A Mother's Secret

by T J Stimson

  She’s woken in the middle of the night by the unmistakeable sound of Mae’s heavy brass bedhead thumping rhythmically against the wall. Frank must be home. She’s surprised; he only left yesterday morning on a trip to Istanbul. She thought he’d be gone at least a week.

  She peers out of the bedroom window to check for his lorry cab. It’s not there. But parked in its place is a dark red Ford she recognises, a car that has her rushing to her bedroom door to double-check the bolt.

  Jimmy’s back.

  Chapter 19

  Thursday 9.00 a.m.

  The space next to her was empty when Maddie woke up. She’d heard Lucas come home from Candace’s in the middle of the night, struggling with the double-lock on the front door before finally letting himself in through the kitchen. But he hadn’t come up to bed, presumably because he hadn’t wanted to wake her. He usually slept on the sofa if he was late back; one of the many ways he’d always been the perfect husband.

  Maddie threw back the duvet and then lay staring at the ceiling, unable to bring herself to get out of bed. A trickle of dampness pooled in her ears and she realised she was crying again. She made no effort to stop it. The tears came all the time now, even when she was sleeping, a constant flow of grief and sadness over which she had no control. She didn’t even bother to wipe them away.

  The front doorbell rang at the same moment as her phone buzzed on the bedside table. She ignored them both. She was overcome with inertia, as if a lead blanket was weighing her down. She couldn’t think of a single reason to get up.

  She wasn’t fit to call herself a mother anymore. One child had already died on her watch and she had very nearly lost another yesterday. She had no idea how Jacob had got through the side gate and into the street; it was always kept locked and bolted, but somehow he’d opened it. She couldn’t blame Emily for taking her eye off him; her daughter was only nine. Maddie was the one who was supposed to be looking after him. If Jayne hadn’t found him wandering along the main road, he could have been kidnapped or hit by a car.

  Her phone buzzed again. She let it go to voicemail but finally swung her legs sideways and sat up, checking the screen. Candace: she’d called three times, once very late last night and now twice this morning.

  She didn’t really want to hear what her sister-in-law had to say, but Candace would only keep calling. Wearily, she played the first message, the one from last night. At first there was a long silence and she was about to hit delete, when Candace’s voice suddenly echoed loudly in her ear. ‘Maddie, are you there?’ There was a clatter as she dropped the phone. ‘Oops, sorry about that. You still there? Lucas just left. Sorry it’s so late. He’s such a wonderful brother, you know. I’m so lucky to have him. He’s a wonderful brother. Did I tell you that already?’

  ‘Oh, Candace,’ Maddie said softly. Four years sober, and now this.

  ‘I did something,’ Candace blurted suddenly. ‘Something terrible. I’m so sorry, Maddie. I should have told you. Lucas wanted to, but I made him promise.’

  The message abruptly ended. What on earth did Candace mean? She’d done something terrible? What sort of terrible? Maddie stared at the phone for a minute in frustration and then played the second message, the one Candace had left a short while ago.

  ‘It’s me again,’ Candace said, now sounding sober and suitably contrite. ‘Sorry I kept your husband out so late. Look, ignore whatever I said when I phoned last night. I’m sure I was talking all sorts of silly nonsense. Give me a call when you’re up. Sorry again.’

  She heard the sound of voices downstairs and Lucas calling up to her. ‘Maddie! Are you awake?’

  She ignored him and played Candace’s last message. ‘Look, Mads. Can you call me. Please.’

  She had no idea what her sister-in-law was talking about, but it sounded ominous. She replayed the first message again, her sense of foreboding growing. Candace could be erratic when she’d been drinking, Maddie remembered that from before she got sober, but this was different. What could Candace have done that was so terrible, other than fall off the wagon? And that was hardly a state secret.

  Candace was there that day, a voice whispered in her head.

  No. Candace was no more capable of hurting Noah than she or Lucas. She couldn’t imagine anyone she knew deliberately harming her child.

  Maddie hated the fact that this cloud of suspicion was hanging over them all. Regardless of what the pathologist said, she still clung to the belief that it was all a mistake.

  Lucas appeared in the bedroom doorway. ‘It’s the police again. You need to come down.’

