It had felt like fate.
Kate felt a welling of tears in her throat and swallowed hard. She’d missed the sunset now. Alex would think she’d stood him up.
Glancing towards the bar, Kate started in surprise. Alex was there, sitting in the same stool she had vacated not half an hour before, a glass of what looked to be water in front of him. As she stared, he turned and looked her way, his expression not one of consternation or judgement, but of tenderness and concern. Toby and Filippo were hovering, so Alex could be in no doubt of who this man was beside her. He must understand what that could mean, yet he had chosen to stay regardless.
‘Let me speak for a minute, James.’ Kate extracted her hand from his. ‘Let me tell you what I think has happened,’ she said. ‘I think you enjoyed single life at first. I’m guessing you had a few dates, made a bit of a mess around the house, wore the same pants all weekend and watched sport all day on TV – but then it dawned on you that all the things you wanted, all those stipulations you reeled off your life list, weren’t appearing as if by magic now that I’d gone. I think you realised that relationships take work, and that I had done most of the heavy lifting over the past eight years – at least where our emotions were concerned.’
James went to argue, but she cut him off.
‘No, let me finish. The thing is, I think you’re here because the alternative is too hard. I don’t think you want me at all – not really. I think what you want is to not have to try. With me, you can be the one who achieves, the one with the good job, the higher salary and the perfectly functioning fertility,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘Being with me makes you feel good about yourself and now it’s not so easy. Am I right?’
‘No.’ James’s tone had become surly. ‘That’s not it at all.’
‘Then what is it? Because all this missing me stuff is not very convincing. Sorry, but it’s not,’ she added, as James looked stricken. ‘You’re right,’ she went on. ‘I have changed since I came over to Croatia – I’ve learned to value myself more. Being around people who think I’m worth something has changed things for me.’
As she said it, Kate had looked instinctively across at Alex – a move not missed by James.
‘Who’s that?’ he said shortly.
‘That’s Alex. He’s my friend.’
‘That guy?’ James squinted in disbelief. ‘That hippy? I thought you liked things clean and tidy, Kate – that bloke looks as if he hasn’t had a bath all year.’
‘Don’t be such an arse,’ she retorted. ‘Alex is kind, accepting and real. You have no idea how refreshing it’s been to spend time with a man not obsessed with money or his career, a man who’s content to simply go with the flow.’
‘Just not under it,’ threw back James with a hard laugh. ‘And you may mock my ambition, Kate, but the main reason I want to do well and build up some savings is so we can have a family, so I can support us adequately enough to raise our children. If that makes me a bad guy, then I don’t know, Kate, I really don’t.’
Kate fell silent, wounded by his words and by her own treacherous tears, which had sprung out as soon as he mentioned family. It had been their plan for so long; the future she had believed that she wanted above any other. And she did want to be a mother one day, whatever it took and however difficult that may prove to be. James was here now, promising her exactly that. Could she afford to wait? Should she even want to wait?
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she whispered, so quietly that James bent his head towards hers. At some point he must have slid his hand into hers again. Kate did not have the strength to pull away from him. All her self-righteous anger was ebbing away, and she was weakening. What she’d shared with Alex was special, but this was James – her James, the man she had, until a mere few weeks ago, wanted back in her life as her partner. She’d been ready to give up because she’d thought there was no hope, but now that had changed and suddenly the decision lay in her hands. Kate never had been good at making decisions.
‘Kate, please,’ he said, pressing his head against hers. ‘I’m sorry for hurting you. I’ve been wrong about so many things. All I’m asking is for the chance to prove myself.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, her voice strained. ‘So much has happened. Trying to get over you has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done – it almost broke me. I can’t risk putting myself through all that pain again, I just can’t.’
‘Don’t do it for me, then,’ he said. ‘Don’t do it for either of us.’
Kate sat back and away from him, severing the connection of his skin against hers.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, weary now. ‘If not for us, then for who?’
Smiling, James pulled a wedge of paper from the back pocket of his jeans, unfolding it before passing it across. There was a heart-shaped logo printed at the top, beneath it the words Adopt North London and below that a headline that read: Children who need adopting.
‘Do it for our child,’ he said.
Chapter 47
‘You want us to adopt?’
Kate gawped first at the pages in her hands then at James.
‘I’ve done a bit of research and I think we’d be strong candidates,’ he said, plumping up with renewed self-importance as she gaped at him. ‘My company offers a great paternity package and you’d be happy to stick a pin in all this interiors stuff for a few years, wouldn’t you? It would be worth it,’ he added, misreading her disbelief, ‘for a baby.’
Toby had switched on the lantern lights that were strung above the Tiki Bar and the colours swam together as Kate stared at them. Alex was no longer there; she hoped he was OK.
‘I don’t understand,’ she murmured, scanning the pages one again. James must have printed them out from a website. Next to stock photos of children’s hands on toys or their welly-booted feet splashing in puddles, there were names and short biographies.
Charlie, five, loves dinosaurs, space and bedtime stories. He’s boisterous but loving, looking for a forever home.
Maisie, seventeen months, enjoys bath time, loves teddy bears and cuddles.
