‘Of course.’
She kneels on the floor beside him and pulls him into a tight embrace. Their tears mix as she touches his cheek with hers. She doesn’t even seem to care about the snot. They stay, locked in position, until the new sobs which wrack his body subside.
Afterwards, Lorraine gently prises the clump of sodden tissues from his hand and places crisp, clean replacements on his knee. He bundles them into a ball and uses the mass to wipe ferociously at his nose. He wipes his eyes with his shirtsleeve. He’d put on a shirt and tie today, for crying out loud, that’s how out of control he was feeling. When did he last wear his suit? An interview in the early two thousands? But no, it wasn’t then. Scott catches his breath as a desperate, chilling thought descends.
It was Lucy’s funeral.
And then again at the court hearing. The irony. The sheer fucking irony that the last time he wore this outfit, he was also in a room facing Leon and in absolute bits. You couldn’t make it up.
He yanks at the tie and opens the top button.
‘I’m gasping,’ he says.
Lorraine hands him the water glass. He downs it in three swallows.
‘Oh my God, Lorraine. I can see why I’ve avoided this all these years. This is so … so … fucking painful.’
Lorraine takes the glass from his hand and returns it to the table. She drains her own before responding.
‘Would you believe me if I told you the first time is the hardest? That it does, actually, get easier?’
Scott leans his elbow on his thigh and lowers his head onto the tips of his fingers. He moves his head from side to side.
‘I cannot believe I let you talk me into these sessions. How many are there again? Four?’
Lorraine clears her throat.
‘Six.’
Six. Jesus wept. Can he do this five more times?
‘You’ve done the hardest bit, believe it or not. You told him how completely and utterly his actions shattered your life. Did you explain how you lost your wife, your job, your home, your security, your friends and neighbours, your co-parent. Everything. Because of one stupid, selfish act.’
Scott looks up.
‘I did.’
‘And how did it feel? Telling him?’
Scott hesitates. Because it hurt like hell. But it was also cathartic, to a point. The lad’s eyes, before they were obscured by his own tears, were haunted.
‘It felt awful. Traumatic. But necessary and peaceful at the same time. If that makes any sense at all?’
Lorraine nods; It makes perfect sense.
‘I wonder if he got it,’ he says to his sister-in-law, who’s barely left his side over the past three weeks. In the time they have talked, reminisced, healed and even, on occasions, had the audacity to plan. Because that’s what Lucy – Lorraine’s twin and his darling wife – would have wanted.
‘Yes, I imagine Leon got it,’ Lorraine says.
There’s a gentle knock on the door.
‘Are you ready for us to come in?’ Ursula asks.
Scott nods, and the young man with the haunted eyes and the tear-stained cheeks looks him straight in the face and begins to talk.
He outlines the guilt, the horror he feels every day, the shame he brought on his family, the rift that has formed between him and his friends, how he has been blacklisted from the community. How one stupid, adolescent decision wrecked all their lives and haunts him every second of every day.
Scott finds his eyes drying and the hatred he expected to feel morphing into something altogether different. Pity. Lucy has gone and he will continue to miss her every day, but he also holds some hope for the future now. The tentative possibility of a new romance, a stronger bond with his daughter, a re-kindled relationship with his sister-in-law. The boy in front of him has none of that. He has lost his freedom, his confidence, his purpose and his sense of integrity. Those might be harder things to rebuild in the long run.
