Page 95 of The Last Train Home
‘What kind of space?’ he asks.
‘Seven thousand miles.’
‘You’re going back to London? Now?’
‘Tomorrow,’ I say because I need to give him a chance to sleep on it, to wake up in the morning, retract what he’s said, apologise and stop me from leaving. And then we can try to move forward, take it from there.
‘Are you leaving me?’ he asks.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m leaving. But I’m not leaving you. We just need some serious space. We can talk about it in the morning and maybe … you won’t feel this way, once you’ve slept onit.’ I stop talking. I can’t put words in his mouth. Sean needs to reach a conclusion himself. When I think about this later I’m sure he’ll be able to reassure me, but at the moment he’s floored me.
The sun streams down as I stand by the taxi’s door. Sean stands with his hands in his pockets, watching me as I put my cardigan for the flight and my carry-on luggage into the car. He’s booked the taxi to take me to the airport. He doesn’t know what to say or do. So far he’s said and done all the wrong things. Only I don’t think he’s realised that yet. I don’t know if he’ll ever realise that.
‘You know where I am, Sean. If you decide you want us in your life … you know where I am.’
‘I didn’t think you were leaving me?’ he pleads. ‘I thought you were only leaving for a bit.’
‘I don’t know what’s happening,’ I cry.
‘I didn’t want it to be like this,’ he says. ‘We were so good.’
‘We were.’
He’s said all this before. I feel numb. I can’t hear it again. It’s doing neither of us any good.
‘How will we make this work, with you there and me here?’ he asks again.
‘We won’t,’ I say. ‘We can’t. You can’t be a father from the other side of the world. You can’t be a husband from that distance, either.’
We’d talked late into the night. We’d talked through the early hours of this morning and at no point did Sean volunteer to be part of the family he’d helped create. At no point did he volunteer to apply for a transfer to the London office. At no point did he beg me to stay, which was the thing thathurt the most. I can’t be here with him any more. I just can’t. It’s scaring me that I might descend into full loneliness when my husband doesn’t really want the family he’s created. We’re getting in his way.
‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that I might be a bit scared?’ I asked him when we woke, bleary-eyed and both of us crying when the argument started again. ‘That I need you?’
Now we’re here, by the taxi, it seems as if both of us are resigning ourselves to the facts. Our marriage is ending. Neither of us wants to make it work with the parameters each has set the other. We hold each other, because there’s still love there, but it’s clear that this is the end.
‘We don’t fit your ambition. We don’t fit the life you’re trying to create for yourself. I’m not enough. Collectively, the baby and I … we’re not enough.’
‘Don’t say it like that,’ he protests, but deep down I’m sure he knows I’m right. His ambition didn’t encompass living well with a family, although at one point I think he thought it did. There’s no room for us in the picture of his day-to-day life that Sean’s painted.
I’m leaving and he’s not even trying to stop me. Instead he booked the car.
‘Will you …’ he asks as I start to climb into the taxi. ‘Will you message me, when you’ve had it, please.’
It.
‘For what purpose?’ I say, rather horridly.
‘So I know you’re all right. So I know the baby has arrived safely. So I can transfer you some money, to buy things. I’ll do it now,’ he says. ‘I’ll go straight back upstairs and I’ll put so much money in your account, Abbie, you and the baby won’t want for anything.’
‘Thank you, Sean,’ I say, because anything else is pointless at this stage, when the driver is waiting politely and I reluctantly have a flight to catch.
Beg me to stay. Beg me to stay. We can work this out if you tell me you love me and you ask me to stay. Although if he begged me to stay, I’m not sure I could trust Sean to want us suddenly. Every fibre of my body knows this. I just need to relay that message to my brain.
His phone rings in his pocket and he reaches for it. ‘I have to take this,’ he says. ‘Abbie, I’m so sorry.’ I don’t know if he’s apologising for the way we’ve ended or because he has a work call that he needs to accept. I’m not going to stand here to find out.
I want to tell him I love him, before I say goodbye, but I look at him as he itches to accept his phone call and I can’t say it. I’m not sure I’d mean it.
‘Bye,’ I say and I climb into the taxi.
