Page 96 of The One Day You Were My Husband
I know, rationally, that he’ll just be devastated, or angry, or both, that he’ll have needed to get out of the house. I know that he won’t want to talk to me anymore than I’d want to talk to him if I’d stumbled across an intimate message chain between him and a woman from his past.
But the longer I don’t know where my children are, the sicker I feel. I call Nicola and I call Mum; neither reply. I call Maya again and she answers this time, but is only able to whisper that she is at the register office and can’t talk.
I’m just about to call Robin again when Johan phones.
“Carrie. Where are you?”
I tell him I’m in a taxi, on my way to my apartment to pack my suitcase and leave for the airport.
He says something under his breath that I think is a Swedish swear word. “When will you be at the airport?”
“Maybe two hours from now?”
“I’m coming to meet you there. I’m coming to England with you.”
“What?”
“Oh, Carrie…I’m sorry. It’s about Robin. Your husband. I really don’t want to be telling you this, but he…uhh, he—”
“What?Johan, what about Robin?”
“Are you flying SAS?” he asks. I can hear him running up some stairs. A drawer is opened, the sounds of scrabbling. A zip.
“Yes. But Johan…” Running again, then the sound of keys, some beeping.
“I’ll see you in terminal five. Text me your flight details. I’ll get a seat on your plane.”
“You’re scaring me. What do you know? Are the children OK?”
“I’m sure they will be. But I need to talk to you again, face-to-face. Wait for me by airport security, OK?” I hear a door slamming, a deadlock turning.
“Johan,stop!”I’m shouting. “Tell me what’s happening. Now!”
“It was Robin,” he says. He’s out of breath; he must be walking fast, maybe even running. The sound of a car door opening, closing, the engine starting. “Robin was my fixer in Myanmar. It was him who gave me the pills to carry, for his boss. Robin is the reason I went to prison.”
I think my heart actually skips a beat. “I’m sorry?”
I hear the sound of gears changing, then his indicator: a cheerful ticking in the eye of this tornado.
“I didn’t know who your husband was. I didn’t know anythingabout your new life, Carrie. I forbade myself from googling you. Then yesterday you called him by his name. There are hundreds of thousands of Robins in this world; I didn’t think anything of it. But the name stuck itself to my subconscious and I found myself googling Robin Carghill. Out of interest, I suppose. I found him straight away. Loads of stuff about the Heynes Foundation, a profile on LinkedIn. But I kept going—I don’t know why, I just got carried away looking at this man who nearly destroyed my life. I got to page four of Google and there was your name. Something to do with a sponsored bike ride on Dartmoor that you and him did together.”
I wrap my arms around myself.
No.
“I can’t believe I’m telling you this. I just cannot believe it.”
No.
“I find it very disturbing, Carrie. There’s no way he wouldn’t have known who you were when you met. I used to talk about you constantly when we worked together. I showed him pictures of you. Fuck,” he adds. “Roadworks.”
My taxi pulls up outside my apartment building. I pay the driver, probably too much, but I need to be out of that car, in the fresh air.
“I don’t think it can be the same Robin,” I say. “I…I met him completely by chance. At a hospital fundraiser. And Robin’s…Robin’s a good man, Johan. A really good, kind man, who’s done nothing but look after us all. It can’t be…”
Johan listens, not saying anything, but I can hear the sounds of a car driving. I know he’s still there, and I know he’s giving me a moment to come around to the idea.
“I’m sorry,” he says, after a long pause. “And for what it’s worth, I thought he was a good guy, too. I’ve even had moments when I can find some grain of understanding why he stitched me up the momenthe saw authorities arrived on his doorstep. This, though. This is a whole new level of wrong, Carrie. How long have you been together?”
