He frowned. What did that mean? It sounded worrying. Not at all like the Emily he remembered, who wasn’t a scaremonger. What had happened? Had someone hurt her? Acid fear flooded his gut at the thought of her coming to any harm.
If she had been hurt, he told himself, it was your fault. You should have looked after her.
He met her off the train a week later. She was standing on the platform, in a blue duffle coat and suede boots, her face a little thinner, her eyes a little larger, her hair cropped short. She saw him walking towards her and her face sort of crumpled and lit up at the same time and she stayed rooted to the spot until he was standing in front of her. The crowds milled around them as they hugged: proper hugging, of the kind where you pull the other person towards you so hard they nearly become you, and your hearts start to beat together.
She was crying, he realised. ‘Don’t cry, Em. This is a good thing.’
But she couldn’t seem to stop and he didn’t know what to do except hug her tighter.
‘Hey, hey, it’s OK. I’m here. I’m not letting you go. Come on.’
They got on a bus and went back up to Clifton, and he took her to his favourite pub that overlooked the suspension bridge. They had pasties, and scrumpy in the sunshine as he’d promised. She seemed quiet, and nervous, possibly even wary, but that wasn’t surprising, after what had happened. He talked far too much, as usual, and she laughed quite a lot, eventually, but didn’t tell him much.
And he could still feel the magic, but he wasn’t sure if she could. There was something holding her back.
Afterwards, they went up to the suspension bridge and stood looking down at the gorge. It was spectacular, the deep ravine with the Georgian terraces looming over it. Jonathan felt a burst of pride at his new city, and was glad to have something to show off to her. He turned to look at her.
Emily was gazing down at the river, far, far below, and her expression was so grave, he felt afraid.
‘Em?’
Her eyes were glassy. Was she about to cry?
‘I need to tell you something.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Not here.’ She looked around at the cars going over the bridge, the cyclists, the pedestrians. ‘Somewhere quiet.’
He felt a terrible sense of foreboding. Was she going to tell him something he couldn’t handle? Had someone hurt her? He felt a surge of protectiveness for this new, fragile Emily. He took her hand as they walked back to his flat, and she squeezed his fingers tightly, whether to reassure him or because she was in need of reassurance, he couldn’t be sure, but it felt nice.
They arrived at his flat, on the first floor of a six-storey house in a sweeping crescent fronted by a wide pavement.
‘Wow,’ said Emily.
‘Don’t get too excited,’ he grinned. ‘It is, quite literally, a façade. The flat is classic bloke squalor.’
He opened his front door and they walked up the faded pink carpet of the stairs, then into the flat and into the living room, with its garish carpet and mismatched furniture, that he shared with two flatmates. None of them was particularly domesticated. But he was relieved that it was at least tidy – he had cleared out the mugs, glasses and takeaway cartons that morning, and even drawn the curtains.
‘They’re all out,’ he said with confidence. ‘We won’t be interrupted.’
She sat on the faded chenille sofa. Her hands were twisting in her lap, her fringe across her eyes so he couldn’t see the look in them. He was about to go and make a cup of tea when she said something.
‘I had a baby.’ Her voice was almost a whisper.
He stopped en route to the kitchen, startled, not sure he had heard right. ‘What?’
‘Your baby. Our baby. I had a baby.’
‘Em …’ He was aghast. ‘Tell me you’re joking?’ He walked over and crouched in front of her, taking her hands. Was she telling the truth? She shut her eyes but tears were still rolling out from under her lids. Big round tears so solid he felt he could pick them off her cheeks and put them in his pocket.
She opened her eyes, looking straight into his, and he knew what she was saying was true.
‘I couldn’t keep her. They wouldn’t let me. I had to give her up.’
He couldn’t ask her the obvious. He couldn’t say why didn’t you tell me? Because of course she wouldn’t have told him. He had chosen a future without her in it, let alone a baby.
‘Her? It was a little girl?’ he asked instead.
