The Things We Need to Say

by Rachel Burton

  ‘Well that does sound like him.’ Fran smiles at the description. She’s surprised Amado has left out the words ‘grumpy’ and ‘bossy’.

  ‘I think Elizabeth must have told him to come,’ Amado says even more quietly. ‘I’m sorry, I did not know any of this.’

  She sighs. Of course Elizabeth asked him to come. Fran was a fool to think she’d spoken to him and not told him to get the first flight out here.

  ‘Tell him I’ll be down in ten minutes,’ she says.

  As she comes down the stairs she feels a bubble of excitement and nervousness in her stomach. She feels the way she used to at the beginning when she would wait for him to pick her up: the first time he took her away for the weekend, the first time he took her to the theatre, the first time she met his parents. She would sit at home waiting for him, feeling this same sense of excitement and nerves, longing to see him, longing to feel the solidity of him, the surety of him, but nervous of the depth of her feeling, the speed at which the relationship was going.

  This feeling today reminds her that whatever has happened, whatever they have done to each other, she still loves him. The fact that he has travelled across Europe for her proves he still loves her. She wonders if it is enough. She knows it has to be.

  She sees him before he sees her. She stands in the atrium and there he is, sitting out on the terrace, his back to her. He takes her breath away, even after all these years. He sits with one ankle crossed over the opposite thigh, his hair standing on end, a cup and saucer on the table at his elbow. She knows instinctively what’s in it: black coffee, two sugars. She wishes he’d have less sugar, she wishes he’d take fewer painkillers, she wishes he’d relax more. But she knows she can’t change him. She’s learned that the only person who can change Will is Will and all she can do is love him, just the way he is. She’d forgotten to do that for a while.

  She looks at him and thinks about the threads that bind them, the twists of fate that brought them together. If her mother hadn’t died when she did, if she hadn’t walked away from London and from Jake, if Will’s wife hadn’t left him, they would never have met.

  And she wouldn’t be standing here now wondering what happens next.

  She closes her eyes for a moment, picturing him. The way he always sits, the rhythm of his breath, and the way his stubble grows. The grey hair at his temples and the crease between his eyebrows that she has always thought of as the scar from all his headaches. The crinkles around his eyes from squinting into the sun on ski trips, from laughing too much, from living his life.

  A life they’ve lived together. A life Fran wants to carry on sharing with him.

  She wonders if he knows about the baby. Elizabeth said she hadn’t told him, but she wonders if he’s guessed. Or if he’s imagined the worst. She can’t put it off any longer.

  She takes a breath and walks towards him.

  As if there had ever been a choice.

  ONE YEAR LATER

  Our accidental miracle was born on 16 February 2017 by Caesarean section. Will was there this time, sitting by my head stroking my hair. It was a precaution, given my history, not to leave me in labour too long. Barely thirty minutes passed from making the decision to go to surgery to the moment I heard the first angry cries of Dylan William Browne.

  Afterwards Will told me how scared he’d been, how he felt as though he was in the way, how he had convinced himself something terrible was going to happen. I felt the anxiety melt off him when we first heard our son crying. When they brought him over to us I could see he was trying not to cry himself. Even after everything I’d felt for Oscar I still hadn’t realised it was possible to feel so much love for one little human as I felt at that moment.

  In the months leading up to Dylan’s birth we both knew we had to do whatever it took to make our marriage work, to give ourselves one last chance at being a family. We moved out of the village in the autumn, selling the Old Vicarage to the first people who made us an offer. We found a house back in Cambridge, bigger than our old one, with a larger garden, in a less built-up area. It was the first time, I think, that either of us really understood what it meant to compromise. We both needed to make changes.

  We talked a lot in those long months while we waited for Dylan. We talked about all the things we should have talked about before. We were both as scared as each other that something would go wrong with this pregnancy and that we couldn’t survive that. It was terrifying, but at least we were talking rather than pretending everything was absolutely fine, as we had been for years.

