Page 72 of The One Day You Were My Husband
“How’s your dad?” he asks, next.
“He’s got Alzheimer’s,” I say shortly. “He’s in residential care. And actually quite sick at the moment.” I check my phone, but there’s nothing from Nicola.
Johan’s face falls. “I’m sorry. That’s…God, that’s heartbreaking. Your lovely dad.”
“Yeah.” I fiddle with my drink coaster; a leather spot of black on a smooth, white table. “It’s been incredibly hard.”
“What sort of things does he remember?” Johan asks.
“It varies. It was mostly just his episodic memory for a while—recent events, things he’d done and said. But it’s a lot worse now. He hasn’t got many dates or facts left at all. He’s just in this kind of shifting time warp, with people he mostly doesn’t recognize coming and going. Like, I’ll go and see him and he’ll tell me about his daughter who’s a surgeon, even though he can’t quite remember her name.”
“Oh, Carrie.”
“Yeah.”
“Does he remember his surgeon daughter’s husband getting arrested on their wedding day?”
I try and fail to smile. “He did once tell me that story, yes. But he’d forgotten your name, and he had no idea it had happened to me—he said it had happened to a friend’s daughter. He told it like he was the village gossip. Scandalized tones, shaking his head, the works.”
“He didn’t remember the details?”
“No, thankfully.”
“I’m glad,” Johan says after a pause. “I’d hate to have contributed toa painful memory. It’s bad enough that you’ve had to live it all these years.”
Tiredness is closing in quiet and fast, like heavy snowfall. The shock is wearing off. Johan’s energy is focused entirely on me; he doesn’t look anywhere else. It’s me who keeps breaking eye contact.
I take a breath. “If you really can’t or won’t tell me anymore, I think I want to go,” I say. “I have two children and a husband. It’s not right for me to be here with you.”
And itisn’tright. I need to be there for my poor little Maeve after her trip to the head teacher’s office. And for my Raffy, who is without his mummy for the first time in his life. If Robin’s gone so far as to admit they’re struggling without me, things must be bad. I’ll get them while they’re still at the table if I call in the next ten minutes. My heart lifts at the thought of their little voices, their silly faces covered in food and pen marks, the illicit chocolate Robin’s probably let them have.
“I hope your husband is a nice man,” Johan says after a pause. “I hope he looks after you.”
“He does. Beautifully.”
“Good.”
“I know you’re a father, too. I looked you up online, of course. When I found your cabin.”
“I’m a stepdad,” he says. “Matteo isn’t my son. As he has reminded me more than once when I’ve refused to buy him sweets.” The ghost of a smile.
There’s an uncomfortable sensation in my chest as he tells me this.
“I’m going to go,” I repeat, standing up. “I’m leaving in the morning. And this is…I just can’t…”
Johan stands up, too. He watches me for a while longer, then nods. “I understand.”
I close my eyes. Twelve years of my life rewritten, just like that. I hold onto the back of my chair, trying to ground myself. I listen to the hum and clatter of the reception and bar, a shout of laughter disappearing into a stairwell, the sound of milk being foamed by a barista’s wand.
“Carrie.”
I open my eyes. He’s putting his wallet in his back pocket—the left one, as always.
“It’s an anniversary for us today,” he says. “Thirteen years since the day we met. Did you know that?”
I exhale slowly. Of course. A tall man standing in a corridor outside Major Trauma. Work trousers, paint on his wrist. Sky-blue eyes and a deep sense of knowing. The pull of that man.
“I’d forgotten,” I admit.
