A Merry Little Christmas

Chapter 25

Nell

Nell,

I’m just letting you know that I’m going to stay somewhere else for a while. I need some space to get my thoughts in order and I can’t be around you while I do that. My head is in a mess, and I don’t know what to think. I found out tonight that you’ve been lying to me. And also learned that you don’t think that Max is my son. I don’t think it is possible for me to be any more hurt and confused right now.

I’m leaving your phone by this note. You dropped it on Yvonna’s driveway, so I went to collect it once I’d finished on that emergency job where the house had been broken into. All five of them in the family, the parents and three kids, stood in the door to wave me off. I had been feeling so sorry for them, all their valuables stolen, all their Christmas presents taken from beneath the tree. But now I think they are the lucky ones. They have each other to lean on, the rock-solid support of the family unit. Possessions are nothing compared to the riches of family. Families come in all sorts of forms, Nell. You, me and Max are a family. I thought that was an unshakeable fact.

After I left Yvonna’s, I drove to Merry and Bright to deliver your phone to you, I knew you’d be lost without it and worried about where it was. I wish I hadn’t. My life would be so much less complicated and depressing than it is now.

The main lights in the shop were off, but I could see the flat was still bright upstairs. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I heard you talking to the Airbnb guy. I still can’t work out whether I am glad I heard what you said or not. Ignorance is bliss, right?

Wrong. It turns out that I’ve been kept ignorant of the facts for the last few weeks, and it’s been anything but bliss. I have been so cut up about it. You let me think that you were the one with fertility problems. You even suggested as a joke that I should trade you in for a better model, one with fully working parts. All along it has been me with the problem and now I wonder, is that what you are considering doing: trading me in for someone else?

Knowing how much you want to be a mother to our child, knowing that Merry has managed to do the one thing that you can’t (or so I thought) has torn me apart with grief for the kids we might never have. Ever since we got those results – results which I now know you lied about – I’ve thought of nothing but you, of what I can do to make things better. It confused me why you didn’t want to go back to see Dr Bajek, we must have been offered a follow-up appointment? There are many routes to becoming parents and I was willing to explore all of those. But you made that decision on behalf of us both, that we weren’t going to take this journey any further.

I assumed you and I were rock-solid like that family, but a family whose foundations are not built on trust eventually crumbles and that is where we are now.

Because Merry told me about your termination. You have been pregnant before and never once thought to tell your husband about it.

And because I heard you, Nell, with the Airbnb guy. I heard you joke about having sex with another man to get pregnant and that no one would ever know. Is that really how unimportant I am in this marriage? To you?

But none of this compares to what I heard you tell him about Max, about my boy, I’ve never even met the bright star in my sky. I can’t believe you’d stoop so low as to suggest to someone I’ve never even met that Max isn’t my son.

So now do you see why I have to go? I can’t be around you, Nell. Not at the moment. I’m too angry, disappointed and confused.

Please do not try to call me, I have no wish to talk to you. If you have any remaining respect for me, you’ll let me have this time alone to work through these feelings.

Yours,

Olek