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‘Where did she get that idea from?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then why would you think that?’
‘She left a letter.’
‘A letter? Accusing us of having an affair? I can’t believe it. I’d like to see that letter.’
‘No,’ I refused. I didn’t want her to know that Maria had referred to her as that two-faced, long-titted, no nipple, skinny-assed, cock-sucking, cum bucket.
She went silent.
‘Did she seem colder toward you or change in any way?’ I insisted.
‘No. We were best friends. We told each other everything,’ she denied, suspicion creeping into her voice. She was beginning to doubt the existence of the letter. She was like all human beings—she would rather believe a lie than accept that she had been so thoroughly fooled.
We ended the conversation on an uneasy note.
I called her other close friends. Did she say anything to you? The answer was always the same. No. No. No. No. I phoned her brother. He put the phone down on me in disgust.
Often I dreamed of my children. We were in a garden or a schoolroom. There were other children playing there with them. I called to them and they came running to me. I picked them up and held them tightly, relief pouring through my veins.
‘Thank God! Thank God. It was just a nightmare. I dreamed you were both dead.’
‘Like Grandma and Grandad?’ they asked me.
‘Like Grandma and Granddad,’ I told them, laughing and crying at the same.
‘But we are not real, Daddy,’ they told me solemnly. And then I woke up with tears pouring down my face. Wishing I had not woken up. Convinced they were still alive in another dimension.
Weeks later after the furore had died down, and after the hospital foundation had used words like ‘regretfully’, ‘untenable’ and ‘tarnished reputation’, the great thaw arrived. And with it came rage. How I cursed her. Bitch. Fucking stupid cunt.
It was so bad all my breaths became gasps of anger. I had to stop seeing friends. I was seriously at risk of totally, completely, unequivocally and corrosively losing my shit if another one said, ‘God wanted his little angels back so he called them home,’ or some other similar crap.
I wanted to spit at them. ‘Oh right! Is that why he chose to burn them to death? God didn’t do this, you fucking moron!’
During that period I opened the letter often and ended up slamming my fist on my desk so hard I eventually broke the damn thing. I was so furious once I decided to burn her letter in the fireplace, but my hand shook as I tried to throw it in: I couldn’t destroy something I hadn’t yet understood.
Months later I was carefully unfolding her letter and finally trying to understand my part in it. I no longer raged against her or her abusers who had turned her into a monster. The season of guilt had come. It was worse than the rage. Far worse. Oh the guilt. How it ate at my insides! It was all my fault for being so blind and so caught up with my own success that I never saw it. Not once.
Ever seen the way a team of termites can utterly decimate a tree until it is nothing but a shell?
That was what my guilt did to me. I walked around, an empty shell. I walked, I talked, I ate, I worked, but inside I was dead. There was no way to atone for what I had done. She was gone and she had taken my innocent children with her.
Olivia was gone, but her scent still lingered on my skin. I held the letter in my hand and it felt lighter somehow. Because for the first time I understood.
I held up a page:
When I am gone I will watch you and I will remember us. Our bodies spilled together. The light slanting into the room. The coffee cups with dregs. The croissant crumbs on the plate. One plate. We shared it remember?
Your breath on my skin. Your hand on my breast. Your leg thrown over mine. Your flesh. My flesh. Joined. Stuck. Forever. Forever.
Do you hear me, Dr. big shot Marlow Kane?
Forever. No matter who you touch. Who you fuck with that great, big, dirty cock of yours.
I know what big daddy long dick likes. I know all your secrets.
