Chapter 88
Josh
Emma turns to me as soon as we enter the kitchen. Kai has stayed behind in the living room with Rachel.
She shuts the door. ‘What the hell was that?’
For a moment or two, I can’t speak.
I wore your T-shirt. Teenage Fanclub.
We had a baby. You and me.
In the back of my mind, old memories begin to glint and then vanish, like cobwebs in frost. I wonder if this is how it feels to be Rachel. Seeing only the faintest, most fragile outline of things, and only then when the light is tipped just right.
‘You and my mum never had a baby – did you?’ Emma’s eyes are insistent, unblinking. Momentarily, it is as though she has me in the dock.
‘No. No. Of course not.’
Her shoulders sink a little. Relief, I assume. She is wearing her Christmas jumper today, a faded Scandi-knit, crimson with white snowflakes. She gets it out every year, because it was a present once from Rachel.
She bites her lip. ‘God, but there was something—’ Breaking off, she shakes her head.
‘What is it? Tell me.’
She shrugs, slightly helplessly. ‘She seemed so desperate for us to hear what she was saying. Her voice was so urgent. Usually she’s just slightly vacant. You know?’
I do. I noticed it too. But Rachel’s mind is such a jumble these days, it’s getting harder and harder to reliably interpret her demeanour.
‘There’s no chance . . .?’ Emma begins.
I wait.
‘There was never any crossover? With you and my dad?’
My heart starts to beat abnormally hard. Is she asking what I think she’s asking?
She spells it out, too impatient to wait for me to catch up. ‘There’s no possibility Lawrence isn’t my dad?’
‘No. Lawrence is one hundred per cent your father. Your mum is just confused.’
Emma looks abruptly exhausted. It’s not hard to get why.
She is pregnant, and caring virtually full-time for a mother who no longer really knows her.
And now this. I want to put my arms around her, but with Emma I can never quite predict if she’s going to stick an elbow into my stomach and tell me to get off.
‘You promise?’ she says.
‘I promise. Me and your mum never—’
I break off.
Well, there was that one night. Obviously.
The night I think Rachel is remembering.
When she turned up in the rain after that stupid row with Lawrence and I lent her my Teenage Fanclub T-shirt.
And yes, we drank a whole bottle of brandy, and I spent much of the next day with my head in the toilet.
I’d pretty much blacked out after a certain point.
But we’d woken up fully clothed, in separate beds.
And Rachel was still really into Lawrence, albeit he’d been acting like a bell-end.
It’s never occurred to me that anything happened between us.
I haven’t given it a second thought. Not once.
And neither has Rachel, as far as I’m aware.
We never felt the need to discuss it, not in all the years since.
But, suddenly, it strikes me that the maths would tally.
My skin turns cold as snow.
No. Not a chance. For one thing, Emma is so much half Lawrence, it’s scary.
‘You never what?’ Emma prompts.
‘Nothing. There’s no chance Lawrence isn’t your dad.’
Somewhere in the room, a bulb is buzzing, incessant as an insect. I make a mental note to sort it, because it’s the kind of noise that really winds Rachel up these days.
Emma lets out a breath. ‘Okay. Okay.’
I smile. ‘Little bit relieved there, are you?’
‘Um, yeah. What with you being twenty-nine and everything.’
Fair point. I lean back against the worktop, try to recover from the past few minutes.
My eyes land on Rachel’s cookbooks, lined up along a shelf.
Some of them are from when we were married.
Delia, Nigella, The Naked Chef. The sight of them always stills my heart.
Because, true to form, Rachel’s house isn’t groaning with stuff, the way my flat is, after nearly seventy years on the planet.
She has kept the habit of a lifetime, only holding on to possessions that mean the most.
‘Have you told your dad about the babies yet?’
Emma nods. ‘Although, we’re not actually speaking at the moment.’
‘Why not?’ Lawrence and Emma fall out pretty regularly – another reason I’m convinced they’re related. Their rows are always fierce in a way that borders on primal, that would seem almost impossible without them sharing genetic code.
‘Oh, you know. As soon as we told him, he started interrogating Kai. Coming up with all these outdated and inaccurate opinions about his job and why he doesn’t have his own flat and all this other irritating, regressive, patriarchal bullshit.’
‘He probably just feels bad that he’s not around to give you a hug in person.’
Emma tilts her head. ‘You know, you give people the benefit of the doubt more than anyone I’ve ever met.’
‘Well. Lawrence isn’t all bad.’
That said, I did overhear the end of a fairly painful phone conversation between him and Emma, a few weeks back.
‘It’s not about whether she recognises you or not,’ she was saying.
Pause.
‘You’re my parents. You, and Mum.’
Pause.
‘Yes, of course the money’s incredibly helpful, but—’
Pause.
‘Because I think Mum would like it. Yes. Yes. Okay. Fine. Let me know.’
She hung up, let out a long sigh. And the futility of the whole situation made me sad. He has no idea what he’s got, was all I could think.
He sent flowers to Rachel last week, with a card that read, Thinking of you at this terrible time x. I found both items stuffed into the kitchen bin the following morning, sprinkled liberally with the leftovers from Emma’s Indian takeaway.
I feel her scanning my face now. ‘I bet you wish Mum took that pill too, don’t you?’
I gaze out of the window for a couple of moments. The garden is steel-skied and powdered with frost, picturesque as a Christmas card.
‘No,’ I say truthfully. ‘Because she never wanted to. Not in her heart. Anyway, if she had, and we’d stayed together, you might not exist. And you like existing, don’t you?’
Emma smiles. ‘Usually. Most days.’
I let out a short laugh. ‘I try not to think about that stuff too much. Take it from me – there’s no point wishing for things that can never come true.’
‘Well, I do.’ Her voice becomes a tremor.
‘I wish . . . I could have Mum back for just one more day. So I could talk to her about the babies. So Kai could see what an incredible person she truly is. So I could tell her I love her, and know she’s really heard it.
So I could tell her . . . not to be afraid. ’
Her words are a landslide. Momentarily, they crush me.
Eventually, I say, ‘You can still say all that stuff to her. I think she does understand, deep down. I really think she does.’
I don’t confess that I’ve started talking to Rachel while she’s asleep. I tell her I never stopped loving her, that I’ll join her in the next life. I always ask her to wait for me there. Because the only thing I want is to be with her again. To pick up right where we left off.
Emma wipes tears from her eyes. But they don’t seem wholly like tears of sadness. They are tears of frustration as well. ‘I’m not ready to lose her, Josh. This is all happening too soon. It’s so fucking unfair.’
Rachel’s carers have the radio on, tuned to one of those stations that’s non-stop Christmas. The music switches to ‘River’ by Joni Mitchell.
I have to turn away, so Emma can’t see my face.