Sweet Satisfaction (Purple UGC Winner 2014)

Sweet Satisfaction - Epilogue

Epilogue 

Five Years Later

The golden sun is beaming down on the sapphire sea, a picturesque moment.

“John, I have some news for you,” Elsie says, tossing her short blonde curls over her shoulders.

“Please don’t tell me you’re pregnant again,” John groans, watching their children John and Madeleine chase the Maxwell twins, Annabel Mary and Minnie Isabella, in the sand, while he rocks baby Ruby in the perambulator.

“No, silly! Emma’s coming home!” she squeals.

John frowns; Emma volunteered as VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurse in France, and when the war ended she decided to travel the world, having spent most of her life in an orphanage. John hopes her homecoming won’t bring back bad memories, and instead she will have tales of New York and not soldiers she treated for shell shock. He winces; memories of the trenches are best left forgotten.

Christmas was already a sombre time, for ‘that night’, as they referred to it, had happened on Christmas Eve. Instead of presents, the twins lit candles for their dead sister, who had been named Emmelina at the registry office. John remembers holding Elsie’s hand through all of it; the depression, his shell shock, the police inquiries, their premature baby boy…

There are some things about that night that Elsie has never revealed to John, the pain is still too sharp. Sometimes, when it is just a normal day, she will suddenly scrunch her face up, and he knows she is thinking of visions of the blade piercing open Ludmilla’s skin, or her jaunts with Bobby, or her Mother, or sister, or something that happened that night.

He knows Elsie feels guilty; she thinks she is a coward. Susanna swung by her neck after admitting she shot Mary and Rose. Elsie will wake sobbing in the night, wishing she could erase 1915 from her memory.

She chose John because he loved her, and she knew she loved him. Bobby loved the money Susanna gave him. Elsie doesn’t know what happened to Bobby and his sister Eliza, she thinks they went to start a new life in Canada. But she knows what happened to the inheritance. There isn’t one. It’s all gone. The next heirs in line agreed it was best, having seen the damage done, the headlines splashed across the newspapers. They held Elsie’s hands as they watched the coins melting and the notes curling in the dancing flames that reminded her of the bonfire in Reaurez…

There are so many things that have scarred Elsie for life. But she has learnt a lesson in life. There is more to life than getting revenge and money and titles and hiding your true self in the shadows. Life is about love and family and forgiveness and friendship and not being scared to show the world who you really are, for Elsie proudly sports the green, white and lilac badge, the leading suffragette of Brighton, her husband by her side.

There is a tiny part of Elsie’s heart that will never ever heal, because everyone’s desire for their own sickly sweet satisfaction ripped her apart.