A Mother's Secret

by T J Stimson

  They’d been empanelled for the trial of a haulage contractor accused of murder. It hadn’t been the glamorous Law & Order melodrama she’d secretly hoped for when she’d been called for jury service, but a rather pedestrian tale of embezzlement, bad luck and bad choices that had ended with a blow to the head from a wrench in a half-built swimming pool.

  Maddie, along with the rest of the jury, had initially been inclined to side with the prosecution. The haulage contractor had admitted he’d been on the building site where his auditor’s body had been found. He’d acknowledged they’d had a blazing row on the morning of the day of the murder. The wrench had come from his own set of tools and bore his fingerprints. As they started their deliberations, the foreman, a retired doctor, had repeated everything the Crown had laid before them as if it were undisputed fact, and sat back, job done.

  It was Lucas who’d made them all think again. ‘Where’s the forensic evidence?’ he’d demanded. ‘Where’s the motive?’

  ‘Fraud,’ the foreman said, folding his arms. ‘It’s obvious.’

  Lucas had looked round the jury table, holding each of their gazes in turn. They were a pretty uninspiring crew, Maddie had to admit, seeing them through his eyes. Five men, seven women, all but two of them white, most on the fringes of what her mother called the ‘real’ working world: the unemployed, the retired, stay-at-home mums. Lucas had been the exception. She later learned he’d passed up the chance of a major design commission to do his jury service, and he’d taken the responsibility seriously.

  ‘Where’s the proof?’ Lucas had asked. ‘The police investigation found nothing to back up the prosecution’s fraud theory. I’m not saying the man’s innocent, but it’s not enough for us to think he probably killed his auditor. The prosecution has to prove it. The question is, have they done that?’

  Lucas had achieved what the defence had signally failed to do and made them put aside their prejudices and actually consider the case before them. The evidence was all circumstantial, he argued eloquently, and set against it was the accused’s previous good character. This was a man who’d never had so much as a parking ticket, a committed churchgoer and family man. To convict him of cold-blooded murder, of picking up that heavy wrench and smashing in the skull of another human being, they had to be sure. Not just fairly sure. Not just on-the-balance-of-probabilities sure. They had to be absolutely sure beyond any reasonable doubt.

  His reasoning was calm and logical, but he’d exuded a fierce, suppressed energy Maddie found mesmerising. She could almost see the neurons firing in his brain. She hadn’t been the only member of the jury to fall a little bit in love with him.

  Thanks to Lucas, the haulage contractor had been found not guilty, and less than three months later, an ex-boyfriend of the victim had been picked up in a routine traffic stop and confessed to the crime.

  Lucas deserved the same benefit of the doubt as the haulage contractor, Maddie told herself now, tossing onto her back and staring up at the ceiling in the dark, her eyes dry with exhaustion. Thank God Noah was giving her some peace, for once. She didn’t have the energy to deal with his crying.

  Lucas was the most honest, principled man she’d ever met. She had never once caught him in a lie in all the years they’d been married; not even a little white one. He’d lost commissions because he refused to compromise his principles and use sub-standard materials to cut costs. He’d stood by the head of the local junior school when the man had been falsely accused – in a venomous and anonymous poison-pen letter – of sexually abusing a child, insisting the school board not rush to judgement without proof.

  Maddie rolled restlessly onto her side. She was desperate to sleep, but her mind raced frantically, like a rat seeking its way out of a trap. Was it possible there was a darker side to her husband? How did she even know he was in Poole, as he’d said? His own secretary had told Candace he was working from home. You read stories in the papers about people who led secret lives – men with two wives at opposite ends of the country, serial killers who prowled the streets picking off prostitutes before going back home to eat Sunday lunch with their families. Their nearest and dearest always claimed to have had no idea what was really going on. Maybe the signs had been there, but they’d been too blind and too trusting to see them. In the end, how much did you ever really know anyone?

