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Five Hours After I Didn’t
Audrey felt as though she’d woken up from a dream and arrived in a nightmare.
‘I don’t understand what has happened. Why did Josh leave?’ Vivien asked, as Clara tried to pull a grey shirt dress over Audrey’s limp body. ‘Do you know what this is all about?’ Vivien asked Clara.
Audrey looked up at Clara then gave a small nod of the head, allowing her friend to explain.
‘Fred is someone from Audrey’s past. Him showing up out of the blue at the wedding just got Audrey a little confused, and then with the reverend, and everything else going wrong – well, it’s been a stressful day for everyone.’
That was one way of putting it.
‘It’s all my fault,’ Audrey said. ‘I’ve made a mess of everything. Benedict told me this would happen, he said, “I hope one day you love someone, maybe even plan to marry them, and then someone comes along and ruins it for you.” Look, someone has, it was me.’ Audrey slowly, pulled her knees to her chest.
Vivien exhaled, a long breathy exhale, then she sat down on the bed.
‘Clara, would you leave us, please?’ she said.
Clara looked between the two women, seemingly indecisive about whether she should go. ‘I’ll be outside if you need me,’ she said, squeezing Audrey’s shoulder.
Once they were alone, Vivien said, ‘What on earth has Benedict got to do with Josh leaving?’
‘You asked if I was sure about Benedict, and I wasn’t.’ She kept her eyes on the floor, unable to look up at her mother. ‘What if I was wrong? What if I ruined your happiness on a gut feeling?’
‘Audrey, he was not a good man.’
Audrey took a huge gulp of air, as though loading a gun, readying to fire.
‘I don’t even know what happened anymore, I just felt uncomfortable around him. He did touch me in his gallery, but... not explicitly, he was looking for a light switch, it could have been an accident.’ She rubbed her hands against her face, against her lips, trying to pull the words out. How many times had she raked over the events of that morning in her mind? ‘Just because I didn’t like it, maybe that didn’t make it wrong. You were so happy and then he left, and I stole that from you, and then I couldn’t be around you, couldn’t stand to see how broken you were because of me.’
Still, she didn’t dare look up. She didn’t want to see the disappointment, the anger, at this admission. When she finally dared to look at her mother, she saw that Vivien was crying.
‘And you’ve felt like this, all these years, that it was your words alone that made me throw him out?’
She nodded then, before starting to sob. ‘I’ve felt so guilty, every day since he left. Some days it’s so heavy, I think it’s going to pull me under.’
‘Then this is all my fault,’ Vivien said quietly.
Audrey looked up at her from the floor, feeling tears run down her cheek.
‘I had no idea you felt bad about it. When you said what you did about Benedict, I... I’d already had my doubts. It was a feeling I had not let myself dwell upon – I was too besotted.’ She paused, knitting and unknitting her hands in her lap. ‘I didn’t want to listen.’
‘But you listened to me?’
She shook her head. ‘When you were staying at Hillary’s, I asked my friend Warwick to come around. He knows about computers.’ Vivien started biting one of her nails, a habit she abhorred. ‘He helped me access Benedict’s laptop. I had this instinct that he was hiding something there, the way he closed it whenever I walked into the room.’
Audrey’s eyes were pinned on her mother’s face now; she had no clue what she might be about to say. ‘There were photos, in a file, of women. Lots of women, posing for him. Some women I had met, his “protégées” from the studio.’
‘Posing for his art?’ Audrey asked, hearing her naivety as soon as she said it.
‘No, Audrey, not for his art.’ Viven winced, clearly pained by the memory. ‘They were in a file marked “Tax Returns”, and they were’ – she blushed – ‘explicit. All date stamped, taken in the time we’d been together.’
Audrey took a moment to digest this. Vivien pressed her knuckles into her other hand. ‘I should have told you, but I was ashamed.’
‘Why? What did you have to be ashamed of?’
‘Because I loved him,’ Vivien sobbed, her face finally breaking. ‘Because I loved him, even then, when I could see what he was. I still wanted him, my body wanted him. What kind of monster does that make me?’
Audrey got up from the floor now and went to sit on the bed next to her mother. She put an arm around her shoulders. ‘It doesn’t make you a monster.’
