The Things We Need to Say

by Rachel Burton

  ‘Breathe in,’ she says as the group sit in a twist, ‘and as you breathe out, see if you can find more movement. Try not to force anything or wrench yourself around.’ Fran walks over to Joy and, after asking her permission to do so, gently helps her move more deeply into the posture. She watches the tension melt away from Joy’s shoulders.

  ‘Have a think about what you need to let go of,’ Fran continues. She tries not to think about Will as she says it. ‘You don’t have to share what it is if you don’t want to but now, as you exhale and let the twist go, imagine yourself letting go of whatever it is as well.’

  She notices the tears in Katrin’s eyes. This is not the Katrin she is used to seeing.

  Everyone folds forwards over their legs before twisting to the other side. Fran stands behind them, watching them, breathing them in.

  ‘Feel the opening in your shoulders, your chests, and your hearts,’ she says, thinking about the things she loves about twists. ‘Take a breath in and think about all the space you can make by letting go of what no longer serves you. What can you make space for? What do you need to make space for?’

  As they sit there and breathe, Fran thinks about what she needs to make space for. It comes to her suddenly out of nowhere, like somebody else’s voice in her head.

  A baby.

  She is surprised. She has no idea what it means. But as she slowly leads the group down onto their backs, as she lets them lie hugging their knees into their chests, she realises that she has never made the space in her life for a baby.

  But now standing in the middle of this sun-drenched Spanish yoga studio, gently leading a group of yoga students into a long relaxation, she realises that at some point over the last year she has made that space. That she is finally ready.

  Unlike many of her colleagues at the yoga studio, Fran had never really believed in the laws of attraction. She doesn’t believe thoughts become things or that you can think yourself well. As her very first yoga teacher in London, an ex-chippie from Hull, had said: there’s a lot of yoga bollocks out there. She’s never believed that the reason she and Will have never been able to have a baby was because they hadn’t had enough positive thoughts – Will had enough positivity for the both of them anyway. The reason they hadn’t had a baby was because life is full of knocks and disappointments and heartbreak.

  But she does know that she has never talked to Will about how she really felt about starting a family. She never told him how scared she was or how she hadn’t felt ready to be a mum. Maybe that drove a wedge between them long ago.

  As her yoga students lie on the floor at her feet, Fran places a hand over her belly and wonders if it’s too late.

  *

  After the class is over, and before lunch, Fran takes a walk down to the beach on her own. She spends a few moments scrunching the sand under her toes, taking deep breaths, preparing herself for what she is about to do. She looks over to the row of shops opposite and sees the illuminated green cross of the Farmacia. She hesitates for a moment longer and then begins to walk towards it. She stands outside not really knowing what to do. She can’t be pregnant, but she also can’t remember when her last period was.

  She knows they have been careful, but she also knows that there was that one night when they weren’t. When they’d thrown caution to the wind and, much as she doesn’t want to admit it, as much as she is overcome with fear, she knows the dates match up.

  It seems so ridiculous that this could happen so quickly and easily now, when she and Will had struggled to conceive for so long.

  A woman in a white coat sees her hovering near the door and walks over to her, smiling kindly.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asks in perfect English.

  ‘I think I might be pregnant,’ Fran whispers, so quietly the pharmacist has to duck her head to hear her. Fran remembers the word Mia used on Tuesday morning that she now assumes must mean pregnant. Embarassada. This whole situation feels like one excruciating embarrassment.

  Fran leaves the Farmacia a few moments later with the pregnancy test tucked into the bottom of her handbag.

  OCTOBER 2008

  The first time I was pregnant Will wanted to tell everyone straight away, but I insisted we wait. It took me weeks to get used to it. I’m not sure I ever got used to the idea. Maybe that was part of the problem. We held the secret between us all summer like a fragile package. We went to Santorini for a week and he slept with his hand over my belly.

  We talked about how this would be our last holiday like this for a few years, how we’d have to cut down on the travelling, the weekends away, choose more family-friendly destinations – all the steps in Santorini would be impossible with a pram. Will said he’d strap the baby to his back and we’d have adventures together. I didn’t doubt him – back then I didn’t think anything could slow Will down.

  If I thought too much about being pregnant, I realised I was terrified. I tried to hide it from Will – I didn’t want to dampen his happiness. He’d find me sometimes, sitting by the window, deep in thought, and ask me what was wrong. I’d tell him I was fine, but the truth was that I didn’t know if I was ready for this baby. I didn’t feel grown-up enough. I still felt like a kid myself and I didn’t have a mum to talk to.

  ‘You know you can talk to my mum whenever you want,’ Will said.

  But I wasn’t ready to tell Will’s family then.

  Getting the all-clear on the three-month scan was a huge relief, as though a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Seeing our first baby for the first time will always be one of my favourite memories. When I first heard the baby’s heartbeat I squeezed Will’s hand so hard that I saw him wince.

  Will devoured baby books like they were going out of fashion. I wasn’t that interested in what the books said, I was more interested in watching my bump grow, still unable to comprehend that my changing shape was due to a little human growing inside of me. At thirteen weeks, Will told me, our baby was the size of a lime, weighed nearly an ounce and, if it was a girl, she would already have two million eggs in her ovaries.

