‘And what do you think?’
‘I’m going home in a week,’ Fran says. ‘Will and I should be together for Oscar’s birthday just as I planned and after that …’ She stops, exhales.
‘You’ll find a way through all this,’ Elizabeth says, squeezing her arm. ‘He made a mistake in truly awful circumstances. This is nothing like my situation – you know that, don’t you?’
Fran nods. ‘It’s nice to know Will’s got you and Jake on his side,’ she says.
Elizabeth smiles but her eyes have flicked over to Amado again.
‘So … Amado,’ Fran says. ‘That’s some fast work. Have you been taking tips from Constance?’
‘Amado is far too old for Constance,’ Elizabeth replies.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ Fran says.
*
It feels like being on holiday with her parents, not that they ever went anywhere more exciting than a caravan in Wales. Elizabeth and Amado walk hand in hand, slightly in front of Fran as she dawdles behind, watching the crowds all heading in the same direction. Lots of families and couples but nobody else as obviously alone as she is.
She thinks briefly of Jake and hopes that he won’t be alone for ever, and of Will alone in their home, in their bed. For the first time since she found out, that other darker part of her brain doesn’t question whether or not he is alone. She knows he is; she knows her fears are unwarranted. They are Will and Fran and while she doesn’t know if they can weather this storm together, she knows they have to try. She feels as though she is on the brink of something.
It is only a couple of days now until Fran flies home to her other life, her real life, so Amado had suggested taking her and Elizabeth to the dancing fountains in Salou. The fountains are a pale imitation of the ones in Barcelona, but they are pretty nonetheless: a cascade of coloured lasers and water set to music at the end of the Passeig Jaume I.
She hadn’t been sure about coming – she’d been feeling light-headed and sick all day – but she’s glad she made the effort. As they walk past the Farmacia where Fran bought the pregnancy test, she feels everything come full circle again, the world flipping back onto its original axis.
The show has started by the time they get there, and the crowd is thick, everyone viewing it through their smart phone cameras.
‘Why can’t anyone just look at things with their eyes any more?’ Amado grumbles.
He helps Fran and Elizabeth up on to a wall so they can see better and then jumps up behind them.
‘You know,’ he says. ‘I always say this is just for tourists but every time I do watch it, I’m impressed at the show we can put on in Salou.’
Fran sees Amado take Elizabeth’s hand and feels a thrill of happiness for them – two human beings experiencing love anew. She wonders if you have to find someone new for that to happen, or if you can find it with the same person again.
They watch the fountains, trying to ignore the jostle of people and selfie sticks around them. Amado is still grumbling about camera phones.
‘Will would hate this,’ Fran whispers to Elizabeth.
‘Why? It’s fun. Everyone’s enjoying themselves and the atmosphere is brilliant. He could stand over there and grumble with Amado.’
Fran looks around her and tries to imagine Will if he were here. ‘He can be really stuck-up sometimes you know. He’s more like his mother than he likes to admit.’
‘That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile when you’ve talked about him in ages,’ Elizabeth says.
‘I miss him,’ Fran replies. ‘It’s time to go home.’
‘I thought I might stay for a while,’ Elizabeth says, glancing at Amado.
‘Ob la di’ by The Beatles begins to play and Fran moves away from Elizabeth and Amado a little to give them space. She loves this song. It always reminds her of her first and only trip to a music festival. She’d hated the festival, loved her home comforts too much to be happy with festival toilets and sleeping in a tent, but the trip there in Jake’s van had been so much fun, listening to the White Album over and over because it was the only CD they had with them. She thinks about those days with nostalgia, but she knows it is time to let them go, time to step into the future. It’s impossible to contemplate that future without Will.
Fran takes a deep breath and looks around her as ‘Ob La Di’ turns into Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’ and the fountains flash green and purple. She sees people dancing with their children and she feels her throat tighten. Maybe Will would have loved this, after all, if things had been different. Having kids might have lightened him up a bit. She thinks about the baby she is carrying, her last hope, and wonders if it is enough.
