This is also probably a good place to tell you that I love you. I do and I always will, but love and like are two very different things, Mother. And so, do I like you? Again, the rather inadequate answer is: most of the time.
I want to talk to you about Merrin. That name that has not passed our lips in conversation from that day to this. Merrin Kellow.
I think back to that summer, less than three years ago, but a lifetime too. I was a na?ve kid, but who isn’t at twenty-two? I did, however, feel old enough to make good choices. That was another thing Dad always told me: make good choices – and I did. I chose Merrin. She was sweet and made me laugh and she made me happy. She made me really happy. And now whatever I write with regard to her makes me feel disloyal to Lydia. Darling Lydia, whom I adore and who is the best mum to Noah and Freddie, but life with Merrin would also have been good. Life with Merrin was good! Did you know she was at this hotel? I can’t believe you did, not even you would be that cruel, surely?
I feel again, it’s important to say that I love Lydia. And ours is a good, strong, solid love, but I loved Merrin, too, and she loved me, and you know, Mother, she made me so very happy when I was discovering who I was. She didn’t want anything from me, from us, despite your warnings to the contrary. You were wrong about her, and the way I let her down, guided, encouraged and coerced by you, is something that will haunt me. She deserved better, we both did.
The love that I had for her might have waned, might have dried up or might have bloomed into a whole lifetime of love – who can possibly know? Not me and not you. But you know that feeling, that love that is so all-encompassing it’s like a drunken madness, obsessive and singular – when the prospect of not being with that person is a thought that’s almost unbearable. Well, it was like that. It was everything, and I desperately wanted to find out what came next, but you took that opportunity from us. Should I be thanking you? Because if you hadn’t intervened I might not have met Lydia and my Noah and Freddie would be different or not at all, and those thoughts are as desperate as they are unimaginable to me. But good God, Mum, it was a hard lesson.
I’ve seen Merrin and she is still the same, sweet person; a little shy, but smart and with a warmth and honesty that shines from her. It’s funny, I always think of Port Charles with her in it and yet apparently she has stayed away, away from her home, and all because of what happened. This is a bitter pill for me to swallow because I know that the place is her home far more than it will ever be mine. I guess that’s it. This is what I wanted to say, and a different relationship between us might mean I did not have to write to you, but again, here we are. The whole episode caged us in a thin sheet of awkwardness that I find hard to break out of. If it were easy, I think I would have done so a long, long time ago.
I have decided to leave this letter for you to find after we say goodbye at the end of our stay – and I leave it up to you as to whether you want to discuss it further or, if you prefer, do what the Mortimers are so good at: sweep it under the carpet or tear it into a million pieces and pop it in the fire as if it was never written and as if you had never read it. As dad to Noah and Freddie, I can tell you that I would never meddle in their lives as you have in my mine; would never want to exert such control that it impairs their freedom to think, their freedom to explore, their freedom to choose . . . I want them to choose whomever and whatever they want, Mother, because I think that is real love, love without conditions.
I could go on, but what’s the point? Merrin is still sweet and holds understandable anger, but little malice; she still has so much about her that drew me to her. Our time, our opportunity has of course passed and we both, I am sure, have happy and productive lives, but seeing her has made me ask certain questions: what if? What if I had gone ahead in spite of your dire ultimatum? What if I had packed a bag, married her and moved in with Ben and Heather Kellow? What if I’d chosen to follow my heart and not my head? What if I had chosen her? What then?
All hypothetical, of course, as we will never know, but I want you to know that you did me a great disservice, and her too, and that is a great shame, which I will have to carry always. I hate coming back to Port Charles and rarely do, not only because of the understandable disdain in which the locals hold me, but also because it reminds me of that, the saddest episode I have ever had – it really was – when I was hurting more than I knew was possible and I hurt the girl I loved; because be in no doubt, I loved her. I loved her.
Digby x
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MERRIN
It was the end of a long and exhausting day. With a muddled head and wanting to avoid the corridors and guests, or more specifically, certain guests, Merrin decided to walk the long way to their quarters. She trod the woodland path where damp leaves gathered and the stone flagstones grew a little slippery when rained on. To walk among nature helped still the torrent of intrusive thoughts.
‘Merrin! I’ve not heard that name before, it’s lovely!’
‘I-it’s n-not that common, but I have . . . I have . . . I did hear it before. Once. It reminded me of the sea.’
The branches of the oak and horse chestnut trees formed a canopy that in autumn, with an array of burnished leaves in shades of red through to the palest yellow, was something to behold. It was one of her favourite things: to take her time, idling along and looking up through the branches as the sun peeked through where it could and the leaves moved in the wind to sing to her a rustling sonata. Tonight, she stood at the end of the path and slipped off her shoes and, holding them in her fingers, she placed first one foot and then the other on the cold, damp path, feeling the stresses and worries of the day travel down her legs and disappear through the soles of her feet, worming their way into this little patch of garden behind the castle wall.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out and was delighted to see it was Bella’s number.
‘You’re up late.’ It was nearly midnight.
‘It’s Valentine’s! Of course I’m up late – there are chocolates to eat and champagne to sip! Oh no, wait a minute, that’s just my fantasy life; I’m up because Glynn has diarrhoea and I’ve had to change several leaky nappies. Welcome to my world in all its glamour!’
Merrin laughed. ‘Poor little thing.’
‘Me or the babby?’
‘Both.’
‘I wanted to see if you were okay, after the whole Digby episode. I can’t believe he just turned up like that.’
‘Me neither. I spoke to him,’ she whispered, looking around, checking she was alone.
‘What? How? Where? Oh, my God! What happened?’ All traces of fatigue had gone from her tone and Bella now sounded wide awake.
‘I came out of the cupboard and he was just there in the corridor, alone.’
‘Fuck! Did he try it on?’
‘What? God, no, of course not!’ she tutted. ‘What do you think we are, fifteen?’
‘In my head, yes.’
‘No, it was nothing like that, Bells, it was . . .’ She took her time, picking her way along the path, lit only by the uplights that the gardeners had artfully placed to highlight the magnificent trees. ‘It was strange and surreal. I need to think about it more to see how it’s left me, but right now? It feels like it’s over, done. I don’t have to fear bumping into him, do I? And that’s huge.’