The One Day You Were My Husband (96)

“Are you going to call him?” Mum asks.

“I don’t know if I can face it right now.”

“I understand,” she says, even though she doesn’t. My mother is always ready for a fight. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do, Carrie. There’s no way I’m going to get any sleep tonight; I’ll be watching those children like a hawk. So just call. OK?”

Johan watches me for a long time after the call has ended. I watch him back. There are dark circles under his eyes and I see, under the stark ceiling light I never use in our living room, how he, too, has aged. And yet, to me, he’s no less beautiful.

I get up and start pacing. I need to make a plan. Too long, I’ve been carried along in the slipstream of other people’s stories. I need to take action.

I go through to the kitchen and sit at the table, where I find the remnants of a bolognese dinner. A couple of carrots under the table, a curl of spaghetti welded to the wood; speckles of dried mince stuck to the edge where Raffy normally sits. There’s even the remains of a cup of tea in the seat Robin normally takes by the window so he can look at the stars.

Robin, my rock.

I think of the agony I suffered over Johan all those years ago, the despair I felt at having failed to recognize who he apparently was. And then the gratitude when the universe sent Robin my way. Solid, kind, generous Robin: a man I could finally trust.

After a few deep breaths, I call him.





Thirty-seven.




He doesn’t answer.

What are you doing? I write, simply. Johan comes to join me. He leans against the worktop, far too tall for this old, low-ceilinged house.

I panicked, Robin replies less than a minute later.

I show it to Johan.

Call me, I write. Right fucking now.

Robin calls immediately. “Look, Carrie, I’m sorry,” he says, in his voice. His calm, kind voice. “I’m really sorry. I had a little panic that you’d…”

“That I’d what? Call the police?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so.”

“So you decided to disappear with our children as a deterrent? Seriously?”

“I admit it wasn’t my best…well, it wasn’t—”

“What were you doing? Why were you in a hotel in Lancaster Gate?”

Robin sighs. “I know, I know. Probably silly, but I was worried something would kick off and that I might need to—I don’t know. Lie low.”

“What does that even mean? You were going to do a runner? With our children?”

“No! Of course not!”

“Don’t you dare sound outraged!”

“I just wanted to be near your mum’s in case I needed to drop them there for a while.”

“So you could run off to Heathrow and disappear? I…Robin. Who are you? What is this?”

“I’m so sorry. Truly sorry. I was young, when it all happened. I was frightened. I did what my boss ordered me to do. He was a dangerous man, Carrie, but I’ve regretted it ever—”

“Don’t. Don’t even.”

“OK.” He sounds meek.

I take a deep breath. “I want to know one thing only. Did we meet by accident? Or did you track me down?”

Johan is watching me intently.

“Of course I didn’t track you down.” Then Robin hesitates. “Well, not entirely.”

I close my eyes.

“The charity gala had been planned for a long time before you got a job at the Royal Marsden. But yes, a couple of months before the gala I found out that you’d started working at the hospital.”

“How?”

He hesitates. “I looked you up.”

I close my eyes.

“And that’s why you were there that night? Because you wanted to see me in person?”

There’s a long silence. Johan watches me in the way he always used to when I was on a call from the hospital. There’s respect in the way he’s looking at me—pride, even—but also detachment. Johan never interfered, or piled in to support me, like Robin does. He never used to feed me “helpful” advice in a whisper or on a piece of paper, like Robin does; he never sat there listening.

I have only ever seen these qualities of Robin’s as supportive. Now I’m unsure.

“Yes,” my husband says eventually. “I did ask if I could come to the gala. I normally left those things to Andrew and his wealthy chums—I’ve never had the kind of spare cash needed for donations. But, yes—I did hope to clap eyes on you. I still felt so guilty—not just about Johan, but about you, this woman I’d never met yet heard so much about. But, darling, I never planned to fall in love with you. I never even planned to talk to you, I just…look, I’m being honest with you now, at least. I’m not some sort of—”

I cut in. “Don’t tell me what you are and what you’re not. I have no grounds whatsoever to trust you.”

“I know this is all terrible. I have gone over it again and again in my head, over the years. Should I tell her? Should I just come clean? But what purpose would it have served? We were happy, Carrie! You were happy! You were looked after and safe!”

“What purpose would it have served?” I am incredulous. “What purpose would it…Oh my God. And that wasn’t ‘looked after and safe.’ That was pathological deception.”