The White Lie (54 page)

His wife had always wanted to go riding in Argentina, Pip said. The diver was encouraging him, beginning to suggest places to stay, and Pip took his phone out of his pocket and began making notes. He wasn’t really thinking of how this chatter might appear to onlookers. He was doing it protectively of Ottilie, masking her talking to me, what once was me, producing a sort of white noise that furnished her with privacy. She was sitting beside the green plastic, one hand placed upon it.

She was looking down at me. She was looking right at me, her hand on my forehead as if I were a child ill in bed. I was in the green package. I was there. I was looking back at her, her sad face looking down. Part of me. Part of there. “I’m so glad, I’m so relieved to see you again,” she said. “I knew that Alan was lying, that Joan was wrong. I knew it. I knew you wouldn’t leave me, say nothing to me ever again, edit me out of your life and carry on. I knew they were wrong. I’m so relieved. I love you so much.”

Everything else I can deal with. I can forgive.

And now I must sleep.

About the Author

A
NDREA
G
ILLIES
has worked as a writer and editor. She was praised by the
New York Times
as a “gorgeous writer” for her first book, the memoir
Keeper,
which won the Orwell Prize and the Wellcome Trust Book Prize.