‘But—’ I move towards her but Adrian takes my arm.
‘Leave it, love.’
Reluctantly I watch her go. Then I turn to Adrian. ‘Why didn’t you pick up your phone?’
In reply he ferrets in the pocket of his tracksuit bottoms. ‘Six missed calls. Bit excessive, don’t you think?’
‘I was worried.’
‘But why?’
‘I thought something might have happened. You left without telling anybody where you were going.’
‘I told Nancy when she was here earlier that I was going for a run.’
‘Oh. Right. Well, she didn’t tell me. She disappeared without collecting her wages.’
‘I gave them to her.’ He takes off his fleece and hangs it over the banister. I immediately take it off again and fold it over my arm.
‘Oh. Right,’ I say again, momentarily distracted. And then I remember. ‘You’d printed out something. I thought it was your manuscript. But it wasn’t.’
Adrian looks surprised. ‘What? I’ve not printed anything.’
‘I’ll show you.’ I’m trying to remain calm, feeling foolish for my panicky missed calls earlier. I walk up the stairs. He kicks his trainers off and follows me.
When we reach our room, he runs over to his desk and gathers up the papers. Then I notice the light on the printer flashing. There is more paper in the tray. I pick them up, dismayed to see they say the same thing.Selena.
I thrust the pages at him. ‘What’s going on?’
His eyes scan the pages and he doesn’t speak. Instead a pulse throbs at his jaw.
Oh, God. He’s going to admit it, isn’t he? He’s going to tell me he was in love with Selena.
I wait, my heart pounding. I’m holding my breath. The world seems to stop. Will I remember this afterwards, this pivotal moment in my life? Will I think of it in the Before and After?
I know things could be better between us. But I’ve tried, I’ve really tried, to mend our relationship. To get things back to how they were. Maybe that’s the problem: I wanted him to be like he was before his breakdown, but it’s altered him and I need to love him for who he is now. And I do. I do. I don’t want to lose him.
He lifts his head, his brow furrowed. ‘I don’t know. Honestly, I didn’t do this.’
I’m thrown. I wasn’t expecting him to say that. ‘What do you mean?’ Is he in such a bad way that he’s forgotten? I assess him. No, he seems calm, stable, nothing like he was in the days before his breakdown.
He tidies up the papers so they’re in a pile and clicks on his laptop. I peer over his shoulder. There, on the screen, is one page full of ‘Selena’. But when he scrolls up to the previous pages, there is his novel. He goes to the print set-up and I can see that someone has arranged for just that page to print thirty times.
He turns to me and his eyes are intense, desperate. ‘I didn’t write this.’
I exhale in relief. He’s telling the truth. Thank God.
He twists back to the computer and I squeeze his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry for thinking you did.’
He sighs and sits down heavily on his office chair. ‘Are you always going to doubt me? Because of what happened?’
Because of what happened.
I slump to the floor. ‘I thought I’d never see them again.’
His voice is thick with emotion. ‘You don’t know how sorry I am. That I put them at risk like that.’
Two weeks before he’d tried to take his own life, Adrian had picked up the girls from school. It was unusual that he was home in time: he never normally finished work until at least six. But unbeknown to me he’d walked out of his job. He hadn’t been thinking straight and drove them into the centre of London. I’d been desperately trying to get hold of him, wondering why they hadn’t come home. It had been two hours and I was on the verge of calling the police when he eventually answered my call. I’ll never forget his voice and how panicked he’d sounded to find himself driving past Buckingham Palace. It was like he’d just woken up, he said.
