The Love of My Life: A Novel

One



Leo



Her eyelashes are often wet when she wakes, as if she's been swimming in a sea of sad dreams. "It's just some sleep-related thing," she's always said. "I never have nightmares." After a fathomless yawn she'll wipe her eyes and slip out of bed to check Ruby is alive and breathing. It's a habit she's been unable to break, even though Ruby's three.



"Leo!" she'll say, when she gets back. "Wake up! Kiss me!"



Moments will pass, as I slide into day from the slow-moving depths. Dawn will spread from the east in amber shadows and we will burrow in close to each other, Emma talking almost nonstop-although from time to time she will pause, midstream, to kiss me. At 6:45 we will check Wikideaths for overnight passings, then at 7:00 she will break wind, blaming the sound on a moped out in the road.



I can't remember how far into our relationship it was when she started doing this: not far enough, probably. But she would have known that I was on board, by then, that I was no more likely to swim back to the shore than I was to grow wings and fly there.





If our daughter hasnÕt climbed into our bed by that time, we climb into hers. Her room is sweet and hot, and our early-morning conversations about Duck are among the happiest moments my heart knows. Duck, whom she clutches tightly to herself all night, is credited with incredible nocturnal adventures.



Normally I'll dress Ruby while Emma "goes down to make breakfast," although most days she'll get sidetracked by marine data collected overnight in her lab, and it's Ruby and me who'll sort out the food. My wife was forty minutes late for our wedding because she'd stopped to photograph the tidal strandlines at Restronguet Creek in her wedding dress. Nobody, except the registrar, was surprised.



Emma's an intertidal ecologist, which means she studies the places and creatures that are submerged at high tide and exposed at low. The most miraculous and exciting ecosystem on earth, she says: she's been rockpooling since she was a young girl; it's in her blood. Her main research interest is crabs, but I believe most crustaceans are fair game. Right now she's got a bunch of little guys called Hemigrapsus takanoi in special sea-water tanks at work. I know they're an invasive species and that she's looking at some specific morphology she's been trying to pin down for years, but that's as much as I'm able to understand. Less than a third of the words biologists use can be understood by the average human; getting trapped in a group of them at a party is a nightmare.





Emma is singing to John Keats when Ruby and I arrive in the kitchen this morning, the sun jagging across the worktops and our cereal hardening in bowls. Her laptop, which displays a page of mind-boggling words and squiggles, plays a track called ÒKillermuffin.Ó When we rescued John Keats from the dog shelter they told us that jungle at a low volume soothed his nerves, and so it has become the soundtrack to our lives. IÕm used to it now, but it took a while.



I stand in the doorway with Ruby perched on my hip, watching my wife singing tunelessly to the dog. In spite of a bunch of musicians in Emma's ancestry she is incapable of singing even "Happy Birthday" in tune, but this has never stopped her. It's one of many things I love about my wife.



She catches sight of us and dances over, still singing appallingly. "My favorites!" she says, kissing us both and extracting Ruby from my arms. She whirls off with our daughter and the dreadful singing gets louder.



Ruby knows Mummy's been ill; she has seen her lose her hair thanks to the special medicine she gets at hospital, but she thinks Emma's better now. The truth of the matter is, we don't know. Emma had her post-treatment PET scan yesterday and an appointment to discuss the results has been booked for next week. We are hopeful, we are frightened. Neither of us is sleeping well.



After a brief stint dancing with her mother, Duck whirling around their heads, Ruby wriggles off to take care of some urgent business.



"Come back!" Emma cries. "I want to cuddle you!"



"I'm too busy," Ruby says, regretfully. Then: "Hi," she whispers, to the plant she's looking after for nursery. "I'm going to give you a drink."



"Anything?" I ask, nodding at the computer. Emma presented a BBC wildlife series a few years back and continues to receive messages from weird men, even though she hasn't been on telly since. But her series was repeated recently, and as a result the messages have increased. Normally, we laugh at ...