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“Don’t. Don’t say that you understand. You don’t. You can’t. You’ll never understand until you’ve been there. Once you’ve watched as someone you love breaks, and known that even if you help him pick up the pieces he’s just going to break again.”
Audrey wipes her tears on her sleeve, but more take their place.
“You don’t understand how it feels to stand outside the bathroom door and pretend you can’t hear the one you love cry inside. Or scrubbed blood from the kitchen floor in the middle of the night so the kids won’t see.”
More tears. Her lower lip starts to tremble.
“All those hell-nights when I pretended to be asleep so he wouldn’t notice that I was listening to him scream into the pillow. Late evenings when he came home drunk and degraded, his gaze empty of life. The filth. When I put the kids to bed and promised that daddy would be there in the morning, not knowing if it was true.”
Silence. Her gaze is lost somewhere far, far away.
“We tried. We really did. He went to therapy for years. Medications. Different psychologists. Hell, he even did some time in an institution. Electric shock therapy. It didn’t help. He just broke again.”
She tugs at her sleeve, the one who caught her tears.
“Sometimes I’d lie in bed and think that I just had to turn over and put my arm over his throat. Press as hard as I could. Until he-”
She sobs once, a devastated little noise that does not quite dare to be heard.
“You don’t understand. Six years. We were married for six years. Two kids. I gave everything I had. He did too. But he didn’t have much when we married. Hardly anything. He tried. He tried every day. But.. but he couldn’t.”
A noise that might be construed as a giggle if it wasn’t so full of bitterness passes her lips.
“You can’t love another if you are unable to love yourself” she whispers, as if it is a divine truth that has just revealed itself to her.
There is silence. It lasts forever. A whole moment.
“Sometimes I wondered why. Why he went out. When he knew, we both knew, that he was going to… let someone hurt him. That he would come home to me… broken. Bloody. Those eyes. Empty. Pleading. ‘Sorry’ he said. I used to get so mad. He hurt himself so much. Then he wanted me to… to forgive him. To hold him. Comfort him. Clean up… everything. Forgive. And I forgave.”
The seam on the sleeve unravels. Audrey distractedly plays with the thread. Tugs at it.
“I forgave and forgave and waited. Hid knives. Flushed meds down the toilet. Let the kids have sleepovers with mum. As if they didn’t understand. As if they didn’t see.”
Audrey cries, a helpless silent crying that goes straight into the heart and stays there.
“Sometimes, he’d say he loved me and I’d pretend I believed him. He… he really tried. His eyes… he knew too. That it wasn’t true. That he… that he couldn’t. Didn’t have any love to give. Just a bit. He gave it to the kids. What little there was.”
“All those sunday dinners. Like actors on the stage. Playing happy families. The loving wife. And I sat there and wanted to yell at… at her. Can’t you see. What you did, what you did to us. What you took from us. Everything I will never have. But I didn’t say anything. I played my part.”
That noise again. The almost-giggle.
“Should’ve gotten a bloody Oscar. Then when we came home. He cried. I comforted. He screamed and I covered the children’s ears. And I hated so fucking much. All of me was hatred.”
The thread from the sleeve breaks and she stares at it as if she’s never seen a piece of thread before. The tears slid unbidden down her cheeks. Not asking permission.
“Once he said that.. That he wished it had been him. Who died. Not… Not his brother. It’d been better. I hugged him and thought I agreed. It would have been better for everyone. If he didn’t have to live.”
She sobs.
“I wanted him to die. I’m sorry.”
Her eyes. Empty. Apathetic. Devastated.
“They don’t know. I promised. Not say anything. His confidant. The only one who saw. The only one who knew. The hate. The blood. The despair. The pain. The child who never got to be a child. I went insane. He too. I wanted us to be together. Happy. With the children. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t. He… couldn’t.”
Audrey looks up, straight into the camera.
“Witness with no voice,” she whispers. “I promised.”
Audrey cries.
Doesn’t bother wiping away the tears with her sleeve anymore.
Hermione turns of the camera.