Guilt

by Sarah Michelle Lynch

  We set off again at a slow pace as Sam takes in the news. Eventually we come across a metal bench and sit down, able to watch the estuary flip backwards and forwards against the roaring wind.

  “It explains everything,” Sam finally admits.

  “The killer was never found. I expect that’s why they hid the truth from you. I expect they felt hopeless that they couldn’t tell you who had hurt your sister, nor why.”

  Sam has his hands over his face, but he’s taking it in his stride, not crying – just digesting.

  “You can’t expect me to let you move in, just like that,” I remind him.

  “I know. I know. I got carried away.”

  I like to come down to the foreshore. It’s elemental down here. Plus, you can see the land for miles around, across to the south bank and up towards Ferriby, then back all the way down towards the docks, marina and The Deep submarium.

  “Why? Why did you get carried away?”

  “Because I’m terrified,” he explains, “that you’ll change your mind, go off me, forget me… become so buried in your grief that we grow apart, never seeing one another. There have been weeks where you haven’t even texted me.”

  Whether it’s the lashing wind or my heart, I don’t care, I let tears cover my face without trying to wipe them away. Grasping my travel mug in both hands, I take a few shaky mouthfuls before closing the cup again.

  “I’m sorry, what more can I say?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I was looking for some reassurance, I guess.”

  And I was such a bitch … when all he was doing was feeding my kids breakfast.

  There will never be a good time to say it, so I just come out with it…

  “Gage committed suicide.”

  Sam is silent but when I turn to look at him, he’s peering at me, wondering if he heard right.

  “How do you know?”

  “I found a note… but more than that… I just know. I feel it.”

  “A note? Where? Did it come by owl?”

  I manage a half-hearted smile, looking down at my lap. “Gage had been tracking my phone without me realising. He must have always known about our coffee shop meetings on Saturdays, then that night we spent together at your place.”

  Sam can only shake his head.

  “This is crazy.”

  “He had pills… for depression. He wasn’t taking them. Maybe they affected his performance… I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  “What did the note say?”

  “It said—” Either the wind just took my breath away, or Gage’s soul just washed over mine, because I feel dispossessed and freezing cold suddenly. “It said, ‘I’m sorry. Don’t hate me.’ Or it may have been the other way around, I don’t know. But that’s what it said.”

  “Infuriating,” he gasps. “Absolutely reckless! Foul! How could he do this to you?”

  “Please, Sam. Not now. Not today. Please.” I can’t take any more of this.

  “Sorry, I know. I know. This is happening to you, not me. It’s just that this is why I acted like a maniac yesterday. I feel like he’s trying to sabotage any happiness we may have had the potential to enjoy. That’s how it feels… like he’s sabotaging us from beyond the grave.”

  “They ruled misadventure because he’d had roofies. I think he expelled most of the evidence in the toilet, but I think he knew exactly what he was doing. I’m fairly certain he wanted to climb into bed and have a long sleep, never intending to wake up. He wanted us all to think it was a drunken misadventure, because even unto the end he was too afraid to admit he had a problem and needed help.”

  I break down. It hurts. I wail. Sam just holds me while I do. Thankfully nobody else is around, or maybe the wind is carrying my cries to other people nearby, warning them to steer clear.

  Eventually, I get a grip. I take control. “The worst thing is not having answers.”

  “I’m with you there,” he says, and out of the corner of my eye I see him looking wistfully towards the riverbank.

  “What do we do?” I ask.

  He kisses my hand, then my cheek. “We take one day at a time. Together or apart, whatever you need. But I’d rather we were together. So we can get through it stronger.”

  “I’ll try,” I whisper.

  “I can’t ask for any more than that.”

  I sit back against his embrace and let him wrap his arms around me. We do nothing but be close, and eventually, I feel as if I could sleep again.

  “Let’s go to mine,” I suggest.

  WE’RE LYING ON my bed, clothed. I’m being spooned but with all my layers, all I can feel is his breath against the back of my neck.

