Shoving my phone in my bag, I walked to the tube slowly, looking around me as if seeing for the first time. A normal day. A Monday. No one else was reacting like the universe was playing some horrific trick on them. So why me?
Approaching the road, I noticed the cyclist a few moments before and slowed right down; the woman with the dog in tartan stopped and tutted as she almost walked into me. The cyclist swept by, the whir of his wheels, the flash of his neon top, a slight hiss in the air. I twisted my body to watch him continue down the road, signal, and turn left. What could I change? What could I affect?
My chest ached as I chided myself again for messing up so badly, how different today might have been if I’d stopped him leaving the house.
The tube was the same. The man in the padded coat had a slightly sad expression on his face and I stared back at him for a second in mutual torment. I wondered what his story was. What would he think if I told him about the last forty-eight hours? What would any of these people think? The woman in the blue faux-fur coat, headphones over her ears, wouldn’t believe me, surely. The child peeking over the escalator at me might, but then he probably believes that Father Christmas really does deliver presents to a billion kids in one night. The man in the overcoat hurrying down one side might scoff. Would the two women watching him take pity on me?
I exited the tube into the street, blue sky above, the turtle-shaped cloud, the stripped, small tree ahead stark in its winter beauty. The sight brought a lump to my throat.
I moved on automatic to the café, realizing as I approached the counter that I was still clutching the paper bag with my cinnamon swirl inside.
The barista was waiting, an eyebrow raised as I Iooked at him, the tattoo winding around his neck. “Hazelnut latte?” he ventured when I hadn’t said anything. “And a blueberry muffin.” That smile, the gap in the teeth. I thought of Poppy, the rigid way she’d been lying in her bed, the dark smudge on her cheek, the orange dots in our bathroom sink—of course—the details slotted into place. But that didn’t make any sense. Why?
A discreet cough as the café bell went. How long had I been standing here?
“I’m sorry.” I jerked to attention, aware suddenly that my latte was on the countertop, a muffin in a bag. I rummaged for my purse.
“On the house.”
“I . . . Thank you,” I said gratefully, alarmed to feel the sting of tears. Perhaps he noticed too as his expression turned to concern. I turned to leave and then looked back, “Can I ask? Sorry, I know I should know. What is your name?”
The smile again. “Jurek.”
“I’m Emma,” I said, not wanting to leave the warmth of the café, the kindness of this virtual stranger. For a second I wanted to tell him everything, to sit in the steamed-up window, the smell of coffee beans strong, and unburden myself. But another customer was waiting and Jurek was too polite to move me on.
“You take care, Emma,” he said. “The muffin will help, yes?” and the connection warmed my stomach.
I didn’t want to go to the office. To see Linda and odious Arthur. But where to go? I slumped onto a bench farther down the street, the graffiti announcing D hearts F. I felt my hand tingle with the urge to change the F to an E. Dan hearts Emma. Emma hearts Dan. What I felt for Dan was so much more than that—what was I meant to do without him? He was my husband, my best friend, he was my ally in parenting. He’d seen me at my very best (tanned and happy winning a pool competition in a Sydney bar) and very worst (vomiting down myself and into a coal scuttle at Hattie’s thirtieth birthday party).
Miserably I sipped my latte, heart not in anything, the familiar flavor taking a second or two to even register. Resting the cup on the bench, I pulled out the cinnamon swirl, examining it. Flakes escaped into the bag as I bit into it. The explosion of flavor prompted the memory of a particular day, barely being able to swallow the pastry for feeling.
A Saturday morning, in those early foggy days of Poppy when it could have been a Saturday or a Tuesday, midnight or midday. Time didn’t make sense, the days long and dark and disjointed. Poppy slept, I slept, Poppy cried, I cried and laughed and soothed and cleaned and tried to support Dan. He’d been struggling with fatherhood, with life. He was deep in the middle of grieving for a mum he’d grown even closer to in the last few years. He barely registered his newborn daughter, emerging from a daze as I handed her to him to cuddle, to change, to hold for two seconds.
Bewildered, he would look down at her, his face softening as she clutched a thumb with her tiny fingers. Then wordlessly hand her back after a few moments. “She wants you.”
“Dan.”
He was frightened, I could see it. Frightened of the dangers everywhere for the precious new member of our family. Frightened to hold her, to love her. I was frightened too but someone had to do it, to put one foot in front of the other. And God it was hard, and sometimes I just wanted to scream at him to notice us, come back to us.
Anyway, that Saturday he’d appeared, showered, clothes clean, eyes bright. He’d paused in the bedroom doorway. Poppy starfished beside me in the bed, me on my side half-asleep, one hand on her chest as it rose and fell, steady, calm, serene. Tiptoeing in he handed me a plate.
“You said you loved them.”
Returning a few moments later with a mug of tea, steam curling into the air as I slowly sat up. We sat on either side of her and Dan cheersed me with his own mug.