  I finally told Will how angry I’d been: angry with myself for not being able to have a baby, angry with him for wanting one so badly. Will finally admitted how scared he’d always been: scared that we couldn’t survive another failed pregnancy, scared for my health, scared that he’d lose me. It had never occurred to me that he’d ever considered I might be the one who would leave.

  We both realised then, I think, that by not talking we had slowly been tearing each other apart. We’d both been so scared of admitting how we felt; we’d both been so scared of hurting each other that we’d just hurt ourselves by pretending. We’d made the mistake of thinking that we were responsible for each other’s happiness, when the only person responsible for our own happiness is ourselves.

  Will left the firm and set up on his own. He hasn’t had a headache since the day he walked away. He works to his own timetable now and I do his books and file his taxes. He has a small office suite in town and he only wears a suit if he’s going to court. He barely shaves any more and he plays cricket on Parker’s Piece in the summer. He’s finally given up sugar in his coffee and I think he’s learning to relax. He’s forty-seven now and, to me, he’s never looked more beautiful. It’s freedom that’s done that to him.

  And what happened to everyone else? Katrin walked away as well – from her fiancé and her glowing academic career. She managed to time her freedom with my maternity leave so she took over my classes at the studio. I’ve decided I’m not going back so there’s a full-time job there if she wants it. She keeps me up to date on studio gossip. David is dating again. His exploits on Tinder could fill a novel, she says. Constance, to everyone’s surprise, is getting married. It turned out that Freddie was more than just a fling and, despite being younger than me, asked her to marry him at New Year. The wedding is in September. I might have to start drinking again to get through that one.

  The last time I heard from Molly she was living in Sydney managing a backpackers’ hostel, drinking green juice, and going to yoga every morning. ‘A hipster cliché’ she said in her email. I think she’s met someone so I don’t expect her back in a hurry. And Joy is halfway through her round-the-world trip. Molly saw her in Singapore and said she is unrecognisable from the woman who shuffled into our yoga retreat a year ago.

  Mia had a little girl three weeks before Dylan was born. We email each other photos every now and then. Elizabeth never came back from Catalonia. Amado must have got well and truly under her skin. She helps run the hotel these days and whenever she emails me it’s with another invitation to visit. I’d love to go, love to see Elizabeth and Mia and baby Lucia but I have a feeling Will doesn’t want to go back, and I understand why. But eventually I’ll talk him round. We can’t allow ourselves to be scared of the past any more.

  I never heard from Jake again. I hope he found the closure he needed. I hope he came back to England and visited his mother. I did tell Will about Jake – I didn’t want us to have any secrets. He never said anything, but I suspect it’s another reason he’s not keen to go and visit Elizabeth.

  There have been times over the last year when I thought Will and I wouldn’t make it, times when we clung on to each other so hard because we thought if we didn’t we’d disappear. But there have been good times too, and as the months pass the good times outweigh the bad.

  Sometimes, now I have perspective, I wonder if Will’s affair may even have saved our marriage. It made us face up to what we’d been throug
h; it made us honest with each other, made us get to know each other as people again instead of striving for a perfection that we believed we needed to find, which had always been unattainable.

  I know now that having a baby – that one thing that was always missing – isn’t going to be the one thing that saves us. I know now that a marriage needs work and honesty and communication. But I also know that we love each other and that love will help us conquer all the hurdles that life throws at us.

  Being parents is more exhausting than either of us imagined, but when Will looks at me some days, shell-shocked from lack of sleep, and asks ‘am I too old for this, Fran?’ I see only love there.

  Once, just after we got back from Salou, Will asked me if I’d ever be able to forgive him. I didn’t answer because I didn’t know. He never asked me again. He just let things happen, allowed our marriage to take its natural course. I always appreciated that.

  One day, about three months after Dylan was born, Janine took me out for the day. We got massages, had our nails done. It was the first time I’d been away from Dylan, the first time Will had looked after him for a whole day on his own. I texted constantly and eventually Will stopped replying. When I got home he was asleep on the sofa, Dylan lying on his chest, ‘Test Match Special’ on the radio.

  And I knew then.

