The Things We Need to Say: An emotional, uplifting story of hope from bestselling author Rachel Burton
you having an affair with Karen Barden?’ She hears the words as though somebody else has spoken them.
He turns around and she sees a shadow cross his face, and for a second she thinks he’s going to deny it. Then she watches him crumple, leaning back against the wall.
‘How did you find out?’
‘So you are having an affair?’ She realises she’d been hoping he would deny it, or that it had been a misunderstanding – a crush or obsession on Karen’s part. She realises that she wasn’t prepared for it to be true. Her world, the one that had already tipped on its axis, flips over completely.
‘Was,’ Will replies. ‘Past tense.’ As though that makes a difference. He makes it sound so matter-of-fact. She searches his face for some indication of what he’s feeling but he isn’t giving her anything.
‘She sent you a text this afternoon though. I don’t know why I read it, I just …’ Fran stops, biting her lip. Will has the decency not to question why she was going through his phone. She couldn’t have answered him even if he had asked.
He moves towards her then, wiping his hand down his face. She hears the sound of the palm of his hand against the stubble on his jaw.
‘God, Fran, I’m so sorry. It’s been over for months, since before Christmas. I promise you that.’
‘When did it start?’
He sighs. ‘Halloween,’ he says. ‘The night I walked out.’
‘The night you …’ She doesn’t finish the sentence, can’t bring herself to remember what he did before he walked out on her. She turns away from him, remembering the argument they’d had that night, how Will had told her he couldn’t take it any more, remembering the sound of the door slamming behind him as he left.
‘I didn’t plan to go there,’ he says. ‘I just ended up there.’
‘I didn’t even know you knew her.’
‘I didn’t really. We bumped into each other a few times when you were still really ill. She was just someone to talk to …’ He trails off, realising the hole he’s digging himself into. Realising there is no way out of this.
‘Jesus, Will,’ she says quietly.
‘It only lasted a few weeks,’ he says, as though that makes a difference. ‘I didn’t know what I was doing …’
‘So why is she texting you now?’ Fran interrupts.
He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. I saw her in the pub last night. I hadn’t seen her for months.’
‘I don’t think you’re in a position to get defensive,’ Fran replies. It seems almost impossible to think how she and Will had been together only that morning, the tenderness, the love.
Her husband had cheated on her. After everything they’d been through. She feels numb, as though her body is shutting down on her again just as it did after her mother died, just as it did last summer.
She lies down on the bed, rolling onto her side, her back towards him.
He walks around the bed and kneels down next to her. He takes her hand in his and says her name softly, gently. She doesn’t resist him; she has never known how to resist him.
Seeing Will kneeling by the bed like that reminds her of when she was pregnant. He would squat down next to her as she settled down to sleep each night and he would talk to her bump. He’d recite nursery rhymes, sing songs, tell him stories about his family, teach him the rules of cricket. He was so delighted that he was finally going to be a father, so delighted that it was a boy. He pretended that it would have been the same if it had been a girl, but Fran had never really believed that.
Those moments were some of the happiest of Fran’s life. When Will was there with her, when it was just the three of them shut up together in the bedroom each evening, she could forget about the pain in her back, the strange sensation of her stomach stretching taut across her like a drum skin, the weight of her breasts. She could forget about how being pregnant didn’t seem to suit her, how she felt as though her organs were being pushed up and out of her throat, how she didn’t feel big enough, substantial enough, to be carrying Will’s son. When Will pressed his lips to her stomach she could forget about how scared she was to be pregnant.
She looks at Will kneeling there in that same spot now, after this bombshell. He seems to be expecting some sort of response from her.
‘Why did you do it?’ she asks. ‘Was it because I let you down? Because I couldn’t be the wife you wanted?’
‘God, Fran, no. You’ve never let me down.’
‘I’ve never been able to give you what you want.’
‘That’s not true. You’re all I want – you know that.’
She laughs then, a dry humourless sound. ‘If that’s true, how did you let this happen? How could you do this to me, Will? How could you do this to us after everything?’
Will doesn’t say anything. Fran closes her eyes and listens to his breathing, which is almost perfectly in time with hers, just as it always has been.
‘I don’t know,’ he says eventually. ‘I wanted you to talk to me …’
‘There was nothing to say,’ she interrupts, her eyes blinking open. She looks away from him. She knows she should have tried to talk to him more, but she had never been able to find the words.
‘I thought I’d lost you, Fran,’ he says. His face might not have been giving much away earlier but now the pain is clear. But it is too late. She doesn’t think she can care about his pain any more. ‘I know I should have tried harder. I know I should never have walked away from you that night. I needed you, but you weren’t there …’ He stops, hesitating, dropping his gaze from hers. ‘Christ, none of this is an excuse. There is no excuse for what I’ve done and it didn’t help if that’s any consolation.’
‘None.’
She closes her eyes again, unable to look at him. He is still holding her hand, his fingers wrapped around hers. She finds herself transported back to the hospital, nearly a year ago, when she thought if she held on to his hand and never let go, everything would be all right. She wiggles her fingers free from him. It doesn’t feel as though anything will ever be all right again.
‘Talk to me, Fran,’ he says.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asks. ‘If I hadn’t found out today would you ever have said anything?’
‘I was going to tell you when you got back from Spain,’ he said. ‘Although that doesn’t sound very believable now.’
Fran doesn’t respond, doesn’t open her eyes.
‘I thought if we were going to try again then we had to do it honestly. I—’
‘I think you’d better sleep in the spare room tonight,’ she interrupts. ‘I’m going to go to bed now. I’ve got an early start in the morning.’
‘You’re still going?’ he asks. ‘You’re not going to cancel?’
When Fran was training to teach yoga, one of her teachers had explained to the group the importance of always being there for their students. Whatever may be happening in their own lives needed to be put to one side as they remembered why their students came to class. ‘Why did you first start going to yoga?’ the teacher had asked. They’d all had different reasons, but they’d all agreed that they had gone to feel supported by their practice, and by their teacher.
‘Those people need me,’ she replies quietly.
‘I need you, Fran. We need to talk; we need to work out where we go from here.’
She shakes her head against the pillow. The noise the pillowcase makes against her hair seems louder than it should