  Lucas was forty years old, and she had only been part of his life for six years; of course there were things she didn’t know about him, just as there were things about her life that she hadn’t shared. Maybe there were aspects of his past he wasn’t proud of, things that had no bearing on the man he’d become. She could only speak to the Lucas Drummond she knew, and she didn’t believe that man would ever deliberately deceive her.

  But she was beginning to wonder if she knew him as well as she thought. The subtle pressure he was putting on her to sell the sanctuary, for example, so that he could buy into a partnership with his architectural firm. It had started to feel like emotional blackmail. And he’d been wonderfully supportive when she’d been depressed, but during her illness he’d been very firmly in charge, and she couldn’t help noticing that’s the way it’d stayed, even when she’d got better. He’d decided to take Emily out of her private primary school, for which Sarah paid, and send her to the state school down the road, so that Emily and the boys would have exactly the same education. Maddie didn’t know why, but he wasn’t terribly fond of Jayne, either, and had quietly vetoed dinners and get-togethers with her husband for so long that she’d stopped even suggesting them. It was almost as if he didn’t want her to have any friends, and for the first time, Maddie wondered why.

  She sat up again and punched her pillow into shape. Maybe there was a perfectly good reason why Lucas had faked her signature and taken out a loan without telling her, though she couldn’t think of a single one. But in the end, it didn’t matter why he’d done it. It meant she couldn’t trust him; she’d always be wondering what was going on behind her back. It’d be like taking back a man who’d cheated on you. Wouldn’t you always be wondering when he was going to do it again?

  Chapter 8

  Saturday 7.30 a.m.

  Maddie woke with a start. It’d been almost light when she’d finally fallen asleep, utterly exhausted. She was grateful Noah had slept through the night, but she’d almost have welcomed the distraction. At least it might have stopped her mind spinning.

  She reached for her phone on the bedside table and gasped when she saw the time. Seven-thirty! No wonder her breasts felt like they were going to explode. Noah had gone for nearly eight hours without a feed. He must be absolutely exhausted himself to have slept for so long. However awful his colic was for her, it was worse for him, because he had no idea why he was in pain.

  She struggled out of bed, grabbing her dressing gown and jabbing her arms into it as she stumbled across the room. Jacob had slept longer than usual, too, probably because of all the Calpol she’d given him yesterday to bring down his temperature. She needed to get the kids all up and moving; Lucas would be home any minute. She wanted to get her head together before she talked to him.

  She heard the crunch of tyres on gravel and peered out of the bedroom window. Lucas was already pulling into the driveway. Her stomach churned with nerves. She ached to nurse Noah, but she needed to talk to Lucas more. She had to confront him and get it over and done with. She cracked the door of the nursery to check on the baby. He didn’t stir, so she carefully shut the door again and turned towards the stairs.

  Afterwards, she could never say what made her stop and go back. Some sixth sense, perhaps; a mother’s intuition. Or maybe she’d known the moment she’d seen her son’s arm, but her mind, fighting to protect her for just a few more seconds, had refused to process it.

  As soon as she re-opened the door, she knew something was very wrong.

  Lydia

  She’s never been so happy in her life. She was frightened at first when Mae abandoned her with strangers, because even though she’
s scared of Mae, at least she knows her, she knows where she is.

  But then the lady with the yellow hair came out from behind her desk and talked to the crying lady in the blue hat and the old man with the shiny bald head for a long time, and then the crying lady stopped crying and came over and crouched down beside her and said, my name is Jean and this is my husband Ernie and what’s your name? She didn’t want the lady to be cross with her because she couldn’t remember her own name, so she said Mae, because it was the only name she could think of. And then the not-crying-now lady said, how would you like to come home with me, just till everything gets sorted out? And so she did.

  She’s been here for weeks and she still can’t believe how big their house is. There is an entire room with a table and chairs just for eating in and another room with a big green bath for washing yourself. There was a bath at Mae’s house, but no one ever used it for washing themselves. Once, one of Mae’s special friends stayed with them for a while and he kept his two pet ducks in it. When he left in the middle of the night without saying goodbye, Mae was so angry she wrung their necks with her bare hands.

