Emma and I sit in awkward silence while Olly and Tink bicker about who’s to blame for what just happened.
Ruby climbs into my lap. ‘I love you, Daddy,’ she says. ‘Except when you’re stinky.’
‘I love you too,’ I smile, kissing her hair. ‘Except when you’re stinky. But you’ve been very good this afternoon. Thank you.’
‘Seriously?’ Olly snaps, turning round. He’s talking to me.
‘Seriously what?’
‘Are you really praising your compliant child when mine are behaving like delinquents, again?’
He’s not joking. Oskar and Mikkel have kept their parents close to the edge for many years: I think Olly may finally have boiled over.
‘Olly,’ I say, carefully. ‘Olly, Ruby’s three. She’s been here for two hours without complaining or running away. You must remember the boys being three. You must remember what an achievement that is. It was no reflection on you or your children.’
‘Fine,’ he says. He’s furious. ‘Whatever.’
‘“Whatever?” Olly! Stop it! This is not a thing!’
‘Don’t provoke me and then play innocent,’ Olly says. ‘It’s offensive.’
Without warning, Emma cuts in. ‘Olly, stop being an arsehole,’ she says, loudly. We both turn around. She’s looking straight at my brother, cheeks reddening.
‘Sorry?’ Olly wasn’t expecting this.
‘I said, stop being an arsehole.’ Emma continues to look straight at him. Her voice lowers. ‘Leo’s just run round half of Hampstead Heath looking for Mikkel, who he loves, and who he’s never once judged, just like he’s never judged you as parents. You know that, Olly, so will you please stop using him as a scapegoat.’
Everyone, even Ruby, is silent. Oskar watches his father with fascination.
After a weighted pause, Olly nods. ‘You’re right,’ he says. I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
He turns to me. ‘Sorry, mate. That was out of order.’
‘Apologies,’ Emma whispers, a few minutes later, when Olly and Tink are talking to their boys. ‘You’re more than capable of fighting your own battles. I didn’t mean to belittle you.’
I study her face. ‘What would you have done if he hadn’t backed down? Were you going to swing a right hook?’
She shrugs. ‘If I’d had to. I won’t allow Olly or anyone else to treat you like that.’
At this I laugh. Emma has always been ferociously defensive of me; comically so at times. I put my arm around her, as the looped fairy lights begin to glow and the audience begins to chant for Sir Tom.
‘You are the best person I know,’ I tell my wife, and I mean it.
Ruby lies across our laps and tells us it’s time for a sleep.
I choose to believe what Emma’s said about her graduation photo. I choose to believe there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for her removal of her papers to the dining room, and that the confusing things I found were confusing only because I wasn’t seeing them in context.
My wife is everything I have always believed her to be. She loves me, I love her, and to allow myself to go searching for dark corners would be to betray all that is good in the life we have created together.
Chapter Twelve
EMMA
‘Time for ice cream,’ Ruby calls, as I root around amongst whorls of hair and dust under a trampoline. I took her to the gymnastics club for the morning, but mostly it’s been me bouncing up and down while she shouts feedback. Now Duck has been posted through some trampoline springs.