his hand and touched the cheek where Lorna had placed her last kiss to him which was now wet from his own tears. Their goodbye had been bittersweet. Lorna was accepting and dignified, he had no reason to believe that she was hurting. Could his ending their affair have driven her to take her own life? Charles wouldn’t believe it. Lorna Thomas was a happy, stable young woman. Whatever made her so desperate that so no longer wanted to go on living, it couldn’t have been him.
Charles finished his glass of scotch and felt it drop down into the hole which had formed inside him. A hole so cavernous and empty that he knew he would never be able to fill it. He now lived in a world where Lorna did not exist and he felt inside that a part of himself had died with her.
And these wounds won’t seem to heal
Charles awoke as he always did, hot and panting, staring sightlessly in to the empty darkness of his bedroom. The sheets around him were soaked from his sweat.
With his heart pounding frantically in his chest, he tried to remind himself that it was all just a nightmare, that everything was fine. But in his dreams he saw her, falling away from him and no matter how hard he tried, how far he stretched, he couldn’t catch her.
Six months had passed since Lorna’s tragic death. Charles Lloyd had watched the seasons change twice over with an indifferent eye. He felt detached from the world around him, lost. Not that anyone could notice; outwardly he appeared his usual charismatic self, smiling for the cameras, shaking hands and continuing to represent his country as best he could. Internally, he was a mess.
Physically, Lorna was gone, but she haunted Charles’ dreams as she had done since he decided to end their affair. However, she now plagued his sleep with more ferocity, meaning that Charles was robbed of the little rest he managed to get. The moment he closed his eyes and felt blissfully transported from the reality where he felt constant pain, she would come to him through the darkness. It was always the same dream; Charles forever trapped in the moment when she kissed him goodbye on the cheek in a hotel room. However, in his dream she then doubles over in pain and collapses to the floor, dying right before his eyes. Unable to witness her demise, he tries to force himself to wake. Just before Lorna gasps her last breath he awakens in his bed, the sheets sodden from his sweat.
Elaine had grown so tired of his ‘night terrors’ that she had relocated him to the spare bedroom, which suited Charles just fine. He felt like a fraud around his wife, mourning for another woman and struggling to even look her in the eye when they talked.
Charles assumed that his nightmares were just his way of exorcising any guilt he was harbouring about Lorna’s suicide. Surreptitiously, he had gotten hold of the police report from Lorna’s crash. She had driven her car into a tree and died immediately on impact. Charles wanted to believe that it was an accident, but the words were there for him to see in stark black and white, cold and devoid of emotion in their summary of the situation; verdict, death by deliberate means. Suicide. As Deputy Prime Minister, Charles wielded certain powers; he could alter the law, distribute the national budget as he and his Cabinet deemed fit, but he lacked the power he truly needed – the ability to turn back time. He wanted to return to that moment in the hotel room and not hide behind his cowardice. He wished he’d had the strength to be truthful with Lorna and to tell her that he loved her.
What troubled Charles more than Lorna’s passing was the fact that he had never uttered those three immortal words to her. Their love for one another was assumed but never vocalised and regret hung heavy around the Deputy Prime Minister’s neck. He felt as though he wore the missed opportunity like a scarlet letter and Lorna continued to visit him at night, reminding him, tormenting him, about what could have been.
‘Another bad night?’ Elaine asked over breakfast one typical Sunday morning. Despite the early hour, her hair was already tidied into a bun, a fresh coating of lipstick on her lips. Her question was delivered tersely from behind her artificially crimson lips.
‘Yes,’ Charles said wearily, rubbing his eyes with his hand.
‘We really need to do something about it, it simply can’t go on. Look at you, you look a fright! You need to be projecting a certain image and haggard isn’t it!’ Elaine berated him as she would a naughty child; there was no concern in her voice.
‘Perhaps I’ll call in a doctor.’ Charles didn’t even look up as he spoke, instead stabbing half-heartedly at the boiled egg his wife had prepared for him.
‘That sounds like a good idea; I’ll call and arrange for them to visit you first thing tomorrow.’
Charles’ relationship with Elaine reminded him of his relationship with Faye. Both were formal and restricted. His conversations with Elaine resembled those he had with his assistant at work, detailing things that needed to be done, events which required his attendance. They didn’t discuss their feelings as though it were forbidden to do so. Both Charles and Elaine came from families who frowned upon displays of affection as ‘frivolous’. To them, a marriage was very much a business partnership and should be approached as such. You did not marry for love, you married to better yourself, or so Charles had always been led to believe.
For many years, he assumed that love existed only in Hollywood movies. When an actor would declare to his on-screen love that he couldn’t live without her, Charles would look on, bemused by such passionate feelings. He had never felt like that towards Elaine. He cared for her, certainly, but not to such extremes that his very existence would end if she were to leave him. He had a platonic marriage, as his father and his father before him had. It was considered normal and Charles had never questioned it. Until Lorna.
‘Charles!’ Elaine exclaimed in shock when her husband suddenly smashed the egg upon his plate with his fist.
Charles looked at her, his face contorted with anger and droplets of yellow yolk falling from his hand which was still clenched in a fist.
‘I’m sorry darling,’ he suddenly shook his head as if clearing away the demon which had briefly consumed him, and began wiping his hand clean with a nearby napkin. He went through the motions, apologising, claiming that he didn’t know what had come over him, attributing it to his lack of sleep. But Charles knew what was wrong.
Charles Lloyd was angry. He was angry and he was hurt. The great love of his life was gone. Like the Shakespearian tragedies which existed in his school books, he had found true love and it had ended in tragedy. Left alone in a world without Lorna, he felt trapped and disillusioned.
‘Look at the mess,’ Elaine berated her husband and his sudden impulse to destroy his breakfast. ‘Honestly, Charles, these past few months I don’t know what has come over you but I do not like it.’
‘I’m sorry, darling, really I am. The stresses of the job, they can be most trying.’
‘I’m aware that with great power comes great responsibility. You forget that I was bred from a family where all the women marry great men. Though none as great as mine,’ Elaine smiled fondly at her husband, who, even with bags hanging beneath his eyes, was still handsome. She loved how when she hung on his arm at events she was the envy of most women and she enjoyed gloating to anyone who would listen about his job and all the trappings that came with it. His job became her calling card, to the point where most of her sentences began with, ‘Oh my husband, the Deputy Prime Minister.’ It was with a mixture of pride and arrogance that she so often divulged information about his position. But she hid behind his job, as did Charles.
‘No, we don’t have time for children,’ she would tell family and friends. ‘Charles is simply too busy, he’s the Deputy Prime Minister after all. And when he’s done ruling the country it will be too late to start a family of our own. It’s a price I’ve had to pay for being married to a man at the top.’ People would roll their eyes, not knowing that Elaine was actually barren and could not bare children. The revelation had nearly destroyed her at the start of her marriage to Charles. But, ever the gentleman, he told her that they would be enough for each other, that children