Forgive Me

by Susan Lewis

  “Claudia,” Andee said softly.

  “Don’t touch me,” Claudia growled, snatching her arm away from Andee’s soothing hand. “We, me and my family, are not your project, do you understand that? We don’t want you interfering in our lives, because you clearly don’t understand the first thing about what’s happened to us if this is what you’re going to do. All you apparently care about is some vile human being who goes around setting fire to people’s houses and almost killing them. No one made him do it. You do realize that, don’t you? He could have said no, walked away, done the right thing, but he didn’t. Apparently he even watched us coming and going like a bloody stalker deciding on the best time to strike, and please don’t tell me that proves he didn’t want to hurt anyone, because it’s too late for that. He’s where he deserves to be, where I hope he’ll stay for the rest of his rotten life, and if you think either of us is going to read his bloody letters, much less ever forgive him, you’re out of your minds.”

  Casting a glance at Dan, Andee said, “Claudia, I understand how you feel, really I do . . .”

  “No, you don’t. If you did you wouldn’t have done this. Listen to me, we want nothing to do with that monster, and I can’t believe you ever thought we would. Haven’t you seen how hard we’ve been trying to put our lives back together, to move on from it and try to forget it ever happened? Except we’ll never be able to do that, will we? One of us will bear the scars forever, in our own ways we all will, and now you seem to think that adding this to our pain is a good idea. Just what kind of people are you? We thought you were our friends, we trusted you, and yet all the time you’ve been using us as . . . experiments, pawns, seeing if you can fix us with one of your do-gooder schemes. How dare you? How could you even have thought we’d want to be involved in this?”

  Andee was watching Marcy and Jasmine sitting together on the sofa, Marcy staring down at their joined hands, while Jasmine watched her mother, her eyes dark with anguish as she flinched and frowned at the tirade. It was bad, far worse than Andee had expected . . .

  Henry said, “Claudia, maybe we need to . . .”

  “Don’t!” Claudia snapped at him. “I’m not interested in what you have to say, I just want to get out of here. Mum, Jasmine, find your coats. There’s no point staying now that we know why we’re here.”

  “Claudia,” Dan protested, “you’ve got the wrong idea . . .”

  “No, you have,” she hissed at him, “and you’ve also got the wrong people. Please don’t speak to me again or come to the house. False friends are not the kind we want anything to do with. Mum? Are you ready? Jasmine, help her up.”

  As Jasmine tried to take her grandmother’s arm Marcy gently pulled it away, letting her hand flop back into her lap. Without looking at Claudia she said quietly to Dan, “I’d like to read the letters.”

  Claudia stared at her in disbelief. She was so stunned she didn’t know what to say or do. She tried to speak, but no words came out.

  Jasmine said softly, “Sorry, Mum, but I think I would too.”

  Claudia reeled. She couldn’t take in what was happening. She’d been so sure the other two felt the same way she did, that they shared her hurt and outrage, that they were glad she was speaking up for them, but apparently not. How could they want to go through with this? It didn’t make any sense to her, none at all . . .

  She needed to leave, to walk out and never come back to this house, but she couldn’t go without them.

  Tightly, brokenly, she said, “I’ll wait in the car.”

  DAN FOUND HER standing beside the BMW a few minutes later, staring blindly toward the closed gates of the Botanical Gardens. It was dark, there was no one around, nothing to see or hear apart from the distant rumble of traffic.

  She didn’t hear him come, had no idea he was there until her senses picked up on him and turning her back she started to open the car door.

  “Please wait,” he said, putting out a hand to stop her. “I understand that you’re angry and probably feeling betrayed, but I promise you it was never anyone’s intention to hurt you or your family.”

  “Intention or not, you’ve succeeded.”

  “Yes, we have, and for that I’m truly sorry.”

  She stiffened. She couldn’t accept the apology; there was nothing about this nightmare that was possible to accept.

  “Can you try to think of it as something that might help your mother, even if you don’t want to engage yourself? She’s said she wants to read the letters . . .”

  “And what good do you think they’re going to do?” she demanded, spinning around to face him, eyes swimming in tears, skin blotched with heated emotions. “Whatever that verminous toad has to say it isn’t going to heal her . . .”

  “It could help her to understand why it happened and—”

  “We know why, Dan. He was paid to do it; he’s already admitted that. He took money to harm people he doesn’t even know. He didn’t give a damn about us. All that mattered to him was his payday. So, unless he tells us who was behind it . . . Has he? Is it in his letters?”

  Dan shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

  “So, what the hell is the point of them?”

  He dropped his head for a moment, pushing his glasses up his nose as he gathered his words. “I asked him to tell Marcy—and you—about himself,” he explained. “I thought it was important for him to try and put across to you a sense of who he is and what’s made him the person he’s grown into.”

  “And why the hell would we care about that?”

