The Sentence Is Death

It’s the insurance. You get a quarter of a million quid when I’m gone. That’s a big amount of money. Enough to look after you and the girls for the rest of your lives. Enough for you to move out of Ribblehead if that’s what you want. Maybe you’ll go back to Leeds. It was me who dragged you into the Dales in the first place and I often think that was selfish of me and no good came of it in the end. But with the money you can make the decisions. I hope you’ll be happy. That’s my only thought sitting here. You and the girls.

But you have to be very careful with this letter. You should destroy it after you finish reading it. Don’t show it to anyone. Don’t tell anyone . . . not even Dave. I haven’t looked at the policy but these insurance companies are full of weasels and they’ll find any excuse not to pay up. They’ve got to think I died in an accident. I’ll come to that in a minute. This isn’t easy for me. It’s not easy for you. But it’s the way it has to be.

I hope you will forgive me. You always were my one true love.

I have to take you back to April 2007. Yes, it all goes back to Long Way Hole. I have to tell you the truth. Don’t be angry with me, Sue. I didn’t tell you the truth then and I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Part of the reason was that whichever way I tried to swing it, it was my fault. I was in charge. I planned the excursion. And I was the one who said it was all right to go ahead. When I look back, I think that the only reason I did those trips was to hang on to something that had already gone. Richard and Charlie and me. We’d been close mates at Oxford and we’d had some wild times together and every year when we met we’d try to relive what we’d had, but we all knew that as we got older it was slipping away and each year there was a bit less of it and we all had to pretend a bit more. By the end, Richard was a big-shot lawyer. Charlie was doing all right for himself in marketing. But I’d ended up in the finance department of a little company nobody had ever heard of in the back of beyond. I never really felt comfortable when I was with them and it didn’t change no matter how much beer we drank.