nobody but her ever used this bathroom – Will preferred the en-suite – but Fran knew it had been a labour of love and being here made her feel close to her husband, even when things had seemed as though they could never be fixed.
Will renovated the bathroom first because he wanted to make her dreams come true – he always said he wanted to make her dreams come true. But Fran couldn’t help thinking that all the work he’d put into this house was just a mask, a cover – papering over the cracks that were getting deeper and deeper as it started to become apparent that she could never make his dreams come true.
After last summer she would spend hours in here, locking the door so Will couldn’t come in. Back then she used to wonder what it would be like to disappear into the water and never re-emerge, but she doesn’t think like that any more. She doesn’t lock the door any more either, but she does keep it closed – not like before, when she’d keep it wide open so she could still see Will if he walked past. Some evenings he would even come in, sit on the edge of the bath, and talk to her. She didn’t think he’d been in here for months; it had become her private sanctuary, as his study had for him.
After it had happened it had taken her months to let him touch her, let him kiss her. She couldn’t bear him to be near her; she couldn’t bear anyone to be near her. Other people’s sympathy, other people’s emotions, made everything worse. She couldn’t cope with her own feelings; she didn’t have the space to think about Will’s.
Things had gradually got back into a semblance of normality after New Year, once Fran had felt ready to go back to the yoga studio. Once she finally did, it had helped more than she thought it would – being with her friends again, doing something that mattered to her, something that made her happy. Sometimes the only time she felt alive was when she was teaching.
She thinks about the previous night, about falling asleep in Will’s arms, and it dawns on her that it was the first night they’d slept the whole night through together in months. It had taken them so long to get there after those first fumbled attempts at normality.
On their wedding anniversary in March, Will had come home from work with a takeaway from their favourite Thai restaurant in the next village. He’d laid the table, lit candles, opened a bottle of Prosecco, and encouraged her to join him, to share a meal with him.
‘I know it doesn’t feel like we have much to celebrate,’ he’d said. ‘But we still have each other.’ She’d tried to let herself relax, to just enjoy his company for a few hours, to try to eat something.
Afterwards, they’d watched a film together just like they had this afternoon. She’d lain back against him and tried to concentrate on the future, tried to concentrate on the film. She’d let Will choose and it was full of action and loud noises and bright colours with an unnecessarily complicated plot that she hadn’t been able to follow. It had made Will happy though, and she had let herself sink back into his contentment, even if it was only fleeting.
Later, when the film was over, she had become aware of the sensation of his arms around her, the warmth of his breath on her neck. She had turned around to face him, felt his lips on hers. It had been six months since she’d last kissed her husband properly. She had wanted to feel something, anything. She hadn’t been sure she would be able to and, as it turned out, it was months before she truly started to feel anything again, but she wanted to try before the gulf that had opened between them became too wide to traverse.
He had carried her upstairs that night. It was the first time they had gone to bed at the same time since the previous summer, and while she wasn’t able to feel the things she used to be able to feel, at least her husband had been there with her.
But later, even later, when he thought she had fallen asleep, she had felt his arm slip out from underneath her, felt the mattress lift as he got out of bed. She had heard him slip back into his clothes and pad across the bedroom and down the stairs. She had heard the door of his study open and close and she knew she had lost him again, to his thoughts and to his sadness.
She had wondered if anything would ever be the same. They had kept trying, from that night onwards, to find a new sort of normal, but he had nearly always come to bed after her, always woken long before her, neither of them able to sleep more than a couple of hours at a time.
Until now. Now she understood that, deep down, under all the pressure and the pain, they were still just Will and Fran. They could still find happiness again. Now she began to understand how much he had been through as well.
The bathwater is starting to cool and she needs to finish her packing before Will gets back so they can spend the evening together. She pulls herself out of the water, wraps herself in one of the big, soft white towels, and walks across the landing to the bedroom.
It is then that she notices Will’s phone on his nightstand. It isn’t like him to leave his phone behind. She notices the light flashing, signalling a message, and for a moment she feels something shift – as though the atmospheric pressure has changed slightly.
If somebody had asked her, afterwards, why she did it she wouldn’t have been able to tell them. All she remembers is walking over to the nightstand, still wrapped in the soft white towel, and picking up Will’s phone, drawn to it like a moth to a flame. She’d never looked at his phone before, never checked his messages or emails, never answered a call. But that afternoon she is pulled towards the flashing light on the phone and she will never be able to explain why.
Later, looking back at this moment, she would wonder if she’d made the right choice. But sometimes life isn’t about choices. Some things are just meant to be.
Will has never been secretive about his phone or his laptop. He leaves his emails open in the kitchen all the time and everyone knows his PIN to everything is his birthday. He is just arrogant enough to believe that nobody will ever try to hack him.
Fran walks over to the nightstand and picks up the phone, tapping in 310170. She will remember the touch of her fingers on the phone screen for a long time afterwards. Almost immediately she wishes she had never looked.
I miss you so much, Will. I wish we could be together again like we used to be – just one last time. You know where I am. Kx
The number isn’t saved to his phone, and there are no other texts or calls to or from it. It is almost as if Will had gone out of his way to make sure they were all deleted. Fran knows exactly who ‘K’ is anyway.
She turns the text message back to unread, locks the phone, and returns it to the nightstand. It isn’t until then that she feels it: the sensation of the world tilting on its axis. Nothing will ever be the same again.
She thinks about Karen Barden, a woman who works in the village pub. Someone she barely knows. Fran had seen her flirt with Will sometimes; she’d seen Will flirt back. She hadn’t thought much about it. She’d had bigger things on her mind. She’d barely thought about Karen Barden at all until now.
She unwraps the towel from around herself, hanging it over the back of the door to dry, and slowly dresses. Then, carefully and methodically, she begins to work her way through her list, packing everything she needs for Spain.
One of the things that she has always loved about yoga is the way it has helped her to be aware of the present moment, to focus her mind on the task at hand. The reason she’d taken it up all those years ago, long before she’d even considered teaching, was to help her stress levels at university. Now, in her bedroom, the bedroom she shares with her husband who she suddenly feels she doesn’t know any more, she takes some deep breaths and focuses.
Inhale. Exhale.
Will
