I’d shied away from checking up on her, from looking her up online. My grief was too raw and my heart too fragile. It was easier to let the memory of her face fade in my mind with the passing of time.
In a few weak moments more recently I had contemplated knocking on the door of my old house on one of my infrequent visits to see Amanda and the girls. I’d tried to picture Emma’s reaction, to imagine how it would feel to see her face again; whether she would be pleased to see me, or whether she would simply slam the door in my face.
Would I be pleased to see her, or would I only be able to see the face of the person I blamed for my brother’s death?
In the end, I hadn’t dared to do it. I’d made peace with the fact that she’d never be part of my life again and there was no point in stirring up the hornets’ nest.
But now, here she was, splitting my life apart like an axe through a log, and I couldn’t ignore it any longer.
She wanted to see me, and I had to decide whether to pull that loose thread one last time and risk my whole, safe life unravelling – or leave it alone and live with the knowledge that being here, in my life, was enough.
33
EMMA
How long do you wait for someone to reply before you give up on them? Although email was great for so many things, one of the worst things about it was the uncertainty: did Nick get my email, or had he changed his email address? Had he read it? Had it gone into his junk folder? Or had he seen it and decided to ignore it?
After six weeks had passed, I was fairly certain I wasn’t going to get a reply from him no matter what the reason. The question was, should I try to find him another way, or did he simply just not want to know?
‘You have to at least give him the chance to decide whether he wants to be part of Flynn’s life,’ Rachel said.
‘I don’t want to trick him into anything,’ I replied. ‘If he’s not interested in seeing me, then that’s that.’
Rachel knew not to push me on it, but her words stayed with me. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps Nick did deserve to know about Flynn no matter what. Maybe I should have told him about his son in the email, rather than being opaque about it.
But I hadn’t wanted to frighten him off. I had no idea what Nick Flynn’s life had been like since we’d last seen each other,and I had no idea whether he was even in a fit state to see me. Besides, this was pretty big news I had to tell him, not something to just drop into an email.
‘We need to look him up,’ Rachel said. ‘There must be more about him online.’
‘There really isn’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve tried everything, but he doesn’t seem to have an online presence.’
‘What, not at all?’
‘Only a couple of local news stories from when he took his new job as deputy head at that school in Suffolk, another one where he’s quoted saying how proud he is after the school received an excellent OFSTED inspection, and a couple of articles in the local paper about a charity he’s set up for grieving relatives.’ I shrugged. ‘It makes me worry that he’s deliberately hidden himself from the world.’
Rachel peered more closely at me. ‘What are you really worried about, Ems?’
I tried to ignore the burning sensation behind my eyes, blinking back the tears before they escaped. I sniffed. ‘He must blame me for what happened to his brother,’ I said, my voice wobbly. ‘He must hate me. I’d hate me.’
‘It’s not your fault. You must know that?’
‘Of course it is,’ I said, as the tears streamed down my face. ‘If I hadn’t written that letter then his brother would never have died!’
‘But Nick would have done.’
I shook my head. ‘But that was the way it was meant to be. This is why he told me he didn’t want to know anything about the future, because nothing good can ever come from interfering with it.’
‘You don’t know for certain that he even found your letter.’
I looked up. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, you have no idea whether he found it, or whether the fact that Andy got on the train rather than Nick was just a coincidence.’
I stared at her. That had never even occurred to me. I’d just assumed that Nick’s brother dying instead of him was down to me. But what if Rachel was right, and itwasjust a coincidence?
‘Maybe. But that still doesn’t change the fact that he hasn’t replied to my email.’
‘Then let’s go and find him,’ she said.
