One Lie

Natalie’s Story

“Why didn’t you stay married?” asked Britt, “Didn’t you love Uncle Martin?” I was entertaining my great niece while her mother was on a business training weekend. Britt was technically a young adult and had started to show an interest in the various marriages and divorces in our family.

“Love,” I responded, preparing for an intense conversation. “Love’s a funny thing. I was so in love with Martin, I lied to the police to protect him.”

Britt’s eyes widened. When you’re young, you can’t imagine the sensible older people you know ever doing anything reckless. “Pleeeaaassse tell me about it!”

Now that I’m old, and Martin’s at death’s door, there’s probably no reason to keep it a secret. “I will, but you have to promise not to tell anyone else in the family.”

She gave some approximation of a scouts’ salute. I don't recall anyone in the family who ever joined the scouts, so I don’t know where she got that from. Probably thought it was something we did in my day.

I told her to make us coffee while I went to fetch my box of mementos of that time. It wasn’t much. Just a picture of Martin and me when we were in college together, a picture of the wedding, and a couple of newspaper cuttings. When we sat back down, I started the story.

“We were in our senior year in college, and we’d been together for more than a year. We were very much in love, we argued about philosophy and politics and religion, we experimented with drugs and sex, it was a very typical college romance.” I showed her the photo, and she stared at it, trying to reconcile the image of two 1970s students with the reality of those same people in their 70s now.

“He was very good looking, if you ignore the hair,” she admitted, “but so were you. I had no idea you used to look like that.”

I glared at her and pretended to swat at her head. “So you think I was always a dried-up old hag? Explain to me again why I’m opening up my heart for your amusement?”

Britt squinted at me in a slightly contrite manner, and said “Would you like a slice of cake? I’ll promise to listen quietly.”

I accepted the slice of lemon drizzle cake (it was heavenly – some things taste so much better as you get older). After waiting a few minutes to make her suffer, I continued the story. “We were in our final semester, and of course, we’d both started to think about what would happen next. We were very happy together, and our sex life was great, but did we want to commit to staying together after we graduated? I did. I was so in love with him, and I couldn’t think of any reason not to settle down. He wasn’t sure. He felt that he hadn’t had enough time to ‘find himself’ – I assumed he meant to sow some wild oats – and he wanted to take a break for a few months while we potentially settled into jobs in different cities. We had a screaming match while we were drinking at home on a Friday night.”

Britt was nodding sagely. “Mom and I have had that conversation a few times,” she admitted grimly. “She is very definite about not committing to someone for life before living a bit more.”

I managed not to tell her that her mother had done exactly that and paid the price for it several times. That’s Jasmine’s story to tell, not mine.

“Anyhow, Martin and I had this huge fight and he stormed out. There were several bottles of really cheap wine, and I drank most of them while I cried. I passed out in the bedroom fully dressed with a bottle in my hand. I thought our relationship was over, and he’d never come back. You always think the most dramatic outcome is the likeliest at that age – sorry, your age!”

Britt had had her share of drama. “But surely you’d had fights like that before?”

“Yes, of course, but never while we were talking about our future. It just seemed so final. Everyone tells you that before getting married, you should talk about everything and see if there are any deal-breakers that you can’t get past. I thought that was what had happened.” Even now, I felt a wave of sadness, remembering that long-ago night. I thought my heart was breaking. Maybe it was. The idea that he had walked out of my life and would never return was more than I could bear.

Britt was fully engaged in the story now. I wondered if she had a similar experience that she hadn’t shared with me.

I sighed. “But he did come back. Some time during the night he came in, and we talked, and he took care of me while I vomited my guts up. It was all a haze when I finally woke up properly at lunchtime. He was very serious, and he made some soup and a sandwich to help settle my stomach. While I ate that, he said something I’ll never forget. ‘Nat, you know I love you. I’m sorry I was such a shit to you yesterday. Of course we should stick together. Let’s get married right after graduation, while our families are here.’”

