The Love of My Life(76)

Chapter Fifty-Four


Earlier


Jill’s bought pastries, not a fry-up. She busies herself heating milk for hot chocolate while I pee, wash my face, and mentally compose yet another message to Leo that respects his need for two more days, while somehow communicating that I adore him and that I lied to him all these years with good reason.

But of course, I have no phone, and Jill is being infuriatingly resistant to giving me hers.

I stand in front of her bathroom mirror, contemplating my face. I look exhausted; the skin round my eyes saggy and translucent.

What did I think would happen? Did I really believe I could bury these truths permanently inside myself, that Leo would never sense there was more?

Really?

‘Look. Jill,’ I say, when I return to the kitchen. ‘It’s so kind of you to do this, but I have to speak to Leo. Even if he doesn’t want to speak to me, I still have to sort out stuff concerning Ruby. Please let me borrow your phone.’

Jill gets cocoa out of one of her neat plastic storage boxes.

‘OK,’ she says. ‘Fine.’

She starts making a paste out of cocoa, sugar and milk, humming under her breath as if I’m not in the room.

‘Jill.’

‘Yes! Hang on, let me get these done, then I can—’

I go to the hallway where her coat and bag are hanging on their designated hooks. I get her phone out of her pocket and as she comes out I hand it to her, for the password.

‘Emma! Could you not have—’

‘Please just unlock it,’ I say. ‘Please, Jill. I’m desperate.’

She sighs, reaching for the phone, just as the intercom goes.

She jumps. Jill actually jumps, and her face changes completely.

‘Emma . . .’

‘Yes?’

Jill pauses. ‘Listen, I didn’t just bring you here for pastries and a heart-to-heart. I – there’s something important you need to know. It’s why I was trying to get hold of you Friday night.’

I close my eyes. ‘Can it not wait?’

She doesn’t reply. When I open my eyes she’s buzzing someone into the building. She runs a hand up and down her jeans, and it comes to me that she’s not just a bit nervous, she’s terrified.

‘What have you done?’ I ask, quietly. ‘Jill, what’s going on?’

‘Just wait a moment,’ she whispers. She creeps over to her front door and puts her eye to the spyhole.

‘Jill . . .’ I’m whispering too, although I don’t know why.

And then she straightens up and opens the door to a young man, standing outside. A man with my face and a male body.

With longish hair that needs washing and a oncered T-shirt, sun-baked to pink. He stands in the doorway, looking at me with fear and curiosity.

I would know my son anywhere. Even if I hadn’t spent years looking at pictures of him on the internet, I would know.

I stare at him. He stares at me.

My heart, pounding. All my life. This moment.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You’re Emma, right?’

I nod. Tears gather in my eyes. My child.

Seeing the tears, he balks. ‘Oh, I’m sorry – I . . . I didn’t mean to . . . I’m Charlie. Charlie Rothschild?’

I nod again, not trusting myself to speak. Grief falls inside me, a landslide.

‘I’ve been trying to get in touch with you, actually, I . . .’

I have longed for you every single day of your life.

Charlie.

Jill puts a gentle hand on my back and retreats into the kitchen, and my son speaks to me. The landslide takes everything in its path. He says, ‘I tried to reach out to you via Facebook, but I don’t think you knew who I was – or perhaps you just didn’t want to talk to me – you blocked me, after my second message, so . . . Look, I hope it’s OK for me to be here?’

He has tanned legs in shorts, deeply scuffed leather trainers.

My boy.

Finally, the tears burst from me. He is my son, and yet, we’re strangers. I scrabble in my pocket for tissues I don’t have; Charlie has to hand me one from Jill’s console table in the end.

I manage to say it is absolutely OK for him to be here. That it means more to me than he could ever imagine.

And then I sob into Jill’s tissue, and the poor boy is floored.

Stop crying, I think, and then I cry harder, even though I don’t want to do this to him.

I can’t stop. I cry and cry, while my son stands in the middle of Jill’s neat hallway, watching helplessly.

Jill’s face is blazing with anxiety. She didn’t plan for this.

I have to stop. With determination, I blow my nose, because they say that’s the best way to stop crying, and it actually works. The landslide slows, the fragile bowl of my body holds. After a moment Charlie sticks out his hand to take my sodden tissues. It is a kind gesture. His fingernails are grubby, the hairs on his arm bleached by the sun.

I have never had the chance to nag him about his fingernails. I have never had the chance to clip his tiny baby talons like I did Ruby’s, or to buy him toddler steps so he can reach the sink and wash his hands.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,’ he says.

‘No, no, it’s me who should be sorry.’