  I knew then that I had long since forgiven him.

  I knew that Will and Dylan were the loves of my lives.

  And I knew that, for us, love will always be enough.

  Acknowledgements (make yourselves a cup of tea – these are long…)

  I wrote this book during one of the hardest years of my life. In many ways it was a solace – a place to disappear when real life became too much to bear. But in other ways, dealing with real life made this book harder to write than it should have been. There were times when I almost gave up and there are people without whom this book would never have been finished. It truly takes a village to write a novel!

  Firstly, my incredible, inexhaustible super-agent, Tanera Simons at Darley Anderson. Thank you for believing in Will and Fran as much as I did (more so sometimes!), for loving them, for cheering them on. Thank you for not letting me give up and for always being my calm port in an anxious storm.

  Thank you to everyone at HQ, particularly Hannah Smith and Nia Beynon. Hannah, your endless optimism is a delight!

  To all the people cheering from the sidelines, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Particular thanks to Jenny Ashcroft for that phone call in June when I thought all was lost and for giving me faith in myself again – I am eternally grateful. Thank you to Katey Lovell and Mary Jayne Baker for the vegan Pad Thais and for listening to me moaning on about ‘that bloody yoga book’ – I can’t believe it’s finally out in the world! Thank you to Cressida McLaughlin for starting all this in the first place and for your seemingly inexhaustible supply of Poldark gifs.

  Big, huge love and thanks to Maxine Morrey for always cheering me up, even in my darkest moments, and for all the wisdom and jokes and to Victoria Cooke for all the gossip and for being the friend I needed when I thought I’d never finish this book!

  Thank you to everyone who read various drafts of The Things We Need to Say (back when it had a different title!): Keirney Scott, Kaisha Holloway, Katherine Debona and Laurie Ellingham. Beta readers are the silent heroes of every novel.

  There were parts of this book that were incredibly difficult to write and research and I couldn’t have done it without the frank and honest help of some dear people. Kylie Hodges for talking so openly and honestly about premature birth and NIC Units. Thank you – I appreciate your help and any mistakes I’ve made are completely my own doing. To Jacki Badger for explaining what a caesarean feels like (and to Mr Badger for admitting how scared he was). To Gemma Metcalfe for your help with Spanish hospitals. To Steph Pomfrett for insights into being married to a cricketer. To Roopa Ahluwalia for being my on-call divorce lawyer (for advice on Will and Elizabeth of course, not because this book drove me to divorce! Although…).

  And huge love and thanks to Sarah Smith for that email that changed everything. Fran and Will and I thank you immeasurably for your bravery and I’m honoured to call you a friend.

  Big thanks to everyone at the Villa Romana in Salou for making our research trip to Catalonia such a joy and big thanks to the Salou Downhill Bike team – I’m sorry for stealing your business model and your terrible jokes – readers, if you are ever in Salou or Tarragona I highly recommend their trips – http://www.downhillbikessalou.com/

  To the baristas in Pret a Manger, Leeds Station – thank you for all the peppermint tea and for ignoring my tears as I struggled through ‘that scene’.

  Love and thanks to my dad, my brother and my sister-in-law for always putting up with the fact that everything I say is embellished with storytelling or stops halfway through because I’ve paused to daydream. And to my mum – it breaks my heart you never got to read any of my books, but I know you’re still there, kicking my ass to always be the best version of myself.

  Huge gratitude to the book community – the readers, the writers, the book bloggers. Thank you for buying my first book, for taking the time to read, review and share. I know I’ve missed so many of you out of these acknowledgements but we all know we couldn’t do it without each other.

  And finally, as always, the biggest love and gratitude to my beloved Drew. Thank you for reading every single draft and for holding my hand when everything got too much. Thank you for making me believe that love at first sight can last a lifetime, and that love is always, ALWAYS enough.

  Will & Fran’s playlist

  These are the songs I was listening to when I was inside Will and Fran’s heads. I hope you enjoy!

