‘Trust me,’ he said, stroking my hair. ‘I promise I won’t let you down.’
It had turned into a longer run than he’d intended. He’d only meant to be gone about thirty minutes or so, but as he looks at his watch he realises he’s been out for more than an hour. He needed some space to think, away from the house, away from Fran. Time to think about the things he’d said to his brother that morning, the things his brother had said to him.
He’d looked up when Jamie had followed him into his study. He’d made the calls he’d needed to make and was sitting watching the rain against the windows, wondering what the future would look like, thinking about everything he and Fran had lost.
There are only eighteen months between the two brothers. They had always known what the other was thinking. And Will had realised – as soon as he saw the look on his brother’s face – that he knew the secret Will had been carrying for the last nine months, the secret he hoped nobody would ever find out. Just before Jamie confronted him, Will had realised that there was a sense of relief in being found out.
‘What the fuck were you thinking, Will?’ Jamie had spat at him, his hands on the desk as he leaned towards his brother. Will hadn’t moved; he had just carried on sitting there, staring out of the window.
‘Keep your voice down,’ he’d replied softly.
In the quiet moment that followed he heard the scrape of a chair being pulled up, the gentle sound of Jamie sitting down, a long exhalation.
‘Talk to me, Will,’ Jamie had said after a while and Will told him everything, their heads together like they used to be when they shared secrets as boys. The words fell out of him, jumbled together in their eagerness to be released. Will had been glad to finally share the burden of the secret, even though he had known that this was only the beginning and that sharing it would change everything for ever.
When he’d finished speaking he’d looked at his brother. ‘I’ve been a complete fucking idiot,’ he said. ‘But I thought I’d lost everything. Fran wouldn’t talk to me, as though it was all my fault.’ He paused, blinking back tears. ‘As though it wasn’t tearing me apart too.’
‘So you thought you’d fuck a single mum from the village instead?’ Jamie asked, his face white. He’d always had a soft spot for Fran.
Will had leaned his elbows on the desk, covering his eyes with his hands. If I don’t open my eyes, he thinks, maybe all of this will go away.
‘Is it over?’ Jamie asked.
Will nods, dropping his hands onto the desk in front of him. ‘It’s been over since Christmas Eve.’
Jamie had sighed. ‘Fran must never find out,’ he’d said. ‘After everything she’s been through, this would destroy her.’
Will had run his fingers through his hair.
‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ he’d said.
‘Not enough to make sure it didn’t happen,’ Jamie had replied.
He hadn’t banked on Jamie working out that he had cheated on Fran, but Jamie knew him too well. On Saturday night, while Fran had been getting the dinner ready, he and Jamie had gone to the pub. He’d bumped into Karen there – it had been months since he had last seen her, since he’d broken off their brief affair. As far as he was concerned it was over, in the past. But Karen had flirted with him and there must have been something about his reaction that had made Jamie suspicious. When he’d come out of the toilet half an hour later to see Jamie and Karen chatting, it hadn’t occurred to him what it might have been about.
But now Jamie knows, Will doesn’t feel as though it is something he can keep to himself any more. He isn’t sure if he can keep lying to her. He isn’t sure if he can keep lying to himself. And, now he’s had time to think about it, he’s sure that Jamie is wrong; finding out isn’t going to destroy Fran. Fran is stronger than most people realise and he owes her the truth.
He starts to slow his pace down as he circles back into the village, rubbing his temples where one of the tension headaches that have plagued him since law school is throbbing behind his eyes. Some days he can run them off, but today isn’t one of those days.
He thinks about what Fran had said before he left the house, about wanting to start again. He has wanted their marriage to work all along – even when he was sleeping with someone else it had never been with the intention of leaving Fran. He thought he’d lost everything. He never thought he’d hear Fran say she wanted to try again.
Initially he’d thought she was talking about something else, and he said he wasn’t ready. He wasn’t, and he was certain Fran wasn’t either. But it doesn’t mean they can’t talk about it. They’re not too old to try again. Not quite. Not yet.
But if they are going to try again, they have to build it on honesty and it has to start with him. He has to tell her the truth as soon as she gets back from Spain. He has to let her have Spain first; he has to let her see how strong he already knows she is. He knows that leading this retreat is going to help her so much and the strength she gains from it will help her make whatever decision she needs to make.
Because, whether he likes it or not, that decision has to come from her.
Will slows to a walking pace as he passes the row of cottages at the station end of the village. The station itself has been closed for years but the trains between Cambridge and Newmarket rattle past the back gardens of the cottages once an hour, making these houses less sought after, cheaper, mostly let to tenants who come and go. He comes to a stop outside the house at the end of the terrace. There is something he has to do.
*
He stands outside the door of Karen’s cottage remembering the first time he came here on that cold, wet October evening, soaked to the bone and distraught. He remembers how the candles in the jack-o’-lanterns had all gone out in the rain, how there were only a few straggling teenagers still out trick or treating. He remembers how nobody came to their house that night for treats, knowing better of it, knowing that Fran still needed to be left alone.
He remembers how he’d walked out on Fran, shouting at her when she was at her most vulnerable, slamming the door so hard as he left that he thought the glass panels would shatter.
If he could live through that night again, would he do things differently? Do we ever have a choice?
He knocks on the door remembering the last time he was here on Christmas Eve. He remembers how cold it was and how he thought his heart was never going to mend. After Karen had let him in he sat on the bottom of her stairs and wept like a child. And when he’d cried every last tear out of his body, he had told her it was over, that he had to try to make his marriage work, that the thought of being without Fran was more than he could bear. Karen had nodded and he’d walked up to her, stroking her cheek with the pad of his thumb.
‘I never meant to hurt you,’ he’d said. As though anybody could ever have come out of any of this without being hurt.
And here he is again, knocking on
