Life Ain't Easy Ch. 04

I was looking at Margaret and her face was showing disbelief.

"That so called medical report he showed you, Margaret. Was it an original?" Shirley demanded.

"No" Margaret answered in little more than a whisper; "It was a photo-copy."

"A photo-copy probably of this one. But this one is the original it hasn't been doctored by having the name changed. I found these amongst Robert's papers after I threw him out and here's Dave's one. It's not the best sperm count you can have but I can tell you it's way above average. Didn't you wonder why Robert would have a copy of Dave's sperm count?"

Shirley had taken me by surprise. She hadn't told me she had those reports. She obviously felt more vindictive towards Robert than I had thought."

"But why did it take so long for me to get pregnant?"

"Damned if I know." Shirley replied, "just bad luck I suppose. My sister tried for ten years before she had her first one, then she fell for two on the trot. Making babies isn't as easy as it should be for some people."

Maggie couldn't stand anymore; after all these years of lying and cheating on me she must have realised it was all for nothing in the first place. She got up and ran out of the room crying. Ashley went to get up and follow her but Abigail told her to leave her mother for a little while.

I was finished with Maggie but not with Robert.

"OK, why did you force Maggie to keep on having sex with you. You knew I would find out one day. Did you figure you would step in and play daddy to my girls if I divorced Margaret?"

"Fuck you! You always had everything; I wanted a family of my own." Robert shouted back at me.

I was drained and I really just wanted him out of my life. "Get the hell out of here and never come near my family again. If I ever see you again I will not be responsible for my actions."

He got up and I stepped back so he could walk past me. He had just got to the doorway when we heard the deafening bang. Robert was propelled backward by the impact of the bullet and collided with me. Knocking me off balance, we both fell to the floor.

I must have hit my head because everything went a little hazy. My chest felt like a hammer had hit it and the breath had been knocked out of me. I looked down and saw some blood on my shirt. 'Hey, have I been shot there? That's my bloody heart! Shit, I'm gonna die!' My muddled mind tried to make sense of things.

"Oh, God, no. David, I didn't mean it. Please, David, don't you die!" Margaret screamed as she came into the room the gun still in her hand.

Abbie's Mike appeared from nowhere and took the gun from her. Maggie crouched down to me babbling on that she hadn't meant to hurt me. I looked into her eyes and realised she was no longer with us.

The bullet had gone through Robert's heart, exited his back and stopped when it embedded itself in my breastbone. Bloody frightening and painful but not serious. That bloody gun had come very near ending my life as well as Roberts after all.

When the police arrived my daughter told them that Robert had given Margaret the gun to protect herself from me. I don't think the police were too convinced and they were never happy with the story. Apparently the gun did not have a single fingerprint on it; so Mike must have done a quick cleaning job.

I blame myself for what happened that day. I had left the gun in the house and I should have realised that all my family knew the combination to the old safe in my study. How had Abbie and Mike known I'd had a gun in the first place if they couldn't get into that safe?

Apparently the girls had spent hours playing at breaking into the damn thing, when they were young children. When eventually they got lucky they had been too scared to tell me what they had done. The safe had been in the house when we bought it and I had never kept anything of value in it. Except that bloody gun.

At the inquest, the coroner found that Margaret had killed Robert whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed. The Criminal Prosecution Service decreed that she was unfit to plead and no useful purpose could be served in bringing a prosecution against her as she has been certified as being of unsound mind.

Robert's ashes were poured (not scattered) into the Thames.

So far Maggie has not recovered. The head doctors say she is unlikely to do so. She is now resident in a sanatorium just north of London. Maggie sits in her room and talks to herself all day. The girls and I visit her often but she rarely knows them. When I visit she sometimes becomes lucid and has been known to talk about the children we are going to have when she is well again. Her mind appears to be in a time before we had the children.

Margaret made a serious mistake. But the mistake I made was just as bad if not worse. Robert lied his way into her bed and then blackmailed her into having sex with him for the rest of his life. I completely under-estimated the mental strain that Margaret had been living under all those years.

Had I let Abigail tell Margaret that I had never been sterile and that Robert was, would she have been able to handle hearing it that way? I will never know? But the way she did hear it was too much for a troubled mind to handle. Now she serves what appears to me to be much worse than a prison sentence for the murder of Robert.

Erica and I did not get married. We live together as we did originally in New Zealand. We both agreed that I could not divorce Margaret with her mind in the condition it is in. I have to keep control of her treatment; I don't want the doctors giving up on her. We have spent thousands of pounds on specialists, but so far to no avail.

I have noticed that all my daughters have got into the habit of calling Erica Gran now that we have some grandchildren.

Life goes on.

The End