AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I’d love to,’ I said regretfully, ‘but I’ve just this minute promised Hannah I’d babysit Milly on Saturday night. Not that she’s a baby any more, of course,’ I added wistfully. Like a fool I plundered on, unaware I was digging a hole I was about to fall straight into. ‘You should have seen me with her when shewasreally tiny. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Maybe they should have another one, so I can get in some more practice.’
Finn didn’t move, not a muscle, and yet I felt an almost gravitational pull as he drew away from me. The seconds stretched until they felt like minutes, and then hours.
I heard the sadness in his voice before I saw it in his eyes. ‘We need to talk, Gemma,’ he said.
He held my hand as he spoke, as though that could save me from the pain, but his words were like tiny razors, each one cutting me deeply. ‘I don’t think this is going to work,’ he said, shaking his head sorrowfully. The air went out of my lungs as though I’d been punched. ‘You want children,’ he said.
‘Well, not right this minute,’ I replied, desperately trying to lighten the mood, and failing abysmally.
‘But one day you will,’ he said, before delivering his coup de grâce like a reluctant executioner. ‘And I don’t. Not ever.’
‘But why not? You’re great with kids.’
Finn’s smile was full of sadness. ‘That doesn’t mean I want any of my own.’
It wasn’t breaking news. There’d been hints and clues dropped over the nine months we’d been together. I’d just chosen to ignore them. It was a conversation for ‘future us’, I told myself, for when we were living together, or even engaged; there was plenty of time. Until suddenly there wasn’t.
‘This is my fault,’ Finn said with obvious regret. ‘I should have made my feelings clearer long before now.’
I shook my head, unwilling to let him shoulder all the blame. ‘No. Don’t say that. I think part of me has always suspected how you felt.’ I raised my tear-filled eyes to his face. ‘I just hoped that you’d change your mind… in time.’
Finn got to his feet and that simple action opened a chasm between us that I was terrified we would never breach. ‘You had an amazing childhood, Gemma, filled with love and thousands of wonderful memories. I understand why you want to replicate that.’ He was pacing now, as if pleading his case to a jury of one. ‘But you have to know that recreating mine is thelast thingI’d ever wish on a child.’
‘Finn, what happened to you and your parents was a terrible tragedy. But you can’t shut yourself off from loving someone because you’re scared of losing them.’
‘It’s notmeI’m trying to protect. I cannot and will not inflict what I went through on a child of my own.’ He was talking about hurting someone who I was suddenly terribly afraid I’d never get to meet.
‘Couldn’t you talk to someone about this, a counsellor, like you did in Australia?’ It was a desperate suggestion, but Finn loved me too much to allow me even a sliver of hope to hang on to.
He crouched before me and held my face tenderly between his hands. ‘You’re going to be a wonderful mother, Gemma. You’ve got so much love to give.’
‘I loveyou,’ I said desperately.
His eyes were bright with tears. ‘I know you do. And I love you. So much that I’d rather walk away from you now than make you live without something you truly want. If you stay with me, I’m scared there’ll always be something missing from your life. That’s why I’ve been so freaked out about buying this house.’
‘What? But I thought you wanted the cottage as much as I do.’
Finn shook his head sadly. ‘I want it, but not for the same reasons as you. You see Mushroom Cottage as a home to fill with children,’ he said sadly, ‘and you’re right, it really is. But I’m not the man to have them with you.’
‘Then I don’t want them either,’ I declared fiercely. ‘You don’t get to decide what’s right for me, Finn, or what I’m prepared to give up. Those aremychoices. And I’m making them now. I’ve already lost one person I love, and I don’t think I could get through losing another. I choose you, Finn. I willalwayschoose you.’
I phoned the estate agent the next day to pull out of the purchase, without consulting Finn first. He was right. Mushroom Cottagewasa family home; it should go to a couple who wanted to raise their children there. It felt wrong to deprive someone else of that dream. And besides, I had a feeling I’d never be able to look at that small bedroom beside the master without feeling the pain of losing something I’d never had.
Was the mystery of Finn’s disappearance tangled up within these memories? Could he be so misguided as to believe that ‘freeing’ me to find someone else was the ultimate way of proving how much he loved me?
Through the window, I watched as the night sky dissolved to grey, then pink and finally blue.
It was the dawn of the fifth day.
THURSDAY: DAY FIVE
24
My phone was ringing on the front seat of my car. I could hear it through the rolled-down passenger window. I removed the nail I had clamped between my teeth and quickly hammered it into the bark of the oak tree. I was getting better at this now: faster at putting up the flyers, and far less likely to hit my thumb with the hammer.
The number of posters in the box had diminished. I counted how many were left before leaving my flat, unable to understand why the six hundred and thirty I’d already distributed hadn’t yielded a single response.
Finn had gone up crookedly; I could see him looking down at me from a forty-five-degree angle. The jaunty tilt made him look almost quizzical, as though he too was beginning to doubt how effective this plan would be. ‘It’s better than doing nothing,’ I told him as I leant through the car window and plucked up my phone.
