Emma Worthington is sitting on the side of the unmade bed, massaging the base of her stomach, which is aching horribly. She can’t wait to have the baby but, then again, she isn’t looking forward to endless sleepless nights now that they have got Ben sleeping through.
The loud ringing of the phone right next to her gives her a fright and, at that very moment, the baby gives a hard kick.
‘Ow! Oh my God, Alex. I’ve just got off the phone from Jo Shepherd and was about to call you. Have you seen the papers? About Nicky Scott?’
‘I know, that’s why I’m calling.’
‘Isn’t it ghastly? It’s beyond belief that something like that could happen. Poor James. What he must be going through?’
It’s as if Alex hasn’t heard her and when he does speak his voice sounds peculiar, distant.
‘I need to talk to you about something, Em.’
‘What? What’s the matter— Alex?’ Emma knows her voice sounds uncharacteristically shrill.
Her husband has spoken only a few words, but she recognises his tone of voice. Emma has the urge to put the phone down so she won’t have to hear what he says next.
Alex doesn’t say anything for a few seconds and then speaks slowly and quietly, as if he is exhausted by what he has to tell her.
‘Em, before you say anything, you must let me finish. I can explain everything.’
Emma feels a stab of fear.
‘Oh God, I don’t want to hear this. Please don’t speak like that, you’re frightening me.’
‘I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you again – I’m such a fucking useless idiot.’
She puts her hand to her mouth and fights back tears.
‘No, Alex, no!’
Neither of them speak and then something clicks into place in Emma’s mind.
‘But what has all this got to do with Nicky Scott, Alex?’ Her voice sounds cold.
‘I was with her on Thursday night. I—’
Emma interrupts. ‘What the hell do you mean, you were with her? You’re not telling me— no, no, not again. Why are you doing this to me?’ She starts moaning.
‘It was nothing like that, Em. I had a drink with her, that’s all. She said she was having problems with James and needed someone to talk to.’
‘Are you bloody serious? Why didn’t you tell me then? Do you really expect me to believe you, after everything you’ve done before?’ Emma feels like hanging up but, for some reason, she can’t pull the receiver away from her ear.
‘I swear, Emma, nothing happened. We just talked. I should have told you, but I knew you would react like this.’
‘Of course I would fucking react like this. How the hell do you think I would react?’
She can almost feel Alex recoil in shock at the other end of the phone. She hardly ever swears.
‘I don’t know. I’m so sorry,’ he says.
‘But Nicky Scott is dead. This is impossible. Are you telling me you had something to do with it?’
‘No, not at all. It must have happened long after I left, but I’ll have to go to the police because I may have been the last person to see her.’
‘My God, Alex, you have really screwed up this time,’ Emma says. ‘You fucking bastard. Don’t even think about coming home – I don’t want to see you again, ever.’
‘Em—’
But Emma doesn’t hear what he says next because she has slammed the phone down so hard on the bedside table that the frame containing a photo of them with their son, Ben, falls onto the floor and the glass smashes.
Emma sits on the edge of the bed and clutches a pillow to her chest, rocking backwards and forwards. She is far too angry to cry.
‘You fucking bastard, you fucking bastard,’ she keeps repeating, like a mantra.
Finally, though, the tears come. Lying in a foetal position so as not to put pressure on her huge stomach, she hugs the same pillow into her face and sobs. The phone rings twice, but she ignores it and when, finally, she has to get up because she badly needs to pee, she takes the phone off the hook.
She has a splitting headache and while she is sitting on the loo she rummages around in her sponge bag to find a painkiller, then discards the idea. It’s probably bad for the baby, she thinks as her tears threaten to start again. This time she fights against them and leans forward with her elbows on her knees and her fingertips pressing hard into her head, rubbing her temples.
*
Alex knows his excuse sounded pathetic but there was nothing else he could have told Emma other than a version of the truth.
He is no stranger to guilt. His Catholic upbringing had instilled it in him from an early age and, although he has lapsed somewhat in recent years, he has never lost the ability to feel guilty for his mistakes and shortcomings – and he knows there are many. For a moment, he entertains the idea of tracking down the nearest Catholic church and making his confession, but he knows it would be pointless because the guilt he feels now is never going to go away. He has blown the last chance he had with Emma and there is no redeeming himself.
