She insists on staying for a while and talking about it more, obviously. She’s shaken, I can see that, but her mind is whirring. That curious, busy head of hers. Tick tick tick. Always ticking over. When she asks why I never looked for Rob, I give my pathetic shrug and say I didn’t want to know. I loved David and I’d married him. I was young. He was my safe place. I’m impressed she doesn’t slap me hard around the face and tell me to pull myself together and face the music. I’d want to do it if I were her, listening to my spineless drivel. I tell her I’m tired and don’t want to talk about it, and I see her pity then. She quiets.
It doesn’t take much to get her to leave. I mention that David will call and then I’m going to lie down for a while, and she nods and hugs me, squeezing me so tightly in those slimmer, firmer arms, but I can see she’s already thinking about what to do next. How she can help me, or help herself, or whichever. As long as the outcome is the same, who cares?
David doesn’t call at our agreed time; another clue that he meant what he said last night. He’s washing his hands of me. Maybe even challenging me to make good on my threat. Poor thing. He’s at his wits’ end.
I make a peppermint tea and go upstairs and lie on the cool duvet cover and stare at the ceiling. I’m remarkably calm given the situation. There are still some wild cards out there, and I’m entirely reliant on Louise to find and put together the pieces of the puzzle I’m laying out in front of her. At the right moment she needs to grasp the significance of this morning. If she doesn’t, I’ll need to find another way to show her. Still, life is better when it’s interesting. I feel quite content.
Being told a thing is never enough. I’ve told Louise what I think David did all those years ago, but words really don’t carry any weight. Momentary sounds on air have no solidity. Written words, slightly more perhaps, but even then, people don’t ever really trust each other enough not to have doubts. No one ever truly thinks the best of anyone else.
To trust the truth of a thing, you have to suffer the thing. You have to get mud on your hands and dirt under your fingernails. You have to dig for it. A truth like David’s and mine anyway. That can’t be understood by telling. I need to take Louise into the fire before she can come out the other side pure and clean and trusting. If David is to finally be free and unburdened, she needs to carry the burden first. The truth has to be hers. She needs to take the truth to him.
And then let it unravel them.
