The Night I Was Saved

Chapter Fifty-Two

Perth, Australia, November 2001.

The weather is stifling, the sun high in the air and not a cloud to be seen. Around me, people are happy which is often seen with weather like this; the human body fills with the hormones endorphin and dopamine the moment the sun shines. I wonder if I'm immune. I must be immune.

Because in contrast to all the people around me, I feel empty. I'm thirty-eight years old, in the middle of a relationship crisis with the one woman I've ever loved, and I've just laid my father to rest. I've no friends, never had them to be honest, and I lost my job last March, which makes me unemployed. If it wasn't for some savings and my father's ample heritage, I probably wouldn't even be able to fly back home to London in January.

My life is a mess, and while I walk around sunny Perth, with happy families and couples filling the streets, I realize it's always been a mess.

Until I met her. Carla. She's twenty-nine, the daughter of a teacher and an accountant. Properly raised, beautiful, and in the prime of her life. And out of all people, she fell for me.

It started two years ago when she started working as my assistant at Johnson's Software Development. She knocked me off my feet straight away; I'd never been in love before, even questioned if I was able to feel an emotion like that, but she drew me in effortlessly.

She left the company after six months, but she didn't leave me. Thinking back, that was the happiest time of our relationship; the first nine months. After those nine months, she moved in with me, and that's when things headed south drastically.

Three months into living together, she tells me she wants to try for a baby. With me, the loser that hardly ever comes outside and can't cook for shit. But she saw more in me than just that loser, and so, I agreed. I had never seen myself with children but for her, I'd have them. I'd do anything for her.

But life can be cruel, and just when everything finally looked up for me, life had to fuck with me again. Long story short, we discovered my swimmers are dead, meaning I can't give her the one thing she wants desperately. A baby.

And she wants to be a mother so desperately, she's willing to do everything to become one. Including having a baby with another man. Including leaving me if that's not what I want. She's ready to jump ship.

I begged her to think about it, and since my father was terminally ill, I proposed a break. To give her time to think, properly and without me, and to grant me the opportunity to help my father before taking a big decision like that. I could only handle losing one of them.

And thank to everything that's holy, she agreed. I've put the flat in her name, showing her how I would truly do everything for her, and I left. We've been having contact, although minimal, but the conversations we are having give me hope. I think she misses me, which was what I'd hoped when I left for six months. She has to see that she doesn't want to be without me. She has to miss me to know she wants to keep me.

And I had time to think too. She wants a child at all costs, and I want her at all costs. So if that means I have to make concessions, I will. If she wants a child, I won't stand in her way, but I want to be there every step along the way. When I come back home, I'll tell her, and I hope it's what she wants to hear and it'll convince her to stay.

I have two months left, and it gives me time to sell my father's house and make sure everything is dealt with his livelihood. Once that's all taken care of, I can go back and hopefully, start our future. Of Carla and me.

I'm about to take a left turn, passing an older building as I do, before I hear yelling to my right. Instinctively, I turn my head towards the noise, and I'm just in time to see a tiny girl run into me, her blonde hair all over the place as she grabs my leg and holds onto it for dear life.