Nine Lives Read Online Free Page A

felt like a new prisoner. I was led into a long corridor lined with booths. I had to sit facing a glass partition and wait for Donald to appear behind it.
    â€˜Use the phone to talk,’ the warder said, acknowledging me as a first-timer. ‘You’ll get used to it.’
    I’ll have plenty of time to accustom myself, I thought. Donald was in for life. But would I keep visiting him, month after month, dissembling on a telephone line? Or would I cut my losses? Take the advice of Donald’s lawyer and move to another place? But I’d only do that if I was convinced my Donald was a murderer. And personally, I don’t have any proof.
    I waited for Donald to appear, and when he did, shortly afterwards, I was struck by how well he looked. Prison suited him. He’d put on a little weight and though his hair was closely shaven, he looked a lot younger. An innocent face, I thought, a claim that he confirmed immediately as he picked up the phone.
    â€˜I’m innocent,’ he said, as he always did. ‘You believe that, don’t you?’
    I nodded into the phone.
    He pressed his hand over the partition and I sensed that I had to cover it with my own. He smiled and so did I. I loved that glass wall. It meant he couldn’t embrace me or touch me in any way. All he could savour was the print of my hand, as lustful as a kiss through a wooden panel. But there was more to the glass than the distance it entailed. Much more. It gave me a sudden sense of freedom. I was untouchable, so I could say anything I wanted. All thequestions I’d been too timid to ask in our many years together could now be released without fear of irritated response.
    â€˜D’you have any other visitors?’ I dared to ask. ‘Your parents?’ He shook his head over the phone.
    â€˜Dead,’ he said. ‘Both of them.’ It had taken all those years of co-habitation, and a glass partition, to inform me that my husband was an orphan.
    â€˜Any brothers? Sisters?’ I was becoming bold.
    â€˜No. I’m an only,’ he said.
    At last he had spoken. That mouth of his, that after almost thirty years of marriage had been clammed shut on such basic information, had now, with the shield of a glass partition, suddenly opened. It was not so much the news itself that astonished me; it was the realisation that I had been so accepting of his silence and for so long – that I had never questioned his reserve, his reticence. I had simply acknowledged him as a dark horse. Yet I thought I knew him, and knew him well, but now I understood that I knew nothing of the
core
of him and I had made do with his simple outline.
    â€˜You must have been lonely as a child,’ I said.
    He shrugged. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
    The glass partition clearly prescribed limits. But I would not stop trying to make him out. I would persist, I decided. Next time, I’d visit him as long as I needed. As long as I needed to ferret out the nub of him and perhaps begin to fathom what was, until now, beyond my understanding. Through a glass darkly, I would begin to unravel my doubts.
    â€˜I would like to see the boys,’ he said.
    I had no answer to that one. They had written him off and he was unlikely to see them ever again.
    â€˜They think I’m guilty, don’t they?’ he said.
    Again I had no answer. They, and the twelve jurors, good and true, I thought, along with thousands of others. What was so odd about me that I couldn’t go along with the majority verdict? I suppose it was pride. For how could I admit to having lived with and loved such a man? It was vanity, the flipside of my self-contempt. But I would persevere. I would come again and again. At the end of that telephone line, I would wrench out of him all that he was loath to tell me. I would wring him dry.
    â€˜You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,’ he said.
    At that moment, I could have shattered