Page 4 of Letting Go of Yesterday
‘Why don’t we try and catch up to James now?’ Odette turned to look at Rowan and she’d been about to agree, when another figure emerged from the food bank. He and James were talking as the other man locked the door. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it, until the man suddenly turned to face James, the two of them illuminated by the light of the streetlamp, and the world seemed to move in slow motion as James reached up and put a hand on the back of the man’s head, drawing it down towards him and kissing him in a way that was so unmistakably filled with passion that acid bile rose in Rowan’s throat, shock and nausea presenting the very real possibility that she might throw up.
‘Oh shit.’ Pippa’s mouth fell open as the words tumbled out, and Odette gasped in a way that made it feel like she’d sucked all the air out of the world, just for a moment. But it wasn’t her friend’s dramatic intake of breath that had knocked the wind out of Rowan, it was the realisation that all the feelings she’d wanted him to have for her belonged to someone else. Her greatest fears had become a reality in that instant and as she struggled to remember how to breathe, she knew nothing in her world would ever be the same again.
2
SIX MONTHS LATER
The drive from Membory Grange to Port Agnes had taken three hours so far. As Rowan glanced in the rear-view mirror, now that they were just two miles from their destination, the sight of her daughter’s red-rimmed eyes made her want to start crying again too. Saying goodbye to everyone had been incredibly hard. They were leaving behind their closest friends. Rowan had given up her dream job, after less than two years, one she never thought she’d have secured at just thirty-six, and the children were being forced to change schools too. All of those things would have been enough reason for tears, but Bella had cried hardest of all saying goodbye to her father. He’d only just returned after a sabbatical to a school in Tanzania, where he’d been for almost three months and now they were leaving him behind.
‘Why can’t Dad come with us?’ Bella had pleaded with Rowan for an answer, and she’d shot James a look that must surely have conveyed all the rage bubbling up inside her. He had begged her, literally on his knees, not to tell the children the real reason why she’d decided to quit her job and return to the village on the Cornish Atlantic coast where she’d grown up. He’d sobbed, telling her that if his father and the rest of his family found out the truth about his sexuality, they’d never speak to him again. He’d lose his job as chaplain of the exclusive private school founded on the Christian principles he espoused on a daily basis. The same principles that were forcing him to live a lie. If he’d been anyone else, her heart would have broken for him having to tear himself in two like that, trying to live up to the ideals and doctrine he’d been raised with, which were so at odds with who he really was. He was a gay man and he should have been able to be open about that and free to fall in love with anyone he wanted to. But the empathy she felt for him was clouded by anger, because he’d forced her to unwittingly live that lie too. At least James had known it was all a pretence.
Despite her anger, she still hadn’t wanted to throw him to the wolves; to tell everyone what had really ended their marriage. Pippa and Odette had seen it for themselves, but they’d agreed to carry the secret too, because Rowan had asked them to. They’d probably told their own husbands, and things like this had a way of getting out eventually. There were already rumours flying around the school about why Rowan was leaving, and what had happened between her and James, but there’d been no public declaration that they were divorcing, despite the fact that she’d begun proceedings within a week of discovering his affair. The only announcement she’d made was that she’d decided to take a job back where she’d grown up, to be closer to her parents. She had no idea what James was telling people about why he’d decided not to go with her. She didn’t care what anyone else thought, but she resented the fact that their children were still living a lie.
James had begged her with just as much passion not to tell Bella and Theo that he was gay, not until the time was right. It was a decision she’d wrestled with, but in the end, she’d decided that maybe he was right. There’d been so much change for them to deal with and she hadn’t wanted their father’s sexuality to become the talk of Membory Grange, while they were all still there. She didn’t want their new start to be plagued by gossip either. She knew only too well that Port Agnes was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone else’s business, but she wasn’t going to feed that. They’d just have to draw their own conclusions about why she’d moved back to Cornwall without her husband. Only her mother knew the whole story and Rowan had sworn her to secrecy, making her promise not even to tell her stepfather Dean. Her father and stepparents knew James had been involved with someone else, but not the full details, because she didn’t want the children to find out due to an accidental throwaway comment. She was aware it might look to some people like the marriage wasn’t necessarily over for good as a result, even though that couldn’t have been further from the truth.
