My Lies, Your Lies - Susan Lewis Page 0,114

can see to set us both free. I know we have shared many dreams, and for the past months they have been the only light in my darkness, but I cannot let you carry on believing it’s possible for us to have a future together. I want you to find happiness and love with someone who is not tainted in the way I am – not only by reputation, but by the things that have been done to me in here. I am sorry, Marianne, but I can take no more of the violence and degradation. Knowing what I have suffered. what I, as a deviant, have been forced to do, makes me ashamed to see you.

I know you will always love and take care of our son and I hope that one day you will be able to tell him about me in a way that captures only the beautiful memories we share. I thank God for them. They and your letters and visits have done so much to transport me from this hell. Yesterday, someone found the letters and destroyed them – I would prefer not to tell you how – but they also took Jamie’s photos and I have no idea what has happened to them.

I am going to say goodbye to you in two ways, my darling, the first is with music, of course. Do you remember the song I once told you encapsulated everything I feel about you? I didn’t play it for you enough, maybe you’ll say I played it too much. I’ve been unable to record it myself, but along with the words that I am going to put in with this letter, you will find the name of an artiste I believe sings it very well. It is a song all about first times – the first time I saw your face, the first time I kissed you, the first time that I lay with you, and how I felt our joy filling the earth and knew it would last until the end of time.

The second way is through the poem you sent me. As beautiful and perfect a poem as it is, I have changed it to help me tell you what I most want you to know.

How do I love you? Let me count the ways

I love you to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach …

I love you freely,

I love you purely,

I love you with the breath,

Smiles tears, of all my life; and I believe

With all my heart that I shall love you

Even more after death.

Thank you my darling for the happiness you have given me, and thank you with all my heart for our beloved son. Fly now, beautiful Marianne, live your life and know that my spirit will always fly with you.

David

Joely was too blinded by tears to read any further, but she could see there was more, just a few lines as though penned by the sixteen-year-old Marianne.

It’s all my fault. I know that. I will never be able to escape it. If I live to be a hundred I will never stop loving him, and I will never be able to forgive myself. If I hadn’t told he would never have gone to prison, then no one would have abused him and made his life so intolerable that he chose to end it like this.

It’s all my fault.

It’s all my fault.

It’s all my fault.

‘Yes,’ Freda said, her voice cutting so sharply through the silence it made Joely start. ‘It is your fault.’

Joely looked at her, then at her mother. Marianne’s face was ashen, her eyes bright with tears.

‘He would still be alive if it weren’t for you,’ Freda declared, her tone full of contempt. ‘My brother, my talented, beautiful, brother who had his whole life ahead of him, would not have died in that pit of a prison if you hadn’t sent him there.’

Marianne didn’t try to defend herself, but before Joely could speak on her behalf, Freda was saying, ‘There is no one else to blame. You, Marianne, are as responsible for his death as if you’d stabbed him through the heart or pushed him from a cliff. You are the moth that was drawn to the irresistible light that was him, but instead of burning to death as you should have done you extinguished him.’

Marianne started to speak, but Freda hadn’t finished:

‘You tore the very soul out of my family; did you know that? Did you even care? My mother never