Mr. Nobody(89)
Chris stays quiet, he hasn’t told her what happened the night before last either. The kiss. That long, warm kiss fourteen years in the making. He can’t tell Zara how he lights up when he sees Emma, how she lets him look after her, how she makes him feel needed. And how Zara doesn’t. How he needs Zara more than she needs him and no matter how long they’ve been together he still feels closer to Emma.
“Say something, Chris,” she prompts, her voice quiet, hopeful.
Chris looks up at her, at his stuff littering the floor of their bedroom, at the honeymoon suitcase open next to him on the bed. “Honey, if I had told you who she was, you would have just written about it. Wouldn’t you?” He says it almost tenderly because he reasons, who’s he to judge, he promised to love Zara forever and he barely made a year.
“That’s not fair, Chris. I might not be an angel, but don’t pretend that’s the reason you didn’t tell me you’d invited her for a drink. Because you were worried I’d write a story about Charles Beaufort. I’m not an idiot. You asked her out for a drink because you wanted to spend time with her. You missed her, right? You liked her, back then, didn’t you? Did you guys go out? Did you sleep together back then?”
Chris looks at Zara’s un-made-up face—her cheeks are wet, her eyes red, but she’s still so beautiful—and he feels a deep ache of guilt. Marni and he didn’t go out. He never asked her, he’d been too afraid he’d ruin their relationship, their closeness, that he’d scare her away. So, no, they never slept together. And when Marni left, after her father’s death and everything that followed, he thought about her a lot. He wrote her a letter but hadn’t known where to send it; he’d asked the school to pass it on but they couldn’t. So he’d gotten on with his life, he’d gone to university and fallen in love with the closest girl he could find that reminded him of Marni. Thick brown hair, golden freckles, an infectious laugh. This was before he came back to Brancaster and got together with Zara. Perhaps it had been the way Marni left, the gap she left behind in his life, but he thought about her a lot. Less and less over the years, but every now and then so strong. He didn’t think he’d see her again. He wouldn’t have made a promise if he’d known she’d come back.
Chris knows he could tell Zara all of that, but why would he hurt her more? What good would it do to explain the reasons? And Zara shouldn’t have done what she did. “You’re making this about me, Zee. What you did to her was bad. Really bad. It’s like you don’t think the things you do affect people. You broke into her house. You’re so lucky that she hasn’t pursued this. Her hands and feet were bleeding, you know. And what you did, about her identity, that was just cruel, really cruel. It put her in direct—”
Chris’s iPhone blares to life on the dresser, on the other side of the room, its jaunty tune painfully at odds with the tone of their conversation. Chris makes a move toward it.
Zara’s eyes flare. “Don’t you dare answer that, Chris. Not right now.”
Chris squeezes his eyes shut and lets out a loud sigh. He sits back down on the bed as they wait, wordlessly, for the call to ring out.
After the silence settles, Zara collects her thoughts. “I was angry, Chris. I have apologized. I have said I’m sorry. There’s no way I could have known what would happen yesterday, you know that. Lichfield was hardly my fault. I couldn’t know someone would try to hurt her. You can’t blame me for that—”
The phone bursts to life again, insistently.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Zara whips around, picking it up without checking the number. “WHAT!” A voice on the other end, muffled, and Zara’s hand flies up to her forehead. “Sorry! Oh God, sorry. Yes, yes, he is. Who is this? Okay, one second.” She holds out the phone to Chris. “It’s a nurse from the hospital.”
“Who?”
“She didn’t say her name.”
* * *
—
Seconds later Chris bursts from the bedroom and bounds down the stairs, taking two at a time. “And have you called anyone else?” he asks.
Chris frowns at Rhoda’s reply, then asks, “Why would she say that?” At the base of the stairs he shrugs on his uniform jacket and rattles his pocket for car keys as he listens to the answer. “Okay! Okay, listen, it doesn’t matter, I’m on my way. No, you go back to the hospital if you’re on duty, she said just me, right?”
Zara appears at the top of the staircase. Where are you going? she mouths, her expression racked with guilt. Chris looks up at her and raises a hand—they’ll pick up this conversation later.
His attention is drawn back to the phone. “No, it’s okay. Don’t worry. I’m on my way to Holkham now,” he says, turning away from his wife. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
44
DR. EMMA LEWIS
DAY 13—TALK THERAPY
We sink down into the two chairs, opposite each other, and I steal a fleeting look to the front door—it’s too far, and besides, even if I managed to make it out onto the road, I know he would catch me. I’d feel the weight of him crashing into me from behind and that would be it. No, best not to run.