Chapter twenty #2
‘Parenthood.’ I made myself look him in the eye. ‘One thing I remember very clearly – when we broke up – was you saying that you weren’t ready to take that step.’
‘Did I say that?’
‘You did. I wanted us to make a commitment to each other, and you said you weren’t ready.’
I tried to sound casual but I could recite the whole conversation. It was burned on my brain.
I’m just not ready for the life you want. Not yet.
Fraser shook his head, as if he didn’t want to contradict me, but couldn’t let it pass. ‘That’s not how I remember that conversation, Beth.’
I faltered. I’d just congratulated myself on making a reference to our break-up without flinching, but now he’d drawn attention to it, he’d thrown me off my stride, and like a gymnast who’d fallen off the beam and now had to clamber back on and carry on as if the slip-up hadn’t happened, I had to find a way back into that key sentence. But my balance had gone.
‘Well, um . . .’ I gazed across the table at Fraser, willing him to help me out by saying something like, ‘It was a terrible mistake but I’ve reflected since we’ve been apart, and I’m ready now, so let’s move in together and get on with it.’
Fraser didn’t do that. He raised his eyebrows, encouraging me, so I pushed on.
‘Um, the last few years have been pretty weird, but they’ve taught me a lot about myself,’ I floundered.
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ he agreed. ‘Sometimes you need to have that shock to really examine what you need, not what you think you need.’
‘Great!’ OK. Back on track.
Tomsk shifted by my feet. He’d been good so far, if still somewhat wary of Fraser – which was unusual, given how relaxed he was with the Rosemounters. Maybe he sensed the competition for my affections.
‘You have to rebuild for who you are now,’ he went on, ‘not who you were ten years ago.’
‘Absolutely.’ I nodded, too hard. But what should I say next?
All week I’d lain awake planning how I’d manoeuvre the conversation around to ‘us’, nipping and nudging topics of conversations like a sheepdog to get it going in the direction I wanted, but now it was happening, it was going too quickly. I didn’t feel in control.
‘It’s funny how we’ve come back into each other’s orbits now, isn’t it?
’ I said, as if it had just occurred to me.
It hadn’t; it was a metaphor Seraphina liked to use about her and Arthur, and their star-crossed love.
‘Almost as if we were meant to be apart for that exact amount of time, and now . . .’
‘What?’
‘Here we are!’
His brow furrowed.
‘Like planets.’ I faltered. This had sounded much better in my head when Fraser was murmuring agreement, instead of narrowing his eyes. Arthur got it straight away, but then he did have a Victorian gentleman’s education. ‘Coming back into each other’s orbits.’
There was an agonising silence, and then Fraser squeezed his forehead with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Oh. OK. No. Beth, whatever I say, you’re going to take the wrong way, so . . .’
‘No, I won’t!’
Fraser looked uncomfortable. ‘Clearly we have different memories of this, and that’s fine, but when we broke up, it was a break-up. I wasn’t putting us on some kind of hiatus. I’m not a total bastard.’
‘But—’
‘You gave me an ultimatum.’ His expression was indignant but firm. ‘You said you wanted commitment, and a family, and that, as a woman, you didn’t have an infinite amount of time. And that if that wasn’t what I wanted, we needed to go our separate ways so you could make that happen.’
That was, word for word, what Mali had told me to say. But when he said it, that wasn’t what I remembered saying. Or at least, it wasn’t what I’d meant.
‘You didn’t explicitly accuse me of stringing you along, but that was the general impression I got.
’ He shook his head, as if the memory still stung.
‘If we’re being honest, I felt you were dumping me.
I was pretty happy as we were, but you were clear that marriage and kids were now top of your agenda, rather than the life we had.
So . . .’ He shrugged, as if I’d have been happy with any wedding ring, and any kids.
‘You’d clearly spent a lot of time reaching that decision for yourself, and it couldn’t have been easy, so I thought the right thing to do was to let you get on with it.
I mean, I assumed you’d be settled down by now. ’
‘What? No!’ He was making me sound so cold, so fixated. ‘Fraser, I didn’t want imaginary kids more than I wanted you.’
‘No?’
‘I wanted your kids,’ I blurted out. ‘And you. I wanted our kids. I just thought you needed me to tell you I was ready for that. I thought it was what you wanted too.’
He didn’t answer. He dropped his gaze awkwardly. And that sliced into me deeper than any words could. I felt my heart plunge in my chest.
Silence fell across the table.
I forced myself not to speak. This would be the moment when Fraser would reach his hand just that tiny bit further and take mine, and say, with a crooked smile, how stupid we’d both been, and that it would be even more stupid to waste another second.
He didn’t. He put his fork down on his plate, toast half-eaten. It clattered off the plate, and on to the table.
I knew I should just stop at this point, but I heard my own voice, and it sounded accusatory when my brain was aiming more for ‘reasonable’.
‘You said you weren’t ready,’ the whiny voice insisted. ‘Which to me, suggested that you weren’t ready now but you would be, at some point.’
‘Well, I wasn’t going to say, No, you’re right, I don’t want to have kids with you.’ He sounded offended. ‘Give me some credit.’
‘But telling me you weren’t ready . . .’
Whereas I sounded like a stuck record.
‘Beth, does it matter? Why are we arguing about this? We broke up, end of.’ Fraser’s face was full of sympathy. Not love. Sympathy, and growing concern.
‘But . . .’
‘Beth.’ He put his hand over mine. ‘Don’t do this. Please.’
I stumbled to a horrified halt, as the full extent of my self-delusion peeled back and revealed the cruel reality beneath.
