The Love of My Life(31)

But his generosity only makes the guilt more acute. He has no idea what I’m risking, every time I come up here. He thinks I come only to heal.

Alnmouth, three and a half hours from London on the fast train, is where the dark curl of the river Aln empties into the North Sea. Dad and I came to this part of the coast every summer when we lived in Scotland. In my memory our holidays were ripe with everything I’d craved: laughter, spontaneity, the company of other human beings. I remember us rockpooling for hours with the family in the caravan next door, shared picnics on the edge of the dunes. Me laughing myself silly in the playground as light faded from the estuary and the wind whipped up the scrub grass on the saltmarshes. Golden times.

But there was nothing golden about my visit to this place four years ago. The wind was ferocious for the entire visit, rain flouncing in and out from the sea, and I couldn’t dry my clothes quickly enough. By the last day I was desperate to get back to London, and Leo.

That final morning was the one time I failed to make my checks. A fatal error. I went out to the beach, unthinking, with a plan to kill the last few hours crab-hunting on the exposed rocks beyond the golf course.

And then, suddenly, right there – amid the wrack-strewn boulders – there they were.

Metres from me, frozen to the spot. Both of them.

The police came quickly. I missed the last train back to London, but Jill drove all the way up to collect me, and Leo never knew a thing.

Today, though, it’s serene and beautiful, and warm enough for Ruby to ask if she can paddle. ‘Of course,’ I say, removing her shoes. The sun has really thrown me. It has no place in my rotten plans for the next twenty-four hours.

Ruby runs delightedly across the corrugated sand, jumping over tiny abandoned sandcastles; miniature Lindisfarnes and Bamburghs, covered in shells. She stops a couple of times to poke at coiled lugworm castings (‘Sand poos!’) and then gallops at speed into a large tidal pool, with no concern for its depth or her trousers.

I abandon our things under the dunes and go after my daughter, who’s already emerged from the pool and is now running down to the sea. Above her, blue sky is combed through with cirrus and the air is summer-holiday warm.

Jeremy Rothschild is coming to our rental cottage tonight.

Ruby runs into the water, hopping and squealing.

I was in Waterloo Station when he called to tell me Janice had disappeared. Already late, I was hurrying to catch a train to Poole Harbour but, after that news, didn’t even make it off the station concourse. I just stood there until Jill called and warned me this could ‘kick off.’ That’s when I realised I had to go home and hide my paperwork.

I don’t know what’s happened, Jeremy had said, over and over. I just can’t understand it, Emma. Janice was fine.

A few days later, I told Leo I was having dinner with Jill. Jeremy and I met face to face.

We went to a shisha lounge on the Holloway Road, because there was scant chance of a paparazzo spotting us there. Neither of us wanted a shisha pipe – we had no idea what to do with it – but the friendly manager, perhaps sensing the weight of the occasion, had brought one ‘on the house!’ A terrible scene ensued while he demonstrated how to use it, and we sat in bleak silence.

We ordered grainy coffees and talked in truncated sentences, mostly about the police search for Janice, until he looked me in the eye and asked me – in a tone I really didn’t like – if I had been in touch with her.

Of course not, I told him, but he didn’t believe me: I could see it in his eyes. He asked me again, and then again.

‘Is that what this meeting is about?’ I asked, eventually. ‘You think Janice has disappeared because of something I’ve said? Or done? Seriously, Jeremy?’

Jeremy took the shisha pipe and sucked for a minute. He looked ridiculous. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘But before you get too haughty, or defensive, you might want to ask yourself why I’d worry about that.’

There wasn’t much I could say in response.

‘I just needed to see you,’ he said, more levelly. ‘Ask you in person. I’m sure you’d do the same, in my shoes.’

And he was right. I would.

Sensing the meeting might soon come to an end, I’d asked, and then begged, for the same thing I always begged him for, and he said no.

Soon after, we’d walked off in opposite directions.

Since then there have been several text messages, plus his request to meet up here in Alnmouth. No further information about Janice and no explanation for his complaint to Leo’s editor, even when I sent him a furious message about it. He ignored that completely, as if my husband’s work was a matter of such infinitesimal importance he hadn’t even read to the end of my message. And I’d hated him, for a few days, until the old longing returned and I said, yes, I’ll come and see you in Northumberland.

I’d go anywhere, if I thought there was half a chance of him relenting. Anywhere at all. He knows the power he holds over me.

The sea is a film of green glitter, with my daughter hopping and shrieking at its edge. I smile as she comes sprinting over to me, gasping when she jumps up into a freezing clamp around my waist. ‘Mummy!’ she yells. ‘Too cold!’ I stagger across the sand, zigzagging, and she clings on. I kiss her head, already salted by the air.

Jeremy has always held power, I think, as my daughter jumps down and runs off. Even now, with Janice missing, I’m like a stray dog, following him around, desperate for crumbs.