Chapter Text
Over the sea and far away, Claire existed in an ocean of guilt. She berated herself for getting carried away, thinking that she could find love in the middle of a warzone. Memories of flashing lights and sticky dance floors haunted her and made her cringe; was she really so vain and vapid? She had never been one of that crowd, out for a good time and damn the rest of them.
Confronted with the resettlement paperwork, she felt even more ashamed. No career. No qualifications. ‘I was married,’ she tried to explain, feeling painfully inadequate as the female lawyer lifted an eyebrow.
‘To Jamie?’ John Grey had asked, looking baffled. She felt her skin burn with embarrassment. ‘Erm, no. I met Jamie in June.'
‘I see,’ he had answered politely. She wondered what version of the tale he did see; his soft-hearted friend being taken in by some sort of hussy who had got herself pregnant, married him and had made off to Canada with all of his money, leaving him to his fate in Scotland?
She played the events of their story over and over again in her mind. The day he had found her, and told her she was staying with him, like it or not. That made her laugh, the stubborn Scot. The night he had wept in her arms when Edinburgh was bombed. They had lain together underneath the stars, in a state of worried intimacy, before he had confessed that he wanted to kiss her. The night that they had reached Glasgow, when they had kissed on the dancefloor, in the street, in the stairwell, before going straight to bed.
She thought of his body, so beautifully made. She loved his shoulders, broad enough to surround her completely, the way his arms held her with the promise of gentleness while the rest of his body burned with lust. His hands, big, calloused and frequently sporting gashes and cuts, able to make her whole body quiver with the stroke of a fingertip.
She missed his voice, the way he rolled his rs and missed out whole syllables, or planted extra ones in words like poem. Poyum, he had said. It’s a poyum, She had laughed until the tears came to her eyes, while he pretended to be insulted. She had never laughed so much in bed with a man. It had never felt so normal to be naked in anyone else’s bed.
She lay now in her own cold bed, her hands placed gently on her abdomen, relying on her memories to try and warm her soul. She loved him. She had loved him. He loved her. He had loved her. He had loved their child, aware of its existence before she had been. She repeated it all like a mantra to herself, trying to believe in the present tense and not be consumed by the past.