Cassie’s eyes were heavy with tears. ‘I can’t imagine ever meeting anyone I could love as much as I love you, even though we’ve only known each other a few months,’ she said. ‘And I feel as though you’re my perfect man. Except we aren’t perfect for each other, are we?’ So indescribably sad.
‘We could be?’
‘But I don’t see how. Obviously I don’t know whether or not I’ll ever have a baby, but I want one so much. And you’re here, and I really love you.’ She really did. So very much. ‘And I can’t bear the thought of ending up like Juliet and Anthony. That look that she gave him when she was talking about them not having had kids.’
‘They’re happy, though.’
‘I’d be so scared that I’d resent you, even just once, in the future.’
‘I think maybe I’d have a baby for you. I know you’d be a great mother. Maybe a baby doesn’t need two great parents.’
Cassie shook her head. ‘You said at the weekend how awful it is not to be wanted by your father.’
‘But I love you.’
‘I love you too. But sometimes love isn’t enough, is it? If you want diametrically opposed things.’
‘I think I’d have a baby for you,’ James said.
‘I would want you to want to have the baby for the baby itself.’
‘Maybe I would.’
‘That isn’t true, though, is it?’
James stared ahead for a few seconds and then shook his head.
They both sat there, not speaking, for a long time. Then James stood up and poured their cold drinks down the sink.
‘We should probably go to bed,’ he said. ‘You have a long journey tomorrow.’
They went to bed separately, which at the start of the evening Cassie would not have believed possible.
In the morning, she felt like total crap from lying awake crying for so much of the night. James didn’t look a lot better. She should have had the bloody pudding in the restaurant and they could have had fat-stomached-person sex last night and had this conversation over breakfast and she could have cried on the plane instead.
They ate croissants and compote very politely together and then James insisted on carrying Cassie’s bags from the bedroom out to the hall and then she suddenly said, ‘James. Please could we have a hug? I can’t bear you to look so miserable.’
Unfortunately, the hug felt desperately sad. Unbearable to think that this was it.
‘I’m going to come with you to the airport after all.’ James said the words into her hair. ‘If that’s alright?’
‘Yes, please.’ While he was still there, with her, there was still the chance that maybe he’d have an epiphany and realise that he did want a baby. Or they’d bump into Juliet and she’d say how glad she was that she’d never have kids and Cassie would be able to bin this feeling that shehadto try for a baby. Orsomething.
They didn’t hold hands in the back of the cab but they did sit quite close together, their knees touching. They talked about London sights and history that Cassie had gleaned during her stay.
At the airport they did the walking version of the same sad experience.
Cassie’s last sight of him was him looking no longer his friendly rugby player type but like a serious, handsome City man again, all rigid jaw and drawn cheeks.
Turned out she hadn’t run out of tears last night. She got through a lot of tissues on the plane.
* * *
Cassie looked out of the window at two squirrels playing on her lawn. So gorgeous. Actually quite heart-rendingly gorgeous. She’d disturbed a bobcat tracking a squirrel last week. It was awful when animals preyed on each other. She sniffed and wiped a stray tear from her cheek.
Four weeks on from saying goodbye to James, you’d have thought that she would have moved on from the tears phase. But apparently not. If anything, she was getting more emotional. Yesterday she’d cried because she’d run out of yoghurt and the island store didn’t have the flavour she wanted.
She was starting to wonder whether she should just call him and tell him that she loved him more than she loved the idea of a baby. Yeah, she probably should. It felt like it was true. Maybe she’d just needed a bit of distance to work that out.
