I hope they are just lonely.
‘I love your piece on Kenneth Delwych,’ Emma tells me, keeping an eye on Ruby, who’s climbing up to the sink with her watering can. My newspaper is on the table with the obituaries page open.
I go over to John Keats and fold one of his flappy silken ears around my finger, waiting for the but. The dog smells of biscuits and singed fur after a recent encounter with the iron.
‘But?’ I prompt.
She stops, caught out. ‘No but.’
‘Oh, Emma. Come off it.’
After a moment, she laughs. ‘Fine. I do love it, but the female priest is the real show-stopper. Hey, Ruby, that’s enough water.’
John Keats sighs deeply as I lean over to study my articles. Kenneth Delwych, a peer famed for the legendary orgies he hosted at his Sussex vineyard, is sharing the obituaries page with a Bomber Command navigator and a female priest who had a heart attack during a wedding ceremony last weekend. ‘You’re at your best when you’re completely deadpan,’ Emma says. She puts bread in the toaster. ‘That actor last week – the Scottish one, what was his name? Ruby, please don’t drown the thing . . .’
‘David Baillie?’
‘David Baillie. Yes. Perfection.’
I reread my Kenneth Delwych piece while Emma deals with the inevitable overflow of water and soil from Ruby’s plant. She’s right, of course. The female priest, with her far shorter obit, reads better.
Unfortunately, Emma’s often right. My editor, who, I suspect, is in love with my wife, often jokes that he’d sack me and hire her if she ever decided to quit marine biology. I actually find this quite offensive, because unless he’s secretly read her scientific articles, he has only one piece she wrote for the Huffington Post to go on.
Emma is a research fellow at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, which takes up two days of her week, then she comes back to us in London to teach estuarine conservation at UCL. She is an excellent writer, with instincts frequently better than mine, and she really does enjoy cruising Wikideaths, but this has more to do with her love of a good story than any interest in stealing my job.
Ruby and John Keats go out into the garden, where the sun steals through gaps in next door’s sycamore, spotting our tiny lawn with gold. Smells of an early city summer roll through the door: still-glossy grass, honeysuckle, heating tarmac.
I try to rehydrate our cereal, while outside the dog runs around our pond, barking. It’s alive with baby frogs at the moment, which he seems to find unacceptable. ‘John Keats, will you be quiet?’ Emma asks, from the doorway. The dog takes no notice. ‘We have neighbours.’
‘JOHN!’ Ruby yells. ‘WE HAVE NEIGHBOURS!’
‘Shhh, Ruby . . .’
I find some spoons and take our breakfast out to the garden.
‘Sorry,’ Emma says, holding the door open for me. ‘Me and my unsolicited opinions on your work. It must be annoying.’
‘It is.’ We sit at the garden table, still bobbled with dew. ‘But you’re mostly polite. The main problem is that you’re often right.’
She smiles. ‘I think you’re a brilliant writer, Leo. I read your obits before I even open my work emails in the morning.’
‘Hmmm.’ I keep an eye on Ruby, who’s just a bit too close to the pond.
‘I do! Your writing is one of your sexiest assets.’
‘Oh, Emma, seriously, stop it.’
Emma has a spoonful of cereal. ‘Actually, I’m not joking. You’re the best writer on that desk. Period.’
Embarrassingly, I can’t stop myself from beaming. ‘Thank you,’ I say, eventually, because I know she means it. ‘But you’re still annoying.’