Page 15 of Welcome to the Cornish Country Hospital

‘Oh no, nothing like that.’ The spots of colour had flooded Danni’s whole face now. ‘But I did google Richard. I wanted to check that he was still at Trengothern Hall, and I was intrigued to see what someone who’d been so important to you looked like. I’d never have betrayed your trust and opened your letter, though, because the truth is I have got one secret that I’m terrified I might not always be able to contain.’

‘I bet it’s not as bad as mine.’ Connie was going to share her secret with the young woman standing next to her bed, whether Danni returned the favour or not. Speaking about it to Gwen had helped get things clear in her head and to make the decision to tell Richard before she breathed a word to Darcy, or anyone else it might affect. That was the thing with secrets: they lost their power once they were out in the open. They could still cause damage, there was no doubt about that, but she was certain now that keeping the secret in the first place had caused the most harm of all. Connie took a deep breath and ten minutes later she’d told Danni everything, the same story she’d shared with Gwen, each telling proving slightly easier to get through.

‘Giving up the baby must have been an incredibly difficult decision to make all by yourself. But you were trying to protect Richard and make sure he didn’t lose the farm, or end up resenting you for it.’ Danni was making the same excuses for Connie that she’d made for herself for the last thirty-eight years, but it was no good. Nothing could justify what she’d done, even though there wasn’t a trace of judgement in the younger woman’s voice.

‘Most people wouldn’t be so understanding, and I wouldn’t blame them if they weren’t.’ Connie looked down at her hands, knotted together in front of her. When she looked up again, Danni had turned away and was glancing over her shoulder as if to make sure no one was around to overhear them.

‘I wish my secret was even half as selfless, but it’s not. My biggest fear is that one of the most important people in my life will find out and hate me because of it. My only hope is that one day the thing I’m keeping from her won’t be true any more, and then I won’t need to keep it secret.’

‘Does anybody know about it?’

‘I think one person does.’

‘Would it help if you told me?’ Connie deliberately kept her expression neutral. She didn’t want to pressurise Danni, but finally being able to tell the truth about Richard and the baby had helped make the whole thing feel a little less overwhelming. ‘You don’t have to, but it might ease your burden and I promise it won’t go any further.’

‘I’m in love with my best friend’s fiancé and I’ve spent the last seven years praying that she’ll fall out of love with him, find someone who makes her even happier, and leave the way clear for him to realise he should have been with me all along. Even saying it out loud makes me cringe. I sound like a pathetic, love-sick schoolgirl, not a woman in her thirties who ought to know better.’

‘You sound like someone tortured by feelings you wish you didn’t have, and we can’t help who we fall in love with. Trust me, I know as well as anyone that life would be a whole lot bloody easier if we did.’ Connie had convinced herself that she recognised a kindred spirit in Danni and now she knew for sure. On the surface, the younger woman’s secret might not seem nearly as devastating, but Connie remembered only too well the unbearable ache of longing for something she couldn’t have. Thoughts of Richard had filled her every waking moment in the early days, and Danni was having to contend with feelings of guilt towards her best friend too. That was no easy burden to bear. ‘Have you ever done anything about the way you feel?’

‘Run away from London to bury myself in a new life in Cornwall, where I wouldn’t be faced with seeing him every day. We worked together and I thought getting away would help me finally get over him.’

‘I’m sensing a “but”?’

‘They followed me.’ Danni sounded exhausted. ‘And now I’m back to seeing both of them on a daily basis. Every time she looks at me, or asks for my opinion about their wedding plans, I feel like the worst friend – no, scratch that, the worst person – in the world.’

‘If you weren’t a good person, you’d have already acted on your feelings, because hers wouldn’t have mattered to you as much as your own. But by keeping this a secret, you’ve put her feelings first every single day for the last seven years. Only a very good person would do that.’

‘It doesn’t feel that way, and I hate myself for loving Lucas.’