She nodded. ‘I brought you a picture.’ She leaned over the side of the sofa to open her bag and pulled out a photograph. ‘That’s her. Look at her. Our baby.’ Her face crumpled again.
And so it was that Jonathan found himself looking at a photograph of the daughter he didn’t know he had. A little girl in a white velour babygro, lying on a rug.
‘I called her Robyn,’ Emily’s voice quavered.
‘Oh, Em. That’s a perfect name.’ He was crying now himself.
‘I don’t even know if they let her keep it.’
She slumped forward onto him, and he took her in his arms, awkward, frightened, unsure of what he was supposed to do. But she seemed to take comfort from his embrace, as she told him everything, at times barely able to articulate what had happened. He kissed her head, pushing her hair back from her tearstained face.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he kept repeating. ‘I’m so sorry. I should have been there. We could have …’
Could they? Two youngsters still at school, with no clue about the world or a baby’s needs. He felt angry, with himself most of all, but also with his mother, for forcing them apart, and with Emily’s parents, for not being brave enough to stick by her, for taking what seemed to be the easy option.
‘What did you do?’ he asked her. ‘After the baby?’
She sighed. ‘My dad got me a job in the housing department. I couldn’t face going to university. Pretending to be normal and going to parties and having a good time when my heart was …’ She searched for the word. ‘Smashed. But I’m OK. I’ve got my own flat.’ Her face brightened. ‘When my mum forwarded your letter, it was like the sun coming through my letter box.’
‘Oh, Em.’ He gazed at her. The feelings were all still there. The Ready Brek glow. The sense of fitting together. Being with her was as right and perfect as well-worn slippers, as buttered crumpets, as a roaring log fire. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
She was gazing back at him. ‘Hold me,’ she said. ‘Just hold me. That’s all that I need.’
37
That Saturday morning, Jonathan came downstairs in his sweatpants and T-shirt all set to head to the shop for the bread run. He was surprised Emily was already up as she loved lounging in bed at the weekends and listening to Radio 4, the cats curled either side of her. He always brought her breakfast: coffee and fresh croissants and strawberry jam.
She was sitting on the sofa in her pyjamas, as white as a sheet.
‘I can’t do it,’ she said.
Jonathan frowned. ‘Can’t do what?’
She began to cry. He hated it when she cried. He had dedicated his life to stopping her from crying. To making her laugh as much as he could. To immersing her in a world of joy: woodland walks and their silly fat cats and candlelit meals in tiny restaurants and labyrinthine bookshops and big bunches of tulips – there was a vase of them on the table; yolk yellow – and any number of the simple things in life that made you forget what you didn’t want to remember.
But he knew he could never fully erase the trauma. It had been a trauma for him, too, when he had found out what happened. But he had never known the baby. It was just a story he’d been told. A story that had affected him, nonetheless, although he was more distressed by the impact it had on the woman he adored.
‘I found her,’ she was saying now. ‘I found Robyn.’
‘What?’ He stood
still, staring at her.
‘She got in touch. She got in touch with me.’
Her face showed a jumble of emotions: both overjoyed and overwhelmed.
Jonathan knew she had put herself on a register some years ago, hoping Robyn might make contact. But he had always underplayed it, not wanting Emily to invest too much hope in it. It seemed like an added torture to him. He felt it was best to close the door and move on. But she always said to him she couldn’t close the door, just in case.
‘Like Wendy’s mother in Peter Pan, keeping the window open for the children,’ she told him, but he thought that life was not like a children’s book, with a happy ending. But of course he didn’t stop her. He just never mentioned it.
But it seemed he’d been wrong to be pessimistic.
‘It was going to be a surprise. I wanted to bring her home for you. Our daughter.’ She leaned back in her seat, defeated. ‘But I’m scared. I’m supposed to be meeting her.’
‘Today?’
