I lay still in my little bed and listened. The house was silent. Christa and Geoff should be on their way to France by now. I wondered where they were, instead. I wondered what Charlotte was up to. I should not have run away from her. I got up slowly, feeling hungover, tired and heavy. There was too much to think about, so I pushed it all from my head and had a long, hot shower. I dressed in my Gap clothes again, which were only slightly crumpled, and left the house with Geoff’s A-Z in my bag. My raincoat was still damp. I could have walked the route to Caledonian Road tube station in my sleep. The trees were the same, the dog shit was the same, the adverts were the same. Some things didn’t change at all.
Highcroft Road existed. Although I had found it on the A-Z, I had half expected it to have vanished, and I expected 24a to be a garage. In fact it was part of a well-maintained terrace of grey brick houses. It had blue window boxes bursting with geraniums. The window frames had been painted recently: the white gloss was dazzling.
I walked up a short flight of stairs to the front door and pressed the bell. It was half past eleven, and I was not expecting Jo to be home. She was sure to be at her gallery. I planned to head for Jermyn Street after this, and to walk into every gallery and ask for Jo until I found her. If she did happen to be at home, or if there was a nanny or lodger there, I was going to be blasé and talk about happening to be in the area and dropping in on impulse. I had no plan at all, beyond proving my wild surmising to be wrong.
Heavy footsteps approached the front door, and it swung inwards. I attached a bland smile to my face and waited, my story on my lips.
Our eyes locked.
He was tall and handsome, and his eyes had the same laughter lines they had always had. His hair needed a cut. It was falling close to his eyes. He was wearing tracksuit trousers I had never seen before, and a white T-shirt.
He kept staring at me. His eyes were wide. His mouth gaped for a second before he closed it. He looked panic-stricken. He looked weak.
‘Hugh?’ I asked him. I watched him wondering whether to close the door and put the chain on. It was one thing to desert me and Alice in France. I think he lacked the guts to slam a real door in my face.
He slumped. ‘Emma,’ he said. ‘Shit. I suppose you’re going to come in.’
‘I suppose I am,’ I agreed, and pushed the door wider. He stood back and I walked past him. I walked into an entrance hall with a scratchy beige carpet, white walls adorned with frames displaying swirls of abstract art, and a neat row of shoes next to the skirting board. The shoes came in three sizes. Some of them I recognised as Matt’s. Others must have been Jo’s. Then there were the little ones.
Everything seemed hyperreal. I knew I was in Matt’s home, that this, rather than a grotty studio apartment, was his other home. I could not, however, process the information. All I knew was that I needed him back.
Matt was still standing by the door, so I walked past a staircase, into a kitchen. I heard slow footsteps following me. The kitchen was light and white and reasonably tidy. The chrome-fronted dishwasher was swinging open. A pot of coffee was the only thing on the sideboard. My hand shook as I took two white mugs from a shelf and filled them with coffee from the cafetière. I tried a few cupboard doors, looking for the fridge. When I found it, I added some milk to the mugs. I tried to steady my hand as I handed Matt his drink. He took it wordlessly.
I needed to be strong. This was unfortunate, but it did not change the way I felt about Matt and about our family. I still loved him. I needed him. I wanted to start again now that I knew about my mother. Matt was going to need to start again for his own reasons. I did not hate him. I wanted to make him understand.
‘So.’ I said it as a conversation opener, nudging him to say something. He was not meeting my eyes. ‘Matt,’ I said, in a firmer voice. ‘I can kind of see what’s going on here. I do realise that you are the father of Jo’s son. Aren’t you?’ He nodded. I knew that I had to be straightforward. I had never forced a confrontation in my life. I had always defused arguments, mollified, consoled, compromised. Now I had to be different. I had to make him think he had no choice.
‘But that’s OK,’ I continued. ‘I mean, admittedly it’s not ideal. We’ll go into the details later. But I still love you.’ I looked him in the eye. He met my gaze.
‘Do you?’ His voice was expressionless.
‘Yes. I love you totally. I can’t think about anything other than us being all right. I can forgive you for anything.’
He smiled. ‘That’s my Emma. Em, it’s not that simple. I have fucked up big time.’
‘I noticed.’
‘Jo’s my wife.’
‘I worked that out. She was talking about Hugh all the time she was with me. Is that your real name?’
