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  And sob she did, cradled against Kate’s comforting bosom, her hand smoothing rhythmically up and down her back, telling her without words that it would be all right.

  ‘That’s it, let it go,’ Kate murmured, and when the tears had slowed to a trickle, when the pain had eased to a dull ache instead of the slice of a sword, Kate let her go, and she sat down at the table and groped for a tissue.

  ‘Sorry—heavens, I must look a wreck,’ Fran said, sniffing and patting her pockets until Kate handed her a clump of kitchen roll. She mopped her face, blew her nose, sniffed again and tried to smile. It was a wobbly effort, but it was rewarded by an answering smile and a mug of tea put in her hand.

  When had Kate made it? In the few seconds she’d been mopping up? Must have. God, she was losing it.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, wrapping her nerveless hands around the mug and hugging it close.

  ‘Better now?’

  She nodded, and Kate smiled sympathetically.

  ‘Good. It always helps to get all that backed-up emotion out of the way. Helps you see things more clearly. Was that the first time?’

  ‘And Mike’s too close to allow him to see it. Because he’s hurting, too, and you don’t want him to feel bad for you.’

  ‘When did you become so clever?’

  A fleeting shadow passed over Kate’s face, and Fran was so preoccupied she nearly missed it. Not quite, though, but she had no idea what had prompted it, and Kate was smiling now.

  ‘Oh, I’m not clever, Fran,’ she said softly. ‘Just human. Maybe I just try and put myself in someone else’s shoes, and I know the difference Jem’s made in my life, so it’s not hard to imagine how I would feel if I’d been unable to have him.’

  Fran didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t been in Penhally when Kate’s husband had died, but she’d heard about it from her parents, and how sad it was that he couldn’t have known that Kate had been pregnant after several years of marriage. But she didn’t feel she could say anything about that now. It had been years ago, intensely private and nothing to do with her.

  So she sipped her tea, and sniffed a bit more, and blew her nose again, and all the time Kate just sat there in a companionable silence and let her sift through her thoughts.

  ‘Have you noticed,’ Fran said finally, as the sifting came to a sort of conclusion, ‘how just about everybody seems to be pregnant at the moment? I don’t know if it’s just because I’m hypersensitive, but there seems to be a plague of it right now, especially among the school mums. Every time I look up, there’s another one.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Fran said very softly. ‘It really hurts. You have no idea how much I want a baby, Kate. It’s like a biological ache, a real pain low down in my abdomen—No, not a pain, it’s not that sharp, but a sort of dull awareness, an emptiness, a sort of waiting—does that sound crazy?’

  ‘No,’ Kate murmured. ‘It doesn’t sound crazy at all. I’ve heard it before, so many times.’

  ‘The frantic ticking of my biological clock—except it’s not ticking, is it? The spring’s broken, or it needs oiling or something, but nobody can find out what exactly, and sort it out. And in the meantime we’ve run out of time on the NHS, we don’t have any money to pay for another cycle of IVF privately, and even if we did, Mike’s been so odd recently I don’t even know if he wants a baby with me!’

  Kate studied her tea thoughtfully. ‘Do you want a baby with him?’ she asked gently. ‘Or do you just want a baby?’

  That stopped her. She stared at Kate, opened her mouth to say, ‘Of course I want a baby with him!’ and then shut it again without saying a word, because suddenly she wasn’t sure, and she felt her eyes fill again.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied instead, looking down and twisting the tissue into knots. ‘I really, really don’t know.’

  ‘Do you still love him?’

  Again she opened her mouth, then shut it, then said softly, her confidence wavering, ‘Yes. Yes, I do, but I don’t know if I can live with him like this. And I don’t know if he loves me any more.’

  ‘Then you need to talk. You need to spend time together, find out if you’ve still got what it takes, because there’s no point killing yourselves to have a baby together if you don’t

  ‘Think about it,’ she went on. ‘Talk to Mike. Take some time together. And play, Fran. Take time out. The weather’s gorgeous now. As soon as you break up at the end of the week, try and find some time away from the farm and all its distractions. Is there any chance you can get away?’

