The Things We Need to Say

by Rachel Burton

  ‘I know this is none of my business,’ Jake says quietly. ‘But you deserve to be happy and it breaks my heart to see you like this. It breaks my heart that anyone could do this to you. I know I don’t know your husband, but I hate him for what he’s done.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Fran snaps, ignoring the light-headed effect his words are having on her, the way he makes her stomach flip. ‘It is none of your business and you don’t know him.’ She knows this would be a good opportunity to tell Jake the truth. She knows she’s not going to take that opportunity.

  ‘I know you’re hurting, Fran,’ Jake continues, as he follows the cyclists down the narrow lane that leads to the village of Porrera. ‘But do you and your husband need to be more honest with each other?’ He reaches out to touch her just like he had done in the car the previous Saturday on the way back from Tarragona.

  Fran moves away from him and opens her mouth to answer, but she doesn’t know what to say. She knows there is so much truth in what Jake is saying. She doesn’t understand how he’s hit the nail on the head and she doesn’t know if Jake realises how close to the bone his words are, but she and Will have been skirting around the truth for years. If there is any chance of their marriage working, they have to be honest about how they feel.

  *

  The group have a quick pit stop for cups of tea and toilet breaks at a small café by the stream that runs through the village. It really does feel like stepping back in time. It’s much cooler up here than it is in Salou and the energy is much slower, less frantic. Fran feels as though she could sit here for ever. She wonders what excuse she can use to get out of the wine tasting.

  ‘Sit next to me in the winery,’ Elizabeth whispers to her as she squats down next to the chair Fran is sitting on. ‘If you don’t want to drink any of the wine just swap your glass with mine. I’m happy to taste it twice.’

  ‘What did I do to deserve a friend like you?’

  ‘You gave me the best divorce lawyer in the southeast,’ Elizabeth says with a grin.

  Fran sighs. ‘Oh let’s not talk about him,’ she says.

  The winery owner speaks no English so Jake translates everything. Fran hadn’t realised how fluent in Catalan he was. So much so that sometimes he forgets the English words. Fran wonders if he dreams in English or Catalan, then realises that it is a question too intimate to ever ask him.

  The wine is called Priorat and has been made in this region since the 1700s and not much about the manufacturing process has changed since then.

  ‘They are tiny purple grapes,’ Jake says, ‘and they are all still picked by hand, then destemmed and put in these deposits.’ He opens up huge storage containers that are built deep into the floor of the winery. ‘They ferment in here for about a month.’

  After that, the winery owner tells them via Jake, the wine is pressed and put into oak barrels. The wine stabilises as it reacts with the oak and then it can be bottled. They use the barrels for up to four years before sending them to Scotland where they are used as whisky barrels.

  Fran is starting to get tired and desperate to sit down, so is delighted to see tables and chairs set out for the wine tasting with little bowls of savoury biscuits set out on each table. She sits down and tucks in as the wine tasting begins. She hadn’t realised how hungry she was.

  She doesn’t pay much attention to the chatter about the wine. She watches as everybody swirls the red liquid around in their glasses and sniffs it and she tries to do the same so it doesn’t look too obvious that she isn’t joining in. She pretends to drink but leaves her glass on the table for Elizabeth to deal with.

  Then, with grand ceremony, it is time to taste the thirteenth best wine in the world. Fran isn’t sure who has proclaimed it such, but a book and certificate are being produced as evidence. She leans over towards Elizabeth.

  ‘Do you think it’s OK if I taste this one?’ she whispers.

  ‘Of course it is,’ Elizabeth replies. ‘I had the odd tipple during both my pregnancies.’

  ‘But that was then …’

  ‘I know,’ Elizabeth interrupts. ‘It’s a miracle any baby born before about 1990 ever survived.’ She winks at Fran. ‘Have a taste – you might never get another opportunity.’

