Guilty Love (Completed)

Chapter Twenty'Two

"So you said, and it may well be that the Director of Public Prosecutions will decide to change the charge to one of manslaughter, but that isn't my decision." She bit her lip, staring ahead into a bleak future-- there would be a court case, Ritchie would be tried for killing her husband and she would have to give evidence in public, talk about all the things she had desperately tried to hide for so long. She would be accused, condemned, even if she wasn't on trial herself... whatever she said, however loud her protest of innocence, the world would find her guilty of betraying her husband and finally causing his death, and Linzi half accepted that verdict already.

Nobody could blame her as harshly as she blamed herself, she was so ridden by guilt that she didn't really care what happened to her now. "Oh, Barty!" she thought, tears burning behind her lids. "My poor Barty, you didn't deserve this..."

They kept Linzi in hospital for several weeks, she was allowed no visitors at first and was kept heavily sedated, drifting in and out of chaotic dreams, nightmares in which it happened again, over and over, as if she still couldn't believe it was true and was trying to make herself believe it. Things didn't always happen in the right order.

They came in muddled flashes, the helicopter crash, Ritchie's kiss, her own wild response to it, all mixed up in sequence with Barty's outburst, his violence, the moments when she knew he was going to kill her this time and then the blackness that had descended and the awakening to find him dead and Ritchie there with that look of shock on his white, drawn face.

Each time she woke up at that point, sat up in bed staring at nothing, breathing jaggedly, sobbing. Sometimes she hated Ritchie. She wished she had never met him. She could never forgive him for Barty's death. He might not have meant to kill Barty, he might have walked in and found Barty apparently choking her to death and acted without thinking. Logic might tell her that it was unfair to blame Ritchie.... but she did. If it weren't for him Barty would be alive. That was all she could think about. He had grabbed up that candlestick and hit Barty so hard that Barty had died of it.

Sometimes she would give such an anguished cry that a nurse would run into the room, talk soothingly, give Linzi another injection which would send her back to sleep only to have the cycle repeat itself. The dreams, the walking, the crying....

During the second week she spent more time awake sitting up by the window of her room starring out in frozen white-faced silence. She couldn't eat, despite the coaxing of the staff. She couldn't concentrate on any of the magazines or books they brought her. If they put on the television she sat and stared blankly at it without noticing what programme was on at the time.

One day a nurse walked into her room and said, "You have a visitor, Linzi, isn't that nice? Your aunt has come to see you." Linzi stared blankly. "My aunt? I don't have a aunt." The nurse looked unsure. "She says she is your aunt Ella."

"Aunt Ella!"

Linzi's face changed, a faint glimmer of life in her blue eyes. "I'd forgotten her... she isn't really my aunt, she's my father's cousin, and my godmother, I haven't seen her for years, not since my mother's funeral. How did she know I was in hospital?" The nurse gave her an odd glance. "Does it matter? She's come to see you, so shall I send her in?"

Linzi had the vaguest memory of Aunt Ella, she wouldn't have bet on being able to recognise her in the street, but the minute she walked into the room, Linzi knew her with a start of surprise. She was tall for a woman, around five feet eight, well built, wearing a tweed skirt and jacket and a blue blouse, and looked competent and sensible, her fair hair mostly grey now having once been very like Linzi's; a colouring which came from Linzi's father's family. Her blue eyes had faded, too, and were set in a web of laughter-lines.

"Aunt Ella!" Linzi said, her mouth quivering into a smile as the older woman came over to the bed and bent to kiss her cheek. "You haven't changed a bit!"

"Kind of you, and I wish it were true, but I'm a good few years older than when we last met," Aunt Ella gruffly said, sitting down on a chair beside the bed. "How are you? You look like ghost. Are they looking after you properly?" Linzi nodded indifferently. She wouldn't have noticed if the staff hadn't treated her well, but in fact they all went out of their way to try to cheer her up.

Aunt Ella leaned over and patted her hand heavily. "I came as soon as I read the papers, but they wouldn't let me see you then." "Newspapers? It's been in the newspapers?" Shock darkened Linzi's blue eyes. It hadn't occurred to her that the Press would pick up on the story. "What had the newspapers been saying?" she wondered, biting her lip. "You've had a bad time, haven't you?" Aunt Ella said in a suprisingly gentle voice for such a big woman. Linzi stared down at the coverlet on the bed, nervously picking at a loose thread in the weave.

Aunt Ella patted her hand again. "No, set your mind at rest, I'm not here out of curiosity, I shan't ask you any questions about what happened. My only concern is you, my dear. I blame myself for losing touch after your father's death. I am your godmother, after all. I promised your father I'd always take care of you and I didn't, just because I didn't get on with your mother." Linzi remembered then how much her mother had disliked Aunt Ella. Whenever she visited them, her mother had dropped biting comments on her, not always out of earshot.

"I was very fond of your father," Aunt Ella said frankly. "And your mother was a little bit jealous because we were so close. If we hadn't been first cousins, you know, we might have got married, before he met your mother. But in those days first cousins never married, it was frowned upon, so we both married other people and were both very happy. But your mother never quite trusted me." She grinned a little mischievously and Linzi faintly smile, too. "Mum was very possessive," she recalled, and Aunt Ella nodded.

"I know. It was a very happy marriage, just as mine was. My own husband died not long before your father, and maybe that should have brought your mother and me closer together, but it didn't. She was grieving and she resented me because I grieved too. Well, never mind, that's all in the past. I only wish I hadn't let that keep me from getting to know you, but I want to make that up to you. You must be feeling very lonely, but I'm here now, Linzi. You won't have to go through this alone."

"You're very kind," whispered Linzi.

Aunt Ella stayed half an hour, talking to her. "When they let you out of here, do you want to go back to your old home?"

And that cause Linzi to stop from everything she does and stayed put like a doll for a moment.

~~~~~~~~~
Let's let Linzi think of it, should we? 😂
Until the next episode.. muahhhhssss