The Devil's Favourite Obsession

Chapter 199: When crisis finds you - 4

Marion stood on the terrace, unaware of how long she had been there. The wind had picked up, gently moving the loose strands of hair at her temple. Her fist remained clenched, and though her tears had stopped, it wasn’t because she had finished crying. Her body, in that slow, uneven moment after Binge’s last words, had decided that crying wasn’t what the moment called for.

She lifted her face to look at Binge, regarding him as a woman does the first person brave enough to voice a truth she had refused to acknowledge for seven years. Her gaze was neither soft nor grateful. "Why are you telling me this now? What do you stand to gain? Why make life harder than it already is?"

Binge didn’t respond immediately. He regarded her with the careful attention he had held since she slapped him, a look that had not wavered with any of his previous sentences. "Because I could no longer sit back and watch you turn into someone foolish."

The words dropped between them at a pace they had not set. "Foolish? You think I’m foolish?" Marion let out a forced laugh. "There are plenty of fools in this world, all living in a fantasy where everything is perfect. Who gives anyone the right to interrupt that?"

"I don’t care about others; I don’t know them. But I know you."

"That still doesn’t explain why you’re so invested in my life and my family."

"Because you remind me of my mother. When I was little, she acted just like you do—content with whatever my father gave her, all while slowly dying inside from heartache." Marion studied Binge closely this time, as if she were seeing a new person. "In the club, when we talked, I could already see your uncertainty. You tried to act strong and independent, but your eyes told a different story, revealing someone who was determined to show the world she was unbreakable."

"What do you want from me?" Marion asked. "Are you asking me to get a divorce and separate our children from their father? What exactly do you want? Even if I’m reminded of your mother, there are many who are in my situation, smiling and getting on with their lives. And if I were to die, what’s it to you?"

The question was different from what she had asked downstairs in the living room.

"I don’t want anything from you. There’s nothing for me to gain from this. But your children— they will feel that void without you in their lives. Who knows, they might end up like me, caught up in the mafia, involved in killings and extortion, causing others to suffer. One day, they’ll realise what you’ve been through, and when they look back, they might blame themselves for not paying attention."

Marion turned her gaze away from him and looked at the birds flying in the sky before returning to him. "So, you are doing this for my kids," she stated, nodding slowly.

"And for you," Binge added.

She closed them not because she wanted to look away from him. She closed them because the small lit corner of her chest that had been listening to the conversation underneath the conversation needed a moment in which the rest of her body would stop sending it information. She needed her eyes to be off the man on the terrace for ten careful seconds, so that the corner of her chest could deliver the question it had been holding back to her brain, where her brain could decide what to do with it.

The corner delivered the question.

The question was: Was Binge right about Martin?

She did not answer it.

She did not need to.

She had already answered it three years ago, in a kitchen, on a Wednesday evening that had not been the worst Wednesday evening of her marriage by any objective measure, when Martin had told her that the rice she had cooked tasted like animal feed and the children had stopped chewing at the table and had looked, all three of them, at her face to see whether they were supposed to laugh. She had laughed first. She had laughed because Madeleine had been seven years old and Madeleine had been watching her mouth.

She had been answering the question every Wednesday for three years, and she had been refusing to write the answer down.

She opened her eyes.

"What do you think I should do?"

The question arrived in the air with a careful neutrality she did not, by every honest measure of the tightness still in her chest, in fact possess. But neutrality was the only currency she had available. She did not, at this hour of the afternoon, have the warmth to ask the question warmly. She did not have the rage to ask it angrily. She had a single neutral measure of attention, and she had decided to spend it.

Binge looked at her for a long time.

"You do not need to do anything today."

"That is not the answer either."

"It is part of the answer."

"What is the other part?"

Binge slid his hand into the pocket of his coat. He produced a folded square of paper. He held it between two fingers. He did not extend it toward her.

"The other part of the answer is on this piece of paper. It contains the address of a flat I keep for women in your position—women who have, on a thoughtfully considered Thursday afternoon, decided that the life they have been living up until today is not the one they want to continue living tomorrow. It’s just two streets away from a school where you can enrol Melisha and Michael without changing districts. The rent is already paid for the next four months, and nothing is in your name.

This flat is not a favour I am asking you to accept. Let Martin realise the mistake he made. Once you and the kids are gone, he will understand what life is like without you. Let him experience your absence in his life."

"What about Zoyar? I heard from Lily that he’s always there, from morning until her shift is over. Is he keeping his eyes on her? Why?" Marion was suspicious of his intentions.

Binge laughed in response. "He is trying to win Lily over. So he makes sure she sees him every day and doesn’t think about any other men."