Page 85 of Dear Darling
I reach for his hand. Lace my fingers through his. He stares at his skin against mine, he doesn’t know whether to trust it or not. But, for once in my life, I do. ‘Youdoknow me. You do. But I have kept a lot of secrets. I’ve been ashamed, so ashamed.’
He brushes a tear from my face.
That simple gesture, between a husband and wife, makes me brave. ‘I need to tell you about Lolly.’
Epilogue
One year later
Seb, Alex’s six-year-old son, is stomping with Millie over the mudflats. We are in Port Navas for the summer, staying with Alex and his wife, Martha. It is a village of no more than ten houses, a convenience store, a post box and a creek.
Alex and Kit have become fast friends, entirely different but bonding over rugby and Kit’s newfound love of fishing. Most mornings, when I get up, Kit isn’t there. He’s with Alex, out on the estuary and then the open sea.
After I told Kit everything, I wanted to never speak about Daniel again, I’d said all I wanted to say, close the book, it’s done. But our therapist, a strident sixty-year-old called Diana (who reminds me, comfortingly, of Mrs Hannington), warns me of my instinct to bury my secrets, to let them grow unchecked inside me until I believe everything hard and difficult – losing Faye, Millie’s tantrums – is about them. They are not. I must unlearn this. Because now, I am not just trying to survive. I am trying to live.
So, I talk about Daniel to Kit, even though it’s awkward and hard and terrible. I will not drift into these places alone. There is no need. Kit is here.
Even so, there are things Kit doesn’t know. A few days ago, Martha took the kids while Alex, Kit and I went out onForager. When we glimpsed the promontory of pines, the secret beach, the village, Alex whispered to Kit and my husband came and stood by me as we passed the cottage. ‘It’s over now, babe,’ he says, slipping his arm round my waist. ‘It’s over.’
And it is.
The police told me that after I gave them my statement, they drove to the cottage and let Daniel out of the cellar. They asked him to come in for questioning. He said he was thirsty. They thought he was drinking water. It was pure ethyl acetate.
I felt nothing when they told me, unable to process the magnitude of what they said while standing in my own kitchen, watching Kit chase Millie. But in the months that followed, his death would catch me unawares, the air trapping suddenly in my ribs. A train would arrive on the platform, depart, and I’d just be standing there, confused that the world had carried on when he was gone. Some part of me thought he’d always be in the cellar, forever behind glass.
And then I’d crawl over the details of his death, all the tiny choices he made at the end. Why did he give up then? Why did he drink ethyl acetate rather than running a kitchen knife through his jugular or walking into the sea? Perhaps it was comforting taking something he was so familiar with. Or perhaps he wanted to send me one last message:Look at me, Lolly. I’ve killed for you. I died for you. I loved you. It was all true.
It’s not true.
Because his love never gave me life. This is life.
Millie is calling me. ‘Mama, I see one, I see one!’ and I feel again the trembling joy of discovery, of pulling out into the light something that has been hidden. She finds the edge of something, wrenches it out, she nearly falls back with the force but she is laughing. In her hands, is the enormous muddy prize.
‘Wash it in the water, honey,’ I say to her. She does, rinsing it with jagged movements. At the sight of it, she squeals, gallops over to show me. It is half a scallop shell, the outer ridges amber, the inside, pure opaline.
‘Do you want to keep it?’ I ask. ‘For your collection?’
She nods. ‘It’s beautiful.’
