He was so busy trying to take the pressure off his father that sometimes she wondered if they’d taken too much too soon, but it was certainly back on now, and Russell seemed to be thriving on it.
And Joy was helping in the farm shop, as usual, and so Fran ended up making the cheese.
She didn’t mind. It was quite therapeutic, really, and because of the tight timings—adding the starter culture once the milk was the right temperature, then stirring it, then leaving it, then adding the rennet, and the mould if it was to be a blue cheese, then cutting it, then scooping out
the curds into the strainers, and all the time checking the temperature of the various processes, washing out the vats, scrubbing down the tables, sterilising everything, endlessly hosing the floor and brushing it clean—there was no time to think and yet the steady rhythm of the work was curiously restful.
There was all the work in the cheese stores as well, turning and salting and testing, and then packaging the cheeses for sale, either in wheels or cut into wedges and shrink-wrapped.
It all took time, and as they were so busy with the summer tourist influx it kept her well out of Mike’s way, but it was quite hard physical work, and she was feeling drained this week. Just because it was another thing, another turn of the screw at a time when things were already tough enough, she’d started her period on Sunday evening, and although she
knew
she couldn’t be pregnant—well, after all, how could she without any contact with Mike?—nevertheless it still made her feel down.
She’d just finished a long session of salting and turning in the blue cheese store on Thursday and was cooking their supper when she saw Ben heading towards the house with a book in his hand. She went to the door and opened it with a smile. ‘Hi, Ben!’ she said, and he smiled back.
‘Hello, Fran. Is Mike in? I’ve got something for him.’
‘Yes—go on through. He’s in the sitting room. He’s bored to death. He’ll be delighted to see you. Want a cup of tea?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I won’t hold you up, I can see you’re cooking. I’ll just go and have a chat for a few minutes.’
‘If you’re sure?’
‘I’m sure. You carry on, I won’t be long.’
‘Is the invalid up for a visit?’
Ben was standing in the doorway, and Mike chuckled and shifted up the sofa, propping himself up against the backrest and moving his leg into a more comfortable position.
‘Absolutely. Come on in, make yourself at home.’
‘So how are you?’
‘Oh, you know—bored, sore, frustrated with the ceaseless inactivity…’
‘Peachy, then.’
‘Oh, utterly.’
Ben grinned and dropped into the armchair opposite. ‘Thought so. I’ve brought you a book—it’s an autobiography I’ve just finished reading. The guy was unfortunate enough to become one of my patients and he gave it to me. Nice man. I thought you might enjoy it. It’s quite funny and very touching—he used to be a farmer.’
He slid it over the coffee-table and Mike picked it up, flicked through the pictures and put it down. ‘Thanks. I’ve heard about it—if I’d thought I’d have the time, I would have bought a copy, so I’ll enjoy reading it. God knows, there’s not much else to do at the moment.’
Ben chuckled. ‘I can imagine. So when did they change your cast?’
‘Tuesday. It doesn’t seem to be swelling too much, so they were happy to do it. I have to say it looked pretty grim.’
Ben nodded. ‘I expect it’s black.’
‘Mmm—like this,’ he said, lifting up his T-shirt and making Ben wince.
‘That’s a goody. You were lucky your chest didn’t cave
in. You could have had a flail segment there and it would have made it much more exciting.’
Mike groaned. ‘No, thanks. It was quite exciting enough. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve thanked you for coming to my rescue.’ He tipped his head on one side. ‘Actually, I seem to remember you rang me at a rather opportune moment for that chat, and you never did say what it was about.’
‘Oh, that. It’s nothing to worry about—it’ll keep.’
‘Well, if it’s nothing to worry about, bring it on, frankly, because all I’ve had to do for the last week is sit here and worry about all the things I should be doing and can’t, and how much work this has put on everybody else, and how far behind we’ll be if I can’t get all the summer jobs done—so, please, if it’s something to think about that isn’t a worry, tell me!’