‘And is he the one person you’ve told your secret to?’ Connie could see why Danni would feel bad about telling Lucas, because even if he didn’t reciprocate her feelings, keeping his fiancée in the dark about them, when he knew, was a betrayal in itself. But Danni was already shaking her head.

‘I didn’t tell him. I’ve never told anyone except you, but I think he knows anyway. There’ve been times when we’ve come so close…’ Danni frowned, hesitating for a moment. ‘One night we almost went too far, another step in his direction and I’d have risked more than a decade of friendship with a woman whose whole family have taken me in as one of their own. I knew then that I had to leave, because I wasn’t going to be strong enough to keep doing the right thing when we were working so closely together. Esther is the kindest, most beautiful soul and the thought of hurting her is the only thing stopping me from acting on how I feel about Lucas. Except now they’re here, and he’s back working in the same hospital. So, what do I do? Run away again? Find somewhere to go where they’ll never follow me?’

‘You could just tell her.’ Connie was fully aware she was making it sound far easier than it was, and Danni recoiled as if she’d been slapped. ‘Hear me out. The power of your secret, and the danger of it, lies in the fact that Esther doesn’t know. It’s torture for you, I can see that, but I’d bet my last pound that it’s exciting for Lucas. If Esther knew, it would take the pressure off you taking all the action to stop anything happening. And it would kill the excitement for Lucas stone dead.’

‘And probably my friendship with Esther with it.’ Danni looked close to tears.

‘Either way I don’t think it can survive. If you don’t tell her, you’ve got two choices. The first is to keep running, and what kind of friendship can the two of you possibly have then? Your other choice is to act on the way you feel and that can only ever end in disaster, with your friendship blown apart forever and you as the villain of Esther’s life story. But if you tell her, she’s likely to choose to distance herself and Lucas from you, so that nothing ever happens. Yes, you’ll lose the friendship you once had, but you won’t be the one person in her whole life she wishes she’d never met and, who knows, maybe one day she’ll find her way back to you.’

‘You think someone else will come between Lucas and Esther?’

‘From what you’ve said he seems willing to push the boundaries. How long will it really be before he pushes one of those boundaries so far that it breaks?’ Connie shrugged. ‘I can almost guarantee it. But don’t you dare put your life on hold waiting for that to happen. Would you really still want Lucas if he did that to Esther?’

‘No.’ Danni’s eyes met Connie’s and they revealed the truth before she could admit it herself. ‘I don’t want to want that, but it’s like I don’t have a choice.’

‘And that’s exactly why Esther needs to know. It’s the only thing you can control. I should have been honest a long time ago about how I felt, but I spent four decades fighting it and it still hasn’t gone away. Don’t waste half a lifetime like I did. Seven years is already far too long.’

‘If you think I should do that, why didn’t you change your mind and tell Richard how you felt?’

‘Because I made a deal with myself that Richard could be mine for the summer, but then he had to commit to Fiona. The summer we had was glorious in every sense of the word, and I knew if I admitted to Richard that I loved him, he’d want to call off the wedding. Even when I discovered I was pregnant, I couldn’t go back on the promise I’d made myself. Later on, when I wished with every bone in my body that I could, it was already too late.’

‘That sounds like something out of a Jane Austen novel.’

‘It felt like it too, at times, but no matter how distraught I was, I kept telling myself what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. For Richard it would always be just a summer fling and he’d probably got over me by the time autumn came.’

‘Do you really think he did?’ The emotion on Danni’s face was naked. It was obvious she didn’t justwantto hear how things had panned out for Richard, sheneededto know. If he’d got over his feelings, then maybe she could too. But sadly, Connie was in no position to offer any such reassurance.

‘I’ve got no idea; all I know is that I never did.’ She sighed; it had been exhausting to hold on to all of this for almost four decades and now she was stuck here, in this bed, unable to finally tell him the truth about all of it. ‘It was different back then. There was no social media, thank God, or I’m not sure if I’d have been able to stop myself from searching for him. Imagine the torture of looking at photographs of the person you love marrying someone else.’

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