TWELVE

Emma

SUNDAY, MARCH 25, 2012

The walk back to the tube seems to take twice as long because my legs are so shaky.

I’d got it all wrong. I’d steeled myself for the baby conversation, had my responses ready for possible interrogations, but I’d had to ask her that last question. About Will. To reassure myself that he was no longer in the picture. But of course he is. How could it be otherwise?

I try to do my breathing, but my heart is still bumping against my ribs when I finally sit down on the Central Line train.

I sit in a daze. In between stations, I can see myself reflected in the window opposite.

•   •   •

When I finally get home, hours later, Paul has cooked his chicken thing—I can smell it; it smells of home—and is waiting patiently when I turn the key in the lock. I’d remembered to call him earlier to tell him I’d decided to have a look round the shops while I was in town.

“Darling, you look frozen,” he says. “Come in and get warm. Shall I run you a bath?”

“I’m fine, Paul,” I say and sidetrack him with how the lunch went.

“Jude cooked lentil casserole,” I say and he laughs. He knows I’ve always hated it.

“Of course she did,” he says. “What was her flat like?”

And I have to think.

“Wall hangings and scarves over the lamps,” I say. “She’d probably describe it as shabby chic but it’s more shabby shit.” Paul smiles.

“Did you have far to walk?” he says and pulls my feet into his lap to warm them.

“It’s miles from the tube—in the land of shops selling secondhand fridges. Actually, I felt a bit nervous walking down her road. I don’t know why she chose to live there.”

Jude moved north of the river years ago. She’d felt like a change, she told me later, when I got back in touch, when I made the first move to make the peace. It had been years since we’d spoken, but you know how things reach a stage when decisions get stuck in stone. My own anger about being chucked out would probably have cooled down pretty quickly if I’d been left to myself, but I went to live with my grandparents for a bit and Granny loved the opportunity to be proved right about her daughter’s shortcomings as a mother. She ramped up all the ill feeling, putting the phone down on Jude so she couldn’t talk to me—“It’s for your own good,” she told me. And by the time I left to fend for myself, the silence was total.

Of course, I wondered about Jude, over the years, and sometimes fantasized about a reunion. I thought I’d see her when my grandfather died, but the conflict between her and her parents was too deep-rooted to be negotiated by then, I suppose. She didn’t come to his funeral—or Granny’s a year later. She probably hadn’t guessed that they’d left her some money, and I wondered if she’d felt guilty when she got the executor’s letter.

I kept putting the idea of getting in touch aside for later. I was busy, finding jobs and bedsits, shifting around and rootless for a few years. Then university and Paul. Life got in the way, I suppose. And I didn’t know what I’d say to her.

It was my fortieth birthday that made me want to get in touch. A landmark birthday, Paul said.

I sat for ages worrying about what to write—how to say hello after twenty-four years? In the end, I put Dear Jude, How are you? I have been thinking about you—about us—and I would like to see you again. I am married now and living in Pinner. I will understand if you decide not to, but if you would like to contact me, please write or phone. Love, Emma. I still sounded like a child.

I waited and waited for a response, hurt at first, then angry, and then I panicked that she was dead and I’d left it too late.

I rang our old number at Howard Street—for the first time since I was sixteen—to find out, shaking and hanging on to the phone. But when I finally got an answer, it was another woman’s voice.

“Who?” she said. “Oh, her. She’s long gone. Blimey, must be ten years since I moved in. Funny, there was a letter for her a couple of weeks ago.”

“I sent it,” I said. “She’s my mum . . . Do you know where she is now?”

“No, don’t know where she moved to. Sorry.” The woman sounded sad for me. “What shall I do with the letter?”

“Throw it away,” I said.

I rang her old office the next day—more strangers—but they told me that, according to their records, Jude was still alive and they agreed to forward my details to her.

She kept me dangling another three months—and I began to believe that I might never hear from her again. To be honest, I didn’t know how I felt about that. Some days, I was devastated—I felt abandoned all over again—and other days, I felt a sense of relief. I’d tried. But I could put it away now. Get on with my life.

Then her short note came through the letterbox. I remember smelling the paper as if I could catch a scent of her, and I rang her new number immediately to tell her how glad I was to hear from her.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but Jude didn’t scream with excitement when she realized it was me. Not her style. Nor did she apologize for the rupture in our relationship, for throwing me out, for choosing Will over me.

“I needed to put myself first for a change,” she said. “I needed to find myself. After Will left me—those were difficult years, Emma. But I think you and I can put it all behind us now. We’re different people now.”

And I agreed.

“I think we should meet somewhere neutral,” she said. “Have a cup of tea somewhere. What do you think?”

Her terms, her territory, I suppose. She’s never been to our home. Jude calls it “Paul’s house” and says it’s too far for her to travel. “Pinner—it’s about to fall off the edge of London, Emma.”

The first time, she chose a café in Covent Garden and I took Paul with me, holding his hand tightly. Jude didn’t bother to hide her shock at the age gap between us, and there was an awkward silence while we pretended to study the menus and I waited with clenched stomach for the inevitable remark. But she held back. Nothing was said. And it had been all right in the end. No big emotional reunion but, then, no row, either.

“Well, that wasn’t too bad,” Paul had said as we walked away.

•   •   •

What did you buy? Anything nice?” Paul says now as he gets up to set the table, and for a moment I don’t know what he’s talking about.

“Oh, no, nothing, in the end,” I say when I realize. “I just had a look.” And I sit quietly for a moment. I haven’t been shopping.

•   •   •

I should have taken the Central Line west to get back to Pinner, but I didn’t. I went in the opposite direction. I remember thinking, I’m not going home. Well, I was in a way. I was going back to Howard Street.

The journey passed in a blur, stations coming into bright focus and then flashing back into the darkness, walking up and down concrete steps with the crowds to change to the Jubilee Line and then up into the daylight again at Greenwich. The 472 bus to Woolwich took a long time to come—It’s Sunday, I kept telling myself. I watched the digital display count down the minutes until I could board. Three mins. One min. Due.

But when I got there, it had all gone. The rubble of 63 Howard Street was behind a steel mesh fence and I could only stand and re-create it in my head. When I walked further on, I could see behind the builders’ huts to what was our garden, once. I could see the police tape, a loose end fluttering, and the dirt. But there was nothing else to see. And I walked away. A face at a window in one of the houses opposite watched me. I pushed my fists into my coat pockets and kept my head down.