hadn’t realized, of course. I hadn’t even thought she might be. We assumed we couldn’t have children.” He looked down. “We were tested years ago and were told it was unexplained infertility. Anyway, you don’t want to know about that. She told me that Emma was pregnant and that if I carried on seeing you, she would tell her everything. I knew Emma would leave me if she found out I was seeing you.”
“But you wanted to leave her!”
“I did. I wanted to be with you. I just hadn’t factored in a baby.” His face was pink with emotion and he gripped my hand tightly. “Ruby, I have never fathered a child. It’s something I’d always wanted. Longed for. I wanted a baby even more than Emma did. And I loved you. Of course I loved you. You’re wonderful. But I had to make that decision.”
“And you didn’t think you’d bother telling me?” I couldn’t help it. I knew I sounded bitter, but I was bitter. I was still furious with him, not so much for not leaving his wife, but for not telling me. For letting me down. “Why would you treat someone you loved like that?”
“I told you. I wrote to you. I couldn’t call you: We had that rule, remember? I wouldn’t do anything to make things difficult for you at home. And when I got to work after that week away, you weren’t there.”
“Sarah didn’t tell you why I’d gone?”
He shook his head. “I assumed you’d left so that you wouldn’t have to see me.” He looked down and I knew he felt ashamed. “You have to understand, though, why I couldn’t leave home. I couldn’t leave Emma, not if she was pregnant. What sort of man would do that? And when I got home she bundled me into the car and took me away for a week. She said we should leave our phones behind.” He swallowed and I steeled myself for what he’d say. “She said we needed to bond. That we’d been living separate lives. We had. I’d told you that; we talked about it a lot. She said we had to be a family now, that our child came first. I couldn’t call you. She was with me the whole time. And when I got back to work, you’d gone and I knew I deserved that.”
“I was fired,” I said.
“What?”
“I got to work on Monday morning and was told they were terminating my contract.”
“What? Who told you that?”
“Eleanor Jones.”
He nodded, his face pale. “I hadn’t realized she was in on this, too. Jane must have spoken to her before she left work that day. But why didn’t you e-mail me?”
“Are you kidding? You didn’t turn up. You didn’t write. Then when I tried to call you, your phone was switched off. What kind of e-mail did you want, exactly?”
“But I did write!” He sounded so frustrated. “I don’t understand why you didn’t get it.”
“What time did you send it?”
“About six o’clock. I remember looking at the time when I was writing it.”
I thought back. “Tom sent a text from the train before that, and after I replied I turned the sound off on my phone in case he called me. I was so nervous that I knew he’d suspect something if he spoke to me.”
“Does he know your password?”
“No. No, of course not.”
“So he can’t access your e-mail?”
I stopped short. “Oh no. He had my iPad that day. He took it to London, to use on the train. And if you click on Gmail my in-box would open automatically; the username and password are stored there. I don’t use it for anything private. Just shopping, that sort of thing. But he doesn’t use Gmail. Why would he even open it?”
Harry ignored this. We both knew why Tom would be checking my messages. “You have e-mail notifications on your phone, don’t you?”
“Yes, but nothing came through. Just a second, I’m trying to think . . .” I sat quietly, thinking back to the day I’d left Tom. I’d muted my phone, not wanting to