‘Oh my God. Why would she do that?’
‘We don’t have to talk about this now,’ I say. ‘You need to rest.’
He props himself up on his elbows. ‘Was it my fault?’
‘No.’
‘Vicky, I have to tell you something.’
‘No, you don’t. Please don’t.’
‘I slept with her.’
Neither of us says anything. The man in the next bed moans quietly to himself.
‘It was a mistake,’ Tom whispers. He holds his hand out for mine and then drops it when I don’t move. ‘I told her she’d got it wrong. You know what happened after that.’ His hand goes to his abdomen, lies across the wound like a mother protecting her unborn child. ‘I am so sorry.’
‘We’ve both made mistakes.’
Somehow that doesn’t help.
I sigh deeply and stand up. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow.’
He nods and lets me go without a word. I turn and glance back at him through the glass panel in the door. He’s staring straight ahead.
‘Has there been a funeral?’
It’s the next day. Despite everything, I can’t not come and see him. Neither of us has mentioned his confession. I nod. ‘Yes. It was very small. Robert came. Sophie stayed with her grandparents. Grayling was there, and Sarah Wilson. And me.’
‘Not Maggie?’
‘She couldn’t make it.’
He has no idea of their connection yet. One thing at a time. I thought she was wrong not to come. She is a woman with a lot to answer for but, fortunately for her, it looks like she won’t have to do that. Unlike me.
There are a lot of things I haven’t told him yet, like me leaving the teaching profession and my plan to move away and do something completely different. I’m thinking about setting myself up as a property developer. If we don’t survive as a couple, I have my tools and my skills and I can look after the four of us on my own if I have to. I catch his eye and we both smile at the same time.
‘I’m not angry with you,’ I say.
It’s odd, because I’ve been through a whole range of emotions in the last few days, and yet it’s true: I’m not angry.
‘I’ve written you a poem,’ I tell him the next day, proffering my notebook. ‘But it’s nowhere near as good as yours.’
‘Read it,’ he mumbles, and closes his eyes.
‘OK.’
I lift the book up and squint at my scrawl.
They said you wouldn’t make it,
When you were comatose,
I thought I couldn’t take it,
But then you twitched your nose.
‘That’s as far as I got.’
He chuckles. ‘Very moving. I had no idea you were so talented.’
‘Thank you, that means a lot, coming from the Coleridge Street laureate.’
I study his face as he drifts off. He is gaunt; his skin pulled taut over his skull, his eyes hollow. He speaks as I’m stooping to pick my handbag up off the floor.
‘She hasn’t been to visit me.’
I put it down again. ‘Who, darling? Do you mean Hannah? She did come, but she’s gone back home now.’
‘No, not Hannah. Amber.’ He gives me that small-boy look and I frown.
‘Tom, I told you, Amber killed herself.’
‘Oh?’ he says. ‘Yes. Sorry. I forgot.’
And that’s how it is. Amber never quite leaves us because every so often, when he’s distracted, or tired, or just plain confused, he asks me why she hasn’t been to see us, and if we’ve fallen out. The doctor told me he died in the ambulance taking him to hospital that night. They lost him for three and a half minutes. It’s affected his short-term memory.
Tom has fallen asleep. I stroke the hair away from his eyes and bend to kiss his forehead.
Robert emails me a photo a few days later. It was taken the Christmas before last in our sitting room. I’m about seven months pregnant with Josh, sitting deep on the sofa with my feet up on a pile of cushions, wearing a huge baggy green jumper and black maternity leggings. The girls were treating us to their interpretation of the Nativity, with Sophie Collins as a pontificating, self-important Joseph, Emily as Wendy, a pious scold, and Polly as an uncooperative baby Jesus. She wanted to be a king.
My hands are resting on my jiggling belly, my head rocked back with laughter and Amber is convulsed beside me, tears streaming from her eyes, gripping my arm.
I print out a copy, buy a frame for it and place it on my dressing table. We were true friends once, Amber and I. I hold on to that when I wake up at night, sweating from a recurring nightmare, her eyes staring at me through the darkness of the cellar. I wish I could have healed her.
Acknowledgements
Heartfelt thanks are due to Harriet Bourton and Bella Bosworth, both of them fantastic editors, and to Sarah Harwood, my publicist at Transworld; to Victoria Hobbs at AM Heath for her support and kindness, and her colleagues Pippa McCarthy and Jennifer Custer. Thanks to my lovely friend and neighbour Genevieve Quierin for allowing me to pick her legal brain; to the Prime Writers for listening, offering advice, having great lunches and making me laugh; to Detective Inspector Kate Balls of the City of London Police for patiently answering my questions, and, of course, many thanks and loads of love to Max, Lulu and Steve Smithwick.