The White House - Book 6, The Porth Kerensa Series

Author's note and alternative ending

I wrote two endings to this story, although if I'm honest there's another two brewing in my brain as well but I've resisted the urge to write them. However for my own amusement and curiosity I decided to share the other ending with you all.

I'd love to hear which one you prefer.

Alternative Epilogue

I can feel James touching me. His hands are warm when he clasps mine, gently, between his and I yearn for the comfort and security I used to experience when he touched me. However, the sensation of his skin against mine stirs nothing in me anymore and the heat of his breath against my ear evokes nothing except the memory of what is now absent. I might as well not be here. I have heard the doctors talk in hushed tones around my hospital bed; I have heard the words ‘broken spine’ and ‘coma’, and I have heard them say they think I will slip away soon. But it’s not soon enough. I should have died that night. I wish I had.

I remember telling James, many years ago, that the happiness he gave me made me feel light as a feather; as if I could drift away up into the sky and scud along with the clouds on a gentle breeze. He had laughed and tightened his hold on my hand, telling me that he would make sure he never let me go. More and more I remember that conversation and I wish I was a helium balloon now, free and carried aloft by the wind of change that buffets at me. If I could cut the ties that tether me I would willingly float away from there in an instant.

It always sounds as if his voice is muffled and distant, as if he’s trapped behind a thick pane of glass and every time he visits me I find myself wondering what’s wrong and if anyone will help him. Until I remember again that it is me who’s trapped. He sits next to me; holding my hand and he talks about the weather, local events going on the village and the friends he has made. He talks even though he has no idea whether I can hear him or not.

I lie there with my conscious mind closed to the world, immobile and listening, but unable to respond and I wonder if he hopes that I will die soon. Does he think it’s unfair that even now I am still clinging to life and holding on to a part of him that he cannot free until I die? Does he fall asleep every night, hoping that the morning will bring a phone call from the hospital informing him I slipped, gently, away?

But he does not talk about himself, or how he feels.

When he has finally run out of generic subjects that won’t hurt either of us he talks about the child; a gasping little boy that they lifted from my inert crippled body. They called him a miracle and James named him Nathan because it meant God’s Gift. He says he is growing bigger and brighter every day, despite his difficult premature start and his brave fight for life. He tells me he is babbling sounds, sitting upright on his own and that he recognises the people around him. He talks about his lovely silky brown hair, the smile which lights up any room he is in and his blue-eyed gaze that make my mother melt.

I know he is about to leave for he is giving me his usual goodbye speech. He says he misses and loves me and he tells me to find my way back; to fight and never give in. His voice washes over me, but it means nothing to me here in my muted dark world. He must know that the battle has been fought and lost. I am trapped here, aware of the long months that have passed and the lack of hope in the doctors whispered conferences over my immobile broken body. There is no choice anymore, the time for fighting for survival is gone and I want to break free of my moorings and float to freedom.

I am a prisoner alone in a dark jail that I built for myself. I am held here by a bind I cannot break and that is my punishment. Memories of how happy I used to be with James wash over me like a gentle rainfall. From the first moment I met him through to those last years, the horrible things we said to one another and even that dreadful night. The promises we made and the lies we told, all of them vivid in my mind. Those are the ties, those are the lies and I wonder where the truth went, or if it was ever there at all.

James, the only man I ever loved, says goodbye and promises he’ll see me soon. I wish I could tell him to leave me here and never come back, but now he speaks and I cannot answer him. I will never get the chance to speak to him again; everything that can be said has been, and it doesn’t matter now how often he stands next to me whispering that he’ll always love me and he knows I can recover from my tragic accident.

None of it matters.

I can never tell him why I did what I did and now I have to lie here in this endless black world, knowing he will live his life bringing up a child that I fear. Nathan Ellis Morgan is the little boy from my dreams; the little boy who will walk the promenade in the sunshine, holding hands with his father whilst eating an ice cream.

He is the child of evil.

Oh, how I long for peace with Val and the babies I loved and lost before, but I don’t think a woman like me can find peace. I am a woman who failed miserably at everything she ever tried to do.  I am a woman who tried to kill her child and herself. I am a woman who does not deserve peace.

I know that now.

The End...

Mezmerised