The Love of My Life(48)

She winks. To try to kill a few painful hours yesterday I took Ruby to Ikea to buy a replacement, and Della is no fool.

I pause by the door as she puts it on a table, remarking to a colleague that the plant has come back looking substantially smaller. ‘They’re all the same,’ says the colleague, oblivious to my presence. ‘Middle-class parents. Can’t ever admit to being wrong.’

This final heaping of shame does it. The tears come, and I flee.

As I walk off down the road, at speed, I hear a car pulling up to the kerb next to me. I take no notice until I hear the door open and my name called.

I turn to see who it is.





Chapter Twenty-Nine


LEO


At 9.55 a.m. I call Emma to find out why she is not here. Although she’s late for everything, always, this was one appointment I trusted her to make.

Her phone rings out.

I try again at 10.30. Then at 11.00.

Is she with Rothschild, getting her story straight? The thought makes me want to throw my teacup at the wall. I don’t, because it’s rare Huguenot porcelain left to Emma by her grandmother. Instead I find an Ikea one and smash that. I have never done anything like this before, and it does not make me feel any better.

I sweep up the fragments and call the obits desk to tell them I’ll be working from home. Kelvin seems unbothered but Sheila calls me straight away.

‘What’s happened?’ she asks. I can hear her moving away from the obits desk. ‘Did it not go well?’

‘Emma didn’t turn up,’ I tell her. ‘We were meant to meet here at nine thirty. No sign of her. She’s not answering her phone.’

I can almost hear her frowning. ‘That’s strange. I thought she was desperate to explain herself to you?’

‘She was. She’s done nothing but message me about how sorry she is, how she needs to explain, how much she loves me. But this morning: zilch.’

‘Keep me posted,’ Sheila says. ‘Please?’

At 11.15 I call the nursery, suddenly panicking that Emma has taken Ruby and done a runner. I speak to Della, who assures me that Ruby is there, and that Emma dropped her off at 8.45 ‘with a very perky-looking plant’.

I update Sheila. She replies with a puzzled emoji, and Sheila is not someone who dabbles with emoji.

Unease drums in my stomach. I try Emma’s right-hand woman, Nin, first at Emma’s UCL department and then, when she doesn’t answer, on a mobile number I find in Emma’s Rolodex. She tells me Emma called in sick this morning, but spoke to someone else. ‘Is she OK?’ Nin asks.

‘Who knows?’ I say. I laugh oddly, and end the call. Nin probably thinks I’ve killed her.

That huge space is opening up in my chest again: I have to do something. I write a note for Emma on the kitchen blackboard and leave the house. I go and buy milk. When I return, it is midday and she’s still not here.

I force myself to take John Keats for a walk on the Heath. I watch people running round the athletics track, and John steals another dog’s ball.

When I return, it is 1.30 p.m. and she’s still not here. I make a sandwich I can’t eat.

I check in with Nin again. She says she supposes Emma could have gone to a marine ecology event in Plymouth, but she doesn’t sound convinced – pulling a sickie just so she can sneak off to her other employer is not the sort of thing Emma would do. I hear myself agreeing with her, but what do I know about my wife?

‘Will you let me know?’ Nin asks, and it’s then that I really begin to worry. ‘When you find her, will you message me?’

I promise I will.

I sit down with a notebook and make a list of the places Emma might be.

Jill’s

Jeremy Rothschild’s

Her therapist’s

Marine conference Plymouth

On the Heath/ladies’ pond

With one of her Mum Friends

With one of her other friends.

I feel better when I’ve finished this. There are many people and places to check, and by the time I’ve got through them, she’ll probably be home.

I find the Plymouth event first and give them a call. Several people are no help at all, but eventually I’m passed to someone who says he works with Emma when she’s in Plymouth, and she is definitely not there. ‘We’d have loved to have her here today!’ he says.

Her therapist tells me she cannot talk to me about Emma, but that if I am concerned I must call the police, and maybe Jill. I end the call as quickly as I can. That woman will know far more about me than is comfortable.

I try the two mum friends for whom I have numbers, but she’s not with them. They sound borderline excited that I’ve lost my wife. I promise more and more people I’ll keep them posted. Nin texts for an update. On the edge of all of their responses, I notice, is an unspoken suggestion that she might perhaps be having a serious depressive episode – something more weighty than the Times we are all used to – and that I should escalate my search if she doesn’t appear soon.

I try Jill, but there’s no reply. I text her, asking her to phone me.

Sheila calls again.

From the moment I got off the plane at Luton four days ago until 9am this morning, Emma has done nothing but text me. She’s been desperate to talk. What has happened? I begin to feel the first movements of real fear inside me.