I think of my father, who showed me the Plough just before being posted to Montserrat with his Marine commando when a volcano erupted. On his return, he told me the mission had gone well, but didn’t seem to want to resume our astronomy conversations. I’d often find him looking up at the sky, but he seldom spoke.
I go in to check Ruby is breathing, and return with a blanket for Leo. (I had to do this on our wedding night too, when I found him napping in a corner while our guests danced.)
Only then, when there are no further tasks to do, do I feel brave enough to think directly about the phone call.
It stopped me in my tracks at Waterloo yesterday morning, coffee undrunk in my hand; commuters swarming around me. His voice was distant, as if he were calling from a mountain thousands of miles away.
I asked him to repeat himself, but he knew I’d heard.
I didn’t make it out of Waterloo, let alone to Poole Harbour. The departures board scrolled on through the morning, the commuter rush receding, and I stood still in the middle of it all, immobilised.
I only made it out of there when I called Jill.
‘This could kick off,’ she said. ‘You should be prepared.’
So I went home, quickly, before Leo got home from work, to empty my personal file.
Just in case.
I stuffed the contents in an old shopping bag, in the corner of the dining room furthest from the door. Somewhere Leo would never look.
Not that he would even think of looking, of course.
Some thirty-six hours later, a woman without cancer, I sit quietly in the soft dark of my garden and allow myself to reread the messages he sent after the phone call, which I’d screenshotted before deleting, the photo hidden deep in my phone.
Please don’t think I’m going to just leave this, he’d written.I’m not. I need to see you. In person.
And then, when I didn’t reply:This isn’t a joke. I will turn up at your house if I need to.
The elderly lady who lives next door to us is brushing her teeth in her bathroom window. She looks out at the dark tangle of trees that span our gardens, lost in thought about another time, another life maybe.
I cannot, must not see him. I know this. The risk is far too great.
And yet,OK, I find myself replying, a few minutes later.I’ll meet you.
Chapter Seven
LEO
My editor, Kelvin, is a shy man. Meetings are held over the safe distance of our block of desks, and our annual appraisals are conducted digitally. He wouldn’t do well with a one-to-one.
For this reason I’m surprised when he emails to suggest ‘a chat this morning’. I turn to ask when and where, because he sits right next to me, but his jaw is clenched and he’s typing at speed, so I type a reply to suggest the coffee bar in five minutes.
We repair to the atrium at the centre of the newsroom floor, where geometric blocks of light filter through a glass roof. Kelvin shifts, struggling to meet my eye. Around us are the sounds of keyboards, low conversation, the news flickering quietly on giant screens suspended from the ceiling. I wonder if I’m about to be sacked, and for what. For being unsustainably average? I write decent obits, but they lack the intellectualism and forensic gaze of Sheila’s, or the Wodehousian humour of Jonty’s.
‘Very pleased about Emma,’ Kelvin says, after clearing his throat. ‘I’m not afraid to say I think your wife is fantastic.’
I mean, at least he’s honest.
I wheel out a few trite sentences, largely because I have few words for the relief. She’ll have to be tested from time to time, of course; there’s always the prospect of secondary tumours secreting themselves around her lymphatic system – but the odds are on our side. Relapse rates are fairly low, and Emma is relatively young and healthy.
Kelvin fiddles with his coffee. ‘We wrote a stock,’ he says, eventually. ‘For Emma. We haven’t saved it in the system – didn’t want you stumbling across it. But we did have to get something written. We wrote it during her chemotherapy.’
I swallow, thinking about the last few months. Uneaten meals, mouth ulcers, tiny wrathful spots on Emma’s skin. Ruby getting strep throat and Emma sobbing because she wasn’t allowed near her.
‘I’m sure this is an unappealing subject,’ Kelvin adds. ‘But we would publish an obit, of course, if she died.’
Emma’s still known for her BBC series, a lovely threeparter about the ecology of the British coastline: how conditions have changed for the creatures living in our estuaries and rocky shores, our beaches and dunes.A development researcher from the BBC had ‘discovered’ her, chairing a panel at a British Ecological Society event. He had been charmed by her wit and nonconformity, as most people are, and invited her down to discuss programme ideas.
