The Things We Need to Say Read online

  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.

  JULY 2016

  Fran

  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 I help you senyoreta?’ says a voice close by. It takes her a moment to realise that the voice is speaking to her. It’s been a long time since anyone called her senyoreta. It’s been a long time since she’s been anywhere without Will. The thought gives her a fizz of excitement in her belly as though the coming week could hold untold adventure.

  ‘Um yes, sorry,’ she says. The man is dressed smartly in a three-piece suit. Fran wonders how he isn’t boiling to death. His name badge says Amado. ‘I’m Fran Browne. I’m here to teach a yoga retreat.’

  ‘Ah.’ Amado bursts into a huge grin. ‘Pardon me, pardon me, Senyora Browne.’ Fran preferred it when he called her senyoreta.

  ‘Please, just call me Fran.’

  ‘Come with me,’ he says, beckoning Fran to follow him. He clicks his fingers at a young man in a waistcoat who is passing by and says something to him in Catalan that Fran doesn’t understand. The boy takes her suitcase from her, smiling and nodding.

  ‘Carlos will take your things to your room,’ Amado assures her. ‘Meanwhile, Pierre will show you around. Pierre …’ he shouts at another young man, this one wearing an orange T-shirt, and then he turns back to Fran.

  ‘You have sun tan cream on yes?’ he says frowning, placing his nut-brown hand on Fran’s milky pale arm. ‘The sun here is very strong and you are very pale.’

  Fran smiles at this. ‘Yes, yes,’ she assures him. ‘I never go anywhere without Factor 30 at least!’

  Amado nods and turns to Pierre and the two men speak in rapid Catalan. Fran just about gets the gist of it from hand gestures and facial expressions. Pierre is to show her the yoga room, the dining room, the private lounge and swimming pools, and then he is to show her where her room is. At least she thinks that’s what’s happening.

  ‘We will see you for dinner?’ Amado asks. Fran still doesn’t feel hungry, but she assures him that they will. She has to try to eat something after all.

  The yoga room is beautiful with sprung wooden floors and a sea view. There are shelves full of rainbow-coloured yoga mats, blocks, cushions and blankets, along with candles, incense and a huge and beautifully carved golden Buddha. Fran almost weeps with relief at it. This is exactly what she needs.

  ‘You can take your yoga mats onto the beach too if you like,’ Pierre says. ‘But it gets pretty busy after about eight a.m.’ His English is perfect, without a hint of an accent, and Fran wonders what brought him to a small tourist town like Salou to run a health spa.

  ‘I’m a sports physiotherapist,’ he says with a smile as if reading her mind. ‘You’re wondering what I’m doing running a health spa and massaging pampered old women, aren’t you?’

  ‘How did you know that’s what I was thinking?’ Fran asks.

  He shrugs. ‘Everyone thinks it,’ he says. ‘Some people even ask. There’s not much work in Catalonia right now – you take what you can get.’

  Fran bows her head to hide her blush. She forgets sometimes how hard life is for some people. With the privilege she has, she has no right to feel so miserable.

  ‘Come on, let me show you the pool,’ Pierre goes on, leading Fran back outside.

  *

  Later Fran sits in her room, the balcony doors open so she can hear the sound of the sea, the occasional burst of laughter, or families having fun. Mostly everything is quiet as it’s siesta time. Nothing much will happen now until this evening. She sits on the bed and looks at the room around her. Amado insisted that she have one of the mini-suites, even though she said she didn’t need it. He said he wanted Senyora Browne to be happy, but really this room just makes her sad – the king-sized bed, the double shower, the bottle of Cava in the fridge – all remind her of Will.

  She lies back on the bed holding the little plush Piglet she brought with her against her face. Somewhere outside a baby is crying and Fran wonders, as she always does, what it would have been like to hear the sound of her own baby crying, to get up in the night to feed the baby she and Will had planned. It feels like all their plans have turned to dust.

  But part of her knows that they were Will’s plans not hers, that she had only ever done it to please Will, to keep him happy, to try to give him what he wanted. She thinks again about the secret she can barely bring herself to admit, let alone admit to her husband.

  While she had been enjoying a life she had only ever imagined after meeting Will – the holidays, the dinners out, the theatre – she had never been sure she wanted things to change. Deep down, she had never been sure she’d wanted two to become three.

  She knows she should phone Will now, just to let him know she’s arrived safely. She knows texting is cowardly and that he’ll just phone her straight back anyway, but she can’t bear to talk to him. Not right now.

  Looking around the room again, she realises how lonely she feels. She knows it’ll be better tomorrow when everybody else is here to distract her, but right now she needs to hear a friendly voice. She reaches for her phone, finds Janine’s number in her contact list and waits for the international dial tone.

  Janine and Fran have been friends since before Will. They worked together and, after Fran left, Janine became Will’s secretary.

