‘OK?’ Beatrice eyed him warily, still standing by the closed door, shifting from foot to foot, waiting for Atholl to come.
‘I mean, really thinking, for the first time since I fucked it all up and ran off.’
She became aware that her heart was thumping uncomfortably in her chest and her face was beginning to burn. Was she about to cry? The Highland punch wasn’t helping matters as it coursed through her bloodstream.
‘I was horrible to you. I didn’t know how to handle it all. I could have behaved better, much better.’
‘It’s a bit late now, isn’t it, Rich? Have you come here to give me the divorce papers? Is that why you’re here?’
‘No, God no. I’m an arse but I’m not a total bastard. Hear me out, Beatrice. I couldn’t handle you and how sad you were, and how I couldn’t do anything to help you, and…’
Now she was crying, and she found herself crossing the room to grab a tissue and dropping down into the stool beside Rich’s chair.
He kept talking, his words coming in an unstoppable rush. ‘I didn’t have it in me to fix everything. And you wanted another babysomuch, and I…’ She met his eyes. There were actual tears in them, she noticed. She had never seen him cry before. ‘I just couldn’t go through it all again. And I don’t think you could either.’
‘So you left me,’ she said quietly and matter-of-fact.
‘I think if you really think hard about what we were like before the baby, you might see that we weren’t all that happy, not for years before—’ He cut himself short and looked down at his hands. ‘I feel terrible saying this to you.’
‘So why say it to me now? Why come all this way in the pissing rain and the middle of the night to tell me this?’
His words had stung but deep down she had known he was right, and he wouldn’t be stopped now.
‘I came to apologise for the way things ended and to tell you I didn’t just throw it all away – our marriage and all the memories. It wasn’t working anymore, and we were actually really miserable.’
‘It wasn’t all that bad. If you’d managed to keep your dad in check and come home from work earlier once in a while or spent a bit less time working at the weekends when I lost my job and you knew I was at home climbing the walls, bored to distraction, maybe we’d have been able to fix it. I still think we could have fixed it, if we’d made a bit more effort.’ She let her shoulders fall as the guilty thought struck her and she blew out a heavy sigh. ‘Rich, it wasn’t all your fault… I know that now. I’m sorry too. I was a mess. I was trying to fix things the only way I could, by getting pregnant again, and I’d clammed up, couldn’t talk to you. And you couldn’t talk to me either. Even if we had grown apart, which wereallyhad, it’s such a shame it had to end the way it did, so abruptly and with so much pain unacknowledged. We both could have handled things so much better.’
‘Maybe you’re right. It’s too late now though, isn’t it? Or are you telling me we still have a chance at something?’ Rich asked, his eyes widening.
Beatrice shook her head with an exasperated huff. In spite of his tears and his sudden fit of remorse she was exhausted and ready to throw him out. She hadn’t imagined their reunion being quite so fraught and she hadn’t anticipated how angry and hurt she would still feel. ‘Rich, what else are you wanting me to say?’
She found herself wondering if there was still time to talk to Atholl, to go to his room, apologise and try to convince him to spend the night with her, in spite of Rich’s terrible timing. But when she looked back at her husband she surrendered this last bit of hope.
Rich was still talking, wringing his hands and looking up at her imploringly. ‘You don’t have to say anything. It’s me who should have told you that I never, ever, not once, didn’t want our baby.’ His voice faltered. ‘And I wanted to find you and tell you that. Ilovedthat little baby with all my heart, and I’d have been a good dad, nothing like my father.’
‘No, nothing like him. I know that.’
‘And I would have tried to make it work between us, in spite of everything, but we never got the chance to find out what our family would have looked like, or how we might have been together if there were three of us.’
Beatrice’s heart sank and broke all at once. She’d never known Rich could ache like this before. His pain somehow blurred his face and she couldn’t quite see his features or the old Rich she used to know. The sorrow in his voice touched a deep, long forgotten part of her, the affection she’d had for him and her hopes and dreams for their future.
‘Rich, we could have talked about all this months ago; you should have said something and helped me to talk about it.’
‘I never got the chance. One minute we were grieving, the next we were supposedly trying again, and I was hurting so much, and so were you.’ He was sobbing now. ‘And somehow we were propelled apart… and, if you remember Beatrice, we were never very good at talking things through, were we?’
She wasn’t sure how, but her hands were suddenly clasped together in his soft, familiar grip and they’d turned their bodies to face one another.
‘I came to tell you that I loved you and I loved our baby and I’m so sorry it didn’t work out for us. And I miss you. And I miss looking forward to being a daddy, and… I don’t even have anything to remember our baby by—’ At this, he broke down again. Tears streamed down his face.
Beatrice slipped off the chair and onto her knees, wrapping her arms around her husband, crying too, weighed down with his sadness, her hands gripping his clothes. Neither of them heard the rattle of teaspoons inside mugs outside the door and the sound of a tray being set quietly down, and footsteps retreating.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Checking Out
The fumes from the car exhaust billowed into the reception through the open inn door. Rich swung Beatrice’s suitcase into the boot and gave her an assured, gentle smile which she returned before he made his way to the driver’s seat and closed the door. In his hands he held a folded bundle of soft fabric, embroidered with rainbows and clouds, his baby’s blanket.
The passenger door remained open as the car idled and Beatrice, wearing Richard’s jumper from the night before, turned back to the inn. Atholl watched from behind the reception desk.