Suddenly she feels sick and light-headed again. The music feels as though it is slowing down and the lights getting brighter. The crowds seem to be closing in on her and she starts to feel as if she is slipping, as though her legs are about to give way beneath her.
*
Fran lies back on the pillows of the narrow hospital bed and closes her eyes. Elizabeth is on the hard, plastic chair beside her, where Will should be.
‘Would you like me to ring Will?’ Elizabeth asks, her face serious.
‘No,’ Fran replies. ‘There’s no point worrying him – not yet.’
‘If you’re sure,’ Elizabeth says, her face still set with concern.
When Fran had come round from her fainting fit or whatever it was, she had found herself on a bench a few yards away from the fountains.
‘Are you OK?’ Amado had asked, his face tense.
‘I think so,’ Fran had replied. But then she had caught Elizabeth’s eye and knew that she had to think about more than just herself. ‘But I think I’d better go to a doctor and get checked over.’ She paused, her gaze flicking between Elizabeth and Amado. She couldn’t feel any dampness between her legs but she’d fainted and fallen to the ground – she couldn’t be too careful.
‘You must look after your baby,’ Amado had said. Elizabeth had looked at him, surprised. He clearly hadn’t told her he knew about the baby. ‘We will go to the hospital in Tarragona. I’ll get my car.’
Amado had been wonderful at the hospital as Fran had felt herself beginning to panic – hospitals always made her feel like that. He spoke to the staff in Catalan, explaining what was going on and translating for Fran when she needed it. He had taken himself off somewhere when they’d given her the ultrasound, leaving her and Elizabeth alone. It had been Elizabeth’s hand she had been holding as they prepared her, not Will’s.
Her baby was so small she could barely make out its outline on the screen, but she could hear the heartbeat – strong and true – and a huge wave of relief washed over her. She was dehydrated and they wanted to keep her in overnight to rehydrate her slowly but essentially both she and her baby were fine.
‘You’re absolutely sure you don’t want me to call Will?’ Elizabeth asks again.
‘No, really. I’ll speak to him when I get home. There is nothing he can do while I’m here and it will only worry him.’
‘In that case I’ll go and find Amado,’ Elizabeth says. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’ She bends down to kiss Fran gently on the cheek.
Will
He sits in the half-light of an August evening – the patio doors open, Ella Fitzgerald on the stereo, the sky a thousand shades of orange and purple and blue as the sun sets. Whenever he listens to jazz he thinks about the night he proposed to Fran in Paris, how he wished he could dance. They’d gone to classes once, years ago, trying to fill up the time they should have been dedicating to raising children. He’d never got a handle on it. Jamie was right: he couldn’t stand not being the best at everything.
He has a glass of Scotch in his hand – his third? Fourth? He can’t remember. He hasn’t eaten and he can’t remember if he had lunch. He’s been sitting here since he got home from work.
The days have been melting into one another. He wakes up with a hangover, with a headache. He takes painkillers, goes
for a run, drinks coffee, goes to work, comes home, pours himself a whisky, rinse and repeat. He hasn’t played cricket since Fran left. The vice-captain of the team phoned a week or so ago, worried about him. Worried that they’d lost against the weakest team in the league more like, Will thinks cynically. He had tried to go one Sunday; he’d put on his whites, picked up his bat, but he never got further than the front door.
All he can think about is Fran: how much he wants her, how much he needs her. How quiet the house is without her, how empty the bed. He still sleeps in the spare room. Jamie phones all the time, trying to get him to do something, anything other than sit about the house, but since that first weekend he hasn’t wanted to. He knows he’s spending too much time thinking about what might have been. He knows he needs to take Jamie’s advice and start concentrating on the future, but he doesn’t know how.
