‘I don’t like the fact that you’re learning all of this from me,’ Jeremy says, after a long silence. ‘It’s not right. But if it helps you work out where Emma might be . . .’
I rub my hands over my eyes, at a loss. I don’t know this woman Jeremy has described. This woman he has known nearly twenty years. I don’t know anything about the way she thinks or what drives her decisions. Do I love her? Could I love her? Has she ever loved me, or has that just been a part of the performance?
Emma is Emily. She met Jeremy’s cousin and became pregnant. She agreed to let the Rothschilds adopt the baby; she changed her mind, she suffered postpartum psychosis and tried to suffocate her baby. She then went through with the adoption, only to harass them, and then attempt to abduct the child.
‘This is . . . . This is a nightmare,’ I say, eventually.
Somewhere, in a back room, a washing machine beeps. I escape from the hell in my head for a moment to try to imagine Jeremy Rothschild doing laundry, but I can’t. I can’t think.
I know a little of postpartum psychosis. I had to write up that poor woman who jumped off a bridge with her baby, a few years back; the story still haunts me. But Emma? How could she go through a trauma like that and not tell me? Not tell anyone?
But she did tell someone, I realise, as the truth presses silently in. Jill, who turned up at our house just before Ruby was born, who wouldn’t budge until Ruby was two weeks old. Jill, who never left Emma on her own with Ruby, even when they were napping together on the sofa.
Jill knew.
The thought makes me so angry, so desolate, I nearly get up and leave. But what then? There are so many questions I need to ask Jeremy.
I hold myself steady. I concentrate on my breathing, just like Emma taught me.
Emily. Emily Ruth Peel, with a grown-up child and a criminal record.
‘What about this abduction?’ I ask, eventually. ‘What actually happened?’
‘She hid in a copse of trees in our local playground, apparently ‘just to have a look at’ Charlie. He disappeared for a few minutes; Janice panicked and called me. I found Emma just as I ran across from our house to the playground.’
I rest my head in my hands. ‘And this wasn’t during the postpartum psychosis?’
‘It was more than a year later, Leo. I believe she was very low, but she certainly wasn’t psychotic.’
I imagine Ruby disappearing in a park. Me and Emma running, shouting her name; the sheer terror. It’s incomprehensible that Emma could inflict that on another parent.
‘What did Emma say at the time?’ I ask. ‘What was her defence?’
Jeremy prevaricates. ‘Well, actually, she denied the charge of abduction. Claimed she was just watching him from the edge of the park. That he spotted her and came over for a few minutes; she did nothing to encourage it. Certainly, the magistrate believed her.’
A tiny crack of relief. ‘Well, I’m inclined to believe her, too,’ I say. ‘Emma wouldn’t just . . .’
Doubt swarms in before I can even finish the sentence. Emma is capable not of just small lies but fundamental deception. For starters, she was hiding in a bloody grove of trees, watching Charlie play without Janice’s knowledge. Who am I to say that’s not acceptable. That’s many miles from acceptable. Who am I to say she wasn’t planning to take him? That she didn’t try?
I look back at Jeremy. ‘What did you believe?’
He considers his response for a moment.
‘I also struggled to imagine her actually taking him,’ he admits. ‘But the fact is, Charlie disappeared for several minutes, and when Janice found him, he was next to the gate Emma exited by. That’s just too much of a coincidence for me. Especially given that she admitted to having covertly watched him and Janice several times in the preceding months.’