  She laughed, but with very little humour. ‘Not exactly. There’s the milking, and the cheese making, and then we share the weekends with Joe, so they each get one weekend off in four. Well, Saturday afternoon and Sunday.’

  ‘And when’s your next one?’

  ‘This weekend,’ she said slowly. ‘But Mike won’t stop. He’ll just use the time to catch up on paperwork.’

  ‘So stop him. Find a little hotel or a guest house or something, and go away for the night.’

  ‘I doubt if he’ll wear that. Anyway, we’ve got Sophie coming for tea on Sunday because she’s away the next weekend.’

  ‘You can be back by teatime.’ Kate stood up and put a hand on Fran’s shoulder. ‘Try it. You’ve got nothing to lose. And you might have everything to gain. And in the meantime, I’ve heard some very interesting things about miscarriage and diet and the relationship to damaged and defective sperm.’

  Fran frowned. ‘Are Mike’s sperm defective? I don’t think they said anything about it at the fertility clinic—well, not to me, anyway.’

  It sounded a good idea, but she wasn’t sure she’d get it past Mike. ‘Is it freaky?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want to start giving him weird stuff. He’ll ask questions or refuse to eat it. You know what men are like. And he’s always starving.’

  Kate laughed softly. ‘Typical man, then—and, no, it’s not freaky. It’s more a supplement to his normal diet rather than any radical alteration. I can let you have all the details, if you like—why don’t you come and see me tomorrow after school? I’ve got time, and we can go through it then properly.’

  Fran nodded slowly. ‘OK. Thanks. I will.’

  And in the meantime, she’d try and talk him into going away. Just a few days, right away from the pressures of the farm.

  She felt a shiver of something that could have been fear and could have been excitement. Maybe both. Probably.

  She’d ask him tonight.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘THIS is ridiculous.’

  Fran stared out across the yard. She couldn’t see the farm office on the other side, but she could see the spill of light from the window, and she knew exactly what he’d be doing.

  Avoiding her.

  Night after night, week after week for months now.

  It was becoming a pattern. He’d get up at the end of their evening meal, kiss her absently on the cheek and thank her, then go out, Brodie at his heels, to the farm office.

  And he’d stay there, wrestling with the accounts and the endless paperwork, until nearly midnight. Sometimes she’d hear him come to bed, sometimes she wouldn’t. And in the morning, when the alarm went at five, he’d get up and go into the bathroom and dress, then go out and do the milking.

  On a good day, or at the weekend, she’d see him for breakfast before she went to work herself. On a bad day, and there were increasingly more of them, she wouldn’t see him at all.

  Tonight was no exception. He’d kissed her vaguely on her cheek, said, ‘Don’t wait up for me, I want to get those quota forms filled in,’ and he had gone.

  Sick of not having a relationship, sick of not having anyone—not even the dog, for heaven’s sake!—to talk to in the evenings, sick of going to bed alone. Even on his birthday.

  No wonder Kirsten had left him.

  She sighed and turned away from the window, sick, too, of staring out and willing him to come back in. It hadn’t always been like this. At first, when they’d started going
out together, he’d been able to find time for her, and after they’d married he’d been lovely. OK, he’d worked late and started early, but when he’d come to bed he would wake her, snuggling up, either for a cuddle or to make love to her, slowly, tenderly, languorously—or wildly, as if he couldn’t get enough of her.

  When had it changed? she asked herself, but she knew.

  The miscarriage—the most recent one, three months ago.

  That was when it had changed—when he’d withdrawn from her so completely. When she’d lost the baby she’d thought they’d been so thrilled about.

  Except maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe he hadn’t been thrilled at all. Maybe this last miscarriage had been a lucky escape, a narrow squeak in the midst of all the happy, fluffy stuff—choosing the colour of the paint for the nursery, discussing names, telling both sets of parents. Thank God they hadn’t told Sophie, but they’d been waiting till after the three-month watershed, till it was safe.

  Except it hadn’t been.