Ben laughed and sat back, studying him for a moment. ‘OK. It’s about the field in front of the house. Well, all round it, really, but especially the bit between the house and the road. It’s not huge, but when we had the christening you let us use it for parking, and it was hugely helpful. The drive’s really not big enough if we have more than one visitor, and if we had that field, we could extend the parking at the front and make a bit more of a garden on that side of the house. And if you got really carried away and wanted to sell the bit between us and the clifftop, and maybe a little strip round each side too…?’
Mike thought about it for a moment, then nodded slowly. ‘It would make a lot of sense for you, but we tend to move the cattle through from one side of you to the other along that field, and if you’ve got the whole section from the cliff to the road, we’d have to move them on the lane,
and we try to avoid that. And it wouldn’t help you with access to the beach—I take it you’ve found out how steep it is there? You can’t walk down.’
‘No, I know. It was just an idea. It’s the other bit, really, that’s the most significant, and Lucy’s decided she loves gardening—takes after her grandmother, I think, and she really wants to expand it. She says I only want it so I can have a little red tractor mower and drive around on it, pretending to be a farmer—’
Mike laughed out loud at that. ‘Any time you want to play at being a farmer, give us a shout and you can get up at five and do the milking.’
Ben grinned. ‘I’ll stick with the mower,’ he replied. ‘So—think about it, ask Joe what he thinks. There’s no rush, and we certainly don’t want to put any pressure on you, but if the land’s going begging, we’d be more than happy to pay you amenity rates. We’d have to get it valued to make it fair.’
Amenity rates? They doubled the price of agricultural land, sometimes more than doubled it. And the land Ben was talking about wasn’t in any way fundamental to the running of the farm. They had plenty of grazing, and certainly the area between the house and the road was only ever grazed just to keep it down. It wasn’t good enough for hay, it wasn’t big enough for crops and the most sensible thing would be to sell it to the Carters.
And, God knows, cash at the moment was tight.
‘Have you got a plan of the plot?’
‘Not here,’ Ben said. ‘I have at home. Want me to draw it up so you can see?’
‘Or I can walk over it with you.’
Ben arched a brow ironically, and Mike sighed. ‘Well, drive, then. I can get Joe to bring me up. We could all talk it over on site. I’ll speak to him and Dad first.’
‘Do that. And now I’m going to leave you in peace. Fran was cooking something that smelled really gorgeous, and I don’t want to be responsible for ruining your supper. Enjoy the book—and drop in when you’re next in the hospital. The fracture clinic’s right next to A and E, and if I’ve got time, I’ll stop for a coffee with you.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Mike promised.
Ben went out, and he could hear his voice in the kitchen, talking to Fran for a moment before the back door shut.
So Ben wanted to buy the land.
And if he did, Joe and Sarah would get enough money to refit their kitchen, which was absolutely falling apart, and he and Fran—they’d have enough money, he thought, the realisation slowly dawning, to pay for another cycle of IVF.
He swallowed. If Fran felt brave enough to go for it. And if she did, he’d have to find the strength from somewhere to support her when it all went wrong.
Assuming she even wanted a baby with him any more. Right now, he wasn’t sure she did. He didn’t know what was going on in her head, and that made life with her an absolute minefield.
And to make matters worse, Sophie was coming back on Sunday week and he still hadn’t worked out how to tell Fran that Kirsten was pregnant.
Oh, damn.
T
HERE
was only one way to do this, Mike decided, and that was to tell Fran straight.
So he did—eventually.
She’d prepared a lovely meal—chilled watercress and tomato soup with basil and garlic croutons, a really tasty chicken dish in a creamy blue cheese sauce with shiitake mushrooms on a bed of wild rice served with the freshest, crunchiest runner beans out of their own garden, and then a fabulous fruit salad rammed with fresh summer fruits topped with a dollop of clotted cream. It was streets away from the usual food they ate, when she was up to her eyes in schoolwork and he was milking until six-thirty and then fighting with the paperwork. He didn’t care if it was geared to helping his leg mend, it was gorgeous, and he scraped the last dribble of cream off the edge of the bowl and pushed it away with a sigh of regret.
