The laugh that escaped was wry and bitter, but soft. There was no actual joy in it, and she wouldn't pretend there was. "I told you constantly," she pointed out. "Every single time we'd fight I'd tell you. You think normal couples argued as much as we did towards the end?" She shook her head, both to disagree with her statement and to clear it. "I know why you were doing what you did, but I begged you not to. Because they were starting to talk about you. Yes, it got you coverage, but it wasn't exactly good press, now was it?" Oh, sure, there was always the saying there was no such thing as bad press. But there was. Especially in that awful battle between the US and the Russians. And he'd just kept on pressing the issue.
Mentioning Anatoly's children was a low blow, especially when comparing them to Freddie, but she knew he was right. Her eyes closed painfully but she forced herself to meet his eyes. "Of course I knew what I was doing. And I knew it was wrong." Admitting that out loud wasn't easy. They were probably the hardest words she'd ever said. "I think I always thought he'd leave her...maybe try and get custody of the children, or at least want to see them. I thought..." She'd thought he loved her. But she couldn't say that to the one person who she knew, with no doubts in her mind whatsoever, had loved her.
No. She wasn't going to cry because Florence was made of stronger stuff than that. She'd put a dark past behind her and grown into a golden child, a gifted chess player, and someone the country had stood behind. But the pained expression she wore would've been impossible to miss. She'd promised him answers. She'd known it was going to hurt. And she simply had to keep going. "I thought I meant more to him than I apparently did," she admitted, her voice barely above a whisper. It took swallowing every last ounce of pride to admit that to him, of all people. But there it was, on the table, for both of them to deal with.
What would she have changed if she'd had the chance? Anything? Everything? She'd have gotten to know the man before turning her entire life around to be with him, that much was certain. And, if she was being honest, she might have tried yet again to talk sense into Freddie. "If I could do it all again?" Or she could have just walked away from it all. Now there was an idea. "I might have tried to make it work. With us. Instead of turning to the first safe place I found." Not that she wasn't 'safe' with Freddie. She knew he'd never physically hurt her. But the put-downs, the criticisms, and the badgering? Less than perfect. And far from comforting.