My Lies, Your Lies - Susan Lewis Page 0,62
them, and I know he adored me. That never changed. We always loved each other from the time we first met right up until the time he died. I still love him, of course, feelings that deep don’t disappear because someone has stopped living, we all know that. What I hadn’t realized until I lost David was that in some ways they seem to get stronger which makes them even harder to let go of.’
David. So it was Sir.
And he’d turned into a serial adulterer.
‘Certainly I’ve never been able to let go of mine, but I confess I don’t want to. They’re what hold me together. He was everything to me, and he always will be. Of course I’ve loved others, my family naturally – my nephews are the only ones still alive and I care for the youngest as much as if he were my own son.’ She broke off for a moment, pressed a hand to her brow as though smoothing out the frown and continued. ‘Each one of my husband’s affairs broke my heart and he knew it. He hated himself for hurting me, swore it would never happen again, but it did. Sometimes he’d leave me for a few weeks, even a few months, and my despair was so great that my family would fear for what I might do if he didn’t come back. He always did and I always opened my arms to him, because I knew he’d realized, yet again, that nothing would ever mean as much to him as the love we shared. Other women were like a drug, you see. It was the forbidden fruit, the risk, the danger even, and there was plenty of that. He craved it as profoundly as the music he loved. He tried hard to control the urges, he really did, and I did everything I could to help him, but he was a handsome and fascinating man with the kind of magnetism that made him irresistible to everyone who knew him, not just women. You could say that he was the candle burning bright, and we were his moths – and no amount of pain could force us to protect ourselves from him.’
She paused, touched a hand to her mouth and continued. ‘Unlike other addicts he didn’t have to go out looking for his drug of choice, because it – they – came to him.’ She gave a small, humourless laugh. ‘The women, tall, thin, short, blonde, English, foreign … Each of them with their obsessions, beliefs, delusions and most of all their temptations … In trying to help him I agreed to go through a period of isolation with him. We stopped our friends coming to the house and we didn’t go out unless it was locally and together. It didn’t last; he simply wasn’t cut out to be reclusive. He loved to socialize and entertain, and so did I. At weekends our home was always full of guests. We’d throw parties in the meadow, or on the beach, grand dinners in the dining room that’s now the den, or intimate soirées in the music room. He loved to play for our friends, and there were many who could take up instruments too and the rest of us would dance and sing and drink cocktails into the small hours.’
She raised a hand to her face again and Joely saw how shaky it had become. She even wondered if there were tears in Freda’s eyes, but there was no sign of any when she looked up, only of a small, knowing sort of smile.
‘Aren’t you going to ask about my pride?’ she challenged. ‘How I was able to bear my own weakness, and let him trample all over me like that?’
Though Joely had wondered about it, she simply shook her head. It hadn’t felt like the right thing to ask before the story was finished.
‘He never cheated on me here, in this house,’ Freda went on as if she hadn’t interrupted herself. ‘He always went away somewhere, I rarely knew where, but it hardly mattered. He was gone, I tried to believe he’d be back and while I waited I wrote my books to distract myself, but the fear was always there, eating me up in a terrible, soul-destroying way. That this time I might be wrong. This might be the woman he finally leaves me for.’
She seemed to hold her breath as she turned her hands over, looking at them as though they’d been