Seven Days of Us(42)
Her thoughts were interrupted by footsteps on the stairs, and Andrew charging in. “Emma!” he barked.
“What? What’s happened?”
“Nothing, just, I just—would you like coffee? I was about to make some,” he said, sounding short of breath.
“Isn’t that mine?” he added, looking at his old briefcase in her hands.
“Yes, you don’t still need it, do you?”
“Well—I can’t chuck it! It’s practically an artifact now. A museum piece. Christ, to think we all carried these!” he said, grabbing it off her. “And now it’s just God-awful iPads.” He stood, clutching it to his chest.
“I was just about to see if there was anything in it,” said Emma.
“There’s nothing. I remember emptying it when you first stowed it up here. It was a seminal moment. This case came everywhere with me.”
So he still hadn’t forgiven her, thought Emma, as Andrew skulked off to one of the side bedrooms with his precious case. She crouched over a box of old kitchen gadgets, but she couldn’t concentrate.
When Andrew quit his Beirut post in 1987 and became so chippy with her, she had blamed motherhood. He minded her shift in priority, she’d told herself. But she could see, now, that his real gripe had been her insistence he come home. It was galling to think he hadn’t accepted it, after all these years. She resented being cast as the party pooper—particularly since she’d sacrificed her own career when Olivia was born. She could have made quite a success of catering. She’d had dreams of launching her own company, Emma’s Eats, or just Emma’s. The fact that Andrew had never become a household name as a columnist wasn’t her fault.
Andrew
THE ATTICS, WEYFIELD HALL, 11:15 A.M.
? ? ?
Hugging the briefcase, Andrew sat on Emma’s school trunk in the garret where he had hidden on Friday. His fingers shook as he unlocked the catches and tucked Leila’s letter into his breast pocket—vowing to burn it on tomorrow’s bonfire. Thank God he’d got up there just in time. Waiting for his pulse to slow, he saw a stack of old copies of The Times in a box by his feet. The top one had his byline on the front page—a 1985 report on Hezbollah and the hostage crisis following Alec Collett’s abduction. He read it hungrily, and the others beneath. This was the stuff he should have kept writing, not drivel about tasting menus. He had known so much at that time, had been so intent on getting the truth published, read, understood. The idealism of youth, he supposed. He finished the last cutting and delved deeper. At the bottom of the box was a bundle of old-fashioned blue Airmail letters. Half were in his own handwriting, half were in Emma’s. He unfolded one of his:
April 4, 1981
Brown-Eyed Girl,
I’m writing this from the camp, where we’ve been holed up for forty-eight hours. Our usual crummy hotel would be unimaginable luxury by comparison. We’ve been on rations for two days, nothing but crackers and boiled water and dehydrated astronaut food. I ought to be filing a piece on the Mujahideen, but all I can think about is you. It’s hopeless—even when the editor chases my copy, I just think how much I need to hold you again, to kiss your elegant neck, to feel you beside me. I want to be touching you, always. I miss you so much, Emma. And I want to show you off. I wish I’d never broken the Bunty story, that we’d never got into this secret mess. You were right, we should have told your parents at the start. Now I’ve made everything more complicated. What do you think about the Royal Wedding idea? We could start over, they needn’t ever know about last year. You will wait for me, won’t you? I have nightmares that you’re going to go off with some chinless baronet your parents would approve of. You won’t, will you?
Oceans of kisses,
A x
PS: Your royal English rosiness would need a lot of sun cream here. It’s just as well you’re safe at home in darkest Battersea. I’m not going to give up on moving you north of the river, by the way. One day, you’ll see the light.
He remembered writing it at the camp where he’d briefly been stationed during the Soviet-Afghan War, instead of his usual post in Beirut. He opened up the next one, from Emma.
April 10, 1981
Dearest Andrew,
I adore posting letters to you, it feels so romantic and old-fashioned. And I love getting your spidery handwriting back—I think your t’s and k’s look like you, all tall and skinny. I should be quick because I have to get to the kitchens in a second (Arabella and I are doing a swanky kiddy party tomorrow and they’ve requested Mr. Men chicken Kievs), but I had to answer your poor letter—is it swelteringly hot? Are you really living on Ryvita and Cup-a-Soup? I can’t bear it! Shall I send you something nice to eat? What shall I send? I can’t wait for you to come home. I miss you so much, too. I wish you were kissing me RIGHT NOW. I can’t concentrate at work because of it, either. I nearly made meringues with salt yesterday, and it would have been all your fault.
Please be careful, won’t you.
All my love X
PS: Let me think about the wedding idea. Wouldn’t it be better just to tell the truth? Maybe Mama and Papa won’t mind about Bunty?
PPS: I won’t go off with a baronet. I hate baronets, chinless or otherwise.
PPPS: I’ll never be persuaded up to Camden.
There were several boxes of them, dating from 1980 to 1984, when Olivia had been born and the letters had been replaced with sporadic, distracted phone calls. By the time he’d read the whole lot, his neck was stiff and his foot was fizzing with pins and needles. He felt as if he was surfacing after hours underwater. Emma must have kept the letters—he hadn’t seen them since they were written, though he vividly recalled their composition in the shimmering heat, and the thrill of ripping open a blue envelope from Emma. So why did he feel as if he’d been reading about a pair of strangers?