After You Left(62)

He has a son, but he hasn’t cheated. With his ex. The one he hadn’t loved enough to marry. It was before we met. ‘I don’t understand. You’ve got a baby with Lisa. Okay, well . . . that’s one thing. But how does that affect us?’

‘I only found out the day before our wedding. She hadn’t intended to tell me – perhaps never, actually. I don’t really know.’ He frowns. ‘That’s a whole other story I can’t get into. She didn’t want me coming back to her for the wrong reasons.’

I can’t take some woman’s motivations on board right now. ‘You went to see them? To her house?’

He frowns. ‘Yes. How do you know?’

‘I found the note in your pocket. The one you wrote that day when I walked in on you, and you were on the phone.’

He thinks for a moment. ‘Ah.’

‘I’ve driven to the house, Justin. I talked to your plumber. I know you’re living with her.’

I remember him once briefly saying that Lisa wanted a baby, and that getting her pregnant wasn’t something he was going to take lightly. I’d filled in the blanks: Justin didn’t feel secure enough about their relationship to commit to having a child. That was why he had ended it. It had made me feel good: clearly, he loved me more. ‘I bet she wanted you back. Sex one time, then ending up pregnant . . . How do you even know he’s yours? Maybe she’s tricked you.’

‘He’s mine, Alice. And she didn’t trick me.’

‘But she wasn’t going to tell you, then miraculously she ends up telling you the day before our wedding?’ He was set up. How can he not see it? All my protective instincts rise to the surface. She will not win.

‘Alice . . . That’s not why Lisa told me, to dissuade me from marrying you. Far from it. She told me because she’d just found out that our child was born with a heart defect. Dylan suffers from a very serious condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.’ His eyes brim with tears again. ‘Basically . . . it’s one of the heart conditions that’s commonly referred to as sudden death syndrome.’

I hear him, but the words fail to register. Sudden death . . . Heart condition. Baby. Justin and his family with heart problems. The men who died young. His own father.

I stare at him in disbelief. ‘Your baby has a heart problem?’

He pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘Quite a significant one, actually. Lisa only found out the week we were getting married. She needed to see me because the doctors needed to know my full family medical history. They said that talking to me could influence the course of his disease.’

‘But . . .’ It’s like a puzzle with a missing piece. ‘Why didn’t you just say so? Why wouldn’t you tell me there and then?’

‘Because it was a day before our wedding! Everything was planned. You were so happy. I was happy. And then I get this news. I didn’t even know I had a child, let alone a very ill child, and they wanted to know all these details from me, about my health, my family’s health – things I could barely remember. It was crazy. I couldn’t think straight. I didn’t know where the hell I was . . .’ I can’t take my eyes off him, off his turmoil. ‘I thought, okay, we’re only going away for a week. As soon as we get back, I’ll deal with it, and that’s when I’ll tell you. I’ll deal with it then.’

‘But we could have postponed the wedding, if you’d needed to!’ I can’t really picture the late-stage logistics of this, but I’m sure it would have been possible.

‘Maybe. But at the time I thought I had it sorted.’

‘How did Lisa find out about his condition?’ I don’t know which question to ask first. There are so many. I don’t even know why I want to know. I just want a picture.

‘A few things. His feeding. His breathing. The feel of his chest, apparently, when she touched it. It was like his heart was trying to jump out of his body because he was working so hard to breathe.’ He puts his head in his hands.

He’s thinking it’s all his fault.

I shake my head, dazed. Dazed and disbelieving. ‘So what does this mean, Justin?’

‘Well, at this stage we don’t really know. He’s just had surgery, and he’s still technically in recovery. There are a few possible outcomes. He could lead some version of a limited normal life. Or it could lead to progressive heart failure, and he may require a transplant. Or, of course, worse. It’s still too early to say.’

‘He’s just had surgery?’

‘Yes. That’s the thing. That’s what I found out while we were away. Lisa rang to tell me that Dylan had taken a serious turn for the worse. They needed to perform open-heart surgery, basically’ – he wipes at tears – ‘to save his life. And there was I, thousands of miles away on my honeymoon, sitting drinking wine on a balcony. And I’d only ever seen him once for about half an hour.’ He shakes his head. He is clearly still very much reliving it.

The phone call at 4 a.m. UK time! I knew it wasn’t from his office. ‘Well, it’s starting to make sense. But I still don’t know why you couldn’t have told me there and then. You could have explained and we could have flown back together.’

He looks at his feet. ‘I don’t know. I was only thinking that I needed to be there. Maybe there was something I could do. I . . . like I say, I can’t explain it. I just needed to leave. To be on my own. To have a chance to think.’