  “It’s not so much about caring as understanding that he is a person, a victim, if you like, of his own circumstances, just as you are of yours. He hasn’t experienced any of the privileges or benefits that people like you and I take for granted. He’s struggled in more ways than even I know, or probably want to know. In spite of being exploited from a very young age he tried to get an education, to lead a normal life, but living where he does in the kind of environment that shuns traditional learning, authority, all the norms . . .”

  “Spare me the sob story. He’s a cliché . . .”

  “Come on, you can do better than that.”

  Maybe she could, but maybe she didn’t want to. “If you’re trying to make me feel sorry for him,” she snapped, “then it’s not going to happen.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking, nor am I trying to make excuses for him. What he did has caused immense harm to you and your family, no one is ever going to deny that, least of all me—or him. My aim here is to try and help you to understand that all the rage and hatred you feel toward him is more damaging to you than it is to him. In your different ways you and your mother are still suffering profoundly; most of it is locked up inside you and that’s making it worse. You only have to look at your mother and see the way she is . . .”

  Claudia turned her head abruptly away.

  “I believe,” he continued carefully, “I hope, that if you can gain an insight into the person who did this to you and why he did it . . . OK, I know he was paid, and that he needn’t have done it, but if you read his story, told in his own words, it might help you to understand him . . .”

  “I’ve already told you . . .”

  “. . . and that could be extremely beneficial for you, and for your mother. I think Jasmine needs it too, but Marcy is the one who is finding it the hardest to overcome what happened. It’s not just her injuries, although obviously they’re a big part of why she hardly goes out in public, it’s the suppression of her spirit, her inability or unwillingness to communicate or to feel that is the biggest concern. We both know what a lively and confident woman she really is, and I accept that the kind of trauma she suffered can change a person, but I am not ready to accept that it’s changed her. She’s still there, I’m sure of it, and I know you are too. We have to support her, Claudia, and the fact that she’s prepared to read the letters suggests to me that she’s ready to do even this if it’s going to help her.”

  Claudia lowered
her eyes, not wanting to look at him anymore, not even sure she could go on listening in spite of the glimmers of hope he was offering. She wanted to resist him, to carry on ranting, accusing him of betraying her trust, insisting that he didn’t know what was best for her mother, or for her. The words, the anger, were all there knotted up inside her along with the hatred of Archie Colbrook and all the evil things she wished on him. And yet, making its way into all that pent-up rage and venom was the inescapable realization that Dan could be right.

  Minutes ticked by. There was so much she wanted to say, to ask, to feel even, but everything was so jumbled and uncertain that she couldn’t try. She simply stood where she was, stiff and cold and finally yielding to him as his arms went around her and he held her the way he had the day he’d found her on the moor, soothing her loneliness and despair with his quiet, undemanding strength.

  “It’s starting to rain,” he said after a while. “We should go back inside or sit in the car.”

  She chose the car and it was only when she found herself on the passenger side that she realized they were in his BMW, not hers. It hardly mattered, they weren’t going anywhere, although perhaps she wished they were, somewhere a long way from here where she might be able to think more clearly, or even pretend that life didn’t require so many impossible decisions.

  “Will you tell me what’s in the letters?” she asked, after he’d started the engine in order to turn on some heat.

  He didn’t answer right away, instead he removed his glasses, wiped them with a cloth taken from the glove box and put them on again. “If I did,” he said in the end, “I’d be using my words, and I think it’s important for you to hear Archie’s.”

  “Please tell me there’s nothing in them that’s going to upset Mum, or frighten her . . .”

  “I wouldn’t let her read them if there was. You must know that.”

  Yes, she did, but she still had to ask. He might not have handled this well, at least in her opinion, but he wasn’t a cruel man, far from it. “And where is it all supposed to lead?” she asked. “I know you think it’ll help us to know something about him, but is your real purpose to get his sentence reduced or even . . .”

  Stopping her before her presumptions could run into territory that would hurt and anger her again, he said, “When I started this it wasn’t necessarily to help Archie, it was mostly about Marcy and you. It still is about you both, but I’m not going to deny that if some good comes from these letters and any subsequent communication you or Marcy might have with him, I will write a report for his defense team to use in any way they can.”

  She sat with that for a while, imagining all kinds of scenarios that she wasn’t liking at all, until she said, “Is there a chance he’ll get off completely?” She wouldn’t be able to bear it if he did; it would feel as though Marcus had won and she simply couldn’t allow that to happen.

  “No,” he replied. “He’s already admitted to the charge of arson and criminal damage, so he’ll serve a prison term for that, and it’s highly likely that when the attempted murder case goes to trial he’ll be found guilty.”

  She swallowed dryly. “And you don’t think he’s guilty of attempted murder?”

  “What I think doesn’t count, it’ll be up to a jury.”

  She turned to him. “That doesn’t answer my question. I want to know what you think.”

  Not taking his eyes from hers he said, “I don’t believe it was his intention to harm anyone. So I wouldn’t consider it wrong to reduce that particular charge to one that’s more fitting. As far as sentencing goes there won’t be much in it, and as he’ll go down anyway for arson you can be sure he won’t be back out on the streets this side of his thirtieth birthday.”