  “Your hair looks pretty,” he murmurs.

  “Thank you.”

  There’s a painful silence that follows. I’ve hurt him. He’s hurt me.

  I’m dealing with the most savage revelation of my life.

  For so long, I suppose, I blamed Gage for my own shortcomings. I blamed him for hindering my writing career, with his constant advice: “You don’t need to work. I work for all of us. Just look after the kids.”

  It feels like his depression has given him a get-out-of-jail free card, and I’m having serious trouble with that. I’m only human, after all. I feel wronged but at the same time, I feel bad for feeling this way. Yet, I still feel overwhelmingly wronged and upset.

  “Is that why you shagged around a lot?” It blurts out of me suddenly, my mind trying to think of things to take the edge off thinking about Gage’s death. “Feeling… I don’t know… worthless.”

  “It was rebellion, I suppose,” he whispers. “But the funny thing was, it was only detrimental to me.”

  He pulls me tighter against him and it feels too good. Gage also gave great hugs. He was huge and muscular, but with Gage it was always like I was hugging a friend, not a lover.

  “They must have distanced themselves from you emotionally… to prevent you finding out… only it didn’t have the desired effect, did it?”

  “My mother was in mourning after it happened, but my father – never a fan of my elder sister’s notorious partying – didn’t appear as sad. So maybe that’s why they never talked about it with me. My mother didn’t want to reveal the truth, and she didn’t want my father saying something like, ‘Yeah, your sister got killed because she took too many risks.’”

  “So, you knew bits and pieces, then?”

  “I knew she was always gone. I was seven, she was ten years older, but I wasn’t stupid. You could always tell she’d been drinking… maybe drugs too, I don’t know. Maybe my mother was too ashamed to admit she’d allowed Clara to fall in with the wrong sorts of people.”

  “I could try to find out more for you, if you like? Get the full report, or something.”

  “No, there’s no point. She’s gone, isn’t she?”

  “So, whenever you asked your parents about her, they said… what, exactly?”

  “That she was gone and they had no way of knowing where she was.”

  “And they’ve lied to you all this time?”

  “Yep. It explains why my parents’ marriage was never the same again; why they seem to hate one another and sent me away to boarding school when I was eleven, even though that had never been the plan. My mother was more of a believer in holistic childrearing, hence the home schooling up until that point, but once I was of age my father was determined I’d go somewhere decent and become properly regimented, to stay out of trouble. In a way, I suppose he was right. I was safer there. I had friends. I didn’t have to stay at home surrounded by their toxicity.”

  “How awful to never deal with their emotions… never coming to terms with it. How can they live like that?”

  “I don’t know, Liz. It’s always bothered me that two people could be so bad for one another and yet remain together. I guess they’re trapped by their shared grief… shared guilt, even.”

  I turn over and rest on his chest, holding his hand and bringing it to my lips.

/>   The past two months have been a rollercoaster.

  “I think I just need a little sleep,” I murmur.

  “Okay.” He strokes the wispy bits of hair off my face and brushes it back into my mane.

  Before I drift off, I ask, “Nobody can ever know what he did. It’ll have to be between us. I need to protect my kids.”

  “Liza, no. I understand protecting them now, but when they’re older, they will need to know. It’s not good keeping secrets. They need to be made aware of these things. You can’t wrap them up forever.”

  “Sam…” I start crying.

  “Hey, I know, I know.” He kisses my cheek and holds me through it all.

  Just how many tears have I cried? And how many more do I have in me?

  It seems my pain is infinite.

  It seems like it’s a part of me now.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  WHEN I WAKE UP IN his arms after a couple of hours’ sleep, I feel like a zombie. I could sleep for a month straight, quite happily, and yet I know that will not help.

  He wakes with me and kisses my hair, holding his arms tight around me, his love for me so warming – and yet I still don’t feel like I deserve it.

