The Dilemma

by B. A. Paris

  ‘Please, Daddy, stop!’

  I give a roar of frustration. ‘Don’t! Don’t you dare ask me to stop when you’ve been having an affair with Rob!’ I bring the axe down on the largest remaining piece, scattering fragments everywhere. ‘My best friend’s brother—’ I raise the axe again. ‘Jess’s husband—’ Another swing of the axe. ‘Your best friend’s FATHER—’

  ‘Daddy, STOP!’

  Turning the axe in my hand, I use the head as a club and send the mass of broken wood flying around the shed. ‘Don’t tell me what to do!’ I yell, as pieces smash off the walls. ‘You don’t have the right! How could you do it, Marnie? How could you leave us?’

  ‘ADAM!’

  Livia

  He stops in mid-swing and whips round, and for a terrible moment I think he’s going bring the axe down on me. Then confusion replaces the fury in his eyes and he looks at me in bewilderment, as if he can’t believe that it’s me standing there and not Marnie.

  I reach out a hand. ‘It’s alright,’ I say gently. ‘It’s alright.’

  He lowers his arm and the axe thuds to the ground. His face turns ashen. And then he sinks onto his knees, covers his face with his hands and begins to sob uncontrollably.

  I kneel on the floor among the shards of black walnut, trying to take him in my arms. But he won’t let me in. Ashamed of his tears, he won’t let me move his hands from his face. Trapped in his own private hell, all I can do is hold him, tell him that I love him, that I’m sorry, that everything is going to be alright, that we’re going to get through it. All the things he said to me, all the things I couldn’t say to him, until now.

  At some point I look up and see Josh standing in the doorway, his arms by his side, his face streaked with tears. When he starts to move towards us, I shake my head and give him a quick smile, letting him know that Adam wouldn’t want him to see him like this: broken, crushed, defeated. And understanding, he moves quietly away.

  Eventually exhaustion overtakes him and I’m able to pull him to me, smooth his hair, kiss the tears from his eyes.

  ‘It’s going to be alright, I promise,’ I say softly. ‘It’s going to be alright.’

  He doesn’t answer, because he can’t. But the sigh, from deep within him, is enough.

  A YEAR LATER

  8TH JUNE, 2020

  Adam

  We’re having a party today, for Livia and Marnie. Josh has organised it. Everyone who was at Liv’s party last year is coming, plus Marnie’s friends from school and university. All the people who’ve become an important part of our lives during these last twelve months.

  In the aftermath of Marnie’s death, and at her memorial service, the one thing people wanted to know was what they could do to help. We thought about it and decided that what we wanted, what would help the most, was for them to keep Marnie alive in our minds by keeping her alive in theirs, and talking to us about her. And it has helped, hearing stories about her that we never knew. It isn’t always easy, but it’s better than never mentioning Marnie at all.

  That was one of my first mistakes, not mentioning Marnie to save people embarrassment. It’s normal for clients, while we’re talking about the piece I’m going to make for them, to show me photos of their house so I can suggest the best type of wood to use to harmonise with the rest of their furniture. Inevitably, talking about ‘home’ leads to talking about family and, if I was asked about my children I would only mention Josh. But each time, it felt like a terrible betrayal of Marnie. So now this is what I say:

  My son, Josh, lives in London with his girlfriend, Amy. I did have a lovely daughter, Marnie, but she died some months back in a plane crash – the Pyramid Air one, perhaps you heard about it?

  And when they look shocked and mumble that they’re sorry, I say:

  It was terrible at the time, and it still is most days, but we try to remember how lucky we were to have her.

  It’s usually enough.

  For the first few weeks after Marnie’s death, Liv was definitely stronger than me. I was a physical and emotional mess. Crushed not just by guilt and grief, but also by Marnie’s affair with Rob. I couldn’t reconcile the Marnie I knew with the Marnie she had become. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, and quickly lost a stone in weight. Whenever I thought about her last moments, I imagined her calling, not for Livia, or me, but for Rob.

