The Woman Who Lied(10)
Trevor had patted her hand reassuringly. ‘It’s just a coincidence, that’s all. There’s no way someone could orchestrate a hoax at the exact time you’re riding a bus.’ He had shaken his head, signalling it was the end of the matter. This man, who only moments before had been chastising her about an unlocked front door. But he was like that, was Trevor. She’d always found him a bit contradictory and hadn’t really liked him when she was first introduced to him ten years ago. She’d found him a bit brash, slightly dominant of May, who ran around after him as if he was a king and she a mere subject. Elliot had laughed when she’d told him so. ‘My mum loves it,’ he had said. ‘It makes her feel useful now that I no longer live at home, and they adore each other.’
Elliot was their only child and May had once told her she’d longed for more but kept having miscarriages, until the emotional toll became too much and they gave up. May had died suddenly from an aneurysm at the age of fifty-six, a year after seeing her only son get married and only a few months after holding her first grandchild in her arms. ‘I never thought he’d settle down, my lovely,’ she’d said, hugging Emilia on their wedding day. ‘He’s had serious girlfriends but he always insisted he wasn’t the marrying kind. And then he met you. You’ve changed him.’
It was only after May’s death that Emilia realized the depth of love Trevor had felt for his wife. He was lost without her and her death diminished him. He spiralled into a depression that lasted nearly a year. Emilia and Elliot had encouraged him to sell the family home in Devon and move nearer to them. It took some convincing but eventually Trevor bought a flat in Isleworth and found a job as a security guard in Brentford. He threw himself into being a good grandfather to Jasmine and Wilfie and, over the years, Emilia had grown very fond of him. It was clear how much he adored his son and grandkids – which was more than she could say for her own parents, whom she saw only occasionally even though they lived just an hour or so away in Guildford. She often wished she had the same bond with her parents as Elliot had had with his.
There was something reassuring about Trevor – and likewise Elliot. Something about their calm, measured personalities that made Emilia feel secure. Even so, after Ottilie and Trevor left that night, she took heed of her father-in-law’s words and double-locked all the doors.
Her mobile springs into life on her desk and Emilia’s stomach swoops. She snatches up the phone.
‘Okay. I admit it. It works,’ says Hannah, without any preamble, as is her way.
Emilia exhales with relief as she moves a pile of papers from her chair so that she can sit down, her mobile balancing between chin and shoulder. ‘So you’re happy for me to keep it in?’
‘It’s your book. As long as you know there’s no coming back from this. Once Miranda is killed off you can’t have a resurrection in a later book. That’s it for the series. But at least she’ll go out with a bang.’
Emilia leans back in her chair and stares out of the dormer window into the garden. From here she can see the shadowy form of Elliot moving around his insulated outside office. Can she really do this? But she’s thirty-eight years old: she’s been careful with her money and knows she can survive if her career takes a nose dive. ‘It feels like the right thing to do,’ she admits. ‘Time to move on. I want to write about something else. Something different. I’ll miss Miranda, but –’
‘It’s an emotional ending,’ interjects Hannah. ‘Her death. It affected me.’
‘Oh. That’s good.’ Emilia feels a tug on her heart. She’d cried when she wrote that final chapter with Miranda’s death, the first time she’d ever cried at anything she’d written. But Miranda had been everything she wished she was, and when she killed her off she felt like a part of her had died too.
She glances around at her framed book jackets, adorning the dusky pink walls of her office, feeling a sense of accomplishment even if it is tinged with worry and guilt. She reassures herself that it’s done now: the story has taken on a life of its own and there is no going back. She always feels at a loose end when she submits a book, not quite ready to start another, her last story still hanging over her, like a recent dream she can’t quite shake off. She already misses Miranda and the doubt sets in. What if she’s making a huge mistake?
‘I’ll get the edits back as soon as. There’s not much to do, it’s already very fully formed. Well done, Emilia. It’s very clever. I’m impressed.’
A wave of guilt washes over Emilia. If only Hannah knew the truth.
8
Emilia takes the box with the decapitated seagull inside and closes the door to her office firmly behind her. It’s right at the top of the house, in the converted attic and next to the guest bedroom. She watches a pigeon walking across the large Velux window, its feet tapping against the glass. She makes her way down the narrow staircase that leads onto the main landing, and when she’s reached the kitchen on the ground floor she throws the seagull into the bin, wondering why she hadn’t done so as soon as she’d received it.
She makes Elliot an instant coffee, slips on her coat and shoes, and crosses the frost-coated lawn to his garden office. They’d built it in the middle of the first lockdown so that Elliot had somewhere quiet to work (even though he now goes into the central London office three times a week). It always smells of wood and electrical equipment and, unlike her office, is meticulously tidy. There is a photo on his desk of the two of them on their wedding day and another with the four of them on a trip to Land’s End when Wilfie was only four. They are all pulling silly faces and pointing at the sign and it always makes her heart lift. When she first started dating Elliot he wasn’t put off that she already had a four-year-old daughter, as she’d thought he might be, and treated Jasmine like his own.