  ‘Fran, hi, aren’t you supposed to be in Spain?’ It’s so lovely to hear Janine’s voice that Fran forgets to speak for a moment. She wonders why she didn’t phone her friend the previous evening.

  ‘Fran? Are you there?’ Janine asks. Fran realises she still hasn’t said anything.

  ‘I’m here,’ she says. ‘I’m in Spain.’

  ‘Are you OK? Will didn’t come in to work today and nobody’s heard from him. Is everything all right?’

  ‘He cheated on me.’ Fran hears the words, but they still don’t feel real. She still can’t believe Will did this after everything they’ve been through. And yet at the same time she can.

  ‘Fran, hold on, I’m still at work. Let me go somewhere more private.’

  Fran waits, hearing rustling and muffled voices. After a moment Janine comes back.

  ‘Fran, are you sure?’ she says.

  Fran tells her everything. The words pour out of her like a waterfall and when she finishes she feels completely empty. As if on cue her stomach
growls, reminding her again that she hasn’t eaten since the previous day. She finally feels hungry.

  ‘Jesus Christ, I’ll kill him,’ Janine says quietly.

  ‘Please, Janine,’ Fran says. ‘Please don’t be angry with him on my behalf. He’s still your boss, still your friend.’

  ‘You’re my friend and he’s hurt you.’

  ‘He’s still a good man.’ As Fran says the words she knows they are true. She knows she should be angrier, that some women would be out for his blood, but she doesn’t feel like that. She doesn’t know if she will ever forgive him, ever be able to look at him in the same way, ever be able to trust him, but she isn’t angry. Janine thinks she should be, but Janine hadn’t seen Will’s face this morning, or last night. She hadn’t heard him crying in his study night after night when he thought Fran was asleep. How Fran wishes now that she had found the energy to go to him then, how that could have changed everything.

  ‘How can you say that?’ Janine asks. ‘After what he’s done, after everything you’ve been through?’

  ‘Because of that,’ Fran responds quietly. His affair paled almost into insignificance compared to everything else, compared to what else he’d done last October as the rain lashed down, just before he walked out. ‘Because of everything we’ve been through. He’s been through it too. And he’s still Will. People don’t suddenly become evil because they make a mistake.’

  ‘Some mistake!’

  ‘Good people do bad things sometimes, Jay. The last few years have been so hard on both of us and these last twelve months …’ She pauses, unable to talk about the last twelve months even now.

  There’s a silence for a moment. Fran can imagine Janine chewing her bottom lip in that way she does when she wants to say something but knows that it’s perhaps not the right time.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says eventually.

  ‘For what?’ Fran asks.

  ‘I was wrong. I always told you he’d never do this. I always told you he’d never leave you.’

  Fran remembers the time she first told Janine about her fear that Will would leave her for someone younger, a fear that increased with every miscarriage and every negative pregnancy test. Janine would always tell her it would never happen.

  ‘Fran, he adores you,’ she’d said. ‘He’s loved you since the moment he set eyes on you. We could all see that.’

  ‘Really?’

  Janine had laughed. ‘Yes, really. You thought you were so clever the way you thought you were hiding it from us, but we all worked it out at the Christmas party.’

  The Christmas party.

  ‘Fran?’

  Fran had forgotten to speak again, Janine’s voice on the other end of the line bringing her back into the room.

  ‘I was so terrified that he would leave me,’ she says. ‘So scared he’d find someone else who he could have children with, and so wrapped up in my own pain that I missed this. Whatever it is.’

  ‘Midlife crisis?’ Janine wonders aloud. ‘I mean he’s, what, forty-five now?’

  ‘Forty-six.’

  ‘There you go then.’

  ‘Couldn’t he have just bought a Porsche or something?’ Fran asks.

  Janine sighs. ‘I don’t know. I’m so sorry, Fran. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Teach yoga,’ Fran replies. ‘Sit in the sun. Take it easy and see how I am in a week.’

  ‘You’ll be OK?’

  ‘I’ll be fine. Can you keep an eye on Will for me though?’

  ‘Make sure he doesn’t stray again you mean?’

  Fran laughs despite herself. ‘He’s not a tom cat.’

  ‘He’s behaving like one.’

  ‘Just make sure he’s OK.’

  After she hangs up Fran feels better. Janine always has that effect on her. She wishes Janine were here, but she has always said she would rather walk across hot coals than step on a yoga mat. Besides, she has three children of her own to look after these days.

  Fran phones Will before she has a chance to think about it. He answers on the first ring.

  ‘Fran,’ he says, breathless. ‘I was worried. Is everything all right?’

  ‘Everything’s fine, Will. I’m sorry I didn’t ring earlier.’

  ‘Can we talk?’ he asks.

  ‘Not now, Will. It’s not the right time. I’m not ready.’

  She hears him take a breath. She closes her eyes.

  ‘I love you,’ he says.

  She hangs up the phone.

