The Love of My Life(94)

‘I – what?’

‘Leo, are you looking at Google Maps?’

‘Yes! But – oh. Yes, I see them.’

I clicked on them, and my heart beat faster. ‘These look promising.’ I clicked through a load of photos, trying to see if they had a view of Coquet Island, but Sheila beat me to it.

‘Coquet Island,’ she said. ‘Bingo. Right, let’s find out if she’s staying there.’

‘Are you able to do that?’ I asked, reverently. ‘Do you still have access to surveillance systems, or something?’

After an abrupt laugh, Sheila picked up what sounded like a landline and called a number. I waited, almost excitedly, expecting her to ask to be put through to some field agent in a Northumberland bunker.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Is that Alnmouth Glamping Cabins? Excellent. Now listen, I need to get hold of one of your guests, urgently. Her name is Janice Rothschild. Yes . . .’

A few seconds later, the call was done. ‘Right,’ Sheila said. ‘That was the owner of these huts. She’s in Sicily for the summer, but – yes, it says on her system that Janice is staying in hut number two. I suggest you call Emma. Get her over there as soon as she arrives in Alnmouth. She’s what, four hours away?’

She paused. ‘How was that for espionage?’ She was polite enough not to laugh.

I stared at the cabins online, picturing Janice having a couple of drinks for Dutch courage before opening her pills. My stomach churned. Would she have chosen her outfit? Did she have a last meal? Did she know what she was going to do when she woke up that morning?

I pictured the sight of her, collapsed on the floor, and I imagined Emma and Charlie walking into the hut, the sheer horror of finding her.

Then it was all very simple.

‘Ruby,’ I called. ‘Ruby, find your shoes. We’re going for a long drive in the car.’

I couldn’t allow Emma to do it. I couldn’t allow her to live another moment of this nightmare alone.

John wanders up to Emma and me, as we sit in silence. He wags his tail for a moment before heading off inside, in search of food.

I don’t know if Emma’s too tired to talk, or perhaps too nervous, but she sits perfectly still, arms wrapped tightly around her knees. She’s wearing the beanie hat again.

I track a bird as it crosses the bay. Emma’s taught me what these birds are before, but the name eludes me now. This drives her mad: she’s always said I never listen to a word she says, but I do. Did. I thought about her words late at night when I was dropping off. When I sat at my desk, writing obituaries. I thought about her words when I was driving, walking, eating, and I did that because she was the only person who had ever made sense to me.

I prise her left hand from her and slide off her wedding ring. I put it in my pocket. Emma inspects her bare hand, silently, but doesn’t look at me.

After a few moments I sense her body sag.

The bird cries, looping round above us. ‘We’re not married,’ I remind her.

Emma shakes her head. ‘No.’

I take her hand back. ‘But what’s clear to me is that we should be.’

She looks at me, sharply, then looks away.

‘Emma?’

I watch her, patiently, until she turns to look at me again. In the fast-falling darkness her eyes are deep seas. Unknown oceans, but I can learn them again. They’re the only ones I want to swim.

‘I will trust you,’ I tell her.

She hesitates. The bird loops over us again, wings still as it rides a current.

‘I will trust you,’ I repeat.

‘But will you? Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘But – really?’

I nod.

‘I know you, Leo,’ Emma says.

‘I also know me. Better than you might think.’

The bird disappears into the inky horizon, still calling.

‘I want us to get married. Properly. With Ruby in a sweet little dress, stealing the show. We don’t have to tell anyone, if you don’t want to have to explain it. But I want us to be married.’

After a long pause, she drops down onto her elbows. I drop down onto mine.

‘When Ruby and I were driving up here, I was trying to imagine shuttling her between two different houses for weekend custody. Us learning to become friends, trying to co-parent. One day meeting someone else. And it felt miserable. I don’t want that, I want us. I’ve only ever wanted us.’

Emma nods, almost imperceptibly.

‘Do you?’ I ask, when she doesn’t say anything. ‘Do you want us?’

She switches round to face me, resting on one elbow. Then: ‘Yes,’ she says, quietly. ‘More than anything.’

There’s inches between our faces. I feel her breath, I see her hair, still tucked behind her ear.

Emma has endured more pain in her thirty-nine years than most people do in a lifetime. And yet she’s still someone everyone’s secretly in love with, someone everyone wants to talk to at a dinner party. She’s still the funniest person I know, still the woman my boss would sack me for if she ever wanted a career change.

Yes, she’s complicated; she retreats from time to time to a dark place. She has ever-worsening problems with hoarding, a compulsive need to check Ruby is breathing and many other things besides. But she’s still Emma: vital, brilliant, infuriating Emma.