I turn to Leo, heart suddenly pounding. ‘Leo, this is—’
‘Charlie.’ Leo’s voice is soft. He stares at my first child, opens his mouth to say something, but no words come out. I see my features everywhere in Charlie’s face. Leo must too.
‘Come in,’ my husband says, eventually. He lets go of John. John bounds at Charlie, delighted, dancing round him, knocking over a pile of books with his whipping tail. Charlie kneels down and plays with him, smiling and laughing for the first time today, and I realise I’m sitting on the floor, too, because my legs won’t hold me anymore.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
EMMA
We all go into the kitchen. Leo puts the kettle on. Jeremy goes over to Leo and, after a pause, they shake hands. It seems as if Jeremy’s apologising to him, although that makes little sense.
Charlie looks at the sleeping bag and pillow in a pile by the back door, but says nothing. ‘You OK?’ he asks, casually, as if I’m a mate he’s bumped into in the student union bar.
I shrug – ‘Bearing up, you know!’ – because I won’t undermine his belief that coming to see me was the right thing.
‘We were just parking when you two turned up in your car.’ He peers at Leo with interest. ‘Were you out together?’
‘No,’ Leo says shortly, although his tone isn’t unfriendly. ‘Listen, I’ll get out of your way in a minute, let me just sort out the tea.’
I hesitate. ‘Actually, I’d like you to stay.’
I can’t have any more secrets from him.
Leo pours tea. ‘I don’t mind going,’ he says, levelly. He’s so kind. So bloody kind.
Charlie looks to his father, who shrugs. Charlie says, ‘As long as this can be confidential?’
Leo nods his assent and hands Charlie tea, but he hasn’t put sugar in it and Charlie doesn’t ask.
‘OK then,’ Leo says, sitting down, and I feel so proud of him. Nobody looking in on this room would guess that my husband was sitting with the stepchild he only found out about a few hours ago.
‘Right,’ Charlie says, as John Keats settles on the rug in the middle of the room. John’s surprised by these late-night antics, but not unpleasantly so. He tucks his nose under his tail and watches us.
‘So . . . what happened this afternoon was that someone left a message on our answerphone. Someone from the shop, in Alnmouth.’
Jeremy chips in. ‘I asked them to call me if they saw Janice. Seems she popped in there this morning.’ He pauses, and I realise this sighting isn’t necessarily good news. ‘It’s probably inconsequential, but they said she bought two packets of paracetamol.’
Charlie rubs his hands over his face.
‘I’m sure she’s just in need of some pain relief,’ Jeremy goes on. ‘She gets bad tension headaches – but—’
‘She could already have bought paracetamol from someone else,’ Charlie blurts out, more to his father than to me. ‘She could have a great big stockpile of it by now –’
‘We’re going to assume she hasn’t,’ Jeremy says. ‘We’re going to assume she was buying paracetamol much in the way you or I would. Nobody ever just buys one packet; we always buy two.’ He turns to me. ‘The shopkeeper is someone whose opinion I trust – we’ve known her for years. She said Janice seemed fine; no cause for concern whatsoever. In fact, she only told me Janice had bought paracetamol because I asked what was in her shopping basket. As well as paracetamol she bought bread, cheese, pasta, a few apples and a chocolate bar. And a bottle of orange squash. I don’t think anyone contemplating the end would do that.’