‘Yes. Matthew’s my middle name.’
‘Jo said she didn’t think she and Hugh – she and you – had a future together. I know that we have. So leave here and come home with me. Matt, think of Alice. You can’t abandon your daughter with that crappy letter which I know you didn’t write. Come to France with me and we can work things out. She keeps asking when you’re coming home and I say it will be soon. Because it will be. We can’t manage without you. Please, Matt. Look, I’ve been talking to Christa, and I’ve found out lots of things about my mother, and that’s really making me feel quite strange, and so I kind of need you. I know I’ve been silly, being so fucking amenable all the time, but it won’t be like that any more. I’ll be different. It’ll be better.’
I turned away so he couldn’t see my tears. I had said my piece. I was holding myself together, pleading with him to say yes. Once I had him back, we could work on everything else.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘Don’t be sorry. We can make it OK. We can start again and rebuild our lives, better.’
‘You and Alice don’t deserve this. You’re better off without me.’
‘We are not. We’re
so
not. Come on, Matt. Loads of women would be mad with you. I’m giving you a chance, here, to make it all better.’
He put his head in his hands. ‘But I can’t make it all better, can I? If I went back with you, what would happen to Olly? Either way, I lose contact with a child. I can’t pick which one it is.’
‘I wouldn’t make you lose contact with Olly. You could see him as much as you wanted.’
‘And my job in London? You’d never trust me. You think you would now, because you don’t like the prospect of being on your own. But you wouldn’t. How would you feel while I was still away working half the week?’
‘I’d feel bad. But I’m going to feel a lot, lot worse if you’re never with me.’
‘Emma. This is not going to be easy to tell you, but I have to. As I said, Jo is my wife. She has agreed to have me back, to see if we can work it out between us. I am committed to her. I’m going to give my marriage everything I possibly can and I’m going to make it work out. I’m sorry. I know this isn’t what you want to hear. I’ve messed you around and you deserve someone better, and you’ll meet someone better.’
I could not control my voice, which came out in a high-pitched shriek. ‘I WILL NOT.’ My words were scrambled together, incoherent. ‘You can’t say that. You are the only person I’ve ever loved. I can’t believe you’ve done this to me. Jo will leave you. She already told me so. She won’t be able to forgive you and she’ll end up throwing you out because she’s strong and she’s got dignity. I’m not strong! I haven’t got any dignity! Your place is with me. I’m begging you to come back with me. I don’t know what I’ll do if you don’t.’ I was hiccuping and half hysterical.
Matt put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Emma,’ he said kindly. ‘You are strong. Come on. I’m glad you’re talking about your mother. That’s great. You’ll have a great future, without me. You need to get a grip. I’m sorry I tried to fob you off with that awful letter. Jo wrote it. She’d be furious with me if she knew you were here.’
‘See? You’re already going behind her back.’
‘I’m not because I didn’t invite you. How did you find me?’
‘Woman’s intuition,’ I said, with a bitter smirk. ‘Things just fell into place. I think I’d half known for a while. I just hadn’t let myself think about it. Christ, Matt. You were married when you met me. You were married when Alice was born. You were married when you suggested that
we
get married.’
‘I didn’t mean it to happen like that.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t care. That’s the bit you don’t understand. It’s all a detail. I don’t care. The best thing for everyone –’ I broke off to blow my nose. ‘Is. If. You come back. To. France.’
We sat in silence for a few moments, as I waited for him to agree with me. After a while I realised I had to say something, to keep the conversation going, to prevent him from telling me to leave. I collected myself.
‘Jo knew about me, then, when she turned up in Pounchet?’
He nodded. ‘Because you put that picture in my suitcase. Mummy and Daddy and Alice at our house in France. Miss you. Kiss kiss kiss. That one. I tried to explain it away. I told her that a colleague in Paris had shown it to me and I’d gathered it up with my papers, and she let it drop but she didn’t believe me for a second. I had a receipt from the removals people in a trouser pocket, and I stuck it in a load of paperwork to shred and forgot about it. She went through every single thing and found it. So she decided that rather than asking me about it, like most people would, she would pitch up with some half-baked story about being a lost tourist.’
‘She was convincing. Self-possessed.’ I tried not to think back to the evening I had spent with her. I did not want to remember what I had said.
‘Jo’s good like that.’