  Jean lets her have a bath every day. She has a bed, too: a real bed, not just a mattress on the floor, and it has pink sheets on it. She didn’t know what the sheets were to begin with. Clothes for a bed! It seemed such a funny idea. The first night she slept on the floor, so as not to get them dirty or wrinkled. But when Jean came in the next morning, she laughed and said it was OK if she messed the sheets up, that’s what they were for. Then Jean jumped on the bed with her shoes on, laughing until she climbed on the bed herself and jumped up and down, too.

  And there is food, so much food! It seems it’s always time for one meal or another. Slow down, Jean laughs, as she crams toast into her mouth at breakfast and shoves more in her pockets for later. You’ll make yourself sick. She does, too, her belly isn’t used to feeling this full. It takes her a few days to realise that the gnawing pangs in her tummy have gone. She still fills her pockets with scraps when she leaves the table, she can’t help it, but Jean doesn’t seem to mind. You poor love, she says. We’ll soon fatten you up.

  Jean takes her shopping and buys her new dresses as clean and fresh-smelling as the sheets and her very own shoes that don’t pinch or slop around on her small feet. Jean shows her how to wash her hair with shampoo and how to braid it neatly into two plaits, and she never hits her, not ever, not even when she has an accident because she’s too shy to say she needs to pee and has forgotten how to find the bathroom in this huge house. Jean doesn’t even shout. Jean strokes her hair and hugs her and says it doesn’t matter, it was an accident, we’ll fix it in a jiffy, don’t you worry.

  She doesn’t ask how long she’s going to stay here. She doesn’t miss Mae at all, which proves just what a wicked little girl she really is. But she doesn’t want to think about Mae. She’s in the middle of such a lovely dream and she doesn’t ever want to wake up. Sometimes, she hopes she’s dead so she won’t have to.

  But then one day Jean answers the telephone and when she comes off she’s crying again. Ernie asks her what’s the matter and Jean collapses in his arms, I’m not going to let them take her, she says. What do they know, these social workers, I’m not giving her back to that wicked woman, over my dead body.

  But Jean won’t be able to stop Mae. No one can ever stop Mae when she’s made her mind up about something.

  Jean does her best, she writes letters to important people and she begs and pleads, but it’s no good. The night before Jean has to take her back, she cooks her favourite macaroni and cheese followed by chocolate ice cream. Jean brushes and plaits her hair and reads her a story and tucks her into her nice clean warm bed with the pink sheets for the last time and her face gets that strange look people have when they’re trying really hard not to cry. Jean kisses her cheek, I’ll never stop fighting, I’ll make them listen, I’ll come back and get you, just you wait and see. But she knows deep down it’ll never happen. Davy promised he’d come back for her, too, but he never did.

  Mae is waiting for them at the shop where she left her, looking so different in a normal mummy dress instead of the low tops and short skirts she normally wears that she almost doesn’t recognise her. Mae bursts into noisy tears and throws her arms around her in a suffocating hug, my baby oh my baby thank goodness you’re all right!

  She doesn’t want to let go of Jean’s hand, but Mae is holding on to her so tight she can’t breathe, pulling her away. You’ve been very kind, looking after her while I was under the weather, she says, but I’m right as rain now, few pills, bit of rest, just what the doctor ordered. Mae’s fingernails dig into her shoulder, but her mother’s bright smile doesn’t slip.

  She wants to beg Jean not to let her go, she wants to run right out of the shop and keep on running as far away from Mae as she can get. Her heart is beating loudly in her ears and she feels hot and shaky and sick in her tummy. Her little hands clench into fists by her sides. She wants to hit something, she wants to hurt someone as much as she is hurting, and she realises, in a kind of dazed surprise, that this is what angry feels like.

  She doesn’t know why Mae even wants her back. Mae says she’s never been no good, nothing but trouble since the day she was born. Should have got rid of you when I had the chance. But maybe Mae has missed her after all, she thinks hopefully. Maybe things are going to be different now.

