Page 42 of Letting Go of Yesterday
‘But it should have been me, you didn’t know anything about it until after it was already done.’
‘It doesn’t matter and it was my choice. We both agreed it was for the best and nothing’s changed, except that you’ve got the baby to think about now too. So just live with your guilty conscience if you have to, and suck it up.’
‘Maybe I could just tell Rowan.’
‘No!’ Nathan’s response was forceful, but he needed to make sure Will got the message. ‘Telling just one person could make the whole thing unravel. This was our secret and if you tell anyone else we’ve lost control of it.’
For a moment Rowan’s words about James came back to him; maybe there was justification for her refusing to tell Nathan everything that was going on, but it was a very different situation and he couldn’t think about that now. All that mattered was stopping Will from doing something stupid and making sure he stayed with the family who needed him. As he locked eyes with Will, his brother finally seemed to realise that nothing had changed and they had to keep this to themselves, otherwise all of the sacrifices that had been made might really end up having been in vain.
‘Okay, it’ll stay our secret until the end, just like we promised, but I need you to know how much what you did means to me.’
‘I already know and I’ve told you before, there’s no need to thank me any more. It’s over and we can all move on.’
Will looked doubtful for a moment, and Nathan knew he couldn’t let his mask slip and allow his brother to see that his doubts were valid when it came to some people, because there were those who would never allow him to truly move on. It was a relief when Will finally nodded. ‘Okay I know you’re right, but I think I might have found a way of showing you how much what you did means to me.’
‘You’ve bought me a sports car?’ Nathan grinned, glad of the light relief after such an intense conversation.
‘No, but Heather and I have agreed to call your new niece Nathalia, after the uncle who made her existence possible.’
‘Is Heather really up for that?’ There was a lump in his throat as his brother nodded.
‘It was her suggestion and she doesn’t even know the half of what you’ve done for us, but she still thinks you’re amazing and absolutely the best person for our children to look up to.’
‘Are you sure that’s not the drugs from her op talking?’ Nathan grinned again and Will hit him playfully on the arm.
‘Shut up and take the compliment for once in your life.’
‘Thank you.’ He put his arms around his brother one more time and tears blurred his eyes. They held on to one another until they both regained control of their emotions. Things might not have worked out with Rowan and that had affected Nathan far more than it ought to have done. But for the first time in a long time it felt as if they could look forward to the future with hope, and he’d have repeated every sacrifice he’d made a hundred times over just to hold on to that possibility.
* * *
Rowan hadn’t felt the way she had for the past two days since she was a teenager, when she’d been pining over Nathan the first time around. Even the news that the Ofsted inspectors would be grading the school as outstanding hadn’t lifted her spirits the way it should have done, because she knew how much she’d hurt Nathan. She woke up thinking about him and went to bed thinking about him, going over the conversations they’d had and trying to work out if there was a way she could have handled things differently and not made such a terrible mess of everything.
She’d wanted to be honest and admit that when they’d moved beyond friendship therehadbeen a part of her that didn’t want anyone to know, because of how they might view the headteacher dating someone with a criminal record. But she’d got past that recently, she really had, because she knew just what an amazing person Nathan was. She hated the fact that he might doubt how she saw him, but she couldn’t tell him the whole story until the children had been told as much as they needed to hear. It wasn’t even that she didn’t trust Nathan to keep whatever she said to himself, but she’d promised James when he’d been on the verge of doing something stupid that she’d support him through the process of talking to the children. The trouble was James was still putting it off. After the way his father had reacted, he’d been even more certain that they should handpick the people who were told, even once the children knew. That was something they’d have to work through eventually, but for now her priority was getting James to face up to his responsibilities to Bella and Theo.
Discovering that her husband was cheating on her would have been a huge knock to her self-esteem regardless of who his affair partner had been, but finding out that he’d fallen in love with another man had been a body blow she hadn’t been sure she could get up from at first. Logically, she knew that some of the feelings she had made no sense. It wasn’t ‘her fault’ that he’d fallen in love with a man. It was no one’s ‘fault’, it was just the way James had always felt but had never been able to admit. That made the feeling that she was somehow less of a woman, because he’d rather be with a man, completely illogical. She knew that, but it didn’t stop that feeling coming to her in waves over the weeks and months after the discovery. Embarrassment had mixed in with those feelings too. What would people say about a woman whose husband preferred another man to his wife? It was another ridiculous thought. James had finally been true to himself, that was all, and he hadn’t had the strength to tell her. Being the last to know that her marriage was over and that her husband loved someone else was humiliating. It shouldn’t have been, because there was nothing she could have done differently to change that, but feelings and logic often didn’t go hand in hand.