  We never made it to Cairo. The night Livia came to find me in my shed, when everything finally became too much, the thought of boarding a plane a few hours later filled me with such dread that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do it.

  ‘I can’t go to Cairo,’ I murmured shakily, as the sun began to rise in the sky. ‘I don’t want to see.’

  ‘Then we won’t go,’ she told me gently. ‘I don’t want to see either.’

  In the aftermath of the accident, it was Nelson who dealt with the official side of things and kept us up to date with the investigation into the crash. Trapped in a deep, dark tunnel with seemingly no light at the end of it, I was incapable of doing anything.

  The turning point came about six weeks after Marnie’s death when I wandered down to the kitchen one morning, and found a note from Livia, saying she’d gone out. Josh didn’t seem to be around either and I vaguely remembered that he and Amy had gone away for a few days’ break. It was the first time I’d been on my own since Marnie had died, and although I’d retreated so far into myself that I barely spoke, their absence began to weigh on me until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I tried phoning Livia but each time, my call went through to voicemail.

  I phoned Nelson.

  ‘I can’t get hold of Livia,’ I told him, feeling near to tears. ‘I don’t know where she is. What if she’s had an accident?’

  ‘She hasn’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She’s gone to the Park,’ he said, referring to Windsor Great Park. ‘Have you just got up?’

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted, because it was nearly midday.

  ‘Then have a shower and a shave and go and join her.’

  ‘No,’ I said, shrinking back inside myself. I hadn’t left the house for weeks, not since Marnie’s memorial service, and I didn’t want to go a place that held so many memories of her.

  ‘You have to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What date are we?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s the twenty-fourth of July.’

  I knew that date. Marnie’s birthday. ‘It can’t be,’ I stuttered, unable to believe that most of July had gone past without me noticing.

  ‘You need to get a grip, Adam,’ Nelson said firmly. ‘You can’t go on like this.’

  I felt a surge of anger. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, my daughter died,’ I said, my voice cold.

  ‘And so did Livia’s. Go and find her. She needs you, Adam. She can’t go on carrying you anymore.’

  I hated him then. But when I went to the bathroom, my hate turned towards the shell of a man staring at me from the mirror. I barely recognised myself and that frightened me. How could I have let myself become such a mess? It wasn’t Nelson’s voice I could hear telling me to get a grip, but Marnie’s. She’d have been appalled to see me in such a state.

  While I shaved for the first time in weeks, I thought about what Nelson had said about Livia carrying me, and felt a growing shame. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d looked at her properly, or had had a conversation with her. Consumed with guilt, Marnie’s death had become all about me.

  I guessed that Livia would have walked into Windsor and used the Cambridge Gate entrance to get into the park. I kept my head down as I walked through the town, imagining that everyone recognised me as the man who had lost his daughter in the plane crash. When I reached the gate, I found myself faltering. We had always started the Long Walk with Marnie here, and I wasn’t sure I could do it without her. And then the strangest thing happened. As I stood hesitating, with memories of Marnie crowding my thoughts, I felt myself being propelled
forward. I was so sure someone was pushing me that I turned my head to see who was there. But there was no-one. And yet there was, because I could feel this presence walking along beside me.

  ‘Hello, Marnie,’ I murmured. ‘Happy birthday.’ A gentle breeze stirred the air around me and for the first time since Livia’s party, I found myself smiling.

  I wasn’t worried that I wouldn’t find Livia. I knew that if I kept walking, I’d eventually meet her as she made her way back to the gate. It was a while before I saw her coming towards me. I was shocked at how thin and tired she looked, and wondered how I could have been so selfish.

  She didn’t see me as she trudged along with her head down. As she went to move around me, I caught her arm.

  ‘Livia.’

  It took her a moment to realise it was me. And when she did, she slumped against me and burst into tears of relief and exhaustion.

  From the kitchen, I hear Josh and Amy moving around upstairs as they get dressed. I left Livia sleeping but I heard the shower running, so she’ll be down soon. I open the back door and Murphy stirs in his basket. He comes to stand beside me and we go out to the garden to wait for Livia.

