When Marianne came back to the room she was carrying two sets of printed pages and her laptop. She handed a set each to Joely and Freda and returned to her seat at the dining table. She didn’t speak or even look at them; she simply sat quietly staring at nothing, putting Joely in mind of a defendant awaiting a verdict.
When Joely looked at the pages she saw they’d been typed in the same font Freda had insisted on for the memoir. She wondered if her mother had simply continued to use the settings because they were already there, or if she’d chosen it deliberately in order to give Freda the end for her story.
I am becoming increasingly worried about David. The depression that has come over him in recent weeks is deepening and I don’t know how to help him. When I saw him last weekend he was hardly able to speak to me, and every time he looked at me I could feel the sadness inside him as though it were mine. It was mine, because that’s how it is with us, we share all of our feelings, our hearts, our minds are, as he has said himself, as one.
I talked to Mummy about my fears so she asked Daddy to contact the prison to report our concerns. He was told that the matter would be looked into, but none of us really knew what that meant. Daddy said he’d talk to some other people he knows to find out if it’s possible for David to be moved elsewhere, but we’re still waiting for news on that.
I haven’t received any letters this week, so to keep us going I’ve been playing Jamie the lullabies and ditties his Daddy has composed for him. I don’t suppose I’ll ever be a great pianist, but David keeps it very simple so I don’t have much trouble following the notes. It’s clear that Jamie loves the tunes; they even distract him when his gums are hurting, and sometimes, when I stop, he fusses until I start again.
I love being a mother as much as I love David. I don’t care that I’m only sixteen and there are still many years to wait before David can be with us. What matters is that he will be with us one day. It’s all we want, to be together.
Daddy received a call from the prison this morning to tell us that David hanged himself last night.
I could hardly take the words in, but I know I screamed and screamed because Mummy kept telling me I’d frighten the baby. I couldn’t stop; I wanted to go to him, to bring him back to us, to tell him that it’ll be all right. It’s all my fault, I know that, if it weren’t for me he’d never have gone to prison and I’ll never, ever be able to forgive myself.
I know if it weren’t for our beautiful son that I would do the same right now so I could be with him. I don’t know how I’m going to carry on without him. I keep seeing him in the classroom laughing and blushing as we teased him, playing his guitar and encouraging us to sing. I see him driving his car with me beside him, chasing me around the garden at his uncle’s cottage, the awe and passion in his eyes as we explored Paris and deepened our love for each other. I can’t bear to think of him being somewhere I can’t see or touch him now, where I can’t hear him anymore or inhale the essence of him. I am so full of his and my despair that I’m unable to speak or move or even nurse our little son.
As the hours pass and my grief deepens beyond all bearing I come to the decision that no matter what I must go to him. I can’t let him be alone in whatever place he is now. My parents will care for Jamie, he’ll never want for anything, they already love him as if he were their own.
I am still thinking these thoughts, making plans, writing notes, talking to David in my mind telling him I’m coming, when his letter arrives.
My darling Marianne,
By now you will know that we won’t be seeing each other again in this life. I am sorry, my angel, but this is the only way I can see to set us both free. I know we have shared many dreams, and for the past months they have been the only light in my darkness, but I cannot let you carry on believing it’s possible for us to have a future together. I want you to find happiness and love with someone who is not tainted in the way I am—not only by reputation, but by the things that have been done to me in here. I am sorry, Marianne, but I can take no more of the violence and degradation. Knowing what I have suffered. what I, as a deviant, have been forced to do, makes me ashamed to see you.
I know you will always love and take care of our son and I hope that one day you will be able to tell him about me in a way that captures only the beautiful memories we share. I thank God for them. They and your letters and visits have done so much to transport me from this hell. Yesterday, someone found the letters and destroyed them—I would prefer not to tell you how—but they also took Jamie’s photos and I have no idea what has happened to them.
I am going to say goodbye to you in two ways, my darling, the first is with music, of course. Do you remember the song I once told you encapsulated everything I feel about you? I didn’t play it for you enough, maybe you’ll say I played it too much. I’ve been unable to record it myself, but along with the words that I am going to put in with this letter, you will find the name of an artiste I believe sings it very well. It is a song all about first times—the first time I saw your face, the first time I kissed you, the first time that I lay with you, and how I felt our joy filling the earth and knew it would last until the end of time.
