‘FUCK OFF,’ I yell, at the pedestrian, but the tears are falling now.
I drive, crying, until I nearly hit a third speed bump and realise I must pull over. Briefly, before I crumple over the steering wheel to sob and swear and scream and thump my wrist, I see the pedestrian turn around and run back down the street, away from my car.
Ten minutes later, I set off again. The rage at Jeremy has already subsided: he’s no more than the messenger; I know that. It’s my wife I am angry with. My wife, the woman who doesn’t exist.
I would have understood, is what I keep thinking. Emma could have told me any of what Jeremy’s just related to me, and I’d have accepted it all. How could I blame her for what happened when she was knee-deep in a psychiatric emergency? How could I judge her for watching her child in a park when the pain of missing him overtook reason? Wouldn’t anyone make a clandestine visit, if they knew where their adopted child lived? I would.
She wouldn’t have wanted to tell me she gave away her child: I understand that. God knows, she’s seen me struggle enough with my own adoption. But I would have taken it without judgement. I was in love with her; I’d have kept my own past out of it.
（Wouldn’t I?）
And I could have helped her forgive herself for the suffocation, piece by piece, or at least softened the edges of her guilt. You were ill, I’d have told her, day after day, year after year, until she was able to believe it.
（Wouldn’t I?）
I accelerate up past Pentonville prison, floodlit and eerie.
The ugly truth is that there is a part of me that’s horrified. A part of me that is frightened; a part that has even briefly wondered if Ruby is safe with her mother.
And that is precisely why she didn’t tell me. Why she appears to have told nobody, other than her oldest friend – because she knows that these same thoughts would cross almost anyone’s mind. Is she a violent person, underneath it all? Does she still think about harming her child? Harming anyone else?
I bang my fist on the steering wheel again, raging at Emma, raging at myself for thinking exactly what she predicted I would.
I turn off Agar Grove into the noise and filth of Camden at nighttime. The streets are full of young people drinking, laughing.
As I inch my way north towards Chalk Farm and Belsize Park I allow myself to sift through the stuffed pocketbook of lies Emma must have told me. The trips to Northumberland – all those fucking trips she took, all the times I waved her off so she could have some time alone, looking for crabs, when she was just trying to stalk the Rothschilds.
The day Ruby was born; the sympathy the maternity team must have felt for me as I held my baby for the first time, dizzy with joy, oblivious to the fact that this was Emma’s second child.
And, talking of precious days, what about our marriage? Is it legal, if Emma failed to tell the officials she’d changed her name? She said nothing about it when we gave notice at the town hall. And yet, a few months later, she stood opposite me at the registry office and said she knew of no legal reason why she, Emma Merry Bigelow, should not marry me, Leo Jack Philber.
Her criminal record. The stalking of the Rothschilds, even when we were together. The ‘dinners’ with Jill when she must have been doing God knows what; her refusal to come to any industry parties, presumably because she was avoiding a public meeting with Jeremy.
The traffic is stop-start all the way up Haverstock Hill. My fingers drum against the steering wheel, my leg twitches. Being trapped in here with these thoughts is unbearable.
When I pull up at my house I scan for Emma, just in case, but the only familiar car is Olly’s.
My heart pounds. I’m exhausted. I have no idea what to think, what to do, what my next move should be. My heart is afraid for Emma – my heart which has loved her so long, and so deeply – but I am angry, I am in shock, and I do not see how I could ever trust her again.