Bunny

I wrote Raffles a letter.

It was a cowardly thing to do, but I couldn't bear to tell him to his face. I didn't trust that I had the strength to go through with it in person; whether he took it well or ill, either way it would have broken me. It was better for both of us in a letter. Cleaner.

If I wrote that letter once, I wrote it a hundred times. Some drafts drifted into the tens of pages, but in the end I wrote barely half a page, if that. The simpler the better, I decided. The colder the better. The less I wrote, the less Raffles would have to catch hold of; the less to twist and rationalise; the less likely he would see through it, and me. The cut had to be clean. Decisive. Final.

I told him I didn't love him.

Completely untrue; but how many times had Raffles lied to me in the name of some plan; in the name of of protecting me? This was no different. If he believed I didn't love him, if he thought that perhaps I never had loved him, it would be easier for him to let go of me. He might hate me, but as long as he forgot me and went on with a better, safer life of his own, I'd be glad of it; and if he left me alone to do the same, I'd be gladder still. It was better all around that he didn't know the truth. What good had the truth ever done either of us? What good had my selfish love ever done him? What good had it done me? I had the chance to be unselfish for once in my life; I had the chance to act love instead of merely profess it, and love is sacrifice. Love is selfless. I loved him, and so I had to hurt him. I had to break his heart so that he could put it back together again without me in it.

I moved to Thames Ditton.

After that day in the park, after I'd made my decision, the universe seemed to align to approve my choice. I found new rooms to rent the very next day, ready to be occupied as soon as possible. It took a little longer to find someone to sublet my flat in Mount Street, but that was no matter; thanks to Raffles I had money enough to pay rent up front on the Thames Ditton rooms and to cover general costs for the immediate moment, even after settling up (most of—some of) my debts in town. As to future expenses—well, my plan, at least, was to begin living a life far more frugal and ascetic; a life on a budget, and within my own means. I could make an honest living by my pen—people did, didn't they? I was confident, too confident, perhaps; but Fate herself seemed to be championing me at every opportunity, reassuring me I was doing the right thing. From inception to execution, I was out of the city within three days, leaving no time for doubts or second thoughts. For the most difficult thing I've ever had to do, the practical act of leaving proved remarkably easy.

I didn't send Raffles' letter until I walked out of Mount Street for the last time. My few personal belongings were already packed into a waiting hansom as I dropped the unassuming brown envelope into a postbox, and my heart along with it. In it I had asked Raffles not to contact me, but I didn't trust him to do as I had asked, and neither did I trust myself not to fall back into his arms if I saw him. It made more sense not to give him the chance to be weak, so I removed the temptation for him and me alike. For once, my foresight and oversight could have been said to rival his, and all in all it was a plan worthy of Raffles himself. He should have been proud: I was finally using the lessons he'd spent so long teaching me. If Raffles came to find me, he would find me gone.

It's of little use to dwell at any length on my feelings as I made that pivotal journey from the city, or in those first aching weeks which followed. I'm not sure I could express them with any accuracy if I tried. I felt everything and nothing: sorry, glad, heavy, light, relieved and trapped at alternating intervals; sometimes everything all together and in the same moment; sometimes none of it, and nothing else at all beside. But for those first weeks, one thing never wavered, and that was my staunch belief that my decision had been the noble one. Every pang of sadness sated my perverted appetite for martyrdom and self-flagellation; every moment of peace and freedom validated my conviction that I had done the right thing. If I missed him, it only showed me that my love was selfish; if I didn't miss him, that I didn't need him. My defences were watertight.

And I didn't always miss him. There were streams of sunlight in my life that I appreciated all the more for the bleakness elsewhere. Things I had once considered small, worthless, meaningless, then became beautiful, and important, and worthwhile. My mind, untethered from the doubts and fears which had blinkered me for all of those years, now found new things to notice and to love. In a life emptied of all I had once valued, those little, insignificant things became everything to me. Walking down a tree-lined street in the sunshine felt superior to walking through any society ball; catching a glimpse of morning dewdrops sparkling on cobwebs, more dazzling than countless diamonds; all the riches of the sunset, its colours streaking the skies, more beautiful than any painting in any gallery, and free to be owned by anyone who would only look up. These things were simple, but they were honest.