  I miss Marnie every minute of every day. There’s an aching void inside me which will never be filled – how can it be when I’ve lost a part of me? But Livia and I have come a long way in a year, thanks to the love and support of our family and friends. She has Jess, Kirin and her mum, and I have Izzy, Ian and my parents, especially my dad. His sixth sense knows when I’m drowning and he’ll miraculously appear to throw me a lifeline, usually in the form of a drink in town, or a walk along the river with Murphy, whichever he feels I need most.

  I also have Nelson, who came and stood in the doorway of my shed one day, and I knew from the look on his face that he’d found out about Marnie and Rob. He was heartbroken over their affair, furious that Rob was willing to risk everything he had, everything we had, for something that could never be.

  ‘What was he thinking?’ he kept repeating, the same question Livia and I had asked ourselves over and over again in relation to Marnie. ‘I’m so sorry, Adam, I’m so sorry.’

  I tried to comfort him, telling him it took two to have an affair. I was glad he didn’t know about the baby Marnie had lost. I almost wished I didn’t, but Livia hadn’t wanted there to be any secrets between us. Sometimes, I try to imagine what it would have been like if Marnie hadn’t lost the baby and if she hadn’t died. It’s heartbreaking to think how it could have been. But I also know it would have been extremely difficult to adapt to such a situation.

  Nelson asked what Livia and I wanted to do, saying he’d understand if we never wanted to see Rob again. Under any other circumstances, that’s what we’d have chosen, to never see him again. But we had Jess to think of. If we cut Rob out of our lives, she would want to know why. I also had Livia to think of. To lose her best friend, which she inevitably would, on top of losing her daughter, would be too much. And there was Cleo and Josh to consider. We didn’t want either of them to know about the affair.

  In the end, it was Liv’s decision. She said she wanted us to carry on as before, as if nothing had happened, as if we didn’t know. So that’s what we do. It’s incredibly hard, and despite our best efforts, things aren’t quite the same when we meet up. If Jess, or Kirin – because Nelson preferred not to tell her – notice that Rob is more subdued around us, they probably put it down to the strain of Marnie’s death. Normally Kirin might have dug deeper, but she has her hands full with the latest additions to their family, Rose and Bertie, who are now six months old.

  I think Livia finds it easier than me. There are days when the weight of the lie becomes almost too heavy; when I don’t know how I’m going to bear being in the same room as Rob, or breathe the same air as him. But I do it for Livia, for all that she’s been through, for the way she has coped with losing Marnie, for the way she carried me during those first weeks, putting her grief aside to get me through mine. And because I love her more now than ever.

  Livia

  I close the card I was reading and put it back in my drawer, hidden beneath the roses I saved from Marnie’s bouquet. The card arrived on the Tuesday after she died, the day we were meant to fly to Cairo. It was the birthday card she had promised to send me and tucked inside, I’d found a hastily scribbled handwritten note.

  There’s something I need to tell you, Mum. I think you know I’ve been keeping something from you but I’m hoping you don’t know what it is because I want to explain it face to face so that you can at least try to understand. I’m not sure you’ll be able to, and Dad even less. You’re going to be disappointed, and ashamed of me, but I need you to know that I never intended it to get to this, it just happened. And now that it has – well, all I can hope is that you’ll find it in your hearts to forgive me.

  As I read it, I was glad that I knew what Marnie was alluding to. If I hadn’t known about her affair with Rob, I’d have tormented myself forever, wondering what she could possibly have done to need my forgiveness. But there are other things to torment me. I guessed that Marnie had written the note straight after our phone call, when I’d tried to tell her not to come back. I’ve never stopped wishing that I’d managed to persuade her, just as I’ve never stopped wishing that it hadn’t been our last conversation. I can’t remember if I told her that I loved her, as I usually did at the end of a call, and I torment myself that I didn’t.

  I have a shower and get dressed. I’m not sure how I feel about this party today, although I’d never tell Josh that. I wouldn’t mind if we never celebrated my birthday again. I know it’s stupid but sometimes I wonder if Marnie dying was payback for me being so over the top about my party last year. It seems almost abhorrent to have put so much store on something so materialistic.

