Chapter 11 - One day like this
19th July 2018 (cont)
He caressed her face again with his hand, relieved that she at least hadn't fled, although he knew that something was deeply upsetting her. He wanted to press her on it, but he had a feeling it would only push her away. Instead, he pulled her towards him, hugging her tightly, and dropping a light kiss on the top of her head.
Suddenly, the moment in the corridor was broken, as he raised his eyes, and met the furious, cold stare of his ex-wife.
"Well, well. Look who it is." she uttered with a cold voice, as she stared at the woman in his arms.
"Rebecca" he acknowledged her presence, feeling Molly stiffen in his embrace.
Rebecca continued to stare, not at him, but at Molly, who remained in his arms for now, but was attempting to pull away. He didn't let her go for a second. He had a horrible feeling that Rebecca was about to blow.
"What the hell is she doing here Charles?" Her tone was quiet but deadly.
He attempted to control the situation, knowing that he would be unsuccessful, but trying anyway. Molly was still pulling away, and he let her go this time, watching her visibly shrink under Rebecca's intense stare. "Rebecca, this doesn't involve you. Go back inside the room with Sam, and I'll be there shortly."
Her gaze finally diverted to Charles, her fury descending at the same time. "Like hell I will. Why didn't you tell me she was here? There's no way I would have agreed to come and visit with Sam if I'd known you were only out in Canada to hide away with your little girlfriend."
Molly's attention was captured by that statement, and she looked at Charles, blocking Rebecca out of her line of vision. "Visiting?"
Charles was confused by the question, until it suddenly dawned on him. Molly still thought that Rebecca was out here as his wife. He felt utterly sick at the thought that she mustn't have believed him when he told her the truth about them splitting up. He watched her carefully as he responded. "Yes, she's visiting with Sam. I told you, we've split up."
Molly looked down as she responded, her cheeks flushing bright red. "I know, but I wasn't sure if...I thought-" she trailed off, not sure what to say. It wasn't that she had an outright suspicion that he was lying, she just hadn't had a chance to work through all of it in her head, and he hadn't fully explained everything. She saw the hurt and frustration in his stance as he spoke.
"You didn't believe me?" He voiced the question, but there was no point. They both knew the answer. Molly tried to justify it regardless, almost forgetting the third person still involved in the conversation.
"Can you blame me for being confused?" Her watery eyes bored into his. "You ain't exactly been completely straight with me in the past."
Rebecca seized the moment, sensing the fractured relationship between the two people in front of her, and feeling an immediate sense of satisfaction. "Nice to see that she trusts you, Charles." She wasn't finished, and added salt to the wound as she smirked "-what a solid foundation for any relationship."
Charles' head snapped towards her. "If I need your input I'll ask for it."
Rebecca wasn't finished with him, continuing to stare. "You still haven't answered my question. Did you know that she was out here? Is that why you walked out on your wife and child? For her?" She aimed a contemptuous look at Molly to make her point, expecting Molly to flinch. Only she didn't. Molly weighed Rebecca up carefully, shocked at the venom which clearly coursed through her. But she didn't flinch. She was sick of feeling like the weak link in this situation.
Charles brought his hand to his head, rubbing his hair in frustration. "You know exactly why I left, let's not cover old ground."
Rebecca smirked again at that, lashing out to deal with her own pain over the situation. "Oh yes, let's not upset your little tart."
That was enough for Molly, and she was finally angered out of her silence. "Excuse me?"
She felt a cold, icy stare look her up and down. It was almost enough to make her shiver. Rebecca responded with a sweet tone, but her words were nothing but vindictive. "Oh didn't you hear me? I called you his little tart." Molly was briefly silenced, shocked by her words so she continued. "I hope you're proud of yourself, causing the end of a marriage. I almost feel sorry for you. You're completely correct not to trust him of course. Won't take him long to do the same to you as he did to me. You'd better watch your back, a replacement will always be there, ready and willing to step in, just like you were."
Charles had heard more than enough, and physically stepped between the two women before Molly had a chance to respond. "That's enough."
"Oh I'm just getting started." Rebecca tried to look past him to engage once more with her target.
"Trust me, you're not doing anything." He lowered his head towards his ex-wife, and spoke in a calm, measured tone. "Don't embarrass yourself any more than you have." His head gestured towards Molly, his eyes softening when he looked at her. "I love her. I've always loved her, and I've always been honest about that, even when you and I got back together. I'm never going to stop loving her, regardless of anything else that happens. None of what's happened is Molly's responsibility. It's mine. So just stop."
Molly's heart raced at his words, a sense of calm washing over her somehow in the face of Rebecca's anger. Charles spoke with authority, and she believed every single word of what she heard him say.
His calmness only infuriated his ex-wife more. "I will not bloody stop! If you think when you get back home from your little Canadian love nest that I'm letting you anywhere near Sam, you're sadly mistaken." She was on the verge of hysterical now.
