The Sentence Is Death

And then I got ill and the NHS couldn’t help and you told me to go down to London and talk to Richard. Did you never wonder why I was so against it? Why I put my foot down every time? We had all those arguments and I know I was upsetting you, but I never wanted to see him again and anyway, I knew in my heart that he probably wouldn’t help. The very sight of me would just remind him of the coward and the liar that he was. But you wouldn’t take no for an answer. You more or less dragged me on to the train. And this is the result of it. Here I am.

Do you know, I very nearly didn’t go to his posh house in Hampstead. I nearly rang him to say that I’d changed my mind. I was going to tell you that he’d refused to give me any money for my treatment and leave it at that. But I can’t lie to you, Sue. Long Way Hole was the only time in all our years together that I lied to you and it made me sick to my stomach. I went to see him, just like you wanted. And just like I expected, he turned me down flat.

He wasn’t anything like the man I remembered. Well, he was only a lad really, nineteen, when we first met. He was very polite. He invited me in. He offered me a cup of tea. But when I told him why I was there, he refused to help. He said that in view of what had happened, he didn’t think it was appropriate for him to involve himself in my affairs. Words like that. The strange thing is that over the years I think he’d persuaded himself that I was to blame. Well, I’d been the one who’d seen the storm clouds. That had all come out at the inquest and it was a matter of public record that I was the one who gave the go-ahead. (He even used those words . . . I wanted to punch him when I heard them coming out of his mouth.) But somehow he’d managed to conflate everything so that it was as much my decision as his to leave Charlie behind. Well, I could write more. I could write until the cows come home. But the bottom line is he threw me out.

This is the difficult part, Susan. This is the bit I don’t want to write. And it’s why you’re going to have to wait six long months until you finally learn the truth.