Chapter 62 Charlie
CHARLIE
Charlie’s shoulders convulse, the burden of carrying Freya’s secret finally making its weight felt.
“As soon as she closed the door on the police that morning, I knew,” he says, with tears in his eyes.
“I’d heard every word she’d said to them, the lies that had tripped off her tongue so easily, and I thought I was going to be sick.
She tried to tell me that she’d lied for me.
That they’d take one look at my bloodstained face and assume that I had been the one who had turned the car over. ”
How will you be able to prove you didn’t? Charlie remembers her saying. Frank and Coco will tell them you stormed off after the fight, well over the limit. Your prints will be all over the wheel.…
Anita closes her eyes. “And still you stayed?”
“Because she promised she would get help and stop drinking,” says Charlie, his voice wobbling.
“And she did—for a while. She went to meetings and the doctors gave her medication to help curb the cravings for alcohol. She seemed committed to getting well and being a better person. I honestly believed she was going to turn herself around, because that was the only way our marriage was ever going to survive. But then she stopped taking her pills, and without them, I knew the temptation to start again would be too much. So…” He bites down on his lip and forces himself to look at Anita.
“So I started giving them to her without her knowing.”
Anita raises her eyebrows. “A dangerous game to play.”
Charlie nods. “I stopped as soon as I knew she was drinking again.”
“So she’s back on it?”
Charlie offers a resigned grimace. “I tried so hard to keep her on the straight and narrow. But she met this woman Tess, who was her worst enemy disguised as a light in the port.”
“She would have gone back on it with or without someone else’s help,” says Anita.
“It’s in her DNA. She could suppress her true self when she wasn’t drinking, but only for so long.
Because then the real Freya comes knocking, wanting to come out to play.
And it’s normally alcohol that teases her out. ”
“But this woman seemed intent on dragging Freya down,” says Charlie, shaking his head as he recalls his futile attempts to warn Tess off. “She systematically set out to weaken Freya’s resolve, even though I begged her not to.”
Anita raises her eyebrow in silent question.
“And when Freya did fall off the wagon, this Tess woman took photos and showed them to me as proof.”
“Why would she do that?” asks Anita with a furrowed brow.
Charlie had asked himself the same question a hundred times.
“She said she wanted to save me the heartache of waiting for an alcoholic to change—because they never do.” He spares Anita the added detail of Tess going on to proposition him.
“But I think it was more a need to validate her own failings by highlighting Freya’s. ” It’s the only explanation he’s got.
“But it was always going to come to this,” says Anita. “You were never going to win.”
“Perhaps not, but I was prepared to die trying.”
“So are you done now? Are you going to walk away?”
Charlie stares at Anita. “I’m going to have to, aren’t I? Because knowing what I now know, if I stay, there’s every chance she’ll kill me.”