  She fell silent again, unable to determine exactly how she was feeling now, apart from oddly remote from it all. As if they weren’t talking about her and what had happened to her mother. But they were, and Marcy could have lost her life in that fire, would have if the emergency services hadn’t turned up when they did, so there remained no doubt in her mind that a charge of attempted murder was the right one to pursue.

  Breaking the silence, he said, “We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves with all this talk about charges and prison sentences. What we need to focus on right now is how to make all this more bearable for you, Jasmine, and your mother.”

  Although she could hardly argue with that, her voice was edgy as she replied, “And you think getting to know Archie Colbrook will do that?” For some reason it didn’t sound as horrific as she’d expected it to, although that still didn’t make it a good idea. “Do we have to meet him?” she asked. “I don’t think . . .”

  “We’re not there yet,” he came in gently. “I haven’t even broached the possibility with Archie, but I know he’ll be willing if you and your mother are.”

  She wasn’t, she knew that without having to think about it, but could she say the same for her mother? “I have a feeling she will be,” she said, “depending on what’s in the letters, of course.”

  “There really isn’t any reason to be afraid of them,” he assured her.

  She let her eyes drift to the dark night, lit by streetlamps and the glow of the sign over the Botanical Gardens. She was picturing a nineteen-year-old thug in a prison cell writing to someone he didn’t know because he’d been told to, not because he wanted to. She saw him in the dock being accused of his crimes. She thought of Marcus, safe and triumphant in his own prison cell, his only regret that it wasn’t her who’d been scarred for life.

  After a while she turned to Dan and seeing the earnestness of his expression, sensing his determination to help, she felt a little of her resistance starting to fall away. All that mattered to her in the world was her mother and Jasmine. But since they’d been here in this town they’d discovered that they weren’t on their own anymore. They’d made friends who’d given them support in so many ways that they’d come to trust and believe in them. They had nothing but Marcy’s best interests at heart, hers and Jasmine’s too, and maybe it was time to accept that. She couldn’t feel sorry for the way she had exploded when Dan had explained what this evening was really about—really, what had they expected?—but he hadn’t deserved all the things she’d yelled at him. She wanted to explain this to him but wasn’t sure where to begin. Instead, she said, “I’ll read the letters.”

  He smiled. “I don’t think you’ll regret it,” and pulling her to him he pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead.

  AS MARCY PUT the last letter aside her hand was shaking slightly, and her shoulder ached from having held it in the same position for so long. She was aware of the others watching her, waiting for her response, but she simply let her eyes lose focus as her thoughts weaved her back through his story, seeming to keep her attached to him in a way that wasn’t easy to escape. His home, his mother, the men who’d exploited him . . . It was as if she’d just dreamt about him, and the oddness of it was still playing out in her mind. She didn’t have a clear picture of him, in spite of the photos she’d seen in the press. That person, grim-faced and hollow-eyed, a youthful degenerate who evinced no conscience or remorse, no decency or compassion, wasn’t the one who’d spoken to her from the pages he’d filled. She wasn’t sure who had, she only knew that he’d left her feeling more confused than vengeful, and uncertain about where to go from here, if they should go anywhere at all.

  “Are you OK?” Andee asked softly.

  Marcy glanced at her and nodded. Yes, she was all right, but she was also disturbed by the connection she continued to feel to Archie Colbrook. His crime had created a link between them that was like no other she’d experienced. He seemed to understand, as she now did, that for good or ill they would always be a part of each other’s lives. In the coming hours and days he would be waiting for her response, maybe wondering if he’d done the right thing in writing to her, or if he’d wasted his time. Was he nervous, or did it not really matter to him what she thought of his efforts? His purpose could ha
ve been entirely self-serving, an attempt to put himself in a good light with Dan, judge, and jury . . .

  There was no denying that a part of her wanted to wreak the bitterest revenge on him, to burn his face, even kill him for what he’d done to her. It was a raging, dark, ugly part of herself that lay hidden and chafing beneath the shell of zombie-like calm she had been using to protect herself. It scared her, and she knew it could probably destroy her if she allowed it to take her over with its surges of fury and frustration, or its hunger for retribution. If it did, she was afraid she’d end up losing herself along with everything else.

  Picking up the letters, she stared at them as if they might communicate answers to the questions she still had, as if in some way they’d give her the inner strength she needed to defeat her worst instincts.

  She would read them again, but before that she would give them to Jasmine and hopefully Claudia would read them too. It was important to know what they thought, Henry too, before she made up her mind about what she wanted to do.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  So, Dan gave you my letters, you read them and decided you’re not going to write back. That’s cool, I get it. If I was you I wouldn’t write back to me either. What could you say that a polite person like you would want to put into writing? You might not even know the words to tell me what you think of me.

  I could help you with that.

  I have to admit I’m way more gutted than I expected to be by your decision and I knew it was going to be a knock-back if you didn’t want to engage, just not this big of a one. Suddenly being in prison feels a whole lot worse than it did before—and it was never good—but I expect you’ll be glad to know that. It’s what I deserve.