Uncertainty hovers like bad weather out at sea. I either admit to my trespass into her hidden corners, or I watch, and wait, and hope it’ll blow in a different direction.
Neither feels right.
Chapter Eleven
LEO
Ruby is using apple juice to arrange her mother’s sparse new hair into tiny spikes. ‘I’m turning Mummy into a monster,’ she tells me. ‘One of the bad ones which is dangerous and poisonous.’
‘You are,’ I agree. ‘It actually really suits her.’ And then, apropos of nothing, I look at Emma and say, ‘St Andrews undergraduates wear purple for their ceremony, not blue.’
We’ve taken Ruby to an outdoor Tom Jones concert at Kenwood House, with my brother, Olly, and his family. Olly and Tink have two untameable young boys. Oskar is being yelled at in Norwegian by his mother because he has climbed the scaffolding sound tower in the middle of the audience, and the Kenwood House Event Security Team are now in attendance. His younger brother, Mikkel, is missing, so Olly and I have been running around calling his name. The Kenwood House Event Security Team are in attendance on this matter too.
I just stopped at our picnic blanket to check Mikkel hadn’t returned, but found only Emma and Ruby eating quiche and singing the Sesame Street song.
Emma frowns at me from under Ruby’s hands. ‘Sorry? St Andrews what?’
‘St Andrews students graduate in a purple hood, not blue,’ I repeat, slightly breathless. I drop down to sit on my heels, half looking at her, half scanning around for Mikkel.
‘I don’t understand,’ Emma says.
It’s been three days since I found the paperwork from her Folder of Important Bits hidden in a corner of the dining room.
Every night since, I’ve opened my mouth to confront her as I’ve climbed into bed. But every night, at that very moment, she has rolled into me and slid a sleepy hand around my middle, and I’ve been too afraid to jackhammer the night – and, quite possibly, us – wide open.
But this is the problem: Emma hasn’t told a harmless lie, nor have I misunderstood what I saw. She has deliberately misled me about her university education. Why would she do that? Why would anyone do that? If it were just this that I’d discovered, I’d be surprised. A little shocked. But it’s not just the university thing. It’s everything.
Ruby’s trying to comb the spikes out of her mother’s hair with sticky fingers, and Emma flinches. ‘That hurts!’
‘I apolgise,’ Ruby says solemnly, before resuming. I will be sad when she learns to say this word properly.
Emma reaches round and bundles Ruby onto her lap. ‘You’re a tyrant. Kiss me now.’
Is Emma trying to distract me?
In the distance, I see my brother dragging Mikkel through the patchwork of picnickers. Thankfully, he’s taking him to join the fracas with his elder son at the sound tower.
‘It was your graduation photo that caught my eye,’ I say. I sound peevish. ‘In the photo you’re wearing a blue and gold hood. Whereas St Andrews’ colours are purple with white fur. I noticed the other night, and I’ve been feeling a bit confused about it.’
Emma offers Ruby a Tupperware of breadsticks and some green-coloured dip. ‘Really? Well, they can’t have been purple when I graduated. I wore whatever the academic outfitters said I had to wear.’
Ruby inserts a breadstick carefully into my ear.
‘Sorry, Leo. I don’t understand; why is my graduation photo a thing?’
‘Because I . . . When did you graduate from St Andrews?’
‘You know when I graduated! 2001.’