There was no misunderstanding that! ‘You want to see my CV? There’s a whole page listed under problems.’
‘Your terms. If you decide…’
‘… I don’t want ground rules!’ she stopped. ‘Just for once, for the first time since I can’t remember when, I want something to happen as it happens. OK?’
‘OK.’
‘But there are things to get out of the way.’ It wasn’t an immediate contradiction. She had to tell him. It would be her barrier if she didn’t: she had to risk it becoming his.
‘I don’t think you do,’ he said, cautiously.
‘It’s for me,’ she admitted.
‘OK,’ he said again, although more doubtfully this time.
Jennifer had tried to rehearse it, to take away the vileness, but there were no words that could. She talked staring intently at him, seeking the twitch of revulsion that would tell her she’d lost before it began. His face remained blank. She almost wished it hadn’t: for there to have been something, whatever it was. ‘Doctor Lloyd made the tests, at the hospital. I’m not… it’s all right. I’m all right.’
Hall nodded but didn’t speak.
‘I wanted you to know.’ Say something! Please say something!
‘And now I do.’
Not enough. Still blank faced: non-committal. ‘And?’
‘I can understand it being your problem. It’s not mine.’
There was a flood of relief. The smile was still hesitant. She had to get everything out of the way: a fresh start or whatever cliche it was. ‘And we haven’t talked about Gerald.’
‘Do we need to?’
‘I don’t want to begin with any…’ She stumbled to a halt, sniggering nervously.
‘… Ghosts?’ he suggested, smiling back.
‘I can’t imagine I was going to say that!’
‘Julian Mason would probably think it was good that you were.’
Jennifer became serious again, her emotions on a switch-back. ‘I don’t feel anything. I supposed I should… wish almost that I did because it’s not right to feel nothing… but that’s what it is. Nothing. Not hate or sadness or regret. Nothing. It’s as if he never happened. Never existed… Does that make me strange…?’ She managed another faint smile. ‘… Stranger than I have been…?’
‘That is a question for Julian Mason.’
‘I’m asking you.’
‘You were married to a man you never knew: whom no-one knew. How can you feel something for someone you never knew?’
Jennifer’s smile broadened. ‘Thank you. That makes some kind of sense… as much as anything does.’
‘Is that the end of the ground rules that never were?’
‘Yes.’ I don’t expect another miracle, God, but make this work: please make this work.
‘Do you want any more wine?’
‘No.’
‘Neither do I.’
‘Your room. Emily’s taken to coming in to mine, if she wakes up.’
It didn’t work. Jennifer was tense, rigid, and Hall couldn’t relax, either, and was too relaxed because of it.
‘It’s my fault,’ he apologized.
‘Mine.’
‘It’s no-one’s fault. It’ll be all right.’
‘It will be, won’t it?’ she said, anxiously. ‘You’re not frightened of… you know…?’
‘I’m not frightened of anything. I’m very excited, which is the problem and I love you and everything is going to be wonderful.’
‘There’s one more thing we haven’t talked about.’
‘What?’
‘I think it’s time Emily knew about Gerald.’
Hall felt an intruder when Jennifer discussed it with Annabelle, trying to decide a good time and concluding between them there wasn’t one, and even more awkward when Jennifer pulled the child on to her lap and said she had something important to tell her.
‘It’s about Daddy,’ Jennifer said. Would she feel anything about Gerald now? Not about Gerald, she thought. For Emily, about Gerald, perhaps.
‘When’s he coming home!’ demanded the child, pulling away from Jennifer and grinning up at her.
‘That’s what I’ve got to tell you. He won’t be coming home, darling.’
‘Not till when?’
‘Not ever.’
‘Not ever, ever? ’
‘No.’
‘He’s got to!’
‘You know when I came home, with the man who told you he knew God?’ began Jennifer, anxiously.
Emily sat with her lip between her teeth, tiny face creased in uncertainty. She nodded.
‘And you told him about Miss Singleton and the picture of Him on the wall?’ It was becoming too long! Too convoluted!
Emily nodded again.
‘Has Miss Singleton told you about Heaven.’
‘It’s where God lives.’
‘That’s right,’ encouraged Jennifer. ‘And that’s where Daddy is now. God needed someone to help him and asked Daddy to go. So he has.’
That’s not fair!’ protested Emily, eyes brimming. ‘I want him! I want him to come back.’
‘He can’t, darling.’
‘Tell the man who knows God to make Him send Daddy back.’
The tears started and Jennifer had to swallow, against her own. ‘He can’t do that.’
‘I want Daddy!’ demanded Emily, through the tears, slapping out rudely at Jennifer.
‘Daddy has gone,’ said Jennifer, as firm-voiced as she could manage. ‘He’s not coming back because he can’t.’
‘I want him!’
‘It’s just going to be the two of us now, you and me,’ said Jennifer, looking solemnly over Emily’s head to Jeremy Hall.
Emily pulled away from her mother again, looking in the same direction. ‘You’re not going to be my Daddy!’
‘I know,’ said Hall.
That night Emily wet the bed. Jennifer and Hall still didn’t manage to make love properly.
Until that week Jennifer had not maintained her promise in a church: instead a priest in Alton, an anxious young man named Tomkins, had twice a week braved the outside multitude to come to her and with inadvertent naivety provided three days of tabloid headlines the worst of which had been ‘God to the Rescue’.
That Sunday Jennifer decided to go to him and to his church for the first time.
Considering himself a hardened expert, Hall warned Inspector Hughes – suspecting as he did so that police leaks resulted in the very media invasion he was seeking protection against – and there was a familiar cordon around the church when they arrived after battling through the throng immediately outside the house. In the pew Emily positioned herself very positively and suspiciously away from Jeremy Hall, between Annabelle and her mother. The row behind them remained empty. Only two people stayed in the one in front, crushed together at the far end. Tomkins took his sermon from the Book of Proverbs and quoted, ‘Let us solace ourselves with love, for the good man is not at home, he has gone on a long journey,’ which Hall thought appropriate for their reluctant acceptance by the congregation. He expected her to take communion but she didn’t. Seeming aware of his surprise she said on the chaotic ride back, ‘I’m not ready yet. My baptism and confirmation will be my acceptance.’
Before he got into the helicopter that came that night to collect him Hall said, ‘It’s been quite a weekend.’
Jennifer said, ‘I’d wanted it to be better.’
‘There’ll be a lot more that are.’
Chapter Thirty-eight
Jeremy Hall did not consider himself a literary judge but he was impressed by what Jennifer had written when he got back to London that night. She wasn’t hurrying it: hadn’t, in the first seventy-five pages he’d brought back with him, yet reached the moment of Jane’s possession. Jennifer was being brutally, scathingly honest about herself and her affair with Lomax – a casual adventure to begin with, growing guiltily into love – and Hall accepted how fully her confidence had returned for her to want him to read it now that their affair had begun, if not yet been properly consummated.
He amused himself with the impression of the President of the American publishing company trying to crawl down the telephone to get to him when he called to finalize the $8,000,000 contract. As it was the man insisted on catching an evening flight to London, despite Hall’s warning that he wouldn’t be available the following day because of a court appearance that might occupy him for the remainder of the week.