One Step Too Far (29 page)

He couldn’t understand Emily’s sadness about the unborn baby either. Last night, on the first occasion he’d tried to talk to her about what they might do next, Ben had tried to be practical, had even suggested tentatively that they could maybe try again soon – Emily seemed to find it easy to get pregnant, he’d said, this time next year everything might be different.

“What do you mean?” she’d said quietly, her body tight and clenched as she perched on the silver wicker chair by the window. “How can I even think of having another baby? You think I can just replace Daniel? Replace my unborn baby?”

“No, of course not,” Ben had said. He’d hesitated, aware that carrying on could be dangerous. “But we didn’t actually know the baby, so it’s not like we’ve lost him like we’ve lost Daniel.”

“Yes we HAVE,” she’d cried then. “We’ve lost his first smile, his first steps, his little personality that never had the chance to grow. You don’t understand do you? I should be twenty weeks pregnant, halfway to holding him in my arms, he should know the sound of our voices by now, but he doesn’t, because he is
dead
. A week and a half ago it should have been Daniel’s christening, but we had to cancel that because
he’s dead too
; tomorrow Daniel should have been going to Nathan’s birthday party, the present’s still upstairs; in July we should have been taking our son on his first proper beach holiday, he was so excited to be going on a plane. Every single day I should be making him breakfast, getting him dressed, playing with him, taking him to playgroup, bathing him, reading to him, putting him to bed, looking after him, loving him. Do you want me to go on?”

“No,” Ben had said. “I don’t. Why are you acting like it’s all my fault? What have I done?”

“Oh, nothing,” Emily said. She stood up. “You’ve been a bloody saint, as usual. It's me who's the villain round here, isn't it?
She should have been watching him,
that’s what YOU think, that’s what everyone thinks. You think it’s all MY fault, don’t you?” She had looked at him with hatred then, or so it seemed. “DON’T YOU?”

Ben had been shocked – Emily never shouted, had always been so mild-mannered even when they argued, it was like he was looking at a stranger. Her face was twisted and ugly, and he tried to suppress the rage he felt, his sudden urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, shake some sense back into her. She saw his hands clench as he got up to leave the room and she ran at him then, beat her own fists at him, out of control suddenly, and he'd tried to stop her, pin her arms against her side and hold her tight until she calmed down – and maybe if he’d succeeded it might all have been different, but she shook herself free and flailed at his face, catching him with her nail, and as he let her go to cup his ear, contain the squelching blood, she ran from the room.

Ben stared rigidly at his computer, endeavouring to send his thoughts away from their confrontation last night, back to his spreadsheet, but he found his heart was racing and his palms were sweating again, so he stood up abruptly from his desk, saying he was popping out for a sandwich, although it wasn't even 11 yet. Out on the street he turned blindly right, in the direction of his favourite cafe; then right again into Rochdale Road, on automatic pilot now, not thinking at all; but then as he went to enter the cafe someone was coming out, and although he already had his hand on the door he found he couldn't face it after all, and he turned abruptly away, onto New George Street; and when he reached the end of there he went right, randomly, he had to go somewhere. He slowed down at last. He needed to ring her.

“Hello,” she said, and her voice was cold.

“Hi,” he whispered, barely able to get the words out. “Are you OK?” and as he said it he regretted the question.

“Oh, yeah, great,” she said and he winced at her sarcasm.

“I’ll come home early, I’ll cook dinner,” he said. “What do you fancy?” and again he wished he could take back his words, unsay them.

“Nothing,” she said eventually, but she wasn’t bitter this time, just blank, which was worse in a way.

“OK, I’ll work something out.”

Emily said nothing.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s a lovely day, maybe you could do a spot of clearing up in the garden.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I – I was just trying to think what might make you feel better.”

“Ben, nothing will make me feel better,” she said, but the way she said it wasn’t self-pitying or accusatory, just desolate. Her voice was thick. “I’ve got to go. Bye.”

“Bye,” he said, to a dead line, and he stayed mute and stupid on the pavement opposite the old fish market, staring up at the sculptured panel of the woman with a babe in arms and a little boy by her side, until he could tell someone was staring at him, perhaps wondering whether to ask him if he was all right, and so he moved at last, fast and purposefully back to the office, his sandwich forgotten.