After the initial screaming and crying on Rowan’s part had finally stopped, and the pleading from James had got him the secrecy he wanted, it had all been painfully civil, until it came to the point where her children were sobbing and she couldn’t be honest with them about why their father was staying behind. All Rowan cared about was how they were coping and she could have murdered James with her bare hands for standing there silently, wallowing in his own self-pity, and making her the fall guy for all that they’d lost. As Bella had pleaded for James to come with them, it had been on the tip of her tongue to scream out the truth and tell their ten-year-old daughter that the reason her father couldn’t move to Cornwall was because he was in love with another man and had been for more than two years.
The fact that her husband had been sharing another man’s bed at every opportunity he got for all of that time was information Rowan could probably have done without, but the one thing she’d insisted on when the overwhelming emotions had finally started to recede, had been total honesty. At least between the two of them. It was the only way they were going to be able to move forward in any meaningful kind of way and be able to co-parent. Maybe if she’d known what that total honesty would look like, she’d have asked for a watered-down version. Euan Samuels, the head of Christians in the Community, the charity that ran the food bank and other projects, was the love of her husband’s life. Meeting him had forced James to confront something he’d struggled to supress for years. He still loved Rowan, he’d told her, of course he did. Just not the way a husband was supposed to love his wife. He’d said he wished it wasn’t true and that he’d tried so hard to ignore his feelings for Euan, but they’d been bigger than him in the end. If any of that was supposed to make Rowan feel better, it had failed.
Despite everything he’d told her, he’d seemed genuinely shocked by the decision she’d reached in the early hours of the morning, three days after she’d discovered his relationship with Euan, after they’d sat up all night talking. She’d cried more tears than she’d ever have thought possible in that time, after her life had been ripped off its axis, but she already knew one thing for certain.
‘I can’t stay here. Sooner or later it’s all going to come out and I don’t want to get up every morning and go to work, knowing that everyone is talking about me and worse still, feeling sorry for me. I’m not living like that again and it’s the last thing I want for Bella and Theo.’ She’d shuddered at the memory of what it had been like to live in a village that had suddenly felt like a goldfish bowl, after the spectacular collapse of her own parents’ marriage. Her mother had fallen in love with Dean, her father’s business partner in his construction firm. He was fifteen years her junior, and they’d set up home together in the cottage Dean’s mother had owned. Her father had stood outside screaming at the pair of them for hours on end and he’d seemed completely heartbroken. But within a week her mother’s best friend, Marion, had left her husband of over ten years, and moved in with Rowan’s father, Tony. She told him that she’d been secretly in love with him for years. It had been messy and incredibly embarrassing, especially when rumours had begun circulating that her parents had been part of a wife-swapping circle, something her mother, Katrina, had assured her wasn’t true and that the only ‘crime’ she’d committed had been to find the love of her life when she was already married to someone else. Up until that point, Rowan’s biggest worry had been her upcoming GCSEs and the burning pain of unrequited love that had finally been on the verge of changing into something with the potential to be wonderful. She’d never liked being the centre of attention and she never had been, but overnight it had happened in the most unwelcome of ways. The one thing she was certain of was that she didn’t want that for her children.
‘You can’t leave. Where will you go?’
‘Home.’ The word had made it feel like she had something alien and uncomfortable in her mouth, like an oversized gobstopper.Home.Could she even call it that any more? She’d lived there for the first sixteen years of her life, but after her parents’ divorce, she’d spent more time in London than she had in Cornwall. Her mother had moved there with Dean two months after their affair had come to light and Rowan had been forced to stay in Cornwall until she’d finished her GCSEs, but she’d transferred to a sixth form college in London for A levels. It wasn’t because she’d sided with her mother rather than her father, she’d been just as angry with both of them for a long time, but London had felt like the lesser of two evils, and the chance to escape from the scrutiny of village life.
