Fiona Harper - Best of Fiona Harper

Ellie hadn’t planned to end up here. She just had. An impulse. She walked into the sitting room and slumped into her favourite armchair.

I should never have left this chair. I should have stayed here eating biscuits and never gone to Larkford. Then I would never have forgotten you, my darling girl.

But then she wouldn’t have this new baby. And she really wanted it. She clamped her hands to her stomach, as if to reassure the tiny life inside, and her eyes glittered with maternal fierceness.

If Mark didn’t want it, then she’d just bring it up on her own.

Ellie shook her head. She hadn’t even told Mark yet, didn’t have a clue what his reaction would be. She was just making the same mistake she always made: an idea had crept into her head and she’d sprinted away with it like an Olympic athlete, not even bothering to check that she was running in the right direction. Maybe she was so terrified of losing Mark that deep down she almost expected something to come along and demolish it. And at the first hint of trouble she’d been only too ready to believe her luck couldn’t hold out.

Sitting here moping was doing her no good. She pulled herself to her feet and started to walk round the house. As she visited every room different memories came alive: Chloe riding her truck up and down the hall; Sam marking homework at the dining table; the kitchen counter where she had made cakes with Chloe, more flour down their fronts than in the mixing bowl. And she realised she’d never been able to do this before, never been able to look at her cottage and see it alive with wonderful warm memories of her lost family.

As she sat trying to process all the new information Kat’s song from the wedding drifted through her head:

Yesterday is where I live, trapped by ghosts and memories.

But I can’t stay frozen, my heart numb, because tomorrow is calling me…

Ellie guessed the song had been about her break-up with Razor, but the simple lyrics about learning to love again had been so right for their wedding day too. ‘All My Tomorrows’ was the title. And she’d promised the rest of hers to Mark, willingly. Nothing in the world could make her take that promise back. So there was only one thing to do: she had to go back home—her real home, Larkford—and let Mark know he was going to be a father. Whatever fallout happened, happened. They would just have to deal with it together.

Her instincts told her it was going to be okay. She hoped she was brave enough to listen to them.

She grabbed her keys off the table and took long strides into the hall, her eyes fixed on the front door. A shadow crossed the glazed panel. She hesitated, then walked a few steps further, only to halt again as a fist pounded on the door.

‘Ellie? Are you there?’

She dropped her keys.

‘Ellie!’

‘Mark?’ Her voice was shaky, but a smile stretched her trembling lips. She ran to the door and pressed her palms against the glass.

‘Let me in, or so help me I’m just going to have to break the door down!’

She patted her pockets, then scanned the hallway, remembering she’d dropped her keys. She ran to pick them up, but it took three attempts before her shaking fingers kept a grip on them. As fast as she could she raced back to the door and jammed the key in the lock. An ugly grinding sound followed as she turned it, then the key refused to move any further. She wiggled and jiggled it, pushed and pulled the door, trying all her old tricks, but it wouldn’t budge. The key would not turn in either direction, so she couldn’t even get it out again to have another go.

‘Ellie? Open the door!’ The last shred of patience disappeared from his voice.

‘I’m trying! The lock’s jammed.’

‘Let me try.’

The door shuddered and groaned under Mark’s assault, but remained stubbornly firm.

Ellie sighed. ‘They don’t make doors like this any more.’

Between pants, she heard Mark mutter, ‘You’re telling me.’

She pressed her face to the stained glass design, able to see him through a clear piece of glass in the centre. He looked tired, disheveled and incredibly sexy. Without warning, she started to cry again.

He stopped wrestling with the door and looked at her through the textured glass. ‘We have to talk.’

She gulped. He sounded serious. Was serious good or bad? Good. Serious was good. Please God, let serious be good!

‘I know,’ she said.

‘Why are you here, instead of at home?’

She took a deep breath and turned away from him, pressed her back against the door, then slid to the floor.

‘How did you know where to find me?’

‘I phoned Charlie in a panic and she suggested I might find you here. I’d already been to your parents’ house and your brother’s.’

She nodded. Charlie knew her so well. Maybe too well. If her friend hadn’t guessed where she was she might have made it back to Larkford and Mark would never have known how stupid she’d been this afternoon. But why had her first impulse been to run? To come here? Did that mean something?

‘Ellie?’

She took a deep breath. ‘Do you think we got married too fast, Mark? I mean, did we get carried away? Should we have waited?’ Everything just seemed so confusing today.

She heard him sit on the step. His feet scraped the gravel path as he stretched his legs out. ‘Are you saying you want out?’ he said quietly. ‘Are you saying you want to come back here for good? I thought you loved me, Ellie. I really did.’

Ellie spun onto her knees and looked through the letterbox. He looked so forlorn, so utterly crushed, she could hardly speak. ‘I do love you,’ she said, in a croaky whisper. He looked round, and her stomach went cold as she saw the sadness in his eyes.

He tried a small smile on for size. ‘Good. Come home with me, then.’

