‘She was hit by a car that just so happened to be outside our house?’ I snap. ‘Can’t you see, someone did this deliberately. To hurt me.’
‘Em,’ Rupert lets out a long breath, ‘OK. I can see that maybe it could look that way, but – be honest, it could just as easily have been a car that hit her. Do you want me to come home?’
I think about Sadie’s expression as she tells me that Caro was pregnant. About Lola’s tiny face, and how she’ll never wind her way round my feet again. ‘No,’ I say, ‘it’s fine.’
I arrange with the vet to take Lola in for cremation, and then head upstairs, a bone-aching fatigue tugging at my entire body. Lola might have only been in our lives for a short while, but I was attached to her, and I’ll miss her winding her way round my feet all day. As I reach the top of the stairs, that nectarine-scented perfume hits my senses and I see Caro’s Facebook page in my mind’s eye, her face smiling up at Rupert as he gazes down at her in adoration. Enough is enough, I tell myself, opening the door to the spare room and heading straight to the wardrobe. It’s coming up to the second anniversary of her death, so maybe the time is finally right. Maybe if her things aren’t here, I won’t smell her on the air anymore, and the house will finally start to feel as though it belongs to Rupert and me. Maybe I’ll start to feel as though I belong. Maybe by getting rid of every trace of Caro, I’ll let whoever it is that is calling me – that shadow that follows me everywhere I go – that I’m not taking it anymore. That they can send me all the text messages, and call me as many times as they like, I am here to stay. I run my fingers over the fabric of her clothes and start to pull out the hangers sorting them into piles.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
I jump, catching my hair in the empty hangers that dangle above my head. ‘Shit, Rupert, you scared me.’
I manage to disentangle myself and stand, tired and aching, as Rupert surveys the spare room, the piles of clothes that lie on the bed, the dressing table, the floor.
‘I asked what you were doing.’ He doesn’t step forward to kiss me hello, like he usually does.
‘I’m sorting Caro’s things out,’ I say, heat making my cheeks flush pink. Maybe I should have checked with him first. ‘I don’t want to upset you, Rupert, but I live here now. It’s hard for me to live in a house where your first wife’s clothes still hang in the spare wardrobe.’
‘Of course. I’m sorry. You just caught me unawares, I wasn’t expecting it.’ Rupert steps over a pile of high-heeled sandals and pulls me into his arms. ‘And you’ve had a horrible day too.’
‘Pretty shit,’ I say into his shirt, as he kisses the top of my head. ‘Amanda’s pregnant.’
‘Oh?’ Rupert slides a hand under my shirt, as he traces a line of kisses along my jaw and down to my neck. Despite the shot of desire that makes my knees weak, I place a hand on his elbow to stop him. It feels weirdly wrong, when we are surrounded by Caro’s things, her perfume staining the air.
‘We’ve never talked about it, have we? About starting a family. I don’t even know how you feel about children.’ Now is his chance to tell me about Caro. I wait, turning to the clothes on the bed, pretending to fold them.
‘I, ahh…’ Rupert runs a hand through his hair. ‘I don’t know how I feel really, I haven’t ever thought about it much.’
‘Really?’ I turn back to him, my arms folded across my chest. ‘Not once? You never thought about maybe turning this room into a nursery?’
‘No. Emily, what is this about? Have you suddenly decided you desperately want a baby or something? Because, not being funny, you’ve never mentioned it either.’
He’s not going to mention it. ‘Sadie told me about Caro.’ I watch his face as a whole range of emotions flicker across it; fear, anger, and then finally sadness. ‘Why didn’t you tell me she was pregnant when she died, Rupert?’
‘What was I supposed to say?’ He finally raises his eyes to mine. ‘Don’t you think it was hard enough to tell you how she died? I wanted to tell you but…’
‘But you didn’t,’ I say, flatly. ‘I had to find out from Sadie like some sort of idiot, who doesn’t even know who she’s married to.’
‘God, Em, please don’t be like that.’ Rupert moves towards me, but I hold up a hand.
‘I felt like a fool, Rupert. I’m sorry, but I did. You should have told me.’
‘It was too hard, OK?’ Rupert almost shouts the words, and I feel something in me crumple. Maybe I’m being unreasonable. Cruel, even. ‘I couldn’t tell you because it was too hard. It was bad enough telling you she killed herself – what would you have thought of me if I told you that life with me was so unbearable she took our child with her?’
A single tear tracks its way down his cheek before he walks from the room, slamming the door closed behind him leaving me standing alone in a room filled with his dead wife’s things, wishing I had just kept my mouth shut.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I apologize to Rupert again in the morning, pressing my body against him before the alarm clock goes off and he has the chance to slide out of bed to go to work. He rolls over and kisses me hard, pulling himself on top of me, knotting his fingers through my hair until I wince.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper, tracing my fingers over his cheeks, following the track his
