Emma lost her mother a day or two after birth; her father just before she sat her A-levels. His commando had been sent to what was then Zaire to help evacuate British nationals from Kinshasa, and he didn’t make it back.
Her father had been an unhappy man, she said, and mostly absent, but she had loved him, as any child does. A picture of him sits on our landing; the only thing Emma’s managed to put on the walls since we moved in. The loss of both parents has always seemed like a plausible explanation for her spells of sadness. But I began to wonder last night, with a downward drop of dread, if her Times were even real. What if they were an alibi, so she could go up to Northumberland and have sex with Jeremy Rothschild? Did she move Jill into our house when Ruby was born because she was afraid Jeremy would turn up to claim his daughter?
I swallow hard.
When I’m able to get up I open the door a crack, and am near-blinded by shafts of early sun. Spider webs glow on the ground like jewelled plates, broken only by paw prints. Soon the dew will be burned off and the day will reach full heat, full speed.
I pause again, uncertain if I’ll throw up.
John Keats is watching the pond with impatience, but bounds over happily when he sees me, as if he is used to me sleeping in the shed. I pull him back inside. ‘Jeremy,’ I say to him. ‘Jeremy? Do you know Jeremy?’
He beats his tail on the floor.
‘John. Where’s Jeremy?’
The dog, confused, excited, turns in circles. He has no idea, but he doesn’t like to miss out on a game.
I tell him we need to go inside. I stand up, but don’t move. I tell him to lead the way, but he starts jumping around, barking. I kneel down and hug him, which is the only way of stopping him once he’s overexcited.
It takes a while before he settles. I sit back on my heels, looking at him. ‘I don’t think I can do this,’ I admit. ‘I’m not ready, John.’ The only conversation I can have with Emma, now, is to confirm the details of her affair, and to tell her I can’t be with someone who has cheated on me, and I’m not ready for that.
I fight tears as I message Emma to say I need more time. I stick my head out of the shed. There is no movement in the kitchen; they must be upstairs.
That decides it. I give John a kiss, and sprawl heavily over the back wall, into the brambled alley that separates our gardens from those we back on to. Nobody ever uses this narrow lane, and the gate at the end has been locked for years. For the second time in twelve hours, I climb over it, only this time I’m watched by a delivery man, sorting through parcels in the back of an unmarked van.
‘All right?’ I say to him.
‘All right,’ he replies. In the distance, John Keats is barking again.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
LEO
Few newsrooms are empty at the weekend, and ours is no exception. Features is dead, of course, but today the news desk is frenzied, and politics is doing brisk business too. A protest has tipped into violence and skirmishes are breaking out across Westminster. Apparently the Foreign Secretary’s car has got stuck in an angry crowd. I hurry past the busy desks, unwilling to engage.
As I round the corner, I see Sheila at her desk.
‘Oh!’
‘Oh,’ she echoes. She removes her glasses.
It takes me a little while to realise she’s embarrassed. Her computer is switched off and there is a novel in front of her, and it’s ten past ten on Saturday morning. Eventually she places her book on her desk and swivels her chair to face me properly.
‘You look terrible,’ she says. ‘Are you OK?’
I shake my head.
‘Oh, Leo,’ she says quietly, and it comes to me, finally, that she has known all along. Humiliation comes at me like a landslide.
‘How did you know?’
‘The Rothschilds have been friends for years,’ she says. ‘Jeremy and I in particular; he’s always confided in me.’
I remain silent, mostly because I don’t trust myself to speak.
‘I’m sorry, Leo,’ she says. ‘I was never comfortable about you being kept in the dark.’
I’ve never heard tenderness in Sheila’s voice. It fills me with despair.