Somewhere in the house a phone is ringing. Will ignores it, but it persists. On and on. He puts his whisky glass down and stands up, swaying slightly. It must have been his fourth glass after all. He walks to the phone in the hall, rubbing his head. He has to stop drinking; he has to pull himself together. When Fran comes back she can’t find him like this. He needs to make this work. He has to.
He picks up the receiver.
‘Will, it’s Elizabeth. We need to talk about Fran.’
*
The sun is rising on a new day, dawn slowly stroking her fingertips over the horizon. Will has been awake all night, headache pounding behind his eyes, a knot of guilt and grief mixing with the remnants of the previous evening’s whisky in his stomach. He feels as though he’ll never be able to forgive himself for what he’s done and if he can’t forgive himself, how will Fran ever forgive him? He keeps reminding himself of Elizabeth’s phone call, that Fran still needs him, that it isn’t over. He tries to suppress the feeling in his gut that it’s all too late.
It’s been a long time since he was last at Stansted airport so early in the morning. He used to take the red-eye out to his firm’s offices in Paris and Berlin a lot when he was younger – one of the only partners with any fluency for languages. But after they started trying for a baby, after everything got so difficult, Fran asked him if he could be at home more and he happily obliged. He hated being away from her. This was the longest they’d been apart since the day they met.
His flight to Barcelona will be called in an hour or so, not much longer. It was the first flight he could get. He has already planned out the train connections from Barcelona to Salou. He can be with Fran by early afternoon.
He’s been sitting on this hard, plastic chair all night, waiting – it reminds him of hospitals, of falling asleep waiting, holding Fran’s hand. They’ve spent too much time struggling; he has spent too much time breaking her heart.
After Elizabeth’s phone call Will had thrown some clothes in a bag and called a cab. As he’d waited at the bottom of the drive he’d hoped it wasn’t the same driver who had taken Fran to the airport three weeks ago. It was, of course, but neither of them acknowledged any recognition, which allowed Will to stare out of the window and brood. He thought about all the times he’d treated Fran less well than he should have done. The times he’d shouted at her, the times he’d walked away from her. The argument about IVF, smashing up the nursery. And now this.
He knows his father was right when he said he wasn’t going to find anyone else like Fran and he knows he has to try to save his marriage. He has to bring her home.
Elizabeth had been vague about what was wrong with Fran, just that she hadn’t been very well and she’d had to go to the hospital, that she’d been dehydrated but was going to be fine. He felt that Elizabeth had been hiding something from him and he couldn’t help thinking the worst. Surely she’d have said if Fran had lost another baby? She couldn’t be pregnant anyway could she? He’d been so careful, protecting his own heart as well as hers. So careful apart from that one night in Norfolk of course, that one night when they’d thrown caution to the wind, where for a moment he’d felt like not giving up. But he can’t let himself think about that.
He thinks about what Elizabeth said to him when he last saw her, as she got into the lift at his offices, about forgiving himself. He thinks about what Jamie said about the future. He thinks about what could have been, about their plans for filling the house with children, about their family, about Fran, about Oscar. He wonders how many of those plans were his plans rather than their plans. And he realises, maybe for the first time in his life, how little control he has over any of it. How little control he ever had.
He thought he could live his life according to a plan. He thought the Old Vicarage, the village, the idea of a perfect life would make that plan a reality. But all he has is the moment he lives in – he’s beginning to realise Fran was always right about that. He has to make the future more liquid, his plans less rigid. He has a vague idea he’d like to move away from the village, that he needs to seek help about how angry he is, that he needs to work out what to do about the career he’s beginning to hate.
He remembers Fran asking him, when she found out about his affair, if it was because she’d let him down. He’d known exactly what she meant. She always felt she wasn’t good enough for him because she hadn’t been able to have a baby. But she was so much more than he ever deserved. He never thought she’d let him down; he never thought she wasn’t enough. He still doesn’t know why he did what he did. He couldn’t answer the question when Fran asked it and he couldn’t answer it when Jamie or his father asked it. He has no idea why he risked everything like that.
