one who moved the goalposts, not me.’
‘I can’t be the sort of wife you want,’ she said, her eyes shining with tears. ‘I can’t do it any more. I’m not that sort of person, Javier. I want more from life than money and sex and endless hours in the gym or the beauty salon. I want to be loved for who I am, not for what I look like.’
He snatched up his trousers and zipped himself into them. ‘I care about you, Emelia. Believe me, you would not be here now if I didn’t.’
‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’ she asked. ‘You care about me. For God’s sake, Javier, you make me sound like some sort of pet.’
He sent her a frustrated look as he grasped the door handle. ‘We will talk about this later,’ he said. ‘You are not yourself right now.’
‘You’re damn right I’m not,’ she said. ‘But that’s the heart of the problem. I have never been myself the whole time we’ve been married. I am a fake wife, Javier, a complete and utter fraud. How long do you expect such a marriage to last?’
He set his mouth. ‘It will last until I say it’s over.’ And then he opened the door and strode out, snapping the door shut behind him.
EMELIA went to bed totally wrung out after her conversation with Javier. She lay awake for hours, hoping he might come in and join her but he apparently wanted to keep his distance. She spent a restless night, agonising over everything, ruminating over all the stupid decisions she had made, all the crazy choices to be with him in spite of how little he was capable of giving her emotionally. No wonder she had grown tired of their arrangement. She was amazed it had lasted as long as it had. She had compromised herself in every way possible. With the wisdom of hindsight, she knew that if she’d had better self-esteem she would never have agreed to such a marriage. But, plagued with insecurities stemming from childhood, she had been knocked off her feet with his passionate attention. His ruthless determination to have her in his bed had curdled her common sense. She had acted on impulse, not sensibly.
When she woke the next morning after snatches of troubled sleep she felt the beginnings of a vicious headache. The light spilling in from the gap in the curtains was like steel skewers driving through her skull. She groaned and buried her head under the pillow, nausea rolling in her stomach like an out of control boulder.
The sound of the door opening set a shockwave of pain through her head and she groaned again, but this time it came out more like a whimper.
‘Mi amor?’ Javier strode quickly towards the bed. ‘Are you unwell?’
Emelia slowly turned her head to face him, her eyes half-open. ‘I have the most awful headache…’
He placed a cool dry hand on her forehead, making her want to cry like a small child at the tender gesture. ‘You’re hot but I don’t think you’re feverish,’ he said. ‘I’ll check your temperature and then call for the doctor.’
Right at that moment Emelia didn’t care if he called for the undertaker. She was consumed with the relentless, torturous pain. The nausea intensified and, before he could come back with a thermometer, she stumbled into the en suite bathroom and dispensed with the meagre contents of her stomach in wretched heaves that burned her throat.
Javier came in behind her. ‘Ah, querida,’ he said soothingly. ‘Poor baby. You really are sick.’ He dampened a face cloth and gently lifted her hair off the back of her neck and pressed the coolness of the cloth there.
Emelia brushed her teeth once the nausea had abated. She slowly turned, embarrassed at her loss of dignity. She felt so weak and being in Javier’s strong, commanding presence only seemed to intensify her feelings of feeble vulnerability. She could not remember a time when she had been sick in front of him before. He was always so robustly healthy and energetic, which had made her feel as if he would be revolted by any sign of weakness or fragility. In the past she had hidden any of her various and mostly minor ailments, putting on a brave face and carrying on her role of the always perfect, always biddable wife.
‘The doctor is on her way,’ he said, supporting her by the elbow. ‘Why don’t you get back into bed and close your eyes for a bit?’
‘I’m sorry about this…’ she said once she was back in bed. ‘I thought I was getting better.’
‘I am sure you are but perhaps yesterday was too much for you,’ he said. He brushed the hair back from her face, his expression more than a little rueful. ‘I’m sorry for upsetting you. I keep forgetting you’re not well enough to go head to head with me.’
‘I am fine…really…’
He grimaced and added, ‘I shouldn’t have made love with you. Perhaps it was too soon.’
Emelia wasn’t sure what to say so stayed silent. It seemed safer than admitting how much she had wanted him to make love to her.
There was the sound of someone arriving downstairs and Javier rose from the bed. ‘That sounds like the doctor,’ he said. ‘I’ll be right back.’
Within a couple of minutes a female doctor came in, who had clearly been briefed by Javier, and she briskly introduced herself and proceeded to examine Emelia, checking both of her pupils along with her blood pressure.
‘Have you had migraines in the past?’ Eva Garcia asked as she put the portable blood pressure machine back in her bag before taking out a painkiller vial and needle for injection.
‘Not that I can remember,’ Emelia said. ‘But I’ve had a few headaches since I had the accident a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Your husband tells me you’ve recovered a bit of your memory,’ Eva said, preparing Emelia’s arm for the injection. ‘That was yesterday, correct?’
‘Yes…’
‘You need to take things more slowly,’ Dr Garcia said. ‘I’m going to take some bloods just to make sure there’s nothing else going on.’
Emelia felt a hand of panic clutch at her throat, imagining an intracranial haemorrhage or the onset of a stroke from a clot breaking loose. ‘What else could be going on?’ she asked hollowly.
The doctor took out a tourniquet and syringe set. ‘You could be low on iron or have some underlying issue to do with your head injury.’ She expertly took the blood and pressed down on the puncture site, her eyes meeting Emelia’s. ‘What about your periods? Are they regular?’
Emelia was suddenly glad Javier had left the room as soon as he had brought the doctor in. ‘Um…I really can’t remember…’
‘So you haven’t had one since the accident?’
Emelia bit her lip. ‘No…’
‘Don’t worry,’ the doctor said. ‘After the ordeal you’ve been through, your system is probably going to take some time to settle down. Stress, trauma, especially physical as in your case, would be enough to temporarily shut down the menstrual cycle. Are you taking any form of oral contraception?’
‘My
