Page 11

“It was hard, Mitch, so hard. I did everything I could to try and help him, but he didn’t want to be helped.” Hot tears fill my eyes.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he says gently.

I dash away the tears. “All the doctors wanted to do was shove pills down him. Ones to control his blood pressure and cholesterol. Painkillers, antidepressants. And they all have side effects, so then he had more pills to counter those. He was practically rattling. And he was still in pain. I couldn’t do anything. I tried to get him up and about, to go for a walk, to do anything, but he just yelled at me. And in the end, it became too much. I didn’t want Millie growing up in that kind of atmosphere.”

“So you left?”

I shake my head. The memory of that horrible night makes me feel as if a hand is crushing my heart. I wish I could wipe it from my mind. But it’s always going to be there, like a piece of shrapnel lodged deep inside my brain, and no operation would ever be able to remove it.

Chapter Four

Mitch

“One night, I’d just had enough,” Vix says simply. “He’d been grumpy all day. Snapped at Millie and made her cry. He’d been rude to me several times, when I was only trying to help. I felt as if I was getting on his nerves, and that really upset me. Other people said I should leave him to it, go off and do my own thing, but I’m not like that. If the atmosphere between us was unpleasant, I needed to do something about it. So after Millie had gone to bed, I turned off the TV and said we needed to talk.”

She pauses, looking away, gathering her thoughts. I don’t say anything. What can I possibly say that will make this better? I hadn’t realised it had become so bad for her. I feel awful—I walked away and left her with him, even though I knew they were both struggling. I was his friend, and he’d been through a terrible experience. I should have stayed, forced him to talk. But what do you do when a man refuses help at every turn?

“I started calmly,” she continues, “but it soon got out of control. He saw everything I said as a criticism and lashed out verbally. He told me I was like a wasp in his ear. Always going on at him.” She presses her fingers against her lips for a moment. “He yelled that I had no idea what he was going through. And then…” She brushes away a tear. “He cried. I tried to comfort him, but he pushed me away, embarrassed. And he said he didn’t want me to stay. That I should leave him, because I deserved someone better, someone whole.”

“Ah, Vix…”

“I went to bed and cried all night. He stayed on the sofa. The next day, after I took Millie to daycare, we talked again. And again the day after. I kept trying to persuade him to let me help. I said I’d go back to the doctors with him, try to get him off some of the pills, go to the gym with him, to counselling, anything. But he just kept saying he didn’t want that. It was as if he was trying to make me miserable so I’d walk out. And things were starting to get difficult financially because he wasn’t working. We were struggling to pay the mortgage.”

“Jesus.”

“Dad tried to help, but Jayden refused. Dad got angry eventually, that shows how bad it was.”

I know what she means; I’ve never seen Rudolph lose his temper. “What happened?”

She gives a long, heartfelt sigh. “He could see how miserable I was. He tried to talk to Jayden, but he wouldn’t listen, and in the end, Dad gave him a right dressing down, said he needed to pull himself together for his wife and child. When he went, Jayden said he was right. And then he said he was leaving. And he packed his bags and walked out.”

I’m so shocked, my mouth’s gaping like a fish. “Where did he go?”

“He stayed with a friend for a few nights. And then he told me he’d spoken to his brother, and he was going to move down and live with him.”

“In Christchurch?” I say, astonished.

“Yeah.”

“And he left, just like that?”

“Yep. Walked up the gangplank onto the ferry and didn’t even look back.”

“Fuck me.”

We fall quiet, the events of the past few years like a huge weight pressing down on us.

She’s too young for such misery. She has such a light spirit; she should have had the chance to build the happy family she’d always wanted. Instead, she’s been abandoned, and she’s clearly lonely and hurting. Her grief must have been unbearable when her mother died.

“He didn’t even come back for the funeral,” she says.

I stare at her in shock. “What? You’re fucking kidding me?”

She shakes her head.

I groan and brush a hand over my face. Neither he nor I were there to support her during one of the hardest days of her life.

I lower my hands and pull her into my arms. “I’m so, so sorry,” I murmur.