Page 148 of What If I Never Get Over You

‘Oh my God,’ he murmurs, his eyes wide with wonder. He leans down and presses his lips to my stomach. ‘Daddy loves you, Taran and Stella,’ he whispers.

This man has my heart, and it isburstingwith love.

As soon as we heard that we were expecting a boy and a girl, Ash and I knew instinctively that we’d name our children after our childhood best friends.

Stella was my star, and my daughter will be too. Both our children will have names inspired by nature, because Taran, of course, means thunder in Welsh.

Even the excitement of our babies’ movements doesn’t stop us from wanting to lose ourselves in each other, and now the moon has drifted out of sight of the window and Ash has gone back to sleep. I trace his features with my eyes, luxuriating in this quiet moment and reflecting on my luck, on our happiness. Later this morning I will marry the love of my life.

We want this moment, while it’s still just the two of us, to be able to stare into each other’s eyes uninterrupted and say our vows.

I reach over and pick up my ring from the bedside table, a circle of perfect daisies, made out of white gold.

Philippa gave this to me when Ash broke the news of our engagement – it belonged to her mother. She said there was no pressure to wear it, but I couldn’t love it more.

I’ve grown surprisingly close to Philippa – or Philly, as she insists I call her now. She’s super excited to become a grandmother, although sometimes she gets caught up in worrying about everything Ash has sacrificed. She still believes that one day he’ll come to regret denying his children their heritage, and I have to admit that I’m also disposed to overthinking when it comes to this subject.

Sometimes I’ll imagine our daughter sitting out on the hilltop by the cabin and staring down at the grand mansionin the sun with its golden gatehouse that was gifted to her family by a king. I’ll imagine her running barefoot in the woods as a young girl and slipping her feet into high heels as a grown woman. Will she ever wish that she could have grown up living a grander life as the daughter of a viscount and viscountess? Will she wish she could have got married in the beautiful gardens that she will never be able to call her own?

I’ll imagine our son tearing down the corridors of his grandmother’s residence, his footsteps reverberating like his name, thunder, against the walls. I’ll think of him walking at ten, loping at thirteen. How old will he be when he can no longer enter those corridors and claim any right to them? Will he be at peace with it when his grandmother is no longer there to call on? When he realises that his father gave up his ancestral home?

Will he think of his own children and what they might have had, andtheirchildren, and the children who might come after? Will he resent his father for taking all that away from them?

When I find myself spiralling like this, I think of the words Taran said to Ash days before he died. And I remind myself that wedoswim in rivers, wedowatch the stars, listen to birdsong and the sound of the rain. We livegoodlives, dogoodthings and appreciate every moment.

So I try not to think about tomorrow. I try not to think about twelve years’ time or fifty or a hundred. I try not to think about five hundred years of the past, or five hundred years into the future. I try not to think about what the worldwill be like in a thousand years, or a million, or five billion, when the earth is ash and dust and life is a long-lost memory near a dying star in the vast universe. I gather my loved ones close, my boy of thunder, my brightest star, my strong, steady Ash, and I cherish today.