Guilty
The thoughts, the tears, the fears, the horror, the devastation had been plaguing Lily all night. Her mind raced with thoughts of the televised news report…
An unidentified man was found dead, with three bullet wounds to his chest at 7 in the evening at Flat 3A on the 5th floor in the Bouverie Housing Estate in Essendon. His corpse was discovered, when neighbours noticed blood seeping through the corridor carpet, and bullet holes in the front door.
Frank, found dead in his dilapidated flat. Bloodied, shot up and alone. She remembered sitting on the couch that night, with her two girls. The girls, like her, had burst into hysterical tears. She had turned to Nigel for support, comfort, but he had done nothing but blink slightly, sitting rigidly still with a stiff upper lip, like a man with a secret to hide.
That was when Lily knew. She knew as light is day. The very night before, Nigel had enquired so oddly and so precisely where her ex-husband lived; there had been something very off and very wrong, Lily hadn't been able to put her finger on.
And on the very next morning, the morning preceding Frank's death, Nigel had behaved shiftily. Snapping at the girls, sweating profusely, picking his nails, prodding his cereal, chewing his lips, fiddling with the tablecloth, seemingly completely and wholly lost in thoughts.
Come nightfall, Lily had heard the creaking of the bed as he pulled on his socks and jacket, and the creaking of the floorboards as he snuck around the house, gathering his belongings together, like a man ready to leave his wife. Lily had pretended to be asleep, but she had spent the whole night awake with a hysterical knot in the pit of her stomach, as the man she loved crept around the house like a criminal (which incidentally, he was).
"Please don't tell me I've earned myself another cheating scoundrel, doesn't one bitter experience of adultery suffice?!" she had sighed inwardly.
Lily had assumed this late-night shenanigan involved another woman. Alas, now lying stiffly in bed next to the murderer, wide awake with the devastating weight of crushing guilt and terror, Lily wished a mistress... Lord, even a prostitute, was all that had transpired that fateful night.
Now, come the morning following Frank's death, Lily was seated on the cold hard tiles in the corner of the bathroom, crouched down with her legs pulled up against herself. She had the music turned to max volume in an attempt to mask her loud sobs from prying neighbours.
She was a sleep-deprived weeping wreck, having spent the entire night coquettishly rifling through Nigel's belongings. Her pale quivering hands had chanced upon a loaded handgun in her husband's attic, and she had dropped it to the floor, like a hot potato. In addition, she found a tiny crumpled up piece of paper, measuring not more than a few centimetres, lodged in Nigel's wallet. It was a minature scribbed note of Frank's address.
Lily was finally staring at the truth, from the barrel of a gun, and what she saw made her feel ill. Physically ill. With devastation shaking her to the core, Lily had waited till the girls left for school, for she didn't want to do this in front of them. So at precisely 8:30 am, as the school bus pulled out of the street with Lily's two heartbroken little girls in tow, Lily made a decision to break their hearts irreversibly, forever.
The truth was she loved Frank. After all this time, despite all his faults, indiscretions, weaknesses and betrayals, Nigel had never been able to hold a candle up to her first love. And so, Lily knew what she had to do. She couldn't bear the thought of life in a world where she had caused her beloved's murder. She could not, for the life of her, live with herself.
As she descended unbearably quickly, head-first into the deep end of a shuddering mental breakdown, in her state of hopeless panic, she devised an escape plan. And it involved only two things. A note and a bedsheet hanging from the ceiling, tied around her neck. And so, with sobs, moans and hiccups racking her tiny frame, she put pen to paper, and wrote.
My Dearest Ursula and Phoebe…