Unfortunately, the volume of her shouts had increased enough to be heard by others, and Molly watched as a young boy in pyjamas, with thick hair ruffled on his head, emerged at the door of the room which they stood outside. Although she had only ever met him briefly, years ago, she would recognise him anywhere. He was the image of his father. His wide, brown eyes filled with tears as he looked at the scene in confusion. Molly was the nearest to him, and she felt an involuntary urge to reach out to him.
"Sam?" she addressed him with a whisper, hoping that it would draw his gaze from the meltdown which his mother was suddenly experiencing.
"What's going on?" His lower lip trembled as he took in the scene. He had grown so much that she wasn't much taller than him. He was so much more grown up than she remembered, but still undeniably young and innocent. She wanted to sweep him up and take him away from what must be an unbearable sight for him. She suddenly felt a familiar image return to her brain; of her at ten years old, sitting on the stairs of the flat in East Ham in the middle of the night, listening as Dave and Belinda screamed at each other. She remembered sitting on the stairs, comforting two of her sisters as they listened to the shouts, unable to sleep for the noise. She felt so much empathy for Sam at that moment; also viewing a scene that he shouldn't be party to at his age.
Suddenly, his parents registered the fourth person present in the awkward moment, and stopped tearing each other to shreds, turning their attention to their upset son. Molly pulled away, knowing that she had no place here. Not right now.
She managed to sneak away before Charles registered that she was leaving, opening the gap between them in the corridor as he and Rebecca pulled their upset son back into his room.
5th August 2018
Molly sat awkwardly in the waiting room of the clinic, Julia in a chair by her right hand side reading from a book. The pair sat in silence waiting for Molly's name to be called by the receptionist. They had been waiting for almost forty minutes so far, a seemingly endless stream of names being called in her place. Waiting appeared to be the theme of the day; the clinic was almost two hours drive from the base, and the nearest absolutely non-military facility of its kind that they could find. Molly still hadn't confessed her condition to anybody beyond Julia, and had managed to convince her to stay quiet until today's appointment was over and done with.
She drummed her fingers with nervousness on the wooden arms of the chair, feeling uncomfortable. As a sense of nervousness and apprehension filled her body at the prospect of what was about to happen, she pulled a well-thumbed piece of paper from her purse, and opened it. The paper contained the neat and elegant handwriting that she would have recognised anywhere. She read the words again, although she probably could have recited the letter word perfectly to anybody who asked.
21st July 2018
Molly
If you're reading this letter, then it means I have managed to utilise all of my best persuasion skills to convince your flatmate to pass it on. I think that deserves some credit, as I genuinely feared for several of my body parts the last time I spoke with her. She has a skill of invoking fear on a similar level to the Taliban, particularly with Brains, who refers to her as the 'Irish Rottweiler' (please do not tell her, or him, that I told you that).
I know that you were surprised that I turned up here in BATUS without any prior warning. I'm sincerely sorry for the way that it all happened, although I could never be sorry for seeing you again. I know how much I've hurt you, and please know that it wasn't ever my intention to do that. I told you in Bath, more than 4 years ago, that I loved you, and that I wanted you to be brilliant. I meant it then, and I still mean it now.
I handled things all wrong with you and Rebecca, and I've hurt everybody in the process, including Sam, the very person whom I was trying to protect. By the time you read this letter, Sam and Rebecca will be on their way home, and I'll be out on the prairie on exercise. I'm not sure if you have already heard from either Brains or Fingers, but we are scheduled to return to base from the exercise on 1st September.
You said that you needed time to get things straight in your head. You have no idea how much I hope that six weeks is enough time for that to happen. I remember telling you once in the past that you needed to sort your world, and everything in it. I now know that's true of myself as well as you.
I've taken steps since Newport to try and right the wrongs for which I'm at fault. But there is one thing I haven't done. I haven't apologised to you. From the moment that we saw each other after Smurf's funeral, I wasn't fair to you. I punished you for my own failings, and for my guilt and jealousy. I'm so very sorry for behaving that way Molly.
I spent the next four years punishing both of us for my own stupidity. I should have tried harder to find you, and not let myself be dissuaded by others. But I didn't. I gave up. On you, on us, and on any faith that we would be able to fix what had gone wrong. I'm not prepared to give up any more. Not until I'm sure that you know just how much I love you. I will come back to you, on 1st September. I hope that by then, you may have found it in your heart to forgive me, and that we might be able to move forward from this together.
I love you very much. Please don't ever forget that.
Yours, always.
Charles
"Oh god, she's reading the letter again, fetch me the sick bucket." Julia looked up from her book and grinned as she nudged Molly's side.
"You're just jealous cos nobody would write you a love letter, you tosser."
"Oh, please. 'Major hottie' was public enemy no.1 until he came up with that letter. He's just lucky I passed it on to you without inflicting any injury on him, or his perfect hair. Are you ever gonna tell me what the fuck it says, or are you just gonna clutch it to your chest like a Jane Austen heroine forever more?"
"Shut it. Maybe you should ask Brains to write you a love letter of your own." This time it was Molly's turn to grin as Julia did her best to pull a face of complete disinterest.