Emily nodded. ‘We’ve exchanged a couple of emails. And I wrote to her. I told her about how it all happened. Us meeting at summer school. Then breaking up. Then finding out I was pregnant.’ She took in a juddering breath. ‘I wanted her to understand why I couldn’t keep her.’
She was weeping.
‘Hey, hey.’ He came to sit by her. ‘This is amazing. But I don’t want it to upset you. Maybe it’s best if you don’t meet yet? Give it a little bit more time. We can talk it over together.’
He didn’t chastise her for not telling him earlier. He understood Emily. She would want to make everything perfect before she told him. But she had underestimated the emotional impact of meeting her daughter; forgotten how vulnerable she still was, after all this time.
She shook her head.
‘She’s getting married. Next weekend. She wanted to meet. Find out everything about her past before she …’
‘I see,’ said Jonathan.
Emily looked at the clock. ‘She’ll be on her way. It’s too late to stop her.’
Jonathan paced around the living room. Emily was right. It would be cruel to renege on the meeting at this late stage. It would have taken courage to make contact, even more to come and meet the mother she had never known. But he wasn’t going to force Emily. She wasn’t strong enough.
‘Would you like me to go and meet her?’ asked Jonathan. ‘I can talk to her for you. Then we can decide what to do. All of us. Together.’
Emily nodded. ‘I’d love that,’ she said, slumping with relief. ‘There’s just one other thing, though.’
Jonathan raised an eyebrow. ‘What?’
Emily raked her fingers through Ron’s ginger fur, biting her lip. Then she looked up at him.
‘I haven’t told her about you.’
Later that morning, Jonathan walked down the hill into the centre of Bath as if he was sleepwalking, unable to believe what was unfolding. That he was going to meet the daughter they’d never been allowed to love. The daughter they had often talked about. He had never allowed Emily to dwell too long, but he would paint beautiful pictures for her to imagine, of a happy little girl in a flower meadow, dancing in the sunshine. It was the only way they could get through the pain.
They had no more children. They had tried, for a short while, but every month Emily became riddled with anxiety as they waited to see if she was pregnant, and she seemed both disappointed when she wasn’t, yet relieved too. It became a torturous cycle, of her both wanting to have a baby and yet fearing it. She was terrified the same thing would happen to her, that she would be plunged into a black world of post-natal despair and paranoia, despite endless reassurance from Jonathan that he would be there to catch her if she fell.
In the end, they decided to stop trying. The agony and the doubt proved too painful. Jonathan had to bury his anger that his wife had been so deeply affected, and search inside himself for an answer, a way of atoning and making up for the void. Though she assured him he was enough.
‘I am so lucky to have you,’ she said. ‘You are all I need.’
And now, their reward had come. The daughter who had slipped through their fingers was back in their life. Jonathan knew that didn’t necessarily mean happy ever after. It might be a rocky road. But at least they would know. They didn’t have to imagine any more.
He wasn’t sure, either, as he reached the centre of town and began winding his way through the streets, dodging the Saturday shoppers, just how he should introduce himself. In the end, he decided he would do what he always did. Just be himself.
As soon as he walked into the café, he recognised her. The daughter he had never seen. Sitting at a table with her hands curled around a cup of tea, her dark hair coming loose from its ponytail, her skin ivory like her mother’s, her profile perhaps more like his.
And as he said her name and she looked up at him with a smile, he felt a sense of peace wrapping itself around him, for now they would have answers, and they could give her answers too, for he saw a myriad of questions in her eyes.
For two hours they sat, barely pausing for breath. They had two coffees (Jonathan), two cups of Earl Grey (Emily) and a Bath bun each as Jonathan told Robyn the missing part of Emily’s story, and she told him about life at Hawksworthy Farm.
Robyn was surprised at how at ease she felt with Jonathan. He was so calm and kind and candid. And so delighted to meet her, his eyes behind his glasses filling up with tears every now and then. He choked up when he spoke about Emily, and Robyn could see how much he adored her.
She didn’t allow herself to think what might have happened if things had been different. That wasn’t what this meeting was about. It was about the future, not the past. At least she hoped so.
