The Dilemma(74)

‘But before then. How did you know you had to call it?’

I sense a slight hesitation. ‘Because Marnie hadn’t phoned me to let me know she was safe. I kept expecting her to, but she didn’t.’

‘Wait a minute.’ I close my eyes, trying to work it out. ‘You said the airline has booked us on a flight tomorrow.’

‘That’s right.’

‘But the tickets for the flights this morning, the ones I found in the bin – you must have bought them, from the travel agency in town. I recognised the wallet.’

‘Yes.’

‘When? When did you buy them?’

‘Yesterday, as soon as I heard about the crash. I thought Marnie was stranded at the airport in Cairo. I thought, if she’d missed the flight, she’d be there all alone and she’d be frightened because of what had happened – because the plane that crashed was the one she should have been on – and she wouldn’t know what to do. So I got tickets for us to go to her, to be with her.’

‘What? You knew about the crash yesterday?’ Josh stares at Adam. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

‘Because – I told you – I didn’t think that Marnie was on the plane. I wasn’t going to worry you for nothing.’

My heart retracts, coming back to nestle deep inside me.

‘That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what was wrong with you, why you were acting so strangely. Wait – was that what you were trying to tell me, before the party?’ He doesn’t say anything. ‘It was, wasn’t it? You wanted to tell me that Marnie might have been on the plane that crashed.’

‘Yes,’ he says again.

‘But why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you just come out and tell me?’

He can’t meet my eyes. ‘I tried to,’ he says, his face grey. ‘I tried to. But you were so happy. If I’d told you, you would have wanted to cancel the party and I just wanted you to – I knew that once I told you, you’d feel sick with worry, like I did, and I didn’t want that for you until I knew definitely.’

‘But you only phoned at – what? – three in the morning. Why didn’t you phone earlier? They give you a number straightaway, don’t they, for people to phone if they think someone from their family might be on the plane?’

‘Because I didn’t want to know,’ he says, his voice low. ‘I wanted to hang onto the chance that Marnie hadn’t made the flight.’

I look at this man, who has suddenly become a stranger to me, and my heart shrivels to almost nothing.

‘How did you do it, Adam?’ I ask, my voice trembling with rage. ‘How did you manage to chat and laugh and eat and drink when there was a chance that our daughter was dead? And more to the point,’ my voice rises as the realisation sets in, ‘how could you have let me chat and laugh and eat and drink, and dance – dance! – when there was even the tiniest of chances that Marnie was dead!’

‘Livia, please!’ He reaches desperately for me but I twist away.

‘No!’ I look at him in horror. ‘What are you, some kind of monster?’

‘Mum, don’t!’

I round on Josh. ‘He let me dance! My daughter was dead and he let me dance!’ Lunging at Adam, I begin hitting him, raining blows on his head, on his chest, anywhere I can reach.

‘Mum, stop!’

But I’m too far gone. I carry on hitting Adam with my fists, screaming at him, calling him a coward, and other names, until Josh pulls me away and I collapse onto the floor.





7 A.M. – 8 A.M.





Adam


Livia’s cries follow me all the way down the stairs and into the garden. I walk blindly up the steps to the lawn, still reeling from the violence of her reaction. I knew it would be like this. I knew she wouldn’t forgive me, not once she knew the truth of what I’d done. She might have accepted that I’d kept the news to myself for a couple of hours because she and Josh were sleeping. But to expect her to accept that I knew about the crash long before the party started, and chose to let it go on, was too much. When she asked how I could have let her dance, her words tore through me and as her hands slammed onto me, I asked myself the same question – how could I have let her dance? Because now, it seems abhorrent.

I need to phone Nelson. I sit down on the stone wall, my back to Marnie’s photos. I can hear Livia’s sobs from here – or maybe it’s just their echo in my brain. I’m glad Josh is with her, doing what Livia wouldn’t let me do, comforting her. He hasn’t said anything to me. He didn’t need to; the look of disbelief he gave as he asked me to leave was enough.

I take out my mobile, sit with it in my hands, reliving the moment when I destroyed Livia’s world. It was harder than I ever imagined because she thought I was talking about something else. Something to do with Marnie, but also to do with Rob. I can’t think about that now, I have to call Nelson.

His voice is too loud down the line. ‘Adam! How’re you doing?’

‘Nelson, can you come over? Just you, not Kirin or the children.’

There’s a pause. ‘Is everything alright?’

‘No, not really. I’ll tell you when you get here. I’m in the garden. Could you come now?’