‘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.
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.’
‘You don’t have to,’ he said. ‘I like seeing you every day.’
‘We both know I do have to.’
He looked at me then, quietly for a moment.
‘I love you,’ he said after a while. It was the first time he said it.
Standing at the bottom of the gravel driveway, waiting for her taxi, Fran takes a deep breath. It’s just after five in the morning and the sun is beginning to appear over the horizon. The rain of the previous day has subsided and the sky is a thousand shades of orange and pink. Another day is dawning, the birds singing, life is continuing. The cycles of nature don’t care that Fran’s world will never be the same again.
One of the things she has always loved about living in Suffolk is the size of the skies. They always feel as if they go on for ever and, on a good day, the sunsets are as beautiful as anything she’s seen in more exotic locations. The size of the sky at her in-laws’ estate had taken her breath away the first time she’d seen it. She’d still been living in Cambridge then, where the sky always seems so close, almost oppressive in comparison. There’s a freedom in the Suffolk skies that makes Fran feel beautifully insignificant.
She hears Will’s footsteps on the gravel drive behind her. She knew he would never be able to just let her leave. She doesn’t turn to look at him.
‘Don’t do this, Fran,’ he says quietly. The whole village is still asleep. It feels as though they are the only two people in the world.
‘I have to,’ she replies.
‘You could go tomorrow,’ he says. ‘You can get a flight direct to Reus tomorrow. We need to talk.’
Still she doesn’t look at him. She wishes the taxi would come.
‘Please, Fran.’
There is something about his tone of voice, something about the way he sounds that almost breaks her. She turns to look at him. He stands in front of her still in his pyjamas, his hair tousled, his brow furrowed in that way she knows means he still has a headache. The shadows under his eyes indicate how little sleep he’s had. She wants to reach out and touch him – she almost does – but the taxi arrives suddenly with a screech of brakes.
‘I have to go today,’ she says. ‘You know I do.’
Fran had decided weeks ago, when she first agreed to do the retreat that she wanted to arrive the day before her retreaters. She needed a little time to settle in, to get the lay of the land. But flights to Reus only went from Stansted on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so she had organised a flight to Barcelona and booked a taxi to take her down the coast to Salou from there. She had sorted out this week in a way that worked best for her. She wasn’t going to change her plans for Will now, not after what he had done.
‘I’ll put this in the back then shall I, love?’ the taxi driver asks. His voice seems unusually loud in the quiet summer dawn, his accent the kind of Estuary English that would make Will’s mother turn her nose up.
Fran nods and as the driver puts her suitcase in the boot, Will steps a little closer.
‘Fran …’ he begins, reaching