"Firstly, I doubt that scouse tosspot could write his own name, never mind a letter. Secondly, I note that you waited till I got up at the crack of dawn and drove you for two hours to the arse end of nowhere until you started with your very funny jokes."
"That's interesting" noted Molly quietly, folding her letter back up to put it back in its safe place.
"What's interesting?"
"Well, I was expecting to deny anything was going on between you two. Which you didn't. Interesting, like I said."
Julia glared at her. "Ok. Well I shall add, for clarification, that even if he was the last man on earth, I wouldn't go there."
"Yeah. Whatever you say mate. Although you wasn't saying that the night I came home and caught you two looking well cosy on the couch." Molly looked at her, before dissolving into giggles at the dirty look aimed in her direction.
"Molly Dawes" the young nurse broke their conversation as she called the name from her place at the door.
She stood on wobbly legs, and followed her down the corridor, feeling anticipation build inside of her with every footstep she took towards the room. She moved her hand down protectively to her very slightly rounded abdomen to reassure herself for a moment. The swell was barely noticeable, but it felt like a shift in the earth to Molly.
She soon found herself anxiously pacing back and forth in a narrow room. The nurse had already left, and Molly was left with nothing to do other than twist her watch in nervous circles as she poked about, waiting for the doctor to arrive. The exam room wasn't particularly unusual; plain white walls covered with illustrations of a foetus in the various stages of gestation. Still, Molly's legs were shaky, and she found herself wishing she could sneak back out into the safety of the waiting room without anyone noticing. Out there, she could count on Julia to say something to distract her. But here, inside the small, quiet room, there was nothing except for the frustratingly persistent knowledge that she had avoided telling Charles about this for far too long now.
She could have had told him, but she hadn't, and now she was dealing with this alone. For at least the next few weeks anyway. God knows what he would say when he found out how long she had been keeping the secret. But she was terrified to tell him. Terrified that despite all of his words of love, that he would view being with her as a duty rather than something he wanted. They couldn't even manage to sort themselves out, let alone be parents. What the hell was he going to say?
Stop being stupid, she thought angrily, interrupting her own train of thought. Her mind flickered back to the thought of a fifteen year-old Julia, and she scolded herself suitably, as she once again placed a trembling hand on her stomach. "We're not alone", she whispered under her breath to her stomach, rubbing her hand over the small bump which was obvious only to her.
The same older male doctor whom Molly had spoken with earlier that morning entered the room, drawing Molly from her thoughts as he addressed her and gestured to the examination table in the middle of the room. He was short, with greying hair and a kind twinkle in his blue eyes, which carried on as he made small talk with her. Molly hoisted herself on to the table uncomfortably, and it suddenly struck her how wrong it felt to be doing this alone. Without him. The thought continued to haunt her as she lifted the lower half of her top and felt the cold gel being spread out over her abdomen. Before she knew it, the overhead light in the room had been dimmed, and the small screen at the side of the bed crackled into life as the probe made contact with her stomach, rolling around gently.
"There we are" the doctor said, as he zoomed in on the image that filled the screen. Molly felt the breath she had been holding release from her with force as she stared at the screen, mesmerised. The image in front of her was magical. A tiny little body, with a head, and arms, and legs lay in front of her, as clear as day, despite its black and white tone. Her baby. Their baby.
The probe continued to move over her stomach as the doctor pointed out the various features on the screen. Molly wasn't even aware of the tears trickling down her face until the doctor pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and placed it gently in her hand.
"We were correct about your dates Molly. The scan is showing you as 12 weeks and 4 days pregnant. That makes your due date approximately 14th February. A Valentine's Day baby. Congratulations."
"Is everything ok? I mean, everything's normal isn't it."
""Everything looks completely normal. Don't look so worried." He smiled kindly at her, and her beam lit up the room.
Julia had told her that there would be a moment. A moment where it would all fall into place, and she would suddenly know, without a shadow of a doubt that she could do it. It was that precise moment, alone with the kind doctor with the sparkling eyes that she looked at her baby on that screen and knew without a shadow of any doubt. She loved that image on the screen with an immediate, unstoppable force; one that took the breath from her. No matter what else happened, she could do this. She was going to be a mum. She was ready.
AN. Hello! No cliffhanger this time! :-) I'm actually feeling very emotional on behalf of Molly. She's beginning to see the bigger picture. She doesn't get drawn into a fight with Rebecca, and concentrates on Sam instead. And she is finally getting to grips with the concept of motherhood, something which horrified her previously. She loves her baby, and she is seeing the way ahead. The only issue is that CJ still doesn't know, and things aren't still fully resolved between them. How do we think he will react?! He will play a bigger part in the next chapter, so perhaps we will find out then...
I'm thrilled that most of you seem to be enjoying this - it's become longer than I anticipated at the outset, but I hope you will bear with me until the end. Still a couple more bumps in the road, but stick with me!
Song was one day like this, by elbow.
