‘I’ll do whatever you want to fix this. Counselling? A holiday? We could go to Scotland, like we did for our honeymoon? Anything?’ you said, as I packed a bag. But I don’t think anything can fix us now. Do you?
Your wife
Amelia
Adam still hasn’t put the pieces of the puzzle together.
He stares at the little girl’s bedroom where everything is covered in robins, looking like a lost child. Until I take his hand and lead him back out onto the landing. We stop at the top of the spiral stairs, and I point at the final framed photo on the wall.
‘Who is it?’ he asks, although I’m fairly sure he must know by now. Having face blindness can’t stop someone from seeing the truth.
The grandfather clock in the bedroom starts chiming and we both jump… I thought it had stopped.
‘It’s you,’ I say. We study the image then: the expensive-looking suit he wore for the wedding, the confetti on his shoulders, the wedding dress, the rings, the happy smiles… and someone else in the shot. ‘Henry is in the background. We both know he wasn’t invited, but the fact that he was there – standing on the street outside the register office by the looks of it – along with seeing this picture on his wall of family portraits, suggests that he thought of you as much more than just a screenwriter who adapted his books.’
Adam still doesn’t understand.
This isn’t going to be easy. But my husband needs to know the truth now, and I need to be the one to tell him.
‘The woman in the wedding photo isn’t me.’
Adam
‘What do you mean?’ I ask, staring at a picture of a bride and groom whose faces I can’t see.
‘It’s a photo of your first wedding. When you married Robin.’
We stand in silence at the top of the staircase. It feels as if we stay like that for a long time, while I try to process what Amelia has said.
‘I don’t understand—’
‘I think you do,’ she says. ‘I think that even though you were married to Robin for ten years, she never told you that she was Henry Winter’s daughter. I think she grew up here and that little girl’s bedroom was hers.’
I stare at my second wife for a long time, trying to see from her face whether this is some kind of prank. But the Van Gogh swirls are back, and I grip the banister for balance.
‘This is insane. That can’t be true!’
Amelia shakes her head. ‘I know you can’t see it, but these three photos on the wall – the ones that were missing yesterday – are all of your ex-wife. This is you and Robin getting married, with a photobomb from Henry.’ She points at the next picture. ‘This is Robin when she was younger, teenaged I’d guess, in a rowboat fishing on Blackwater Loch. And this…’ She nods towards the final frame. ‘… is a little girl, who looks like Robin, sitting on Henry’s lap and reading a book, while he smokes a pipe.’
My mind is racing back and forth through time, and I speak my thoughts out loud.
‘This can’t be real. Henry didn’t have children—’
‘The headstone in the graveyard says different.’
‘Robin never wanted to talk about her family, especially her father. She said they were estranged—’
‘I don’t doubt it, but I’m guessing there’s a reason why she never told you who he was.’
I study the faces in the photos again, but even now that I know what to look for, they all look the same.
‘I know you can’t see it for yourself, so you’re going to have to trust me,’ Amelia says. After seducing me, her best friend’s husband, trusting her is something I’ve never been great at. ‘I’m telling you that these pictures are all of your ex-wife. The ones of her as a little girl look the spitting image of the ones of Henry as a little boy. The likeness is uncanny. They could be twins separated by forty years, or, it might be time to accept that Robin is Henry’s daughter.’
Her words feel like a series of slaps, pinches, and punches. I can’t get my head around it, but I’m starting to believe what Amelia is saying.
‘I don’t understand why either of them wouldn’t have told me something as big as this,’ I say, hating the pathetic sound of my own voice. I might not be able to see beauty on the outside, but Robin was the most beautiful person on the inside. I could feel it, whenever she was in the same room. Everyone else knew it as soon as they met her too – she was just so good, and genuine, and honest. I can’t imagine her lying to me about anything, let alone something as huge as this.