I stand apart from him and concentrate on breathing.
‘I should have told you straight away,’ I say, breathless. ‘I should have told you I was unhappy, but I didn’t want to admit our perfect life wasn’t perfect. I shouldn’t have gone up there with him. I did things that were stupid and wrong, but I never thought you’d let me down when I needed you most. Maybe I took your love for granted. Maybe I thought that whatever I did you’d still be there. I didn’t know what you wanted, Fergus, I didn’t know if you wanted to us to be together or not, and I didn’t know if I could be with you any more. Everything’s different.’
Even as I say the words I find myself moving into Fergus’s arms, welding myself to the heat of his body, inhaling his scent, desperate to hold on to the ghosts of the past even as I finally let them go.
‘Christ knows I love you, but when we met I thought that love was all we needed. Now I don’t know that it’s enough.’ Fergus holds on to me hard, pressing me close into the contours of his body. ‘If we do this then we’re going to need much more than just a hope and a prayer, we’re going to need each other. A proper partnership. You and me working together, sharing the load financially, emotionally, equally.’
‘I’m not letting you go,’ he says, the first hint of a hopeful smile shadowing his mouth. ‘Maybe love on its own isn’t enough, but we have so much more than that, Kitty. We have honesty now, and respect, and if we’ve found a way through this we’ll be stronger than we ever were before. And now we’ve come through this, the next time anyone tries to knock us for six we’ll be ready to face them. We know the worst that life can throw at us, we know it’s not all fairy tales and romance.’ He steps back, one hand on each of my shoulders. ‘But what will never change is that we love each other and we love our baby. And that’s the magic that means we can make it, we really can.’
I smile in the second before his kisses me, and, as I close my eyes, for the first time in months I feel the promise of the future, tender and vulnerable, but there all the same.
‘Do you really think that we can beat the world?’ I ask him, in a last moment of uncertainty, the taste of his kiss still on my lips.
‘I know we can,’ Fergus whispers. ‘We can do anything as long as we are together.’ He lays his palm against my cheek and looks down at me, smiling.
‘Please, Kitty. Don’t let this be the end.’
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Copyright © Rowan Coleman 2003
Rowan Coleman has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
‘Secret Love’. Words by Paul Francis Webster. Music by Sammy Fain. © 1953 (renewed) Remick Music Corp, USA. Warner/Chappell Music Ltd, London W6 8BS. Reproduced by permission of International Music Publications Ltd. All rights reserved
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
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After Ever After Page 41