  Will

  He sits with the phone in his hand long after Fran has hung up. He curses himself for trying to push her into talking again, reminds himself of that promise he made – that whatever happens now has to be Fran’s decision. He reminds himself that he has to allow her to take her time; he mustn’t push her. He has to wait for her. It was his inability to wait for her that started all this.

  He listens to the clock in the hall that continues to tick away the seconds in the empty house, the seconds of his life. He doesn’t know how much longer he can stand the sound of that clock. He thinks about all the times he couldn’t wait for what he wanted. All the times he’s rushed Fran into things that she might not have been ready for.

  He steamrollered her into this relationship, turning up on her doorstep when she was so obviously wary about getting involved with her boss. He’d pushed and pushed for a baby, even when he’d been lying awake at night worried sick about Fran’s health, even when the stress of it was driving a wedge between them. He should have let it go years ago; he should never have let her keep trying. He knew how scared she was of losing him – as though the possibility of a baby was the only thing keeping him with her.

  And then, when he thought all his dreams had come true, when it looked like they could have everything, it was torn away from them. He wonders if their marriage was broken long ago.

  Will knows he has spent his life anchoring his happiness on things that were out of his control. He has tried to find security in a future that he and Fran may never have. He has wanted a family for so long that he’s lost sight of all the other good things in his life. He’s lost sight of being just Will and Fran. He’s lost his resilience too, somewhere. He’s become weak and needy, trying to find gratification anywhere he can. Now he is in danger of losing everything.

  Elizabeth

  Elizabeth sits on the bottom step of her hallway waiting for Constance to come and pick her up and drive her to the airport. The emptiness of the house echoes around her. She will be glad to get away from it.

  Constance and Elizabeth have been going to Fran’s yoga classes for years now, slowly cementing a friendship through their love of yoga even though they are so different. Yoga helps us understand how similar we all are.

  She knows Constance will be feeling just as eager as she is to get away. She knows the death of her mother affected Constance just as much as it had her sister, Joy, even though she isn’t willing to admit it. She knows both Constance and Joy need this week in Spain as much as she does while their mother’s house is sold. She knows that beneath the highlights and the expensive clothes and the Botox and the much younger boyfriends, Constance has a bigger heart than anyone she has ever known and that she and her sister are closer than she’d have anyone believe.

  Elizabeth looks around her as she waits. When the boys were growing up she always felt as though this house was too small; there was clutter everywhere and never enough space to store anything. There weren’t enough bathrooms or living spaces; the children would argue with their father about what to watch on TV all the time. But now that she’s alone, the house feels enormous. Great cavernous rooms that aren’t worth heating so she just shuts the doors and forgets about them – the boys’ old bedrooms, Tony’s office.

  Max, her youngest son, had visited for her sixtieth birthday. She’d tried to make the best of it – cooked a roast dinner, painted on her best smile – but she knew neither of their hearts were much in a celebration. It wasn’t much of a sixtieth birthday part
y after all. He stayed the night but was eager to get back to his life in London the next morning. What thirty-three-year-old man wants to sit about in an empty house watching television with his mother?

  ‘We should have planned something better,’ he said as he left. ‘Tried to get the whole family together.’ His voice had faltered when he’d said it and he’d smiled his big white smile, the one he had always used to get himself out of trouble as a little boy. ‘Sorry,’ he’d said quietly.

  They both knew the whole family would never be together again. The way things stood his elder brother Ian was barely speaking to her. Elizabeth doesn’t know if he’ll ever forgive her for what she’s done.

  Ian sees the world in black and white, and to him what his mother has done is wrong. Max is more like Elizabeth. He doesn’t really have a plan – he goes where the wind takes him – and he’s able to see the shades of grey in the world.

  Ian and his family have been spending a lot of time with Tony. ‘I don’t want Dad to be the one who ends up ostracised in this situation,’ Ian had said in the one stilted conversation he’d had with his mother since it had all come to a head. A telephone call instigated by Felicity, Elizabeth’s daughter-in-law. A telephone call that left Elizabeth knowing quite clearly how Ian felt – that she should be the one who was ostracised.

  Thank God for Max.

  Elizabeth had been wondering about going on a yoga retreat this summer and when she heard Fran would be running one, she signed up straight away. She hadn’t felt able to do much over the last few months, but she had been able to go to yoga three or four times a week, and for that she was extremely grateful. Yoga made her feel better about herself, more balanced, more grounded in the midst of chaos.

  She had first met Fran two years before all of this had begun, when she started to go to Fran’s restorative yoga classes on Friday mornings. It was slow and relaxing and became the perfect antidote to the rest of Elizabeth’s working week. Elizabeth had been to a lot of yoga classes over the years, but she found Fran to be one of the best, most intuitive teachers she’d come across, despite her looking about ten years younger than she is – like a little pixie with her short red hair and her big green eyes and the way she tilted her head to one side when she was thinking.