The Love of My Life(82)

Leo goes upstairs and comes back with his sleeping bag and a pillow. ‘Let me get you a pillowcase,’ I say, desperately, but he says no, he doesn’t need one, and heads off towards the back door.

‘Leo,’ I whisper. I can’t bear it. Here, in this house, is all that is good. All that has healed me, that gave me a reason to live.

He turns around. John, who was following him, turns around too. He sits down by Leo’s feet, watching me.

‘Leo . . .’ Where would I even begin?

‘I can’t bear what you’ve been through,’ Leo says, into the silence. ‘I feel sick with grief for you, losing Charlie in such awful circumstances. For all you went through before and after. But, Emma, you didn’t try to trust me with it. You didn’t even try.’

He runs a hand through his hair. His lovely hair.

‘I didn’t even know your name,’ he says, and he, too, is on the brink of tears. ‘I have held you every night for ten years and I didn’t even know your name.’

He turns round and heads for the garden door, just as there’s a quiet knock at the front door.

Quick as a flash, Leo sinks to the floor and hugs John Keats, to stop him barking. ‘It’s probably Olly,’ he says. ‘He’ll have forgotten something.’

He stays holding the dog while I go to the front door.

But, instead of my brother-in-law, I find myself face to face with my son.

I stare at him.

‘Hi . . .’ he says.

‘Hello? Hi. Hi!’

Behind Charlie, at the bottom of our overgrown path, is Jeremy, in a parka and baseball hat combination he could only have borrowed from Charlie. The wind has picked up and the trees dance furiously, releasing an earlier rainfall on Jeremy’s hat. Jeremy half-raises a hand in greeting.

‘I’m sorry,’ Charlie says. ‘But I had to – there was something else I needed to talk to you about. Important. Should have brought it up earlier, but I . . . Well, something’s come up this afternoon. Since I saw you.’

I turn to Leo, heart suddenly pounding. ‘Leo, this is—’

‘Charlie.’ Leo’s voice is soft. He stares at my first child, opens his mouth to say something, but no words come out. I see my features everywhere in Charlie’s face. Leo must too.

‘Come in,’ my husband says, eventually. He lets go of John. John bounds at Charlie, delighted, dancing round him, knocking over a pile of books with his whipping tail. Charlie kneels down and plays with him, smiling and laughing for the first time today, and I realise I’m sitting on the floor, too, because my legs won’t hold me anymore.





Chapter Fifty-Seven


EMMA


We all go into the kitchen. Leo puts the kettle on. Jeremy goes over to Leo and, after a pause, they shake hands. It seems as if Jeremy’s apologising to him, although that makes little sense.

Charlie looks at the sleeping bag and pillow in a pile by the back door, but says nothing. ‘You OK?’ he asks, casually, as if I’m a mate he’s bumped into in the student union bar.

I shrug – ‘Bearing up, you know!’ – because I won’t undermine his belief that coming to see me was the right thing.

‘We were just parking when you two turned up in your car.’ He peers at Leo with interest. ‘Were you out together?’

‘No,’ Leo says shortly, although his tone isn’t unfriendly. ‘Listen, I’ll get out of your way in a minute, let me just sort out the tea.’

I hesitate. ‘Actually, I’d like you to stay.’

I can’t have any more secrets from him.

Leo pours tea. ‘I don’t mind going,’ he says, levelly. He’s so kind. So bloody kind.

Charlie looks to his father, who shrugs. Charlie says, ‘As long as this can be confidential?’

Leo nods his assent and hands Charlie tea, but he hasn’t put sugar in it and Charlie doesn’t ask.

‘OK then,’ Leo says, sitting down, and I feel so proud of him. Nobody looking in on this room would guess that my husband was sitting with the stepchild he only found out about a few hours ago.

‘Right,’ Charlie says, as John Keats settles on the rug in the middle of the room. John’s surprised by these late-night antics, but not unpleasantly so. He tucks his nose under his tail and watches us.

‘So . . . what happened this afternoon was that someone left a message on our answerphone. Someone from the shop, in Alnmouth.’

Jeremy chips in. ‘I asked them to call me if they saw Janice. Seems she popped in there this morning.’ He pauses, and I realise this sighting isn’t necessarily good news. ‘It’s probably inconsequential, but they said she bought two packets of paracetamol.’

Charlie rubs his hands over his face.

‘I’m sure she’s just in need of some pain relief,’ Jeremy goes on. ‘She gets bad tension headaches – but—’

‘She could already have bought paracetamol from someone else,’ Charlie blurts out, more to his father than to me. ‘She could have a great big stockpile of it by now –’

‘We’re going to assume she hasn’t,’ Jeremy says. ‘We’re going to assume she was buying paracetamol much in the way you or I would. Nobody ever just buys one packet; we always buy two.’ He turns to me. ‘The shopkeeper is someone whose opinion I trust – we’ve known her for years. She said Janice seemed fine; no cause for concern whatsoever. In fact, she only told me Janice had bought paracetamol because I asked what was in her shopping basket. As well as paracetamol she bought bread, cheese, pasta, a few apples and a chocolate bar. And a bottle of orange squash. I don’t think anyone contemplating the end would do that.’