‘That was delicious, darling, thank you,’ he said with a smile, and she smiled back and took his plate.
‘You’re welcome,’ she said.
It would have been easier if he hadn’t felt so guilty because he was about to wreck it all by telling her about
Kirsten. In fact, he was so preoccupied with working out how to do it he was surprised she hadn’t picked up on it.
But apparently she hadn’t, because she cleared the table, loaded the dishwasher and topped up his glass of apple juice without commenting on his silence.
He wished he didn’t have to do this. Telling her about the baby was going to spoil their evening, and good times between them were so few and far between. She’d made a real effort tonight—did he
really
have to say anything to spoil it?
Yes, because otherwise Sophie would come next weekend and if she knew she was bound to say something, and he owed Fran a few days to get used to the idea without having to pretend enthusiasm to a delighted little girl who was finally having her dream realised.
But not now. Later, perhaps. When they’d gone to bed. When he could lie there and hold her, and hug her when she cried—because she would, of course. She was bound to, and if she was already in his arms, maybe she wouldn’t run away and cry in private.
Although he hated it when she cried, he hated even more the idea that she’d run away and do it in a corner somewhere, like a wounded animal. That he really,
really
couldn’t bear.
‘Coffee?’ he suggested.
She hesitated, then smiled. ‘OK. Just a little one. I don’t want to keep you awake.’
He’d love her to keep him awake, but that wasn’t what she was talking about, and, anyway, there was still this whole pregnancy minefield.
Oh, hell. Life was so incredibly complicated.
‘What’s wrong, Mike? You’ve been frowning all evening.’
He turned towards her in the darkness. With the bedroom
curtains open, as they always were, he could just about make out her features, but he couldn’t read her expression. That was a definite disadvantage of doing this in the dark, but it was more intimate, easier to say the things that would hurt her so badly.
‘Nothing’s wrong, exactly,’ he said, not knowing where to start. He reached out and found her hand, curling his fingers round it and squeezing gently. ‘It’s just—Kirsten’s…’
He let it hang, and after a few seconds she sucked in her breath and he knew she’d worked it out.
‘When?’ she said, her voice almost inaudible.
He ached to gather her into his arms. ‘February,’ he told her, although he couldn’t see that it made any difference, but it had been his first question, too, and he supposed it was only natural, part of the process of establishing just when the changes would start to show. Soon, he thought, remembering Kirsten’s first pregnancy.
Fran’s fingers tightened on his, and he squeezed back and didn’t let go.
‘Does Sophie know?’ she asked eventually, her voice hollow.
‘I don’t know. She didn’t when Kirsten told me.’
‘When did she tell you?’
‘On Sunday.’
‘Sunday?’ she exclaimed, pulling her fingers away. ‘But—it’s Thursday!’
‘I know,’ he said heavily. ‘I didn’t know how to tell you.’
‘Oh, Mike, that’s silly,’ she said, her voice more normal now—or was it? ‘It’s lovely for them. And Sophie will be delighted.’
‘Are you going to be OK with it?’ he asked, wishing to God he could read her face. If only he’d done this in daylight…
‘I’ll live. It was always going to happen, Mike.’ But this time there was a little wobble in her voice, and without thinking about it, because if he did he’d talk himself out of it, he reached out and gathered her against his chest.
For a moment she resisted, then he felt her chest hitch, and her arms slid round him and she squeezed him tight. Right over his cracked ribs, but he stifled the groan and held her, running his hands gently up and down over her back to comfort her.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he murmured, and she sniffed and her chest jerked again, but she wouldn’t let the tears fall, wouldn’t give way to them.
Damn, she was so ridiculously
brave
! If only she’d cry—let it out, let him hold her while she worked through all her feelings, but she wouldn’t, and he could understand that. He wouldn’t lie and cry in her arms either. It was just all too revealing.
‘I knew it would happen,’ she said finally. ‘I mean, why not? Everyone else in the world seems to be pregnant.’
