Emily

Chapter Twenty-one

Marina and Rory in bed. For a second all I could think was how beautiful they looked on my dark blue sheets — her glorious mass of red hair cascading all over the pillows. Just like a Hollywood film. Two people too beautiful for real life.

Then I screamed and they looked round. Marina recovered from the shock first.

‘I’m sorry, Emily,’ she said. ‘But you had to know sometime.’

‘Oh, I’ve known,’ I said. ‘I’ve known for ages and I’ve known too about your being brother and sister.’

That rocked them.

‘I mean, it’s nice your keeping it in the family,’ I went on, ‘but that sort of thing is rather frowned on in the prayer book and by the law, I should think.’

I ran out of the room, locked myself in the loo and started to cry. After a few minutes someone came and rattled on the door.

‘Go away!’ I screamed. ‘Use the other loo. This one’s engaged.’

‘Emily, it’s me. Marina’s gone. For God’s sake come out. I want to help you.’

‘Help me?’ I felt my tears escalating into hysterical laughter. ‘Help me? What can you do to help me?’

‘Let me in, or I’ll break the door down.’

‘No!’ I screamed. ‘No! No!’ There was a silence, and then an explosion.

I screamed again. The door was swinging and Rory was standing in the doorway, a smoking gun in his hand. He’d shot the lock out.

‘Now, come out!’ he said, grabbing my arm and dragging me into the bedroom. Walter Scott sat whimpering in the corner.

‘I know why you married me,’ I hissed. ‘Just to release the cash from Hector’s will, to give you a front of respectability so you could carry on with Marina, your dear little sister.’

Rory was trembling. ‘Who told you all this?’ he said.

‘Hamish did,’ I said.

‘He’s a swine,’ said Rory.

‘He’s unhappy,’ I said. ‘He didn’t want anyone to be left out. He certainly hasn’t behaved any worse than you.’

‘When you’re desperate, you suspend any kind of morality,’ Rory said, echoing Finn’s words of two months before.

Then he told me, quietly and without any emotion, that when he’d first met me, he’d been very attracted to me, had thought I was so gentle, loving and understanding, that we might even make a go of it. He said he had intended, had tried desperately hard, to break it off with Marina, but had failed to do so. And there was nothing he could plead by way of excuse or justification. Volcanoes of invective and abuse kept boiling up inside me, and sinking down again. It was his detachment that paralysed my powers of speech. But for the cold, fixed shadows in his eyes, and his deathly pallor, he seemed his normal self.

‘Marina and I do realize we’re social pariahs, in the wilderness for good and all. She’s upset, of course, because she can’t have my children.’

‘She’s upset,’ I breathed. ‘Oh, boy, do I feel sympathy for her. I suppose it’s more exciting, doing it here in our bed. It’s much more exotic than turning on ten miles away where I couldn’t possibly catch you.’

He looked at me. Did I imagine there was a flicker of despair in his eyes.

Then he said the fatal words.

‘I’m sorry, Em.’

‘Get out,’ I hissed. ‘Get out! Get out.’

He stood irresolute for a minute.

‘I don’t want to spend another minute under the same roof as you,’ I said.

I suppose that was the cue he wanted. Within two minutes he’d thrown his things into a suitcase and Walter and he were gone.

Whimpering with terror, I rushed to the telephone.

I recognized Jackie Barrett’s voice immediately. There was music in the background.

‘Can I speak to Dr Maclean?’ I said.

‘Just a minute.’ How cool and off-hand she sounded. ‘Is it urgent? He’s very tied up at the moment.’

‘Yes it is. Very urgent.’

‘Who’s that speaking?’

‘It’s personal.’

‘Finn, darling,’ she said, and I could just imagine her turning up her palms in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I’m afraid it’s for you.’

I slammed down the receiver.

Rory gone. Finn obviously taken care of by Dr Barrett. That left the baby and me.

‘You’re the only thing I’ve got now,’ I said numbly.

It wouldn’t take me long to pack my suitcase, either. If I hurried I could catch the seven o’clock ferry.

I rang for a taxi.

When the doorbell rang I grabbed Rory’s dark glasses to hide my swollen eyes, gathered up my two suitcases and walked to the top of the stairs. I suppose I must have missed the top step. The next moment I was falling. The pain was something I’d never known or could ever have imagined. The rest was blackness.