Deception aka Sanctum

chapter twenty-five

IT’S FOUR-FORTY-FIVE AND IT’S ALREADY DARK OUTSIDE.

Last night I got a phone call from an unnamed newspaper, wanting to know about Dr. Susie and my swinging marriage. I hadn’t a clue what they were talking about. They told me that Stevie Ray, true to bastard form, had sold the story of our sex-mad marriage to the paper and they wanted my comments. Could I tell them the name of the woman I’ve been having an affair with for several years? I told them to fuck off and hung up, which was probably the worst thing I could have done, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I immediately realized that I should have been nicer and said Stevie Ray got the wrong end of the stick. I tried to call the journalist back but I didn’t have his name or even the name of the paper. I dialed the last-caller ID code, but it said that the caller had withheld the number, a message that usually means they’ve come through a switchboard. I couldn’t very well phone all the newspapers and ask which one was about to expose me.

I lay in bed wide awake, imagining Susie seeing the newspaper in prison and crying; imagining Margie as a grown-up coming across a copy of the paper and throwing it aside in disgust. First thing this morning I phoned Fitzgerald, livid, and asked about suing. He sighed, sounding uninterested, and said was there a grain of truth in it? I said no, there wasn’t. It was a complete fabrication and they’d misunderstood something I said to someone. He sounded quite skeptical and hemmed and hawed and said, well, if you said it in any context they can publish it. To be honest, the smart thing to do is let it go. I should only sue if I wanted to (a) bankrupt myself and (b) have the allegations reprinted again and again in the papers for the next three years.

I mentioned the Durness phone-box thing and said I’d been thinking about getting a file together for the appeal about the press coverage and he said no, the papers have lawyers working for them and have to screen the articles before they’re published. So forget it. I didn’t want to mention the Donna letter in case Susie has already talked to him about it. I don’t want him thinking she doesn’t tell me things.

Changing the subject with hope-crushing swiftness, Fitzgerald told me that the reports are all in and Susie’s sentencing hearing has been moved forward to five days’ time.

Susie will see the newspaper article. I know she will. Some bastard will show it to her and she’ll phone here, angry and wanting an explanation. It could cloud her appeal. It’ll certainly cloud the coverage of her appeal. What the hell can I say to her? That I’m tramping around making us vulnerable to people like Stevie Ray because I didn’t believe her? Although, subsequent to digging about in her private papers, I think she’s probably not a complete and utter liar. If the article isn’t in the papers tomorrow morning before I go to visit, I could try to explain preemptively. I could set the ground.

I shook all the way through my haircut. Afterward I went for a run. I ran for about six miles, until my knee hurt, long after my lungs began to smart. I was trying to tire myself out, aiming for ten consecutive minutes when I’m not absolutely furious. I bought some of those marzipan bars to bribe myself through the morning. I’ve eaten three of them already and I feel sick. I’ve had to hide the others from myself in the fridge.

This from an overlooked C-drive file titled C:/misc/evington.doc. I wouldn’t have bothered with it because I thought you could only keep documents in the “My Documents” file, but I’d left the mouse pointer resting on it while I had a sip of tea and a blue box popped up on the screen that said

Author: Dr. Susie Harriot

Title: She called from Durness and I had to go. It’s over. Sh

I opened the file and here it is, cut and pasted in its entirety:

She called from Durness and I had to go. It’s over. She shouldn’t have called me. There are loads of people she could have called who were nearer. She should have called the police, or I should have called them, because who the hell am I to think I can make anything all right for anyone? I thought it was my big chance and I could talk to Andrew. I know he respected me and would be surprised and pleased to see me. She said he was in a highly volatile state and had hit her several times. I knew he would need help, that it would be a shock being released just like that after five years without any training for freedom or help or support.

He was in the kitchen, reading the paper while fat Yeni dressed Margie upstairs. She irritates the pulsating living fucking shit out of me. She’s so sweet and helpless and pointless and silent and stinks of dairy products and she’s as fat as an elephant as well and eats all the time when she thinks I’m not looking. He looked up at me with his big stupid face and asked me where I was going, huneee. I got really angry and just said to the shops. He said well give us a kiss then, huneee. I couldn’t explain how long I’d be away, I didn’t know and there was too much to tell.

I was happy on the drive up. It was the last time I remember being happy, and in a way it was the first time as well because I felt free and didn’t have anyone to be responsible to or fix or look after or make things all right for. I went across the bay in the boat on my own. That was the big mistake: going after them on my own, because at the time I thought I’d be able to talk to him, calm him, and get them off the hill.

He was on his side when I got there. He was facing away from me and I thought he was a stone or a rag. I saw a shoulder, then shook it, and he turned his face up to me and opened his mouth and gurgled.

I couldn’t breathe and pushed him away and ran and ran and ran down the steep steep hill and over the wet in the sandy bay and into the hotel. The whiskey made me breathe in because I think I would have died if I hadn’t taken a breath, and then I just stood there. I stood there drinking with two hands, shaking. I didn’t know what to do because I couldn’t phone the police or Lachlan or home and my mum and dad were dead and I kept seeing him in my mind. The whites of his eyes and all the black of his mouth.

They haven’t found her yet. I can’t believe she’s dead. I’m having bad bad dreams, and I need to talk to someone about this, but Fitzgerald says not to until after the trial. If I have to give evidence, he wants me to cry when I talk about it.

I’m stuck in this fucking house until the trial comes up, and he’s driving me nuts. I’d like to sack Yeni, but I’m afraid to leave him alone with Margie because he’s feckless and won’t be able to manage.