  The wine is inky and dense, clinging to the sides of the glass when Fran swirls it around. It comes from a time before Will, a time when she was still living with Jake. It was made in 2000 and smells of summer rain on hot pavements, of holidays, of life before. When she tastes it she expects it to be metallic like the glass of wine she pushed away on the first night of the retreat, but the flavours explode in her mouth – vanilla, blackcurrant, plum. When she swallows she thinks of her baby but she’s glad she tried. One mouthful won’t hurt.

  She ends up buying a bottle. She knew she would. Whatever happens, Will has to taste this.

  ‘So you’re going back to him?’ Jake asks with uncharacteristic harshness when she tells him who the wine is for.

  ‘I’m buying him a bottle of wine, Jake, not forgiving him,’ she replies.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I know it’s none of my business.’

  ‘I wish I knew what to do.’

  Jake places a hand on her arm. ‘You’ll figure it out, Frankie; you always do.’

  She loves the way he still calls her Frankie, the way he looks at her, oblivious to her history. She doesn’t know anyone else who can truly look at her without pity any more, who can see the person she used to be. She smiles at him but is suddenly hit by a wave of exhaustion. She’s always hated the first trimester.

  He must notice how tired she is; she sees his brow furrow, but he doesn’t ask any more questions.

  ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Let’s get you all back to the hotel.’

  JUNE 2015

  I felt lonely and afraid when I was carrying Oscar. I was terrified that I’d lose him and I knew how important this baby was to Will, to our marriage. I felt like a ship with a precious cargo trying to avoid the storms. I’d cut my teaching schedule right down and I was bored and alone and constantly waiting for Will to come home from work.

  It was then that I first noticed how claustrophobic the village made me feel. I couldn’t go anywhere without somebody asking me how I was, or wanting to touch my growing bump or give me their opinion on a happy and healthy pregnancy.

  Every evening when Will walked through the front door I wanted to grab hold of him, pin him down, keep him with me for ever. I’d talk to him from the moment he walked in, telling him about everything I’d read or heard or seen on television. I’d watch him pretend to be interested, pretend that his headaches hadn’t started up again with the worry about me and the baby, and then I’d slow down. I’d sit quietly with him, allowing him to relax, reminding myself to relish these last few months when it was just the two of us. Before everything changed.

  We worked our way through the milestones. After sixteen weeks we were quietly optimistic – we’d never made it that far before and then, after the twenty-week scan, we finally allowed ourselves to enjoy it, finally accepted that we were going to be parents.

  The village cricket team won every match they played that summer. It was as though Will’s relentless and renewed enthusiasm for life had spread throughout the team, throughout the whole village, and they couldn’t be beaten. I even helped with the cricket teas that year, something I’d never done before. The younger players fussed over me – their girlfriends touching my bump with a mixture of awe and fascination while the older players and their wives just kept telling us how happy they were for us – they didn’t actually say the words ‘at long last’ but you could see it in their eyes.

  He came up with the name when we were walking home from yet another winning match. He squeezed my hand and smiled that smile that still made my knees go weak.

  ‘What about Oscar?’ he said. ‘For the baby.’

  ‘Where did that come from?’

  ‘I have no idea! I just thought it would be nice.’

 
I looked at him, sliding an arm around his waist. ‘It’s perfect,’ I replied.

  When he wasn’t at cricket, Will spent every spare moment of every weekend that summer with Jamie turning one of our spare bedrooms into a nursery. He wouldn’t let me in, wouldn’t let me look at it until it was ready. Then, one Sunday morning, he took me upstairs and put his hands over my eyes as he opened the door and led me inside.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked quietly as he dropped his hands.

  I looked around. It was beautiful – everything our son deserved and more. All the woodwork was painted white and the walls covered in wallpaper of the palest grey, a pattern of clouds adorning one of them. There were purpose-built shelves and storage units, the carpet and curtains matched the walls, and in the centre of the room was a beautiful white crib. Above the crib was a mobile of clouds and rainbows and inside a cuddly Piglet from Winnie-the-Pooh – not a Disney Piglet, a proper Piglet from the book illustrations.

  I walked over and picked up the Piglet, smiling.

  ‘Your favourite character from your favourite book,’ Will said.

