Lily-white

No matter where I step foot in this town my face is recognizable. I'm the one they say that's riddled with guilt. 

It's always the same cliche, if only they were there, they'd known what'd happened.

Even their accusatory eyes, scorning me, judging me, giving the once over. For my sanity, I have to have thick skin, which is hard going as the mental affliction they inflict is slowly taking its toll. It's even gotten to the point that when I see people talk, I have misconceptions that it's me they're conversing about.

That poor girl has gone missing, he must have killed her and dumped the body somewhere. I surmise, as I try to read their lips. 

I feel it's time for me to leave this place and start anew, but all I'll do is leave the guilt behind. Jesus Christ, I'm starting to convince myself that I am guilty. I'm not, and people need to know that.

“Hey Joey,” this guy bellows over to me. “How can you show your face around here, the law might think you’re innocent but we know what ya did.”

    I want to confront him, but I knew it’d lead to violence. I’ve not known anything other than violence, It’d started at school, those lads pushing me about making all the other kids laugh at me, seeing me as a pathetic weakling. I couldn’t take anymore, so I’d done what my father had said. Son, stand up to them, confront each bully alone and then you’ll see who the real weaklings are.

And that’s what I had done. And I never had anymore trouble from those lads again.

    “Why don’t you tell the police where you’ve put the body. Did you do inhumane things too here?” 

    They even saw silence as a form of guilt. I’d bitten my tongue enough times before. I stepped into the road and made my way towards him.

    “Hey,” I said from the top of my lungs. “Tuppence was the love of my life, you know like everyone else Mike that I would never harm her.”

    “The circumstances around her disappearance are all too strange, it was just the both of you together when it happened. So come on man, what did you do to my sister?”

    I had no answer, the mystery was just as mysterious. I wanted to know what had happened to my sweet Tuppence.

“Look Mike I’ve never lied to you, it’s been nothing but the truth. One minute Tuppence was there, I’d left her for a short while — a couple of minutes max — and then when I returned, she was nowhere to be seen.”

    “The whole family doesn't believe you, even the whole town disbelieves you. It was just you and her and nobody else for miles, so you can see why we’re struggling here.”

    I just stared at my brother-in-law for a split second and then walked away. In his eyes, in the eyes of Tuppence’s family and the whole town, I was guilty. And I had to leave. But I wanted to try one more time, to explain, to bring peace and understanding.

    This is the most daunting experience, as I’m with Tuppence’s family. My attempts to engage with them are proving difficult as all I can see is raging eyes.

“Please believe me when I say that me and Tuppence went into the countryside for a picnic. We were happy she did nothing but smile as we’d laughed and joked. She kept telling me how the river was beautiful and that she wanted to swim in it. We found a safe place to get in where the reeds wouldn’t wrap around our feet and drag us down to the river bed. Tuppence went into the river while I double checked that the car was locked but, when I went to join her she was nowhere to be seen. I did not drown Tuppence in the river.”

The police underwater search unit had not found her. I was questioned by the police and then released. But her family thought otherwise. No I had not buried the body nor had I let the currents take her down the river to be lost forever.

So I had to leave.

*

It’s peaceful here in the new town, I’m the stranger in the vicinity but the people here are welcoming. Friends are far and few between, there’s no love in my life, I’m not saying there never will be, I just don’t know yet.

Tuppence is forever in my heart and I’m sure I am in hers, wherever she may be. I don’t want to say she’s dead but, I can’t think of it in any other way, somehow the river must have taken her. Or did she allow the river to take her? I will never know that, and that will always haunt me. Even the fact that am I guilty for not seeing that perhaps she wasn’t happy in life? 

Today would have been our third anniversary, instead of me here alone I should be in her company, I still want her company but all I experience is the thoughts that I tried to leave behind but they still plague me, torment me. This misconception of guilt has bonded itself to me, there’s no escape here for me. It is like I am imprisoned for a wrong doing that I’m branded for doing. If only Tuppence’s mystery could show, so this nightmare could go, then I shall live in peace.

I suddenly snapped out of my reverie by the soft kind voice of a waitress as I sat comfortably at a table in the coffee shop.

“Was it a flat white or latte sir?” Said the waitress.

“I’ll have a flat white and the cooked breakfast please,” I replied.

This is my fourth time in this coffee shop, the staff are kind and the coffee is good and for the food, sublime. But the enjoyment of the coffee and food doesn’t end there for me, today I have company joining me for breakfast. 

I hope she will be the turning point in my life, where the past can be left behind.

I watch another waitress bring my coffee to the table, she smiles and sits beside me.

"I've clocked off now, I thought you'd never come, Joey. Does all my horrible, controlling family believe I'm dead?"

"Yes Tuppence, we can start a fresh new life together where no one disapproves of us."