by Kate Hewitt
Then the song ended, and Will stepped quickly off the dance floor. Helen went to get a drink, and dutifully Esther followed her, that brief moment of solidarity and sentiment vanished in the flick of an eyelid, the switch of a song.
“So, how are you two?” Helen asked as she guzzled a glass of champagne—from a fresh bottle, judging from the fizziness. “I feel as if we haven’t talked properly in ages.”
“I know.” This didn’t seem like the best time to say she was leaving the party, or that she and Will were separated, or… anything. “It’s been a fantastic do, Helen, but…”
“Oh, and it’s just beginning!” Helen’s eyes narrowed. “You two aren’t going to go all damp squibby on me, are you?”
“Well, the thing is, Will’s tired from lambing season…”
Helen rolled her eyes. “Excuses! But, seriously…” She glanced at Esther, and then at Will, who was standing behind her and hadn’t said a word. “Is everything okay?”
How to answer that? Esther stared at her friend for a moment, her chest going tight, Will waiting for her reply. She couldn’t possibly go into it now. “Yeah, yeah,” she finally said, summoning a smile. “We’re fine. ’Course we are. What about you? How’s Natural England on this side of the Pennines?”
“Didn’t I tell you? I’m taking the redundancy package.”
“You are?” Esther blinked in surprise. She’d always thought Helen was as wed to her job as Esther was. They’d started as raw recruits together, twenty-two years old and blazing self-righteous determination to change the world, or at least the farmland of England’s northwest. “Why?”
Helen rolled her eyes. “Rumour has it that plenty of people are going to get the chop soon, especially if you work full-time. Too expensive.”
“Yes, but…” Esther stared at her helplessly. Natural England was always cutting costs, corners, and yes, staff, but Esther had somehow thought she and Helen were immune. They were both lifers, committed to the cause. Everyone knew that. She’d never wavered in her devotion to her job, crappy as it could sometimes be. Never, ever. It had been one thing anchoring her when everything else had started to waver.
Helen must have seen something of the surprise and distress in her face because she softened, placing one hand on Esther’s shoulder. “It’s not the same as it was, is it?” she said in the tone of someone talking to someone recently bereaved. “Not like when we started, and we were doing five or six farm visits a week, feeling like we were really accomplishing something. Do you remember?” Helen let out a sigh of pure nostalgia. “Coaxing some old codger into signing up for the environmental scheme, and seeing how pleased he was when it actually worked? When was the last time that happened?”
“Well…”
“Now there are so many blasted hoops for the farmers to jump through and we’re the ones holding them out, higher and higher. They never can do enough to get into the schemes, and it takes years to get one signed on properly, never mind the numbers we really need to make a difference.” Helen shook her head. “I still love the ethos, and I always will, but I can’t stand the bureaucracy. I’ve spent more time filling out spreadsheets about how I’m performing on the job than doing my job. I’m getting out while I can. They won’t be offering these redundancy packages forever, you know. A year or two from now it’ll be a shove in the back and a ‘thanks very much.’ A knees-up in the staff room if you’re lucky with a bottle of plonk, and that’s it.” Helen looked positively grim for a few seconds, as Esther struggled to absorb all she’d said.
“Perhaps, but… what will you do instead?” Esther couldn’t imagine doing anything else. She wasn’t trained for anything else. She had a degree in land management and ten years of experience with one government agency. Suddenly it seemed like very little.
“Who knows?” Helen shrugged. “Take a break, start a farm shop, go freelance?” She gave one of her old cheeky grins. “First I’m going to enjoy my honeymoon!”
They chatted for a few more minutes, mostly about Helen and Nate’s honeymoon to Ibiza, and then, after a couple of hugs and smoochy kisses on both cheeks, she and Will were free. Esther stepped out into the night, breathing in the cool, smog-scented air.
The empty street seemed quiet after the crashing pop music of the party, the ensuing silence taut.
“Sorry about all that,” Esther said, and Will shrugged.
