‘Oh, piss off,’ I say to my phone, but my voice is uncertain.
I’ve always felt that there’s something slightly malevolent about a missed call from a withheld number. But when it came up at a friend’s dinner party last year, I discovered I’m largely alone in this. Leo and most of our other friends declared themselves completely unbothered by the idea of an unknown person trying and failing to get through: it was only me and Stef, a friend from work, who seemed to find it unsettling.
Perhaps it’s just those of us with something to hide. Stef has had multiple affairs.
Before I return to my postgrads, I glance out of the window to the square, conspicuously empty now most of the undergrads have gone home for the summer. There’s just a couple of people eating sandwiches on benches, a girl walking up and down on the phone.
And a man, who appears to be staring up at the window I’m standing at. Not somebody I know. He’s scruffy; could easily be a student, but there’s something about him I don’t like.
His hat. He’s wearing a baseball hat. Like the man in Plymouth, like the man outside our house.
I glance along the corridor, but there’s nobody else standing by a window. Nobody else he could be staring at.
My skin prickles; something cold opens in my chest. Is he looking at me?
By the time I return to the room with my postgrads, he’s walking away. I catch the back of him heading out towards Gower Street, and he doesn’t return.
I’m more vigilant than normal when I leave the building at the end of the day, but I’m surrounded only by the silent flow of people leaving Bloomsbury, eyes glued to their phones, nobody talking. Nothing feels quite right.
I don’t want to be here. I want to be by the ocean. Somewhere vast and ethereal with the sun making wrinkled skin out of the surface of the sea.
Next week. Next week is Northumberland, with its huge skies and happy tides. With Ruby, with the sea: closer, perhaps, to him.
Four more days.
Chapter Fifteen
EMMA
Ruby and I leave for the airport on Monday. My daughter, inspired by a book at nursery, has it in her head that we’re going to stay on a tea plantation in Darjeeling. She wraps Duck in a muslin and warns him the days will be hot but the nights rather cold.
I leave her to lecture him on climactic conditions in the Rangbhang Valley, sitting on the train seat beside me. I get out my phone. It’s only 8.30 but I’m exhausted already.
I dial his number.
‘Emma?’
‘Hi.’ I focus on the front page of the copy ofMarine Biologistmagazine I’ve been trying to read, where a shoal of tiny pipefish float calmly in a wrecked ship.
‘Hi.’ His voice drops.
‘Is this a bad time? Is someone there with you?’ I roll the magazine into a tube.
‘No.’ He sighs. ‘I’m alone. I’m just not used to talking freely with you.’
‘I see.’
There’s a silence, so I continue. ‘Look, I know you’ve got a lot on your plate. But you haven’t responded to my messages and I’m on my way up north as we speak. Newcastle for a conference this afternoon, then Northumberland for two nights. Are you still in Alnmouth? Are we still meeting?’
‘I am still in Alnmouth,’ he says. ‘And I very much want to see you, yes.’
‘I’ve got a cottage for Tuesday and Wednesday nights. It’s less than a minute from yours. The lane that goes down the side of the post office? It’s number fifteen.’
‘Right.’
‘Come over when Ruby’s asleep. Any time after eight. I don’t mind which night.’ I roll the magazine into an even tighter tube. ‘We’re leaving Thursday.’
‘OK,’ he says, after a pause. ‘I’ll come round on Tuesday night. But Emma, I ...’