I smiled at that hokey memory. It wouldn’t make it into a Lifetime movie today, but at the time, it was the most romantic thing I could imagine. I fell into his arms and he hugged me close and I cried some more, but this time it was because I was so relieved and happy. We spent the rest of the weekend constantly in each other’s embrace. I showed her the photo from our wedding later that year.

“So if that all ended happily, what does it have to do with why you didn’t stay married?” Britt was like a terrier when she was after information.

“Well, when we went to classes on Monday, everyone was talking about Sandy, a student who’d disappeared over the weekend. She was quite popular, and her roommates and her boyfriend were going crazy with worry. Of course, all the girls were worried that they might get kidnapped, and the guys became super-protective for a while. Apparently she also had a fight with her boyfriend, and she’d left the bar and gone to walk alone across campus. Some people thought perhaps her boyfriend had followed her and hurt her. Others thought because she was alone, slightly tipsy, upset, and very good looking, someone else had caught her and raped her. For the next few days, we were all full of theories.

“Then the police found her body. She’d been raped and murdered, and her body had been dumped in an outbuilding on the campus. They called it ‘a frenzied attack.’ And suddenly all the guys at the college – students, professors, admin staff, everyone – were under suspicion.”

“OMG! A real murder right on your doorstep. That must’ve been wild.” I could see that Britt was trying to imagine what that would have been like.

“Well, we didn’t have social media then, so we didn’t all go online and post videos about how we felt and who we thought did it. But we did have those conversations with each other. We all looked at the other guys in our classes and thought, ‘could it have been him?’ We all started to avoid the guys who were social outcasts or even just a little odd in their mannerisms. The other guys started to pick fights with them. It was really very unfair.”

Britt was trying to understand a world without TikTok and Insta. She failed. I could see it in her confused eyes. I showed her the newspaper clipping from after Sandy’s body had been found. It made it very clear how violent her death had been. She read it silently.

“Then the cops knocked on our door. They were checking where everyone was that Friday night. Sandy had left the bar at around 8:00 pm. They were asking all the guys where they were between then and midnight. At first, I didn’t see a problem. Then I saw that Martin was looking at me, trying to send me a message with his eyes. I remembered that was the night we had the big fight. I couldn’t say he’d been with me. He could have been anywhere. But I loved him. I was going to marry him. And I knew him so well. He couldn’t have attacked and murdered Sandy – he wasn’t that kind of man. And he was looking at me, asking for help.”

Britt gasped. “You didn’t???”

I gazed at her and nodded. “I said he was with me all evening and all night. I told them it was the weekend we got engaged, so I remembered it very well. And he was looking at me with love in his eyes. It’s the most romantic thing I ever did.”

“Did they ever catch the guy who did it?” asked Britt. She had to know, as I did, that I was right to do it.

“A maintenance worker was arrested a few months later. He denied it, of course, but he was tried and found guilty. Purely circumstantial evidence. It bothered me that he might be innocent. He was sentenced to life in prison a year after we were married. And then I had a growing fear that I had protected a murderer. I still believed I knew Martin too well, that he couldn’t do something like that.” I passed the second clipping to her, with pictures of the murderer, the victim, and the story of his sentencing.

“But sometimes, I remembered that night. Martin stormed out in a furious mood. He looked as if he was going to hurt someone. And then after he came back, the next day he’d suddenly done a complete about-face about getting married. Had he done something dreadful? Had he ‘found himself’ and realized that he needed to not be that person? Was he marrying me so I’d give him an alibi?”

“NO!” shouted Britt, horrified. “Uncle Martin would never do that. You can’t mean it.”

She was on the verge of tears. I understood that. Martin is a lovely person. Even after I divorced him, we stayed close. I could never get over the fear that I had sent an innocent man to prison. I never talked to him about it, never shared what was driving us apart. But I remembered how deeply I had loved him, and how my lie for him seemed to be the best thing I could do to keep him safe. In the end, even if he was guilty, I wanted to protect him.

