Page 68 of An Island in the Sun

‘You had a miscarriage?’ He said it as if he was trying to process the words too. It had all got rather serious, rather quickly, but Tabitha couldn’t make light of the situation. She felt safe opening up to Raff, comfortable too, his hand resting on hers, his thumb caressing.

‘It wasn’t planned,’ Tabitha continued, ‘despite Lewis being eager for us to start a family. That was so far from what I wanted back then. I’d been having serious doubts about us when a positive pregnancy test left me up shit creek without a paddle, so to speak.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘I was talking to Julie about it because she told me she’d suffered two miscarriages herself.’

‘Oh shit, Tabitha, I never realised about Julie and I’m so sorry you went through that too.’ His hand remained warm and solid on hers. His eyes narrowed. ‘Is this the first time you’ve talked to anyone about it?’

Tabitha pursed her lips in an attempt to hold back the tears lodged in her throat. Fudge’s fur was so soft, it suddenly reminded her of stroking the soft downy hair of a baby, like she’d done when Olivia and Nancy were tiny. The memory of peach-soft skin and that sweet nothing-quite-like-it baby smell consumed her. Since escaping the UK, she’d rarely been triggered in the way she had been today, although sitting outside a cafe in Paris when three mums with their babies had sat at the table next to her had hit her hard. Locking her feelings away had just delayed the inevitable. Escaping but not using the time to process everything was exactly what she’d done with Ollie. She couldn’t keep running away because dealing with the emotional fallout was hard.

‘If it’s too upsetting we don’t have to talk about it,’ Raff said, in response to her silence. ‘I’m sorry I asked.’

‘No, it’s okay, it’s probably a good thing.’ Fudge stretched out, kicking his paws into her bare leg. She shifted off the sofa to give him room and sat on the rug. She kept her hand on Fudge as she looked up at Raff. ‘My parents know, but it’s only Elspeth I’ve been able to talk to properly. Even then, I’ve struggled to put into words how I actually feel.’ She glanced away, across the luxurious villa with its beautiful garden, glimmering pool and ocean view. No one’s life was perfect, however wonderful it looked on the surface. There were always hidden secrets, unspoken heartache and countless lies. Even Rufus and Cordelia’s idyllic life hid the heartache of a broken relationship with their only son. Tabitha sighed. ‘Perhaps a year of running away from my emotions, from everything, is enough. I need to make peace with what’s happened.’

‘But at the time it must have felt like the right thing to do?’

Tabitha nodded. ‘I wanted to escape from everyone, even the people closest to me who would have helped me get through it, because it felt too hard staying. All my brothers and sisters are in long-term relationships. All of them have kids. I know I’m the youngest, but it was the unspoken expectation that it would be my path too, that because I was with someone and we loved each other we should live together, get married, definitely have kids.’

‘So your ex wanted children but you didn’t?’

‘Not then, no.’

‘How did you feel when you found out?’

‘Sick, absolutely sick to my stomach and utterly terrified. And you know why? Because I realised I was trapped. I’d been uncertain about my relationship with Lewis for a while, put it down to itchy feet, but it was more than that. We weren’t happy together – actually, that’s a lie, apparently Lewis was, it was me who wasn’t.’ Something about the way Raff was looking at her, not shying away from an uncomfortable subject, made Tabitha want to let it all out, to tell him stuff she hadn’t even opened up to Elspeth about. She folded Fudge’s long silky ear between her fingers. ‘I was on my own when I did the pregnancy test and seeing those two positive lines made me feel like everything was closing in on me. I remember leaning on the sink trying to steady my breathing and I had this, like, physical pain in my chest. And it wasn’t as if I could pretend it wasn’t happening – I had signs, I knew I was pregnant before the test confirmed it – I’d been feeling sick in the morning for a few days. The hormones had left me a sobbing mess.’

‘Did you tell him?’

‘No, I meant to, but I wanted to get my head round it first and figure out my feelings.’ Tabitha breathed deeply, feeling the familiar tension building in her chest. Tears stung her eyes.

Raff shifted off the sofa on to the floor and slid his arm around her.

‘I spent so long thinking that I didn’t want to have children…’ She took a deep, shuddery breath and shook her head. ‘Elspeth tried to give me hope, saying it was common to bleed in early pregnancy, but I just knew in my gut, you know, that something wasn’t right. And it was at that moment, when the possibility of becoming a mum was taken away, that I realised how much I actually wanted it.’ Her voice cracked, the bottled up heartache of the last twelve months unravelling. ‘It sounds heartless, but I wanted the baby more than I wanted to be with Lewis.’

‘Oh Tabitha.’

He hugged her close and she leaned into him, the tears releasing like a dam had burst. She sobbed into his shoulder, crying harder than she’d ever done, soothed by the comforting weight of his arms wrapped around her.

She pulled away, leaving his T-shirt damp, her face wet with tears. It was a relief to have let it all out, her grief, her regrets, her sadness, the stress, the worry, to finally open up to someone.

‘I didn’t mean to burden you with all that.’

‘I’m glad you did.’ His eyes were filled with concern. ‘It’s not healthy keeping things bottled up.’

He gently pressed his fingers to the centre of her chest, momentarily stilling her breath. It had been hard to open up to Raff, to be truthful about stuff that had plagued her for months and months, but she was glad she had.

‘I told Lewis about it after I’d miscarried and he was understandably upset. He didn’t get why I hadn’t told him, didn’t understand my reasons, particularly when he found out that my sister knew.’

‘Surely that was your choice?’

‘True, but he had every right to be upset. I was honest with him about my feelings, about my concern over how we weren’t right for each other. I didn’t end it with him then because my emotions were all over the place and I’d just dropped a bombshell on him. But he didn’t listen. Instead of backing off and giving me some space to, I don’t know, grieve for something I didn’t know I’d even wanted, to just get over the awful physical stuff, he chose instead to propose, completely out of the blue just two weeks later.’ Tabitha shook her head. ‘Even after telling him how I felt about our relationship, he still didn’t understand. He even suggested we tried again, despite us not having intended to get pregnant in the first place.’

‘So that’s when you finished with him?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you didn’t tell your sister?’

‘I told her about breaking up with him and she obviously knew about the miscarriage, but I didn’t tell her he’d proposed. I didn’t tell anyone, not even my parents, for fear someone would attempt to talk me into trying to make things work. It never felt quite right with Lewis, but I had no idea why. He was a decent bloke, really decent, and I honestly believed I loved him. My whole family did and thought he was the one. But the more he tried to change me into the sort of partner he wanted, and the more serious our relationship became, the more I distanced myself. The more commitment there was, the further I pulled away.’

‘It’s expectation,’ Raff said quietly.

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