  ‘I’m not dressed.’

  ‘Never mind that. Just come down, would you? It’s important.’

  She pulled a bobbly old cardigan over her pyjamas. More questions. More accusations. Why couldn’t the police just leave them alone?

  DS Natalie Ballard was waiting in the hall downstairs, her red hair pulled back into a neat ponytail. ‘I don’t believe you’ve met DS Shortall,’ she said, indicating a tall, skinny man in his mid-thirties with an unpleasant expression. ‘He spoke to your husband yesterday at the station.’

  Maddie ignored the man’s outstretched hand and wrapped her cardigan more tightly around herself.

  ‘We just wanted to take a look round,’ DS Shortall said. He had a strong south London accent and his pale blue gaze made Maddie feel distinctly underdressed. ‘Get a feel for things.’

  ‘I think I should call my solicitor,’ Maddie said uncertainly, fearful of what the police would think when they saw the state of the nursery. Lucas had tidied up the mess, but the red paint was still there, garishly striping the walls.

  ‘Oh, let them look,’ Lucas sighed. ‘We’ve got nothing to hide.’

  DS Shortall headed towards the staircase. ‘Your son’s bedroom’s up here, is it?’

  ‘First door on the left,’ Lucas said.

  ‘Please, don’t let us keep you,’ DS Ballard said briskly. ‘Just get on with whatever you were doing. We’ll call you if we need you. This shouldn’t take long.’

  Maddie could hear the television blaring in the sitting room, even with the door tightly closed; no doubt the children were sitting square-eyed in front of it, breaking all the normal rules. But these were hardly normal times. Better they overdosed on CBeebies than saw the police searching the house for evidence their parents had murdered their baby brother.

  ‘What are they looking for?’ she said anxiously, following Lucas into the kitchen. ‘What do they expect to find?’

  Lucas put his finger to his lips, then reached up to the baby monitor on top of the fridge and switched it on. Maddie was taken aback. It would never even have occurred to her to listen in on someone else’s conversation and she was a bit shocked that it’d occurred to Lucas. ‘Is that even legal?’ she whispered nervously.

  ‘Sssh. It’s our house. Why wouldn’t it be?’

  ‘… according to the paramedic,’ DS Ballard was saying, her voice crackling slightly over the monitor. ‘he’d been dead some hours before they were called.’

  ‘Christ!’ DS Shortall exclaimed. ‘What the fuck happened in here? That’s one hell of a paint job.’

  ‘Mind those plastic bags, Mike.’

  ‘They didn’t waste much time clearing up, did they? It hasn’t even been a week.’

  ‘Give them a break,’ DS Ballard said sharply and Maddie felt a brief flash of gratitude. ‘They’re probably in shock.’

  ‘You’ve changed your tune.’

  ‘I’m keeping an open mind. You should be, too.’

  ‘It’s the mother,’ he said cynically. ‘It’s always the mother or the nanny, and there wasn’t a nanny, so that leaves Mum. Drummond wasn’t even there the night it happened.’

  Maddie could feel Lucas’s eyes on her. She glanced at him, but he had already looked away. She had no idea what he was thinking.

  ‘Those injuries could have happened two or three days before he died,’ DS Ballard continued.

  ‘Yeah, in
theory, but it’s not likely, is it?’

  They heard the two officers circulating the room and the sound of furniture being moved. When DS Ballard spoke again, her voice sounded distant, and Maddie guessed she must be at the opposite end of the room from the monitor, beside Noah’s dismantled cot.

  ‘Come over here, Mike.’

  ‘What am I looking at?’

  ‘Something about those bruises on his cheek doesn’t add up.’ There was another rattle of furniture. ‘Hold this side rail, would you? Look. How could he get himself wedged that tightly against it? Ogilvy said there’s no way he could have got bruises like that without considerable pressure. There’s nothing here that’d wedge him that hard against the bars.’

  ‘Unless they got rid of it?’

  ‘Why get rid of something that backs up your story?’

  DS Shortall exhaled noisily. ‘Shit, who the hell knows?’