  And then I saw it – the vintage high-backed armchair that I’d spotted in an antique shop on the Norfolk coast when we were there for a few days earlier in the year. I’d fallen in love with that chair, but it hadn’t matched any of our other rooms. I went over to it, touching the material where he’d had it reupholstered.

  ‘I can’t believe you went back for it,’ I said.

  ‘I thought it would be perfect for when you’re feeding Oscar. I know he’ll be sleeping with us at first, but I thought he deserved his own space. Do you like it?’

  ‘Oh, Will, I love it,’ I said, realising I was crying. ‘I love all of it. I can’t believe you did this. You and Jamie.’

  He walked up behind me then and turned me towards him, wiping my tears away with his thumb. He smiled at me, puffed up with pride and excitement.

  ‘This is really happening,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I know,’ I replied.

  But I didn’t know. None of us ever really know anything. All we have is now. I should have remembered that.

  JULY 2016

  Elizabeth

  She looks out of the small square of the plane window on to the sun-parched fields of northern Spain below. She wonders what she is flying home to. She wonders where life will take her now.

  They had left early that morning, the sun still low in the sky. She had said her private goodbyes to Amado the night before. Nothing had happened between them – they were just two lonely people enjoying each other’s company – but when he asked her if she’d return she heard herself promising she would, as soon as she could, as soon as she’d sorted some things out at home.

  Fran had come down to see them off, bleary-eyed and pale. She looked as though she hadn’t slept at all. She’d smiled through it, wishing everybody well, organising times to meet up back in Cambridge, insisting Joy and Molly join classes at the studio before they head off on their travels.

  ‘We’ll have a leaving party for you both,’ she’d said. Molly and David had their heads bowed over his tablet, looking at pictures of northern India.

  The taxis arrived and Elizabeth had taken Fran to one side.

  ‘Are you going to be OK?’ she’d asked.

  ‘It’s just morning sickness,’ Fran had replied. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Look, Fran, I know it’s tempting to throw caution to the wind when you think you’ve got nothing to lose. Meeting Jake again and the sun and the sea might feel like it’s the answer but believe me when I tell you it isn’t.’

  ‘If you happen to see Will, tell him I love him,’ Fran had replied pointedly.

  Constance is asleep in the seat next to Elizabeth with her eye mask pulled down firmly. Elizabeth is alone with her thoughts, and her thoughts drift to Matt. Her divorce will come through any day now, but she still can’t help wondering what life would have been like if she had never met Matt.

  He had turned up in a sports car and a waft of expensive aftershave. He’d seemed an odd choice for such a staid and established private school, even if it was co-ed now. Elizabeth remembered thinking that some of the older girls were bound to fall hopelessly in love with him – which was funny really, in hindsight, considering what happened.

  She had been teaching at the school for years, since her youngest son had finally flown the nest, and she hadn’t known what to do with herself. Matt was ostensibly her boss, recruited as head of the English department, but he often looked to her for guidance having never taught in an independent school before. She wondered what had made him change from teaching in comprehensives. He said his wife had just started her PhD at Cambridge and he needed the best-paying job he could find.

  The fact that he was newly married made everything that happened more surprising. The electricity between them was palpable but Elizabeth still put it down to an old woman’s fantasy, refusing to believe that her growing feelings could possibly be mutual. Until that night, after the Year 11 Christmas disco, when she went to put the rubbish out and found him smoking near the bins and he told her she was beautiful as he stroked her face. Then whatever she had been holding on to unravelled.

  Sitting on the plane now Elizabeth can still feel his tongue in her mouth, his stubble against her cheek, can still smell his aftershave, taste the mixture of cigarette smoke and chewing gum. She can still remember him sliding his hand up her skirt, the sensation of the brick wall against her back.

  Afterwards he’d looked at her and smiled. ‘I feel as though I should say that shouldn’t have happened,’ he’d said. ‘But I’d be lying if I did.’

  Elizabeth hadn’t felt guilty. She’d spent all weekend waiting for the guilt to kick in, but it never did and instead of it becoming a few fumbled moments consigned to her memories it became, over time, a full-blown affair.

