2004 - The Reunion
Page 28
After that, what had she done? Blithely got on with her life. But now…how could she go merrily on? Oh, God…she would end up insane at this rate. Or finish up like Simon and Alex. Fitting perhaps.
She started the car and, with a backward glance at the Unit, drove off, guilt eating away at her heart, and her future.
Innes heard the sound of Sarah’s car as it moved off and then leaned back on the swing, enjoying the silence again.
She tipped her head back as far as it would go, feet straight out in front. She remembered seeing Came doing this very same thing on this very same swing that first day. She smiled to herself. So what? And then the unsettling image of Lydia in the hospital grounds, also on a swing, washed across her previous memory. That one couldn’t be shrugged off so easily. She had resolved to keep visiting Lydia, who sometimes did and sometimes didn’t know her. But Innes had decided. She was going to buy somewhere to live along the coast near Lydia’s clinic, so why shouldn’t she see what she could do for her?
And who else had loved the swing? Of course.
She pulled off her gloves and reached inside her pocket. The envelope was more crumpled every time she looked at it. But then it had travelled a long way. From London to Scotland and into Simon’s care. Back to her own home in London. On to her sun-soaked paradise. And back here again. A talisman? A mark of recompense? She pulled out the sheets again.
My dearest Innes,
It is highly unlikely that I will ever send this letter to you since it is over two weeks since I tried to get in touch with you and you have not returned my call. But I will write it anyway, as a form of catharsis if nothing else. But who knows? I might yet raise the courage to send you this.
I am sure that my call must have come as the severest shock. A ghost from your past. A past that maybe you have long buried. I know little of your life except that you live near me—how strange that feels. I wonder if we have passed in the street. Sat opposite each other in a cafe. Sat beside each other in the theatre. I have in recent weeks fantasized about you walking into my dental surgery!
To explain why I wanted—needed—to see you again after all these years is a tale too long and too painful for me to outline here. I suspect that, given time, the truth will out. You may one day hear from Simon, remember Simon Calder? If you do, listen to him. All you need to know at present is that something terrible came out of our time in the Unit. And something good was lost. My friendship with you was lost. I’m not quite sure how that happened,. It was my fault and I think it was because I ‘shut down’ in the Unit. Wilfully became blind to others, including you, Innes.
Who knows, maybe if I’d acted differently maybe’ we would be friends today. Whatever might have been, I think it is significant that I turned to you recently when my Unit past came back to haunt me. I am sorry, though unsurprised, that you, didn’t respond.
I wish to remain oblique about why I felt the need to contact you just in case you remain untouched by the past, and the truth either does not emergeor does not reach you. However, I fear Simon will have pursued matters by now and nothing will be left to chance. Whatever he does I can never judge him. Nor should you. He will be judged by a higher authority, I feel.
I plan to take my own action because, essentially, I am a coward. The other Unit patients have or will find their own way. Alex, without doubt, can take, care of herself. I met Alex recently. A deeply unpleasant experience. She has taken to keeping in touch and visiting me regularly. She has been scared, yes, scared, about me. That is why she has been so attentive. She should be scared. And for ever ashamed. I grieve for Lydia and her family. I pity Simon’s children. This may all be meaningless to you. If it is, ignore it. If not, then take, heed of what I say.
There is only one thing that I feel you must know, Innes. Perhaps the most important thing of all. Twenty-six years ago I fell in love, with Danny Rintoul. A rapist. Twenty-six years on I fell in love with, him again and pursued the desires I could never have then. I thought him a fine, loving man. I even thought mad thoughts of marriage, living with him, in his idyllic home in the Hebrides.
And then he told me. Told me about the unspeakable act of evil he committed—and in which I now know the others were involved—that wretched day in 1977. Many, many things passed through my mind the moment after he told me. One of the lasting ones is my role in it. I should never have walked away. Maybe I could have stopped it. Maybe Danny would have if I had asked him. But I didn’t try hard enough. Despite everything he did, I know he loved me then as he has loved me of late. My very presence could have stopped him, and he in turn would have stoppedd the others. That one single fact of omission makes me as guilty as the, others. Perhaps more so.
We fought the day he told me. Fought on the ferry boat from Stornoway. I hit him. He told me how he’d begged for forgiveness. He’d been thinking of going to church, asking for redemption from a God he’d never before, believed in. That seemed farcical, obscene to me. I felt fury. Rage. I hit him again and again. Pushed him. He fell into the sea. I killed him. Maybe that was right. Just. Apt. But I will for ever regret that the last words he heard from my lips were ‘I hate you. I hate you.’ I did not. Despite what he told me. That apart, I have only one other abiding and inconsolable regret.
That of ever having set foot inside THE UNIT.
Your friend,
Aby
It was time. Innes slowly made her way to the top of the garden. The wind was up now, sleet sheeting down in diagonal waves. She stood with her back to the Unit and took a deep breath. With cold trembling fingers, she tore the letter apart, letting the wind snatch the tiny white squares away, mingling them into invisibility with the falling snowflakes.
THE END