I hardly ever talked about my parents. Other people’s sympathy was the one thing that always made it worse. I was the only child of older parents, their little miracle. My dad died when I was a teenager and two years later I’d left home to go to university in London with no intention of ever coming back.
But I’d returned to Cambridge three years after I graduated, when my mum was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I’d helped to care for her, but it took her quickly. I hadn’t been prepared for how quickly. She died within a few weeks of my coming back. She left me with enough money to buy my own house and a hole in my heart so big I couldn’t bear to go back to the life I’d left behind in London.
Will didn’t say anything when I told him. It was almost as though he could read my mind and he knew that I couldn’t cope with his sympathy. He looked at me for a moment, nodded once, and changed the subject, gently steering the conversation back to its usual mix of gentle ribbing and mild flirtation. Because I was still kidding myself then, I think, that this was just a mild flirtation. That it would pass. That I wasn’t falling for him.
But then the Christmas party rolled around and everything changed. I got into his car afterwards. I let him drive me home. We sat outside together for too long, until the windows started to steam up from our breath. I was still laughing at his attempts at dancing. He was telling me to treat my boss with a bit more respect.
‘I’d better go,’ I said. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay there with him all night. I wanted him to tell me everything, to let me into his world, but I still thought that was impossible. Maybe it always was.
As I got out of the car I turned back to him one last time. I don’t know what made me say it. Maybe it was three glasses of wine on an empty stomach. Maybe both our lives would have been different if I’d kept quiet.
‘Just so you know, if you weren’t my boss I’d be asking you inside now.’
She cries herself out on Will’s shoulder that afternoon as the rain continues to fall in the garden outside. Slowly her breath returns to normal and she pulls away from her husband, the rise and fall of her chest steadying. Outside, the sun breaks through the clouds for a moment.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says.
Will runs his left thumb over her cheekbone, wiping away a tear.
‘You have nothing to be sorry for,’ he replies.
The shaft of sunlight that breaks into the living room that grey afternoon makes Fran think of new beginnings, makes her think again about the second chance she has been offered.
‘I want to try again,’ she says. ‘When I get back from Spain, I want to try again.’
She watches Will’s brow furrow.
‘I don’t know if I can …’ he begins and she suddenly realises what she has said.
‘No,’ she interrupts. ‘No, I mean I want to try again with us. I want our marriage to work.’
‘You and I can be happy again, I promise.’ He kisses her then, gently, and they sit quietly together holding each other. They feel like a team again, like equals. They’ve come a long way since last summer.
She pulls away from him a little to look at him. He looks so vulnerable. He isn’t as strong as he likes people to believe.
‘The weather’s clearing up,’ he says, quietly. ‘I might go for a run. Do you mind?’
She shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I need to pack and I might have a bath.’
He goes upstairs to change. ‘I’ll cook tonight,’ he says as he leaves.
Looking back, Fran will remember everything about that moment with the surreal clarity of a dream – the sunlight in the room, the logo on Will’s shirt, the way he smiled, the feeling she had that maybe he was right and that they could be happy again.
It was the last time she saw him before everything changed.
*
She lies back in the bath feeling it cocoon her. The bathroom is her favourite room in the house and she probably spends far too much time in here submerged in water that is just a little bit too hot, watching her skin turn pink and the pads of her fingers wrinkle.
This was the first room Will renovated when they bought the house. He and Jamie ripped out the old bathroom suite, stripped down the floorboards and created the bathroom Fran had always wanted: with a double shower and a double sink and, resplendent in the middle of the room, the claw-footed bath she’d dreamed of since she was a little girl. Unless they had visitors, nobody but her ever used this bathroom – Will preferred the en-suite – but Fran knew it had been a labour of love and being here made her feel close to her husband, even when things had seemed as though they could never be fixed.
Will renovated the bathroom first because he wanted to make her dreams come true – he always said he wanted to make her dreams come true. But Fran couldn’t help thinking that all the work he’d put into this house was just a mask, a cover – papering over the cracks that were getting deeper and deeper as it started to become apparent that she could never make his dreams come true.
After last summer she would spend hours in here, locking the door so Will couldn’t come in. Back then she used to wonder what it would be like to disappear into the water and never re-emerge, but she doesn’t think like that any more. She doesn’t lock the door any more either, but she does keep it closed – not like before, when she’d keep it wide open so she could still see Will if he walked past. Some evenings he would even come in, sit on the edge of the bath, and talk to her. She didn’t think he’d been in here for months; it had become her private sanctuary, as his study had for him.
After it had happened it had taken her months to let him touch her, let him kiss her. She couldn’t bear him to be near her; she couldn’t bear anyone to be near her. Other people’s sympathy, other people’s emotions, made everything worse. She couldn’t cope with her own feelings; she didn’t have the space to think about Will’s.
Things had gradually got back into a semblance of normality after New Year, once Fran had felt ready to go back to the yoga studio. Once she finally did, it had helped more than she thought it would – being with her friends again, doing something that mattered to her, something that made her happy. Sometimes the only time she felt alive was when she was teaching.
She thinks about the previous night, about falling asleep in Will’s arms, and it dawns on her that it was the first night they’d slept the whole night through together in months. It had taken them so long to get there after those first fumbled attempts at normality.
On their wedding anniversary in March, Will had come home from work with a takeaway from their favourite Thai restaurant in the next village. He’d laid the table, lit candles, opened a bottle of Prosecco, and encouraged her to join him, to share a meal with him.
‘I know it doesn’t feel like we have much to celebrate,’ he’d said. ‘But we still have each other.’ She’d tried to let herself relax, to just enjoy his company for a few hours, to try to eat something.
Afterwards, they’d watched a film together just like they had this afternoon. She’d lain back against him and tried to concentrate on the future, tried to concentrate on the film. She’d let Will choose and it was full of action and loud noises and bright colours with an unnecessarily complicated plot that she hadn’t been able to follow. It had made Will happy though, and she had let herself sink back into his contentment, even if it was only fleeting.
Later, when the film was over, she had become aware of the sensation of his arms around her, the warmth of his breath on her neck. She had turned around to face him, felt his lips on hers.