“Baby?” My dad’s heartbroken voice penetrated my sobs. I reached out and took his hand. I wanted him to know I’d heard him.
After a while I opened my eyes, they were sore, sticky, and swollen. My dad sat on a chair beside me, and behind him, Miller sat on the floor with his back resting against the wall.
“Dad?” I croaked out.
“Oh, my baby. I’m so sorry, so so sorry,” Dad said. His voice broke and fresh tears streamed down my face.
Miller stood and walked over; he sat on the edge of the bed and pushed back some sodden hair from my forehead. It was a gentle gesture that I wasn’t sure the meaning of.
“I’d like to come back later, when you’ve had a chance to talk to your family. Is that okay?” he asked. His low-toned voice rolled over me, comforting. I nodded my head.
I watched him leave. “Where’s Christian?” I asked.
“Downstairs. I can’t console him. I’ve tried. Oh, God, I don’t know what to do,” Dad said, and the tears that then rolled down his cheeks crucified me.
I glanced at the clock on the bedside cabinet. It had been four hours since Christian and I had left the house. Had I slept? I straightened myself and sat up.
“Let’s go down, Dad,” I said.
He nodded, not making mention of the fact my voice was back. Shock had taken it away, and shock had brought it back, at the worst possible time.
Christian stood when he saw me at the doorway, he rushed forwards but then hesitated, not sure what to do. I stepped into his arms and wrapped mine around his waist. We held each other and we cried yet again.
“I swear, I didn’t want to tell you, but then I was scared how you’d feel if I’d kept that from you as well,” Christian whispered.
“You had to tell me. And now you have to tell me all of it,” I said.
“I don’t know…”
“You have to. I need to know, Christian. I need to know everything.”
I heard a door open and gently close, I assumed Miller had slipped out to leave us alone for a while. Dad placed his hands on our backs, encouraging us to sit. He used to do that when we’d fallen out as children. We had to sit opposite each other and talk it out. Then we had to hug. I guessed we were doing it in reverse order.
I watched his eyes widen in fear, his jaw grinding in anger, and the tears fall in sadness. He was going through every emotion at the same time. I took his hands in mine as Dad sat at the end of the table, not wanting to sit directly beside either one of us, but to be able to reach out to us both at the same time.
“Tell me,” I said.
“I told you I found a photograph she’d sent, she was half-naked, well, she had her knickers on, nothing more. It was a pic taken before she was pregnant. The name of the recipient was Kitt.”
I frowned. Kitt didn’t ring any bells in my mind.
“I didn’t twig. She let me believe it was someone at work; they hadn’t had sex just some flirting that had gotten out of control. I sort of believed her, at first. I was bitterly disappointed, hurt, but she’d just had Alistair, so I put it on the back burner for a little while.”
I guessed that answered why we hadn’t seen them, or been invited to visit.
“She changed, I thought she had pre-baby blues, then post-baby blues, or whatever it’s called. Now I know it was grief.”
If I had been a dog, or a cat, or whatever animal, it would have been so visible that my hackles had just risen at his statement. I felt the hairs on all parts of my body stand on end in utter rage.
“She doesn’t fucking get to grieve for him!” I said. I felt Dad reach forwards and place his hand on my arm. I pulled my arm away.
“She doesn’t have the right to grieve,” I repeated.
“No, she doesn’t. But she did, and I mistook it for something to do with the pregnancy. Now, in hindsight, it should have been obvious the baby wasn’t mine. He looks nothing like me at all.”
I noticed the baby and not the use of his name.
“Does he…?” I turned to Dad; he’d met Alistair.
Dad sighed and gently shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t say, for sure. He’s fair-haired and blue-eyed.”
“So was Hannah,” I said quietly.
“So are you, and you,” Dad said, looking between Christian and me.
Christian and I were both dark blonde, I guessed the formal term would be. Our eyes were blue but with specks of brown. We’d often laughed about our strange eyes; pleased they were a mix of our parents. Dad had brown eyes, Mum had blue.
Christian shook his head.
“Tell me more,” I demanded.
“I found letters going back two years. Some of it was just general chat, some more explicit. One or two detailed what fucking fun they’d had on a weekend away.”
I tried to remember times when Trey had been away, either it had been golfing with his buddies, but then Christian was usually included in that, or it had been work. I started to laugh, bitterly.
“How fucking clichéd. I guess they told us it was a work thing when instead they were sneaking away to fuck each other.” I’d spat the words out and caught the wince that had Dad’s eyes partially close and his brow crease.
Christian didn’t reply.
“What did she say, when you confronted her?” I asked.
“She couldn’t do anything other than admit it. I asked her if they were in love, she wouldn’t reply. I screamed at her, I punched doors, threw things. Then I asked her if Alistair was mine and she said no. She looked at me without any fucking emotion on her face, and said no.”
At that point Christian broke down again.
I was numb, stunned into paralysis. I wanted to reach forwards and comfort him but I couldn’t.
I’d lost my baby; she was buried just a half a mile from me. Yet Trey’s blood still ran, his DNA, his genes, were being kept alive through an adulterous relationship.
