Читать книгу The Things We Need to Say: An emotional, uplifting story of hope from bestselling author Rachel Burton - Rachel Burton, Rachel Burton - Страница 21

Will

He stands up and walks over to the medicine cabinet looking for the painkillers he’d hidden in there last summer, vowing to stop taking them by the handful. He’d meant to start seeing the osteopath again, to start looking after himself, but he’d just never got around to it. Looking after himself had stopped seeming important.

But he can’t cope another second with this headache pounding behind his eyes. He’d lain awake all night in the spare room, his jaw clenched, feeling the headache suck the life out of him. And now Fran has gone and he’s damned if he’s going to put up with this pain. In half an hour the sweet release of codeine will take him.

He finds the pill bottle at the back of the bathroom cabinet and swallows two dry. As an afterthought he takes a third and puts the bottle back, closing the cabinet door and looking at himself in the mirror. He sees his father looking back and closes his eyes. He can’t stand the way he is looking more like his father as he gets older. He can’t stand the way he’s started acting like his father, despite every effort he’s made to be a better man, a kinder man, a better husband.

A better father if he’d been given the chance.

He opens his eyes and looks at himself again. The years of headaches, the years of medication, the years of heartache are taking their toll now. No matter how far he runs, how well he keeps himself in shape, how much cricket he plays, he can’t stop time.

Perhaps it is too late to try again. Perhaps it always has been.

He hadn’t seen Karen again for several weeks after that first time in the shop. The next time he’d bumped into her he’d apologised for being so rude the first time they’d met. They had chatted for a while and Will was glad of the company, glad of the distraction. Karen had made him smile and it had been nice to smile again.

It took him longer than it should have done to realise that she was flirting with him. She was nearly twenty years younger than he was and it massaged his ego to think someone so young could find him attractive.

But the flirting had turned from harmless fun to what seemed, to Will, to be a full-on seduction – and to his shame he’d found himself reciprocating. Sometimes she would ask him to help her out in the house, things her husband would have done for her if he hadn’t left. He would always remind her that he was married, that his wife wasn’t well. Flirting was one thing, consciously going over to the house of the woman who was flirting with him was quite another.

But by October he’d felt as though Fran should be feeling better, that by then things should be changing. He had given up all hope of the life he had planned and the only way he could move on was to let go of the past. He had wanted his wife back and he couldn’t understand why she hadn’t wanted the same thing. He should never have shouted at her, never have tried to force her to do something she wasn’t ready to do.

He had told Fran the truth when he said he hadn’t planned to go to Karen’s when he’d walked out on her that night. He hadn’t known where he was going. He wondered sometimes, if he could do everything all over again would he do things differently?

He had been shaking when he arrived on that night last October, and soaked through from the rain. He hadn’t even stopped to put on a coat. Karen had fetched a towel and poured him a glass of wine and he’d told her about what he’d done, the argument he’d had with Fran, how he’d walked away. They stood in Karen’s kitchen facing each other, leaning against opposite countertops. He’d talked; she’d listened. He’d told her about everything that had happened that summer, everything that had happened over the last seven years, about how he felt his heart would never heal, about how he felt as though his marriage was over.

When he’d finished they both stood in silence. He had stared at her as though he couldn’t believe he’d said so much. But it had felt good to talk; Fran never wanted to talk. It was months later that Will realised, too late as it turned out, that Fran just hadn’t been ready and he hadn’t had the patience to wait for her. He’d betrayed Fran in so many ways that night.

He never thought he’d cheat on his wife, but when Karen walked over to him that evening Will had thought she was going to kiss him and he didn’t think he was going to stop her. Instead she had dropped to her knees in front of him. He was hard before she’d unbuttoned his jeans.

Just before he came he’d caught sight of his reflection in Karen’s kitchen window and remembered the fragment from the Shakespeare play he’d studied for A Level flashing through his head.

Foolish fond old man.

Afterwards, as he’d done up his jeans and swallowed the rest of his wine in one gulp, he hadn’t been able to look at her. She’d turned her back on him to make it easier. She’d finished her own wine as though to take away the taste of him.

‘I have to go,’ he’d said. ‘I shouldn’t be here. I don’t know what I was thinking. I have to get back to my wife.’

As he’d walked home in the rain he told himself that he would end it there. He hadn’t, and he would never forgive himself for that.

He still doesn’t know why he did it, why he went that first night or why he went back. He was desperate for someone to hold him, to tell him that everything would be all right. But he hadn’t realised until it was too late that the only person who could do that was Fran. All Will had ever wanted was Fran. A life he hadn’t planned on was infinitely better than a life without Fran. He should have told her that every day.

Standing now in Fran’s bathroom, in front of the mirror, he slowly starts to pick up the bottles and jars of creams and gels and liquids that Fran keeps on the shelf above the sink. He feels the weight of the blue glass in his hands and is suddenly overcome with the sense of the irreparable nature of the damage he has caused. Anger and frustration rise up in him like fire and without knowing what he is doing he throws the blue glass jar at the mirror, listening with satisfaction to the sound of glass shattering glass. He throws another and another listening to the sound that splinters the claustrophobic silence of the house. He used to be one of the best spin bowlers in Suffolk; every jar hits home.

When he’s done he stands, breathless, listening to the vestiges of the shattering noises echo around the house. When he looks up he catches sight of himself in the broken mirror once more.

Foolish fond old man.