Out of Control

Chapter 24

Fiona felt good when she got into the car to come home. That was one relationship back on an even keel. But there were a few more to go. Rob, for instance. She’d thought about it and had come to a decision: she needed to put him straight on the fact that he could expect nothing from her. Not reparation and not friendship. If Joe found out she was keeping secrets or had restarted communication with her ex-husband, it would threaten their companionable journey into old age. She pulled over in the car, and while she was still feeling confident, dialled the number on Rob’s business card.

“Coffee? Great, I’m free now.” His enthusiasm gave her cold feet. He was expecting more than she could give. But she had to see him as soon as possible and tell him face to face to avoid the expectations in his head growing to gargantuan proportions.

Twenty minutes later they were sitting in the window of One More Bean, the only independent coffee shop in the town. Having his full attention was like being back in the early days of their relationship when everything was positive and hopeful. His eyes were bright and dancing and she didn’t want to quash his mood, so she found herself prattling while she plucked up the courage to say what she actually wanted to. “If we don’t support places like this—” she gestured round at the tables, housed in cosy inglenooks and decorated with fresh flowers — “every high street in the country becomes the same homogenised blob. It’s like the large numbers of us women over a certain age who dress in beige and brown — without individual colour, we become one invisible mass.”

Rob sipped his coffee and ignored her words. He didn’t seem to share her nerves. When he spoke, his voice was normal. “You never married again? Never tried for another baby?”

Fiona hoped he hadn’t noticed her wince at the question. Counselling or no counselling, he didn’t have the empathy to lead gently up to such a difficult subject. Or maybe that was the point of counselling, to get things out in the open. “No.” She didn’t have to justify her response but the words came out anyway. “I didn’t have the capacity to trust anymore.”

This time he winced. “I’m sorry. I never dreamed that my stupid actions would have such a long-lasting impact on you.” His hand hovered over the table, as though he was about to place it on hers. She immediately put both hands around the tall latte glass in front of her and tried to take comfort from its warmth.

“How could you destroy our lives like that? And the life of an unborn child?”

“I was trying to do the opposite. I was trying to build a better life for all of us.”

“By gambling our money away?” The conversation wasn’t going to plan. She’d come here to tell him that she was in a steady relationship and didn’t need ghosts from the past rocking the boat. She’d moved on from that terrible time and didn’t want to be involved in his ‘reparation’. She’d done nothing that required reparation. But now he was dragging her back.

“At first it was just a bit of fun — an office sweepstake, a night at the greyhounds, a tiny lottery win. Every time I tried, I won something. It was as though I had the Midas touch.” He took a sip of black coffee.

Fiona sighed. He’d said all this three decades earlier in those black days at the end of December. Hearing the same words now didn’t change how she felt about his actions back then.

“We were trying for a baby and I wanted to give you the option of being a stay-at-home mum. At that time, you were a perfectionist, maybe you still are, but I thought you would struggle to split yourself between home and work. I wanted to free you of that struggle. Given my unfailing luck, I thought that if I studied form and placed my bets judiciously, it would be easy to win enough money to allow you to take a year or two off work.”

Back then she’d argued that he was trying to blame her by calling her a perfectionist; now, with the benefit of age and experience, she was able to let it go. It wasn’t always an insult. Looking at his older face, creased with experience, his dark hair sprinkled with the silver of age and his eyes still with the same plea to understand, she actually believed that he had started his ‘scheme’ with the best intentions and out of love for her. Unexpectedly, and three decades too late, something started to thaw inside her.

“But it wasn’t. My lucky streak collapsed. I tried to chase my losses. And it ended badly.” He moved the sugar bowl from side to side on the table. “But you know this already.”

Back then, with the pain of losing Amber acute and all-consuming, Fiona hadn’t listened to him properly and hadn’t tried to understand. Now, with her grief dulled by time, she began to comprehend. And to shoulder her own share of guilt. Back then, society had expected men to be the breadwinners, to put their women first and to keep their own emotions buttoned up. Fiona’s younger self had judged and punished him unfairly. He was being as honest as he could with her and he deserved her honesty in return. “I’m not an innocent in this.” There was a lump in her throat and she felt tears on her cheeks. “I was too wrapped up in my own misery. I was a bit of a diva — I expected all the sympathy and attention to be centred on me because I was the one who had physically lost Amber. I was the one going through the medical stuff.” Emotion stopped her talking. Unconsciously, her hand had gone back to the table and now Rob was squeezing it and looking her in the eye. She wanted him to hug her, to forgive her and to make everything better. These were the same things she’d wanted back then; the things she had punished him for not providing. Now she realised that those things had to come from within her. To move forward she had to stop blaming others and learn to love herself.

“No — you were never a diva.” There were tears in his eyes too. “I was the one to blame. For everything.”

“They told me at the hospital . . . they said . . . losing Amber was probably not related to the bailiffs.” She couldn’t look at him. She’d never told anyone this before. “They said it would probably have happened anyway. And then they told me the statistics for how common miscarriage is. But I didn’t believe them because I wanted to blame you. I was so angry about everything. It suited me to make it your fault. Over the years, blaming you made it easier. Don’t ask why — it just helped me to move on by putting you in the baddy compartment and throwing away the key.” There was an uncomfortable tension in her wrists; her hands were squeezing tightly against the rigid glass. This honesty made her vulnerable and open to attack — something the old Fiona avoided at any cost.

