The Love of My Life(44)

She hugged me hard, burying her face in my shirt, and warm tears bled through the cotton onto my chest. Behind us, a bunch of young men were falling about laughing, singing a tuneless song with the lyrics ‘Blake smells of fish, Blake smells of fish.’

I remember our journey home later, how quiet she was, how she held my hand as we sped north on the tube. How she stopped me in the street, just before we went into our house, and said, ‘I love you so much, Leo,’ and how I smiled because I knew she meant it.

She did love me. She does love me. I haven’t just made it up.

But then I think of all the people I’ve written up in my time as an obituarist. The aristocrats with their happy marriages and long-term sexual relations with the housekeeper. The gangsters with girlfriends in every city. The married academics with their student lovers, the artists with their orgies. Many of these people claimed, towards the end of their lives, that they loved their spouses deeply; that their marriages had never suffered because of their infidelities.

Maybe it is possible to love someone and have basic physical sex with someone else? Maybe it is even possible to love two people?

I try not to think directly about Ruby, because I can’t, but the truth about her has already lodged itself somewhere in my skin. Jeremy and Emma met late at night at around the time she got pregnant. This, after years and years of us trying without success to have a baby.

They saw each other in Northumberland this week. They’ve been messaging each other. Emma calls him ‘the father of my child’.

There is no one on earth to whom I’m related by blood, I realise. Absolutely no one.





Chapter Twenty-Five


EMMA


I don’t take Ruby downstairs. I know something has happened by the way John Keats slinks into the bathroom with his tail rammed between his legs. He only does this when he’s seen human behaviour he doesn’t understand.

I help Ruby into her pyjamas, listening for a sound from the kitchen, but none comes. A quiet space of fear grows in my chest as I read Ruby her bedtime story. Since asking me about Mags earlier, Leo hasn’t replied to any of my messages.

The kitchen is like a held breath when I make it downstairs. Leo’s weekend bag is there, but mine is on its back, stranded like an overturned beetle. John Keats stands at my side, pointing his anxious nose at the wireless speaker through which we play jungle.

‘Leo?’ I say, to nobody. Ruby’s preschool plant, in the corner, is now quite dead. She’s watered it to an early grave.

I hold myself still, trying to think what might have happened to Leo.

John pants. ‘It’s OK,’ I tell him. ‘It’s OK, John.’

Then I spot my phone on the worktop, and hear a small wail come out of my mouth.

It is not OK. My phone was in my bag when I took Ruby up for her bath.

Leo, no.

And there it is, when I pick it up: my half-written message to Jeremy. The cursor blinks benignly at the end, awaiting instruction.

. . . you are the father of my child, for God’s sake . . .

The room falls silent. Soft pink clouds twist over the trees in the garden. A cat is sitting on the back wall, washing its paws.

‘No,’ I say quietly. ‘No.’

I read my draft again, twice, three times, and imagine Leo doing the same, the agony in his body, the disbelief.

‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ I whisper, before scrabbling to dial his number.

Hello, this is Leo Philber, says his voice. His lovely voice. Sorry I can’t take your call. Please leave a message, and I’ll come back to you as soon as I can.

We laughed about ‘come back to you’. I said it was American; he said it was what all the cool young journalists said on their voicemails these days, at which I had laughed very hard indeed, and he’d been unable to keep a straight face.

I try to think. Maybe he hasn’t read it? But of course he’s read it. And besides, Leo would never have invaded my privacy in this way if he wasn’t already close to the truth.

The phone screen clears, suddenly, starts ringing. I nearly cry with relief – but it’s not Leo, it’s Jill. I cancel the call.

I try messaging.

Leo, are you there?

Tick: the message leaves my phone.

Two ticks: the message arrives in his.

Two blue ticks: he’s reading it.

Relief breaks over me, although I don’t know why. I have no hope of undoing this.

My darling, please come home. I have to explain this to you

Two blue ticks. I try to picture him, the reading glasses he never cleans, smudged and sad. Maybe he’s out on the Heath as the evening greys. Or on the tube, paused at an underground station before the train swishes onwards to – to where? Oh God, Leo.

Jill calls again. I cancel it. Seconds later, she tries again. I cancel it again; I’ll ring her tomorrow.

I start another message to Leo, trying to explain, but stop. What can I say? The message he’s found goes so much deeper than Ruby’s parentage. There are important reasons why I’ve shielded him from it; these years of collusion and misery between Jeremy and me. How can I tell him now, in a text message?

He goes offline. I send another message, asking if he’s still there, but it doesn’t deliver.

In the middle of this, Jeremy texts. Are you OK? I don’t have any news. Just checking Janice hasn’t been in touch.