68

“At what point did you first think of leaving me?” says Ben. We are lying side by side, not touching now, and it is late afternoon in the hotel in Hampstead, and we are both staring at the ceiling, as if maybe the answer lies there.

I take ages to answer. “Probably that moment in the chapel,” I say. “When you didn’t comfort me, that’s when I thought it was over for us, that you’d never forgive me. I didn’t know then how it would happen, but I just knew Daniel’s death would destroy “us” too.”

Ben looks at me puzzled. “When didn’t I comfort you?”

“You wouldn’t hold my hand, you didn’t respond,” and as I say it out loud I realise I haven’t been entirely rational.

“Don’t get me wrong,” says Ben. “Of course I was angry. At you, at the world, at the bus driver. The only person I wasn’t angry with at the time was Caroline.”

His face grows troubled. “So that’s what she meant when she said sorry.”

“What do you mean? When did she say sorry?”

Ben takes a breath and tells me that on the anniversary of our little boy’s death he went to the Peak District and walked for hours over mountains and across fields, and then camped alone, it was all he could face without me, without Daniel. Then on the next night, he’d been at home on his own and Caroline had turned up to say sorry for something, but he didn’t know what, there were so many things she could have been apologising for. He tells me quietly that he’d let her in and got paralytic with her and that they’d ended up having sex – my husband and my own twin sister.

“Emily, I’m so so sorry,” he says. “I just missed you so much I almost convinced myself she was you. I thought I’d never see you again, and I was trying to get back to you, back to us somehow. And then when it was over I had to face up to the fact that it was her not you, and it felt like I couldn’t hate the world or myself any more.” He stops and looks desperate, like something irrevocable has broken inside him.

Although I’m horrified, repulsed, mad at him, I work it out instantly. “So this was Saturday night?”

“Yes,” he says, and it feels insane but I tell him unflinchingly about meeting Robbie and how much he looked like him, Ben, and that despite all the bad stuff I’ve done since I left, the first and only time I had been unfaithful to him was exactly when he was having sex with my sister.

Ben is silent for ages. “I can just about stand you being with him,” he says. “If that’s how I was able to find you.”

“But look what I’ve done. I’ve killed him. He’s dead now, and he didn’t deserve that,” and I start to weep again, for Robbie this time, another bright boy whose life has ended because of me.

“It’s not your fault, Em. He took the drugs willingly, didn’t he, there must have been something else wrong for him to die like that.”

I haven’t thought of that and it’s probably true, but it doesn’t make me feel any better, it still feels unreal, nightmarish, a further descent into hell.

Ben changes the subject. “Emily, I need to know. Why did you leave me like that? If you owe me one thing it’s to tell me that. It seems like such a shit thing to do.”

I look at my husband. “First I lost Daniel, and then I lost the baby, I just couldn’t bear losing you too. And I know I pushed you away, but I was so certain you didn’t love me anymore, that you blamed me, that it made it worse and worse and I became convinced that you hated me. And then we seemed so far apart and I’d become so mean and hostile I thought in my madness that you and Charlie would be happier without me, that if I left completely then one day you’d be able to meet someone else and start a new family. We were both just so unhappy by the end. And I knew that the new house you wanted to buy wouldn’t have made it any better either. All it would’ve meant was that I wouldn’t have had to walk twice as far to get anywhere, to avoid the dark patch on the road they could never get rid of. But it still lives on in my mind Ben, it’s never going to be gone, not ever. So it seemed easier to just leave, to try to start all over again, I honestly thought I was doing the right thing for both of us. It was either that or…,” and I stop.

“I know,” says Ben, and he turns on his side and looks at me, but I keep on staring at the cold blank ceiling. He hesitates but I know what’s coming and I don’t know how I feel, I’m still in shock I suppose.

“Emily, do you think there’s any way you and I can ever be happy together again?”

I take ages to answer, my mind is too scrambled, I don’t have a clue what to say.

