The phone screen clears, suddenly, starts ringing. I nearly cry with relief – but it’s not Leo, it’s Jill. I cancel the call.
I try messaging.
Leo, are you there?
Tick: the message leaves my phone.
Two ticks: the message arrives in his.
Two blue ticks: he’s reading it.
Relief breaks over me, although I don’t know why. I have no hope of undoing this.
My darling, please come home. I have to explain this to you
Two blue ticks. I try to picture him, the reading glasses he never cleans, smudged and sad. Maybe he’s out on the Heath as the evening greys. Or on the tube, paused at an underground station before the train swishes onwards to – to where? Oh God, Leo.
Jill calls again. I cancel it. Seconds later, she tries again. I cancel it again; I’ll ring her tomorrow.
I start another message to Leo, trying to explain, but stop. What can I say? The message he’s found goes so much deeper than Ruby’s parentage. There are important reasons why I’ve shielded him from it; these years of collusion and misery between Jeremy and me. How can I tell him now, in a text message?
He goes offline. I send another message, asking if he’s still there, but it doesn’t deliver.
In the middle of this, Jeremy texts.Are you OK? I don’t have any news. Just checking Janice hasn’t been in touch.
I delete it, and sink slowly into a chair. I use my phone to put something on the speaker called ‘Smooth: New Directions in Ambient Jungle’, so John can calm down.
Jill calls yet again, and this time I pick up. ‘Hey,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry but I can’t talk. Leo’s been reading my phone and he’s disappeared. Can I call you tomorrow? Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. But I have to talk to you, Emma—’
‘I just can’t,’ I interrupt. ‘I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll call in the morning.’
You need to call me back tonight, Jill writes, straight away.It’s important.
I reply,I’ll call you tomorrow, I promise.
I stay still for a long time, until darkness swallows the room. Planes whine and drag across London, circling into Heathrow and Gatwick, and a fox topples a dustbin. The air cools, but my heart won’t slow.
I try Leo at 1.37 a.m. His phone rings out. I try again at 2.04. At 2.30, he messages, finally.Sleeping in the shed. Please
don’t come out. I need space.
I go to check Ruby is breathing.
Chapter Twenty-Six
LEO
The next morning I wake with a pounding head and a mouth full of sickness and regret. I have no idea how many pints I had last night, how many chasers after that. I do remember climbing over the wall so I could get into the shed because I couldn’t decide if I had actually left Emma, and I felt it would be wrong to spend the night elsewhere without making a proper decision. No matter what, I won’t just disappear on Ruby.
A trapped fly vibrates in a cobweb near the end of my dusty sofa, and outside John Keats is barking at the pond. I’ll have to go inside in a minute, but I have no idea what will happen when I see Ruby. I’m afraid I will just pick my little girl up and run out of the front door.
She’s mine. She has to be mine. For at least the first year of her life people would say to me, ‘Oh, she’s the spit of you! She’s gorgeous!’ and my chest would crack with pride. For the first time, I belonged to a unit. A real family, no secrets.
I think about Ruby’s soft hair, her stubby fingernails, that crafty little laugh. Then I think about Emma and Jeremy Rothschild and it’s so foul and wrong and unbelievable and preposterous that for a moment I really don’t believe it’s true.
But as I sat in the pub last night, before the alcohol smudged my memory and judgement, I remembered things. Emma’s baffling long-term hatred of Janice Rothschild. Her fury the other day when Jeremy complained about me to my editor-in-chief. And of course her Times. Years and years of them.
