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  “You will survive this, Joanna,” she finally whispered in her ear.

  That was the only moment when Joanna nearly broke down. Moira had grasped the essence of the whole thing. All the years of living at opposite ends of the country, filled only by phone calls and letters, simply faded away

  They talked later, of course, in the round of drinks and sandwiches at the hotel nearby – the one that makes its profits from mourners from the crematorium and the one Joanna never wants to see again. But it was now the more ordinary talk of friends because Moira’s watchful husband, Malcolm, was present. A city banker – that was how Moira met him - he has never quite taken to Joanna and her left wing views and this accounts for the infrequent contact between the two women since just after university days. If it were not for Malcolm, Moira and she would have met up over the years. Malcolm distrusts their friendship. But he cannot say much, not when they are just women friends, can he?

  Malcolm is out at a weekend conference when Moira rings her just now. Otherwise, Joanna suspects, the conversation would not be happening. But she understands. There were so many times with Stephen when she also chose her moment for conversations with her friends. They were conversations that were no threat to him but about which he would inevitably have had criticisms.

  She is honest with Moira. She has been on anti-depressants since the Monday after Stephen’s death and off work since then. She has no idea how long this will last. It is just a question of getting through each day. A meeting with the solicitor who looked after their legal matters, hers and Stephen’s, looms ahead, date yet to be set, and it seems like a brick wall that she cannot see beyond. It was the solicitor who contacted her in writing, saying that he had a letter from Stephen for her. She knows it is the suicide letter and she has delayed the moment of arranging to see it. She suspects, she tells Moira with a rueful tone, that she will not like what she will read.

  Her friend listens, saying little, knowing that not much can change; that Joanna cannot move on yet. She has known Joanna in this state before, once over Annie, and again when she and Stephen split up. She knows as much as anyone does about Joanna. Her advice is simple and non-judgemental.

  “You will get beyond this, Joanna. Just go on as you are doing. The days will pass and healing will happen, you know, partly whether you want it to or not.”

  Joanna finds the statement almost acceptable, even if she cannot feel anything more than despair and hopelessness. It is in the nature of depression to feel nothing - that nothingness which Sartre described so well; that nothingness that drags you down and holds you in a void. But Moira can say things to her which, coming from anyone else, she would rebuff. Joanna’s silence on the line is as far as she can go to accept her friend’s words.

  It is only a phone call and it lasts just ten minutes, but it is like a line thrown to her sinking self. Moira has that calming effect on her. Joanna sits in the quiet for a while. Slowly, a semblance of calm and order descends onto her. She can face the next moment, the next few minutes, even the evening ahead. She can join the family and suggest a mid-evening take-away and a game of ‘Scrabble’. She walks past the wine rack and upstairs.

  Chapter 5

  December 20th

  Dear All,

  You will know by now that this has been a dreadful year for the family and I hope you will not mind a Round Robin, just this once. I know they are so ‘non-you’ but I have not found the energy this year to be in touch with anyone or to write a personal letter for the Festive Season.

  Stephen’s death from his suicide drive in October has left us saddened and still coming to terms with his absence. He was a wonderful father to Jeremy, Daniel and Louise, and, even though we separated three years ago now, he still had a big place in my feelings and affection. You were all so kind, those of you who were able to make it to the funeral and all of you who sent messages and cards. Please take this letter as my thanks to each of you.

  We still live at our family home here in Inverness and we have decided to stay here. Both boys are doing well at school and look set to be thinking of exams and, maybe, university. Louise is showing early signs of doing well in class but her head is still full of excitement and mischief. But it is early days yet for them all and the important thing is that they should enjoy these years. That will be hard in the circumstances, but Jeremy is off to Paris in the spring with the school and Daniel is swimming for his school in the Scottish Schools Olympics in May.

  As far as the police and the Procurator Fiscal (That’s the Scottish prosecution service and also the equivalent of your English Coroner, for those of you south of the Border!) are concerned, the matter of Stephen’s death is closed – there was no issue of public concern that might have led to a public inquiry. That relieves us all, as obviously it has been bad enough for the children without any public scrutiny. We have some matters to finish with the lawyer and after that we should all be able to face the future. I hope to get back to work and to be thinking about other people’s problems by February!

  A good Christmas to you and yours.

  Love, Joanna

  PS – Annie – Thanks for your note. Surprised to hear from you and I will ring when I feel stronger. Anyway what about you? Settled, you say? Is there a lucky woman? And I am mightily impressed about you being an Inspector. I bet you keep them on their toes! Love, J

  Chapter 6

  She listens as the solicitor tells her that he has a series of responsibilities to discharge as the executor of Stephen’s will. Beside her, her friend from the gang, Geraldine, is sitting in quiet support. Joanna so needed the presence of her fellow widow there today. Geraldine has gently been around for Joanna since she learnt of the suicide, protesting that Joanna should have called her when the hospital contacted her; telling her she is doing the right thing by staying off work till she is strong again; and calling in to the house two or three times a week just to listen or to say little, depending on where Joanna’s emotions are at any particular time. The other Gang members are in constant touch, too, of course, but everyone has just sort of seen that Joanna’s first comfort can only come from one of them just now. The psychologist friend who has so recently lost her own husband seems to have been the obvious choice of the Gang. A solid, reliable presence, Geraldine was the obvious person she should ask to accompany her to this dreaded meeting.

