December 2015

< It was another sleepless night; I have got kind of used to the odd noises that resonate inside this old building. Not only the clicks and clangs from the ageing pipework, but the guys who shout out indecipherable nonsense in their sleep, fighting their own personal demons, but last night I had so much crammed inside my head that it was impossible to relax.

It is two days before Christmas. The first, and hopefully last Christmas that I will spend away from my family and loved ones. Olivia is visiting later today and I have mixed emotions. Of course, I want to see her, but more importantly, I want to see if she has changed in any way and whether what she is being expected to do in her new life has altered her personality or our relationship. But most of all I want to find out if she can forgive me if she still loves me.

I skipped breakfast; I couldn’t bear to be around all those judging faces. As hypocritical as it sounds, I couldn't stand to be amongst those who were aware of my part in the betrayal to save my own skin.

A lit plastic Christmas tree stood in the far corner of the visiting room with ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful,’ playing from a small CD player on the ground next to it. Happy Christmas. >

***

Olivia was the last to enter the room. I remember this ghastly feeling of lost hope as I watched impatiently as one by one the people filtered in through the door, crossing the line between the real world and hell. And then nothing. There was this discernible gap of maybe a full minute where I stared at the open door, convincing myself that she wasn’t coming, that she had changed her mind and given up on me. The relief as she frantically entered the room couldn’t be over-exaggerated, even if she was looking noticeably frazzled and disoriented.

“Are you okay,” she asked as she sat opposite me catching her breath and looking decidedly edgy.

“Yeah, but more importantly, are you?”

“Why?” she answered testily, staring across at me just like she did when I forgot our second wedding anniversary, her expression a mixture of disbelief and disappointment as she waited for the penny to drop. Finally, I made the connection and felt my heart sink at the realisation that not only was she prostituting herself for me, but now she was breaking the law. It hadn’t taken them long to convert her into their drug mule.

We acted out the now well-established routine, me asking all the expected questions, how are the kids, my parents, your parents, the house, your job and then finally, you?  We were both so obviously aware of the elephant in the room, but neither of us appeared to ha have the courage to bring it up.

I lent in close across the table until barely six inches separated us. She knew what I was going to ask before the words had left my mouth, a single silent tear breaking the mask and falling from her right eye, I watched it slowly trace a line down over her cheek, towards the corner of her trembling bottom lip.

“Do they hurt you?” I asked. To me, the question seemed obvious but appeared to catch her off guard. I could see her working out what to say, writing the words in her head, deciding whether to tell me the whole truth, water it down or say nothing at all.

“No.  No, they don’t.” ‘They.’  She had said ‘they,’ as in more than one. Not for the first time, my thoughts drifted back to the short film of Andrew Garvey's wife, recalling her crazed almost demonic response to what she was experiencing, drawing an unexpected need for me to know more. The curiosity became overwhelming, I wanted to know what that was like, what they did, how she reacted, was it good, did she enjoyed it. Did they make her cum.

Quickly I cast my eyes around the room searching for eavesdroppers. At the far end of my row was one of Dolan’s stooges, he was there for one reason and one reason only: to make sure I was being a good boy and following orders. Olivia had spoken in such hushed tones that I doubted if anyone could have heard anything she said, but to anyone observing us then the emotion in our body language was loud and clear.

“They?” I asked, using the little information that I had.

“Yes.” She replied,

“How many?” I pushed, judging her expression, her eyes cast down towards the tabletop, unable to look at me. I could see her swallowing hard and inwardly cursing her choice of word.

“There are normally three of them,” she began, as her index finger began to draw invisible lazy circles on the polished wood, “one is a woman, she does my makeup and chooses what I wear, and then there are two men.” She paused, raising her eyes toward mine. I guess she was hoping that that would be enough to satisfy my curiosity.

“Livy,” I whispered, seeing in her expression how much pressure and discomfort was weighing down on her.

“One of them always films, he has a camera or a phone they switch over while the other… well you know.” I did, or at least I thought I did. I could picture a clear scene in my mind, the conversation between the three strangers as she complied. “It’s all very…organised I suppose. They call in advance, make sure the kids aren’t at home, then well… wham bam.” The strange almost comedic delivery of those last two words wasn’t lost on either of us, and for the briefest of moments the world stopped.

Without warning a calmness seeped into our souls, it was like the old days, we were just two people sitting across a table, the walls of this room unaccountably replaced by that of Gino's coffee house in the old town. We looked at each other and began to laugh. We laughed out loud for the first time in what seemed like forever, lost in the ridiculousness of the situation that we both found ourselves in. Then just as suddenly as it had begun, it vanished, fading slowly like the sun going down over the horizon.

There was a question that I wanted to ask, and I have to confess that my heart was divided, but some masochistic tendency deep inside of me continued to push my thought to the point where I could think of little else. This pursuit for information had become almost an obsession, I needed to know the truth, I needed to know no matter how painful the result would be.

The question was there, right there on the tip of my tongue, the words so close to exiting my lips that I could almost taste them. I needed to know if she gained any pleasure from all this, if Dolan’s statement about addiction and infatuation was in fact true, a part of me wanting her to be repulsed, to be appalled by what she was doing, but bizarrely another part, the larger part wanted her to consent to it, to embrace it, to welcome and relish it. I never did ask the question, Instead, I gazed hopelessly across the table at her face, her sad beautiful face that I know so well.

There was this moment as the guard called time, and amongst the noise of scraping chairs and sad goodbyes, Shakin’ Stevens began to sing ‘Merry Christmas Everyone.’ As everybody was leaving, going home to enjoy their family Christmas, it was playing out the saddest soundtrack of all.

She could read me as she always could. She knew exactly what was going through my mind and regardless of how painful it would be, what I wanted to hear. As we stood, her eyes again began to fill with soft tears, they collected on the bottom rim and eyelashes, threatening to but not quite spilling over.

“I love you,” she silently mouthed before adding in a muted whisper, “I always will; you need to know that. Regardless of whatever happens or what you hear and the shame that comes after, I always will.”

Looking back, the memory of her saying Merry Christmas to me and leaving the room is so vivid. In life, there are moments, tiny snapshots where you are fully aware of its importance. In the months that followed it fades, you blank it off but it is always there buried in the depths of your mind.