  She scrubbed away the sudden, unexpected tears and swallowed hard.

  No. She wouldn’t cry again. Not after all this time. She’d cried all over Kate today, embarrassingly, but she

  And neither had anything else they’d tried, because she still hadn’t conceived again until they’d gone down the IVF route.

  Of course, the opportunity wouldn’t have gone amiss and, looking back on it, she realised that ever since the first miscarriage things had been different. She’d put it down to too much work and the pressure of the farm, but really he’d been avoiding her for years, she thought with shock, and she’d been more than happy to let him, because it meant she didn’t have to confront her fears and feelings.

  Well, not any more.

  She stared out of the window again, and decided it was time to act. If she was going to save her marriage, she was going to have to fight for it—she just wished she knew what it was she was fighting…

  ‘We can’t go away!’

  ‘Why not?’

  Mike stared at her, puzzled by her sudden insistence, but maybe more puzzled by his own curious reluctance.

  The truth was, with Joe already fixed to cover him for the coming weekend there was no reason at all why they couldn’t go away. Sophie was coming on Sunday afternoon, but otherwise they were free—the animals were taken care of, and Brodie would be perfectly content down at Joe and Sarah’s house with their two dogs. They spent a lot of time together anyway.

  So there was no reason, no reasonable excuse he could give, and he wasn’t sure why he wanted to get out of it, but he did.

  ‘You always have a lot of paperwork.’

  ‘Yes, and it won’t just go away because we have!’

  ‘No, it won’t,’ she agreed. ‘It’ll still be there when we come back. Mike, nobody’s going to die if you don’t do the paperwork this weekend. We can do it together.’

  ‘No. Fran, I can’t go.’

  ‘Or won’t.’

  He met her eyes, wondered what the hell was happening to them, and, abandoning his coffee, he walked out of the farm office and headed for the machinery store. ‘I haven’t got time to talk about this now,’ he said shortly. ‘I’ve got to get on. Brodie!’

  And he walked away, haunted by the look of hurt in her eyes and kicking himself, but he couldn’t imagine what the hell they’d do for the whole weekend.

  He laughed bitterly. His own wife, the woman he loved, and he couldn’t work out what they’d do alone together for a night? ‘Hell, man, you’re losing it,’ he muttered, and Brodie nudged his hand, her face anxious.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said reassuringly, giving her a pat, but it wasn’t. It was far from all right, and he didn’t quite know how they’d ended up there.

  He threw the chainsaw into the back of the pickup, loaded in the other tools he’d need for his day’s work, opened the cab door for Brodie and followed her in, starting up the engine and getting out of the farmyard before Fran came up with any other excuses for—what? Finding time with him?

  Was that really such a bad thing?

  Yet just the other night, when he’d sat with her and tried to get through to her, she’d stonewalled him and got a

  ‘So how did it go with Fran?’

  Kate gave a ‘so-so’ shrug. ‘Not sure, really. I think I gave her something to think about. She’s coming in to see me at the end of the afternoon, before my clinic. I’m going to give her the details of that fertility-boosting diet I was telling you about, so that if they decide to go down the IVF route they’re starting from the best possible position.’

  ‘Do you think they will? IVF’s not cheap and they’ve invested a lot in the farm recently. I don’t know if they can afford it.’

  ‘I don’t know if they even want it,’ Kate admitted quietly.

  Nick sighed. ‘It seems such a damn shame that they got pregnant and then she lost it.’

  ‘But at least we know she can get pregnant, which is a good starting point.’

  Nick nodded and pushed a hand through his hair, the fingers parting it, leaving it rumpled. It was greying now, pepper and salt, but still thick, and her fingers itched to feel it, to thread through it as his had, to see if it still felt as soft and heavy as before…

  She was going crazy. She had no business thinking things like that. She had to get on.

  ‘Just seems so tough, when the rest of the world seems to have babies at the drop of a hat.’

  ‘Well, you would know,’ she said, a touch bitterly, reminding herself of all the reasons why Nick was so very bad for her. ‘And at least if and when they have a child, it’ll know it was wanted.’