But he does know he loves Fran, and he’s sure she still loves him. Maybe he isn’t the same man he used to be, the same man she fell in love with, but maybe they can start again together if they still love each other.
He needs to know if that is enough.
Fran
She is sitting on one of the hard, plastic chairs when Elizabeth arrives to collect her. These chairs always remind her of Will, of waking up to find him asleep next to her. How did he ever manage to fall asleep in them?
‘How are you feeling?’ Elizabeth asks.
‘Much better,’ Fran replies. ‘A bit nauseous but much better. I had no idea I’d let myself get so dehydrated.’
‘It’s easily done I think, especially when you’re being sick a lot.’
‘I’m ready to go if you are.’
The two women walk out to the taxi Elizabeth has waiting outside.
‘Thank you for coming to get me,’ Fran says as they settle into the back of the air-conditioned cab. ‘You didn’t have to come all this way. I’d have been all right on my own.’
‘Well I didn’t come all the way from Salou,’ Elizabeth replies cryptically.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I stayed with Amado last night,’ Elizabeth says quietly, so the cab driver can’t hear. He is probably another ‘cousin’ after all. ‘He has a house just near Tarragona.’
Fran stares at Elizabeth. ‘You’re a fast mover,’ she says.
Elizabeth glances down, blushing, a small smile playing on her lips.
‘I thought he lived at the hotel,’ Fran goes on.
‘He does a lot of the time but last night he had a night off.’
‘Well good for you,’ Fran says, reaching for her friend’s hand. ‘At least one of us is happy.’
‘You and Will can work it out you know,’ Elizabeth replies.
‘Last night felt so strange, having the ultrasound without him there. He’s always been there for everything, the good stuff and the bad. He should have been there – it’s his baby too.’ Fran knew it was time to go home. She was looking forward to it, was glad that her flight was booked for the following Tuesday.
‘You’ll have another scan in a couple of weeks,’ Elizabeth says. ‘Will can be there for that one.’
‘If he wants to be.’ Fran still can’t get the image of Will’s face on that Sunday afternoon out of her head. ‘I don’t know if he’ll want this
baby.’
‘Of course he will.’
Fran sighs. ‘You know that night on the beach, when I told you I was pregnant?’
Elizabeth nods.
‘You asked me to start forgiving myself for whatever it was I blamed myself for. Do you remember?’
‘I remember.’
‘I didn’t know what it was then,’ Fran says. ‘But I think I’ve always blamed myself for not being good enough for Will, for not being able to give him what he wanted. After Oscar died I blamed myself for that too, for the pain I was putting him through. I think that’s why I didn’t want to talk to him about it, why I pushed him away.’
‘You know you were always good enough for him,’ Elizabeth says. The two women are still holding hands and Elizabeth gives Fran’s a squeeze.
‘How do you know though?’
‘Because I spoke to him.’
Fran draws her hand away gently. ‘When?’ she asks quietly.
‘I phoned him last night after I left you.’
‘I asked you not to.’
‘I know you did, but everyone needs an interfering old woman in their lives.’
‘Did you tell him about the baby?’ Fran is panicking now. That news has to come from her.
‘Of course not – that’s not my story to tell.’
They sit in silence until the cab draws up outside the hotel where Amado is waiting for them with open arms.
‘I have prepared a delicious lunch,’ he says. ‘And then Senyora Browne, you and your baby must rest.’
*
Fran is just settling back onto the pillows for a post-lunch siesta when the internal telephone in her room rings.
‘Senyora Browne,’ Amado says softly. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, but your husband is here.’
‘What? No that’s not possible, Amado.’ Fran’s stomach drops. What is Will doing here? She’s not ready, not prepared. She doesn’t know what to say.
‘He is here at Reception.’
‘Are you sure?’ Fran asks.
‘Tall, dark, unshaven, frowns a lot. He says his name is William.’
The Things We Need to Say Page 22
