Seven Days of Us(51)
“That night your birth mother and I, er, met, Emma and I were already an item. A couple, as it were. So . . . Not my finest hour.”
“But, wait, I thought you and Emma met the summer of ’81? I found this whole article about it. You were reporting on the Royal Wedding, and she was a guest, right?”
“That was what we told people, at the time. But we had in fact been ‘courting,’ so to speak, in secret. For well over a year. I’d broken a scandal about Emma’s uncle—in the press, I mean—and I knew her family would recognize my byline and disapprove of me. So we kept schtum to begin with, and then, when that became unsustainable, I was introduced on the pretext that we’d just met at the Royal Wedding. Idiotic, in retrospect. I doubt they bought it for a moment. We were young, in our defense. And we were both at the wedding—that was true.”
Stop gibbering, he instructed his brain. He was making himself sound worse and worse. Why had he gone into so much detail? All Jesse needed to know was that Andrew had been unfaithful to Emma, with Leila. Which was bad enough. What a start.
“Jeez, I’m sorry. If I’d known, I would never have just shown up. Does Emma know?”
“Ah, no. No, she doesn’t.”
Jesse pushed his hair back, and Andrew saw himself in the gesture—and his own, square hairline. Proof at last that he had contributed to this Adonis.
“I see why you came. I’m sorry you didn’t hear from me sooner,” he said. “I had every intention of writing to you.” Out loud, it sounded hopelessly gauche.
“That’s OK. I get it,” said Jesse. For a moment, Andrew thought he might rise for a manly, back-slapping embrace. But he just took another sip of tea.
“So where did you and Emma meet?” said Jesse.
“Me and Emma?” The question threw him. What did it matter to Jesse? “She was catering a media bash I had to go to. She dabbled in the canapé business back then. Eyes meeting over a tray of vol-au-vent, sort of thing.”
“Awesome!” said Jesse, as if it was a huge relief to respond positively again. Andrew fought the impulse to point out that vol-au-vents hardly inspired awe, in the true sense of the word.
“How is Emma, by the way?” asked Jesse, after a moment.
“Sorry?”
“I mean, how’s she doing? Did she decide about treatment?”
“Treatment?”
“Chemo. For, like, the cancer. She told me when we met.” His face took on the appalled look it had in the hall. “Oh, wait, shit. You don’t know?”
Phoebe
THE OAK STAIRS, WEYFIELD HALL, 10:34 A.M.
? ? ?
It felt like they’d been sitting on the top step for ages. Phoebe’s buttocks were numb, and she needed to pee. She wasn’t sure what they were waiting for, and she suspected Olivia wasn’t either. But there seemed to be a tacit agreement to stay together.
“Oh my god, Mummy told me about him,” Phoebe had said once their parents and the man were in the kitchen. “This random guy she started chatting to in the airport. She said he was gay. D’you think he’s, like, Daddy’s boyfriend?” She shuddered, thinking of the day Andrew had taken ages to get the Christmas tree. Perhaps he’d been calling his boy toy. She’d known something was up.
“Phoebs! There’s probably a totally reasonable explanation.”
“But why would Mummy say she ‘knew everything’? Should we go and see if she’s OK?”
“No! Leave her.”
Phoebe feared Olivia was about to quiz her about Emma’s diagnosis again. She wished she hadn’t told her sister last night. The more people that knew, the more real it felt. But instead Olivia said, “They will understand that he can’t leave the house now, whoever he is. Won’t they?”
Phoebe realized how rarely her sister asked her opinion on anything.
“Guess so,” she said. “They let George stay after he’d been here about five seconds.”
“True.”
“Why are you so stressed about the rules? I thought it was just, like, a precaution to be safe. That’s what you said, before you went.”
“I’m not stressed. It’s just, with Sean and everything.”
Phoebe looked at her sister’s profile. Her jaw was clenched.
“Sean?”
“Sean Coughlan,” said Olivia slowly, looking round at Phoebe as if she was stupid. “My colleague with Haag. Don’t you ever read the news?”
“Oh, right. Him. Sorry, I just, I think of the news and real life as, separate, I guess.”
“Exactly. Not your problem.”
“That’s not fair. It’s ’cause when I read about it, it’s so sad, and there’s nothing I can do, so . . .” She knew Olivia would think this was feeble. “I just don’t work in news, so I’m not thinking about it all the time.” She could feel the fight from last night resurfacing. She didn’t want to argue. Whatever was going on downstairs, she felt instinctively that they needed to stick together.
“It’s not whether you ‘work in news’ or not, it’s . . . Sorry, I’m just—” Olivia took a deep huffy breath, like she couldn’t get enough air in. “It’s like this constant, relentless anxiety,” she said. She was still staring straight ahead, not looking at Phoebe.