  ‘All of them?’

  He coloured and turned away, staring out of the window and stabbing his hand through his hair again. ‘We still don’t know—’

  ‘Yes, we do,’ she said with quiet emphasis. ‘James was sub-fertile. He’d had a test.’

  Nick turned slowly and stared at her, his eyes carefully expressionless. ‘So—he really is mine?’

  She felt her heart kick. ‘Yes, Nick. He really is. There’s no doubt at all. Jem is your son.’

  The colour seemed to drain from his face, and for a moment he just stood there, rooted to the spot. Then he swallowed, dragged in a breath, straightened his shoulders. ‘Right. Um—got to get on.’

  ‘That’s it—run away.’

  He stopped, paused, then started walking again, then paused once more with his hand on the doorhandle. ‘I’m not running, Kate,’ he said, defeat in his voice. ‘There’s no point. There’s nowhere to go.’

  And, opening the door, he strode out into the waiting room and left her there.

  ‘Brodie, get out of the way! Come on. Stupid dog—what the hell are you doing?’

  Brodie was tugging Mike’s trousers, trying to get him to play, but he wasn’t interested. He’d been clearing up fallen and dead timber all day, and he’d just found an old willow which had snapped halfway up the trunk but stayed attached, the top swinging down to make a ragged arch, but it was still hanging by a thick rope of twisted wood and

  Under normal circumstances he’d get up the tree and cut it off at the trunk, but it was straddling the river, one end high in the air, the other, in a tangle of broken branches and twigs, sprawled across the ground on this side. There was no way to get to it without crossing the river, and he didn’t have time to keep driving backwards and forwards over the nearest bridge.

  And Joe had the forklift with the long reach for bringing in the hay and silage bales, otherwise he could have used that. No, he’d just have to tackle it from this side.

  But it was big.

  He’d tried levering it off the supporting branch with a smaller branch wedged under it and over another log, but he wasn’t heavy enough to shift it. He couldn’t leave it there, though, because it was unstable and if the wind got up again, it could fall—and the cattle had been grazing down here around it. So he had to shift it now, before the end of the day, so he could let the co
ws back into the field in safety.

  He tried Joe again, but he wasn’t answering his mobile. Probably couldn’t hear it. Damn. And the dog was still begging for a game.

  ‘Brodie, give it up,’ he said crossly, and, picking up the chainsaw, he cut away a few more branches so he could roll the tree when it fell. But the dog was in the way, and he’d get her with the saw in a minute, so he put her in the cab and told her to stay, then went back to it.

  ‘Right, you stubborn bloody thing,’ he said, glaring at the tree, and touched the underside with the saw. It creaked, sagged a fraction.

  He touched it again, but the tree was weaker than he’d thought, and the creaking was more ominous.

  Too ominous.

  He looked up, to where the fallen part of the tree was joined to the trunk on the other side of the river, and watched in horror as, almost in slow motion, the wood started to split away and flip up, freeing the hugely heavy upper section of the tree. It was going to fall, and he was right in its way.

  He didn’t have time to think. He didn’t have time to do anything but turn and run, throwing the saw aside, and as he turned, he heard a loud crack and a sound like thunder, then a branch whipped round and felled him at the same time as the trunk rolled down and came to rest across his legs.

  The pain was blinding, but the adrenalin was kicking in, his heart racing, and gradually the pain receded to a dull scream.

  He lay motionless, waiting, listening, but apart from Brodie’s frantic barking, there was silence. The tree had settled, and he could still feel his feet. And his legs. Hell, he could definitely feel his legs, especially the right one.

  Well, the ankle really. The left one was OK, and he could even move it a little. It was in a bit of a hollow, but the right—there was no way he could move that, and no way he was going to try. Just lying there was agony.

  So now what?

  He was lying there, contemplating his very limited options and trying not to retch with the pain, when he felt the vibration of his phone against his hip. Great. It might be Joe. He’d be able to get him out of this mess. He wriggled around a little, gasping at the pain in his ankle