  ‘If it’s only the size of a lime,’ I replied. ‘Why can’t I do my skirts up any more?’

  By then it was almost impossible to hide, so we started telling people – his parents, my work colleagues. After that Will told anyone who’d listen. He never stopped smiling and his happiness was contagious. I finally started to relax.

  At nearly four months I came down with a really bad cold. I couldn’t take anything for it and felt horrible. One cold, wet evening in October I went to bed about 8.30; I felt sick and had a terrible pain in my back. I thought I might be running a fever, but I didn’t want to worry Will. I thought I’d be fine in the morning.

  I remember drifting in and out of consciousness. I remember Will coming up to bed, gently kissing my forehead before turning off the light. And then I remember waking up and feeling the warm dampness between my legs, being too scared to turn the light on, trying to shake Will out of a very deep sleep.

  When he finally woke up he turned on his bedside lamp. The blood had soaked through my pyjamas and onto the sheets. I remember the bedside clock reading 03.11. I could see Will trying not to panic.

  I remember the drive to the hospital. I remember watching the windscreen wipers of Will’s car swishing back and forth. I remember Will trying to tell me everything would be all right – even though, by then, we both knew it wouldn’t be. I remember the doctor telling us that they couldn’t find a heartbeat. The next thing I remember clearly after that was waking up the next morning. Will was asleep in the hard, plastic chair next to me, his hair standing up on end.

  They told us that this happened sometimes, that there is no rhyme or reason behind it. They told us to make an appointment with our GP because we would need to have some tests, but that there was no reason not to start trying again as soon as we were ready. I didn’t feel as though I’d ever be ready. I wasn’t sure I’d been ready in the first place.

  Will dealt with the
paperwork and took me home.

  ‘Do they know if it was a boy or a girl?’ I asked in the car.

  ‘A boy,’ he said quietly, staring straight ahead, his knuckles white from gripping the steering wheel so tightly. We hadn’t thought about names – we thought we had plenty of time.

  We spent days wrapped around each other, grieving together. We still shared everything back then, even our grief. We got through it because we had each other. I don’t know when that stopped.

  JULY 2016

  Fran

  She lost count long ago of the number of pregnancy tests she has done. Her life over the last eight years seems to have revolved around missed periods, ovulation and peeing on sticks. Of all the tests only five have ever been positive, including the one she is holding in her hand this morning in a bathroom in a boutique hotel in Catalonia.

  She stares at the two blue lines in disbelief; whilst part of her must have known – the metallic taste in her mouth, being careful with her yoga practice – her conscious mind had been convinced it was food poisoning and she had totally dismissed all of her doubts, her fears, her hope.

  She knows when it happened. She remembers Will’s slightly tipsy smile.

  But she also remembers the look on Will’s face last Sunday afternoon, before the text message from Karen, when she told him she was ready to try again and he thought she meant for another baby. He was as unready and unprepared for this as she was. What would he think? What would he say?

  After the first time, Fran would always leave the positive pregnancy tests on the desk in Will’s study, the first place he went when he got home from work. She always felt, after that first time, that he might need a few moments alone to take it in before they shared the news. She always did the tests alone and always had time afterwards to think, so why shouldn’t he? After a few minutes, he would come and find her, put his arms around her – he never said anything, never needed to. They would both just hope that this time everything would be different, that everything would be all right.

  She never showed him the negative ones.

  If Will were here now, Fran would leave the test by the side of the sink until he’d seen it. But he isn’t here. She wonders about telling him, about phoning or texting or emailing, but she knows she won’t because she isn’t ready to talk to him; she doesn’t know what to say. This could change everything. Or it could make no difference at all.

  As she sits on the edge of the bath looking at the test, Mia arrives with her cleaning trolley.

  ‘Adéu,’ she calls as she sticks her head into the bathroom with her usual disregard of personal boundaries.

  As soon as she sees the pregnancy test, Mia breaks into a huge grin. She launches into very rapid French that Fran can barely understand, but after a moment it dawns on her that Mia is trying to tell her that she is pregnant too.

  ‘Douze semaines,’ she says slowly so Fran has a chance of understanding. Twelve weeks.

  Fran smiles back trying not to think of all the things that could still go wrong after twelve weeks, trying not to unload her own misery and fear on to Mia.

  Mia looks at herself in the bathroom mirror, turning sideways and smoothing the tunic of her uniform over her barely existent bump. Fran remembers the first time she was pregnant, how much she wanted her bump to show. How it was barely there before it was gone.

  ‘Et tu?’

  Fran knows exactly how far gone she is; she can pinpoint it to the hour. But back in May it had never occurred to her that she would ever be pregnant again.

  ‘Huite semaines,’ she says, trying to sound positive.

  Mia launches herself at Fran, pulling her into a huge embrace. The force of this woman’s enthusiasm is almost overwhelming. Almost contagious.

  Almost.

  *

  When Fran arrives in the yoga studio later that morning to start getting ready for the first class of the day, Katrin is already there, putting up bunting and balloons.

