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Hard to believe this was the same woman who’d given that speech about courage.
Perhaps she read my mind.
‘I’m trying,’ she said. ‘It’s just so difficult with Matty calling all the time.’
I felt a crawl of adrenaline. My stomach tightened.
‘You never said he was phoning. What’s he say?’
She shrugged, spilled half her drink.
‘That he’s innocent. That they’ve got the wrong guy. That he loves me.’
I ground the carpet with my heel, tried to swallow down the lump growing in my throat.
‘It makes it so hard,’ she said. ‘Every time he calls, I feel so guilty.’
‘Guilty? Why?’
She swirled the dregs of her wine around in her glass. Stared at them as if she were reading tea leaves.
‘Everything. Some days I’m just guilty to be alive.’
‘Maybe you shouldn’t take his calls.’
‘It’s not really as easy as that.’ Ash eashy. . .
The bottles and pill packets continued to pile up. So too the reporters and catcalls.
That night I slipped into my mother’s bed while she slept.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered.
But only the walls heard.
