Read Losing You for Free Online Page B

together, you must understand that. You cannot deprive them of their mother.’
    Despairing of the repetition, he said, ‘The boys are twenty-one andtwenty-three years old. Neither of them is even living at home any more.’
    ‘Oliver is.’
    ‘Temporarily, while he looks for a job.’
    ‘So you are allowing him to be under the same roof as you and that bitch. This is not a good situation for him. I will not allow my son to be exposed to your debauchery.’
    Knowing from bitter experience that it was a waste of breath trying to tell her he wasn’t having an affair when she’d already managed to convince herself he was, he said, ‘This has nothing to do with Angie.’
    ‘How can you say that when she is in my home, stealing my husband, making up to my sons, using my things ...’
    ‘OK, I’m out of here.’
    ‘Noooo! You can’t just leave! Please, Russell, please let me come with you. I swear it’ll be different this time. I’ll do whatever you want ...’
    ‘All I want is for you to let me go.’
    ‘But I cannot do that. I love you ...’
    ‘Sylvie, your drinking, your jealousy ... they’re out of control ...’
    ‘I will get help.’
    ‘That’s what you always say, but you never do and I’ve had enough. I want to live in a world where I can breathe and not have to keep watching what I say in case you take it the wrong way, or feel afraid of even looking at another woman, never mind speaking to her ...’
    ‘I swear I will change. Please give me another chance. I know you still love me, really. I can see it in your eyes. We’ve been through so much together ... Twenty-five years, two children, my cancer ... Remember how afraid you were that I would die?’
    His eyes closed again. Though he’d known it was coming, at least this time the cancer card had taken longer to play – usually it was one of the first out of the deck.
    ‘Don’t look like that, please,’ she implored. ‘I know you care, because it’s not in you to stop just like that. OK, I have not always been easy, but after Papa died ... Grief does things to people, Russ, you said that yourself. Remember how you felt when your own father passed?For a long time you didn’t know who you were or where to turn. I was there for you then, the way I’ve always been, so please don’t just throw me out now when I need you the most.’
    Feeling the knife of guilt twisting deeper and deeper, he came to put his hands on her shoulders and waited for her anxious, teary eyes to come to his. ‘This isn’t about your father, or your cancer, or grief. It’s about the fact that I don’t love you any more – or not in the way I used to ...’
    ‘Don’t say that!’ she yelled. ‘Don’t, don’t . She’s put you up to this. You’re besotted, delusional ...’
    ‘Sylvie ...’
    ‘Don’t you realise that all men your age go through a mid-life crisis? No, don’t look like that. I know this is not what you want to hear, but it is what’s happening to you. We married young; you didn’t get to play the field, so you’re doing it now. I understand that, and I’m trying to deal with it ... Moving here, to this flat, was me trying to give you some space to be you, but we can’t go on living apart. It’s not right, Russ. It’s not who we are. We belong together.’
    Letting his hands drop to his sides as she distorted the truth to suit herself yet again, he said, ‘I have to go. Please don’t vandalise Angie’s car again ... No, don’t deny it, I know it was you and honest to God, if you carry on the way you are ...’ He didn’t even want to think about what might happen. ‘She was extremely upset ...’
    ‘ She was upset ...’
    ‘And scared ...’
    ‘She’s sleeping with my husband and she’s the one who’s upset?’
    Knowing he’d be insane to go any further with that, he simply said, ‘Charlie’s coming to see you sometime in the next couple of days.’ Charlie was their elder son, now living in London. ‘He’s worried