The Love of My Life(4)

Then a fear fogs in from nowhere: what if Ruby has gone missing too? I run upstairs, so fast I stumble and land on my hands, but she’s there.

Of course she’s there. And of course, when I check, she is breathing.

I look for Leo in the airing cupboard, the trapdoor to our unsafe roof terrace. No sign.

Anxiety begins to prickle. What if one of those weird men from the internet has got fed up with me blocking his messages and decided to punish my husband?

Ridiculous, I tell myself, but the idea’s taken hold. Leo opening the door, only to be knocked out. Leo letting John Keats out for a late wee and being bludgeoned to death by some lonely maniac who thinks he owns me, because he enjoys me talking to grebes on telly.

It’s not that bad, of course, but it’s been worse than I’ve let on. Some of them get angry when I don’t reply. I block all of them, but a few have simply invented new profiles so they can come back and shout at me a bit more. For a long time I managed to brush it off, but lately I’ve reached my limit. I’m not frightened as such, just sick of it.

Although I do think someone was waiting for me when I left the lab in Plymouth last week. There was a man sitting on the grassy mound that borders the driveway, which was unusual only in that he had his back to the sea. Who goes to stare at a private driveway on a sunny afternoon, when right behind them is a perfect view of the sparkling Plymouth Sound? I also didn’t much like the way he pulled a baseball cap right down over his face as I walked up the drive, turning his face away as I passed.

Probably nothing, but it bothered me.

I sit down on my bed, trying to focus. My priority in this moment is finding my missing husband.

I check my text messages. Very occasionally, if someone of huge importance has died, Leo has to fire up his laptop in the middle of the night. Maybe something huge has happened, like the Queen or Prime Minister dying? Maybe he’s actually had to go into work?

There are no messages from him in my phone. Only my Google search for a man I shouldn’t have been searching for; the last thing I did before falling asleep earlier on.

The memory of this morning’s phone call seeps through again, like flood water under a door. I just want to talk to you, he said at the end. Meet me. Face to face.

I put the phone down when he said that.

‘Leo?’ I whisper. Nothing. ‘Leo!’ I repeat, louder this time. ‘I could still have cancer! You can’t abandon me now!’

Then, after a pause: ‘I love you. Where are you?’

There is no answer. The man has completely disappeared.

I find him in the garden shed, eventually. About five years ago he became so furious about the state of the house that I paid a handyman to empty the shed. We insulated it and ran an all-weather cable outside, so Leo could work there if he wanted to. I put in a sofa and a rug and a bookshelf, and promised I would never transfer any stuff in there ‘for sorting’. Leo fell in love with it, then promptly forgot it existed.

Now, though, he’s sitting inside, coughing up cigarette smoke.

‘Leo.’ I stand in the doorway. ‘What are you doing?’

He looks sheepish. ‘Having an emergency fag.’ There’s a packet of cigarettes next to him, crudely opened. Nearby, the long plastic device we use for lighting the gas stove.

The dog, who followed me out, looks at Leo, then me, as if to say, but he doesn’t even smoke. ‘But you don’t even smoke,’ I say.

‘I know.’ He picks up the stove lighter and presses the ignition button. A blue-orange flame illuminates his face, tired and frightened, and even though this breaks my heart, I find myself laughing. My husband is in his shed having an emergency cigarette, lit by what amounts to a domestic blow torch.

‘Don’t laugh at me,’ he says, laughing a little himself. ‘I’m scared.’

I stop laughing. I have thought about this often, during my illness, the possibility of dying on a man whose entire emotional landscape has been shaped by loss. I’ve been afraid for myself, of course, and the imagined grief for Ruby has been unbearable, but in many ways it’s Leo I worry about most. I think most people see in my husband a quietly confident man, a man with a quick wit and a big brain, but that’s only the top layer.

Our little family is the first place he’s truly felt he belongs.

‘Oh, Leo . . .’ I say. ‘My darling, couldn’t you have had a whiskey?’

He shakes his head. ‘I promised you I’d give up alcohol. I’m a man of my word.’

I sit next to him on his sofa, from which a small cloud of dust plumes, and hold his hand while he admits to having taken John Keats down to the late shop for cigarettes. He also bought some dairy-free chocolate.

‘It was disgusting,’ he says, miserably.

I loop an arm through his. His poor body is braced, as if ready for attack. ‘You don’t have to give up alcohol yet,’ I tell him. ‘Or meat, or dairy.’ His hair has gone quite mad. There are deep creases under his eyes, and he needs a shave, but, God, he’s beautiful.

I watch him, wishing I could somehow convey how deeply, how completely I love him. How I want to protect him from what might happen to me.

John Keats settles at Leo’s feet, muttering.

‘I’m going to be fine,’ I say. ‘We’re going to walk into that appointment and Dr Moru is going to give me the all-clear, and you’re going to sit there, silently accusing him of being in love with me –’