Alex mentally lists all the ways in which he has failed his wife. Apart from being unfaithful, more times than Emma is aware of, he knows he has become increasingly lazy and selfish as the marriage has progressed. On top of that, they have been getting into debt because his job – looking after private client sales for a small wine company – doesn’t pay enough to cover the mortgage and support the family, let alone pay for holidays or other extravagances. Although Emma rarely criticises him, he knows she hates having to ask her parents for help. Sometimes he blames her for not being tougher on him and allowing him to get away with so much. It is almost as if she is compliant. But, in his heart, he knows that is unfair – she had been tough to start with, but his infidelities had gradually worn her down and after the first time she didn’t have the strength to leave him again. But she will find it now, he thinks, and he deserves everything that is coming to him.
When they first met, Emma had been a model but, after they were married and he was posted to Germany, she gave up her flourishing career and reinvented herself as an artist. She was beautiful, certainly, but she was also clever and talented. She started making a name for herself doing pastel portraits of children and was rarely out of work.
He is not someone who is much given to self-reflection, but occasionally Alex questions why he couldn’t have been content with a life that most people would envy. Emma thinks it is because his mother was absent during most of his formative years and he is always looking for a replacement. It is true, he had rarely seen his mother during those early years. His father had been a director of a leading aerospace company, as position which took him all over the world, and Alex’s mother had made the decision to accompany him wherever he went, leaving their two children for weeks on end in the capable hands of her mother and a succession of au pairs. Alex wondered why she had bothered to have children if she was so uninterested in their upbringing.
It wasn’t that he’d had an unhappy childhood exactly. His grandmother had allowed his sister and him to run wild at their parents’ home in Berkshire, where they all lived. Although, like many women of her generation, she wasn’t particularly demonstrative, she had been adored by both children, and Alex was forever quoting lines from poems and songs that she had taught them. But, looking back now, he had felt his mother’s absence strongly and this was exacerbated when he was sent off to a strict Catholic boarding school at the age of eight and saw her even less. By the time Alex had finished university, he had virtually no relationship with her, and, although they were civil enough when they met for the occasional Christmas or Easter, there was no love between them.
His thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a baby crying behind him and Alex turns around to see a young woman pushing a pram along the path. She looks hopefully towards the bench and he stands up, picking up his phone and briefcase.
‘Please take it. I’m off now.’
In his hurry to get away before he becomes entangled in any further conversation, he trips over a stone at the edge of the path, ripping his suit trousers and grazing his knee.
‘Fuck it,’ he mutters as he gets up and brushes himself off. The gravity of his situation suddenly strikes him with full force when he realises that he has no way of getting any more clothes. After his conversation with Emma, he certainly can’t go home and he will have to find some other solution.
*
Emma calls one of her sisters, who lives nearby, and explains what has happened. Her terrible conversation with Alex has left her feeling shaken and tearful so she feels proud of herself for not breaking down even when she realises her sister is crying.
‘Sorry,’ Kate says after she has recovered herself. ‘It’s you who should be a mess and I’m not being any help at all.’
‘You’re a help just being there,’ says Emma. And it’s true. If it weren’t for her family, she would have collapsed long ago.
‘I’ll be over in a minute,’ Kate says. ‘Do you want me to call Mum?’
‘No, not at the moment – I need some time to think and you know what she’s like. She’ll be wanting to manage the whole thing like a military operation. It would be great to have you here, though, but you mustn’t tell anyone about this, not even Mick yet, please.’
‘Of course not, I won’t say a word.’
While she waits for her sister to arrive, Emma speculates about what Alex is doing now. She isn’t really angry anymore. She knows that they have finally reached a point of no return and in many ways it’s a relief. Always wondering whether he is going to let her down again is exhausting, and she doesn’t have the energy for it anymore.
Despite all his flaws and the countless times he has hurt her, she has never stopped loving him and that makes everything so much harder. She was drawn to him from the moment they met and has never come across another man with the sort of magnetism Alex has, and he makes her laugh so much. She will miss that most of all.