Chapter 92
Josh
A few seconds after Rachel slips back into unconsciousness, Emma stands up and leaves the room.
I watch Rachel for a moment to check she’s still breathing, then wipe my eyes and go to find Emma. On the landing, I pass Rachel’s nurse. She smiles peacefully at me, as if life as we all know it hasn’t just been drop-kicked into outer space.
Halfway down the stairs, I hear the back door close. Emma clearly needs time, and to be honest so do I.
I try to busy myself in the kitchen for a while. Briefly I wonder if, together, we hallucinated the whole thing. Conjured it up between us, a mirage made from pure exhaustion.
Eventually, Emma comes back inside.
A streak of normality follows her in through the open door. Breeze-tossed linen, birds gossiping, sky saturated with sunshine. No hint of shadows, or dark pasts.
She crosses the kitchen, lowers herself into a chair.
I wait for her to speak, because I owe her that much.
‘You said there was no chance,’ she says eventually.
I feel her eyes on me, the endless blue burn of them. ‘I honestly didn’t think there was.’
‘How drunk were you?’
‘Quite. I mean, very.’
‘Blackout?’
I feel like a teenager she’s cross-examining, as though I’m moments from being slapped with an ASBO. ‘Probably. I have no memories past a certain point.’
‘But Mum does, apparently.’ She shakes her head, looks away from me.
‘I’m sorry.’ It’s a weird thought: that I let her down before she was even born. The consequences of being too pissed to remember coming back to bite us all, more than three decades down the line. ‘I know this must be a shock.’
‘What just happened up there?’ she says, confusion spilling everywhere. ‘Mum was almost herself again. I haven’t seen her like that in years.’ A sob chokes out of her, and she smothers it, too late, with a hand.
Worry stirs in my stomach, concern for the babies. Surely they recommend sidestepping emotional landmines when you’re heavily pregnant? And don’t twins often show up early?
‘Look . . .’ I attempt to say something reassuring. ‘Maybe how your mum was just now means she’s turning a corner.’
Hope, always. An unburst bud in my chest.
Emma shakes her head. ‘That’s impossible.’
‘We don’t know. Let me talk to the nurse, and maybe we can—’
‘Josh. Wait.’
The room, temporarily, feels as though it is floating. Suspended in the hinterland between two opposing versions of our reality.
‘You and my dad did look awfully alike,’ she says. ‘Back in the day. Mum said people used to joke she’d replaced you with a lookalike. No offence.’
I decide, just for once, to let this outrageous slander slide. ‘But you’re very similar to Lawrence, Emma. In lots of ways.’
‘No, that’s what I’m saying. Maybe I don’t look like Lawrence. Maybe I look like you.’
‘I meant, personality-wise.’
She shrugs. ‘Nature or nurture, though?’
‘Nature,’ I say firmly.
‘You and Mum both have brown eyes,’ she says slowly. ‘And I have blue.’
Like most normal people, I know next to nothing about inherited eye colour. Though, for some inexplicable reason, I do seem to remember that Lawrence’s eyes are green. Is that closer to blue, genetically? I have no idea.
‘You honestly can’t remember anything about that night?’
‘Bits and pieces. Not much. And nothing to do with me and your mum . . .’
‘Getting it on?’
I lean back against the worktop, almost feeling a blush coming on. ‘Sure. If that’s what the kids are calling it these days.’
A smile creeps over her face. ‘Look at you getting bashful.’
‘Must we.’
‘Did you really drink a whole bottle of brandy?’
‘I think so. The hangover’s the only part I do remember.’
‘Half a bottle of brandy would kill me.’
‘It almost killed me.’
‘We should take that test.’
‘Emma—’
‘I’m serious, Josh. I need to know. Don’t you?’
I do, of course. But at the same time, I cannot even begin to compute that this brilliant and shining woman could possibly be my daughter.
Then again, we’ve all been happy to assume she’s Lawrence’s. Which is equally ludicrous, if you ask me.
‘Will you go out and get one? Please?’
‘Okay. I will. But there’s something I need to do first.’
I tell her what I’ve been thinking about for a few days now.
She listens carefully, then nods. ‘Yes. Thank you. I think that would be a really lovely thing to do.’