“You’re looking well,” Heather tells Amanda as we sit down in her small living room and they engage in comfortable small talk.
“So,” Amanda says, and clears her throat. “Heather, Catherine here is writing a report on the Plague. A sort of dossier of people’s stories, and she wants to know more about Euan so he’s not just—”
“The beginning,” Heather interrupts, her eyes flashing with anger. Her expression softens and she continues. “He was a lovely man, so he was. We met at school when I was fifteen and he was sixteen. We saw each other for a few months and married two days after I turned sixteen. We saw no reason to wait when we knew we were right for each other.” Heather starts handing around biscuits and I’m struck by how normalized the telling of stories of grief have become in the last two years.
“He always worked on boats and he was meant to be easing down but—”
“Can I ask a question?” I ask, awkwardly interrupting. I’ve read everything I need to know about Euan Fraser in the many newspaper articles about him. I’m not interested in him; he’s not here anymore. I want to know what it feels like to be the widow of Patient Zero.
“Of course.”
“What does it feel like to be in this position? Lots of us have lost our husbands, but I don’t have journalists asking me if my husband could have done anything differently as though he’s responsible for starting the Plague.”
I can feel Amanda tensing beside me. This isn’t what we agreed I would ask.
“I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“People are already talking about it,” I say in my softest, most placating voice. It doesn’t matter. The shutters have come down on Heather’s eyes.
“Why don’t we discuss Donal,” Amanda says firmly, shifting the conversation away from Heather.
“Who’s Donal?” I ask, baffled. Have I missed something? Maybe Donal was one of Heather’s sons?
“Donal Patterson is the man who brought the monkeys to the Isle of Bute along with Euan.”
Oh my God. This is the man Amanda referred to in her interview with Maria Ferreira. There are internet conspiracies about who he is and what he did, although all of these conspiracies assume he is dead.
“Is he alive?”
“He is. He’s immune.”
“Why, what—” I shake my head to get my thoughts in order. “What do you want to tell me about him?”
“Something that the entire world is going to know by the end of the day. In just under an hour it’s going to be announced that Donal Patterson is in prison,” Amanda says calmly. “His trial was carried out in secret under a piece of emergency legislation. The news has been kept secret since Donal was convicted a year ago in order to allow plans to be made.”
“What kind of plans?”
“Plans to prevent people trying to find him and kill him. If he hadn’t imported the monkeys illegally, the Plague might never have started.”
It’s a dizzying thought. “How long was his sentence?”
“Life with a minimum term of eighty years.”
“Not likely to get parole,” Heather adds.
“I can’t believe it was so simple. So stupid,” I say. “Sorry, Heather, but I mean, imported animals, a bit of extra money on the side. That’s what caused all this.”
Heather sniffs but says nothing.
“I’m sorry, it’s just. All of this, the pandemonium and it could have been avoided.” Amanda frowns at me and I know she doesn’t want me to keep talking but it is a simple truth. “None of this had to happen.” It is the most painful sentence I have ever spoken out loud. It wasn’t written in the stars. This wasn’t some unavoidable tragedy I couldn’t swerve. These men made a choice and it led to my husband dying. I can dimly recognize I’m being irrational but still, it’s true. Being in Heather’s house, in Euan’s house, is making it so stark I can’t ignore it. But for these men breaking the law, my husband and son wouldn’t be dead.