When Nathan had said they should just be friends, she should have told him she didn’t want that, because she liked him in a way that went far beyond friendship and that she’d never felt the kind of attraction to James that she felt to him. But that was difficult to admit even to herself, because in a way it made her just as complicit as James in the death of their marriage. She might never have cheated, but she’d gone into it knowing she didn’t feel the kind of explosive attraction to him that she’d felt to Nathan. She’d put that down to being a teenager when she’d fallen for Nathan first time around, with the kind of big all-encompassing feelings that couldn’t be replicated as an adult. Only suddenly it felt like they could. She’d loved James, he’d been there for her in the wake of her parents’ marriage falling apart when she’d moved to London, and he was always there to listen to her problems and offer a shoulder to cry on. James was the one she should have stayed just friends with. They both knew that now, but she couldn’t regret it, even for a second, because of Theo and Bella.
What she did regret was not proving she trusted Nathan by telling him the truth about James from the start. She was sure he’d have kept the secret if she’d asked him to. It was too late for all of that now and he’d never believe that one of the reasons she still didn’t want to go public was to protect him. There’d been the inevitable talk of affairs when she’d come back to Port Agnes without her husband, and she knew from Bex that a lot of people seemed to think it must have been her who’d slept with someone else. After all, a chaplain would never do that kind of thing. The people closest to Rowan knew that it was James who’d met someone else, but only her mother knew about Euan. If people found out about her and Nathan, he was bound to be painted as the man who’d ruined her marriage. It was easy to sling mud at someone like him, but he didn’t deserve it and she didn’t want her children to ever believe it was true, and to start hating the man who’d been nothing but kind to them. She couldn’t think about Nathan any more, because all she was doing was going around and around in circles. She’d just have to try and learn to live with the knowledge that she’d blown it and accept that all they could ever be was friends. For now she was focusing on getting James to face up to his own mistakes, so that there was a chance of them one day going back to being friends too.
‘What did your uncle say? Has Stephen spoken to your father?’ Rowan looked up as James came back downstairs after making a call to his father’s twin brother. Michael hadn’t returned any of his son’s calls or answered his messages, and James had been beside himself with worry. It had made it very difficult for her to push him to speak to the children, even though the conversation was long overdue, because he was still reeling from his father’s reaction.
‘Dad’s okay.’ James looked deathly pale and his hands were visibly shaking as he sat down with a thud on the armchair in the corner of the kitchen.
‘You’re not though, are you? You look terrible. What else did Stephen say?’
‘I’m just trying to process it all. It was such a shock and I still can’t believe it.’ James shook his head, staring straight ahead, but without seeming to see anything at all.
‘You’re scaring me now, just tell me what it was so that I know how I can help.’ Rowan had no idea what she could do if Michael had decided to cut James out of his life forever, but she didn’t want any more secrets.
‘Stephen told me he knew why my father reacted as badly as he did and why his homophobia goes far beyond anything his faith dictates.’ James locked eyes with her for the first time. ‘When the two of them were at boarding school, something happened with one of the housemasters. They weren’t the only ones it happened to, Stephen doesn’t think, but it was awful. They were only twelve years old.’
‘Oh my God.’ Rowan’s hand flew to her mouth.
‘He’s convinced that’s why Dad’s the way he is. He can’t separate out what happened to him from sex in consenting relationships between gay men. He’s tried speaking to Dad, and telling him that it doesn’t make any more sense than it would to despise heterosexual relationships if they’d been abused by a woman instead of a man. But he thinks the reason Dad can’t accept that is because he’s never dealt with the trauma. Stephen’s had counselling, but Dad buried himself in the church and, until the last couple of days, he refused to even talk about it or acknowledge that it happened.’
‘But he is now?’ Rowan’s heartbeat was thudding in her ears; this was all so much to take in and it was no wonder James looked so shell-shocked.
