Someone is screaming and they can’t appear to stop and it’s only when Anthony slaps me around the face that I realise it’s me.
The tears run like rivers down my face as I stare at the crumpled body at the foot of the stairs. A pool of blood begins to form on the polished marble floor and I can tell she’s dead. Her body is at an unnatural angle, and it appears that her neck is broken because her head is hanging limply beside her body.
Anthony cries out, “Stop screaming and think. Oh my God, you saw it, Arabella, she fell. It was an accident. Oh God, this is bad. Please tell me you saw that she fell.”
I shake my head and say in a frightened voice, “We should call the police, ambulance, anyone, they could help.”
Anthony appears to be in shock because he says quickly, “Remember what happened? She took a step back and fell. I tried to stop her from falling; tell them, Arabella, tell them it was an accident.”
I’m not sure where it comes from, but I dial the emergency number as if a robot has replaced anything human inside me.
Calmly, I tell the operator what’s happened and my address and then look at Anthony weeping on the floor like a child. I walk over to Venetia’s lifeless body and gaze down on a woman who wrecked so many lives. Then my heart sinks as I notice another life ebbing away as a result of her foolish actions. The pool of blood is coming from between her legs and I cry for the life that is ending before it began. Anthony’s baby. The one thing he never wanted and the one thing I wanted above everything else. Now it’s gone and I cry as if it was my own. Huge wails echo around my perfect home, and I sink to my knees and cry for the only innocent person in all of this. It’s only as we hear the sirens heading our way that Anthony appears to react to the situation and says in a hard voice, “I’ll do whatever you want, give you everything you want, this house, the savings, everything, but back me up on this and say it was an accident. I can’t go to prison, you know that. If I go down, you go down with me. We need to stick together.”
Suddenly, the place is full of activity and I stand aside and watch Anthony taking charge. I watch the police cordon off the area around Venetia’s body, and men in white overalls invade my house. I am taken into the living room where a police officer asks me questions, but I don’t hear him. All I can think of is what Anthony said. Is this really how it ends? We walk away from this whole mess as the only ones untouched by tragedy. We get to move on with our lives and watch everyone else dealing with the fallout. Can we really keep the dream intact and move on to a bright future? As I sit like a statue, those and a thousand other thoughts crowd around my mind and then I hear her voice, Desdemona Fortune. ‘Beware the Ten Commandments’.
I never really knew what she meant by that, but now it’s painfully clear. We have broken every single one of them between us in one way or another. The final one is up to me before the circle is complete. ‘You must not bear false witness against your neighbour.’
Can I really lie to get Anthony in the clear at the cost of justice for Venetia? If I do, I would be the same as all of them. I would be part of that elite club that protects itself and moves on. It’s not as if it will make any difference to her, anyway. After all, her life will not go on. No, surely, it’s not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. It would be so easy to tell a white lie because I did see Anthony push her out of the way. It was an accident and certainly not deliberate, but should I do that for him? Then I wonder what she really meant that day. Perhaps it was a warning that if you go against the Ten Commandments, your life will be destroyed. I’ve already broken one of them by not respecting my parents. Can I really add false witness to my sins?
The officer clears his throat and says kindly, “I’m sorry, madam, I know you’re in shock, but I really need to hear your account of what happened.”
As I gaze up, I see him looking at me with concern with his pen and pocket notebook at the ready and I say firmly, “It was Anthony. He pushed her.”