She left—and then my life began
Emily married young—for love. She was twenty-three, he was thirty. Robert seemed mature, dependable, and steady. He spoke the right words, took her to the theatre, treated her to wine, and swore he longed for a family and children.
At first, all went well. They rented a flat, she quit her dreary job and tended to the home. Robert didn’t protest. He earned, she cooked. On the surface—everything as it should be. But months passed, and Emily didn’t conceive. Then years. First came worry. Then fear. Then blame.
“Perhaps you did something wrong in your youth,” her mother-in-law muttered one day. “My son’s health is sound—it’s you who isn’t a proper woman.”
Emily stayed silent. She wept at night, turning over every possible reason in her mind, searching for fault in her reflection. She visited doctors, took tests, endured injections, swallowed pills. Robert only waved her off.
“I won’t traipse around clinics. There’s nothing wrong with us. You’re just not trying hard enough.”
When, in their fifth year of marriage, she suggested IVF, he snapped—
“What, am I to raise some lab-made child? Breed monsters?”
After that row, he left. Just like that. “A woman without children isn’t a family,” he said. And he left for a younger girl. Six months later, Emily learned the new flame was expecting. By then, she was in hospital—her womb had been taken. The last hope, the final chance.
After the operation, she didn’t speak. Not even when her mother called. She thought there was nothing left to live for. All that had been inside her seemed dead.
But her mother came anyway. Sat beside her. Said:
“You’re not a faulty product. You’re a person. And you’ll be happy. Differently, but you will.”
Emily moved to another town. Started over. Rented a small flat, found work, adopted a cat. And she learned to live without fear. Without expectation. Without pain. Just—to live.
And then came James. Tall, awkward, with kind eyes. He made no grand promises. Just lingered once after tea, then after supper, then—forever.
When she told him—
“I can’t have children…”
He shrugged.
“Then we’ll have a home without them. Or with other people’s children. Or with anyone—so long as you’re there.”
A year later, they married. Took out a mortgage, got a dog, and then—a miracle. The doctors couldn’t explain it. But she conceived. In the eighth month, James wept, gripping her hand at the scan. A daughter. They’d have a daughter.
When Emily ran into Robert by chance in the grocer’s, he was grey, stooped, with a paunch.
“So… are you happy?” he asked.
She smiled.
“Very.”
He stood, lost for words. But Emily turned and walked away. Because at last she understood—all that had happened was necessary. To see her true self. To bring her daughter into the world.
And for her real life to begin.
