Page 95 of The One Day You Were My Husband
“Your husband must be logged in as you…
“Yes—he’s in charge while I’m abroad.”
“I see. Well, he sends a thousand apologies, says he had to go away last night for an astronomy event? He completely forgot we were coming…yada yada…tells us where the key is hidden…includes his phone number…apologizes again…”
I hear the sound of the kettle being filled and a small click as it’s turned on.
“My brother’s an amateur astronomer,” she says. “He’s exactly the same! Just hares off at a moment’s notice!”
Except there was a storm last night. Nobody would have been watching the stars.
The kettle begins to rumble in the background. “I’ll leave you be,” I say. “Give me a call if you need anything. I hope you have a wonderful holiday!”
“You too, Carrie!”
Nothing is wonderful. My beloved dad has died in hospital, long before his time, and my husband and children are missing.
I open up Roof and read Robin’s message to Hazel. He sounds his usual self: neither stressed nor rushed, just apologetic.
The osprey has disappeared from the fence post. The sky has darkened further—it’s about to open. I return to Roof and I’m halfway through Robin’s message, for the second time, when my hand flies to my mouth.
Robin is logged into my Roof account, where he’s keeping an eye on my host’s inbox. But with one click of a button he can switch to my traveller inbox, where there is a series of messages between me and Johan. He’s always known Johan’s name. He has a reasonable idea of what he looks like, but even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. Our messages sit in an unmistakable furrow of old intimacy. They talk of our meeting, of our phone conversation. And then he messages to say he’s on his way over.Please wait for me,he writes, and that’s the last thing my husband will have read last night.
Has he read the message Johan sent ten minutes ago, too? The tenderness of his tone, the kiss at the end?
Please no.
I start the car engine and then turn it off. I don’t know what to do. Rain has started to fall again. It’s a sudden downpour, hammering the windscreen of this toy car with a cold, dedicated fury.
I call Robin again but he doesn’t answer, and I don’t blame him. Total honesty, we promised each other. No secrets, no gray areas, and—true to his word—Robin has told me everything, right from the start.
So did I, until I found my Johan Kullberg again.
No, I whisper, into my cold little car.No, no.This will devastate Robin. It will lay him out. And our children…My eyes fill with tears.No, no, no.
It doesn’t matter that nothing happened. It was all there. For both of us. And it’s still there this morning. I still feel his arms around me after Nicola’s phone call last night, my almost unbearable longing for more. My heart has already betrayed Robin, even if my hands are clean.
Paralyzed, I sit behind the steering wheel, trying to decide what to do next.
My phone rings, breaking the silence. I scrabble for it, but it’s not Robin. It’s Maeve’s gymnastics club. It’s the Devon under-tens championships this afternoon and Maeve is on the squad, but she hasn’t turned up for their extra practice. Robin hasn’t called and he’s not answering his phone.
Where are my children? Where has Robin taken them? What is he doing?
A few years ago, a man in Tavistock murdered his wife and children after discovering his wife had been sleeping with his school friend. I remember how it had sat in my nervous system, the knowledge of this appalling act just a few miles away. I remember his neighbors saying to the news crews that he had always seemed like such a sweet man: quiet, hardworking, always friendly. And yet.
People do unimaginably awful things when they’re cuckolded, Dadhad said to me. We’d met in Ashburton for a coffee while Robin took the twins swimming and I’d seen the Tavistock murders on the front page of theWestern Morning News. I couldn’t let it go.It can send the sanest of folk completely over the edge.
Even Robin?
“Stop it,” I tell myself, loudly. Of course not Robin. These thoughts are no more than a marker of my overwhelm, the bottomless shock of losing my dad, the fallout of seeing Johan.
I send Robin a message saying that I know what he’s seen.
Absolutely nothing happened,I write.I didn’t even know he was out of prison until a few weeks ago. I should have told you—it’s just been such a shock, I haven’t been thinking straight. I’m so sorry, Robin. So, so, so, so, so sorry. But please know that nothing happened. We just talked about his arrest and imprisonment. There was a lot of stuff I needed to know. Please call me. Xxxxxx
—
By the time I return the hire car ninety minutes later, I’ve had no reply.
