KARMA

29. CHANGES

LISA

My darling Maxim,

It's four in the morning and I can't sleep. I found a pad of this yellow paper and I thought I'd write you a letter. A letter putting down all the things I haven't been able to say in person, but my heart is so full of you I need to unload my feelings --- my pregnancy hormones working overtime? Perhaps. But my feelings for you are true and I want to immortalise the truth in black and white, so that even when I'm gone, you will read this letter --- the letter from my heart to yours --- and remember how much I love you, my love.

This, here, is my truth.

Every moment with you has been a treasured memory.

The first three months of my pregnancy, you held a bucket for me and pulled my hair out of my face while I sat on the edge of the bed and threw up. Your hands smelled of soap. I wondered if you had been a surgeon in a previous life.

You bought all kinds of food for me to suit my pregnancy cravings in my second trimester, from pizzas to burgers.

You put up with my crazy mood swings and my bizarre behaviour. One minute I would be laughing, the next I would be sobbing. I burnt your toast one morning and you took a bite bravely and said, "I love my toast extra crunchy," and I promptly burst into tears. I made creamy carbonara one evening, and it turned into a pudding, but you ate it up, every last morsel, and the sight of you manfully chewing and swallowing that disgusting muck sent me running out of the dining room, howling. I baked a cake and it was so hard, and you said mildly, "Who needs a weapon when you've got a rock like this?" and I glared at you and refused to speak to you for the rest of the day. I sulked in bed the whole afternoon, and when I woke up, there was a yellow daffodil on my pillow next to me. "I stole it from our neighbour," you told me pleadingly, your eyes beseeching. "I'm a beast. Forgive me." My heart melted. Needless to say, I forgave you, and you hauled me into your arms and kissed me senseless.

You bought a new mansion in London, and we moved into it six months ago. You had sold your mansion in Leeds and your penthouse in London, and you bought this enormous mansion in Kensington Gardens. It was fit for a queen. "Only the best for my Lisa," you declared. It was the most beautiful mansion I had ever seen, but you know what was even better, Maxim? It felt like home. Our home. We would build new memories here, start a family here. Together, you and me and our child. Side by side.

Yesterday morning, you woke up and saw me sitting at the edge of our bed.

"Why are you up so early, darling? You must be bloody freezing. Come back to bed." You lifted up the duvet to reveal your torso.

"Oh," I giggled, "I'd forgotten about that."

"What?" You craned your neck forward to stare at your body. Then you gasped in mock surprise. Between the brown hairs that covered your chest and flowed from your belly button, there was an anatomical drawing of your insides: ribs, sternum, clavicle, the start of your pelvis, and the coiled rope of your intestines, all in black marker ink.

"You have to come back to bed." You were smiling, your mouth curved in amusement. You leaned over to pull me toward you. "You have to complete me. I don't have any arms or legs yet. How am I supposed to go to work?"

I let you pull me down beside you. You kissed me, long and slow and deep. I could feel the pump of blood around my body, the flush of heat up through my neck, to my cheeks.

"I'm a whale. A walrus," I moaned. "I'll crush you."

"You're beautiful," you told me. "You're always beautiful."

My insecurities disappeared like a wisp of sea mist under the relentless energy of your sun. You stroked my stomach. "Soon," you said, and you bent and kissed my swollen belly. "Soon, I'll have two of you to love."