Jack
TOM COULDN’T COPE WITH THE damage Anna was doing to our reputation.
When a man has so little, that is a lot to take away from him.
I’m trying to justify this. We couldn’t have let her carry on the way she did; obsessive, scaring people.
Getting too close to people. And I suppose it wasn’t doing Peggy any favours to be raised by somebody so uneven.
Anna’s is the last influence I’d want on Peggy.
Are there any reasons that explain it away?
I suppose all I have is an honest reason: I am not the good man that I once was. To be frank, it got to the stage where I couldn’t stand to hear Anna take another breath. She had exhausted my patience. I had exhausted every other option.
I believe it’s fair to say that Anna took a great deal away from me. In ways, she took my life away from me. And there have been times that I was worryingly tempted to take her life, too.
To put the kitchen knife to her neck while she slept softly beside me.
To watch all that kept her alive suddenly reduced to nothing but a stubborn stain on the floor.
Yes, in my most extreme and obscure streams of consciousness, these ideas came to me.
When Tom told me how carelessly and gladly she pushed you down the stairs, it was only natural I would want to do the same to her.
But then I would always realise that she would only be another thing that haunts me. Another bout of grief to mount within us all. If she had already driven me to these thoughts while living, imagine how intensely she would torment me when dead.
And so, I had no real choice but to let Tom take care of it. I stayed in with Peggy, and he took Anna out. I’m not sure what he did next, but he came back alone, after it was gone dark. Whatever he did, where he left her or what his plan was, I don’t know.
I didn’t say goodbye, just in case she came back. Maybe she will, one day. Maybe one day, I will ask Tom what happened. I know he’s done a lot wrong, but I’ve never been more grateful to Tom than I have been these last few weeks. Taking care of the hard things, like always.
Without Anna around, things have gone silent.
The peace and quiet isn’t anywhere near as soothing as I had hoped it would be.
I never thought I would feel anything as terrible as losing you, and yet I feel this.
Teresa calls up to the cottage to see if I want to go to the pictures with her.
I send her home. ’Tis quare liberation alright.
I’m afraid that feeling this way about Anna means that you and I are well and truly over.
We have finally reached our end, Lillian.
I know, because you would never have been with a man so bitter.
Over the last year, too much has changed to sustain the dream of you and me.
You, changed into some celestial being, far out of my reach.
And me, changed into a man you would not recognise.
I am only an abstraction of an abstraction of the man you once knew.
Once loved. If we were to meet for the first time now, we wouldn’t fall for each other at all.
But I will always know what it was to love you.
Darling. My darling. I think it’s time that I let you go.
Go on, pet. I might see you again.