Sunday October 5th 2025
We lit the fire and made peppermint tea. Have given up on chamomile—in the interests of being fully open and honest with each other at last, we both admitted it tastes like dust.
As we moved around each other in the stables, dark falling outside, I kept thinking of him standing there on Windward Ridge, his hair all scruffy in the wind, his gingham shirt billowing, as he said I know. And I love you. It was warm and cozy in the stables, but I was still shivering.
Once he was settled on the sofa, I showed him the catalog of donors.
“I’ve had the first couple of meetings and tests. Tentatively chosen a donor. But that’s it.” My voice sounded all trembly. Was so scared to say it out loud to him, even now, even when he’d told me he loved me.
Stared down into my peppermint tea as Oliver looked at the catalog.
“I can’t believe you’re not pregnant,” he said hoarsely.
His reaction had been hard to figure out back on the ridge—he’d seemed completely floored by it as we walked home side by side, the sun sinking over the island.
We’d talked about the logistics of how he “found out”—Galoshes, who I’m sure had delighted in letting that one slip—but we’d not gotten past the details to how he actually felt.
“I’m so sorry,” Oliver said instantly, reaching forward to touch my knee. “What a thoughtless thing for me to say to you.”
His hand on my leg made me think of the night we kissed, and my tears threatened to spill over.
Had to turn my eyes up to the ceiling, which hardly ever works as well as you think it will, then I was just crying in earnest, wet and exhausted and relieved, in a way, because at least now it was all out there at last.
“It’s OK,” I said through the tears. “I mean, I do want to be pregnant—I will be, in the next year. And there’s just…there’s nothing you can say, I mean, I can’t let you hold me back from this, I just…”
Oliver shuffled closer, legs tangling with mine. “You do get what this all means, don’t you? What I said on Windward Ridge? I love you.”
There was something about the way those words sounded in Oliver’s soft, low, bedtime voice, with his gaze holding mine.
I’ve had men tell me they loved me before, but nobody else has ever said it so I felt it right in the very center of my soul, as though they were speaking to something deep within me.
“Aspen…” Oliver reached for my hand. “I thought you were pregnant the day after we kissed. I was a little thrown at first, sure, and I wondered…well, I obviously wondered who the father was, given that you’ve been here for a couple of months now, so it was probably…someone on the island…”
“Oh, wow, you must’ve…Who…?”
“Believe me,” Oliver said, voice warm with amusement, “I was really struggling to put that one together.”
I started to laugh. “Oh my God, did you think I was, like, having Rog’s baby?”
“I mean, I assumed a tourist fling, actually, but I did wonder when you’d found the time.”
I wiped my eyes. The laugh had loosened something in my chest. I looked down at the freckles on the backs of his hands, the ones I’d traced that night I’d told him I couldn’t be with him.
“Do you want to know how I feel about having children, Aspen?”
“No,” I said instantly, letting go of him and covering my face with my hands. “Oh, God. Yes? I don’t know. I mean, even if you say you’re OK with me pursuing motherhood on my own, then I don’t know that I could ever quite believe you.”
“Really?” His voice was light. “Don’t you get what I’m saying to you? I told you I love you. And I thought you were pregnant.”
“Yes, I know that, I—”
“I was already ready to love you and your baby.”
I almost couldn’t absorb his words. I just blinked at him, my heart beating so hard.
“What are you…what are you saying?”
“I’m saying, if this is really the reason you’ve decided you don’t want to be with me, you’re going to have to come up with something else.”
I threw myself across the sofa and wept as he closed his arms around me, that huge, kind heart pressed hard against mine.
“I’ve always wanted a family,” Oliver said. “In answer to the question you have spent the last two months not asking me.”
“Don’t, don’t,” I sobbed into his shoulder. “It’s too much.”
“It’s the truth. Charlie never actually told me she didn’t want kids until we broke up. But I do want children, as it happens. And I’m not going to ruin your plans, or ask you to slow down for me. I just want to love you.”
So I let it in. I let myself say it—the other big secret I’ve been carrying far longer than I’d like to admit.
“I love you,” I told him, and kissed him, my tears on our lips.
It was my first time ever saying it with my whole self, not a single thing held back. It felt so new—richer, lovelier, deeper than any “I love you” I’d said before.
“Are you sure?” Oliver said, pulling back from me for a moment. “You know I can be…hard work. I want to say I won’t ever go through a dark patch again, but I can’t promise it, and…”
“I love you,” I said again, leaning my forehead to his. “I love you now, and I’ll love you then.”
He closed his eyes and breathed out slowly.
“I didn’t know I could feel like this.”
“Feel like what?”
“Like the future is the brightest place.”
I smiled. That made me so happy to hear.
“What happens now?” I whispered, settling my body fully over his on the sofa.
He shuffled down a little, bringing his arm around my waist. “Well,” he said, in that soft, shiver-inducing voice of his, “accommodation’s sorted.
I’m suddenly very open-minded about sharing this place with you.
Job, though…” He chuckled—I felt the rumble of it through his chest against mine.
“I’ve been fired. I’m pretty sure you have, too. ”
“Oh, Charlie’ll hire you back again,” I said.
“And I’m going to put together a case for an island midwife.
Put it to the medical board, to Doc Laurry.
If they say no, I’ll find some work I can do remotely, but it’ll have to be something to do with midwifery, whatever it is. It’s what I was born to do.”
“Why did you leave midwifery? If you don’t mind me asking?”
“You can ask me anything.” I chose my words carefully.
