‘Georgie? What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘Nothing.’ She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand.
‘It doesn’t look like nothing.’ He filled the kettle and switched it on. ‘I prescribe a mug of tea. And I’m...’ He paused. ‘I’m not prying, but I’m here if you want to talk about it—and it won’t be going any further than me.’
Nobody at St Christopher’s knew that she was a widow. He’d kept his promise about that. She really had to stop letting Charlie’s behaviour affect every other relationship she had. Just because he’d been a cheat and a liar, it didn’t follow that everyone else in the world was, too.
‘It’s my wedding anniversary,’ she admitted. ‘Or it would have been.’ Would she even still have been married? Charlie’s child would’ve been crawling by now.
‘It’s the first anniversary since he died?’
‘Second,’ she said. The first one, though, she hadn’t known about Trisha, and she’d still been mourning the man she’d thought she’d married. Now... It was different. She knew Charlie hadn’t loved her as much as she’d loved him, or he wouldn’t have had the affair.
Ryan clearly thought she was still in mourning; maybe that was why he’d backed off so fast after their kiss. Should she tell him the truth? But then he really might be tempted to pity her—not just poor, widowed Georgie, but poor, widowed, clueless, cheated-on Georgie. She didn’t want that.
Georgie looked totally lost, and Ryan had to stop himself walking over and putting his arms round her. Things were still slightly awkward between them since he’d kissed her in the garden, and the last thing he wanted to do was make that awkwardness any worse.
‘The photos came up on social media as a memory from six years ago. I should’ve expected it, but it caught me a bit on the raw.’
‘I’m not pitying you,’ he said softly, mindful of when she’d told him that her husband had been killed in a landslide while helping people after an earthquake. ‘Of course something like this would catch you out. I’m planning to take Truffle for a very long walk by the sea on my wedding anniversary.’ It would be the second anniversary for him, too, since the divorce.
‘Do you miss her?’ she asked.
‘Sometimes,’ he said. He didn’t miss not living up to Zoe’s expectations—or his own. ‘I wish it could’ve worked out, but we wanted different things.’ She’d wanted a baby. He hadn’t. Not that he wanted to go into that. He shrugged. ‘She was in PR. We were both busy with our careers and worked ridiculous hours. I guess we grew apart.’ That was true: just not the whole truth. ‘It was an amicable split, or as amicable as it could be.’ After the fights. When they’d sat down and finally been completely honest with each other. When they’d realised that their differences were irreconcilable.
But it had still hurt that Zoe had fallen for someone else so quickly. Someone who’d been prepared to give her the baby she wanted. He was glad that Zoe was happy again; but he hadn’t really moved on and found someone else. Not because he still loved Zoe, but because he didn’t want to risk letting someone else down, the way he’d let his wife down. And Georgie had already had too much loss in her life. She didn’t need him complicating things for her.
‘Things are as they are,’ he said. ‘I love my job, I love my dog, and I love Edinburgh.’
‘You grew up here, didn’t you?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I miss my family,’ she said.
Oh, no. Please don’t let her ask him about his family. Because he didn’t have one. Just a grave he visited on the anniversary of his mum’s death. She’d been gone for three decades now; he had a couple of creased photographs of her that had survived the years of foster care, and that was it. ‘You’re welcome to invite them here. I could sleep on the couch.’
Her eyes glittered with tears. ‘That’s really kind of you, but I can’t ask you to do that.’
‘It’s no bother. Besides, I wouldn’t ask a guest to sleep down here with Truffle. She snores. And she’s not above waking you in the middle of the night—that’s why Clara bought the stair gate, after too many three a.m. visits from a dog who’s bright enough to know how to open a door and will lick your nose until you wake up and give in to her demands for a walk.’
Truffle’s tail thudded against the floor at the W-word, and he reached down to scratch behind her ears. ‘Yes, you daft beastie, I’m talking about you.’
‘I’m fine,’ Georgie said. ‘I guess...it just caught me a bit unawares.’
‘Things do,’ he said, feeling awkward.
‘I never thought I’d be a widow at thirty. I thought I’d be a mum. I was so looking forward to having a family.’
And here it was. The same issue he’d faced with Zoe. Georgie, too, wanted to be a mum. Ryan hadn’t wanted to be a dad. He knew nothing about how to be a dad. He’d never had a role model. His mum, until he was six; and then a string of foster parents who’d given up on him.
The one person who’d made a difference was the woman who’d come out of retirement to give temporary cover while his social worker had been on maternity leave: Elspeth McCreadie. She’d sat down with his sulking teenage self and told him that life wasn’t fair, and nobody pretended it was.
But he had a choice. He could focus on his past and be miserable for the rest of his life, or he could try making a difference to the world instead. That he was bright enough to do anything he wanted. He was good at science, so he could be a doctor, make other people better—and if he learned some social skills then his future could be better than his past. But Ryan was the only one
