‘I was going to tell you,’ she says, in the darkness.
I turn on the lamp and look at her. She’s still in her clothes, with a dressing gown on top. There are grey circles around her eyes and her skin is pale: she looks like she used to during chemo.
‘I was going to tell you,’ she repeats. ‘You have to know that, Leo. I was going to tell you. The weekend we went up to Hitchin to meet your parents: I was going to talk to you when we got back to London. We’d been together a few weeks, it felt right.’
‘And?’
‘And you found out you’d been adopted. It blew everything apart, Leo, it took months for you to come back to yourself.’
‘But when I did?’
‘I knew you wouldn’t be able to take it,’ she says, after a pause. ‘I held you through that time, Leo. I heard every word you said about your birth mother. About adoption, about people lying to you. It would have been like a bomb blowing your legs off, just after you’d learned to walk again.’
‘But – but that was nearly ten years ago. Surely—’
She interrupts. ‘If there had been one day in those ten years – one single day – where I’d believed I could share it without harming you, I would have done.’
I stare at her. ‘So it’s my fault?’
‘No . . . I just . . .’ She tries to take my hand but I can’t do it. I can’t sit here, holding hands with her.
‘It’s not your fault, Leo, no. But the truth is that if you’d had a different past, I would have told you.’
When I don’t respond, she says, ‘Put yourself in my shoes. Imagine you were me, with a past so awful you changed your name. Would you really, truly, have told your partner? When it fed directly into every traumatic thing that had ever happened to him? Would you really have done that?’
‘Yes,’ I say, without a moment’s hesitation.
She sighs. ‘It’s easy for you to sit here now, saying that. But I was there, Leo. I knew better than anyone else what you could and couldn’t cope with.’
‘Seriously? We’re doing that again? You know me better than I know myself?’
‘That’s not what I meant! I—’
‘Emma, listen to me. Listen.’ She looks at me. ‘There isn’t anything I haven’t told you about myself. Nothing. I tell you everything, and I always have, because if we aren’t honest with each other, what’s the point?’
Neither of us says anything for a while.
‘You didn’t tell me you’d found all the papers I hid,’ Emma says, eventually. ‘I still don’t know what else you’ve found out, or who you spoke to. You did all of that in secret.’
I sit up. ‘You want to know who I spoke to? Robbie Rosen, for starters. And then Mags Tenterden. Over the weekend I was at Sheila’s, who, it turns out, knows far more about our marriage than I did. And then I spent the evening at Jeremy Rothschild’s, before finally tracking you down at Jill’s.’
Emma balks. ‘You went to see Robbie? Oh, God, Leo. And Mags, I . . .’
‘While we’re on the subject of our marriage. Is it legal?’
She looks away, and, after a while, shakes her head. ‘Possibly not.’
‘Possibly not? What does that mean?’
‘It means I don’t know for certain. But when we gave notice at the registry office, there was a box I should have ticked to say I’d changed my name. I didn’t.’
Emma is looking at me, but I can’t meet her eye. That was our day. Our happy, beautiful day, with its flowers and wine and cakes and friends and dancing and laughter.