I was honest.

True, I wasn't yet free of the skeletons which dogged my every step—far from it!—but I was driving them back with the light of virtue. That little flame of mine may have only been small, but it was not extinguished, and with every day I continued on the straight and narrow path, I felt it growing stronger—and the demons of my past, weaker. I didn't miss them. I didn't miss that part of the life I had left. And I didn't regret leaving it.

At first.

And then, though gradually enough, the novelty of self-sacrifice began to wear thin. My loneliness ceased to be that sharp, agonising, vital reminder that I was pursuing the nobler path, and became instead background noise, a tooth-ache of the soul, ever-present and mundane, sapping my energy and inhibiting all pleasures. I slowly realised just how accustomed I had grown to Raffles being there; his absences always temporary, his silences always brief, the fact of his friendship always dependable. I'd become so used to relying on that friendship that all of the lonely years which had preceded it and him had somehow faded in my memory; the brightness of my short life loved cast out the shadows of my long life alone. But those shady memories reignited, then, in my small, damp cottage in Thames Ditton; my old injuries flaring up with the changing of the seasons, returning with vengeance.

I missed Raffles. I missed him, and I couldn't feel glad of it. I couldn't pride myself upon my selflessness. I couldn't preen on my forbearance. I could feel no honour in my virtuous self-denial. I wanted to be selfish! I wanted to be weak! I wanted the luxury of being irresponsible, the luxury of shifting my troubles onto his broad shoulders and sheltering beneath him. I wanted Raffles more than I wanted to be good; I wanted Raffles more than I wanted him to be safe.

These feelings, of course, set me onto fresh spirals of disgust and disappointment at myself; and this, ironically, was precisely what I needed to keep me on the very path I felt so guilty for wishing to leave. Raffles deserved better than me. What I wanted was immaterial; what I wanted only proved how little I deserved to have it.

So the cycle continued.

And any momentary breaks out of that cycle would soon be swiftly and brutally checked by glancing at the newspapers, for they were full of him. The gossip columns and the sports columns alike made frequent mention of A. J. Raffles that spring and early summer, at this cricket match or that ball, on the arm of this or that society beauty, on the winning side of this or that Gentleman's cricket team. And in the crime columns, too, I could read his hand at work, always miles from association with him, always miles from anything but a complete mystery.

All this went to show one thing in blazing clarity: Raffles didn't need me. He was doing fine, he was doing well, he was doing b etter without me. Even if I buckled and went back to him, I doubted he would take me back. And why should he, after all I'd said? After all I'd done, and all I had failed to do? And if he didn't need me, why should I need him? If he could be happy without me, why shouldn't I be happy without him? I hadn't always been happy with him; perhaps he hadn't been happy with me, either. Perhaps I really had done both of us the biggest favour of our lives in leaving. Perhaps, for once, I was right.

Everything seemed to prove me so, in any case. My choices were validated at every turn. In all ways it seemed that my actions had ensured the ideal outcome: Raffles was happy, and I was on the right side of the law and morality. Virtue had triumphed over villainy, and I was on the winning side, whether I liked it or not. Regardless of whether I would rather lose, if the consolation prize was him.

I suppose I would have carried on like that for the rest of my days, sad, and good, and lonely, had Fate not intervened. I've always lacked the spirit and wherewithal of the more motivated type; the type who can decide what they truly want and go after it with a fire lighted under them, rather than simply taking what they are given, never looking further than their own two hands. Life has always happened to me, and I don't doubt I would have let it carry on happening to me, had something else not happened to me instead. Had Raffles not happened to me instead.

For that June, Raffles came to Thames Ditton and all of my virtuous motives unravelled.