The Things We Need to Say: An emotional, uplifting story of hope from bestselling author Rachel Burton

She looks at Will kneeling there in that same spot now, after this bombshell. He seems to be expecting some sort of response from her.

‘Why did you do it?’ she asks. ‘Was it because I let you down? Because I couldn’t be the wife you wanted?’

‘God, Fran, no. You’ve never let me down.’

‘I’ve never been able to give you what you want.’

‘That’s not true. You’re all I want – you know that.’

She laughs then, a dry humourless sound. ‘If that’s true, how did you let this happen? How could you do this to me, Will? How could you do this to us after everything?’

Will doesn’t say anything. Fran closes her eyes and listens to his breathing, which is almost perfectly in time with hers, just as it always has been.

‘I don’t know,’ he says eventually. ‘I wanted you to talk to me …’

‘There was nothing to say,’ she interrupts, her eyes blinking open. She looks away from him. She knows she should have tried to talk to him more, but she had never been able to find the words.

‘I thought I’d lost you, Fran,’ he says. His face might not have been giving much away earlier but now the pain is clear. But it is too late. She doesn’t think she can care about his pain any more. ‘I know I should have tried harder. I know I should never have walked away from you that night. I needed you, but you weren’t there …’ He stops, hesitating, dropping his gaze from hers. ‘Christ, none of this is an excuse. There is no excuse for what I’ve done and it didn’t help if that’s any consolation.’

‘None.’

She closes her eyes again, unable to look at him. He is still holding her hand, his fingers wrapped around hers. She finds herself transported back to the hospital, nearly a year ago, when she thought if she held on to his hand and never let go, everything would be all right. She wiggles her fingers free from him. It doesn’t feel as though anything will ever be all right again.

‘Talk to me, Fran,’ he says.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asks. ‘If I hadn’t found out today would you ever have said anything?’

‘I was going to tell you when you got back from Spain,’ he said. ‘Although that doesn’t sound very believable now.’

Fran doesn’t respond, doesn’t open her eyes.

‘I thought if we were going to try again then we had to do it honestly. I—’

‘I think you’d better sleep in the spare room tonight,’ she interrupts. ‘I’m going to go to bed now. I’ve got an early start in the morning.’

‘You’re still going?’ he asks. ‘You’re not going to cancel?’

When Fran was training to teach yoga, one of her teachers had explained to the group the importance of always being there for their students. Whatever may be happening in their own lives needed to be put to one side as they remembered why their students came to class. ‘Why did you first start going to yoga?’ the teacher had asked. They’d all had different reasons, but they’d all agreed that they had gone to feel supported by their practice, and by their teacher.

‘Those people need me,’ she replies quietly.

‘I need you, Fran. We need to talk; we need to work out where we go from here.’

She shakes her head against the pillow. The noise the pillowcase makes against her hair seems louder than it should be. ‘No, Will. I can’t talk to you now. I can barely look at you.’ The tears that she has been desperately trying to hold back are filling her eyes and Will sits on the bed next to her, trying to reach out for her. She moves away.

‘Don’t,’ she says. ‘Please don’t. I need you to leave me alone. I need you to give me some space.’

He stands up then, pushing his hands into his pockets. ‘Tomorrow,’ he says. ‘I’ll drive you to the airport.’

‘No, Will, please,’ she says almost desperately, sitting up, looking directly at him. ‘I’m going to book a taxi. The least you can do is give me the space I’m asking for.’

He stands looking at her for a moment, as though he is wondering what to say. Eventually he nods and walks away, closing the door behind him.

Fran watches him leave, his shoulders hunched, his head down. She hadn’t thought it was possible for her heart to break any more than it already had.

MARCH 2005 (#ulink_13dbeb87-991a-5dfc-834a-172689c5667c)

I don’t know how we got through that week at work, that week after we first slept together. Our eyes lingering on each other for longer than they should, our hands itching for the want of touching each other, fevered text messages at night that turned my insides to liquid. His fingers innocently brushing against mine as he passed me a file would send shivers through my body. Nobody had ever made me feel like that before. I began to wonder if I was imagining it.

We didn’t get any time alone together until he took me for dinner that Wednesday.

‘A proper date,’ he said as we walked to the restaurant, just before he pulled me into All Saints Passage and pressed me up against the wall, kissing me until I was breathless.

‘I’ve been wanting to do that for days,’ he said.

I felt my shoulders relax then, the tension melting off me like candlewax. Part of me hadn’t been able to trust him. Part of me didn’t think he’d meant it.

Later, when he drove me home and we sat outside my house in his car – a place we’d been so many times before – I asked him if he wanted to come inside. His fingers were at the base of my skull; I felt his breath on my neck. I heard him groan quietly, kissing the soft place behind my ear before pulling away, straightening himself.

‘I do,’ he said. ‘But I’m not going to. I don’t want our first morning together to be spoiled by the rush of going to work, by me having to leave early to find a clean shirt.’

I tried to hide the disappointment I knew was showing in my face.

‘Let me take you away this weekend,’ he said.

We went to a hotel in the Cotswolds, away from everyone who knew us so we could get to know each other. We made love, slept late, ate breakfast in bed and took long walks in the beautiful countryside, all the while talking about our lives before. That’s how it always felt to me – my life before Will and my life after.

He told me about his brother, his huge family, his parents’ reaction when he refused to go to Oxford and did his law degree at Durham instead. He admitted to his obsession with cricket; how, before he got married, he used to play at county level.

And he finally told me about his first wife. He tried to explain how he felt after she left him for his best friend from law school, the guy who’d been best man at their wedding.

‘All I ever really wanted was to get married and have kids,’ he said, his eyes flicking away from me.

I told him about how much I’d loved living in London, how I hadn’t wanted to come back to Cambridge, but how, after Mum died, I hadn’t wanted to return to London either. I told him about Jake, the man I’d left behind in London. Jake, who I’d promised to go back to but never had.

‘Why?’ Will asked.

To answer that I had to finally admit how much Mum’s death had affected me, how I’d shut myself away from everything because I hadn’t been able to handle the fact that I couldn’t make her well again.

‘You saved me, you know,’ I said as I lay in his arms on our last morning.

‘No I didn’t,’ he replied. ‘I just helped you realise how strong you are.’

‘I was so lonely after Mum died. I didn’t know what to do with myself. And then you came along.’ I turned to face him.

‘You don’t ever have to be lonely again,’ he said, running the side of his hand down my cheek.

‘I do probably need to get another job though.’