I go downstairs to find Sheila drinking red wine in her garden. I have never seen Sheila drink red wine; when we go to the Plumbers’ she always drinks continental lager, occasionally brandy. I also never imagined her drinking alone in a garden full of lush, boldly planted flowers at 5.15 p.m. Everything is out of place.
Wordlessly, she pours me a glass and we sit in silence as the afternoon bleeds into evening.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
EMMA
I take Ruby to nursery on Monday morning, swinging her hand and singing the hokey cokey as if everything is fine. Today is plant handover day and she carries the bag all the way there.
I hand the plant back to Della, Ruby’s key person, saying Ruby has loved looking after it.
‘Wow!’ Della says. ‘It’s really shrunk!’
She winks. To try to kill a few painful hours yesterday I took Ruby to Ikea to buy a replacement, and Della is no fool.
I pause by the door as she puts it on a table, remarking to a colleague that the plant has come back looking substantially smaller. ‘They’re all the same,’ says the colleague, oblivious to my presence. ‘Middle-class parents. Can’t ever admit to being wrong.’
This final heaping of shame does it. The tears come, and I flee.
As I walk off down the road, at speed, I hear a car pulling up to the kerb next to me. I take no notice until I hear the door open and my name called.
I turn to see who it is.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
LEO
At 9.55 a.m. I call Emma to find out why she is not here. Although she’s late for everything, always, this was one appointment I trusted her to make.
Her phone rings out.
I try again at 10.30. Then at 11.00.
Is she with Rothschild, getting her story straight? The thought makes me want to throw my teacup at the wall. I don’t, because it’s rare Huguenot porcelain left to Emma by her grandmother. Instead I find an Ikea one and smash that. I have never done anything like this before, and it does not make me feel any better.
I sweep up the fragments and call the obits desk to tell them I’ll be working from home. Kelvin seems unbothered but Sheila calls me straight away.
‘What’s happened?’ she asks. I can hear her moving away from the obits desk. ‘Did it not go well?’
‘Emma didn’t turn up,’ I tell her. ‘We were meant to meet here at nine thirty. No sign of her. She’s not answering her phone.’
I can almost hear her frowning. ‘That’s strange. I thought she was desperate to explain herself to you?’
‘She was. She’s done nothing but message me about how sorry she is, how she needs to explain, how much she loves me. But this morning: zilch.’
‘Keep me posted,’ Sheila says. ‘Please?’
At 11.15 I call the nursery, suddenly panicking that Emma has taken Ruby and done a runner. I speak to Della, who assures me that Ruby is there, and that Emma dropped her off at 8.45 ‘with a very perky-looking plant’。
I update Sheila. She replies with a puzzled emoji, and Sheila is not someone who dabbles with emoji.
Unease drums in my stomach. I try Emma’s right-hand woman, Nin, first at Emma’s UCL department and then, when she doesn’t answer, on a mobile number I find in Emma’s Rolodex. She tells me Emma called in sick this morning, but spoke to someone else. ‘Is she OK?’ Nin asks.
‘Who knows?’ I say. I laugh oddly, and end the call. Nin probably thinks I’ve killed her.
That huge space is opening up in my chest again: I have to do something. I write a note for Emma on the kitchen blackboard and leave the house. I go and buy milk. When I return, it is midday and she’s still not here.