I’d told Ashley and anyone else who’d listen that it had been me who instigated the break-up – go, me!
High five, girl power! – but the truth was that beneath the crying and devastation was a secret conviction that one day there’d be a knock on the door and it’d be Fraser with a bunch of flowers, and a grovelling apology.
Underneath the blinding pain of the break-up, my deluded brain reassured me that we hadn’t really broken up, because in the future yet to come, we were already safely back together.
I’d been so sure of it, it had become a reality.
I suddenly saw it. I’d subconsciously put my life on hold for five years waiting for something that was never going to happen.
I took a little gulp of air that sounded like a sob.
‘Look, in the end, does it really matter what we said or didn’t say?
’ asked Fraser. ‘We’d come to the end of the road – it happens.
At least we didn’t spoil the memories with a nasty break-up.
I’ve got too many friends who’ve done that – they end up losing years of their life, pretending they didn’t exist between the ages of twenty-four and thirty because they can’t bear to talk about their exes. We’re not like that, right?’
I stared at him, unable to form words. Had he forgotten this was only the second conversation we’d had in the last five years? Because he’d put a solid screen around his life, cutting me out of his?
‘I mean, you’re more like part of the family,’ he went on, oblivious to my inner agony. ‘As Jackie says, you’re doing us a much bigger favour keeping an eye on Mum, than Mum letting you squat in her junk room.’
He smiled, that old smile that had always turned my insides to water.
It was no longer lovely. It was some bloke, smiling at someone he felt a bit sorry for.
The Fraser I’d kept in my head was retreating with every second, like a vivid dream fading with each bleary morning blink, turning him into this stranger in front of me.
‘Right?’
I could only nod. I couldn’t speak because there was a sob backed right up against my lips that I was only just holding in.
‘Some of this is on me,’ Fraser conceded, more confidently now he’d established he wasn’t in the wrong. ‘I shouldn’t have blocked you, that was just stupid male pride. I didn’t want to see you getting married to the next bloke you met. Having those babies you were so keen to get started on.’
I felt like laughing, bitterly, because if Fraser hadn’t blocked me so comprehensively, he would have seen that I’d barely appeared in my own Instagram feed for years.
‘In fact, Iwona was impressed by how chill you were, staying friends with my sisters on social media. She saw it as evidence of my maturity, so . . . thanks!’
‘Iwona?’ I said robotically.
Fraser’s eyes moved from side to side.
‘Jackie didn’t mention Iwona.’
He wiped his face with his hand. ‘OK. So, Jackie doesn’t know about Iwona.
None of them know.’ Fraser seemed to be weighing up whether to tell me or not.
Then in the spirit of our rekindled friendship, he said, ‘Iwona and I decided not to share with the family just yet because it’s complicated.
She’s got two little girls from her previous relationship and her ex is a prick, to be honest. Lots of legal stuff to get through. ’
I tried to breathe slowly, in and out, in and out, but my heart was beating too fast.
‘How long?’ I managed. ‘Have you been together?’
Fraser calculated in his head. ‘About four and a half years?’
Four and a half years? So, just weeks after we broke up? He wasn’t ready for a family, then suddenly he was – as long as it wasn’t with me? My nerves were zinging with pain.
‘Whatever you’re thinking – I know.’ Fraser raised his hands, and said in an infuriatingly smug way, ‘But what you’ve got to remember is that my family are all control freaks.
And when kids are involved you have to put their feelings first, and I didn’t want them exposed to the drama we’ve been dealing with since Dad died.
Mum’s been struggling, so’s Jackie – it wasn’t the right time to introduce them to everyone. ’
Wow. No. That wasn’t what I was thinking. It wasn’t even my third thought.
Fraser misinterpreted my horrified silence. ‘You won’t tell Mum, will you?’
I don’t know where it came from, but I heard my voice snap, disbelievingly, ‘Aren’t you a bit too old to be worrying what your mum thinks?’
We stared at each other, both stunned at how far off the predicted piste the conversation was going, and then Fraser’s phone rang on the table, and a photograph came up on the screen: Iwona.
Or rather, Fraser and Iwona, their heads squashed together in a loved-up selfie on a ski slope, two happy little baby heads squashed below. A family.
My throat closed up with a sudden, powerful rush of tears, the kind you can’t stop once they start, and I felt my chair move.
Tomsk had stood up and was trying to walk away. Since his lead was wrapped around the leg of my chair, he was taking me with him.
‘Are you all right? Is he all right?’ Fraser frowned. ‘Beth? We’re good, right? I’ve honestly only ever wanted the best for you, that’s why I wanted to see you, to find out . . . Beth, don’t walk away. Don’t leave like this.’
I stared at him. This might be the last time I saw Fraser – I certainly didn’t want to ever have this conversation again – so I might as well burn down the house.
‘You can dress it up to yourself however you want, Fraser, but if you knew you wanted a family, just not with me, you should have had the guts to tell me. You shouldn’t have waited for me to make that decision for you. ’
‘But . . .’ Did he look guilty? Had I hit a nerve?
‘I’ve got to go.’ I fumbled in the pocket of my cardigan, pulling out the change I kept for the coffee cart and the homeless man with the collie by the park. ‘Here, sorry.’ I tipped all of it on to the table.
‘Beth? Oh, for God’s sake, Beth, don’t be like this.’
Fraser reached out, but I ignored his hand.
I knew people were probably looking, but I didn’t care; nothing felt real, apart from the hot, tearing sensation in my chest. In any case, Tomsk had decided it was time to go, and since he was the only one in my life who had my best interests at heart, I was willing to let him.