After the Truth (Book Two)

One

Isabel has left and taken the boys with her. She has an aunt in Canada and, as the letter I found when I returned home this afternoon informed me, she has gone there to "get some space to plan a future for them all".

My heart ached as I read her scrawled words, but I knew it was coming. She has never been alone with me for weeks. She has been limpet-like to the children during the day, and after they went to bed, she was having eternal baths, or visiting friends, or going to bed early. She started sleeping in the spare room at the beginning of the month. It was the start of summer, so she told the boys our bedroom was too hot at night. Samuel believed her, but I don't think Jeremiah did.

Unfortunately, Jeremiah is going through what we all do as we grow up: we come to realise we are not always told the truth, even by those we trusted. Had he come to me I would of course have told him the real reason for his mother's move of bedroom. Despite his doubts he seemed to decide believing the lie was better than finding out the truth. He adopted a philosophy so many have. And more are doing so now.

Leaders peddle lies. There followers choose to believe or ignore them. As adults we let trust give way to power, and the perception of being right. Once we have voted leaders into office, to then turn around and doubt or challenge them is to doubt ourselves and the choice we made.

The populace of each country must have confidence their elected, or otherwise, leaders have a plan to save them from the troubles afflicting them. Now, we are all facing one of the greatest troubles the world has ever seen. Surely, our leaders know what they are doing? They have a plan to save us all, or at the very least to save as many of us as they can. The care of their citizens is their primary concern. Not their own survival, or their grip on power.

To think otherwise is to abandon hope.

I have come to realise my mistake at the UN. I spoke in truths and facts. I did not have the theatrical skill to wrap my words in dramatic rhetoric. Loud rhetoric drowns out any doubts or questions from those listening. Lies are far easier to spread with extreme or threatening language. Since my day in New York I have watched so many of the leaders who sat watching me - I cannot say they listened – declare to their own people the real reason for the deaths spreading across the word. It is a mishmash of: Foreigners, foreign diseases, opposing political parties or philosophies, or mistakes and weakness by predecessors, or even God.

All those reasons are lies. And so are the plans they have for saving lives. As the numbers of deaths grows, so many leaders declare their plans will soon turn the tide. Always tomorrow, or next week, or next month, things will get better. Always. But their timelines are perpetual, shifting forward with each new day, into a future that is always just around the corner.

As the political agendas, dictated by rhetoric and unsubstantiated claims grow, the media follow the trending opinions and a lot of news outlets and opinion writers have jumped on the band wagon of belittling my speech.

My medical expertise and early work on the growing pandemic have been twisted and turned into a conspiracy that I somehow was patient zero and or caused of the initial outbreak. Bizarrely, in a manner only possible via internet arguments, the fact I visited each country where early victims were recorded is seen as proof that I was actually helping spread whatever the disease is, rather than tracking it. Ridicule and then conspiracy have led to me becoming a focal point of hatred.

Outside the front of the house are two police cars with armed officers inside.

That is why I did not go after Isabel to beg her to come back. It is for the best that she and the boys go far away. Hopefully, they will not become collateral damage at the vitriol growing against me.