  Ed Murray, the senior solicitor in the firm of Murray and Simpson was more Stephen’s solicitor than hers. Ed acted for Stephen when he was setting the health centre up long before she met her future husband, and it just seemed logical that Ed would see to the conveyance of the house purchase when they married. Later, Ed saw to the revision of their wills and that seemed logical too at the time. Stephen and she were mutually willed and in the event of their simultaneous deaths, the children would inherit through a fund that Stephen’s mother and brother would jointly administer with Ed. Until now, Ed was a behind the scenes prop to them. Now he is coming to centre stage.

  She has only been in Ed’s company across this desk on a few occasions. He is the epitome of the well-educated and well-spoken lawyer that the established universities in Scotland turn out. In his mid-forties, he speaks with a perfect, Scottish radio accent and exudes quiet concern and correct politeness. He takes all the business of his clients slowly and with painstaking attention to detail.

  She has always instinctively liked him, even if he has the effect on her of feeling a little as if she is somehow back in her headmaster’s benevolent office. She always feels somehow younger than her years in his presence.

  This is the meeting she has been putting off since the Christmas season, four weeks ago. But she knew that she could not move on till this piece of business was complete. In the event, she chose a day about half way between their empty Christmas and her planned return to work. It gave her time to get over the void of a Christmas when she and the boys went through the motions of festivity for Lou’s sake. And it would allow her time, or so she reckoned, to compose hersel
f after reading the suicide note before returning to work. And she just wants to do that – get back to work and get on with her life.

  Ed speaks kindly now, but does not pull his punches.

  “As you know, Joanna, there is evidence in the form of a written letter from Stephen that he intended to kill himself. In the letter, he described in advance his method of doing so. The police confirmed that it is in Stephen’s handwriting and passed it to the Procurator Fiscal. He in turn has passed it to me. I am also duty bound to show it to Stephen’s mother.”

  He pauses and opens a file that has been sitting on his desk, a thick file that Joanna has seen in the past. It has their legal life, hers and Stephen’s, and in it are the records of their house purchase and their wills. Before today, it did not seem ominous. Now it does.

  Joanna already knows from the police most of the facts that Ed is describing, but she has not seen the letter before today. She is about to. Ed passes it to her with something akin to deference. She feels that the deference is for the letter, not for Joanna. A middle-aged female secretary notes things down on her jotter, more to give Joanna a moment of privacy than to record anything of significance. Joanna has wondered what the woman is doing in the room and has assumed that it is to provide some sort of record of this curiously intimate encounter with the distinguished, prematurely white-haired man opposite her. It is as if Ed needs to have a witness for his own purposes. With four people in the room, three of them with their full attention on Joanna, she suddenly feels very much under a spotlight. At least Geraldine, sitting in her work suit with her dark brown eyes on Joanna, feels like the safe point in the room. Joanna casts her a quick look that Geraldine acknowledges with a sympathetic smile of encouragement.

  Joanna may not have seen the letter before today, but she has more or less been told what it contains. Ed persuaded the police to relay some of the content verbally when she could not tolerate not knowing any longer. That was just after the funeral. After that, she did not want to face the moment of actually reading the letter in all its black and white starkness.

  Only her ‘third eye’ on these proceedings in Ed’s office stops her from railing against what she already knows about Stephen’s state of mind on the night he died. She is steeling herself against the moment she will look down at his familiar way of writing large curly words with heavy, fountain pen black ink.

  Stocky, and slightly plump from overeating in the last weeks, she is finding her long black skirt, kept for more routine appearances in court or in the local Sheriff’s chambers on some social welfare application or other, too tight and restrictive. Overheated, her discomfort is both physical and psychological - that of a wife and widow who fears that she is about to be humiliated. There is a split second when she thinks she might flee the scene, and then she is leaning back into the heavy oak chair with its high leatherback and solid arms. It takes her into its compelling need for facing the truth. She forces herself to focus on the letter and reads the words. Even after all the time she has had to prepare for this moment. What she reads seers into her like sharp dagger attack between her ribs. She can hardly breathe.

  Ed is almost professorial now and although robust and bespectacled as he watches her, he is gentle in his manner. He waits and lets the seconds tick by till she has read the letter in its entirety. She is composed and she lets the letter drop onto the desk in front of them. She looks across at him. Even this is difficult to do. Ed has seen what Stephen thought ofher. Only now does Ed speak, asking nothing of her reactions – that is her business.

  “Stephen’s suicide was not your fault, Joanna. Only the person who takes their own life is responsible for that decision.” He pauses and his voice softens. “Would it help to tell me something of the last months of your relationship with Stephen? It is not my business, of course, but I do have a reason for asking.”