Everyone but her. He knew that, knew without a shadow of a doubt that she wasn’t pregnant because she’d had a period this week. Not that it made any difference without the means to conceive, but it must just rub it in when something like this happened.
And she’d been in a foul mood earlier in the week, distant and unapproachable, and he didn’t know if she was still angry with him about the accident or unhappy because she wasn’t pregnant again or if it was just PMT.
In the good old days, if she’d been grumpy like this he
would have made a wisecrack about her hormones. Not now. He knew better now, because PMT was an indicator of just how monumentally unsuccessful they were being in the baby department, and frankly it just wasn’t funny.
He pressed a kiss to her hair, and she snuggled closer, letting him hold her. He wasn’t really comfortable. He should have had his leg up on a pillow, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been and for now it wasn’t his priority.
Fran was, and he wasn’t going to do anything that might make her leave his arms. He wished he knew what to say, how to comfort her, but he didn’t, so he just held her, and after an age she fell asleep.
It was hot—too hot to lie so close—and he shifted slightly, easing away from her and stretching his leg out, wishing he’d propped it up on the pillows first before they’d started this conversation.
She’d rolled to her side away from him, and he shifted to face her, hunting for a better position. It wasn’t, but his good leg brushed hers, and she wriggled back towards him, seeking him out in her sleep the way she always did if things were tough.
The way she always
had
, he corrected himself, and let his arm circle her waist, drawing her back more firmly against his chest. To hell with the heat. She needed him, and it was little enough to do for her.
Even if the feel of her soft, warm body in his arms was killing him…
Fran woke to Mike’s arm around her, his fingers curled gently around her breast, the insistent nudge of his erection against her bottom.
Heat speared through her, flooding her with a fierce, desperate need, a hollow ache that only he could fill. It was so long since she’d felt it, felt anything at all except empty and cold. And she wanted him—wanted the old Mike, the man who laughed and chased her around until she let him catch her, who made love to her, tormenting her until she was sobbing with need, then taking her with a wild and uncontrolled passion that left her spent and boneless in his arms.
Where was that man? Gone for ever? Or was he still here? If she only had the courage to reach out…
‘Mike?’ she whispered.
For a moment he said nothing, so she almost wondered if he was asleep, but he was too still, too silent, and then he spoke, his voice gruff and low.
‘I’m sorry. It’s just—I’ll move.’
‘No!’
The word was out before she could stop it, and he froze again. ‘Fran, please. I can’t do this. Can’t lie here night after night, wanting you like this, and—’
‘Wanting me?’ she breathed, stunned. Turning, she stared at him in the moonlight. ‘Do you want me? I thought you didn’t.’
‘Of course I want you,’ he whispered roughly. ‘I’ll always want you.’
‘But—you’ve been avoiding me. Going over to the farm office, telling me not to wait up, getting out of bed in the morning without waking me.’
‘I’ve always done that. I never wake you that early.’
‘Not like this, Mike. Not like this, so I thought you didn’t love me any more.’
‘Oh, Frankie, of course I love you.’ He sighed. ‘I just…’
‘Just can’t bring yourself to touch me?’ she said, her voice hollow to her ears—hollow and empty, like her heart.
‘No! How could you think that?’
‘Then why are you avoiding me?’ she wailed softly, ridiculously, all but inviting him to make love to her when she couldn’t even contemplate his intimate touch.
He sighed again, his hand coming up, the knuckles grazing her cheek with infinite tenderness. ‘It’s not that I can’t bring myself to touch you, Fran. It’s—oh, hell, much more complicated than that.’
‘Then tell me! Talk to me, Mike!’
He didn’t answer, but she could hear the cogs turning, feel the tension radiating out of him.
‘Mike?’
‘Frankie, I’m no good with words. I’m a farmer, for God’s sake. I don’t talk about my feelings.’
