‘Then he got ill. He started to lose his balance – worse some days than others. He was moody and distracted – which was a sure sign something was wrong. James was always cheerful. Why wouldn’t he be? He led a charmed life.’ Mark paused, turning his glass around in front of him. Slowly, slowly; anticlockwise. The foot of it vibrated against the table top, sending shivers down Leah’s spine. ‘He had unexplained pains, stiff joints. He couldn’t grip things any more. He got clumsy, kept tripping over. He choked a lot on his food, and… sometimes when he wasn’t even eating. Just watching TV… choked on his own saliva. Then his speech started to slur. So eventually he went to the doctor’s. Put it off as long as he could, like a typical man. A man who’d never taken a sick day from work in his life. They sent him for a raft of tests and I was expecting him to come out and say it was an inner ear infection, or something up with his circulation. A nasty, lingering virus at worst. It was motor neurone disease. The diagnosis floored him – floored us all. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, to be exact. Life expectancy three to five years. James was in a wheelchair within nine months of the diagnosis. This for a guy who won the tennis club tournament four years running, and had three kids under the age of twelve.’ Mark looked up at Leah. She had stopped fiddling with her own wine glass and was listening in mute agony. There was nothing she could say, nothing she could do. She felt like a prisoner at the table, trapped in the inevitability of his story.
‘And he knew… he knew how he was going to end up. Incontinent. Unable to speak, to feed himself, to do anything. Slowly dying. He was wasting away right in front of our eyes… every time I saw him…’ Mark shook his head, swallowed convulsively. ‘I knew what he was going to ask us to do. He called Karen and me into the room one afternoon; sent the kids outside. And told us, the two people who loved him most in the world, that he wanted to die. Karen went crazy. She called him a coward, and worse – that he didn’t want to fight it, that he was giving up. Accused him of abandoning her and the kids. God, she said some terrible things! I thought she was just… wild with grief. I thought she’d come around. Because I was willing from the start. I didn’t want to lose him – I’d have done anything to keep him. But there was no keeping him – he knew it and I knew it. And I’d have done anything to stop him suffering. I thought Karen would accept it eventually, but… she didn’t. She was adamant. Suicide was not acceptable to her, and of course neither was murder. That’s what she called me, when I tried to persuade her. A murderer.
‘Another six months of this went by, and even though we didn’t talk about it much it was there. Every time I went to visit. Every time I saw Karen, she had this look in her eye – this awful, angry, admonishing look. Daring me to mention it. Warning me not to. And every time I was alone with James, he begged me to help him. He couldn’t even get himself in and out of his chair by then. They had carers coming to the house four times a day. His worst nightmare was coming true.’ Mark paused again, put his hand over his mouth for a second, as if to stop the words from coming out. ‘I wrote letters for him saying it was what he wanted and that I was only doing what he’d begged me to do. He signed them as best he could. One morning he gave the kids an extra thorough goodbye before they went to school. Then while Karen was taking them there, I gave him sleeping pills. As many as he could swallow. I bought them on the internet… God knows what was in them. But they worked. He… died. He died.’
‘Mark, I’m so sorry…’
‘You haven’t heard the best part yet. Karen reacted… as was to be expected, I suppose. And more so. She tore up the letters when I showed them to her. My own stupid fault – I should have made copies. She destroyed them and went straight to the police to report his murder. I just don’t know… I don’t know why she did that! I still don’t understand… that she could be so deeply in denial, and not know in her heart that this was what James wanted. That it was the best and kindest thing anybody could have done for him. Then his will was read and he’d left all that money to me – money to keep Dad in the home for a bit longer, without having to sell the house. Once the press got hold of that they tore me to pieces.’
‘But the trial was over in no time… everybody could see you’d acted from compassion. The judge even said it should never have gone to court…’
‘Tell that to Karen and the kids. And to the journalists with their bloody “Cain and Abel” headlines. She’s told the kids terrible things, Leah. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to see them again. If they’ll ever forgive me.’
‘But… did they know he was dying? Did they know that?’
‘I’m not sure. I never spoke to them about it… Karen told me she was handling it. So I don’t know. I don’t know.’
‘But… once they’re older, once they can find out for themselves how ill he was… I’m sure they’ll want to see you,’ she tried.
‘Well. I suppose only time will tell. So now it’s just me and Dad. He’s the only family I’ve got left. That’s willing to speak to me, anyway. Some of the time.’
‘That’s terrible. Mark, I… I really don’t know what to say,’ Leah said, helplessly.
‘There’s nothing to say. But now you know; and I wish I could say I feel better, telling you about it. But I really don’t.’ He took a deep breath, released a long, shuddering sigh.
‘It’s far too soon for you to be thinking you ought to feel better,’ she told him carefully. ‘You lost your brother, and all the shit afterwards meant you didn’t have a chance to mourn him.’
‘Well, I’ve got time now, haven’t I? Work fired me, of course. So much for innocent until proven guilty. They said my work had been falling below par for some time and it had nothing to do with the impending trial. Which is bollocks.’
‘We could take them to a tribunal,’ Leah said. We. How unexpectedly that word had slipped from her tongue. Her stomach gave a tiny jolt, but Mark didn’t seem to notice.
‘What’s the point? I don’t want any of it back. Any of that old life. How can you go back to things, anyway? When everything is torn apart? You just have to start all over. Might as well be in a new place. A new job,’ Mark said, finally sipping his wine.
‘You do have to start all over,’ Leah agreed. The lines on his face had faded away, smoothed out of relief by the candles’ glow. She took his hands across the table top, meaning only to hold them briefly, to give strength through the touch of human skin. But Mark gripped her fingers tightly, and didn’t let go. Leah met his gaze, as the pain she felt for him changed, became something like fear.
‘Stay tonight,’ he said. Leah opened her mouth but no words came out, and her heart lurched into her throat to choke her. The silence stretched and Mark let go of her hands. ‘There’re plenty of bedrooms, after all,’ he said, awkwardly.
Leah took a steadying breath. ‘I can walk back to the pub. It really isn’t far,’ she said.
Mark’s mouth twitched into the slightest of smiles. ‘Of course,’ he said.
In the morning, Leah rose early and drank a coffee standing at the window of her room at The Swing Bridge, where the glass panes were misted by a night of her own damp exhalations, and the day outside was tentatively bright. Her head was heavy and tender after the wine of the night before, and she couldn’t marshal a clear thought about Mark or what he had said to her. Downstairs there were sounds of movement from the kitchen, metal pans and cutlery rattling. The smell of bacon wafted up the stairs and under her door, and her stomach rumbled; but she didn’t have time for breakfast.