My Husband's Wife

Epilogue

Summer 2017

MARRIAGES

The wedding between Lily Macdonald and Ross Edwards took place quietly on 12 July…

‘Happy?’ asks Ross as we walk back to the house after the church blessing.

Yes – Ross and I. It happened so naturally that I wondered why it hadn’t done so before.

Mum is wearing a rose silk suit and a delirious expression on her face. Tom is holding hands with Alice (their relationship is still going strong). My son looks just like Ed did at that age, according to the photograph albums which my former mother-in-law left me when she died. I feel more confident about caring for Tom now. No longer do I fear that I might tip him over the edge, as I did Daniel.

Meanwhile, Dad is overseeing the barbecue.

We could be just another couple getting married in midlife. There are plenty of us. Carla isn’t the only one to be getting married in prison. So, apparently, is Joe. There was a picture of his bride-to-be in the paper. I recognized her instantly as my old secretary who had announced her engagement so excitedly in the office. The one with the sparkling diamond on her left hand. He put the ring in the Christmas pudding! I almost swallowed it.

So she had been Joe’s source! All the time he claimed to have an obsession for me, he was playing her too. And she had apparently decided she still loved him, despite his being a murderer.

Proof, if any, that I need to move on. Ahead is a clean slate. I make a promise every day to let go of the past.

Yet the guilt still sometimes comes back to haunt me in the form of thrashing nightmares. If I told the police what Joe had told me about pulling out the knife, it is possible that Carla might have her sentence reduced. But Joe is unpredictable. I know that. And if the case is reopened, there is the possibility that Joe might tell the court about the key and claim that I as good as hired him, as he previously claimed Carla had done.

It’s a scenario I can’t even consider. How would Tom cope without me? How would I cope without him?

So Carla remains in prison for my son’s sake.

None of this sits easy on my shoulders. Trust me.

Since Ross and I have got together, I’ve done a lot of thinking. He’s helped me to forgive my younger self for my relationship with Daniel. I can see now that I made mistakes because I was young. Vulnerable. Daniel made me feel good about myself at a time when I was bullied at school for being fat. Yet ironically, as Ross has gently pointed out, my adopted brother was a bully himself. ‘It’s sometimes difficult to see that at the time,’ he told me kindly. ‘Especially when you love someone. His difficult childhood, before your parents adopted him, couldn’t have helped either.’

Very true. Sometimes people are just different, regardless of whether they do or don’t have a label like Asperger’s.

Ross has also helped me come to terms with my behaviour on the Heath that night, after I’d won Joe’s appeal. ‘You were on a high after the case,’ he said. ‘You thought you had no future with Ed. Joe reminded you of Daniel.’

Ross is a good man. He always sees the best in people.

But I still haven’t been able to tell him about Joe’s final confession. How Carla didn’t hire him. How Joe pulled out the knife that made Ed bleed to death. I suspect that Ross would tell me I had a moral responsibility to report that, whatever the consequences.

When I feel in need of justifying myself (something which happens quite a lot), I remind myself of that piece of advice I was given by one of my tutors at law school. ‘Believe it or not, some criminals will get away with it. Some will go to prison for crimes they didn’t commit. And a certain percentage of those “innocents” will have got away with other offences before. So you could say it balances out in the end.’

Maybe she was right. Joe should have gone to prison for Sarah. Instead he’s there for Carla and Ed. Carla shouldn’t have been fully blamed for Ed’s death. Perhaps her sentence is her punishment for murdering my marriage. For wanting something that wasn’t hers to take.

Anyway, Carla’s sentence might be life. But as her lawyer quite rightly pointed out, it doesn’t mean that nowadays. She’ll be out before she’s old.

Yet my own sentence will stay with me until the day I die. Because that’s the kind of person I am. Someone who wants to be good but hasn’t always made it.

‘Ready?’ asks Ross. Gallantly, he sweeps me up into his arms, to carry me over the doorstep of the barn conversion which Mum and Dad have just had done in their grounds to give us some privacy.

As everyone throws confetti and shouts out good wishes, I silently vow that with Ross’s help, my life will be different from now on.

‘I love you,’ he says before gently bringing his lips down on mine.

I love him too. Yet strangely, part of me still misses Ed. It’s the little things that I remember. Ed liked his tea weak, with a quick dunk of the teabag. He knew I liked my Rice Krispies without milk. Small nuggets of understanding like this, built up over the years, create an inescapable bond.

And then, of course, we shared Tom. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t take a paternity test because I wasn’t sure if I could cope with the results. Rightly or wrongly, it’s easier for me not to know if my beloved son is Ed’s or Joe’s.

The fact is that Ed brought up Tom as though he was his (even though he had no reason to believe otherwise). And now Ross has promised to do the same. ‘I will always be there for him, Lily. And for you.’

I know. I don’t deserve him. At least, my dark side doesn’t. Yet maybe we all have layers of good and bad inside us. Of truth and deceit.

Now as Ross and I prepare to slice the wedding cake with all our friends and family around and Tom by my side, I know one thing for certain.

I’m no longer Mrs Ed Macdonald.

I’m my new husband’s wife.

For better.

Or for worse.