I open up the message chain, and my fingers are like jelly.
It’s him.
Two hours ago, he messages to say he’s thinking about her. Would be good to meet up again soon, he adds. Feels like there’s a lot more for us to talk about.
Twenty-four hours ago, he writes, Are you OK?
Then forty-eight hours ago, when Emma was in Alnmouth, he sends three rapid messages, apologising for having left suddenly. He says he ‘couldn’t do it with Ruby there’。
Couldn’t do what? I seethe, repulsed.
Emma has a started a reply. It sits in the dialogue box, as yet unsent.
Jeremy, respectfully, I’m going to have to ask you to stop messaging me about Janice. I can’t shake the feeling that you hold me partly responsible for her disappearance, and that really bothers me. I understand: she’s disappeared, you’re terrified, you’re wondering if you could have protected her better, if I might hold some sort of key. Similarly, I know that, whether any of us like it or not, we are bound together – you are the father of my child, for God’s sake – and that you have your own views on how we should navigate this mess, but awkward meet-ups are not the solution to our problem. You know what I wan—
The cursor flashes, ready for her to continue.
I scroll back and read again. I get to the end again. Then I read the middle section, five, six times over. My fingers hover above the phone, almost as if to delete the words, before starting to tremble.
I turn around and crash straight into Emma’s suitcase, which falls over.
Within seconds, a thundering and scrabbling is heard, as John Keats gallops down the stairs.
‘Leo?’ Emma calls. ‘Is that you, darling?’
I look at the dog, who’s going round and round in circles because his daddy is home and everything is so great. My eyes fill. This is it, I realise. The end of a loved and longed-for family life. All the times I complained about mess or noise, all the times I worried about unknown television viewers and their imagined crushes on Emma, when actually she was having an affair with Jeremy Rothschild.
And then I sink into the chair, allowing myself to think about the child in the bath upstairs, my little pea, my baby. The idea of her resulting from a sordid, hot-breathed affair is more awful even than the thought of Emma having sex with someone else. It is an anguish I can’t contain. I stand up, circling. I have no plan.
‘Daddy?’ A little squeak of a voice, some splashing. John wags and wags, pressing his wet nose up into my hand. He can’t understand why I won’t get down on the floor for rough and tumble.
‘DADDEEEE!’ Ruby yells, from upstairs.
I can’t face her. There’s a howling somewhere within myself. The very idea of my girl being –
No.
My body moves towards the front door, then I’m out into an evening that smells of expensively planted gardens and cooking. I walk quickly down the lane to Hampstead Grove and then Heath Street, where wealthy women with thickly drawn eyebrows sip from misted wine glasses.
I never belonged in Hampstead. I wonder if I ever really belonged anywhere.
Eventually I swerve into a pub near Belsize Park. I order a pint, then a second one, and take both off to a corner table, as if I’m waiting for a friend. I stare at a wall of hop kiln tiles and drink mechanically, in the way that sometimes makes Emma touch my arm and say, hey, do you want to talk?
‘She loves me,’ I say, to the pub. It’s a lovely Victorian public house with oxidised mirrors and stained ceilings, into which stories and songs have been baked for decades since the last paint job. I finish my first pint in minutes, grateful for the anonymity of London. Here, you can harm yourself in plain sight, and nobody will ever stop to ask if you’re OK.