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If someone were to ask me 'Would you turn back the clock?' I'd like to think I'd say no. That it's always better, after all, to know the truth. But I know myself. And I know that in reality, if I could change things, I would. I wouldn't have gone into the shed at Ben's allotment. I wouldn't have wandered around in my post-golden wedding anniversary dazed happiness. I wouldn't have found the box tucked away at the back under an old cloth. And I most certainly wouldn't have read those letters.
There were dozens upon dozens of them stacked together in neat piles in date order. As I sat there and read one after another, confusion led to anger. Then anger led to a pain which gripped me so hard that I felt as though all the air had been punched out of my lungs. One letter had been written every month since August 1951; not a single one had been missed. They had begun exactly two years before Ben and I had met. I sat there for what felt like hours in the allotment amidst the elderflower and the runner beans and I wept like I've never wept before. Wept for all those years of deceit. All those years of thinking I knew my husband better than I knew myself. I was wrong.
When Ben returned the next day, as soon as he walked in the front door, I took him by the hand and led him into the living room. “Christina, what are you…?” Putting a finger to my lips, I silenced him. He sat down on the sofa and I put on the video of our Golden Wedding anniversary party. There were our grandchildren flinging their tiny arms around us and squirming as Ben tickled them. There we were cutting the cake with our names emblazoned in icing across it. And there we were at the end of the night, my cheeks glowing from all the champagne. Just the two of us, dancing cheek to cheek. The song we had danced to on our wedding night.
As I watched, I felt tears streaming down my face. Ben looked at me in surprise. No doubt he thought I was being sentimental. He clasped my shoulders with his arm. I don't know why, but I let him. At the end of the video, the screen blurred. I reached into my bag and pulled out a letter - the one that had wounded me the most. When he saw what lay in my hands, he looked as though he'd been slapped in the face. Utterly stunned. He slowly let his arm drop away from my shoulders and started to ask me where I'd got it from, but his words trailed off. I started to read the letter. “Don't Chris…” he implored me. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, but I knew I had to confront him.
August 17th 1953
My darling Freya,
There's no easy way to say this, so I have to tell you immediately. I've met someone. Her name's Christina. I didn't tell you about her before because I didn't know how to. She's a lovely girl, I know you'd like her. She's a nurse and she's ever so sweet and kind. Freya, I'm going to ask her to marry me. I can't tell you what a difficult decision this has been for me. How many nights I've spent torturing myself, asking if I'm being untrue to you. But everyone keeps telling me I need to move on. That Christina may be the only chance I have of being happy again. But Freya, I want you to understand that she isn't substituting you. That I still love you with all my heart and I'll never stop loving you. Nothing will ever change the way I feel for you - not Christina or anything else. Of that, you have my word.
I love you,
Ben
I don't know how I managed to get through the letter, but somehow I did. After I'd finished, I looked up. The expression on Ben's face was one that I had never seen before - not in the fifty two years of knowing him. He looked as though he was, quite literally, in agony. His eyes had glazed over and he was clenching the muscles in his forehead so tightly that I could see threads of purple veins running down both sides of his face. Gradually, I urged him to fill in all the gaps. To tie off the loose ends of my question marks. And that was how I came to learn more of his childhood sweetheart Freya, whom he was engaged to be married to. Of this spirit from the past who'd drowned off the south coast of France that hot summer of 1951.
Ben's features had softened and tears were running down his face. Instinctively, I put out my finger and caught a drop from his cheek, holding it up to the sunlight that was streaming in through the bay windows. He was trying to talk, to tell me more. But every time he opened his mouth to do so, he choked. So I talked instead. I asked him if he had to choose, would he bring Freya back from the dead or would he remain with me. Words strangled by his sobs were fighting their way out. “Chris…how can you ask me that…it's not the same...you mean the world to me. I can't compare it…don't ask me that, Chris.”
“Answer me, Ben.”
He didn't need to. His eyes said it all. I know one could argue that asking my husband to choose between me and a ghost was senseless. But memory can be so powerful it can engulf you and distort one's present reality.
I couldn't bear to look at him for a minute longer. I stood up and walked towards the front door, leaving Ben sitting on the sofa, softly weeping.
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