J took Emily to Islington Police Station. He’s been all ‘poor Emily’ since we became Charlie’s legal parents, but that’s over now.
She’ll be punished by the law, he said, in voice that makes politicians shit themselves. Promised he’d stop the press getting anywhere near this.
But how will we get her out of our lives? She lives less than half an hour away. She isn’t going to give up, I feel it in my bones.
Just as I began to believe we were safe.
September 30th, 2002
A two-year restraining order. That’s what she got.
Two years? For a woman who tried to abduct a child? I can’t think straight or do anything. Panic attacks, can’t sleep. Therapist wants me to get trauma treatment, she thinks I have PTSD. I can’t let Charlie out of my sight.
Emily won the magistrate over with her bullshit about ‘just wanting to see him’。 He said there was no evidence she tried to abduct C, even tho E admitted that she’s been harassing us.
Waited in the street outside Highbury Mag Court for her to come out. J couldn’t stop me. He tried, but I wasn’t in the mood for compliance. In the end he went home.
Took her forever to come out. She was alone. She’s lost a lot of weight.
I quite literally wanted to push her in front of a bus. You asked me to be a sane and stable mother to Charlie, and then you stalked me? Seriously? You hid in a fucking bush in my local park and tried to steal him away?
How dare you – how fucking dare you?
You have taken so much from us by doing this. And I mean us. You have stripped Charlie of the safe home you asked me to give him. You fucking madwoman. You fucking lunatic.
Instead of all this I walked up to her, calm and composed, and quietly told her that I would make her pay for what she’s done.
And I mean it. No matter how long it takes, I will make her pay.
Chapter Forty-Seven
EMILY
After my conviction I started at the Open University. Three blank years later, I graduated and changed my name. The woman who had terrorised Charlie’s family was removed from record.
I hadn’t gone anywhere near the Rothschilds, nor would I. Instead I used the consuming energy of grief to search for my crab. Whenever I had an empty few days – and there were many empty days, in those early years – I went up to Northumberland to look. I neither found anything nor gave up. I just kept going.
I finished my master’s in Plymouth and eventually got a research post there. I began to lead a life that met the basic requirements of Normal. At times it even felt pleasant, providing I didn’t think too much about where I’d come from. As the years passed, Emma behaved much as young Emily had learned to, and people enjoyed her company. They were entertained by her – I made sure of it.
I’m not sure I was happy, exactly, but I was busy and purposeful, and mostly surrounded by other human beings. That felt like enough.
*
Granny died, a few years later. A man called Leo called about her obituary, and I knew before I even met him that I was being given a second chance.
And that second chance was beautiful; more so than I could ever have imagined. My body moved on, my heart loved again.
But there was always a negative space, a shadow on the sand. That is the way with loss: you can’t undo it, no matter what you have gained.
PART III
EMMA
Chapter Forty-Eight
LEO
Jeremy watches me.
I feel everything and nothing. We sit together, two men without their wives, linked by a nightmare I knew nothing of.