‘Because you can’t!’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I just did.’
We sat across the table from each other, defiant.
‘Are you serious?’ I asked eventually, because I always crumbled first. I still do.
She started laughing. ‘I am. I just wanted to get it over with.’
I picked up my wine glass. ‘You “just wanted to get it over with?”’
She was shaking with laughter. ‘Yes. I – sorry ...’
And then I was laughing too. I couldn’t drink my wine at all. ‘You’re unbelievable,’ I said. ‘Is this actually happening?’
‘I’m afraid so. I love you more than anything else in the world, Leo, and I never thought I’d want to get married but I do; I want desperately to be able to call you my husband. So please say yes.’
We both stopped laughing and stared at each other, just like that first night we spent together.
‘Yes,’ I said quietly, and joy spread through me like a sunrise. ‘Yes.’
She got out of her chair, climbed into my lap and kissed me, then hid her face in my neck. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘It lacked finesse. But I couldn’t wait a moment longer. I love you. I love you. I love you so much, Leo.’
She gave me a ring made of plastic and we carried on eating our cold kebabs and drinking our warm wine, and I had never in my life been so happy.
There was nothing to arouse suspicion. No sign of secrets kept or information withheld. When she sank into the first of her Times I had no reason to suspect that there was anything going on, beyond the fact that she suffered from depression. And who wouldn’t, if they’d lost both parents before leaving school?
Now we lie in bed together, hours after her return from dinner with Jill. Emma is fast asleep, I am awake and overstrung. I find myself returning to that first conversation, that red flag she waved, which I was too love-blind to reach out and grab. Why didn’t I heed it? Or at least question her further?
There’s a part of me that still hopes this is a misunderstanding; an overreaction, perhaps, but my gut doesn’t believe it to be either. My gut thinks: she hid papers somewhere she thought you’d never look. And at least half of them didn’t add up. She’s got a bunch of men harassing her on Facebook and she hasn’t said a thing to you. None of this feels innocent.
Ruby had come downstairs before I had a chance to go back to the green shopping bag, and then Emma came home.
What else is in there? What else do I not know about my wife?
Uncertainty hovers like bad weather out at sea. I either admit to my trespass into her hidden corners, or I watch, and wait, and hope it’ll blow in a different direction.
Neither feels right.
Chapter Eleven
LEO
Ruby is using apple juice to arrange her mother’s sparse new hair into tiny spikes. ‘I’m turning Mummy into a monster,’ she tells me. ‘One of the bad ones which is dangerous and poisonous.’
‘You are,’ I agree. ‘It actually really suits her.’ And then, apropos of nothing, I look at Emma and say, ‘St Andrews undergraduates wear purple for their ceremony, not blue.’
We’ve taken Ruby to an outdoor Tom Jones concert at Kenwood House, with my brother, Olly, and his family. Olly and Tink have two untameable young boys. Oskar is being yelled at in Norwegian by his mother because he has climbed the scaffolding sound tower in the middle of the audience, and the Kenwood House Event Security Team are now in attendance. His younger brother, Mikkel, is missing, so Olly and I have been running around calling his name. The Kenwood House Event Security Team are in attendance on this matter too.
I just stopped at our picnic blanket to check Mikkel hadn’t returned, but found only Emma and Ruby eating quiche and singing theSesame Streetsong.
Emma frowns at me from under Ruby’s hands. ‘Sorry? St Andrews what?’
‘St Andrews students graduate in a purple hood, not blue,’ I repeat, slightly breathless. I drop down to sit on my heels, half looking at her, half scanning around for Mikkel.
‘I don’t understand,’ Emma says.
It’s been three days since I found the paperwork from her Folder of Important Bits hidden in a corner of the dining room.