  1. ‘Ember’ – Kubbi

  2. ‘Laid’ – James

  3. ‘Heart’ – Pet Shop Boys

  4. ‘No More Lonely Nights’ – Paul McCartney

  5. ‘Fran Dance’ – Miles Davis

  6. ‘Troy’ – Sinead O’Connor

  7. ‘Heroe’ – Enrique Iglesias (the Spanish version!)

  8. ‘Summer Time’ – Louis Armstrong/Ella Fitzgerald

  9. ‘Wonderful Life’ – Black

  10. ‘Fix You’ – Coldplay

  11. ‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’ – The Beatles

  12. ‘Everything I Own’ – Bread

  13. ‘That Ole Devil Called Love’ – Billie Holiday

  14. ‘Here I Stand and Face the Rain’ – A-ha

  Read on for an excerpt from Rachel’s first book The Many Colours of Us …

  6th June 2001

  My dearest daughter,

  And so, you are eighteen.

  I wish I could see you and tell you how proud I am of you. I wish I could tell you how excited I was when I heard that you’d been offered a place at Cambridge. I wish I could be with you when you open your A Level results. I wish I could see the look on your face when you get the grades I know you deserve.

  I saw you the other day, my beautiful girl, walking down Kensington High Street laughing with a friend. Tall and tanned, dark hair tumbling down your back. You looked so carefree, so happy, as though nothing could touch you. You looked exactly like your mother used to, when I first met her.

  Sometimes, though, when the light catches you in a certain way, you have a look of me about you, as though a wisp of the young man I used to be lives on within you, looking out for you.

  I want to remind you, now you are all grown up, that your mother has always loved you too. Life hasn’t been kind to her; or rather the life she chose hasn’t been as kind to her as she’d hoped. She had to give up a lot when she had you, and everything she did, she did because she was trying to do the right thing by you. I hope one day, when you hear the truth, you will be able to forgive her. Forgive us both.

  This will be the last letter I write to you. I hope she will let you read this one. I hope she will let you ask questions and hear the story you need to hear. The story of you. And if she d
oesn’t I hope that one day you will get curious, wonder where you came from and come and find me.

  Until that time, I wish you nothing but happiness in everything you do. Study hard but play hard too. Life is short and you never know what tomorrow might bring.

  Despite everything I have always loved you and always will.

  Happy Birthday, Princess.

  Your Father

  To: j_simmonds83@gmail.com

  From: ecj@jonescartwright.co.uk

  Sent: Thur, 06 Jun 2013 at 18.32

  Subject: Re: Inheritance – Private & Confidential

  Dear Ms Simmonds

  Thank you for your email of yesterday’s date.

  It is important that we meet as soon as possible to discuss the matter of your recent inheritance further and I suggest a meeting at 2.30 p.m. on Monday 10th June 2013 at my offices as detailed below.

  Please ask for me at reception.

  I look forward to meeting you.

  Regards

  Edwin Jones

  Partner

  Jones & Cartwright Solicitors, 55 Park Lane, London

  Chapter 1

  ‘I’m Julia Simmonds,’ I say, as I walk up to the reception desk at Jones & Cartwright Solicitors. ‘I’ve got an appointment with Edwin Jones.’

  ‘Take a seat,’ the woman behind the desk replies. She has steel-grey hair and a stern expression and peers at me over half-moon glasses. ‘Mr Jones will be down shortly.’

  I perch on the edge of a big brown leather sofa. It’s so old and worn out it looks as though it will swallow me up if I sit on it properly. I’m sweating already and I can feel my hair curling around my temples. The weather forecast said that today will be the hottest June day since records began. There is no air-conditioning in Jones & Cartwright. I fiddle with the strap of my bag and stare at the floor.

  Two black Prada shoes appear in front of my eyes. You don’t grow up in the same house as Philadelphia Simmonds without being able to recognise Prada when you see it. They are attached to two long pinstriped legs. Very long pinstriped legs. Someone who I can only presume to be Edwin Jones is smiling at me, his shirtsleeves rolled up past the elbows, his tie loosely knotted. He’s a lot younger than I imagined. And a lot more handsome.