The ceremony started very late, perhaps fitting for a man who never needed to be anywhere on time. The last people to come in were Lara, Simon, and a man I didn’t recognise, who took Lara’s arm when she stepped into the church and rubbed her shoulder reassuringly. Simon frowned slightly, and walked behind them as they made their way to the front where a surprisingly young vicar awaited them.
Lara looked nothing like the broken woman that Lee had made her out to be. She walked with her back straight, in a burgundy trouser suit and bright pink shoes which, on any other day, I’d have been tempted to ask her the origins of. The man who accompanied her towards the altar was almost the opposite of her husband. Tall, slim, wearing a well-cut but slightly crumpled charcoal suit and good shoes. He had brown hair flecked with grey and wore small, rimmed glasses. He wouldn’t have stood out anywhere else, but in here the contrast was striking. He looked like a professor in a room full of wheeler-dealers.
The service was boring, traditional, hymns and readings, blah blah. The casket sat at the front, draped in a gold silk scarf, and people stood by it to talk about how Lee was a true character, the life and soul of any party. It was all platitudes, there was nothing said that spoke to his real qualities as a person. When the last hymn was done, the vicar stood up to give a final address, but he faltered and I craned my neck to see what was happening. Lara had stood up, said something to him and walked over to the casket. The vicar sat back down and there was a moment of silence while the congregation waited for Lara to speak. She stood there for a second, and smoothed down her trousers with her hands, looking slightly ill at ease. I began to realise that this wasn’t planned, and checked the programme again for any mention of the grieving widow. Nothing. Oh boy.
‘Thank you all for coming,’ she said quietly. ‘My husband would’ve enjoyed being told how fantastic he was by so many people.’ There was muted laughter. ‘But he wasn’t really though, was he? Sure he was up for a night out. Many nights out actually. Any. But he wasn’t a decent human being by anyone’s definition. You liked him because he paid the bill at the end of the night, or because he invested in your companies, brought you on holidays, maybe even just because he might do one of those things. But I lived with him, and dealt with his selfishness and his disrespect. Daily. It was daily. For years.’ She looked down at the coffin at her side. ‘I was young when we met, too young really. And he was charming, but you all know how charming he could be, don’t you? How easy it was to ignore his worst instincts. But unchecked, they grew and grew, didn’t they? When our daughter died, Lee’s reaction was to go on a three-day bender, eventually coming home – high – with a 19-year-old Latvian girl wearing hot pants and asking our housekeeper to make them breakfast. I put it down to grief, stupid as it sounds. But when our son died years later, he did something similar. You’ve got to give him credit for consistency. It turns out he was a cruel and heartless person with a good front. But I was worse in a way. Because I stayed with him and enabled his behaviour. And now he’s dead, by his own hand. Dead through the constant pursuit of his own pleasure. And I can’t stand here and listen to his life being totally rewritten. You can’t get anything out of him now, so stop. Just stop.’
Lara shook slightly, with adrenaline I thought, not sadness. People were bowing their heads and biting their lips. The awkwardness was all-encompassing. It was wonderful. The tall man in glasses stood up and took her hand, and together they walked down the aisle and out of the church. If I could’ve clapped, I would have. Instead, I followed them out as the vicar stood up and desperately attempted to regroup. Outside, Lara and the professor type were locked in a tight hug. I heard him shower her with praise, stroking her hair and kissing her cheek. She looked up and gave a small watery smile before they walked down the steps together and got into a waiting Mercedes. I knew then, as I watched the car pull out and drive off, that I would let her be. Enough had been taken from her, by Lee, by me. The women who managed to get themselves ensnared by this family weren’t my main target. My own mother was one of them, after all. She might never know it, but Lara saved her own life that day.
CHAPTER NINE
Oscar Wilde wrote De Profundis in the last three months of his two-year jail stint. It’s much lauded – a love letter （of sorts） to Lord Alfred Douglas in which he alternately rails against and embraces his subject. It’s Oscar Wilde, so I daresay it has its merits （his supposed deathbed line, ‘This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do,’ is undeniably good）， but he was also an educated white man, so the bar for genius isn’t set impossibly high here.