“I don’t mind a bit of a boogey,” he said with the faintest glimmer of a smile.
A surprised bubble of laughter escaped her. “I thought you hated dancing.”
“Hate is a strong word.”
Everything seemed loaded with subtext, but Esther didn’t know if she was simply imagining that. Will wasn’t exactly a subtext sort of man, was he? He was as straight and upfront as they came. What she saw was what she got. Which could be either a good or bad thing.
“Let’s find the hotel,” she said, and scrolled on her phone for directions sent in the confirmation email. They hadn’t had a chance to check-in before going to the wedding, and Esther supposed it was just as well. It was going to be awkward enough sharing a room and most likely a bed without having had to have been reminded of it beforehand.
They got their overnight bags from Will’s car in the nearby car park, and then made the ten-minute walk to the hotel along the narrow, darkened streets of Newcastle’s downtown, the only sounds the blare of a distant car horn, and the faint shouts of someone being ejected from a pub, one street over. Neither of them spoke.
They arrived at the hotel, a narrow building crammed between large, modern monstrosities, and after a few minutes to check-in, they were upstairs in a room that was, Esther saw with a sinking sensation, really quite tiny. A double bed, not the queen she’d been hoping for, and about a foot between it and the bureau. The adjoining bathroom was small enough to make using the loo and the shower at the same time possible, if she’d wished to attempt such a feat of hydraulic engineering.
“Well, this is cosy.” Will hefted both their bags onto the bureau. With the two of them in it the room felt even tinier, airless. Her head was still spinning from all the alcohol she’d ill-advisedly imbibed.
“I think I’ll take a shower.”
“Fine by me.”
Unfortunately, Esther realized after she’d shimmied past Will to collect her washbag, the bathroom had a door constructed entirely of frosted glass, and made her feel as if she were performing in a peep show. It was impossible not to have her full silhouette be visible, and also impossible, considering the size of the room, not to have Will watch—all which made having a shower a far less relaxing proposition than she’d hoped.
It felt stupid to be self-conscious considering how well Will knew her body, and how she knew his. Every scar, every sinew, everything. They’d been married for seven years. Of course they knew each other, physically at least.
Yet now, as she rinsed off as quickly as she should, and then yanked on her sensible pyjamas—a fleece top and yoga pants—she felt ridiculously prudish, as if she’d turned into a buttoned-up nun. She avoided looking at Will as she hurried into bed.
He was already lying on one side of what now seemed like the tiniest double bed ever known to humankind, staring up at the ceiling, his hands folded over his broad—and bare—chest like a corpse in a casket.
As Esther slid into her side of the bed, she thought about asking him to put on a shirt, and then decided not to go there. She turned so her back was to Will and clicked off the light.
Silence smothered the room, heavy and oppressive. Esther scrunched her eyes shut, as if she could forcibly will herself to sleep. She edged her feet away from Will’s, in case they tangled toes as they so often had in the past, their version of a kiss good-night.
“Nice door on the bathroom,” Will commented after several endless minutes, his voice disembodied in the darkness, and Esther’s whole body jolted with tension, as well as something else.
“You didn’t have to look.”
“Kind
of hard not to, and in any case, we’re married.” Will shifted on the bed so his body, already mere inches from hers, pressed that much closer. “I know your body as well as my own, Esther.” He spoke matter-of-factly but it still made a shiver go through her. She’d been thinking the same thing, and to hear Will say it made heat bloom inside her.
Then Will put his hand on her shoulder, heavy and warm. “Esther…”
Esther didn’t know who moved first. Did she roll over, or did Will pull her toward him? Somehow they were face to face, hip to hip, toes tangling as they always did. And then Will was kissing her, big, greedy, swallowing kisses that made her feel both desired and obliterated. They’d been apart for two measly weeks but it felt like a lifetime, a very lonely lifetime, and Will’s arms were strong, his body solid, everything about him familiar in a way that didn’t feel aggravating or depressing, just good.