  When he speaks, he is matter of fact. He would like her to describe as best she can the time leading up to Stephen’s death. And she knows, somehow, that she has to do this in the wake of Stephen’s letter that places the blame for his decision to kill himself fairly and squarely on her shoulders. She does not know why, but she is relieved to have a chance to tell their story from her point of view. She wants Ed to hear at least some of the facts from her side.

  Ed asks her to describe what she knows, in her own words and in her own time. She reaches for a glass of water that the secretary has placed on a table to her side. She has a sip before gaining her calm and focussing, just as if she were at work, on the facts as she sees them. She gives no opinions, just facts. Now the secretary starts to take notes in earnest.

  Joanna has not said all this in a systematic way in front of Geraldine before, but there is nothing her friend does not know at this point and Joanna feels no discomfort with her.

  “You know a lot of this already, Ed. Stephen and I were married for fourteen years before we separated by mutual consent. That was three years ago. We decided not to divorce as there was no one else involved and we did not want the children to have to face issues around custody and access. It was an arrangement that we made in mutual agreement. Stephen was free to come and go from our house as he thought fit in the children’s interest. It worked well for the first two years or so. But we rarely knew when he would come round and he often stayed when it was inconvenient.”

  “Did he want to return to your marriage?” Ed intercedes.

  “He said so. But I was not prepared to take that at face value. He was enjoying what he described as his newfound freedom. And I knew that there were casual encounters with other women. So it was not an option; not as far as I was concerned.”

  She feels quietly pleased with this last statement. Stephen was philandering. She was justified in not allowing him to return; in staying out of the marriage. She thinks of Stephen’s mother, Martha, a woman in her early seventies. The thought of Martha reading that letter is suddenly overwhelming. Martha will now feel vindicated in the blame she has placed at Joanna’s door. Her mind wanders to the barely disguised hate in Martha’s eyes when the two women came face to face at the crematorium.

  She must have had an attention gap because Ed pulls her attention back into the room. But the thought of Martha stays with her. Martha will see Stephen’s letter as proof that everything that was wrong with the marriage was Joanna’s fault.

  “Did you and he row in the years after you separated?”

  Uncomfortable with the way Ed’s questions are heading, she feels herself beginning to sweat. She does not want Ed’s blame as well as Martha’s. Her blood pressure must be soaring, but she knows that even when this happens, there are no external signs to the observer. This gives her some comfort.

  “Occasionally, yes. We tended to disagree over what freedom the boys should have. Stephen was very controlling. I suppose he was overprotective because he was not there all the time.”

  She hears the hypocrisy of her last words. Who is she kidding? He was just a control freak.

  “How would you describe his emotional health in the weeks before his death?”

  “The same as usual. I saw nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “He made no reference to suicide?”

  “No. Not in any way.”

  “And the first you knew about it?”

  “When the hospital rang me.”

  “Joanna, you are now fully aware of the general contents of the note that was found by his side - the intimate aspects, I mean.”

  “Yes.” She tries to look Ed in the eye. She manages, but she feels her discomfort. But Ed is used to this kind of unease after all his years working in family matters. Just now though, she realizes that she is more relieved that Geraldine does not know what the letter contains than she is embarrassed by the fact that Ed knows.

  “Did you know, when you and he separated, that he blamed you for the breakdown of the marriage?” Ed continues, without changing his tone.

  She flinches again at the knowledge that Ed now has about the sexual t
ension in their relationship. The letter was quite explicit. But she answers in the same matter of fact way in which the question has been posed.

  “More or less, yes. He was not slow in blaming me for quite a lot in the course of our relationship.” She does not regret the irony in her voice.

  But then she thinks of Stephen’s mother. Silly cow. Let her believe in her son’s unblemished reputation if she will. Joanna knows differently. She and Martha have barely spoken since the separation. And the funeral was the last time that they were in the same place, Martha’s hostility barely contained at the time.

  Right now, Joanna is afraid of how much more is going to come out about their private life, about Joanna. What else will Ed ask? But it is not Ed’s intention to drag the dark secrets of the marriage into this arena any more than can be helped. There are a few more questions, but that is it. He sits quietly before looking straight at her. When he speaks, it is with a gentle tone and he leans towards her over the desk as he does so.

  “Stephen committed suicide whilst the balance of his mind was disturbed. As you know there is no need for an inquest. There is no reason for you to blame yourself - none whatever.”

  She sighs inwardly with relief at the confirming words – words that, somehow, she has waited for during many weeks. Geraldine is silently nodding her agreement with the solicitor, encouraging Joanna with her expression to accept Ed’s words. This is something she and the Gang members have already said before. It has greater weight somehow just now, coming from Ed.

  It is over as far as external interest in their family is concerned. She makes one attempt to divert Ed from the meeting ahead with Martha.

  “Is it necessary to show that to my mother-in-law?” She points, almost with disdain, at the blue sheets with their familiar scrawl. The secretary reaches for it and puts it under her notepad as if afraid that Joanna will grab it and rip it up.