Knowing what you now know – and I have all the private investigator emails and documents to prove it – do you still love her? Can you ever really trust her again? What happens next is up to you. It’s a simple choice, like when we used to play rock paper scissors.
Option one – ROCK: You try to leave with the woman who killed your mother.
Option two – PAPER: You walk out of there alone and come find me and Bob in the cottage. We’re waiting for you, and I want nothing more than for us all to be together again. I will move back to London, we can publish Rock Paper Scissors as a novel using Henry’s name – nobody else ever needs to know – and then I promise you will finally get your own screenplay made. You won’t need to adapt anyone else’s work ever again and can spend the rest of your life writing your own stories.
Option three – SCISSORS: You don’t want to know option three.
The choice is yours. I know what I’m asking you to decide sounds difficult. But it really is as easy as rock paper scissors if you can remember how to play.
Your Robin
xx
Amelia
We’re standing in the bedroom that has been made to look just like the one we share at home, the one I redecorated when Robin moved out. Except that now, things are even stranger than they were before. This is not at all how I hoped this weekend would go. I’d already decided to end the marriage if this trip did not go well – I’d spoken with a solicitor and a financial advisor, who suggested a life insurance policy might help me get what I deserved in a divorce settlement. I wanted to give things one last shot, but I’m starting to wish I’d just left. I’ve already found a flat to move into – it’s nice, with a view of the Thames – but I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. I hoped this weekend might fix us. The estate agent is holding the flat for me until next week, says I can move in straight away if I want, so I always knew that only one of us might be going back to the house that was only ever their home.
My whole miserable life keeps playing on a loop inside my mind recently, and I can’t seem to find the off switch. I lie awake at night – despite the pills – longing to delete all the memories I wish I’d never made. All the mistakes. All the wrong turns. All the dead ends. I’m not making excuses, but I didn’t have an easy childhood. I know I’m not the only one, but those lonely years shaped who I am today. Tiny violins always sound loudest to those playing them. Being passed from one foster family to another, like unwanted goods, taught me never to get too comfortable, and never to trust anyone. Including myself. Every new home meant a new family, new school, new friends, so I’d try being a new version of me. But none of them were a perfect fit.
I’ve always been haunted by the death of my parents because it was my fault. If my mother wasn’t pregnant with me, she wouldn’t have been in the car and my father wouldn’t have been driving her to the hospital when a truck smashed into them. If Adam hadn’t met me his life would have turned out very differently too. We have so much in common, but we feel further apart than ever before. I watched Adam for years. His success – and the internet – made that easy. I’ve tried to be a good wife to him, but he still seems to see me as the bad penny and her as the lucky one. I’ve tried to make him happy. I’ve been trying to make amends for things that happened in the past for too long. I’ve become so many different versions of myself trying to please other people, that I no longer know who I am. I need to focus on the future now. Mine. Atonement is like that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that nobody ever really finds.
‘Why would Robin write ROCK PAPER SCISSORS in red lipstick on the mirror?’ I ask, wondering if Adam’s ex has a history of mental health issues that I am unaware of. I watch as he starts pacing the room, looking a little deranged himself. ‘Why would she trick us into coming to Scotland? Why would she keep her father’s identity a secret for ten years and then not tell anyone when he died? And why would she steal our dog—’
Adam interrupts my questions. ‘Technically, Bob was her dog—’
‘Exactly: was her dog, but then she just left. Disappeared without a word. You never even heard from her again after the magnolia tree incident, except through the solicitor—’
‘Well, I imagine coming home early on our anniversary and finding her husband in bed with her best friend was probably quite upsetting.’
‘Your marriage was over long before I came along.’