Chapter Forty-One #2
‘We met with Tasha’s doctors. I don’t think I fully realised how touch and go it had been when they brought her in.
They’ve put her on the highest dose of medication they can, but they warned us that children with asthma this severe, who’ve experienced an attack like Tasha’s, are likely to do so again.
It was devastating to hear, and our first question was what could be done to help prevent it.
“Short of moving to a different climate, one with less pollution than here,” the consultant told us, “the best advice I can give is to continue monitoring her closely.”’
‘Was he serious about the moving thing?’
Rhys’s shrug looked hopeless. ‘Annalise certainly took it as a plan of action. Perhaps because it confirmed everything she’d researched. “Would her asthma improve if she lived in Australia?” she asked him.’
I didn’t need to be told his reply. The roots of it were buried in the conversation we were now having.
‘But surely Annalise can’t just run off to the other side of the world with your child. There must be laws, rules, or regulations that prevent that.’
‘There are,’ Rhys admitted, but the sadness in his voice told me I hadn’t stumbled over a miraculous solution.
‘Annalise is convinced the only way to keep Tasha healthy is for her to live in Australia and escape the cold British winters and pollution.’
‘But this was only one doctor’s opinion. Couldn’t you see another specialist? Perhaps they’d have a different prognosis.’
‘We saw a second one, the next day.’ Rhys looked beaten, and that was a look I’d never seen on him before. ‘She basically agreed that damp, cold weather is a real trigger for Tasha’s type of asthma and that she’d most likely suffer less in a hot, dry climate.’
I swallowed hard, starting several opposing arguments in my head but never allowing them airtime. They all sounded selfish.
‘Do you think they’re right?’
With the kind of regret that rips hearts apart, he took my hands in his as he spoke.
‘I don’t know, Ellie, but I can’t risk fighting her on this. Yes, there are laws that could force her to stay here. We share parental responsibility, so I could block the move by applying to the courts for a Prohibited Steps Order.’
I was nodding enthusiastically, holding out for a lifeline, only to see him reel it back in with a shake of his head. ‘But what if I did, and Tasha had another attack here, one where the ambulance doesn’t get to her in time?’
I was watching the systematic destruction of a life I hadn’t even known I was trying to build, and there wasn’t a single thing I could do to stop it, because Rhys was right. The risks to his child were too great. Tasha had to come first.
‘Annalise has wanted to go back to Australia for a long time. Even before we broke up, she was talking about it. And now that her parents are moving back to Sydney, she thinks it’s the right time to take Tasha to live near them.’
He must have read something in my eyes, something I would have been too ashamed to say.
‘But her primary motivation is to keep Tasha safe. And I can’t fight her on that. I just can’t.’
He paused, and I braced myself, because I already knew what was coming next.
‘She wants me to go with them.’
It was important that I said the right thing next. But the problem was, I had no idea what that might be.
I stumbled through my words like an actor who was on the wrong page of a script and had forgotten all their lines.
‘But what do you want? What about your work? Your friends? Your life here? What about . . .’ I bit off the rest of that question. I wouldn’t go there. But Rhys did.
‘What about you? What about us?’ he said, so softly I almost lost his words on the warm breeze.
‘I don’t matter. I’m not a factor in this.’
‘How can you say that? Of course you are.’
He sounded so emphatic that I should have felt comforted, but the break in his voice wouldn’t allow me to count this as a victory.
‘We’re too new. We’ve only just begun. I shouldn’t be a consideration here.’
‘You will always be a consideration. Wherever in the world I live, my heart will always be wherever you are.’
‘You have to go. You have to be wherever your daughter is. You and she have an incredible relationship, Rhys. Anyone can see that. Being separated would destroy both of you.’
‘I know,’ Rhys said, his voice hoarse. ‘But so would losing you.’
There was a solution here and a question I knew he would have to ask, but I couldn’t put him through the torture of wondering how to phrase it.
‘I can’t go with you, Rhys.’ It was like an invisible bullet had just struck him. His face contorted in pain. ‘I mean, maybe that’s being presumptuous, because you haven’t actually asked me to.’
He gave me the saddest smile in the entire world.
‘I was going to, even though I already suspected you’d say no.’
My lip began to tremble, and I struggled to get it under control to reply, but it wouldn’t let me. Rhys pulled me against his chest, my face finding the hollow of his shoulder, the place that felt more like home than anywhere I’d ever lived.
‘I know you’ve only just found your father. He’s the missing piece of your family and the only relative you have left. I could never ask nor expect you to walk away from him when you’re only just getting to know each other.’
I buried my face in his shirt front, which I was horribly afraid was going to end up saturated with my tears.
‘And then there’s Mel. You’re about to be godmother to her baby and she’s going to want you to be here and be involved in her child’s life as much as I know you want to be.
‘And lastly, there’s the business that you’ve worked so hard and for so long to make into a success. It’s what your mum wanted you to achieve, and I know that getting where you are is tangled up in all she wanted for you. And that giving it up would be like severing your last connection with her.’
‘How do you know me this well?’ I asked hoarsely, lifting my teary face to his.
‘It’s easy. It’s because I love you,’ he replied simply.
More than anything, I wanted to say ‘I love you too,’ but what would that do, except make him feel even worse?
The seconds stretched on, taking me past the acceptable length of time to give him the response I knew he hoped to hear.
Knowing I loved him back wasn’t going to make any of this any easier.
If anything, it would make it even harder for him to walk away.
If I really loved this man, shouldn’t I be doing everything in my power to lessen his pain, not add to it?
It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, but I dug deep and somehow managed to channel a strength I must have inherited from the woman who’d raised me. The woman who’d written the book on keeping your emotions tightly reined in.
‘We had a good run, Rhys. But I think we both knew it was always going to end with something like this.’
‘What?’
If I’d punched him in the stomach he couldn’t have looked more winded. I had to focus on the tree behind us, because looking into his eyes would undo me.
‘We helped each other get over something few people will ever understand or experience, and we had some pretty amazing times together. But let’s not kid ourselves, your family was always going to come first. And that was just as important to me as it was to you.’
He was shaking his head slowly in denial, and I was so close to screaming, ‘This is all rubbish. I don’t mean a word of any of this’ that the only way to prevent the words from escaping was to bite my lip hard enough to taste the metallic tang of blood on my tongue.
I was hurting him, but it was for his own good. I needed to help him walk away without looking back over his shoulder.
‘I didn’t want to be your everything, Rhys.
Hell, I don’t want to be anyone’s everything.
I don’t want that responsibility. We said we’d give it the summer .
. . and we did. Maybe we’d have lasted a little longer than this, but we always knew we had an end date.
’ I gave what I hoped was a resigned shrug.
‘It just came a little sooner than either of us had expected. We should have known we were on borrowed time when your marks started to fade. The clock has been quietly ticking its way to the end of us for a while now. The best thing we can do is chalk this up to a lovely fling that ran its course.’
And just like that, I broke the heart of the only man I had ever loved.