THE KITCHEN, WEYFIELD HALL, 1:30 P.M.
• • •
The three of them stood near the AGA range for a moment, after Olivia had gone upstairs. Emma looked slightly deflated. “Very tired,” she said, half to herself.
Phoebe slipped onto the bench by the long farmhouse table. Her ethereal face, uplit by her laptop, looked rather eerie. “George thinks Audette’s for the engagement party,” she said.
“Oh yes, gorgeous!” said Emma. “I’ll just see if she wants a hot water bottle,” she added, moving toward the door.
“She’s fine, Emma,” said Andrew, more curtly than he’d meant to. His wife used to flap this way when he came back from Lebanon, bombarding him with snacks and hot drinks, and discreet inquiries after his digestion. It was her way of coping, he knew. One of the only good things to come from quitting foreign correspondence had been an end to Emma’s stifling concern. Even so, carrying Olivia’s rucksack into the house, he’d felt a tug of nostalgia, and something like envy.
“Who’s the publicist there?” said Phoebe.
He knew this was Phoebe’s way of asking him to get Audette’s, an overhyped Mayfair restaurant, for free. “At Audette’s? I believe it’s one of the unfortunately named Natasha Beard’s. But I gave them two stars, so I don’t imagine she’ll be wild about hosting your shindig.”
“Uuuurgh.” Phoebe slumped forward, so that her little chin sat on the table, and looked up at him. Her eyes were like flowers.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, walking across the dim passage to the smoking room, his unofficial study.
Bloody George. It still rankled that he had proposed to Phoebe without Andrew’s permission. Emma joked that it wasn’t like Andrew to be so bourgeois (which, he felt, was true), but it implied a lack of deference. Still, Phoebe mustn’t know their misgivings. It might drive her away. Andrew should know—Emma’s parents had never approved of him, and their hostility had only added a certain frisson to proceedings. But that had been rather different. Sir Robert and Lady Hartley weren’t objecting to Andrew per se—though they’d have preferred Emma to marry a toff. It was Andrew’s scoop on Bunty Hartley in 1978 that had been the problem. Emma’s uncle Bunty was a Tory MP, outed by Andrew for his connection to a dodgy arms deal in Iraq. The story had been published long before Andrew met Emma—there was nothing he could do to unwrite it, and no way the Hartleys would forget the name of “that dreadful hack” who had shamed Bunty. Always, at Weyfield, he felt their froideur afresh. Not least because one of Emma’s ancestors seemed to be glaring at him from a gold frame at every turn. Thank God Emma’s parents had died before Andrew became a food critic. That would have been the last word in nouveau, in their eyes.
Andrew sat at the bureau in the smoking room, its innards bunged up with yellowing postcards and bent photos and inexplicable magazine cuttings. The garden outside looked bleakly soggy, walls punctuated by naked pear trees. He tapped out an e-mail to Natasha Beard and immediately got her out-of-office. That would satisfy Phoebe. He attempted the cryptic crossword, but Emma’s voice kept fluting through from the kitchen, over her CD of dirge-like carols, making it impossible to think. He laid the draft dodger along the door to dull the noise. It looked about two centuries old. Why did Emma keep these things? He read The Economist and found himself hugely irritated by a glowing review of a book by a man he’d been at Magdalen with. Finally, he pulled an envelope out of his wallet—the letter he had received eighteen months ago. He read it again, despite knowing it by heart.
P.O. Box 07-2416
Riad El Solh
Beirut
1107 2100
June 20, 2015
Andrew Birch
The World Magazine
Bedford Sq
London
WC1B 3HG
Dear Andrew,
It has been many years, but I hope you remember meeting me, Leila Deeba, in Beirut. I am writing to tell you that after we met, I discovered I was pregnant with your baby. He was born December 26, 1980. I chose to have him adopted, as I felt unable to raise a child alone. I would like to sincerely apologize for not having informed you. I was young and afraid, and my career, at that time, was my obsession. Beirut was a dangerous place for a child. I thought it would be easier for you if you didn’t know.
But I am writing to you now, Andrew, because I am sick. I have a terminal disease. I have accepted that I will probably die without meeting my son. For many years I hoped he would try to find me, but he has not. I never had any other children.
If, some day, he contacts you, please tell him that not a day passed when I didn’t think of him. My dying wish is that he has been happy. Please believe this letter, for his sake. You will know him if you see him. He was beautiful. I named him Iskandar.
Yours,
Leila
I wish you well, and I hope that life has been good to you.
Andrew thought back to when he had received the letter, in June last year. It had been lurking in a Jiffy bag of post, forwarded to Gloucester Terrace by an intern at The World. Initially, Andrew had doubted its authenticity. The skeptic in him wondered if it was a hoax, or the start of a dismal plea for money. Even if this was the Leila Deeba he remembered, the stunning Télé Liban presenter with whom he had had a one-night fling, how could she be sure the baby was his? The voice sounded distinctly melodramatic, possibly unstable. And the handwriting was all over the place. The woman might well be delusional.
And so he had decided, with very little deliberation, to say nothing about the letter to Emma. It would only open a whole vat of worms. The thing was, he and Emma had already been together when Andrew had shagged Leila. Admittedly, he had only been taking Emma out for three months. And, at the time, their romance had been a secret, because of the Uncle Bunty awkwardness. Even so, allowing himself to be seduced by Leila Deeba was wrong. So when Leila’s uncorroborated letter arrived, years later, it had seemed pointless to show his wife. It would just upset her. She would wonder, if he couldn’t keep his hands off other women then, what else he’d been up to. The truth was, nothing. Meeting Emma at the airport after his night with Leila was torture. Emma had been holding a banner that read “A Hero Returns.” Even worse were the ensuing weeks when she had nursed his injured leg (he always thought of his shrapnel wound as punishment from Allah). Afterward, he knew that he never wanted to feel that heinous again. Within a year he’d proposed.
But now that Jesse’s e-mail had proved Leila’s letter true, Andrew wished he had shown it to Emma when it had arrived. By saying nothing for eighteen months, he’d dug himself into quicksand. He opened his draft reply to Jesse. It was a week since the man had written. Andrew had to say something. So far, he had:
Dear Jesse,
Thank you for your e-mail. While it would be a pleasure to meet you, I am afraid December is not a good time, as my family and I are presently in quarantine. My daughter Olivia has been treating Haag victims in Liberia and we have been instructed to avoid contact with anyone but immediate family.
He sighed. He couldn’t really say “immediate family” to Jesse. That was crass. Besides, the draft implied that in normal circumstances Jesse would be welcomed with open arms. He stood up and stared at one of the porcelain spaniels on the mantelpiece, and his own face in the mirror. He suddenly looked about eighty. Then, to clear his mind, he played a long game of online scrabble.
“Lu-unch!” trilled Emma. He would try again after a drink, he decided.