  Maddie felt sick. She should have admitted what had happened the moment she was asked about the bruises. Better yet, she should have told Lucas the truth in the first place. She realised now that she wouldn’t have had to tell him about the blackouts; she could simply have said she’d fallen asleep. He’d have understood. Instead, she’d panicked. The marks on Noah’s cheek had nothing to do with his death, even the police pathologist acknowledged that, but bruises on the face of a dead child set alarm bells ringing. If she was in their shoes, she’d be asking questions, too. And that policewoman was like a dog with a bone.

  ‘My gut tells me the mother’s not an abuser,’ DS Ballard said. ‘There’s no sign of neglect, the other two kids seem loved and well cared for. She’s just not ticking the right boxes.’

  Maddie glanced at Lucas, waiting for him to squeeze her hand, to give her a reassuring smile, to let her know he agreed with the policewoman and believed in her, too. But he didn’t look at her, folding his arms as he stared fixedly at the baby monitor, subtly but distinctly distancing himself from her.

  DS Shortall snorted. ‘Yeah, well. It’s always the quiet ones.’

  ‘You spoke to the husband yesterday. He said she had serious postnatal depression after the older boy, but there was never any question of her hurting the kids, was there? I can see her topping herself, maybe, but not killing the baby. It doesn’t add up.’

  ‘OK. So why are we here?’

  ‘Why lie about the bruises?’ DS Ballard mused, her voice suddenly loud again. She must be standing right by the monitor. ‘She’s hiding something. The question is, what? Are the bruises part of a pattern of abuse, or is she covering up something else? That’s what I want to know.’

  Maddie couldn’t bear to listen to any more. She’d boxed herself into a corner with her lies: first to Lucas and now to the police. It was going to come out: that policewoman would prod and poke until she got to the truth. Lucas had never questioned her version of events, but he had to be wondering about it now. It was never the sin that tripped you up; it was the cover-up.

  Lucas turned to her and she saw the dawning realisation in his eyes. ‘Maddie,’ he said suspiciously. ‘What did you do?’

  Chapter 20

  Thursday 10.00 a.m.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ DS Natalie Ballard said. ‘Noah didn’t get his bruises from being wedged against the side of his cot, as you initially told us. You now say you fell asleep nursing him and he slipped out of your arms and became trapped between you and the side of your chair?’

  Maddie nodded unhappily as she sat at the kitchen table. She didn’t blame the policewoman for sounding sceptical. If she was DS Ballard, she’d have trouble believing her story, too. ‘It was an accident,’ she said tearfully. ‘I know I should have told you before, but I didn’t think it mattered. He was only stuck for a few seconds.’

  ‘You can see why we’d find this all a bit confusing, can’t you, Maddie?’ DS Ballard said softly. ‘First you tell us one thing and then you change your story and tell us something else. Why did you lie to us, Maddie?’

  She glanced at Lucas, standing beside the sink, his back to her. She hadn’t wanted to tell the police the truth, but he’d insisted. When she’d finally broken down in tears and confessed to him, he hadn’t shouted at her, or lambasted her for lying to him. He’d simply informed her, in curt tones that brooked no argument, that they had to tell the police what had really happened. He’d refused to answer when she’d begged him to say if he believed her. She had no idea what he was really thinking, or what was going on behind his shuttered expression. Lucas had always been so transparent with her, so easy to read, and his opacity now frightened her far more than if he’d yelled at her.

  ‘I was scared,’ she said miserably, turning back to the two police officers. ‘I didn’t want everyone thinking I was a bad mother. And I didn’t think it mattered how he got the bruises. I thought he died from a cot death! We all did!’

  She could hear how feeble her excuses sounded. But she hadn’t thought anything of the red marks on Noah’s cheek. He’d seemed perfectly fine after his mishap; if she’d had any doubt, any doubt at all, she’d have come clean to Lucas and taken Noah to hospital. But the baby had seemed his usual self and so she’d told Lucas a single little white lie so that he wouldn’t look at her with that wariness she’d come to dread in the months after Jacob was born. Of course she regretted it now, but she couldn’t have known how much it would come to matter.