The second way is through the poem you sent me. As beautiful and perfect a poem as it is, I have changed it to help me tell you what I most want you to know.
How do I love you? Let me count the ways
I love you to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach . . .
I love you freely,
I love you purely,
I love you with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and I believe
With all my heart that I shall love you
Even more after death.
Thank you, my darling, for the happiness you have given me, and thank you with all my heart for our beloved son. Fly now, beautiful Marianne, live your life and know that my spirit will always fly with you.
David
Joely was too blinded by tears to read any further, but she could see there was more, just a few lines as though penned by the sixteen-year-old Marianne.
It’s all my fault. I know that. I will never be able to escape it. If I live to be a hundred I will never stop loving him, and I will never be able to forgive myself. If I hadn’t told he would never have gone to prison, then no one would have abused him and made his life so intolerable that he chose to end it like this.
It’s all my fault.
It’s all my fault.
It’s all my fault.
“Yes,” Freda said, her voice cutting so sharply through the silence it made Joely start. “It is your fault.”
Joely looked at her, then at her mother. Marianne’s face was ashen, her eyes bright with tears.
“He would still be alive if it weren’t for you,” Freda declared, her tone full of contempt. “My brother, my talented, beautiful brother, who had his whole life ahead of him, would not have died in that pit of a prison if you hadn’t sent him there.”
Marianne didn’t try to defend herself, but before Joely could speak on her behalf, Freda was saying, “There is no one else to blame. You, Marianne, are as responsible for his death as if you’d stabbed him through the heart or pushed him from a cliff. You are the moth that was drawn to the irresistible light that was him, but instead of burning to death as you should have done you extinguished him.”
Marianne started to speak, but Freda hadn’t finished: “You tore the very soul out of my family; did you know that? Did you even care? My mother never sang again after David’s arrest, and she died only a year later of a broken heart. My father turned to alcohol and spent the next three years drinking himself to death. That, Marianne, is what you and your lies did to my family.”
“I know it was my fault,” Marianne said softly, “I accept that, but everything I’ve written down for you is the truth.”
“And you think that makes it all right? You think that because you still have his letters, because he loved you that . . .”
“Nothing is all right,” Marianne cried brokenly. “That’s not what I’m trying to say. Of course I blame myself. You have my confession right there and I’ve never sought to deny it.”
“Yet you’ve continued to live your life as if he never existed. You married someone else when David’s son was only four years old. That was how long it took you to find another man. That’s how brokenhearted you were and I don’t suppose for a minute that you’ve ever told your son about his real father.”
“Yes, I have!” Marianne shouted. “He knows everything. He and my husband have even read those letters.”
Joely hid her shock; this was no time for it. “Perhaps,” she said to Freda, “if your parents had agreed to meet their grandson . . .”
“How could they meet him without her being there, and believe me they had no desire to meet her.”
“Yes, they proved that,” Marianne broke in, “when they refused to let me come to the funeral.”
“They didn’t want you there. Nobody did. When does a murderer ever get invited to the funeral of their victim?”
As Marianne flinched, Joely cried, “For God’s sake, Freda, in case you’ve forgotten, it takes two to have an affair, and your brother was twenty-five, an adult, a teacher, someone in a position of responsibility, so we should be saying that he took advantage of her. In fact, I don’t think any of us can deny that he did, no matter how genuine his feelings might have been. He was weak, he shouldn’t have given in to how he felt . . .”
“Ask her if she knows where he is?” Freda cut in shrilly. “Ask her why she’s never bothered to find out where he’s buried? Because she’s never cared, th—”
“I know exactly where he is,” Marianne told her. “I’ve always known and I visit him. My husband used to come with me when he was alive, but now I go alone.”
As stunned as Freda apparently was, Joely struggled to take it in. Her parents had visited the grave of a man her mother had loved and her father had never even known? It proved, of course, that her mother had never stopped caring, or loving, and it told her yet again what an exceptional person her father had been. He’d have gone to support his wife, to try and help her to make peace with herself and to pay respects to his adopted son’s natural father. It was the kind of man he was, selfless, nonjudgmental, and a complete stranger to jealousy or any other petty feelings that could so easily corrode a person as well as a relationship.