Jonas, three, has problems with his language and development but is making good progress with his foster family.
Kate wanted to adopt every single one of them, but she was also shrewd enough to recognise emotional manipulation when it was thrust under her nose.
Slowly, she folded the paper over.
‘I thought you were against the idea of adoption?’ she said. ‘You told me emphatically that you wanted your own child.’
‘I do,’ said James, the words escaping like a reflex. ‘But not more than I want to be with you,’ he added hurriedly.
‘You’ve changed your tune,’ she said accusingly. ‘This is a complete one-eighty.’
James had shredded the entire label from his beer bottle and was now picking at the glue. ‘I needed time to get my head around the idea, and now I have.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘But why adoption? Why not try IVF first?’
‘It’ll take too long,’ he said, plucking the printouts from her hands and unfolding them. ‘Little Maisie needs a mum and dad now – she’s already been born. We could buy her lovely things with all the money we’d save not doing endless rounds of IVF.’
‘If we agreed to wait a while, then I’m fairly certain the NHS would fund our first try,’ Kate pointed out. ‘And I could still conceive naturally. I started taking the pill before I came out here to Croatia, but I could easily stop again.’
James was shaking his head as if this second suggestion was ludicrous. ‘But if we opted for IVF, just think of all the tests and the drugs, all the prodding and poking – it would be horrible for you and there are no guarantees.’
‘I know all that,’ she allowed. ‘But it would be our baby. And I would get to be pregnant.’
‘Do you really want that, though? Morning sickness, droopy boobs and stretch marks.’
Kate glared at
him. ‘What a ludicrous and small-minded thing to say, James – as if any of that crap matters.’
‘No, sorry. Of course it doesn’t.’
Kate paused, astonished by this new fire in her belly. James rarely apologised – either he was genuinely sorry, or he’d undergone a complete personality transplant in the time since she’d seen him last. Her eyes strayed back towards the bar. Alex hadn’t returned. She tried to imagine how she would have felt if James had shown up even a fortnight ago. Would that Kate have leapt at the chance to return home, or would she have hesitated? She had told herself so many times that a life with James was what she wanted, but while he’d been absent, she’d filled the gap he left behind with so many other things – not simply Alex, but a career, too. Being hired by Lovro and now Bram Van Dijk had soothed the sting caused by failure and rejection; it had given her a role that felt right. If she went back to London now, she would have to give it all up.
But a baby.
Kate’s heart burst open at the mere thought of motherhood. She’d not forgotten her reaction upon overhearing Nika’s pregnancy news, and how she had carefully avoided the dark-haired office manager since. She’d buried her feelings about it to survive, but they were still there. If she said no to James, was she consigning herself to childless future?
‘I’d want to try IVF first,’ she said firmly, seeing James’s shoulders slouch in defeat.
‘Why is that such an awful prospect all of a sudden?’
‘It’s not, it’s just that—’
Whatever it was that James wanted to say, he couldn’t seem to locate the right words. A crimson flush was creeping across his neck, his face was clammy, and his fingers were still grinding glue off the empty beer bottle.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked. ‘You look as if you’re about to throw up.’
James shook his head.
‘Wait here – I’ll go and get some water.’
Toby was talking to a group of guests and there was still no sign of Alex, so she ducked behind the bar and filled a glass from the soda tap. The fact that James was here at all had yet to fully sink in, and now that she’d put a small measure of distance between the two of them, Kate was able to view the situation with more clarity.
There was something important he wasn’t telling her – but what?
Reaching over the bar, Kate retrieved her bag and phone, finding a ‘sorry’ message from Robyn followed by a stream of kisses. She wanted to ring Alex, and as she thought of him, an idea came to her. Hurrying back across the terrace, she urged James to drink up.
‘What’s the rush?’ he asked, his face paled by the moonlight.
‘I think we should go for a walk,’ she said. ‘There’s something I want to show you.’
James nodded. He seemed glad to be leaving the busy hostel, where the prying eyes of Toby, Filippo and, for a time, Alex had been fixed on him since he arrived. When he told Kate this, she was nonplussed.
‘They all saw what the break-up did to me; the mess it made of me. And I’m not saying that to be cruel to you,’ she added, as the corners of James’s mouth sagged. ‘I’m only telling you what you already know.’
‘Will you hold my hand?’ he asked, when they reached the crumbling stone path that led down to Pokonji Dol beach. ‘It feels weird us not touching.’
Kate extended a reluctant arm.
How could she explain that the opposite was true for her; that the idea of doing anything more intimate than a handhold with him made her insides churn with discomfort.
Unlike Robyn, who had splatter-gunned Hvar with superlatives during her week on the island, James made no comment as they rounded the slope, and the bay came into view below them. He did grumble about there not being ‘a proper set of steps’ down the hillside, only to hurriedly take it back when Kate told him she liked the more natural arrangement of crumbling rocks.
‘You don’t have to agree with me simply for the sake of it,’ she told him, but James shook his head.
‘No, I do. It’s my new thing: trying not to be such a – what was it – small-minded arse?’