After more than two decades away, it was no wonder the word home felt so odd when she was talking about Port Agnes. It was probably why James had looked at her as if she’d suggested moving to Mars. Yet in the wake of her own marriage falling apart, she was suddenly sure that moving back to Cornwall was the only thing she could do. Her mother had returned to the village a few years ago after almost twenty years away, when Dean’s mother had died and left her cottage to them. So now her parents were back to living in the same village. Her father and Marion had a son together, Charlie, who was now twenty-two and on a post-university adventure travelling through Asia. Rowan adored her little brother and she got on well with both sets of parents and stepparents, but for years it had been like a military operation keeping them apart to keep the peace. She’d always hoped they’d patch things up one day and there’d been a definite thawing of the previously very tense relationship between her parents, once her mother and Dean had moved back to Cornwall. So she knew they’d all rally around to provide a support network if she asked them to, and she needed that more than anything now that her marriage was over.
‘When you say home, do you mean Cornwall?’ James had continued looking at her like she had two heads.
‘Yes.’ She’d been more certain than ever in that moment, the doubt on his face just serving to harden her resolve.
‘I could come with you.’
‘What the hell for?’
‘I’ve been thinking…’ She should have cut him off then and told him he had no right to think anything, let alone make any kind of suggestion about where she and the kids might go. He’d made this mess and she was the one who needed to find a way to try and clear it up. Except for some reason she hadn’t stopped him, she’d wanted to hear just how ridiculous his suggestion for the way forward was going to be, but even she hadn’t anticipated what came out of his mouth next.
‘There’s no reason why everything has to change. At least not all at once. We could stay living as a family and raising the kids together. In fact, it would probably be easier now we all know where we stand.’
‘Oh, would it?’ Rowan had somehow kept her tone level, instead of screaming at him, even if sarcasm was dripping from her voice. ‘And what about Euan, is he going to move in with us too?’
‘Of course not.’ James had tutted then, as if she was being deliberately difficult. ‘But I could apply for a parish somewhere, and if Euan got a job up there he could get to know the children bit by bit, as Daddy’s friend at first and then?—’
‘As the man who blew their parents’ marriage apart?’ She’d cut him off, but she was shaking her head. ‘No, actually that wasn’t Euan, that was you. If you think I’m being part of some weird throuple, just to make life easier for you, then you’re sadly mistaken.’
‘It’s not about us, it’s about the kids.’ The pious look on his face had made her blood boil, as he tried to turn it around on her.
‘Is that who you were thinking of when you were snogging his face off outside the food bank? Anyone could have seen you, but I did.’ He’d tried to protest, but there were things she’d needed to get off her chest and he’d lost the right to take the moral high ground a long time ago. ‘I know you think I’m supposed to understand and feel sorry for you, but no one would expect me to do that if Euan had been another woman. Either way, you don’t get to have any say in where I take the kids until we can get through the fallout of what you’ve done, and you’re ready to be honest with them. You sure as hell don’t get to come with us while you work through it all. In fact, you’re going to have to find somewhere else to live while I’m working my notice, because I can’t spend the next few months pretending nothing’s wrong.’
‘If I move out everyone’s going to start asking questions and what if Odette or Pippa give one of them the answer?’
‘It’s not going to stay a secret forever.’ Rowan had sighed, because she’d been no more ready for it to come out than he had. She was still processing it herself. She might think his idea of slowly introducing Euan to the children was ridiculous, but giving them time to adjust to life in Port Agnes before they had to come to terms with everything else didn’t seem like a bad idea at all. ‘You’ve been offered the chance to take a sabbatical to Tanzania before and I think now would be the perfect time for you to go. By the time you’re back my notice period will be almost over and I’ll have been able to make a plan for the longer term.’
‘I don’t think we should rush into something so final.’ James had widened his eyes. ‘And Tanzania… It’s not somewhere I can see myself?—’
‘It’s up to you.’ She’d cut him off, her tone as cold as ice. ‘You can either face everyone now and tell them the truth, or you can give me some space and get out of my life until I have the chance to get out of yours. But I’m leaving and taking the kids with me, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’
