Five Unforgivable Things
One family torn apart by secrets and betrayals. Perfect for fans of Sue Fortin.Over twenty years ago, Kate’s dream came true. After years of struggling, she was finally pregnant after pioneering IVF. But the dream came at a cost. Neither Kate nor her husband, Dan, could have known the price that they would have to pay to fulfil their cherished wish of having their own family.Now, years later, their daughter Natalie is getting married and she’s fulfilling her own dream of marrying her childhood sweetheart. Natalie knows she won’t be like most brides in her wheelchair, but it’s the fact her father won’t be there to walk her down the aisle that breaks her heart.Her siblings, Ollie, Beth and Jenny, gather around Natalie, but it isn’t just their father who is missing from their lives… as the secrets that have fractured the family rise to the surface, can they learn to forgive each other before it’s too late?
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2018
Copyright © Vivien Brown 2018
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Vivien Brown asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008252144
Ebook Edition © July 2018 ISBN: 9780008252151
Version 2018-05-16
For all the babies we have longed for, loved or lost
Table of Contents
Kate
Idon’t know why I’m talking to you. It’s not as if you can do anything to help, or undo what’s already been done. You will listen, though. I know that much. You’ll listen and you’ll let me talk, let me work things out for myself, just as you always have. You don’t tell me what to do, the way Dan does, or tries to, even now.
Dan and me. We were happy once. For a long time, we were happy, when it was just the two of us, loving and laughing, living in the moment, just enjoying being young. And being together. It seemed enough back then; more than enough. But it wasn’t. Not in the end. Dan wanted more, and when it came down to the now-or-never moment, so did I. A baby, a family, a happy-ever-after.
But it wasn’t what we got.
One last throw of the dice, that was what we were offered. A once-in-a-lifetime chance, with six numbers on it, and it could have landed on any one of them, or none of them at all. We both knew that. It all came down to luck, in the end. And to nature. Maybe even fate. Like most things in life, if you don’t take control of them, if you take your eye off the ball…
I did all right for a while, dealt with all the bad stuff the best I could. There are ways, you see. Tricks I learned, disguises I plastered across my face, masks I hid behind. Ways to get from day to day, coping, managing, putting one foot in front of the other. Ways to go forward, when all you really want to do is go back. Not thinking too hard. Or trying not to think at all. Being grateful for what you have, instead of dwelling on what you’ve lost. Keeping busy. Well, that one was easy enough. Sleep, when you can get it, which wasn’t so easy at all. Pills…
If there is one thing you’ve taught me, it’s that pain fades, dampens into something less raw. And so do memories, if you let them. But I can’t forget the mistakes. Everyone makes them, I suppose. But, for us, there were just too many. Things we did. Things we didn’t do, but should have. Things we did wrong.
Oh, it wasn’t just Dan. It was me too. I admit that. In fact, it was me who started it. Me who told the lie that set everything in motion, like a runaway train it’s impossible to stop. Yes, we made mistakes. Big ones. Mistakes that can’t be undone. Mistakes it’s almost impossible to get back from, no matter how much you wish you could.
Moments in our lives, when the things one of us chose to do would alter everything for both of us, alter the course of our marriage. And they did. They altered it, almost irrevocably. And very nearly broke us.
Five unforgivable things.
Kate, 1976
The first time I set eyes on Dan Campbell, I didn’t fancy him at all. He was younger than me, for a start. Only by a couple of years, as it turned out, but enough for it to show. And his hair was a strange kind of half-blonde, half-mouse colour. A bit streaky, like it was neither one thing nor the other. I wasn’t sure if he’d made an attempt to colour it himself with some dubious home-dye kit or if it was what nature had dealt him, but in any case I had always preferred tall, dark handsome types, and Dan fell down on all three counts.