“I realized my personal life was affecting my ability to do the job. I wanted a baby very badly, and I was pretending I didn’t, so that was…
difficult. I think I needed to work through processing that, and being honest with myself. I’m ready to go back now.”
His hand tightened on my waist. “There’s so much I want to talk about. Especially when it comes to you becoming a mother.”
Didn’t think I reacted, but I must’ve stiffened or something, because he lifted a hand to my hair, nudging my face up to look at him.
“Hey,” he said gently. “I don’t mean I need to talk about whether, or when. I don’t want to hold anything up. But I’d like to know where you see me.”
He glanced toward the catalog of donors, which had slid to the floor beside the sofa.
“Well…Where do you see you?”
His hand stroked my back. “You don’t know much of my story yet,” he said, “but you should know I’ve always been a dreamer. Very ambitious. Always overreaching. I was a downhill racer, you know? Mountain biking, fast, downhill. Very competitive.”
I was fascinated. “No way! I thought you worked in a pub?”
“Oh, I did—I temped in all kinds of jobs, because you can’t make much money in downhill racing, even if you’re at the top of the game.”
I bit back a smile. “And you were?”
“I was.” His face was serious. “Until Fearne died.”
“It was…a biking accident?”
He nodded. “It should have been me,” he whispered. “I’d had some wine the night before—just dinner out with Charlie, but it had been enough. I was hungover. If I hadn’t been, I’d have taken the lead. It would have been me that hit that root first.”
“Oliver”—I brushed his hair back, kissed his forehead, then his cheeks, then his sad, soft eyes—“it wasn’t your fault.”
“You helped me believe that, actually. Now, whenever I start to feel guilty about Fearne’s death, I think about my intentions, instead of blaming myself.
It helps me see that I couldn’t control what happened to Fearne.
You can only do what you can do, and the fact is, I couldn’t save her.
If I could have, I would have, a hundred times over, but I couldn’t. ”
I pressed my forehead to his chest for a moment, thinking of my dad.
I hadn’t even known about his struggles with addiction over in LA, let alone tried to help him with them.
I’d idolized my dad, but he’d always kept me at a distance no matter what I did.
It had been a shock to learn that the drugs were probably the reason for that distance.
That maybe he had been protecting me by keeping me away.
I wish he hadn’t. If I could have helped him, I would have—a hundred times over, as Oliver put it—but I’ve had to let go of that guilt. You can only do what you can do.
I wish Dad and I had gotten a chance to truly know each other—his full self and mine. But the money he left me is allowing me to become a mother, and I knew him enough to be sure he’d have found joy in that.
I know I need to call my mum soon. I owe her an apology for the way I behaved after Dad’s death, but I’d just wanted some time to grieve without always thinking about what she needed from me.
Is doing something for you such a crime?
Oliver had said at the dance, and I’d thought, Well, yeah.
Until I came here, pretty much everything I did was in service to other people, and not in a good, selfless, I’m-a-great-midwife way—I mean everything I did was either to impress someone else or make them happy.
I’d completely lost touch with myself, so much so that I couldn’t even acknowledge the one thing I wanted more than anything.
But still—should call Mum. Bridget Denby is needy, chaotic, codependent and all the things I don’t want to be as a mother, but she’s still my mum, and I love her.
“The racing was a good outlet for the competitive spirit,” Oliver said, bringing me back to him. “I stopped riding after Fearne died.”
“And channeled your competitive spirit into trying to see me off the island?”
“I was never…”
He trailed off as I laughed, then slid his hand down to my hip. My skirt was ruched up, and I shivered. He was tantalizingly close to bare skin. But I didn’t want to stop talking—it felt so good to be uncovering all his layers at last.
“You know I don’t get on with the woo-woo stuff,” Oliver went on wryly, “but I don’t drive, and I ended up on an island where people can pretty much only get about on a bike, so…I got back in the saddle again. It’s been so good for me.”
I resettled on top of him, delighting in every inch of us that was touching. It seemed slightly miraculous—all those weeks obsessing over moments when his shoulder touched mine, and here he was, mine to touch.
“So you were saying…I asked you where you see yourself.” I forced myself to say it instead of sliding around the topic, the way I always would have in the past. “In terms of me having a baby. You were saying that you’re very ambitious…”
“Right. I may not think I deserve much in life, but I want a lot.”
“Oh yes?”
“So when I told you the future looked bright to me…” He pressed his lips to my hair, thumb circling on my hip.
“I meant, I’ve already imagined it. I want it all.
I want to live here, with you, and turn that walk-in wardrobe into a nursery.
I want to build a cot from scratch. I want to ask you to marry me when we’re here, in front of the fire, on a night as perfect as this one, and I want to love your child like they’re mine.
I want them to be mine. However they come into the world. ”
He pulled me even closer, arms wrapping around me tightly.
“But we only started dating about”—he lifted his head slightly to check his watch behind my shoulder—“twenty minutes ago. So it’s probably a little soon for all that. I told you: chronically overambitious.”
I was crying again. “Do you know how fucking rare you are?” I said, pressing a tearful kiss to his lips.
“Are you kidding? There are three Charlie Joneses on this island,” he said, seeking my mouth again as I pulled away. “We’re common as stoats.”
He laughed as he kissed me, and I felt so lucky. Luckier than I thought possible, even when I was at my most willfully hopeful, back when I first arrived here. I’ve made so many mistakes, but if they led me here, maybe they weren’t mistakes after all.
And it’s OK if not everyone sees it like that. I know I’m not perfect. I’m Aspen, in a way I’ve never let myself be before—I’m messy and complex and oh, to be loved like this, as I am instead of as I think I ought to be…
It feels like the perfect way to start.