I’d told him I loved them. Cinnamon swirls reminded me of my gran, when I’d stayed in her Dorset cottage when I was tiny, the smell of them filling the galley kitchen. Every day began that way, cross-legged watching the small circles of dough rise in her oven. She’d remove them and we’d eat them warm at her small circular table. A day on the beach stretching ahead. I hadn’t seen Gran after that visit; Mum and her had stopped speaking to each other—an argument I was never privy to—my parents were like that. Private. Had their own arguments with each other, family members, neighbors. Even if it concerned me. It was like I wasn’t even there, didn’t have my own thoughts or feelings about it. And by the time I’d been old enough to see Gran under my own steam she had died.
“I’m sorry,” he’d said quietly over our sleeping daughter. I looked at him, at his haggard face that had aged ten years in two months, the solemn expression, the tears that filmed his eyes. “I’m sorry, Emma.”
I’d bitten into the pastry then, the explosion of taste reminding me of family. Something hard, a kernel of resentment, dissolved inside me and I reached across Poppy to lay a hand on him. “It’s OK,” I said, “it’s OK.”
I thought back to those days, to a Dan so utterly different from the one I lived with now. The Dan who shuffled around me, face gaunt. He’d been ill, so swallowed up by grief and anxiety he never slept, lying tortured in the dark. I’d find him sometimes when Poppy stirred, eyes open and bloodshot, fixed to a spot on our ceiling. Looking slowly at me as if it was 2 p.m. or 2 a.m., oblivious to the world around him.
He’d left us. We’d had a terrible row, God, I’d let rip, it still makes my heart ache to think of the things I snarled at him—and then he left.
Hattie had practically moved in with us, doting on Poppy, giving her bottles, burping her, playing with her as I cried for Dan, asked her if I’d forced this life on him. She’d chastised me for worrying about him. She was of course grieving herself, but she seemed better able to talk about it.
The Dan who had left us had long since disappeared; in fact, it was hard to reconcile the two men. The accident he’d had, his drunken fall from a second-floor balcony that had put him in the hospital, seemed to jolt him back into being.
Today he couldn’t be more different. I mean, yes, his obsession with stationery is an illness, but this Dan is calmer, more comfortable in his skin. In recent years he negotiated hours with Matt that meant he was always back to see the kids, often working from home. He put us first. I stopped chewing; the pastry dust in my mouth as I thought of that Dan, who loved us, splayed in the street.
Dropping the remnants in the bag, I felt nausea swirl in my stomach. God, what was happening? I was going mad; maybe I was the one who had died and this was some test? Some purgatory?
I’d never felt more alone.
“Emma?”
It was a second before I realized the voice wasn’t in my head. Jas was standing in front of me in her woolen teal coat. “I thought it was you! I was sent out to buy—”
“Coffee,” I finished in a flat voice, the last two days suddenly swooping back into my vision.
A line appeared on Jas’s forehead. “Exactly. Arthur can’t ABIDE granules, Emma.”
“He’s such a waste of space,” I said.
“Well, yes, but he, you know, helps pay our wages . . .”
“It’s gross that someone like him gets all the success. I’ve got authors with a million times more talent, who are actual decent human beings, and that sleaze rakes it in and we all have to fawn over him while he’s online being a misogynistic twat.”
Jas was quiet for a moment. “I agree. But not the angle you’re going to go for in the meeting, OK? He’s lovely, right. He respects all women. He loves all coffee.” Her laugh was nervous.
I shrugged, wondering quite what I was doing on that bench, outside that office. I didn’t have to go to that meeting. I didn’t want to go to that meeting.
“Oh, and talking about nice authors,” Jas said, “I really want to give you the opening pages of Ernestina’s latest draft—honestly, Emma, I’m obsessed, I really think it’s special. I think it might be ready to submit. I’d love to know what you think. I mean, I know you barely have time to read but—”
“Ha,” the laugh interrupted her, half strangled, half sobbed.
Jas leaned down toward me. “Emma? Are you all right?”
“Send the pages,” I said, my voice low, my body slumped on the bench.
“Oh, I will. Thanks. Um . . . Do you need to get going for that meeting now?” Jas asked, lingering next to me, a worried expression still on her face. “I think they’re both waiting for y—”
“I don’t feel well,” I explained. “Can you tell Linda . . .” I stood up, decisive suddenly, “Tell her I’m not well. I can’t . . .”
I trailed off as I walked away. My coffee cup abandoned on the bench, Jas staring after me.
“Emma!”
I held a hand up in a wave but kept walking, back past the café, past the tree, and out of the sunshine into the bowels of the tube.
Opening my phone I ignored the notifications, the pings from Instagram. Lou stressing about her cover, Amelia in her hammock, Claire the editor asking where her book was, the emails from clients and editors and publicists. Denise. All of them.
I headed to the internet and typed into Google.
I couldn’t lose Dan. I needed to know what was happening. I knew where I needed to go.