  He slides a hand up inside my jumper and I keep my eyes closed. A part of me wants the oblivion of this. I need to feel alive. I need him. His breathing changes and he rubs himself up against my backside as we spoon.

  Taking hold of my breast, he kisses my throat, murmuring lustily, “Liza.”

  He sneaks his hand into my bra and finds my nipple, squeezing it hard. I hiss and arch, my body awakening to his touch.

  “Together or apart, I will love you forever, my beautiful. Forever.”

  He slides his other hand beneath my sweats and into my knickers.

  I feel overcome, the heat in my groin making me ache all over. I want to switch off and be nothing but his joy as I lie here.

  He tugs down my trousers first before sharply taking down my knickers. He flips my legs apart and turns my head towards him, his tongue parting my lips to kiss me deeply.

  I’m utter burning need as he touches me, stretching me, rolling his finger over my clitoris. His large hand is braced against my pubic bone, keeping my legs apart and my sex entirely his to touch.

  He growls as he kisses me and my body responds to his intimate touch, my hips flying up off the bed as he makes me come hard.

  The next thing I know, he’s lifting his shirt over his head. He climbs over me and pushes up my sweater, then unhooks my bra. I’m entirely naked for him now.

  “Yes, just like this,” he grunts, grabbing me by my legs and shoving his tongue inside me.

  I grasp the sheets and scream as he nips my clit, sucking it between his devilish teeth. I’m baking hot all over even though this is the coolest room in the house and there’s been no sun for days.

  The sight of his tall, lean body… his ripped muscles as he licks and taunts me… makes me even more furiously wanton.

  I roll over and get on all fours. “Like this, Sam.”

  He licks me from behind, starting at my clit, then sliding his tongue all the way up to my tight pucker. I clutch the sheets and rock backwards and forwards, wanting him all over me. Sam pops a finger in my arse and I groan from my belly, needing this so much.

  He adds another finger. And another. There’s gradually a lot of spit, too.

  He pulls down his zipper and sears into me, soaking his cock in my juice.

  Once he’s wetted, he pulls out and removes his fingers, replacing them with his cock.

  “Oh my god, Sam. Yes!”

  “Yes?”

  “Fuck me hard, HARD!”

  “Yes, CHRIST! My dirty woman. God, I love you. I need you so much. I need your body and your soul. I love you.”

  “Sam, just fuck me hard. I love you so much.”

  I’m taken. I’m his. I love him. Morals, questions… right or wrong be damned.

  He grasps my hips and brings me back and forth onto him, careful at first. The wilder he gets, the more I scream… and scream… and I don’t care. I want to keep screaming for as long as he’s able to fuck me.

  “Rub your clit, you bitch,” he demands. “I’m going to fill your body with my cum.”

  He fucks me hard… then harder… and just when I think I can’t take anymore, there’s more. Doing it this way, he can fuck me deeper… but I don’t care that it hurts.

  I feel him coming and suddenly remember to touch myself, reaching down quickly.

  “Wait,” I beg, asking him to keep going.

  “God, Liza. I’m gonna—”

  He starts grinding himself into me all over again and I wail as my orgasm bites into him.

  “Oh, god,” he cries, sounding so vulnerable, and in so much pain, but happy about it nonetheless. It’s a huge blur… but an awakening, too.

  We fall to the bed wrapped up in one another, our noses pushed together, our breath mingling. He’s not as shocked as me because he knew I wanted this. It was only me that didn’t. I play with his hair while he strokes his hands all over my body, holding onto me tight. It just feels so right when our naked bodies are pressed together like this.

  “You belong with me,” he says. “Your body fits inside mine. You feel perfect in my arms. I’m very deeply in love with you. I’ll never not want you. You’re the only woman who’s ever made me feel like this, that’s the truth.”

  I take his hand and put it on my belly.

  “Make me come with your fingers inside me, Sam.”

  He leans across and suckles my breast. “Anytime.”

  I lie back and relax. We still have an hour before I have to go and get the kids.

