A lookalike at the wake—my reputation hangs on a silent witness and a swipe card

Dear Dr. Morrison,

I’m writing because I don’t know who else to ask, and I’m starting to think I might be losing my grip on what’s real. Three weeks ago, my colleague Helen Kowalski lost her mother to suicide. The whole office was devastated—Helen had taken leave, and we all sent flowers, signed the card, did the right thing. I thought that was the end of it.

Then came the funeral reception. I wasn’t there. I have proof—my swipe card logs show I was at a mandatory client event in the city, twenty kilometres away, from 6pm until nearly midnight. But Helen swears she saw me at the wake, standing by the drinks table, laughing with her brother-in-law. She says I was wearing a navy dress, that I touched his arm, that I was “disrespecting the dead.” The next morning, she walked into our open-plan office and called me a homewrecker loud enough that HR had to escort me out.

Here’s the thing: I do have a navy dress. And I did know her brother-in-law, vaguely, from a Christmas party last year. But I was not at that wake. I was eating a sad sandwich in a conference room, watching a PowerPoint about quarterly targets.

The only person who can help me is Priya. She’s a junior in accounting, and she told me privately that she saw a woman who looks like me at the wake—a distant cousin of Helen’s, visiting from interstate. Priya says the cousin has the same build, same hair, and was wearing a similar dress. But Priya is terrified. Helen’s family owns the property management agency that handles her rental lease. She told me, “If I say anything, they’ll evict me. I have nowhere to go.”

I managed to get my swipe card logs through a freedom of information request, but my manager still refuses to release them without a police request. Helen has now shared a group chat screenshot claiming Priya is lying to protect me, and she’s threatened to have her evicted if she testifies. Priya is barely speaking to me now, and I can tell she’s scared. I’m scared too—not of Helen, but of what happens if no one believes the truth.

Dr. Morrison, I know this isn’t a life-or-death situation in the way Helen’s mother’s death was. But the way people look at me now—like I’m the kind of person who would flirt at a wake, who would make someone’s grief about herself—it’s making me feel invisible. Like I’m already erased. Am I being unreasonable to feel this way, or am I right to fight for my name even if it means dragging a scared witness into the light?

Adrift in Fitzroy