I should have called you, I know, Emily says. It’s just that Lawrence and I had an argument, a bad one. I got in the car and started driving and I ended up here. I don’t know why. I wanted to see you.
Her voice breaks a little. Rachel doesn’t know what to say. She cannot quite believe her sister-in-law is here, by herself, for any reason.
Is Lawrence OK? she asks.
No, not really. He’s — got some problems. I accused him of terrible things, of not really wanting a baby. He left. He took his keys and wallet and walked out.
She makes a noise, a partial choke, as if about to weep, and puts her hand to her forehead, knuckling between the brows. Rachel stares at her. Six months ago you accused me of emotional retardation, she thinks. You cut me off from my brother. Now, this. What am I supposed to do?
I thought he’d maybe have called you, Emily says. I know you’re closer now. You haven’t heard from him?
No.
Please tell me if you have.
I haven’t.
Then Emily does begin to cry. She lets herself go, her body shaking, leaning forward, her sobs loose and repetitive, as if the appeal for help was some kind of emotional emetic. Rachel looks at her, mortified. After their years of antagonism and contraspective dislike, the bitterness, to see an adversary so reduced, submissive even, is unnerving. There is no pleasure in it whatsoever. Emily fights to speak.
Then he’ll be — he’ll be. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t know where he is.
Her shoulders hunch. Tears drip to the ground from beneath her hands. Moments of paralysed excruciation pass before something kicks in and Rachel steps forward.
Hey. Come on, she says, gently. Let’s sit down. Over here.
She puts a hand on Emily’s elbow, turns, and steers her towards the bench. They sit. She waits while the woman gets it out of her system. The weeping begins to taper off. Emily wipes her face, runs her fingertips along the soils of black make-up under her lashes.
I haven’t heard from him, Rachel says again. Is he with a friend in Leeds, maybe?
It seems an obvious suggestion — stupid, in fact. She wants to know more about the extent of the argument, which has come as a surprise, but there’s no way to ask. Simultaneously, the thought of knowing their intimate business is off-putting. Emily shakes her head.
He might be with Sara. I used to think there couldn’t be anything worse than that, but there is.
Rachel doesn’t recognise the name, or really understand the comment — is Emily alluding to an affair? she wonders. There’s still so much about her brother’s life she does not know. Emily looks up at Rachel, as if wanting confirmation, or admission, perhaps thinking she is withholding information about Lawrence. But Rachel is at a loss. She shrugs. It’s odd. In her suffering, his wife seems far more attractive than Rachel realised — beautiful, even.
I said awful things about you, and your mother, Emily says, looking Rachel directly in the eye. I said he was brought up in a household where bad behaviour was normal. I told him he was too fucked up to be a father and we should stop trying.
What did you mean, he has problems? Is he seeing someone?
Emily does not answer, but continues to look at Rachel, reading, assessing. Then, as if making a conscious decision, she recoils from the details of confession.
It’s nothing. Just that he goes through these bad times. He comes a bit unwound.
It’s a vague thing to say, but the tone is too factual to be simple deflection or a lie about her husband. What does coming unwound mean? Rachel cannot imagine her brother fucking around or otherwise acting up. But then, she has seen little of him as a grown man. And all men are capable of straying. Most women, too. Lawrence was brought up a certain way; if not instructed in the school, then let to see the possibilities, the methods, as was Rachel. What is laid down in childhood is difficult to reverse; one might spend a lifetime trying. Suddenly Rachel does want to know more, never mind the awkwardness.
Who is Sara?
Just someone he works with. A friend in the office.
What did you mean, being with her isn’t the worst thing?
It was just a stupid argument. We’ve been very stressed.
Emily wipes her face again, composes herself. It’s too late. The guard is going back up.
Whatever it is your family’s got, she says, I don’t have it.
What do you mean?
You’re so autonomous. So defended.
Is that a good thing?
Emily shrugs. Criticism or not, Rachel is out of her depth. She feels incapable of psychologising a brother she knows so little, or consoling a woman with whom she has frequently warred. Whatever window of insight into their troubles his wife might have provided has closed. Emily holds her hands tightly together on her lap.
Wait here a second, Rachel says.
She walks to the back door of the cottage and goes inside. In the kitchen she stands for a moment and tries to gather her wits. It seems bizarre that Emily has come all this way — on a whim, and to a former foe — asking for help. It makes no sense. And yet Rachel does want to help, or at least to understand. The idea of a marital rift, of her brother cracking at the seams, is unsettling. There’s certainly more to it than Emily is letting on; that much is clear. Once, she might not have cared; now, she cannot turn a blind eye. She goes into the downstairs bathroom, gathers a wad of toilet roll, collects a glass of water from the kitchen, and goes back into the garden. She hands them to Emily. After blowing her nose and taking a sip, Emily rallies a little, sits straighter. She combs her hair behind her ears.
I apologise. This really isn’t on.
There’s no need.
No, there is. And I’m sorry for everything this last year.
In fact, the last thing Rachel wants is an apology — the hollow, unendurable victory of that. This declawed version of her sister-in-law still seems wrong. Shadows have begun to spool into the garden and the light is suddenly murky. To the portentous west, the sound of thunder, a long, deep tear, and there’s a distinctive smelclass="underline" wet herbs, cordite, the precursor of rain. Something big is about to unleash. She cannot, in all good conscience, send Emily away.
We should go inside, she says. I’m going to make some pasta. It’s about all I want to eat these days. You can have some with me.
She stands. Emily nods and stands also.
You look really well, she says again.
In the kitchen Rachel pours Emily a glass of wine, and quickly throws together a meal. The two do not speak much but there is a tenuous accord — enough to get through the evening. The rain begins, not with torrid, dehumidifying power, but a slow, intermittent shower, dysuric. Then the battering downpour comes, drenching everything. Emily catches Rachel looking at the clock.
I’ve ruined your evening, she says.
No, you haven’t, Rachel assures her, but I do have to phone someone. And I think you should stay — you don’t want to drive back in this.
After a quiet, reflective dinner, with limited conversation, they retire to bed. Emily does not expand on Lawrence’s problems and Rachel does not push, nor are they keen to stray into the mined territory of the past. Emily borrows a T-shirt to sleep in, bids Rachel goodnight, and heads into the spare room. She seems less distraught, more resolved, though her frame of mind is hard to gauge. Although tired from the night before, Rachel cannot sleep. The house seems to ring with the presence of her brother’s wife, but when Rachel goes to the bathroom, the spare room is silent and no lamp light filters under the doorway into the hallway. It occurs to her that her brother might be far less together than she’d always assumed, his proclivities far darker. Sara. Can it be true he has a mistress? The word, the idea, seems ridiculous. And what is the worse scenario Emily alluded to? Her mind shifts though fantastic, disturbing images: sex workers in the backstreets of Leeds, STD clinics.