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“Ah, Rachel.” He pulled her into his arms, and she came willingly, glad to be there. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, actually,” she told him, her voice muffled against his chest. “I mean, for what it is. Dad said he’d rather go this way than some prolonged dementia affair. Which I understand.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t make it easier.”
“No.” She took a deep breath and then forced herself to take a step back, even though part of her simply wanted to stay in the shelter of Ben’s embrace for—oh, another few hours. Days, maybe. “That’s not what I came here to talk about, though,” she said.
She saw Ben’s expression turn alert and wary, like a curtain dropping down over his eyes, stilling his features. “Oh?” he said, and there was a wealth of understanding in that single syllable that made her heart sink. Already he seemed as if he were shutting down, and she hadn’t even started yet.
“Yes, you see…” Rachel swallowed hard. “My boss rang me yesterday, and there’s a bit of a brouhaha at my office. The higher-ups are getting anxious about the markets, that sort of thing.” He gave a twitchy sort of shrug, waiting for her to continue. “If I want to keep my job, I’d have to head back tomorrow morning. Probably just for a few days, maybe weeks, but I was thinking about it, and I decided—”
“You’re going back.” This was said flatly, without surprise, his expression turning stony, his arms folded.
Rachel stopped, cowed by his tone. “I was thinking about it,” she replied carefully. It hadn’t been a snap decision, and she wanted Ben to appreciate that. “I’ve worked at Wallace and Wakeman for nearly ten years. It’s hard to think about just throwing it all away. If I don’t go back, I’ll lose my job, almost certainly.”
He shrugged. “Well, I’m not asking you to throw your job away, am I?”
Ouch.Considering what she’d been about to say, tohope, that hurt. A lot. “What, then?” Rachel demanded, her voice raw. “If you’re not asking that, Ben, if you’re not…what’s going on here, between us?” She gestured to the few feet between them that now felt like a vast ocean. “I know it’s only been five days,” she added, trying to be fair, “and I said we didn’t have to think about the future. But right now, it seems we do. So, what is going on here, between us?” Her voice throbbed painfully.
Ben shrugged again, his expression unyielding, obdurate. “Not much, I guess.”
What?Rachel blinked, feeling winded. “Not much?” she repeated in little more than a whisper.
“If you’re heading back to London, dumping Harriet in it again, then what can I say?” His voice rose in anger. “I thought you’d changed, but clearly you haven’t.”
“And was I the only one who ever needed to change?” Rachel demanded, her voice rising to match his. “Was this always about me fitting in with your plans, your life?” She shook her head slowly, blinking back tears.
“Ah.” Too much knowledge in that particular syllable. He said so much without saying anything at all. “So that’s how you see it.”
“How else am I supposed to see it?” she demanded. “Just like before, you’re not even willing to have a discussion, consider possibilities, how we could makeuswork.”
“What possibilities are there, Rachel?”
“Well, as it happened,” she told him, her voice trembling as she brushed a tear from her eye, “I came over here to tell you Iwasn’tgoing to go back. That I was willing to give up my job to stay here with my family, withyou. But I was scared, because it made me feel—well, like I was risking a lot, and I guess I was, because you certainly shut me down quick enough, didn’t you?”
Ben’s jaw slackened. “Rachel—”
“You say I haven’t changed, Ben, but maybe you’re the one who hasn’t. You’re willing to let me walk away even—even when I wasn’t going to!”
Her voice rose on a wail of fury and hurt, and then, not trusting herself not to collapse into sobs, she turned on her heel and strode out of the barn, walking blindly across the farmyard. She was angry, yes, but more than that, she was hurt. She thought they’d both grown and changed, had moved on from who they’d been in the past, those old fears and insecurities that had dominated so many of their decisions no longer holding sway. But here they were, arguing again, without even using enough words. She’dhadit with Yorkshire farmers and their taciturn ways! She could do with a bit moreemoting, right about now. She could do with someone who listened and talked to her and didn’t jump to his judgemental conclusions, making her feel like she did back then.
She’d been willing to give everything up for a man who seemed inclined to let her go without a fight, without a word. Why couldn’t Ben come up with some solutions? Ask her how she felt? Tell her he wanted her to stay? Why couldn’t he problem-solve with her, show her that she—they—were worth fighting for, figuring things out for? Instead, he simply stood there, silent, accepting, willing her to walk out the door.
A sudden spurt of anger jetted inside her. She was not going to let him do the same thing to her,again. She turned around and stalked back to the barn. Ben was standing in the same place he’d been when she’d left moments earlier, looking a little dazed.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this again,” she declared, her hands on her hips.
Ben blinked at her. “Iam—”
“Yes, you. Letting me walk away. Practically daring me to. Do you know, Ben Mackey,” she told him, her voice shaking with fury, vibrating with hurt, “I had a crush on you for our whole childhood?” His eyes widened and she rushed on, not wanting to hear what he might have said tothat. “I would have denied it to anyone, of course, but I did. You were my everything—sun, moon, and stars. When you ignored me that day on the bus, and yes, Iknowit was year seven—I was devastated.Devastated.And when you looked at me at that disco in sixth form, I felt as if the lights had come on again, afteryearsof darkness. If you had asked me not to go to uni, I wouldn’t have gone. Maybe that would have been a bad thing, and in any case, I’m glad I went, but you wereimportantto me, Ben. You still are. And yet I feel like I’m staring at a brick wall, a blank window, when it comes to these conversations. And I can’t do all the heavy lifting on my own, because frankly I’ve been on my own for a lot of my life.” Her voice broke and another tear trickled down her cheek; she swiped it away angrily. “Why can’t you say, ‘Let’s work this out, Rach’? Or ‘I care about you, Rachel, and I know we can figure things out’.Anything. But, no. It’s all on me. Again.Ihave to decide. I’m the one who has to walk awaybecause you never bloody stop me!”
Fearing she would start to sob and never stop, she whirled around and rushed out of the barn. Again.
“Rachel—” she heard Ben call, but she kept running. He wouldn’t bloody stop her, she thought, because she was too fast.
She ran all the way back to the Mowbray farm, like the proverbial bat out of hell Ben had called her before, into the house, past the tattered remnants of wallpaper hanging off the walls to her bedroom. She slammed the door behind her, breathless, and then sat on her bed, her head in her hands.
After a few seconds, Harriet tapped on the door and then opened it.
