When I Was Invisible by Dorothy Koomson Page A

I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I’m going to change, for you. I love you, and I’m willing to change. I don’t want you to feel bad again, about anything. I’m going to change and having the wedding to focus on will be really helpful.’
    I could feel the tears welling up again. But not the tears from before – these were tears of pure, unadulterated relief. I pushed them down, though, stopped them leaving my eyes in case he misunderstood. This was what I wanted. I just wanted him to admit it, to understand what he’d been doing, to acknowledge that he was taking things out on me and then try to change. If he changed, went back to being the lovely, perfect man I’d met years ago, we’d be all right. I could pretend the other night didn’t happen, I could ignore all those things I’d been thinking about earlier, and we could go back to being happy.
    â€˜What do you say?’ Todd asked.
    â€˜I think it’d be amazing if you could do that,’ I said quietly.
    Todd reached out to stroke a lock of my hair out of my face and I flinched. Shame flittered across his face and guilt spun inside my chest – he was trying his best. ‘Baby, I love you,’ he said softly. ‘And I’m sorry for how things have been. I am going to do my absolute best to turn this around so we can get married as a new start.’
    â€˜OK,’ I replied. ‘That’d be great.’
    He pulled me down on to his lap and reached around me for his diary, which was splayed open on the coffee table. ‘I’m going to need a lot of help,’ he added. ‘I’m going to need you to let me know when I’m being out of order, don’t just let it slide.’ He was distracted as he talked because he was flipping pages, searching, I presumed, for a month that was free. ‘And don’t be too hard on me if I don’t always get it right.’
Flip, flip, flip.
‘I’m going to try to stop being such a stress head.’
Flip, flip, flip.
‘And it’d be great if you would stop pushing my buttons so often.’
Flip, flip, flip.
‘It’d be great if you could reassure me more often, and let me know how well I’m doing.’
Flip, flip, flip.
‘How does that sound?’
    He finally stopped flipping and looked at me. It sounded like I would be doing as much as him, if not more, to change.
    â€˜Fine. It sounds fine,’ I said. What else was I going to say when I had nowhere to go and he had promised to change?
    Todd leant in to kiss me and I flinched again. This time he didn’t seem to notice, didn’t experience any shame or regret. He had moved on from what had happened so I let him kiss me knowing I was expected to have moved on now, too.
    Â 
Roni
London, 2016
    â€˜To be honest with you, Veronica, I thought you’d be back by the weekend after you left. Begging for your room back and wanting to get back to your studies,’ my father reveals. He doesn’t do big emotions, my dad. Taciturn is how I would describe him. He takes his time to consider things, to formulate how he feels.
    I know, though, that he is pleased I am back. Gently teasing me is his way of telling me so. I was seventeen when I told my parents that I wouldn’t be going to university after A levels but instead, I was going to start the process of becoming a nun, which meant speaking to many different convents and having visits with them, working up to a short stay and then eventually moving into a convent. They had both been stunned, enough for Mum to pause in her sewing, but not to actually look up at me, and enough for Dad to lower his paper and ask me what had brought that about. ‘A book?’ I said.
And the silence reading that book brought to my constantly noisy mind.
‘A nun gave me a book and it made me want to be a nun.’
    â€˜Right you are then,’ Dad had said. Mum went back to her