‘I wonder,’ said Jonathan. ‘If you would come to the house to meet Emily.’ He fiddled with a packet of sugar, nervous. ‘You’ve come all this way and I know it would mean the world. But I understand if it’s too much to ask.’
Robyn was silent for a moment. They’d agreed neutral territory, but she understood how overwhelming this must be. It must be bringing back all the distress Emily had been through at the time. And it didn’t make sense to come all this way and not see her.
‘Or I could go back home and tell her that we’ve met,’ Jonathan offered. ‘And see if I can coax her out.’
‘No,’ said Robyn, standing up, decisive. ‘I’d like to meet her.’
‘We can get the bus. Or walk. It’s quite a way up the hill.’
‘I’m used to hills. I climb the dunes every day.’
‘OK. I can show you Bath on the way.’
Jonathan insisted on picking up the bill and carrying her bag. They wandered through the streets, Jonathan pointing out the landmarks.They passed the Pump Rooms and the Roman Baths, then made their way up Milsom Street, lined with tempting shops, to the foot of Lansdown Hill.
‘We love living here. We moved here from Bristol about ten years ago. It’s big enough to be buzzy but small enough to be cosy and there’s plenty going on. Em teaches the Alexander technique – posture and breathing; musicians use it a lot. And I teach history at a local senior school.’
‘You never went back into music?’
‘I did. Eventually. But only for pleasure. Em bought me a piano for my fortieth, so I bash away when the mood takes me. We go to a lot of concerts. It’s still a big part of our life.’
They were quiet as they made their way up the hill, lined with gracious Georgian buildings that peered down inquisitively at them. Eventually they turned into a narrow street, lined either side with small terraced houses in Bath stone.
‘This is us,’ said Jonathan, stopping outside. ‘Are you ready?’
‘I think so,’ said Robyn. She had lost her earlier butterflies, as Jonathan had been such a kind and calming presence, but now she felt anxious for Emily. What a huge undertaking it must be, to
come face to face with the baby you’d wondered about for so many years. ‘I hope I’m not going to be a disappointment.’
‘You,’ said Jonathan, ‘could not be further from that.’
He led her to the door, opened it and ushered her inside.
It led straight into an open-plan living/dining room, dominated by an enormous red tapestry sofa with a cat on either arm, one tortoiseshell, one ginger, tails curling like crochet hooks. It was the sort of room that had evolved and grown with its owners, and evidence of their interests was all around: open books, magazines, a half-done jigsaw, an open box of Lindor on a shelf. No television. Wonky shelves groaned under the weight of everything from Patrick O’Brien to Plato to PD James, and the walls were covered in pictures. There was a piano to one side – the birthday present Jonathan had mentioned – and a dining table with a laptop open on it: Robyn wondered if that was the spot where Emily had received her email, and how she had felt when it arrived.
And there, in the middle of the room, in a blue linen dress with big pockets on the front, was her mother.
Emily took in a deep breath and put both hands up to her mouth as soon as she saw Robyn. She stood, frozen, her hands trembling slightly. One of the cats jumped off the sofa and stalked over to them, like a bouncer trying to fend off trouble outside a night club.
‘Em,’ said Jonathan. ‘This is Robyn. This is our girl.’
Robyn smiled as Emily walked towards her. And the next thing Robyn knew, her arms were around her neck, her cheek was on hers, wet with their mingled tears, and they breathed each other in, mother and daughter.
‘Oh,’ was all Emily could say, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘Oh.’
‘I know,’ said Robyn. ‘I know.’
Emily released her for a moment, looking into her eyes. Robyn saw anxiety and fear, but also wonder and love.
‘I couldn’t come to the café,’ said Emily, stepping back a little to look at her, but not letting go of her hands. ‘I was too scared.’
A Wedding at the Beach Hut: The escapist and feel-good read of 2020 from the bestselling author of THE BEACH HUT Page 24