  ‘What about your husband?’ DS Ballard asked. ‘Why didn’t you tell him the truth, at least? You had a new baby with colic, two other young children to look after, you were exhausted from all the sleepless nights. Surely he wouldn’t blame you for falling asleep?’

  Maddie was too shamed even to look at Lucas. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t tell him,’ she said helplessly.

  ‘Was it because he might think you’d dropped Noah on purpose?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘By your own admission, you weren’t very happy at the idea of another baby,’ DS Ballard pressed. ‘Lucas knew that, didn’t he?’

  The detective sounded so sure of herself, Maddie started to doubt her own motives. Had she been afraid, deep down, that Lucas might think she’d hurt Noah on purpose? Was that why she’d been so quick to cover up the accident?

  ‘He knew I loved Noah!’ she exclaimed. She turned to Lucas, desperate now for some support, but he remained silent, staring out of the window and refusing to catch her eye.

  DS Ballard frowned. ‘Well, surely he’d understand a simple mistake, then? You see, this is what’s puzzling me, Maddie. If what you say is true and you just fell asleep in the middle of a very long and exhausting night with a crying baby, I don’t see why Lucas – or anyone else for that matter – would blame you. Unless there’s something else you’re not telling me.’

  She couldn’t tell them about her memory lapses. She couldn’t. Another lie, on top of everything else? Lucas would never trust her again. They’d take the children away from her, say she couldn’t keep them safe. It was bad enough the way they were all looking at her now, when they thought all she’d done was fall asleep.

  ‘I’ve told you,’ she protested. ‘It was an accident! I just fell asleep for a moment, that’s all. You said yourself, it could happen to anyone!’

  Lucas finally turned from the window. ‘My wife’s told you what happened. Your own expert says this had nothing to do with Noah’s death.’

  ‘Technically, maybe,’ DS Shortall snapped. ‘But there’s often a pattern of abuse in cases like this. By your wife’s own admission, she’s already lied to us once. Who’s to say she’s telling the truth now?’

  ‘I asked my wife to tell you the full story so that we could clear up any misunderstanding there may have been,’ Lucas said shortly. ‘Not so you could use it as an excuse to attack her again. This is exactly why she didn’t tell you before. You need to stop wasting time chasing shadows and find out what really happened to our son.’

  Maddie was grateful he’d finally intervened, but she was under no illusi
on that meant he’d forgiven her. She knew him well enough to pick up on the anger and hurt in his voice, even if it wasn’t evident to the two detectives. What she still didn’t know was whether it was due to the fact she’d lied to him, or because he believed her capable of something far more sinister.

  DS Ballard got to her feet. ‘That’s exactly what we’re trying to do, Mr Drummond. Rest assured, we will get to the bottom of this. In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to contact me if you think of anything else that might be helpful.’ She looked at Maddie, her expression unreadable. ‘We’ll be in touch.’

  Lucas showed the two officers out. Maddie pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. Of course they didn’t believe her. She wouldn’t have done either, if she were them. They didn’t know her, or what kind of mother she was. All they had to go on was a dead baby covered in bruises and a mother who’d confessed to lying about how he’d got them.

  But Lucas knew she’d never harm their children. Didn’t he?

  She stood up as he came back. ‘Lucas, I—’

  He cut her off. ‘Why did you lie to me?’

  ‘Please, Lucas. Try to understand. I didn’t mean to. It just slipped out. If I could take it back, I would.’ Her voice thickened and she fought back tears. Lucas had to believe her, even if no one else in the world did. He was her rock. She couldn’t bear it if he doubted her, too. ‘It was so awful after Jacob, everyone watching me and second-guessing me all the time. I couldn’t bear that again. If I’d told you the truth, would you have trusted me with Noah? It was such a little thing, I didn’t think it’d matter.’

  ‘How does lying make it easier for me to trust you?’ he asked exhaustedly. ‘Come on, Maddie. We’re better than this.’

  She’d rather he shouted at her than this weary disappointment. ‘You don’t know what it was like for me after Jacob was born,’ she pleaded. ‘Everyone looking at me like I was some kind of lunatic, waiting for me to slip up and do something crazy. You even hid all the painkillers, Lucas! You and Mum watched me like hawks every second of the day.’