  It’s only when Mae is marching her back down the high street, towards the bus stop, the grip on her shoulder so tight she knows she’ll have bruises tomorrow, and leans into her and says, you think I wanted you back, you little cow, they was going to take the house off of me with you and Davy both gone, now you’re going to fucking well earn your keep, that she understands Mae hasn’t missed her at all, and if she thought it was bad before, it’s going to be a hundred times worse now.

  Chapter 9

  Saturday 8.30 a.m.

  Fear and loss seeped like moisture from the room’s neat beige walls. This was where they brought you when there was nothing more they could do. Maddie stared at a cork board covered with leaflets. What To Do After Someone Dies. Living With Grief. After Suicide: A Guide For Survivors. Coping With A Terminal Diagnosis. Palliative Care: What You Need to Know.

  She turned away, her stomach churning. So much pain and misery in the world. How had she ever thought she’d be lucky enough to escape?

  She felt strangely disconnected from everything, as if she was moving underwater, or trapped behind a thick glass wall. She knew her baby was dead. She could still feel his chilling weight in her arms, and yet she couldn’t take it in. The reality was so monstrous, her mind refused to accept it.

  She’d known Noah was gone the second she’d seen his arm dangling through the bars of his cot, his body strangely still. If she lived to be a hundred, she would never forget the thousand years it’d taken her to rush to his cot and pull the blanket away from his cheek. His face had been waxy and deathly pale, his lips a deep mottled blue. When she’d touched his cheek, he’d been cold.

  She had no memory of rushing to the window and screaming down at Lucas, though she supposed she must have done. Her throat was still raw. She didn’t remember scooping her baby out of his cot, either, but she would remember forever the cold, dead weight of him in her arms. She could feel it still. The back of his head, where she had always put a steadying hand, like a ball of stone. Her precious, warm, milky son, now a stiff, cool statue, a porcelain doll. Already she couldn’t remember what he looked like alive. When she tried to picture him, all she could see was his face, deadly white but for his indigo lips and the purple blotches on his skin where the blood had settled.

  She supposed Lucas had called the ambulance and her mother. She didn’t know how long it’d taken for the paramedics to get there. She hadn’t wanted to let Noah go, refusing to let anyone take him from her arms. It was Sarah who’d finally persuaded her. Maddie had handed Noah’s cold little body to her mother, watching as the paramedics briefly examined
him and then wrapped him tenderly back in his blanket. She’d felt the emptiness of her arms and had known instinctively the feeling wasn’t ever going to go away.

  ‘Maddie, stop that. You don’t take sugar. Maddie! Stop!’

  She jumped and glanced up. She was standing at a counter at the side of the room, spooning sugar into an empty coffee mug. It was already a quarter full; she must have added at least six spoonfuls without even knowing what she was doing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, dropping the spoon so that it clattered onto the counter. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking.’

  She sat on the tan leather sofa, pinning her hands under her thighs to stop herself from plucking at her clothes. It didn’t matter what anyone said. It was her fault Noah was dead. She’d wished him gone. She hadn’t meant it, of course, but she’d got exactly what she’d asked for. Maybe, deep down, in a corner of her mind too dark for her to see clearly, this was what she wanted.

  Maybe she’d even made it happen.

  ‘He kept crying,’ she burst out suddenly. ‘No matter what I did, I couldn’t make it stop.’

  ‘He had colic, Maddie,’ Lucas said hoarsely. ‘He couldn’t help it.’

  She stared down at her lap. Her legs were jiggling, but she seemed powerless to stop them. ‘I could hear it in my head, all the time. The non-stop screaming, on and on. Sometimes I didn’t know if it was him crying, or me. I tried to be patient, I did my best for him, but nothing made him happy. No matter what I tried, it didn’t make any difference. He never stopped screaming.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, Maddie.’

  ‘I couldn’t make him better. I’d feed him and change him and cuddle him and nothing helped. I couldn’t stand it anymore.’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘I just wanted it to stop.’