shifted gear after her first miscarriage. She wonders if it became a place where Will did all the looking after and if perhaps he’d got tired of that.
As she walks through Barcelona airport she remembers the last time she was here, over six years ago. She and Will, on their way back to England, wrapped around each other and holding a secret, trying again. Their whole marriage seems to have revolved around an endless cycle of trying again and holding secrets. Some of those secrets turned out to be ones that they didn’t share.
Fran thinks about her own secret, the one she holds so tightly that she barely shares it with herself.
She doesn’t know what will happen to either of them now. But she does know that she has to focus on herself, on being strong, on the retreat. She takes a deep breath and rolls the cold bottle of water over her hot brow, letting the water droplets fall down her temples. She swallows down another wave of nausea and heads towards the taxi that waits for her.
We’d been together just over four months when Will took me to Paris, his favourite place on Earth. He booked first-class seats on the Eurostar and I wound myself up into a ball of anxiety about travelling on a train in a tunnel under the sea. By the time we got to Dover we’d drunk half a bottle of champagne and as the train entered the tunnel he kissed me, distracting me from my fears. By the time we arrived in Calais, all I was interested in was getting to our hotel room.
He had found a boutique hotel in Montmartre. Our room was tiny but beautiful and from the window you could see the marshmallow outline of Sacré Coeur against the horizon. When we arrived we fell into bed before the door had barely closed behind us.
I loved Paris because he did. I loved watching him show me his favourite places, telling me stories of the times he’d been here before. He never mentioned the fact that most of those memories would have been made with his first wife. I tried not to think about it.
Most of all I loved watching him speak French. I’d had no idea how fluent he was and for some reason it made me love him even more. When I mentioned it he shrugged.
‘I did languages at A Level,’ he said.
‘But not at university?’
‘My parents thought law would be more useful.’ There was an edge of resignation to his voice. I was beginning to understand that what his parents thought was often hard to argue with. I’d never asked what they thought of me.
He asked me to marry him as we sat on a bench by the Seine. I was talking about something else – I can’t even remember what now – and he seemed distracted, as though he wasn’t really listening. He cut me off mid-sentence, grabbing my hand and putting something in it.
‘Stop talking for a minute, will you?’ He smiled nervously. ‘Sorry, I just …’ He took a breath, looked away from me. ‘Open the box,’ he said.
The little black leather box he’d given me contained a ring, a solitaire diamond on a white-gold band. I looked from the ring to him.
‘Will you marry me?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t think you’d want to get married again,’ I said, still holding the ring box, still staring at it.
‘Of course I want to get married again, Fran. I want to marry you, I want to have babies with you, I want to grow old with you. I’ve never felt like this before.’ He put his hands on my shoulders, turning me towards him, looking into my eyes. ‘Please say yes.’
I wrapped my arms around him then, as the breeze fluttered in off the river, cooling the humid July evening. I felt the solidity of him, the way he made me feel so sure. This was everything I had ever wanted, the rescue from my loneliness that I’d never dared hope would arrive.
‘Of course yes,’ I said quietly. ‘I want all those things too.’ Even when I said the words I wasn’t sure if they were completely true, but I was sure I wanted him.
We sat there together for a while, arms around each other. Jazz was floating in the air towards us from one of the nearby cafés.
‘I’d ask you to dance,’ he said into my hair. ‘But we know how badly that turns out.’
The next day I lay in bed, staring at the ring on my finger, the early morning sun glinting off the diamond. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me.
‘Where do you want to get married?’ Will asked. I’d thought he was still asleep. I turned my head to look at him.
‘I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it!’
‘Really?’ He seemed surprised. ‘I thought all women thought about that sort of thing.’
‘Not all women, Will,’ I said, rolling onto my stomach so I could look at him. I felt his hand trace the bones of my spine.
‘Well do you want a big church wedding, a marquee in my parents’ garden?’ he asked.
‘Is that what you had last time?’ I didn’t want it to be like last time. I didn’t even really want him to think about last time, but I had to know.
He nodded, his eyes flicking away from me, just for a second.
‘Well then, no. I don’t want this to be anything like last time,’ I said.
He grinned then, that boyish lopsided grin that I loved so much. ‘Will you elope with me?’ he asked.
The taxi drops Fran off outside her hotel and the driver helps her in with her bags. He seems to know most of the staff and there is much back slapping and shouting that Fran doesn’t understand, and then suddenly the driver is gone with an ‘adéu, bella’ and a wave. Fran remembers, too late, that everybody here speaks Catalan. No wonder her sorry attempts at schoolroom Spanish were met with mild amusement.
The hotel is stunning – the pictures on the website don’t do it justice. The owner of the studio where Fran works told her how fantastic it was, but nothing had prepared her for this beautiful marble atrium, so close to the beach that you can hear the waves in the background if you stand still and listen. Fran intends to do a lot of standing still and listening. She feels the warmth of the sun on her back and already, despite everything, her shoulders begin to soften, her shoulder blades melting down her back. She exhales.
She thinks about Will, about how stressed he’s been, about how much the sun here would relax him. He had wanted to go away a few months ago but she had refused; it had felt too soon. It felt as though he was trying to run away from what had happened. But now she is here in the sunshine, now she is away from the village and the constant reminders, she realises what Will had wanted. He’d just wanted some perspective, somewhere to start to heal. It had taken her months to realise how much he was hurting too, as if anyone could run away from that kind of pain.
But now it’s time for her to get some perspective on her own.
‘Can