‘I wouldn’t be.’
The silence descended again. After a minute or so, Matt put his hands on the table. ‘I’m sorry!’ he said suddenly. ‘I’m really sorry. When we got to France I gave myself a year to sort it all out. I was going to decide and I wasn’t going to keep you both in the dark any more. I thought you’d both kick me out on my arse. I never imagined you’d both be up for giving it a go. I never thought I’d have to pick one or the other.’
‘But you’re making the wrong choice. Alice and I, we’re the one. Jo is the other.’
‘No, Emma. That’s not true. You’re the other. I’ve been married to Jo for years longer than I’ve even known you. I’m afraid you’re not the one. You’ve always been the other.’
I was stunned. ‘That’s not true.’
‘I’m sorry to be harsh, but it is.’
I was outraged. ‘Matt. Hugh. Whoever you are. You do not talk about me and Alice like that. You are the man I love, but you’re acting like – like scum. I’m offering you a second chance when I shouldn’t be. Alice is a jewel, she’s perfect, she adores her daddy. You don’t deserve a daughter like that. You fuckwit.’ I was consumed not with fury but with the passionate desire to stop Matt doing the wrong thing. My mother had left a little girl behind because she was ill. Matt could not reject Alice. He had no excuse. I looked at the cup in my hand, and decided that I probably had little else to lose. In a detached way, I lifted my hand and poured coffee over Matt’s head. It was satisfying, but only mildly so. Matt didn’t move out of the way or try to stop me. I wanted him to catch my wrist, because that would have involved some sort of intimacy, but he just sat there. Coffee dripped down his face. He didn’t even wipe it away.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘You have a point. I am a fuckwit.’
I looked at him and smiled. He looked funny with coffee all over him. He caught my eye and smiled back. I giggled. I was beginning to feel hysterical. He looked worried.
‘You’re not coming with me just yet, then,’ I said.
‘I’m not coming with you at all.’
I couldn’t think of anything else to say. There was too much, so I said nothing. I tried to imagine what I would do when I left this flat. I could call Charlotte and let her update everyone. I would tell Christa and Geoff to fly to France. I would try to get a flight to Bordeaux that afternoon. I would be with my little girl, my sister, my friends later in the day.
I might have to try to live without Matt, because he was nothing but an illusion. My Matt had never existed. All along, my Matt had been somebody else’s Hugh.
‘I would never have had anything to do with you if I’d known you were married,’ I told him.
‘That’s why I didn’t tell you.’
‘Does Jo know that? Does she hate me?’
Matt exhaled heavily. ‘She went to France hating you. She expected to hate you. But she doesn’t. She realised straightaway that you had no idea what was going on. She hates the fact of your existence all right.’ He looked at me, and away. ‘She doesn’t want me to have any contact with you ever again.’
‘And you’ve agreed to that?’
‘We’ll need to sort out maintenance and access to Alice once you two are back over here.’
‘But essentially?’
‘Yes. Essentially I’ve agreed to that.’
I walked to the door. I desperately wanted him to stop me, to change his mind, to proclaim his love for me and Alice. He could have made me feel better with a couple of words. He didn’t say anything. Not even goodbye.
I slammed the door loudly behind me, as a meaningless gesture, and sat on his neighbour’s step, and cried.
Hugh paced the flat. He was going to have to wash the coffee out of his hair before Jo came home. He would have to use an unscented shampoo. She was suspicious of him and he knew that she would pick up on anything. He was not sure that there was an unscented shampoo in the bathroom. Or indeed if such a thing existed.
‘That went well,’ he said aloud. He had always enjoyed being Matt. Matt was kinder, stronger than Hugh. Matt was Emma’s pillar. He had supported her in everything. Emma had needed Matt, while Jo and Hugh were not quite equals. Jo was an alpha female, without a doubt. Matt, he thought, could have been an alpha male. Hugh was decidedly beta.
He wandered from room to room, unsure what to do with himself. It was strange to think that Emma was not in his life any more. He could not think about how much he was going to miss her. If he did, he would find himself running after her.
I knew this would happen, he reminded himself. I took the easy path. I knew that was what I was doing. I always knew that I was storing up trouble for the future. When the year was up, if I’d still been getting away with it, I would have carried on. I was never going to drop myself into this situation voluntarily.