It was too much for me to take in at that moment. I let go of Christian’s hand and I stood. On shaking legs, I walked to the counter. I needed to do something and I wanted to laugh out loud as I switched the kettle on to boil. How very fucking British of me!
I placed my hands on the counter and stared at the white-tiled wall. One tile had a crack. I focussed on the crack in a wall of symmetry, of pristine. I wanted to laugh. The more I looked, the more the crack stood out against the perfect. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I thought I had the perfect marriage. Trey was my soul mate; we were the symmetry, the pristine. Yet there had been a fucking large crack, which, like that tile, I hadn’t noticed until then.
The steam from the boiling kettle obliterated the crack, and I pulled mugs from the rack and made tea. My throat was sore, I wasn’t sure if that was crying, screaming, or lack of previous use. I actually wanted a cup of tea, something to warm the ice inside my body and fill the hollow in my stomach.
“She sobbed at his funeral. I didn’t think it strange, at the time,” I said, as I placed three mugs on the table. I sat.
“She had no right to sob. She had no fucking right to grieve for him while I was. That day should have been mine, and mine alone. I shouldn’t have had to share grief with her,” I added. Bile rose to my throat.
I wasn’t sure I was making sense to Dad and Christian, but it was crystal clear in my mind. I was burying my husband and my child that day: a husband and child that had been wrenched from me in the most horrific way. And I hadn’t been allowed to be the one who was entitled to grieve the most. She had not only stolen my husband, as such, but she’s stolen that day as well.
There had been many times I’d wished that day had never happened, I’d prayed it would be wiped from my memory, and for a while it had. In that moment, though, it all came flooding back. How she’d sobbed, while sitting in the middle of the front pew. I remembered how her hand shook as she walked to his coffin and placed a single rose on the top, yet she’d ignored Hannah. Her single sob as his coffin was lowered into the ground resonated around my mind. It all made sen
se.
“I feel sick,” I said, darting from my chair and towards the back door. I needed fresh air.
I pulled the door closed behind me, knowing that in a minute or so, I’d be shivering with the cold. I wanted to be alone, just for a moment, and I hoped the blast of cold air would wipe those memories from my mind.
I gulped in air to quell the nausea. I wrapped my arms around myself, not for warmth but for comfort, and I closed my eyes. I felt myself sway a little, but I didn’t care. I could fall where I stood, it didn’t matter.
Two of the five years Trey and I had been married had been a lie. The thought tore through me.
I heard the back door open and a leather jacket was placed over my shoulders. Miller stepped in front of me, having returned, and although my arms weren’t in the sleeves, he zipped it up, protecting me against the cold. I didn’t speak, I didn’t smile, but I did look at him.
He stared at me without speaking, without blinking, for the longest time.
“Rips you apart, doesn’t it?” he whispered.
It was all I could do to nod.
“The lies, the deceit, the betrayal. If you let it, it will erode your soul, Dani.”
“You’re talking from experience?” I asked.
“Yes. I was married for years. She was having an affair; I didn’t know the guy personally, so I guess that makes it a little easier than your situation. You wanted to know why Daniel and I didn’t get on? She confessed to him, he kept her secret. I can’t forgive him for that.”
I wanted to say that, as a vicar, he had no choice, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. There was also a part of me that sympathised with Miller; family should be stronger than anything else, including faith.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be, it’s not your sin to apologise for. Now, shall we get you back in?”
“Will you stay, just for a little while?” I asked. I wasn’t sure why, but I needed him at that moment.
“Of course. Christian has gone back upstairs. Your dad is hovering over who he should be with right now.”
We walked into the kitchen and I had to wait for Miller to unzip the jacket since my arms were trapped inside. Dad was resting against the counter with his shoulders slumped.
“Go and sit with him, Dad. He needs you,” I said.
“But…”
“I’ll sit with Dani,” Miller said.
I didn’t want to sit in the kitchen, the heart of the house, the place where we always sat. It was tarnished, for the moment, with sour words and bad memories. I walked into the living room and slumped into the corner of the sofa. I curled my legs up under me.
Miller poked around the fire, trying to reignite the embers. He threw on some kindling wood and gently blew until flames started to flicker. I watched as he placed some logs on top before he stood and sat beside me.
“I’m not going to ask you what happened, but Christian told me some. I guess he needed to get it all out. I called him out on where he delivered the news, though. I’m not going to apologise for that,” he said.
“I imagine it was coincidence we ended up at the cemetery.”
“All the same, you should have been told here, in the safety of your own home.”
If anyone else had criticised Chris, I would have been bristling, but I wasn’t. I didn’t agree with what Miller had said, but I was thankful that he was thinking of me. I doubted any time would have been a good time to hear that news, and no place would have been more of a comfort than another.
“I made a mess of the grave, didn’t I?” I said quietly.
“I can fix that tomorrow for you.”
“I’d appreciate that. I don’t want to go there. I don’t want Hannah to be there with him, either.”
“I don't think there’s much we can do about that. Maybe in time you’ll feel differently.”
“Time. That word meant something a little while ago. I thought I was finally coming to terms with what had happened to them, and now? All the pain, and more, is back.”
“It’s a different pain though, isn’t it?”