“I just don’t know,” I say. “Too much has happened, it’s too soon to think about. Poor Robbie has only just died.” I feel Ben tense and I know he’s jealous. My eyes fill with yet more tears, sad for them both. I struggle to continue. “And anyway it's so complicated: I have a new name, a job, a court case to get through, new friends, I’m a different person now.” I see the hurt in his eyes and it’s agony to witness. I pause.

I still can’t think what else to say, so finally I say what I really think, what I’ve wanted to tell him since I first saw him again, sitting alone in the police station.

“Ben, I still love you, I’ve never stopped loving you, I just don’t know whether we can simply start up all over again, after everything that’s happened. And whatever you say someone else is dead now, probably because of me, and he was massively famous and people adored him. I’m going to be a public figure of hate. I don’t know how I’m going to manage that. I don’t know how I’m going to manage yet more guilt."

“Will you at least try?” he asks, and despite myself I find myself nodding and the tears in my eyes are ones of happiness this time.

69

On the Tuesday morning after my release on bail Ben takes me to the flat at Shepherds Bush so I can collect my things. I realise I still haven’t been in touch with Angel, not since Friday night, just before Roberto Monteiro had escorted me out of the Groucho. I’m nervous, I don’t know how she’ll be with me, especially as I gave the police her name, told them it was her drugs that Robbie took. The flat feels quiet and I assume she isn’t home from work yet, but as I hesitate in the hallway, her bedroom door opens and she comes out, her hair a golden mess, fluffy dressing gown as white as ever.

“Cat, babe, what on earth happened?” she says, and she comes over and gives me a hug of such sweetness that I think maybe the police haven’t contacted her after all. “Why the fuck didn’t you call me?”

She seems to have only just noticed that I’m not alone, and so she smiles and holds out her hand and says, “Hello, I’m Angel.”

“Angel, this is my husband Ben,” I reply, and she squeals and says, “Jesus, Cat, can you stop springing this stuff on me. First you’re arrested for murder, and not just any murder, only the biggest football player in the whole flippin' country, then you put the police onto me, you cow, and now you tell me you’re married. What the hell's next?”

“My name’s not Cat, it’s Emily,” I tell Angel, and that’s the moment I properly make my decision, to cross from my new life back into my old one.

70

I stand with my hand on a bible and although I’m no longer a believer I have somehow in the confusion agreed to make an oath, and so I promise Almighty God to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth and the God bit makes me feel uncomfortable. I find I don’t mind telling the truth these days though, I know that lying has got me nowhere. The court is a modern informal-feeling room, more like a school hall, not at all like the courts I’ve been in before, but it’s rammed with reporters, and it’s only by looking across at my husband and him giving me a small smile of support that I find the strength to not buckle at the knees. I’m wearing a navy fitted jacket and a cream skirt and my hair is pulled back neatly, my lawyer told me to make sure I look serious and contrite. That’s easy, I just ensure my exterior matches how I feel inside.

“Catherine Emily Brown, you are hereby charged with possession of Class A drugs, as discovered at Flat 3, 15 Marylebone High Street, London at 06.45 on Sunday the 8
^th
May 2011. How do you plead?”

“Guilty,” I say, and the single word resonates loudly across the room and makes me feel spacey, euphoric.

The judge pauses before starting a lengthy pronouncement on the evils of drugs, and I find it incomprehensible that this is me, Emily Coleman, once an upstanding lawyer, here on the wrong side of the dock, being lectured about my criminal activities involving illegal substances – but thankfully not about murder. This is just the latest episode in my life over the past year or so that I find hard to digest, ever since the hideous annihilation of my precious son started a train of incredible events that took me away from myself, but now seemed to be turning full circle, bringing me back to who I really am – Emily, wife of Ben, mother of Daniel (deceased), mother of unnamed baby (miscarried). Although I’m trying my best I find I cannot concentrate on what the judge is saying, my mind keeps drifting – back to the main road in Chorlton, over to the death bed in Marylebone, on to the doom-filled church where I said my wretched farewell to my boy – and so when I hear the gasps from the gallery I don’t know what’s happened but I assume it must be bad, and it’s only when Ben tells me afterwards I discover that all I got is a fine, a measly £180 fine, and it’s over.