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why not? Dammit, I’m not enjoying this either, but we
have
to talk. Our marriage is in tatters, we’re falling apart and I’m trying here, really trying to get through to you, to sort it out, to find out if we’ve still got anything, and I can’t do that on my own! I can’t lay myself bare, wide open to you—not on my own! You have to do it too, Mike. You
have
to tell me how you feel. You
have
to share. Please…’
Her voice cracked, and with a ragged sigh he reached out and found her hands in the darkness, gripping them so tight she nearly cried out, but she wasn’t letting go, not now, when they were so close…
‘It’s not that I can’t bring myself to touch you,’ he said gruffly. ‘Far from it. It’s more that—I daren’t.’
‘Daren’t?’ she breathed. ‘Why ever not?’
He hesitated an age, then said, so softly she could hardly hear him, ‘In case you get pregnant.’
She froze with shock. So she was right, she thought numbly, her eyes searching his but unable to read them in the shadows. Her voice cracking, she said desperately, ‘I knew you didn’t want a child with me—’
‘Oh, Frankie, no!’ He reached out, wrapped her in his arms, dragged her against his chest with a groan of protest. ‘Of course I want a child with you. But every time you’re pregnant, every time you lose it—I just can’t bear to watch you go through that, sweetheart—not again. I can’t bear watching you fall apart, seeing what I’ve done to you destroying you—’
‘What you’ve done?’ She pushed away, tilting her head so she could look into his eyes, her hand cradling his face. ‘Mike, don’t be silly! You’ve done nothing to me.’
‘Except get you pregnant with dodgy sperm.’
‘We don’t know that. It could be my eggs. Maybe they’re dodgy. What makes you think it’s you? There’s nothing dodgy about Sophie.’
‘Maybe she was a one-off. My lucky break. And anyway, you’ve been avoiding me, too,’ he added softly. ‘Sometimes, when I’ve reached the end of my tether and I really, really needed you, you’ve turned away, reading a book or going to have a bath or—I don’t know, almost anything rather than be alone with me. I’ve even wondered…’
‘Wondered what?’ she asked, when the silence stretched on.
‘If there was someone else.’
‘Mike! You know I wouldn’t!’
‘I know. I do know. Or I know you wouldn’t have an
affair, at least, but—you can’t stop yourself falling in love, Frankie. And if there’s someone else—someone you’d rather be with—I know you don’t want me to touch you. I’ve felt you recoil…’
‘When?’
‘The other night?’
‘Oh, Mike.’ She felt tears fill her eyes, felt the anguish in his voice cut through her like a knife. ‘It wasn’t that.’
‘What, then? What is it that makes you flinch away from me as if I’m somehow…repugnant to you?’
‘Oh, darling, you’re not. Not at all. It’s just—I feel like a medical investigation. As if so many people have looked at me there, touched me, talked about me—as if the part of me that had belonged to us is suddenly public property. And I don’t know if I could bear for you to touch me, or if it’ll just bring it all back—’ She broke off, biting her lip, then went on unsteadily, ‘Mike, I don’t know if I can respond to you any more. I don’t know if it hasn’t just killed it for me, and I’m scared to find out.’
His breath sighed against her face, warm and reassuring. ‘Oh, Frankie. Oh, my love—what’s happened to us?’ he whispered, folding her against his chest again and rocking her. She could still feel the brush of his erection, but softer now, less urgent, and as he cradled her so her confidence grew, her need to hold him, to touch him building until finally she found the courage to reach out.
‘Mike?’ Her voice was soft, gently questioning, and her hand stroked against his shadowed jaw, the rasp of stubble unbearably erotic against her palm. Leaning in to him, she brushed her lips lightly against his, tentatively, not sure of
her reception or how she’d react if he took it further than this, but he wasn’t going to let her find out.
He drew back, taking her hand and turning his face into it, pressing a kiss against her palm. ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘Not tonight. Not when you’re still unsure—still not ready.’
‘I am,’ she lied, but he knew her better than that. So much better. And he was right, of course. She wasn’t ready, and maybe he wasn’t either. They still had a long way to go, a lot to unravel, much to talk through.
And for a man who didn’t talk and a woman usually too shy to reveal her inner self, it was going to be uphill all the way.