The Dilemma(84)

There’s something I need to tell you, Mum. I think you know I’ve been keeping something from you but I’m hoping you don’t know what it is because I want to explain it face to face so that you can at least try to understand. I’m not sure you’ll be able to, and Dad even less. You’re going to be disappointed, and ashamed of me, but I need you to know that I never intended it to get to this, it just happened. And now that it has – well, all I can hope is that you’ll find it in your hearts to forgive me.

As I read it, I was glad that I knew what Marnie was alluding to. If I hadn’t known about her affair with Rob, I’d have tormented myself forever, wondering what she could possibly have done to need my forgiveness. But there are other things to torment me. I guessed that Marnie had written the note straight after our phone call, when I’d tried to tell her not to come back. I’ve never stopped wishing that I’d managed to persuade her, just as I’ve never stopped wishing that it hadn’t been our last conversation. I can’t remember if I told her that I loved her, as I usually did at the end of a call, and I torment myself that I didn’t.

I have a shower and get dressed. I’m not sure how I feel about this party today, although I’d never tell Josh that. I wouldn’t mind if we never celebrated my birthday again. I know it’s stupid but sometimes I wonder if Marnie dying was payback for me being so over the top about my party last year. It seems almost abhorrent to have put so much store on something so materialistic.

It might seem strange, but I feel lucky to be where I am today, to have what I have. First and foremost, Adam. For a few terrible weeks after Marnie’s death, I thought I was going to lose him too. There were times when I couldn’t see him ever clawing his way out of the grief and guilt that consumed him. If it hadn’t been for Josh and Amy, I don’t know how I would have coped.

I finally hit the bottom on Marnie’s birthday, as I walked the Long Walk in Windsor Great Park. I’d been hoping that Adam would come with me but as the date approached, I could see that he’d forgotten it was her birthday and I was too scared to mention it in case it pushed him over the edge. As I walked along, the exhaustion I felt frightened me, because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to carry on much longer.

‘Please, Marnie,’ I prayed, close to tears. ‘Please bring your dad back to me. I can’t get through this without him.’ And then I looked up and he was there, and as he held me while I wept tears of relief, all I could think was that somehow Marnie had heard me. I talk to her every evening now, in the quiet of my bedroom, while Adam is downstairs, or walking Murphy. I lie on the bed, Mimi curled against me and tell her about my day. And I know that she’s listening.

I’m also grateful to have Mum, who turned out to be my rock when it came to deciding what to do about Rob. I finally contacted her about three weeks after Marnie died, to invite her to the memorial service and from then on, we began to meet once a week for coffee in town. Maybe if Marnie hadn’t died we wouldn’t have bonded so quickly, but I desperately needed someone who hadn’t been close to Marnie, because it was too much to have to cope with everyone else’s grief as well as my own. Mum was sad about Marnie, and no doubt cried her own tears of regret. But she hadn’t known her, which somehow made it easier.

Because Adam was in no state to talk about anything, Marnie and Rob’s affair remained a festering sore until the day Nelson went to see him, a couple of weeks after Marnie’s birthday. Rob had finally admitted to him why he’d been avoiding us and Nelson was understandably furious. It meant that Adam and I were finally able to discuss what had happened. But we couldn’t work out what to do. We didn’t want Rob to get away with it but we couldn’t decide whether or not to tell Jess.

One day, when Adam had gone to see a prospective client, Nelson came by to speak to me about Rob, to appeal to me on his behalf. He said that Rob was full of remorse for what he’d done, that his affair with Marnie had started unintentionally when he’d been struggling with depression after Jess’s diagnosis. He had tried to end it several times and his biggest regret was the pain it was going to cause Jess when the truth came out. He hoped that Jess would forgive him because he truly loved her and he asked only that we let him be the one to tell her.

I despised the way Rob was trying to slip from what he did. The words he didn’t dare say – Marnie started it – were behind every calculated word he said. I wanted to tell Nelson that his brother was a liar and a coward and a vile, vile man. I tried to imagine the scene where Rob broke Jess’s heart, but I couldn’t.

I asked Nelson to tell Rob not to say anything to Jess until I’d thought things through. The next day, I met Mum for coffee and as we sat together in the Castle Hotel, I found myself telling her about the affair and asking her advice. And Mum pointed out what neither Adam nor I had thought of, which was that even if we told Jess, she might choose to stay with Rob anyway, either because she loved him enough to forgive him or because she preferred to be with him than be on her own. And because we were the messengers, it would put an intolerable strain on our friendship. Not only that; if we told her, Jess might feel that she should leave Rob because that was what we were expecting her to do. And if she didn’t meet anyone else, she would have a difficult future in front of her. On the other hand, Mum said, if we didn’t tell Jess, Rob would no doubt be a devoted husband to make up for the affair and because – as he’d told Nelson – he truly loved her.