to begin a new year without Meg. The flowers have been placed on her grave, the candles lit in the church and when I awoke this morning, the feeling of dread that had plagued me for weeks had lifted. As I’d put on my linen suit and picked up my briefcase, I was ready to rejoin civilisation and tackle any problems life could throw at me because almost everything has a solution – only death takes away our options. Which makes me wonder how I should respond to this latest dilemma.
I prod the envelope Geoff had dropped back onto my desk after reading the contents. The cream paper is good quality, as you would expect from a solicitor’s office, but if it’s meant to intimidate, it doesn’t. It’s no more than paper and ink, I tell myself as I wait for Jen to step into the office.
‘Geoff said you wanted a word?’
‘You’d better sit down.’
Jen keeps her back straight as she slides into the visitor’s chair. She plays with her fringe which isn’t long enough to hide the furrows on her brow that deepen as her eyes dart from the envelope caught beneath my red lacquered fingernail, across my pristine silk blouse and up to my face. I try to give her a look of reassurance but I can’t quite pull it off.
‘Geoff looks awful,’ she says. ‘Is he OK?’
‘He’s gone in search of some paracetamol.’
Jen makes a move to stand. ‘I have some in my desk. Do you want me to get them?’
‘No, he needs some fresh air anyway. I’d told him not to come into work today but he has to learn his lesson. He can’t drink his way through an entire weekend without facing the consequences. That’s not why I asked you in.’ I pick up the envelope stamped with a large red confidential mark, and prise out a single sheet of paper between a finger and thumb. ‘This is why you’re here.’
I let Jen take the letter but I don’t give her time to read it. ‘It’s some trumped-up solicitor’s clerk representing a certain Lewis Steven Rimmer,’ I tell her, tasting bile as I speak his name. ‘I’ve checked out the firm and they deal mostly with conveyancing so I don’t think we have much to worry about. I presume it’s a friend of Lewis trying to scare us. He’s asking us to cease and desist disparaging his client or they’ll take us to court.’
The letter trembles in Jen’s hand as she scans the contents. ‘He wouldn’t dare.’
‘Of course he wouldn’t,’ I tell her, my voice strong. Lewis Rimmer has taken all he’s going to from my family, and I won’t as much as flinch from this latest attack. ‘To make a case, he would first need to crawl from beneath whatever rock he’s hiding under and admit that he recognised himself in the person I described in the interview.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Carry on with more of the same,’ I say simply. The corners of my lips pull into a smile. ‘I like that we’ve made him uncomfortable. Don’t you?’
‘Of course, but he’s not going to stop at a solicitor’s letter if you upset him again,’ she replies as the letter slips from her grasp. We watch it float onto the desk and Jen gulps down her next breath. ‘Look, Ruth—’
‘This doesn’t change a thing, Jen,’ I tell her. ‘You’ve worked so hard on the relaunch and we’ve got people’s attention again. I don’t care that Lewis is one of them. This letter is another of his games, just like Meg’s note. He could have destroyed all of it but he left enough to make us question ourselves. He could have gone anywhere to escape the backlash but he went to Newcastle, deliberately choosing the university Meg had planned to go to escape him. After messing with her mind, he thought he could mess with ours too.’
Jen chews her lip. ‘Do you think it’s possible he’s changed? Charlie thinks there’s a chance and maybe this letter is Lewis’s way of saying if we leave him alone, he’ll leave us alone.’
‘It’s possible,’ I say, sounding no more convinced than Jen. ‘We both know there are some men who can learn to control their behaviour, but first they have to be willing to acknowledge the damage they’ve done. This isn’t a letter from someone who’s ready to confess his sins. Lewis is still pleading his innocence. He sees himself as the victim, not Meg. He hasn’t changed.’
‘What does Geoff think we should do?’
‘I don’t need to tell you that he hates Lewis as much as I do.’
‘But?’
Although the solicitor’s letter isn’t entirely unexpected, it’s visibly shaken Jen. I doubt she wants to hear what I have to say next, but it won’t come as any more of a surprise to her than it did to me. ‘Geoff mentioned retirement again at the weekend. He wants us to not only close the helpline but sell the business and move to Stratford so we can spend more time with Sean and the girls. It’s a happy picture he paints but I can’t do it.’
‘Is that why you went all out with the interview? You think this is our last chance to save the helpline?’
I swallow the lump in my throat. ‘If it hadn’t aired, I suspect we’d be having an entirely different conversation. I had to do something, Jen. I won’t let Meg go, not without a fight.’
Jen follows my gaze to the photo on the bookcase next to my desk. It was taken many summers ago on a beach in Cornwall and captures a treasured moment of completeness with all four members of the McCoy family. Sean has his arms around my neck while Meg was meant to be propped up on her dad’s knee but she’d decided to dive across the three of us just as the photo was taken. We’re all laughing at her, as was the girl behind the camera.
‘Do you want me to take another photo, Auntie Ruth?’ Jen had asked, eager to get things right.
My niece was only seven and it was her first holiday with us. She had refused to go away with her family to Spain that summer because there had been turbulence during the flight home the year before and she had become hysterical. The intention was to leave her behind with her grandmother, but I wouldn’t have trusted my mother-in-law, God rest her soul, to look after a goldfish, so I’d offered to take Jen with us. The two girls were thrilled, Sean less so.
Jen and I smile at the memories of that holiday and the ones that followed. There were times when it felt like we were a family of five, with Jen and Meg more like sisters. ‘I didn’t know how lucky we were back then,’ I whisper.
‘You can always make new memories with the twins,’ Jen offers.
My smile twists. ‘I know, but Geoff called it walking away. Why would I abandon Meg’s legacy when there are so many questions left unanswered? I have Lewis’s attention now. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.’
Jen doesn’t answer straight away. I can only assume that the threat of legal action continues to play on her mind. ‘Whatever happens, we can’t give up on the helpline,’ she says at last. ‘I won’t walk away either.’
My smile reaches my eyes. ‘And that is the right answer, Jennifer. We might not get as many calls as we’d like but every one we do receive is important. Did you see Alison’s call sheets from Friday? Gemma phoned. Ryan’s been bombarding her with messages.’
Gemma is a very unhappy young woman, and although our main role is simply to listen, all our volunteers have been trained to help our callers recognise a partner’s manipulative behaviours. In the last month, we’ve