Sex would complicate things, but then again, maybe it wouldn’t. After all, they were married, and it was something they’d done a thousand times before. A bodily function, a basic urge… the way to make a baby.
It was the last that caught her like a fist to the gust, a karate chop to her heart. She stilled underneath Will—at some point he’d rolled on top of her, one large, callused palm sliding underneath her fleece top and fighting a deep-seated urge both to give in and to scream, Esther pushed his hand away.
“No. I’m sorry, but no.”
He stilled on top of her, one hand resting on the flat of her stomach. “Esther…”
“I—” She drew a quick breath. Her mind was blank, her body pulsing, no longer with desire, but with pain.
Will rolled off her. “Esther,” he said again, and it was half-statement, half-question.
Esther stared up at the ceiling, the only sound Will’s steady breathing, as well as the ragged hitch of her own. She was not going to cry. She was not. If she cried now, she’d be done for. She’d plunge into those dark depths and never resurface.
“I’m sorry,” she managed to choke out. “I… I just can’t.”
Chapter Six
Disappointment and worse, hurt, flooded through Will. All right, maybe sex hadn’t been the best idea right now, but he hadn’t had any others and having Esther in his arms had been the best thing that had happened to him in ages. He’d felt as if something inside him that had been off-balance for the last few weeks had finally, thankfully, been righted, only to now have it sent spinning again.
Esther drew a quick, raggedy sort of breath, and Will sat up and switched on the light. In the murky, low-watt glow of the bedside table lamp, he saw her staring resolutely at the ceiling, her jaw clenched tight, her expression stony, as if she was enduring what had just happened between them. As if she hadn’t been kissing him back with as much urgency and excitement as he had. Anger flared low in his belly, like a warning shot. He took a steadying breath, determined not to give into that flare of temper.
“What’s going on, Esther?”
She bit her lip. “What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? You look like you’ve been having to grin and bear it, but that wasn’t what was going on here, least not as far as I could tell, and I could tell.” He didn’t think he was that off the mark, surely.
“I… I don’t want to complicate things.” Her voice was wooden.
“Then you shouldn’t have bloody left!” The words were practically a roar, bursting out of him, surprising them both. Will fell back against the pillows and closed his eyes, trying to hold onto his calm. “Something’s not making sense, Esther, because I don’t think I’m that stupid. You haven’t told me you don’t love me, and a few moments ago you were showing me that you did, least how I see it.”
“Don’t, Will—”
“Don’t what?” He opened his eyes and stared at her. “Don’t make love to my wife? Don’t say the truth? Except I don’t think I even know what the truth is, and you’re sure not saying it.” Although the truth was, he didn’t even know if there was something she wasn’t saying, and that both annoyed and scared him. A part of him couldn’t help but think Esther was making a fuss over nothing—but right now it felt like a lot of nothing.
“I don’t know if I can explain,” she said at last, her gaze still fixed on the ceiling.
“Try.” He gazed at her steadily while she stayed flat on her back and stared straight up. “I think I deserve that much. What’s going on?” Although why he expected truth now, he didn’t even know, because he hadn’t had a straight answer from his wife since this whole mess had begun.
“I’m not sure I could even tell you.” Her words were indistinct through her barely moving lips, her hands clenched by her sides.
“If you try, maybe I’ll understand.”
Esther shook her head, taking a deep breath as she finally looked at him, her face full of misery. “Oh, Will, I don’t think you would.”
Something in her tone made a shiver of dread, ice-cold and awful, go through him. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“I’m afraid you’d… you’d think of me differently. Badly. And despite everything, I’d hate that.”
The dread was creeping through him like a cold mist, snaking its tendrils around his heart, turning everything to ice. “Why?” Esther just shook her head again, and Will forced himself to say the words that were forming in his head through numb lips. “Esther, have you been… have you been having an affair?”
“An affair?” The two words were a screech of incredulous indignation that, impossibly, made Will smile. He knew right then what the answer was, and he was glad, although he was sorry he’d actually had to ask the question, especially when Esther scrambled off the bed, straightening her fleece top with shaking hands. “How can you ask me that?”
