How could I not? She told me all the time that she was madly in love. She wanted to move to London to be with me more. Even though her career belonged on the coast, and she taught at Plymouth University, she managed to get a second job at UCL, lecturing aquatic conservation postgrads on estuarine and coastal ecology. She cut down her Plymouth work to two days per week and put in long hours on trains and the M4. All for me.
She suggested we sell my flat in Stepney Green and her place in Plymouth, and that we make her grandmother’s house our home. She mentioned having children. And it was she who proposed marriage, one night in a Turkish restaurant in Haringay, over a bottle of crap wine we’d bought at the all-night shop next door.
‘Marry me,’ she blurted, just as I put a large forkful of ali nazak into my mouth.
I stopped chewing.
‘What?’
‘Leo! You can’t say “what!” I just asked you to marry me!’
I downed my glass of water, to clear the aubergine. ‘And you can’t just ask me to marry you when I’m eating a kebab.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you can’t!’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I just did.’
We sat across the table from each other, defiant.
‘Are you serious?’ I asked eventually, because I always crumbled first. I still do.
She started laughing. ‘I am. I just wanted to get it over with.’
I picked up my wine glass. ‘You “just wanted to get it over with?”’
She was shaking with laughter. ‘Yes. I – sorry . . .’
And then I was laughing too. I couldn’t drink my wine at all. ‘You’re unbelievable,’ I said. ‘Is this actually happening?’
‘I’m afraid so. I love you more than anything else in the world, Leo, and I never thought I’d want to get married but I do; I want desperately to be able to call you my husband. So please say yes.’
We both stopped laughing and stared at each other, just like that first night we spent together.
‘Yes,’ I said quietly, and joy spread through me like a sunrise. ‘Yes.’
She got out of her chair, climbed into my lap and kissed me, then hid her face in my neck. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘It lacked finesse. But I couldn’t wait a moment longer. I love you. I love you. I love you so much, Leo.’
She gave me a ring made of plastic and we carried on eating our cold kebabs and drinking our warm wine, and I had never in my life been so happy.
There was nothing to arouse suspicion. No sign of secrets kept or information withheld. When she sank into the first of her Times I had no reason to suspect that there was anything going on, beyond the fact that she suffered from depression. And who wouldn’t, if they’d lost both parents before leaving school?
Now we lie in bed together, hours after her return from dinner with Jill. Emma is fast asleep, I am awake and overstrung. I find myself returning to that first conversation, that red flag she waved, which I was too love-blind to reach out and grab. Why didn’t I heed it? Or at least question her further?
There’s a part of me that still hopes this is a misunderstanding; an overreaction, perhaps, but my gut doesn’t believe it to be either. My gut thinks: she hid papers somewhere she thought you’d never look. And at least half of them didn’t add up. She’s got a bunch of men harassing her on Facebook and she hasn’t said a thing to you. None of this feels innocent.
Ruby had come downstairs before I had a chance to go back to the green shopping bag, and then Emma came home.
What else is in there? What else do I not know about my wife?