Rachel Burton - The Things We Need to Say - An emotional, uplifting story of hope from bestselling author Rachel Burton

She’d tried to explain to Will what it was she’d hated so much about it, tried to make him understand something that she didn’t really understand herself.

‘I could do better,’ she’d said.

Will smiled. ‘I know you could,’ he’d replied. ‘So why don’t you?’

There were so many reasons why Fran didn’t think she could. She considered herself uncoordinated and ungraceful. She didn’t think she looked like a yoga teacher should look. She swore too much and drank too much red wine and was married to a divorce lawyer.

But Will had never been a fan of excuses. He didn’t put up with them. He liked challenges and pushing yourself harder and always reaching your goal. He liked to be the best, to win.

And most of all Fran knew that he wanted her to be happy and healthy and less stressed. They wanted to start a family and by then they were both beginning to realise it wasn’t going to be as easy as they’d hoped. Fran had gone down to working part time at the law firm she’d moved to after she stopped working for Will, but she knew he wanted her to take some time out. In his mind this was the perfect answer – a less stressful life for Fran while she still got to do something she loved, something she was interested in.

Fran had signed up for yoga teacher training. She was terrified. But she was forced to look inside herself and face that fear. To learn to stand up in front of a class of people and share with them the thing she loved most in the world. Will always knew she could do it and eventually she believed she could as well.

Together they could do anything. Or so she used to think.

As the plane flies over the Pyrenees towards Barcelona – somewhere so full of memories and that cycle of hope that came to nothing – she didn’t know how she was meant to feel. She didn’t know what to do with her sadness; she didn’t know where to put it. There was the sadness for what Will had done, but also the sadness for what had happened before, the dreams they had shared that had been torn apart.

She looked out of the little plane window at the mountains below her and blinked back her tears. Crying always made her feel stupid.

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.