For a moment there was shock etched on his face and he looked almost angry. Then his features softened again and he handed her a napkin from the stainless-steel holder on the table. “I appreciate you being honest with me. I wasn’t looking for this.”

They both fell silent. Fiona blew her nose and then picked up her tall latte glass and, for a second, watched her hand tremble. Then she cradled it more gently in two hands. Rob stirred another spoonful of sugar into his coffee without seeming to realise what he was doing. She watched his face as he winced at the excessive sweetness. She slowed her breathing in an effort to regain control.

When the wave of emotion had subsided, she spoke again. “So, why are we here raking over the past?”

His turn to blow his nose. “My counsellor suggested reparation in order to bring closure and acceptance of what happened back then. I think she’s right. And I think doing it together will be more effective.”

Fiona could feel her guard rising again, like a metal barrier sliding into place. “What do you mean by reparation ?”

“Trying to make amends for the wrong I did back then.”

“And me too?” Now the moment of revelation was over, she was glad Rob knew the truth, but her stomach twisted at the thought of sharing this with anyone else.

“You have nothing to make amends for.” He was still painting her as whiter than white, even though she’d treated him shabbily. “But I’d appreciate your help. I think it will make my own actions more powerful.”

“What actions?”

“I’m going to talk to groups about the dangers of gambling. I’ve got the backing of the local gamblers’ support group and they will get me into colleges, schools, young offenders’ institutions, and possibly even prisons.”

“I don’t understand how I can help. I’ve never had a problem with gambling.”

“You can explain the massive impact that me gambling away everything we owned had on you and . . . on our baby.”

Fiona’s hand went to the pendant around her neck. “Even though I lied to you? I’m not strong enough to admit to that.”

“The fact that you lied adds weight to how badly I damaged you.”

Fiona had arranged to meet her ex-husband with the intention of heading off any further direct contact and asking him to keep his distance at any future club events. Now it was snowballing into something else. She wanted to say ‘yes’ to his idea of putting others off gambling. She wanted to be strong enough to talk publicly about Amber and about how and why she hadn’t told her then husband the whole truth. But wanting to and being tough enough to weren’t the same thing. Plus, there were other difficult conversations to be had first; she couldn’t talk about this in public if the people closest to her weren’t aware of her past. It wasn’t fair. Telling them would be more difficult than telling Rob because he had been part of it and, however he’d taken her confession, she’d had nothing to lose in that relationship. Meeko and Joe needed to know everything, and her mum needed to know how Fiona had concealed the medical truth. This latter conversation needed to happen sooner rather than later as Dorothea and Rob’s mum were in contact. And how would this news go down? Dorothea would be angry at her daughter’s dishonesty, Meeko would get the kid gloves out and treat her like a delicate china ornament, and Joe . . . Joe was unfathomable. “That is such a good thing to do,” she said slowly. “But I need time to decide. It’s delicate. I need to talk to . . . a few people.”

She thought she detected a drop in the eagerness of Rob’s expression. “Of course. Does your partner know everything? Sorry, stupid question, of course you will have told him about your reckless first husband.”

“He knows I was married years ago and it didn’t work out. That’s all.” Telling Joe that she’d been hoodwinked by a gambler and lost a baby would have revealed vulnerability. That’s why keeping him at arm’s length had suited her. She had control over how she presented herself and her past to him. Now, the relief and increased closeness she felt after finally being honest with Rob made her realise that holding information back from the significant people in her life had created the barricades and compartments. And these were stopping her relationships from flourishing to their full potential. And she included Meeko in that.

Rob nodded. “Call me when you’ve made a decision.”

Fiona drained her coffee and pulled her jacket on. Rob followed her to the café door. “You’re right,” he said. “We do need to support these independents.”

She smiled and, outside on the pavement, he pulled her into an unexpected hug. Then he took a step back and looked at her. “Has there been anyone over the years who you’ve trusted enough to tell everything?”

“I’ve come close to it.” Rob had a way of looking at her that made her want to keep talking. There was no need to put up a front and nothing to lose. “I’ve thought about telling my best friend, Meeko. He would be sympathetic and he’d keep the information confidential. But I don’t trust him not to start treating me differently. He’d probably wrap me in cotton wool. I don’t want that. I don’t want my revelation to change our relationship.”

Rob reached out and gave her hands a squeeze. “I understand.”

Then Rob turned right and Fiona went left. As she walked, she caught sight of Meeko a little way ahead. His gait looked awkward. She called to him and he glanced round, hesitating mid-step. She waved and called for him to wait but he turned forward again and increased his pace. It was impossible to know whether he was deliberately blanking her or hadn’t realised who it was. Fiona stopped trying to catch him and gazed, unseeing, into the window of a women’s budget fashion shop, trying to gather her thoughts. She turned her head in the direction taken by Rob, her mind in a turmoil.