I bent down to kiss her cheek, wishing I could draw back her curls with my fingers and, although I made no physical contact, she stirred in her sleep. Her head turned and her eyelids flickered for a moment, but never opened. The movement surprised me and I pulled back a few inches so that I could observe her. The restlessness did not last long; she soon returned to deep slumber, her narrow chest rising and sinking evenly. Her movement though had disturbed the blankets and the top half of a coloured photograph still in its frame was uncovered.
I closed my eyes to hold back the tears. Even though in the photo only my head and shoulders and the top of Prim’s head were in view, I knew which one it was. Andrea had taken the shot at least four years ago when I was pushing my daughter on a playground swing. I was laughing as I held the swing’s seat in which Prim was locked, ready to give it another almighty push so that she would sail “high into sky”, as she put it. Although most of her face remained concealed, I knew that she was laughing happily, only a tiny bit of fear—no, it was more excited apprehension—in her eyes, a long strand of hair—red in the sunshine—loose down her face, almost bisecting it. My increased sadness was both because I would never live such wonderful moments again and because Prim felt the need to have my picture in bed with her, like the inhaler, close at hand.
But then rage began to override my emotions. Oliver was to blame for my death; Oliver was the one who had lost my daughter her daddy; Oliver was the “friend” who’d stolen my wife. I stood up, blinded by tears that brimmed unshed in my incorporeal eyes, raging at the duplicity of it all. Oliver. We’d shared so many good times together, hard times too, building up the business, bouncing off each other with creative ideas, sharing either celebratory or consolatory drinks depending on whether accounts were won or lost. At times we’d been like brothers—no, probably closer than brothers, because there was no sibling rivalry between us—and we complemented each other as a team, he the garrulous but smooth and convincing talker who could charm clients as easily as he could charm women, and I, the quiet but plain-speaking one who was just a little shy in front of both clients and women. A great team with no jealousy between us, not a common thing where copywriter and art director are concerned, when invariably the politics of protectionism (towards ideas as well as status) raises its ugly head. Or so I had believed.
All those years, those good exciting years, he must have envied me for winning Andrea as my wife, even though he, himself, had ruined their previous relationship. Envied me so much that he had plotted to take her back for himself. All those years of deceit…
These black thoughts swept through me as I stood at my daughter’s bedside, the melancholy of a few moments ago overwhelmed by a boiling hatred against someone who had taken not only my wife, but my life also. With one last look at Prim, feeling a love for her that softened only the edges of my anger, I stole back out onto the landing. I heard Andrea’s voice as I came down the stairs.
“What do you expect of me, Oliver?” she was saying. “Jim has been dead for no more than a week and you think I can just dismiss him from my life?”
“I’m not suggesting you should, or even could, do that.” Oliver was talking in low, reasonable tones, the way he used to persuade clients our ad or campaign was great even if they themselves were not quite swept away by it. “But I want to end the deceit, Andrea. I want us to be together all the time.”
Oh, he wanted to end the deceit. Well that would be easy enough with me out of the way.
Andrea again, rising frustration in her voice. “You don’t understand how much I loved him, how I miss him now!”
Loved me? That was hard to get my head around. How could she betray me if she loved me so much?
“You loved us both, I accept that, Andrea. But be honest with yourself—you love me more. You always have.”
“You never made it easy for me. You would never leave me alone.”
“Jim and I had a thriving business partnership. I couldn’t just clear out, it wouldn’t have been fair to him.”
“Did you hear what you just said? You were screwing his wife and you thought it would be unfair to split up your business partnership? I can’t believe you ever saw things that way.”
Nor could I. Oliver wanted it all ways. He wanted my wife and he also wanted the success and revenue that our partnership brought him. Unbelievable.
“I couldn’t leave you, Andrea. I tried, I tried to forget about you and all we had together, but it wasn’t possible. I loved you too much then and I love you too much now!”
“Keep your voice down. I don’t want Prim to wake up. She’s been through enough already.”
Oliver spoke in a whisper, but by then I was close enough to hear. I was just outside the door.
“It’s because of Prim that we have to be together again,” he said.
His words were followed by a silence. I waited.
“It isn’t right for you to bring that up. Not now, not when I’m going through so much pain.” Andrea’s voice was quiet, but it wasn’t a whisper. I heard the sofa creak, as if one of them had changed position.
Oliver’s voice again, still in a whisper, but an edge of… what? Regret? Humility? Neither was really his style, yet there was a new tone to his words. Could have been sadness. “I know it’s too soon, but I do have a right. You know that.”
Another silence, longer this time and, still rooted to the spot outside the door, I imagined Andrea searching his face. Perhaps she, too, wondered what he was implying.
After a while, she said, equally as quietly: “It was the cruellest thing we did to Jim.”
Pointlessly, I held my breath. What could be more cruel than cheating on me all these years?
“It would have destroyed him if he’d known,” Oliver replied.
I began to feel that dreadful inner chill again. Where the hell were they going with this? What did Oliver mean? Surely nothing could hurt me more than their betrayal?
“You’re talking nonsense, Oliver. Even we don’t know for sure.”
“Stop kidding yourself. We checked out the dates a million times. Jim was overseas on a photographic job when she was conceived. The timing works out perfectly, but Jim just thought you’d given birth a little prematurely.”
What? What was he saying?
“We still can’t be certain.” It was a defensive protest.
“We’ve always known. Look at her hair—it’s the same shade of brown as mine. She’s even got my freckles around the side of her nose. Mine have faded over time, but a few are still there.”
It was true: Oliver had a small spattering of light freckles on his face, so light, in fact, that they were almost unnoticeable.
“But it’s her eyes that give her away. Oh, they’re like yours, but they’re more like mine. Each passing year she gets to resemble me more and more.”
“Stop it. I won’t listen! Now’s not the time.”
“The time has never been right, has it, Andrea? It was never the right time to tell Jim the truth.”
“I would never have left him. I would never have let it ruin our marriage.”
“Eventually you would have had no choice. And then Jim would have despised you.”
I heard Andrea sob. I half-collapsed against the wall, my shoulder sinking into it.
“Please don’t say any more.” Andrea’s sob escaped her.
“You—we—both have to face what has always been there between us, and it goes beyond mere love. It means responsibility, Andrea. Primrose is my daughter, and now I want to be a proper father to her.”