“It was just my doubts, and my feeling of guilt,” I told her. “I couldn’t stay married to him, but I couldn’t retract my statement either. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know, whether he did it or whether he was completely innocent and we had picked the worst night possible for our fight.” I was close to tears myself, but that wound no longer caused the same kind of pain. Now it was a dull ache that had crippled me for my whole adult life.

“So, that’s why I didn’t stay married to your Uncle Martin. I still loved him, and I still do, but it was too much to bear.” I stood up and took the empty coffee cups and plates to the kitchen to wash them. Britt went to her room, presumably to try and process the story. I sat back on the sofa and closed my eyes to rest.

Should I have told her? She’s still very young. But now that Martin is dying, I felt a need to tell the truth to someone who might understand why I did it.

* * *

Martin’s Story

Britt contacted me. She’s my ex-wife Natalie’s great-niece. Pretty girl, reminds of Natalie at that age. God, I loved her then. I still don’t understand why she divorced me. We still loved each other, I think. We’ve stayed close, we’ve even had sex a few times over the years, but we’ve never recaptured the wonder of our first few years together.

Britt says she’s writing a family history, and she wants to talk to me and get my memories down on paper. The subtext, of course, is that I will only last a few more months, and I may not be coherent for all that time. I told her she’s welcome to come and visit whenever she likes. Every day here is much the same. I take painkillers and wait for death. No family – I never wanted to try again after Nat. She broke my heart. But it was my fault, I know that. The stupid things we do when we’re young and driven by impulse.

Apparently, Britt wants to know the story of how we got married, and why we broke up. It’s a beautiful story – I wonder if Nat has already told her. I’m writing it down so I can make sure I don’t forget any of it when I tell her.

“Natalie and I had a massive fight about our future, and I was an ass. I told her I needed to ‘find myself,’ whatever that meant.

“Then I went and did something I have regretted every day since. I slept with my professor’s wife. We had a fling during my first two years at the college – just an on again / off again thing, no romance, just rutting to get rid of the stresses of college life. I’m sure she did it with lots of students. For whatever reason, I went and visited her. The Prof always worked late on Friday nights, so I expected her to be alone. I was repeating a pattern, I suppose. I felt bad so I took it out on her body, just like before.

“At around midnight, she shook me awake so I’d be gone when the Prof returned. I sobered up, clear-eyed about what I’d just done and why. I almost ran back to our apartment, crying with shame. Nat was horribly drunk, barely able to speak. I poured my heart out to her, told her what I’d done, and begged for her forgiveness. I shall never forget the look on her face. She screamed at me, told me she never wanted to see me again, said I’d broken her heart past all repair.

“Then a miracle happened. She vomited and passed out. I cleaned her up, took care of her, and held her through the rest of the night. And when morning came, she seemed to have forgotten what I’d done. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Maybe we could just go ahead with our lives. I asked her to marry me at graduation. And she said yes! I didn’t dare ask if she remembered what I’d told her when I came home. For a few days we were ecstatically happy.

“There had been a murder on college grounds about that time. The cops came to ask for alibis, and I realized I’d have to say I was with the Prof’s wife. Would she tell them it was true? I seriously doubted that. It would surely be the end of her marriage. And even if she did tell the truth, what would the Prof do? He’d definitely fail me and maybe get me expelled so I couldn’t graduate. Would Nat stand by me? I looked at her, trying to tell her through my eyes that I needed her to lie and give me an alibi.

“And bless her, she did just that. As though there was never any question, she assured the cops we had been together all evening and all night. She was so collected, I almost believed her. She kept adding details about the weekend, and the fact that we had just decided to get engaged. The cops bought it, and I was free.

“So that is my love story. My beautiful Nat lied for me, gave me an alibi even though I was in someone else’s bed. She did know, and she had decided to forgive me after all. We had a good few years of marriage, but slowly, painfully, it fell apart. It was as though she found she couldn’t fully trust me after what I had done. All my fault, and I’ve been paying for it ever since.”