  ‘You don’t mind do you?’ Katrin asks. ‘I found this stuff in a shop in the town yesterday afternoon and I thought it would be nice for Molly, for her birthday.’

  Katrin had disappeared after lunch the previous day and hadn’t turned up to either yoga or dinner. Even Molly hadn’t seemed to know where she’d gone, but Fran had assumed she’d been licking her wounds somewhere after her strange behaviour at lunch.

  ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ Fran replied. ‘It’ll be lovely to celebrate something.’

  Fran starts to set up the yoga mats and Katrin carries on with the bunting, and for a little while the two women work in silence.

  ‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ Katrin says, suddenly. ‘About what I said at lunchtime. I was way out of line.’

  Fran looks up, but Katrin has her back to her.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she says. ‘Are you OK?’

  Katrin doesn’t say anything at first, doesn’t turn around, but Fran notices her shoulders slump, her head bow as though all the energy has been drained from her suddenly.

  ‘Not really,’ she says eventually. ‘But I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘That’s fine, but I’m here if you need to talk.’

  Katrin turns around then, looking at Fran. ‘Really?’ she says.

  ‘Of course! Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘I don’t know, you’ve just been through so much. My problems seem so petty in comparison.’

  Fran walks up to Katrin, places a hand on her arm.

  ‘Everybody’s problems are their problems,’ she says. ‘And however small they are, they are still important. If you need to talk, I’m here to listen.’

  The two women stand there for a moment, looking at each other.

  ‘How are you, Fran?’

  Fran blinks, exhales, drops the hand that was on Katrin’s arm. ‘I have good days and bad days.’

  ‘Is today a good day or a bad day?’

  ‘Middling.’ Fran smiles. She’s not sure if a day when she finds out she’s carrying Will’s baby again could ever be a completely bad day, no matter what may have gone before, no matter what is still to come.

  ‘I haven’t told Molly,’ Katrin says. ‘About you, about last summer.’

  ‘You can if you want – it’s not a secret.’

  ‘It’s not my story though.’

  ‘It’s eight years since I turned thirty,’ Fran says, changing the subject and looking around the studio at the birthday decorations. ‘It’s amazing how much can change in eight years.’

  ‘It’s amazing how much can change in a year,’ Katrin replies but Fran doesn’t press for more.

  She’d read once that nearly every cell in your body has renewed itself after seven years – it’s almost as though you are a completely new person. Almost. Because brain cells don’t renew, they just age us, holding on to our memories. Which is why Fran can still remember what it felt like to kiss Will for the first time, even though every cell of her lips has changed since then. And in another seven years her husband will still remember what it feels like to kiss Karen Barden, even though every cell of his lips will have changed by then.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Katrin asks.

  Fran realises that her eyes are filling with tears. She blinks again. She might be carrying Will’s baby again, but that doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t fix the mess they’re in.

  She takes a deep breath, rolls her shoulders back. She’s got a class to teach.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she says.

  *

  Later that afternoon, Fran and Katrin buy Molly a cake from a bakery in Salou recommended by Amado.

  ‘The best bakery in Catalonia,’ he said confidently. ‘My cousin’s shop.’ Everyone in Salou seems to be related to Amado in some way.

  It was a beautiful bakery, full of the most elaborate confections. Everything was baked on the premises. The owner, who introduced herself as Christianne, laughed when Fran called Amado her cousin.

  ‘Amado calls everyone his cousin,’ s
he says. ‘He’s known my father for years, that’s all.’

  She told Fran and Katrin about how she had always loved baking as a child growing up in Salou, but hadn’t had the time for it after she moved to Barcelona for work in her twenties. But a couple of years ago her job had been made redundant and she’d come back to her home town and started making desserts and pastries for some of the boutique hotels that were springing up along the side of the beach.

  ‘Amado really helped me out,’ she says. ‘Spread the word. I owe him a lot.’

  Christianne found she needed a bigger kitchen as her business took off and when these premises came up for rent she sunk all her savings into them and hoped and prayed it would work out. So far so good.

  ‘We should tell Molly this story,’ Fran says to Katrin. ‘It’s quite inspiring – there is life after redundancy.’

  ‘Our friend, who’s birthday it is, has recently lost her job,’ Katrin explains.

  ‘In that case,’ Christianne says, ‘you must take one of these gateaux – I’ll decorate one for you. Can you come back this afternoon?’

  ‘Sure,’ Fran replies. ‘Can I have three of those to take now though?’

  ‘Tarta de Manzana?’ Christianne asks. ‘Apple tarts.’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Fran nods enthusiastically, realising she’s craving them desperately. She remembers how much she craved apples when she had been pregnant before. Will always told her to eat whatever she wanted. It was better to eat something rather than nothing.

  ‘Three?’ Katrin asks with a surprised smile as they leave the bakery.

  ‘Sorry,’ Fran replies, slightly embarrassed. ‘Would you like one?’

  ‘No, it’s fine. I had no idea you liked them so much.’

  ‘Love them,’ Fran replies, delighted that she wouldn’t have to share.

  *

  The cake is huge. It sits in the middle of the table adorned with candles that Amado had found for them.