I start a reply: Not sure that was for me! But before I press send, I pause. Who was it for?
One of the staff at Newcastle Uni? Or maybe Susi, her friend from school in Scotland? Doesn’t Susi live somewhere up round Tyneside, these days?
My phone buzzes. Sorry! That was for Susi, not you!
I head back to work.
The afternoon passes in a fog of word counts and Emma, obit planning and Emma; phone calls and Emma. I finish the double agent’s obituary and make a start on a woman who choreographed the British Olympic synchronised swimming team for three decades. I also discover that one of the military chaps I wrote up last week – we call them Moustaches – had lied about his World War Two military cross. I decide I haven’t the energy to break the news to his family, who are pushy enough already, so I just shelve the obit entirely.
I think about that WhatsApp again.
She was writing to an old friend, I tell myself. There’s nothing more to say.
Other than it didn’t quite read that way.
Later, when I’m getting into bed, she zooms off to the loo. ‘Code Brown!’ she whispers.
For reasons I don’t like, I check WhatsApp, and find she’s online. She is not writing a message to me.
I sit still in bed, tiredness expanding radially into alarm. Why I am doing this? What is wrong with me? Emma is well! She’s in remission – I prayed for this! And now I’m lurking on bloody WhatsApp at eleven o’clock at night, because I’ve decided she’s planning clandestine sex with someone in Newcastle? During a work trip, accompanied by our daughter? Seriously?
I swing angrily out of bed and march downstairs. The woman has just survived cancer! I’ve got to put a stop to this, I tell myself, once and for all – even though I see the flaw in what I’m about to do, the unforgivable weakness.
I can see the old green shopping bag has disappeared from the dining room as soon as I’m halfway across the floor, but I fight through to the little clearing in front of it anyway, in case my eyes are deceiving me. There is a new patch of floor showing, where the bag was previously.
John Keats shuffles through and wags his tail. ‘Hi mate!’ I say, but my voice, like everything else, is pitched wrong.
‘What are you up to?’ Emma sticks her head round the door.
‘I was looking for an obits cutting book.’ I make a show of scanning around this room of hoarder’s chaos, even though I would never store anything in here, and Emma knows it.
‘That’s a strange thing to be looking for at this time of night.’ She’s using a cotton wool pad to take off her mascara.
‘I know. But Kelvin’s doing a compilation of our most memorable obituaries and . . . It was easier for me to use my personal collection.’
‘I see. Hey – I just booked flights to Newcastle for me and Ruby. She’s going to explode with excitement!’
Something settles in my abdomen. Of course. Her passport. It was in the shopping bag. So was Ruby’s.
The bag will reappear tomorrow, and I have to stop behaving like this.
Chapter Fourteen
EMMA
Dawn.
I seldom cry upon awakening anymore, but today it happens before I have the energy to pin my defences. I cry silently, hands pressed into my eyes.
He’s not here, nor will he ever be. I will never wake up with him again.
And the sheer grief of it; the motionless weight, is more than I can handle today.
After I caught Leo trying to find my papers in the dining room last night, he tossed and turned for hours. I feigned sleep next to him, wondering how much he had seen, how much he knew.