  It might seem strange, but I feel lucky to be where I am today, to have what I have. First and foremost, Adam. For a few terrible weeks after Marnie’s death, I thought I was going to lose him too. There were times when I couldn’t see him ever clawing his way out of the grief and guilt that consumed him. If it hadn’t been for Josh and Amy, I don’t know how I would have coped.

  I finally hit the bottom on Marnie’s birthday, as I walked the Long Walk in Windsor Great Park. I’d been hoping that Adam would come with me but as the date approached, I could see that he’d forgotten it was her birthday and I was too scared to mention it in case it pushed him over the edge. As I walked along, the exhaustion I felt frightened me, because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to carry on much longer.

  ‘Please, Marnie,’ I prayed, close to tears. ‘Please bring your dad back to me. I can’t get through this without him.’ And then I looked up and he was there, and as he held me while I wept tears of relief, all I could think was that somehow Marnie had heard me. I talk to her every evening now, in the quiet of my bedroom, while Adam is downstairs, or walking Murphy. I lie on the bed, Mimi curled against me and tell her about my day. And I know that she’s listening.

  I’m also grateful to have Mum, who turned out to be my rock when it came to deciding what to do about Rob. I finally contacted her about three weeks after Marnie died, to invite her to the memorial service and from then on, we began to meet once a week for coffee in town. Maybe if Marnie hadn’t died we wouldn’t have bonded so quickly, but I desperately needed someone who hadn’t been close to Marnie, because it was too much to have to cope with everyone else’s grief as well as my own. Mum was sad about Marnie, and no doubt cried her own tears of regret. But she hadn’t known her, which somehow made it easier.

  Because Adam was in no state to talk about anything, Marnie and Rob’s affair remained a festering sore until the day Nelson went to see him, a couple of weeks after Marnie’s birthday. Rob had finally admitted to him why he’d been avoiding us and Nelson was understandably furious. It meant that Adam and I were finally able to discuss what had happened. But we couldn’t work out what to do. We didn’t want Rob to get away with it but we couldn’t decide whether o
r not to tell Jess.

  One day, when Adam had gone to see a prospective client, Nelson came by to speak to me about Rob, to appeal to me on his behalf. He said that Rob was full of remorse for what he’d done, that his affair with Marnie had started unintentionally when he’d been struggling with depression after Jess’s diagnosis. He had tried to end it several times and his biggest regret was the pain it was going to cause Jess when the truth came out. He hoped that Jess would forgive him because he truly loved her and he asked only that we let him be the one to tell her.

  I despised the way Rob was trying to slip from what he did. The words he didn’t dare say – Marnie started it – were behind every calculated word he said. I wanted to tell Nelson that his brother was a liar and a coward and a vile, vile man. I tried to imagine the scene where Rob broke Jess’s heart, but I couldn’t.

  I asked Nelson to tell Rob not to say anything to Jess until I’d thought things through. The next day, I met Mum for coffee and as we sat together in the Castle Hotel, I found myself telling her about the affair and asking her advice. And Mum pointed out what neither Adam nor I had thought of, which was that even if we told Jess, she might choose to stay with Rob anyway, either because she loved him enough to forgive him or because she preferred to be with him than be on her own. And because we were the messengers, it would put an intolerable strain on our friendship. Not only that; if we told her, Jess might feel that she should leave Rob because that was what we were expecting her to do. And if she didn’t meet anyone else, she would have a difficult future in front of her. On the other hand, Mum said, if we didn’t tell Jess, Rob would no doubt be a devoted husband to make up for the affair and because – as he’d told Nelson – he truly loved her.

  I talked it over with Adam, and then with Nelson. And in the end, we decided to keep Rob’s affair with Marnie to ourselves. On balance, in view of Jess’s illness, I think we made the right decision. Rob is certainly devoted to her and although it’s horribly difficult to have to see him, we do it for Jess.