Page 26 of The Love of My Life
What tipped him off?
For a terrible moment I thought he’d found my paperwork in the dining room, so I improvised something about ‘nearly-but-not-quite’ leaving St Andrews. But Leo is honourable, almost pathologically so – it’s one of many things I admire about him – and even if he had somehow found that pile of papers, he wouldn’t read them.
Ruby sticks out her feet so I can put her shoes on, and I find myself too tired to insist she has a go at doing it herself.
It was always my intention to tell Leo. That first night we spent together in my friend Casey’s yurt, I was desperate to tell him. But I held back, as I lay with him afterwards. I held back, and promised myself I’d leave it a few weeks.
Then Leo discovered that his parents had adopted him. A few days later, during a furious phone call with them, it got worse: Jane admitted that Leo’s birth mother had in fact died of heart disease two years ago. He couldn’t even meet her.
As I held him through the dark knots of that time, it became clear that I couldn’t tell him about my past. Not then, when he was already contending with so much – and, perhaps, not ever. I started seeing a therapist, who, to this day, remains the only person other than Jill who knows everything, and she encouraged me to review the situation once things had calmed down in Leo’s own life. We agreed that the end of the year felt about right.
And so nine months later, I looked sincerely at my boyfriend – by then my fiancé – and I knew, with crystalline certainty, that I could not tell him. Not because too much time had passed, but because I knew him well enough by then to know he wouldn’t be able to cope with it, no matter how hard he tried. Not just my revelations, but the fact I’d kept the truth from him in the first place. That, for Leo, in the aftermath of his parents’ dishonesty, would be the ultimate betrayal.
I crashed out of St Andrews University in the autumn term of 2000, aged twenty, and didn’t resume study until I was twenty-three. I chose the Open University second time around. They didn’t teach marine biology, but I was happy to make do with straight biology – it would be enough to get me into a master’s somewhere. I hadn’t the stomach for the things I’d loved first time round: freshers’ week, halls of residence, earnest late-night pigeon politics with someone wailing Jeff Buckley in the corner.
I hadn’t the stomach for any human company, beyond that of my grandmother. I studied alone, either in the British Library or in bed, and when I was done I booked a graduation ceremony in Birmingham, because Granny had said she hadn’t been there in ages and would love to go for a night. When my graduation day rolled around, though, she was ill, so I graduated alone. But I still scanned the congregation when I stepped down from the stage with my certificate, like a solo traveller in the arrivals hall of an airport: that absurd hope we hold, as humans, that we’re not alone, even when all the evidence tells us we are.
For a split second I actually thought I saw him – Dad – a head of close-cropped hair in one of the side tiers, a face in shadow. But it was someone else’s father, sitting next to someone else’s mother, clapping someone that wasn’t me.
I had my allocated one celebratory drink on the top floor of the foyer at Birmingham Symphony Hall, with a kind woman from the alumni development stand. She asked me what my plan was now. I drained my wine and told her my first port of call would be to change my name.
She’d raised her glass. ‘Good for you!’ Then: ‘I’m sorry?’
‘I’m going to change my name,’ I repeated. It was the first alcohol I’d had in a long time. I noticed someone had discarded half a burger in the plant pot next to us. ‘I’m going to call myself Emma Merry Bigelow. Bigelow is my Granny’s name and she’s fierce. And Merry – well, I’d like to be more merry. I don’t ever want to think about my old name again. OK, well, have a good afternoon. It was kind of you to come over.’
And off I went, through a deserted convention centre and down to a canal, where I wandered for hours next to the still water, silver birch leaves fanning weightlessly across the path.
My phone rings as I shepherd Ruby across the trampoline club car park. Ruby notices my frenzied scrabble for the handset, but doesn’t say anything.
It’s Leo’s mother. She often calls when Leo hasn’t replied quickly enough to her text messages, and it’s always on a Wednesday, because she knows I don’t work on Wednesdays.
‘Jane!’ I cry, hand on chest. I have to try to calm down. He’s not going to call: he said no contact, and he meant it.
‘Oh, Emma, good. How are you? I just wanted to let you know that Barry came down with flu on Sunday,’ she says, without stopping to hear how I am. ‘Proper flu, he’s very unwell indeed.’ Her voice is taut and I know straight away what this is really about.
I tuck my phone into my shoulder and strap Ruby in, mouthing silently to my daughter that, yes, we are going to go and get an ice cream. Above us the sky is pale and troubled; the breeze is spiny with the promise of more rain.
I get into the driver’s seat after the call ends, just as my phone buzzes again.
‘Dear God, Jane,’ I sigh, picking it up.
‘Dear God, Jane,’ Ruby sighs, in the back.
It isn’t Jane.
I need to see you again, says a notification on my screen. After a pause, I swipe it open.
Please, he writes, in a second message.
‘Mummy. Mummy! ICE CREAM.’
I scrabble around and find Ruby a copy ofThe Marine Professional. ‘Here.’ I hand it to her. ‘I think you should learn about conger eels.’
‘OK,’ Ruby agrees, but only because I’ve taken her by surprise. I have maybe thirty seconds before I need to start driving in the direction of an ice cream.
We agreed there was nothing more to say, I write.Why do you need to see me?
He starts a response. I wait.