Her fingers got tired holding the brass letterbox open and she let it snap shut. Carefully, because she was feeling a bit wobbly, she pulled herself to her feet. He stood too, and leaned against the door, trying to see her through the multi-coloured glass. Ellie raised her fingers to the clear green diamond of glass where she could see his left eye. It reminded her of the colour of the sunset flash. Of true love. Of coming home.

‘I’m sorry, Mark. It’s just…I just needed to be somewhere that reminded me of Chloe.’

The green eye staring at her through the glass blinked. She knew what he was thinking. He thought she’d come here to remember Sam too. But while she had unearthed forgotten memories of both the people she’d lost, it didn’t make the slightest impact on what she felt for Mark.

‘I love you, Mark. And as soon as we work out a way to get this door open I’m coming back home. I promise.’

He nodded again, but she could tell he only half believed her. Another wave of emotion hit her and she began to cry again. What was wrong with her today? ‘I don’t know why I’m doing this,’ she said, half-sobbing, half-laughing. ‘I can’t seem to get a grip…’

‘Perhaps it’s the hormones?’

Hormones?

She jumped as the brass flap of the letterbox creaked open again. Something plastic rattled through and clattered onto the floor. Her pregnancy test! She’d left it in the sink. So much for a cool, calm testing of the water on that subject.

‘When were you going to tell me?’ he asked, his voice going cold. ‘I didn’t expect to find out I’m going to be a father from a plastic stick. You could have called me at the very least.’

‘I was going to tell you, but then I…I forgot Chloe’s name. And that just freaked me out. I was scared. What if I forget her altogether when this new baby comes along? I couldn’t live with myself. You do understand, don’t you?’

She heard him grumble something under his breath. The heavy crunch of his feet on the gravel got quieter.

‘Mark!’ Ellie ran to the door and pressed her nose against the glass.

No answer. She’d finally scared him away with the ghosts from her past. Her unfinished business had caught up with her.

‘Mark!’ She sounded far too desperate, but she didn’t care.

She dropped the test and flung her full weight against the door. Unimpressed, it hardly rattled. She banged it with her fists, hoping to catch Mark’s attention. She needed to tell him how stupid she’d been, that she thought he’d be a wonderful father.

‘Mark!’ Hoarse shouts were punctuated by sobs as she continued to bang on the door.

She stopped.

No faint crunch on the gravel. No hint of a shadow moving up the path. She used the door for support as she slumped against it, exhausted. He couldn’t leave now, could he?

She managed one last hollow plea, so quiet he couldn’t possibly hear it. ‘Don’t go.’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

She spun round to find him striding towards her down the hallway.

‘How did you—?’

He nodded towards the back door, not slowing until he crushed her close to him. His lips kissed her wet eyelids, her nose, her cheeks, and came to linger on her mouth. She might be confused about many things, but here in his arms everything seemed to make sense. When she finally dragged herself away, she looked into his face. All the passion, tenderness and love she had ever hoped to see there were glistening in his eyes.

‘Ellie, there is room in that massive heart of yours for all of us. Easily.’ He stroked the side of her face. ‘Just because we’re going to make new memories together—the three of us—it doesn’t mean you have to erase the old ones.’

He dipped his hand into his pocket and pulled something out of it. It was only as she felt cold metal round her neck that she realised he had brought her locket with him, and that he was fastening it at her nape, underneath her hair.

Her lip quivered. ‘But what if I do forget? My brain’s not reliable all the time, is it?’

He looked at her with fierce tenderness. ‘You won’t forget. I won’t let you. If you lose a name or a date I’ll remember it for you. We’re in this together, Ellie. You and me. And I want all of you. We have the future, but your past has made you who you are now, and that’s the woman I love.’

She raised both hands and stroked the sides of his face, looking just as fiercely back at him. ‘Oh, I love you too,’ she whispered, and pressed her trembling lips to his.

She had one thing left to ask. Just because she needed to be one hundred percent certain. ‘You do want children?’

Waiting for his reaction, she swallowed, trying to ease the thickening in her throat.

His hands moved from her back to splay over her still-flat stomach. She laughed. He looked as if he was expecting evidence there and then. He was just going to have to be patient.

‘I want it all. I want our baby. I want to change nappies and clean up sick and crawl around on the floor with him. I want to give him brothers and sisters and teach the whole lot of them to play cricket. I want to help our children with their homework, teach them how to drive, give our daughters away at the altar. And I want to do it all with you by my side. Will you do that with me, Ellie? Do you want that too?’

Ellie threw back her head and laughed with joy. Mark always had made everything seem so simple. She was the one who made it all so complicated. She kissed him with a fervour that surprised them both.

Then, for the second time that month, she said, ‘I do.’

ELLIE crept across the carpet in her bare feet and peered into the empty cot.

‘Shh!’ A low voice came from a dim corner of the room. ‘I’ve just got him off to sleep.’ Mark was pacing up and down, their two-week-old son cradled against his shoulder.