Swallowing her emotion, Joely said what she felt sure her father would if he were here, “This all happened so long ago, Freda, that you must surely see that it’s time now to let it go.”
Still looking at Marianne, Freda’s eyes glittered with something close to hate as she said, “Maybe I could if it had ended with David’s death, or the deaths of my parents, but it didn’t, did it, Marianne? You couldn’t leave my family alone.”
Joely looked at her mother and saw she was as confused as she was.
“What are you talking about?” Marianne asked. “I’ve never had anything to do with your family since David went. You’ve said yourself—”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about it,” Freda cut in savagely. “I should have known right away it was you. He was besotted with you, he couldn’t think about anything else . . .”
“Freda, who are you talking about?”
She wasn’t listening. “He’d always been fascinated by the story of David’s love affair, ever since he first heard about it he kept asking to hear more. It shouldn’t have surprised me when he went looking for you, but fool that I am, it never crossed my mind that he would. And then he found you and just like David he fell in love with you. It was as if I stopped existing. Our marriage no longer meant anything to him; there was only you. He had to have you, he was obsessed, but you didn’t want him.”
Marianne was regarding her aghast. “Freda . . . I . . . This is all in your mind . . .”
“I know it was you. He told me. He said, “I understand David’s passion, because she’s bewitched me too. I must have her. I can’t live without her.”’
Marianne was still in shock. “There was someone,” she said, “a few years ago. He was a stal—” She corrected herself. “I never saw him, but I knew he was watching me, following me even. He sent notes, flowers . . . In the end my husband got me to arrange a meeting with him and he went in my place. After that I never saw or heard from him again . . .”
“His name was Doddoe,” Freda told her icily. “That’s what everyone called him, but really it was David. Another David.”
Joely regarded them in amazement and in a way awe as she considered how something that had amounted to little more than an incident, or inconvenience in her mother’s world, dismissed and forgotten until now, had led to such a profound and devastating turning point in Freda’s life.
“Another David,” Freda repeated with scorn. “What is it about—?”
“Freda, you’ve got to stop this now,” Joely told her firmly. “My mother had nothing to do with what happened to your husband . . .”
“She’s who he and my brother were discussing when they took the boat out, she’s who Christopher was trying to protect my marriage from, so if it weren’t for her the accident would never have happened.” Her eyes were still boring into Marianne. “And you sit there now making out like you had no idea—”
“I swear I didn’t,” Marianne put in hastily. “He never even spoke to me. Maybe it wasn’t your husband. We could be talking about somebody else. I’m sure we are . . .”
Freda was shaking her head, clearly not prepared to listen.
Deciding it might be a good idea for Callum to come in now, Joely struggled to her feet.
“Where are you going?” Marianne and Freda asked together.
Thinking fast, Joely said, “I need more painkillers.” Except she couldn’t leave her mother alone with Freda, the woman was building herself up to such a pitch there was no knowing what she might do.
She was about to call out for Callum when Freda stood up too.
Joely’s eyes followed her as she walked over to Marianne. It was as though time had become strangely slow as Marianne looked up and Freda leaned over to whisper in her ear—except she wasn’t whispering, she was sobbing and her hands were going to Marianne’s neck.
Joely threw herself forward and screamed for Callum. With her right hand she managed to shove Freda off balance. Marianne leapt up in shock and Freda clasped her hands to her face.
“What the hell?” Callum cried, running into the room.
Freda began wailing, wrenching, awful sounds coming from the desperate, tortured heart of her. She gulped and sobbed, bared her teeth and screamed as Marianne grabbed her by the shoulders.
Freda’s head fell back as she howled “No!” at the ceiling.
Marianne tightened her hold, trying to draw her in.
Freda sank to her knees and Marianne went down with her holding her close as if she were a child, arms around her, shoulder supporting her head as it shook and jerked with the might of her grief. She began struggling for breath, her whole body convulsed with the enormity of her heartache and Marianne continued to hold her.
Still watching them, Joely left Callum’s side and went to kneel beside them. It was hard to join in the embrace with only one arm, but she could stroke Freda’s back and her mother’s hair and do her best to wipe away their tears. She wondered what the ghosts of those they wept for would think if they could see them now. In an odd way she felt they were there, and that one of them, David, had brought Freda here, to the very last place she’d thought to find comfort, when in truth it was probably the only place.