The Things We Need to Say

by Rachel Burton

  ‘You’re still going?’ he asks. ‘You’re not going to cancel?’

  When Fran was training to teach yoga, one of her teachers had explained to the group the importance of always being there for their students. Whatever may be happening in their own lives needed to be put to one side as they remembered why their students came to class. ‘Why did you first start going to yoga?’ the teacher had asked. They’d all had different reasons, but they’d all agreed that they had gone to feel supported by their practice, and by their teacher.

  ‘Those people need me,’ she replies quietly.

  ‘I need you, Fran. We need to talk; we need to work out where we go from here.’

  She shakes her head against the pillow. The noise the pillowcase makes against her hair seems louder than it should be. ‘No, Will. I can’t talk to you now. I can barely look at you.’ The tears that she has been desperately trying to hold back are filling her eyes and Will sits on the bed next to her, trying to reach out for her. She moves away.

  ‘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.

  MARCH 2005

  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.

  JULY 2016

  Fran

  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 a
ccent 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 for her.

  ‘Don’t,’ she replies, stepping away.

  ‘Remember when we last flew to Barcelona?’ he asks quietly.

  She’s been trying not to think about that weekend seven years ago. Another bullet point in a long list of failures, another time she’d let Will down.

  ‘I need you to let me have some space, Will,’ she says again. ‘Please?’

  ‘Phone me when you get there at least. Let me know you’re safe.’

  She nods once and turns away to get into the taxi, but he grabs her arm, stopping her.

  ‘Fran,’ he says, so quietly she can barely hear him over the noise of the car engine. ‘Are you leaving me?’

  She looks up at him then, catching the darkness in his eyes. Despite what he’s done her heart is breaking for both of them. Nobody should have had to go through what they’ve been through these last few years. She needs to get away: away from this village, away from Will, away from the memories. She doesn’t answer him because she doesn’t have an answer; she just keeps staring into those brown eyes that she has always loved so much.

  ‘Is everything all right, love?’ the taxi driver asks walking around the car and looking at the two of them curiously. Will loosens his grip on Fran’s arm and she gets into the car, shutting the door. The driver shrugs and gets back into the driver’s seat.

  ‘Stansted then?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, please,’ Fran replies quietly. As the cab moves away she turns to look out of the rear window. Will stands on the pavement, his hands in the pockets of his pyjama trousers, watching her drive away.

  Will

  He sits in the bathroom, Fran’s bathroom, on the edge of the bath. He hasn’t been in here for months. He hasn’t been in here since she was pregnant – he hasn’t been able to cope with the memories. Sometimes back then he would take his clothes off and slip in with her, sitting behind her, holding her against him as they marvelled at her growing bump. The last time he sat on the edge of this bath Fran had looked so beautiful. They’d been so happy.

  He doesn’t know what has drawn him into the bathroom, but as Fran’s taxi had driven out of sight, he’d come back into the house and found himself here. This was her haven, her sanctuary. He supposes he is trying to feel close to her.

  He remembers renovating this bathroom for her. He and Jamie had taken a week off work to get it done in time to surprise her on the day they moved in. He’d been amazed that they’d managed it without bursting a water main. He’d just wanted to make her happy. Over the years he’d failed again and again to make her happy, and now he has let her down in the worst possible way.

  The house already feels so quiet without her. The clock ticking in the hallway seems louder than usual. She hadn’t answered his question about whether she was going to leave him. He can’t bear the thought of this empty, silent house being his future.

  From the moment he first met Fran he was lost. He had never believed in love at first sight until then – he thought it was just something written about in the kind of novels his ex-wife read. But when Fran first walked into his office and the woman from HR introduced her as his secretary, he knew he was in trouble. When Jamie texted him that evening to ask how the first day in the new job had gone those were the very words Will texted back: Bro, I’m in trouble.

  He could still remember exactly what she was wearing the first day he met her, the way her hair looked even redder under the office light. The way she stood in front of him looking at him, her green eyes challenging him, appraising every inch of him before sticking out her hand and grinning. She had a firm handshake and her fingers had lingered in his for longer than they needed to. Will knew from that moment he was undone.

  He would find himself watching her from his office, listening to the jangle of the silver bracelets on her wrists as she typed. He’d never met anyone like her; she took his breath away.

  The first time he met Karen at the end of last summer, by contrast, he had barely noticed her. He was still consumed by grief. Fran was still so unwell, barely holding it together, and spent a lot of time in bed. He was trying to look after her, trying to make her eat, trying and failing to find something, anything, interesting or nourishing in the village shop.

  Susan was working behind the counter that day and introduced him to Karen.

  ‘William and his wife live in the Old Vicarage,’ she said.

