Scroll down to read the first chapter....
Sometimes the things we never say
are the most important.
Fran loves Will with all her heart.
They had a whirlwind romance, a perfect marriage and a wonderful life. Until
everything changed. Now Fran needs to find her way again and teaching a yoga
retreat in Spain offers her just that. Leaving behind a broken marriage she has
some very important decisions to make.
Will needs his wife, he needs her
to open up to him if they’re to ever return to the ways things once were. But
he may have damaged any possibility he had of mending their relationship and
now Fran is in Spain and Will is alone.
As both Fran and Will begin to let
go of a life that could have been, fate may just find a way of bringing them
back together.
Perfect for fans of Katie
Marsh, Amanda Prowse and Sheila O’Flanagan
Read the first Chapter here!
DECEMBER 2004
It started at the party. His hands on my hips, my forehead against his
shoulder. He asked me to dance but he didn’t know how. We stood together at the
edge of the dance floor shaking with laughter at his two left feet. I don’t
know how long we stood there. I don’t know if anybody noticed.
He’d waited for me, sitting with my friends, not sure if I’d turn up or
not. I wasn’t in the habit of going to work Christmas parties; I only went in
the end because he said he would be there, because he said he would wait for
me. I arrived just as the main course was being served. I slipped into the seat
next to him. His hand brushed against my thigh as I sat down. He held my gaze
for longer than he should have done.
I fell in love with him that night as we stood on the dance floor
laughing, my hands on his waist, feeling the muscles of his back, the warmth of
his body, through his dress shirt, the press of him against my hip.
That was where it began. I sometimes wonder if that should have been
where it ended.
But later that evening, as I got out of his car, and I said those words
I should have kept to myself, we both knew there was no going back.
JULY 2016
Fran
She wakes up in the same
position in which she fell asleep, her husband’s arms around her, their hands
entwined on her stomach. Neither of them have slept that deeply for months.
Fran remembers something: a hotel room on a Greek island, a feeling of hope, of
new beginnings. She doesn’t allow the memory to linger. This is what they have
now. They can be happy again if they allow themselves to be.
The hot, humid weather
has broken in the night and she listens to the sound of summer rain on the
roof. Will moves gently against her, pulling her closer. She feels his breath
against her neck and the sensation of hot liquid in her stomach, a combination
of desire and need. This is their second chance – she can’t let it pass her by.
‘I love you,’ Will says
sleepily.
‘I love you too,’ she
replies. It feels good to be saying it to each other again. She’s never stopped
loving him; she just forgot how to tell him for a while.
‘Do you want me to go and
make coffee?’ Will asks, nuzzling her neck.
‘Not just yet,’ she
replies, turning around to look at him. His brown eyes are dark, impenetrable
pools. His hair is pushed back off his face. Sometimes she forgets how much all
of this has affected him too. Sometimes she forgets everything except her own
pain. She feels his warmth against her, his strength. She feels as though the
gulf that had been threatening to open up between them for the last year is
slowly closing. She realises they have so much life ahead of them. So much time
to learn to be happy again.
‘I thought I’d lost you,’
Will says quietly, reaching up to stroke her face. ‘I thought you’d gone, but
recently I feel as though you’ve come back to me.’
She smiles softly. ‘I
thought I’d lost you too,’ she says. ‘This last year has been …’ She doesn’t
finish. She can’t finish.
She watches as a shadow
of anguish crosses his face, as his brow furrows, as his jaw tightens. She
recognises that look, recognises the pain he is trying to hide. She hears the
shudder of his breath. His eyes flick away for a moment; he pauses for a
fraction too long.
‘No,’ he says. ‘You never
lost me. I’ll always be here.’
She kisses him gently
then, and feels his hand drift down the bones of her spine.
Later, showered and
dressed, they finally appear in the kitchen; Will’s younger brother, Jamie, is
already sitting at the table drinking coffee. Will and Fran are hardly able to
stop touching each other.
Jamie smiles at them,
raising an eyebrow. ‘You’re up late,’ he says. Fran feels herself blushing, her
stomach flipping over, and turns away towards the toaster.
‘Thanks for last night,’
Jamie goes on. ‘I needed that.’ Recently separated from his wife, living apart
from his children, Jamie is lonely. Last night wasn’t the first Saturday night
he’d spent with them. Fran knows Will has been throwing himself into cheering
his brother up. She doesn’t mind. Jamie makes Will smile and it’s good to see
him smile again.
As Will and Jamie start
talking about the cricket, she feels her husband’s hand on her thigh, the warm,
solid sensation of him right there next to her. They have been given a second
chance, and they have grabbed it with both hands. She isn’t naive enough to
think everything is going to go back to the way it used to be, but she knows
that they can move on; they can talk and heal together. They can take another
chance on living, find a new kind of normal.
Will stretches, draining
his coffee cup. ‘This weather isn’t going to let up is it?’ he says looking out
of the window where the rain is rattling against the frames like beads in a
jar. ‘I’m going to have to cancel the cricket.’ As captain of the village team
it is up to him to reschedule this afternoon’s match. Fran is quietly delighted
that the weather means she doesn’t have to spend her last afternoon with her
husband before she goes away watching him play cricket. Will gets up and walks
into his study, shutting the door behind him.
‘How are you feeling
about tomorrow?’ Jamie asks.
‘Nervous,’ Fran replies. ‘It’s
the first time I’ve been on a plane on my own, which is pathetic at my age, I
know.’
‘It’s OK to be nervous.’
‘It’s the first time Will
and I have been apart since …’ She trails off. Jamie knows what she’s talking
about. ‘I’m worried about him too.’
Jamie smiles. ‘I’ll look
after him,’ he says.