I thought for a moment. “Yes and no. I felt betrayed when he left me, when he died. I was angry with him for a long while. Angry that he’d risked his life by taking that seatbelt off. Now I’m betrayed all over again, and there’s no outlet, if you know what I mean.”
“Explain to me.”
“I can’t confront him. I can’t look into his eyes and see whether he’d tell me the truth. The worst part? I can’t ask him if he loved me, or whether he loved her more.”
Had Trey fallen out of love with me and in love with her?
“You made a baby together, perhaps that tells you something?”
“He made a baby with her!” I snapped, regretting that I had. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
“Don’t apologise. What I mean is, if he hadn’t loved you, would he have done that?”
“I don’t know. Which one of them was a mistake? Hannah or Alistair?”
The thought that Hannah had been a mistake, an unwanted baby by him because he hadn’t loved me enough, tore through me. I wanted to double over to ease the pain that had formed in my stomach and radiated up into my chest. My heart physically hurt as it shattered inside.
Miller shuffled closer to me. He took my hand from my chest, I hadn’t realised it had been covering my heart, and he held it in his. My instinct was to pull away, it was wrong to hold another man’s hand, but I needed the comfort from him. We weren’t friends, as such, I had hoped we could be, and he had been off with me of late. But right then he was just what I needed: a stranger to listen to me, to not judge, and offer some guidance.
“What do I do, Miller? What did you do?”
“I died inside for a while. I shrivelled up, lost my masculinity because I thought I wasn’t man enough for her. I fucked around, just to show her, or maybe me, that I was desired and that she had it all wrong. I drank, I fought, I smashed things, and then I put them back together again. I spent a long time putting me back together again. And so will you.”
I snorted. “I might pass on the fucking around if that’s okay, although right now, a large glass of whisky would go down well.”
He chuckled and somehow, despite my pain, I smiled at him. It was a bittersweet smile. He rose from the sofa and crossed the room to a small dark oak sideboard that housed an array of old-fashioned, crystal cut decanters. He pulled out the silver stopper from one and sniffed.
“I think this is okay,” he said, pouring a measure into two glasses. “I don’t suppose you have ice,” he added, raising the lid of a white ceramic ice bucket decorated with flowers.
I remembered that ice bucket standing pride of place back when I was a child. It had to be over twenty years old and even then, I think it had come from a charity shop. It certainly looked like something that would have graced a 1970’s living room.
“I’ll fetch some,” I said, starting to uncurl my legs.
“Stay there, I can find the freezer.”
I heard Miller mumble to Lucy before returning with four ice cubes in his hand; the water had started to drip through his fingers. He placed two in each glass and then carried them back to the sofa.
“Whisky, no idea how old it is. We might end up with a stinking headache, and it won’t be a hangover, more that it’s off, but…” He handed me a glass.
The liquid burned not just my lips and mouth, but my throat and all the way down to my stomach. I dreaded to think of the cauldron of acid that was bubbling away, having aged whisky in the mix.
“I want to get drunk. I haven’t gotten drunk in years,” I said, taking another sip.
“You don’t, trust me. Being drunk is not a good place to be when your head is full of shit. The shit turns into a sewer, and on top of it all still being there in the morning, you’ll feel fucking ill.”
“Then maybe just enough to numb the pain and the thoughts,” I said.
“Trouble with that is
, the just enough isn’t enough the next time round. The just enough becomes two, three glasses, then half a bottle, a full bottle. Before you know it, you’re so reliant on more and more alcohol, you can’t function.”
“Is that what happened to you?”
“Yes. I lost myself in the devil that is drink for a long while.”
“But you’re drinking now, and you had a pint at the pub the other day.”
“I guess, I’m one of the lucky ones. I didn’t drink because I was addicted to the alcohol, like you; I just wanted the numbness. When that stopped working, I needed a different fix. I can have a drink now, it doesn’t make me want more.”
“What was your different fix?”
“I guess I threw myself into creating things. I brought things to life, changed people’s lives. I just worked, seven days a week. I moved back here and eventually I met someone else.”
I stared at him. He hadn’t mentioned having a partner before.
“You’re…?”
“Not now. Now, it’s just me. And we don’t need to talk about that. Tonight is about you.”
We sat for a moment in silence, with just the crackle and spit of the logs on the fire.
“I feel so lost,” I said, staring at the orange and red flames, listening to a hiss and watching a fleeting streak of blue as sap seeping from the logs caught.
“I know. And right now it won’t make any difference if I tell you that you’re not. You have a supportive family around you. You can’t get lost if you have that, and friends, because we won’t let you.”
“You’re very philosophical, aren’t you?” In fact, he was a pretty deep person overall.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know about that. My dad is the philosophical one.”
“Is he still local?” I asked.
“Yes, he lived at the bottom of my garden…” he chuckled as he spoke.
“I guess in a house of some kind,” I said, interrupting him.
“Yes, we built a little bungalow together, a while ago now. It was nice to work alongside him again. We’d fallen out for many years. I didn’t speak to him, or Daniel, after Pam left. Like I said, I felt betrayed by them both for a while.”
Letters to Lincoln Page 12