  ‘Wow!’ Karen replied, holding out her hand for Will to shake. To this day he can’t remember if he took it or not. ‘That house is gorgeous, and so huge! Do you have a big family?’

  Will froze, staring at her. Why didn’t she know? Why had nobody told her? This bloody village couldn’t shut up about your private business most of the time.

  ‘Karen has only just moved to the village,’ Susan butted in, clearly flustered. ‘She lives up by the station with her two children. She’s recently divorced.’ Will couldn’t imagine why Susan thought he cared.

  ‘William’s a divorce lawyer,’ Susan babbled on. Karen gave him a funny look that he couldn’t read.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, finding his voice. ‘My wife’s not well. I have to get back to her.’ Clutching the two tins of soup he was holding, he fled.

  It was days later when Susan gently reminded him that he’d never paid for them.

  Fran

  She has never been on a plane on her own before. Until she met Will, she’d never been on a plane at all. Meeting him had opened up a whole new world to her: a family she’d never had, countries she’d never visited, things she’d never dreamed of doing. Every year they would go en masse to the south of France, or skiing in the Alps – Fran was a hopeless skier, which utterly frustrated Will, who was, of course, brilliant and only ever skied black runs. It was a life Fran had never imagined.

  On Sunday morning when she had been talking to Jamie about it, when Karen Barden was just a woman who worked in the village pub who occasionally flirted with her husband, she had felt foolish. Foolish about how nervous flying alone at the age of thirty-eight made her feel. But she barely notices anything as she drifts through passport control, through security and through the boarding gate. Bigger things have taken over from her fear of flying and now she is high in the air, her ears popping and the man in the seat behind her digging his knees into her back.

  She can still feel Will’s hand on her arm trying to prevent her getting into the taxi. It would have been so easy to go with him, to send the cab away and take his hand. To walk back into the house with him, forgive him, start again.

  That’s what she wanted after all wasn’t it? To start again. To try again.

  But even if Will hadn’t done what he’d done, even if she hadn’t found out about it, she did have to come to Spain. The reasons for leading this yoga retreat were still there. Over the last few years Fran has felt as though she has been losing her way, her essence. She wants this retreat to help her find out who she is again, to help her rebuild herself. She had been excited at the thought of an adventure on her own, despite her nerves. She had been looking forward to some time away. Now she doesn’t know what to feel.

  Will had always supported her in everything she had wanted to do. They’d always supported each other. They were Will and Fran; they were a team – together they could weather the highs and the lows. They hadn’t expected so many lows, but she never expected the possibility of facing life as only one half of that team either.

  She remembers when she first mentioned teaching yoga. She used to go to a lunchtime yoga class twice a week at the gym near her office. It was the class that Will complained she was always late back from, in the days when she was just his secretary. It was perfect – it stretched her body and relaxed her mind halfway through a stressful day. Her sanity, and the sanity of the rest of her colleagues,
depended on it.

  One week the regular yoga teacher was away. Fran often found herself disappointed when this happened. It always left her with a strange sense of loss, an echo of how she felt after her mother died. She sees it now, sometimes, in the eyes of her own students when she tells them she won’t be there the next week and another teacher will take the class. She knew she shouldn’t be attached to one teacher and one style of teaching, but she always found it hard to let go.

  She’d hated the yoga class that Thursday lunchtime. She’d never hated a yoga class in her life before. She’d found herself, halfway through, uncharacteristically and unapologetically angry. She had done something unthinkably rude, something she’d never done before.

  She’d walked out of the class before it had finished.

  Fran was the sort of person who stayed in the cinema until the bitter end even when the film was long and boring and she couldn’t stand it. She always finished books, even when she lost interest in the characters on page twenty, and when it came to yoga classes she considered herself the mistress of etiquette. She always turned off her phone, never chatted, always arrived early and never, ever left before the end.

  She’d tried to explain to Will what it was she’d hated so much about it, tried to make him understand something that she didn’t really understand herself.

  ‘I could do better,’ she’d said.

  Will smiled. ‘I know you could,’ he’d replied. ‘So why don’t you?’

  There were so many reasons why Fran didn’t think she could. She considered herself uncoordinated and ungraceful. She didn’t think she looked like a yoga teacher should look. She swore too much and drank too much red wine and was married to a divorce lawyer.

  But Will had never been a fan of excuses. He didn’t put up with them. He liked challenges and pushing yourself harder and always reaching your goal. He liked to be the best, to win.

  And most of all Fran knew that he wanted her to be happy and healthy and less stressed. They wanted to start a family and by then they were both beginning to realise it wasn’t going to be as easy as they’d hoped. Fran had gone down to working part time at the law firm she’d moved to after she stopped working for Will, but she knew he wanted her to take some time out. In his mind this was the perfect answer – a less stressful life for Fran while she still got to do something she loved, something she was interested in.