Chapter Thirty
March 2017
‘Lydia, look at me. Why are you crying?’ Theo turned the best he could on the sofa, showing her he wasn’t as steady in his body as he’d tried to make out he was. ‘I’m working hard, I’m going to get better. Who knows if my memory will come back, but we can make new ones, I promise.’ He lifted both her hands into his, gripped them as though not doing so could make him slip away again. ‘I haven’t forgotten everything, Lydia. I haven’t forgotten how much I love you.’
But somewhere along the way he’d done just that. He’d betrayed her, lost her trust and if he hadn’t had the accident she may have never known anything about it. She shook her head.
‘Theo…’ Her voice broke.
‘Just tell me, Lydia. Tell me what’s so terrible that we can’t work through it. It can’t be any worse than I’ve already had to face.’ He leaned in to kiss her and she let him, briefly savouring the kiss she thought she’d never have again.
And now it was time to tell him everything, to fill in the blanks. Only then could he really understand how far apart their lives had become.
*
As soon as she uttered the words ‘You were cheating on me’, Theo passed through various stages of denial, incredulity she could think such a thing, and then regret and self-loathing when he realised everything she was saying was true.
She’d reminded him of his gambling at university, which he remembered, but then added the part Melanie had told her, the part where he’d lost their savings in a supposed investment that in reality had been more gambling he’d kept from her. She told Theo about the last year, how hard it had been to see him and not know whether he’d ever get better. And when she detailed her life and got to the part where she’d started seeing Jonathan recently, it felt as though she was rubbing salt into every open, raw wound he’d ever had.
Theo had walked away in the end. He’d hoisted himself up and managed to get the crutches, ignoring any suggestion that Lydia help. He wouldn’t look at her but she’d already seen tears in his eyes. Theo never cried and it broke her heart. No matter what he’d done, he was in agony. He couldn’t remember any of it. He was the man she’d fallen in love with, not the man who’d lied to her. He’d probably come down here thinking they would eventually fall into each other’s arms and before long he’d be home with her. But it was more complicated than that now and he seemed unable to comprehend the enormity of the situation.
Sometime later, as Lydia sat in front of the fireplace, flames licking at the back of the hearth and stretching as high as they could up the chimney, one of the staff came and took the scones away and asked if she was okay. Lydia asked whether she could sit for a while and they’d said of course. She hoped Theo would be back but even if he wasn’t, she needed some time to think, a while before she phoned Jonathan and asked him to come and get her. He’d insisted on driving her up here and dropping her at the end of the drive. He’d been discreet and said he’d find somewhere nearby until she was ready to leave.
Lydia’s emotions were raging inside. In the early days after the accident she’d been wracked with guilt at not fighting more for Theo and what he would’ve wanted. She’d torn herself up inside, over and over. But now, now she’d seen Theo, a grown man, out of bed and talking away, a fresh wave of guilt crashed over her and very nearly broke her heart. Because if she’d been a more powerful advocate in the beginning, he’d be dead now. And it took every ounce of energy she could summon to remind herself about the benefit of hindsight, that nobody could’ve predicted this outcome, least of all her.
By the time Theo reappeared, the fire had calmed and was flickering gently in the grate. She didn’t demand to know where he’d been, didn’t point out she’d sat here ever since he’d walked away, wondering whether he’d even bother to talk to her again.
‘This is a total fucking nightmare,’ he said when he sat down.
‘It is. And you can’t wake up from it and have everything go back to normal.’
He looked utterly devastated. ‘How could I do that to you?’
She’d had time to process what he’d done, time to wade through her feelings. He’d woken up to all of this unexpected mess and her heart went out to him. He still looked like the Theo she remembered, but somehow he was different. Whether it was their time apart, or what she knew, or a bit of both, she wasn’t sure. But there was a distance that seemed unimaginable to be able to cross.
His hand twitched as though he was going to take hold of hers but he didn’t. ‘I vaguely remember a colleague called Melanie, but telling me I was having an affair with her seems ridiculous.’ He held up a hand as Lydia began to protest. ‘I know, I know. I’m not saying I don’t believe you.’ He winced as though that’s exactly what he wanted to believe. ‘From what you told me there’s no doubt, but don’t you see? I can’t remember it so to me it didn’t happen.’
It must be weird being told you’d done something so hideous and not having any recollection. You’d feel cheated: it would be surreal, like an out-of-body experience.
‘Melanie gave you the benefit of the doubt when she came to see me.’ Lydia said her name out loud with an ease she never thought she’d manage, almost like it was yet another medical term, a piece of jargon she’d picked up along the way. ‘She said maybe you’d changed your mind about carrying things on between you both, and that you may have decided you wanted to stay with me and make it work.’
This time his hand, with a bit of extra effort, was able to close around hers. It wasn’t the usual tight grip of a man holding his girl’s hand but it was enough to show his emotion, his regret.
‘Maybe I had. I mean, were we happy?’
Lydia looked into his eyes. ‘We were, for a long time. We had our moments, certainly, and we did have our tough times. I wasn’t entirely innocent. I’d nag you and not speak to you when I was frustrated, but it never seemed like anything we couldn’t work through. It was worse, much worse, when you didn’t get a promotion at work.’
‘Was that when I cheated?’
‘It doesn’t really matter when it happened exactly, but it was when we weren’t doing particularly well, we weren’t even sleeping together.’ She didn’t allude to the fact he’d been unable to perform. That would be tantamount to kicking a man when he was down, and she couldn’t look at his face and give him more bad news. Besides, the tiny details seemed irrelevant now. They’d gone way past them too, hadn’t they?
She took a deep breath. ‘The night before the accident we…’ She felt strange talking this way after so long.
‘Go on…’
‘We had sex,’ she told him.
‘Then I can’t see how I could’ve been intending to leave you, to be with this Melanie woman. Why would I be sleeping with you both?’
She almost laughed at the ridiculousness, the affair, the other woman he couldn’t actually remember.
‘Under the Christmas tree,’ she said, biting her bottom lip.
‘What was?’
She looked at him. ‘We had sex…under the Christmas tree.’
It was the biggest smile she’d seen since the morning after that very same night and he even began to laugh. ‘Well that could’ve been painful, what with pine needles everywhere. I don’t think you and I ever managed to put up a tree without making a mess.’
She let a giggle escape.
‘See, we were good together. Lydia, no matter what went before, I want to try. I want to make things right between us. I don’t want to throw away what we once had, all our history. And it’s not because I’m here on my own and want what I can’t have. It’s because I love you, Lydia. I really love you. Please, give us a chance. Am I too late?’
For a moment she almost forgot they weren’t sitting on the sofa in their own lounge next to their own fire, that he wouldn’t get up in a second and crouch down onto the floor in front of the hearth and get the flames going to great heights again, that this man sitting here next to her now had stepped out of their cosy terraced house in winter one day in December and in an instant their lives had changed.
‘I have to go, Theo.’ She moved to the door so fast she knew he wouldn’t catch her. It was rude and mean, but she needed to get away, away from the heat of the room, outside into the open air to be able to breathe again.
And when she stepped out of the front door she didn’t stop running until she was across the car park, out of the drive and on the quiet country lane.
Was it really too late to fix the relationship they’d had once before?