“Because you left me,” Will returned, his voice harder than he’d meant it to be. Anger flared through him again, even though he’d been trying to suppress it. “And you didn’t give me a reason, and I’d thought we were fine.”
“Exactly—”
“Be straight with me, Esther. What have I been meant to think?”
“Not that.” Her lips trembled and she pressed them together. “For heaven’s sake, not that.”
“Then what?” Will demanded. “Because nothing you’ve said has made any sense to me.”
She didn’t answer, and he stared at her in a mixture of exasperation and defeat. “You’re still not going to tell me, are you? Whatever it is.” Although he supposed he should be glad that it was at least something. The last time they’d talked Esther had been so dispiritedly vague he had wondered if there really was any reason she’d left him. Maybe she’d just stopped loving him, like a car that had run out of petrol. Nothing more to give.
“I didn’t want our baby,” she said in a low voice, not looking at him. Will struggled to hear the words, and then to make sense of them. Didn’t want? Esther wasn’t looking at him, her face averted, her expression completely closed.
“You—what?” He stared at her in confusion.
“I didn’t want our baby,” she repeated more distinctly. “I didn’t want to get pregnant. I never wanted to have a family.”
He stared at her, completely at a loss. “Why didn’t you say something, then?” he finally asked. “When we started trying?”
“I don’t know.” Esther’s voice was soft and sad, so unlike her normal voice. She was always so brisk, so decisive about everything. Will tried to remember back to when they’d decided to try for a baby. They hadn’t had much of a conversation about it, as far as he could recall, but it had seemed natural. Normal. Had he brought it up first? He must have, but he couldn’t remember now.
“I don’t understand you,” he said after a moment, because he didn’t and he had no other words.
“I know.” She sat on the edge of the bed, her dark hair swinging down to brush her cheek, her expression hidden. “I’m sorry.”
“For what, exactly?”
“Being confusing, I suppose. And for… for not being who you th
ought I was. What you want.”
“How do you know you’re not what I want?” His head felt fuzzy, too full with thoughts and feelings, this new information that he didn’t know what to do with.
“I mean… a mother…” She trailed off miserably.
“But…” He shook his head slowly. “If you’d told me beforehand…” He couldn’t finish that thought. If she’d told him she didn’t want kids, how would he have felt? He didn’t even know. He’d just assumed they wanted the same things, because they always had. And why wouldn’t she want a child? Wasn’t that the way of things, especially in their part of the world? They married, they had kids, they got old together. Had he presumed too much, to think that was how it would go with them? She’d never said differently.
“If I’d told you that I didn’t want your child?” Esther looked up, a look of surprise and something almost like scorn on her face, making Will recoil. He hadn’t thought of it quite like that. “That I don’t ever want that? And,” she added, her voice shaking, “that when I saw that blank ultrasound screen and realized there was no baby, you know the first thing I felt? Do you want to know? Do you want me to tell you, Will?”
“Esther…” It came out as a warning. He didn’t want to hear. He knew he didn’t.
“Relief,” she said flatly, her face turned away from him. “I felt relieved, Will, that there was no baby. Relieved that I could walk away from it without it being my fault, pack up the baby clothes and the prenatal vitamins, all of it. All the things I never wanted. I didn’t have to do any of it, and I was relieved.” Her voice shook and she wrapped her arms around herself, a picture of a woman in grief, and yet she wasn’t.
Will shook his head, unable to process it all, or at least not wanting to. I didn’t want your child. I don’t ever want your child. And she’d been relieved by their miscarriage, actually glad. Was she trying to make him hate her? Or did she just hate him that much?
His head swam and he felt sick. It was so much worse than he’d thought. He almost wished Esther had had an affair. That would have been easier to understand, to accept, than the cold disdain she was subjecting him to now, the near sneer he’d heard in her voice. Why had she married him in the first place? Had she ever loved him?