  ‘You’re young enough to be my son,’ she’d said, constantly surprised that he was remotely interested.

  ‘We’re two adults having fun,’ he’d replied. ‘No expectations.’

  She’d tried not to think about his wife and her PhD. She’d suspected Matt kept his wife in a very different compartment of his brain to Elizabeth.

  It wasn’t until they were caught, until they had both been suspended and she realised that Matt was never going to answer her emails or texts again, that she’d finally allowed herself to feel guilty, to feel desperately sorry for Matt’s wife. It was only then that she’d realised she wasn’t the first and certainly wouldn’t be the last.

  Her mistake had been cataclysmic and unnecessary. She’d hurt so many people: her husband, her children, Matt’s wife. Even if she is just one in a long string of other women, Matt’s wife will find out one day and will end up heartbroken.

  Will’s mistake was different. Will is one of the good guys; Fran has to see that. He was a broken man who, from what she understands, thought he’d lost his wife as well as his son. She’s not defending his actions, but she does genuinely believe that Will and Fran’s marriage can be saved. She only hopes that Fran understood what she was trying to say, that Fran meant it when she said she loved Will, and that she won’t make a terrible mistake with Jake.

  *

  He phones her the day after she gets back from Spain.

  ‘Elizabeth, it’s Will,’ he says when she answers. ‘I’ve got some potentially good news.’

  He sounds flat and tired, his usual bonhomie gone.

  ‘Your decree absolute has come through,’ he goes on.

  Elizabeth sits down on the bottom step of the staircase, the same step she was sitting on when she waited for Constance to pick her up to go on the yoga retreat. She exhales, not really knowing what to say.

  ‘I can get my secretary to pop it in the post to you,’ Will says, filling the silence. ‘Or you can …’ He hesitates. Elizabeth has never heard Will Browne hesitate before. ‘You can come into the office to pick it up if you like.’ He sounds suddenly unsure of himself and Elizab
eth wonders if he has an ulterior motive for asking her to come into the office. She feels desperately sorry for him suddenly.

  ‘I can come to you this afternoon,’ she says.

  ‘I’m free about two,’ he replies but he makes it sound as though it is a question. He really doesn’t sound like himself at all.

  The first time Elizabeth had met Will in a professional capacity was a week after Fran first introduced them. He’d seemed much more relaxed in his own territory than he had at the yoga studio, very much the alpha male in his own kingdom. He was courteous and charming and professional and went through all the steps of the divorce process with her clearly. Every time she’d panicked, or become embarrassed, he’d calmed her down and reassured her.

  She can remember him now, quite clearly, sitting back in his chair, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, drinking his coffee as she’d worried about the financial settlements.

  ‘What if it’s not enough?’ she’d garbled. ‘Property is so expensive in Cambridge. What if I can’t find anywhere to live.’ She can remember the feeling of panic rising up inside her and then noticing Will’s inappropriately brightly coloured socks between his expensive shoes and the cuffs of the trousers of his designer suit and knew that Fran had bought them for him. Somehow that had calmed her.

  ‘If it’s not enough, we ask for more,’ he’d said. ‘We ask for maintenance or put in a claim on your husband’s private pension.’

  ‘And if Tony says no?’ she’d asked.

  ‘Mrs Pearson,’ he’d replied patiently, planting both feet on the floor and brushing imaginary dust off his tie. ‘Without wishing to sound harsh I’ve dealt with a lot of similar cases before.’ He paused for effect, smiled. ‘And I always win.’

  Today, as he comes into the reception area to meet Elizabeth, he looks like a shadow of the man he was then. She can remember, at that first meeting, after they’d gone through the details of her divorce and he’d left her alone so he could photocopy her paperwork, hearing him laughing with the receptionists. She can remember, when he shook her hand at the end of the meeting, how solid and reassuring it had felt and she can remember wondering how he managed to stay so relaxed, so strong, so together. Part of her suspected, even then, that it was a very good veneer.