There were a few pockets of holidaymakers still on the beach, tins of beer at their feet and towels wrapped around their shoulders, so Kate led James to the opposite end of the shoreline, where they sat together on a stack of wooden loungers. He’d let go of her hand as they crossed the stones and Kate tucked her own away beneath her armpits, her knees pulled up to her chin. Everything about her body language said ‘do not touch’ and James received the message loud and clear.
Folding his arms, he stared gloomily out over the water, waiting for her to explain why she’d brought him here.
‘There is something you’re not telling me,’ she said, without preamble.
James’s features flickered with unease, but he didn’t speak.
Releasing her hands and lowering her knees, Kate reached down and picked up a smooth, flat stone. She’d brought her bag with her, and now rummaged inside until she located a pen.
‘My friend, that guy you were so quick to judge up on the terrace, he taught me a trick a few weeks ago.’
‘You’re not going to start juggling, are you?’ said James. ‘I haven’t forgotten your ill-fated week as a trainee children’s party entertainer.’
Kate laughed. It felt like a relief to do so.
‘Not my finest seven days, I grant you. Although, in my defence, it’s not as easy as it looks to make animals out of balloons. But no – I’m not going to juggle. Because I don’t want to, not because I can’t,’ she added, as he made a ‘whatever you say’ face. For a moment, it was as if the past few months had never happened, as if they were back on the sofa they had picked out together from the DFS Boxing Day sale, laughingly lamenting her latest work-related mishap. Before the issue of fertility crashed catastrophically into their lives, they had laughed together a lot – more often than not because of something Kate had done.
‘Here.’ She handed him the stone and pen. ‘I want you to write down the thing that scares you the most.’
James looked as if he might make a disparaging remark, but then thought better of it.
Kate watched in silence as he carefully stencilled the word ‘BALDNESS’ in large, bold letters.
‘Hair loss?’ she exclaimed. ‘That is genuinely the one thing in life that scares you more than any other?’
‘Give me a chance, I’m just warming up,’ he protested, selecting another stone and writing ‘POVERTY’ in more solid capitals.
‘Right, so you don’t want to end up with no hair or no money,’ she surmised. ‘That’s fair. What about emotional fears?’
‘You mean, which emotions am I scared of?’
‘Yes. Does fear scare you? Or hope? Or love?’
‘No.’ James shook his head. ‘But I am scared of losing you – can I write that?’
‘If that is true. But ask yourself, James – is it really that, or is it the regret that scares you? Because if you think about it, you lost me out of choice. Now, you’re starting to think that may have been a mistake and those feelings concern you because you don’t know what to do with them.’
‘I don’t think I get it,’ he said, but wrote the word ‘REGRET’ on the stone regardless.
Now they were getting somewhere.
‘Has everything you’ve told me since arriving in Croatia been the truth?’ she asked, as gently as she could. It was important that she soothe rather than shake this out of him. Kate wanted full transparency, not another argument. ‘And before you answer,’ she went on, ‘I want you to know that if – and it’s a big “if” – I do decide that we can try again, then I need to know everything, no matter how murky the truth and no matter how much you think it will hurt me. There’s no point in pretence – we’re too old for games and there’s too much at stake. How can we sit before an adoption panel if we can’t be honest with each other?’
James had been on the verge of scribbling down another word, but he stilled as she spoke. The internal stru
ggle was playing out across his features, which were twisting and contorted by indecision, and as he fought his own conscience, Kate put her hand over his.
‘Whatever it is, I’ll listen. I promise.’
To her astonishment, James began to cry.
‘Shit, sorry,’ he blurted. ‘I don’t know if I can. It’s too much.’
Kate shifted along until she was close enough to put an arm around him. ‘It can’t be all that bad, can it? Did you cheat on me, is that it?’
James shook his head violently. ‘No, I would never do that.’
‘Are you secretly in mountains of debt? Do you have a gambling habit I know nothing about?’
James’s bottom lip jutted out as he muttered a ‘no’. ‘I wish it was something like that,’ he said forlornly. ‘Something I could fix.’
Kate was beginning to feel uneasy, but she had to know. She had to keep pushing until she got the answer.
‘It’s . . . I can’t . . .’
There were tears coursing down James’s cheeks now, and he pushed them furiously away with clenched fists. Kate had never seen him so distraught.
‘It’s all right,’ she soothed, squeezing him against her. ‘You can tell me – it’s me. Whatever it is that you’re holding on to, it’s clearly upsetting, so you have to tell someone, and it might as well be me – and it might as well be here,’ she said.
James lifted his head and looked at her, his dark, desperate eyes beseeching. ‘It’s all my fault,’ he said, the words choking out over a sob. ‘I’m a failure.’
‘No, you’re not,’ Kate soothed, but his expression caused her to pause. ‘What is it, James – tell me.’
‘I’m the one,’ he said. ‘It’s me who can’t have children.’
Chapter 48
The story about the pregnant girl at university hadn’t been a lie, but whoever fathered that child could not have been James. The tests he’d undertaken for Kate, to put her mind at rest, had come back with devastating results. Results that James had not been able to bear admitting to her or even to himself.
The Getaway: A holiday romance for 2021 - perfect summer escapism! Page 28
