Shelter In Your Love (Beatles Fan Fiction)

109. I Don't Want To Do It

'George,' I cry out softly, and I am crying now, jagged sobs shaking me, but I can't tell the difference between my tears and the rain. I stroke my hand over the bump. Is it my imagination or is he sitting lower than before? I can't remember how it went with Bobbie. It all happened so fast then, my memory gets jumbled. Still, that can't be right. It's not time yet. Not for another five or six weeks. I don't have my maths wrong. I must have seen forty different doctors and midwives.

I swallow hard, gathering myself and take a deep breath. 'Come on,' I tell the bump. 'We can't give up that easily. Let's try this way.'

I choose the direction of the church. I don't think George would head for the docks. There's nothing down there but old warehouses, disused factories and a brewery.

I straighten my back and it complains, but I step forward decisively and then the pain comes. It's bad, the worst yet, it shoots through and around my body like a trapped electrical current. I would cry out but it takes my air from the lungs and my voice from my throat. I just double over, wrapping my arms around my stomach, screwing my eyes shut. However, it's mercifully brief. I recover, taking several gulps of air and I think it's gone, but as I step forward an echoing stab in my back makes me miss my footing on the kurb. I fall over, landing on my hands and knees in the gutter. For a moment I'm winded, coughing and spluttering, but even when I catch my breath, I stay where I am, in the road, wet through and defeated. I twist round and sit down heavily on my backside, covering my eyes with one hand and the bump with the other.

This can't be happening. It can't be. Please, God, someone, help me...

'Are you alright?' a gruff voice says above me.

I take my hand from my face and look up.

'Did you hurt yourself?' George asks, his jaw set defensively and his expression stoney. His hair hangs down around his face, as wet as my own as he leans over me.

'I fell,' I say, sounding dazed. I feel it too.

'Stand up. You'll get hit by a car there.'

I try to, but standing up under normal circumstances is currently a challenge and desolate, despairing and soaked to the bone in the middle of the street, it's impossible.

George takes his hands from his coat pockets and holds them out to me. I take them both in mine and he pulls me to my feet. Once I'm vertical again, he tries to let go but I won't release him, not now I have him. I can't risk that he'll run away from me.

'Are you hurt?' he asks again.

Yes, I think, but that's not what he means. 'No, I'm alright.'

He tries to take his hands from mine again, a little more firmly.

I squeeze his fingers tightly. 'Georgie...'

He takes a breath and swallows. 'You don't have to worry,' he says, voice hushed and head bowed. 'I have no intention of revealing where you are. You've clearly built your... new life here and I won't disrupt that, but I don't think we...'

'George, let me explain...'

'We can't stay married to each other--' he says, speaking over me. 'We can get a divorce. It'll be quiet. Private. No one knows we're married, no one needs to know we're divorced either--'

'No, George, listen--' I start, trying to smile. 'It's alright. It's not...'

'That's what I was coming back to say to you,' George interrupts, cutting me off.

That's what he's come to Liverpool to tell me? He wasn't trying to find me? He was here to tell me he wants a divorce?

'I shouldn't have walked out like that,' he continues as my mind reels. ' I was... surprised.' He raises his head. His eyes look black in the darkness. 'That's an understatement,' he adds, wryly.