The Reunion

convinced I can hear someone moving around downstairs, nails scraping at the window…’
    ‘Jesus, don’t. I’ve got to sleep out in the barn, remember?’
    Jen giggled. ‘Sorry. But it does feel… I don’t know. It’s really stupid.’
    ‘What is?’
    ‘You know I don’t hold any truck with the supernatural. I don’t believe in God, I think that once we’re gone, we’re gone, but still. This place, there’s something about it. I feel him here.’
    ‘That makes sense. This place
is
Conor somehow. There’s so much of him in it, every beam, every board, the table in the kitchen…’
    ‘It’s true. Also, if he was going to haunt anyone, it would be you and me, wouldn’t it?’ She tried to keep her voice light. Dan didn’t reply, he just squeezed her leg again, moving a little further up the bed, so that he was sitting level with her hips. She propped herself up on her pillows, so that she could look him in the eye.
    ‘Have you spoken to your girlfriend?’ she asked him. For some reason Jen didn’t want to say her name.
    Dan shook his head. ‘You didn’t reply to any of my letters,’ he said.
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘It was the guilt, wasn’t it? Was it just the guilt? Or was it more than that? Christ. I can’t believe I’m asking you this.’ He gave a low little laugh. ‘For years, years after it happened, I wondered. I just wanted to know, I was desperate to know, whether there was ever going to be a chance or whether I should just forget about you. I couldn’t forget about you.’
    ‘I’m sorry, Dan, I’m sorry.’
    ‘You should have replied to my letters, Jen. Even if it was just to put me out of my misery…’ He was leaning over her, their faces almost touching, their lips almost touching.
    ‘I betrayed him,’ she said softly.
    ‘He didn’t know.’
    ‘I knew. And I can’t ever be certain whether…’ She broke off.
    Dan leaned in closer, kissed her lips. She closed her eyes and breathed him in. His arms were around her waist, pulling her body into his. ‘I just want a chance,’ he said. ‘We never had a chance.’
    Jen wavered, caught between the temptation to give in to him and the certain knowledge that it would be a huge, confusing mistake. Gently, she pulled away from him. Her rational side dominated.
    ‘I… this… you…’ She was rational, she’d just lost the power to construct full sentences.
    ‘Sorry.’
    ‘Don’t be sorry.’ She smiled at him, traced her thumb down the side of his face, across his lips. ‘I don’t think you really want this, Dan.’
    ‘I do, believe me, I do.’
    ‘Right now, maybe. But I can’t really act on right now any longer. I’m going to be a mother. I’m almost forty. At some point I have to start acting like a grown-up.’
    ‘But, I do too,’ Dan said. ‘That’s what I want, too.’
    ‘Really? You want to leave your beautiful German film star and start a life with me and my baby in genteel English suburbia?’
    ‘I… I… Does it have to be suburbia?’ he asked. Jen laughed. ‘I want a family,’ Dan said. ‘I don’t care where we live.’
    ‘Dan, I know you do, I know you’ve always wanted that, but… you can’t just give up everything you have, for an idea of family, for a child that isn’t yours, for someone you hardly know any longer.’
    ‘I know you.’
    His expression was so earnest – he meant it, this declaration, it was heartfelt. But it was also Dan; he was a romantic, he allowed himself to get carried away. And it was tempting to go along with him, to allow him to carry her away too. Only she’d done that once before, and it hadn’t ended well, not for anyone. She had to be the sensible one this time.
    ‘Yesterday you were in love with your girlfriend,’ Jen pointed out. ‘You talked about how she inspired you, how she made you feel…’
    ‘She won’t be family. It’s not like that with us. She doesn’t want kids, she doesn’t want to settle down…’ There was a note of desperation in his voice, real longing.
    ‘And you do all of a sudden? When did you decide this? This afternoon?’
    Dan’s shoulders slumped. ‘You know that’s what I’ve always wanted, what I really wanted,’ he said. She heard pain in his voice, anger. He got to his feet and turned to leave.
    ‘Dan, don’t go. Please, just wait a minute.’
    ‘It’s fine,’ he said, and just like that his voice was light again, all earnestness and emotion gone. They might as well have been talking about the