Hallucination
She knew that what she did was wrong. She knew, with as much certainty as she knew her own name, that she had not seen Robbie Turner that night. Robert. What right had she to continue to act as though they were in love? As though he loved her. That was something else she knew. He did not love her, and he never had. He never would. If only she could have understood that. Perhaps the terrible events of the coming years could have been avoided. Being an author—a writer—she had every remaining moment of her life to dwell on what could have been, to explore the possibilities.
In her thirteen-year-old mind it had all seemed so perfect. They would be together one day, and he would allow her to continue writing. It was diverting, he thought, and he always appreciated the effort she put into her work. There it was again. What right did she have to assume that she had ever known what went on in his mind? If she had possessed any depth of understanding, she would have realized that he thought her amusing, sometimes, but mostly a pest. He indulged her because she was a Tallis, and she happened to be Cecelia's younger sister. She did know that, as a child, she had written stories and stories and stories, taking care to check that all the words were spelled properly and making sure to sufficiently disguise the names of her protagonists so they would not be easily discernible as being the names of certain people she happened to know in real life. She even bound the copies for him, so that they resembled real books. She wanted to appear professional. He once told her that she would be a real writer someday, and he would buy all of her books and be very proud of her. Had she been paying attention, and had she been able to truly understand the mannerisms he displayed, she would have noticed that his voice was faint and he wasn't looking at her. He was, in fact, looking over her shoulder toward the place where dear, beloved Cecelia was standing. As far as he was concerned, she might as well have been a hallucination.
But it wasn't right. She shouldn't be jealous of Cecelia. Poor sister Cecelia. There was a woman who deserved an ounce of happiness in her life, and never got it. She never even came close. All because of Briony's betrayal. Her only sister, someone who should have loved her and wished for her happiness had allowed envy and spite to consume her very being. Briony's behavior that night had been nothing less than evil. Robbie made sure she never forgot that. Almost every night, he reminded her of what she had done. Cecelia's silence disturbed her, but she began to understand the reasons behind it.
She would go on a quest, just as others before her had done. Only, her quest would be one of atonement. She would do her best to earn forgiveness for what she had done. One day, she would apologize; she would try to undo the lethal damage she had caused. One day. She told herself over and over that she had to do it. She tried and failed several times before giving up.
Robbie and Cecelia would never know. They never knew how many times she had convinced herself to take action, only to reason that it was useless, unnecessary, impossible. When she got the news of their deaths, days apart, she decided it was only fair to give them the happy ending they had so deserved, but never experienced.
The world would never know. Not her parents, not her friends, not her thousands, and then hundred- thousands, of avid readers. They never knew that the ending was false, contrived, disgustingly unreal. The part where she stopped the interview so that she could finally put things right was just another invention of her diseased mind. That scene, like so many others, had been imagined.
But Paul Marshall knew, of course. His chocolate did well, and his offspring were as highly desired as prize-winning racehorses. That was all. He needed nothing else.
And Lola—of course! Lola. Why? She could have stopped it. But she was in shock. She knew it was Marshall, though. She had made that clear to Briony. Still, it was unfair to blame someone else.
And of course, Briony Tallis knew. She had known for years. She may have been a coward for not coming forward. She didn't believe in regret, but she believed in a person's ability to make mistakes. She made plenty of mistakes, but one of them in particular was always at the forefront of her mind. She tried to suppress it, and she succeeded for a time. But as her brain continued to shut down, The Mistake was pushed closer to her conscious memory. Had she told anyone what had happened on that long-ago summer's day, they would have understood why, as she approached her final moments, she whispered, "Cecelia". Had she finally confessed to just one person what she had done, she might not have mustered all her remaining strength to sit bolt upright in bed and cry, in a voice of mingled joy and fear, "Robbie!"