After a moment Jamie gets
up and follows Will into his study. He doesn’t knock; he just opens the door
and walks in. As Fran starts to clear the breakfast dishes she hears raised
voices but can’t quite make out what they are saying. She rolls her eyes to
herself. As an only child she has long since given up on understanding Will and
Jamie’s relationship: best friends one minute, bickering the next. She just
hopes Jamie doesn’t stay too long – she wants her husband to herself for the
day.
Will
It rains all day, the sky
grey and waterlogged and heavy with cloud. After Jamie leaves, Will pulls Fran
towards him, his hands at the back of her head where her skull meets her neck,
where her hair is cut so short.
‘No cricket,’ he says. ‘I’m
all yours.’
She smiles, standing on
tiptoe to kiss him.
‘Can we just watch a film
or something?’ she says. ‘I’m tired and I have to pack for Spain later.’ His
stomach drops at the thought of her going away. He wishes he’d never encouraged
her to do it.
‘I’d forgotten about
Spain,’ he says.
‘No you hadn’t. It’s the
only thing we’ve talked about for ages.’
Will had watched Fran spend
the last few weeks flipping back and forth between excitement and terror at the
thought of going to Spain on her own. He knew she was strong enough to do it;
he knew she was stronger than anyone realised. But he also knew that she
wondered if she was ready. When she first mentioned Spain to him he had seen it
as a perfect opportunity to help her begin to put herself back together again
after what had been the worst year of both their lives. He tried to believe
that everything life threw at him was an opportunity.
Fran had been teaching at
a studio in central Cambridge for six years and had been asked to teach for a
week on a retreat in Spain. Will had always supported her teaching, always
tried to put her career on a level par with his own and had done everything he
could to help her find the strength to go back to work in January. None of it
had felt as though it was enough. None of it would make up for the last year,
the things he had said, the things he had done. Suddenly he is terrified about
being on his own. Neither of them have been alone for months.
‘What do you want to
watch?’ he asks, squatting down in front of the TV.
‘Can we watch Some Like it Hot?’ Fran replies.
Will rolls his eyes. He
must have seen it a hundred times, but puts it in the DVD player anyway and
goes to settle himself on the sofa. ‘Come here,’ he says, and she sits with
him, leaning back against his chest.
‘Are you OK about Spain?’
he asks quietly.
‘I think so,’ she says. ‘I’m
nervous, but I’m excited as well.’
‘Elizabeth will be there
with you, won’t she?’
‘Yes, and Constance. In
fact, I already know most of the other people who are going. I’ll be fine.’ She
pauses. ‘Are you going to be OK?’ she asks quietly.
‘I’m going to miss you,’
he says, lying back on the sofa, wrapping his arms around her. He doesn’t know
how to answer the question. He wants to tell her everything but knows that now
is not the right time.
‘I’m going to miss you
too,’ she replies.
He kisses the top of her
head as she presses ‘play’ on the remote control. He watches her as she watches
her favourite film, her lips moving along with the characters – she still knows
every word by heart. They used to spend rainy Sundays like this when they were
younger, when life seemed easier.
Halfway through the film
he realises that Fran is crying – fat, salty tears running down her cheeks.
‘Fran?’ he asks quietly,
pressing pause on the remote.
Fran doesn’t reply, she
just turns around and he takes her in his arms. He feels her body against his.
She clings to him as though her life depends on it and he holds her close as
she cries and cries. He can’t remember the last time he saw her cry like this. They
had both done their grieving in private over the last year but to Will it feels
as though Fran has been holding all this in for months, shutting herself down.
He’s relieved that she finally seems ready to let go.
‘I want my old life back,’
she sobs. ‘I want to be happy again.’
‘So do I,’ Will whispers.
‘And we will, in time. I promise.’
‘I wish we’d never bought
this house – we had so much hope.’
‘Shhh …’ Will says
softly, stroking her hair as she weeps against him.
Rachel
Burton has been making up stories since she first learned to talk. After many
false starts she finally made one up that was worth writing down.
After graduating with a degree in Classics and another in English, she didn't really know what to do when she grew up. She has worked as a waitress, a paralegal and a yoga teacher.
She has spent most of her life between Cambridge and London but now lives in Leeds with her boyfriend and three cats. The main loves of her life are The Beatles and very tall romantic heroes.
Her debut, The Many Colours of Us, was an Amazon Kindle bestseller. Her second novel, The Things We Need to to Say, is released on 11 May 2018. She is currently working on her third novel in which the heroine follows the love of her life to live in a city in northern England. It has no autobiographical elements at all.....maybe.
Find her on Twitter & Instagram as @bookish_yogi or search Facebook for Rachel Burton Author. She is always happy to talk books, writing, music, cats and how the weather in Yorkshire is rubbish. She is mostly dreaming of her next holiday....
After graduating with a degree in Classics and another in English, she didn't really know what to do when she grew up. She has worked as a waitress, a paralegal and a yoga teacher.
She has spent most of her life between Cambridge and London but now lives in Leeds with her boyfriend and three cats. The main loves of her life are The Beatles and very tall romantic heroes.
Her debut, The Many Colours of Us, was an Amazon Kindle bestseller. Her second novel, The Things We Need to to Say, is released on 11 May 2018. She is currently working on her third novel in which the heroine follows the love of her life to live in a city in northern England. It has no autobiographical elements at all.....maybe.
Find her on Twitter & Instagram as @bookish_yogi or search Facebook for Rachel Burton Author. She is always happy to talk books, writing, music, cats and how the weather in Yorkshire is rubbish. She is mostly dreaming of her next holiday....
Twitter - https://twitter.com/bookish_yogi
My thanks to HQDigitalUK and Rachel Gilbey at Rachel's Random Resources for the opportunity to be part of this cover/chapter reveal.
No comments:
Post a Comment