  “My wish is for us to spend every weekend for the foreseeable enjoying dirty, dirty sex… just us… okay?”

  “You got it.”

  “Just sex,” I tell him.

  “As much sex as I want?”

  “No, as much as I want, and I want it more. I can go for longer than you.”

  Sam raises an eyebrow. “Is that a challenge?”

  “It’s a promise.”

  “I can deal.”

  Sex is going to be my therapy, I just decided.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I CATCH UP WITH HETTY on Monday morning. After having coffee in near-silence, we proceed to the second part of our ritual: walking around the duck pond. As per usual, baby Elizabeth is zonked from her morning feed and Rupert is quite content to watch the birds, but flails at them whenever they get too close.

  “You’ve been with Sam again,” she says, looking me up and down. “I mean, you’ve actually been with him.”

  “It’s that obvious?”

  “I’m afraid so. You’re limping.”

  I suppress a laugh, because that will hurt too.

  “Mama!” Rupert squeals, and I lean down to run my hand through his curls, so much like Gage’s.

  “Yes, baby?”

  “Duck,” he says, “duck!”

  “I know baby, very good. Duck. Quack, quack.”

  Hetty throws her head back on a groan. “I can’t wait for Betty to get a bit bigger so she can tell me what the hell it is she wants all the time.”

  “Urm, breast, and probably, more breast. Then cuddles. Then more breast.”

  “Is that what you get with Sam, huh?” She can’t stop herself laughing out loud.

  We find a bench and Rupert turns his head into the cushioned back of his buggy, letting me know he’s finally ready to rest a moment. I push the buggy back and forth to rock him off to sleep.

  “I wasn’t going to tell you this,” I begin, giving her a warning look. “I’ve had quite the weekend.”

  “It seems…”

  “No, I mean… other stuff.”

  “Oh, really?”

  She takes a bag of Maltesers out of her bag and hands some to me. It’s our one shared vice.

  “Sam was talking about moving in and it made me a bit crazy and then I got talking to Warrick about Gage
’s death—”

  “Oh, god,” she moans, shaking her head, “Warrick?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “He sees stuff in everything. He’s like the worst conspiracy theorist I know.”

  “I know, I couldn’t help offloading though. I had my hair done and then bumped into him. You know how it is, he’s often just there.”

  “Yeah…”

  “Anyway, he told me there’s no such thing as coincidence, which he was right about, actually. I confessed to Warrick about me and Sam, and then how Gage died just a day later, and Warrick and I started brewing all these theories.”

  She smacks herself in the face. “Oh, my sweet lord.”

  “Yeah… so, anyway, to save you all the details, the basic gist of it was that I started wondering if Sam was capable of bumping someone off… but the more I thought about it… the less it made sense. I told you about the roofies, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, you did…”

  “Basically, on Saturday night, I went through all of Gage’s stuff, and then I found a note.”

  Hetty hands me more Maltesers. She’s smiling, intrigued. It’s clearly not clicked with her yet.

  “A note?”

  I take her hand and squeeze it. “Het, it was his suicide note.”

  The bag falls out of her hands and the chocolate balls scatter to the floor, rolling across the dirty, duck-faeces-infested ground beneath our feet. Her hands fly to her mouth and tears rest on the edges of her lashes.

  I feel shaky as I explain, “There were anti-depressants he’d been hiding. He’d been tracking my phone like a stalkerish serial killer or a paranoid ex-boyfriend.”

  “How could he do this to his kids?” she asks, grabbing some tissue from her bag and wiping her eyes. Since motherhood took over her life, this is what she’s like now – all teary and concerned and beautifully caring all the time.

  “I spoke with Marvin. He said when they got off the plane that Monday, Gage was sober. He was completely fine. Marvin never mentioned anything about Gage going through some bad stuff. I didn’t even know. He hid it so well from me, Het. Only the thing is, now I know it’s not like the signs weren’t there, I just didn’t recognise them. You know?”