by T J Stimson
It takes several weeks of wrangling, but in the end they agree to let her live with Davy. He has to promise to change his name, too, move to bloody Hastings with her, but he says why not, it’s a chance for him to start over as well, wipe the slate clean. He’s done so well while she’s been inside, passed his exams, got his qualifications, but his record is holding him back, no one wants to hire an arsonist, of course, as soon as they find out he’s an ex-con the door slams shut.
She’s introduced to her probation officer, Michael Conway, a retired policeman in his early forties who lives in Hastings, not far from the flat they’ve found for her. He reminds her a lot of Mr Tallack, and of Frank; he treats her like a normal human being, not shit on the sole of his shoe. He tells her they’ve found her a job at a local travel agents, it’s not much, he says, she’ll be in the back room writing up bookings and making phone calls, she’s not allowed to work with the public, not yet; but it’s a job, a real job, she’ll be earning her own money, she’ll have her independence.
She knows Michael must have gone out on a limb to get her this job. It’s hard finding anyone willing to employ a former felon, and she knows he must’ve called in a favour to sort this for her. She’s lucky she’s got a decent probation officer. She’s heard some horror stories from the girls on the inside: POs who demand sexual favours, show up drunk, take a cut of their earnings, force them to run drugs. She can tell Michael is a good man. It makes her feel a bit less terrified, knowing he’ll be there to keep an eye on her. It’s going to be tough, she knows that, but she’s starting to see a future now, for the first time since she left Font Hill.
A week before her release, one of the staff at the halfway house says she’s wanted in the warden’s office. She puts down her book and goes downstairs. Michael is waiting for her along with the warden, and she smiles, wondering if he’s got the new library card he promised her.
But he doesn’t smile back. The warden asks her to sit down, and then Michael unexpectedly crouches down next to her, and in a voice warped by pity, he gives her the worst news of her life.
Chapter 30
Thursday 4.30 p.m.
Maddie turned off the ignition and stared at her house, still holding her phone. In a few minutes, she would have to go in and paste on a smile for the children, explain to her mother what had happened, pick up the threads of life and try to carry on. But this one small moment was Noah’s.
She could still smell her baby when she closed her eyes, feel the weight of his small warm body in her arms. The ache in her heart was physical, a crushing pressure in her chest that threatened to suffocate her. She longed to yield to her grief, to stop fighting and let it submerge her. But this moment was all she could allow herself. She had two other living children she had to protect.
Emily had already started to ask questions about Lucas, wanting to know why he hadn’t been home for two days. Maddie had told her he was away working, but her daughter was smart; she wouldn’t buy that for long. Even two-year-old Jacob had been asking for his daddy. She hadn’t spoken to Lucas yet, and he hadn’t called, but they’d have to talk soon and come to some arrangement about the children. She guessed he was staying with Candace. There was no way she was letting that woman near Emily or Jacob, but Lucas had the right to see them. It still hadn’t sunk in yet that he’d moved out. Even though she’d had no choice but to tell him to go, she missed him with every fibre of her being. Last night, she’d reached for him, and instead of the familiar, warm bulwark of his body, there was only cold, dead space beside her.
Her fingers curled around the phone in her lap. On her way home from the sanctuary, Rebecca Piggott had called and given her the news she’d been waiting for: the police were dropping their investigation. But not because they thought the post-mortem had been wrong.
‘Forensic pathology is not an exact science, Maddie,’ Rebecca had said carefully. ‘As with so many things presented as indisputable fact, when it actually comes down to it, it’s all a question of interpretation. That’s actually a good thing for us. Their experts say black, our experts say white, and reasonable doubt lies in shades of grey.’
Reasonable doubt. It sounded like a line from a television drama, not a phrase that could ever be applied to her. Rebecca obviously dealt with cases like this every day, women accused of murdering abusive husbands, college students on trial for date rape, but Maddie felt as if she’d fallen through the rabbit hole and found herself in a parallel universe.
‘I don’t understand,’ she’d said, unable to hide her frustration. ‘If the police are dropping the investigation, surely that means they think it was a cot death after all?’
‘It’s not quite that simple. As you are now unfortunately aware, the basis for bringing a charge citing Shaken Baby Syndrome is the so-called “triad” of head injuries: retinal haemorrhages, subdural haemorrhages, and damage to the brain affecting function. Luckily for us, because of the controversy over other cases like this that’ve been thrown out, the Court of Appeal says that if the outcome of a trial depends solely on this triad, it’s unsafe to proceed. In other words, unless there is corroborative evidence of trauma, or other non-medical facts that are relevant, the CPS will refuse to prosecute.’
‘But they couldn’t find any other evidence, could they?’
‘Maddie, I don’t want to upset you, especially after all you’ve been through,’ Rebecca had said. ‘But DS Ballard was very keen for me to point out that just because they don’t have enough to move forward at the moment, it doesn’t mean they don’t believe Noah was shaken to death. They simply can’t prove it.’
‘She thinks I did it,’ Maddie had said flatly.
‘Not you,’ Rebecca said.
It had taken a moment for her to understand. Rebecca had been warning her. Noah’s injuries might not be enough for the police to be able to prosecute, but that didn’t mean they had an innocent explanation.
She hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry. The police finally believed her story and were dropping the investigation. But that meant whoever had killed her baby would be getting off scot-free.
‘There’s a high chance that someone close to you is responsible for Noah’s injuries,’ Rebecca had added quietly. ‘Someone who was alone with him in the seventy-two hours before his death. The police can’t do anything, not as things stand. Which means it’s up to you to keep Emily and Jacob safe.’
It’s up to you to keep Emily and Jacob safe. She wanted justice for Noah, of course she did. But he was dead, and there was nothing more she could do for him right now. She had to focus on Jacob and Emily.
She picked up her bag and left the cocoon of the car to go inside. Her mother had been staying with her ever since Lucas had left, and she found her now in the kitchen, filling a saucepan with water and setting it on the stove, next to a packet of spaghetti she was about to cook for the children’s tea.
‘Did you manage to speak to Rebecca?’ Sarah asked.
‘The police aren’t going to press charges against me,’ Maddie said.
‘Oh, darling. What a relief.’
Maddie glanced out of the window and watched the children playing outside on the swing set at the bottom of the garden. ‘They don’t think it’s a cot death,’ she said, without turning around. ‘They just don’t have enough evidence to charge anyone, that’s all.’
‘Pathologists make mistakes,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s always easier if there’s a rational explanation, but sometimes awful things happen for no reason, no matter how horrible and random and unfair that sounds.’ Her voice softened. ‘Cot death is tragic and terrible, but it’s no one’s fault, Maddie.’
She couldn’t understand why her mother was so quick to suggest there was an innocent explanation. Did she still think Maddie had had something to do with Noah’s death, was that it? Was she trying to seize on this chance to rewrite the facts because she was afraid of the truth?
‘Did you not hear me?’ Maddie demanded, swinging around. ‘It’s not a mista
ke, Mum. The police don’t think the pathologist was wrong, and nor does Rebecca. They’re sure Noah’s injuries aren’t accidental. They just don’t know who caused them, that’s all.’
‘No one caused them,’ Sarah said firmly. ‘Just because the so-called experts want to find a reason, it doesn’t mean there is one. Dozens of these cases have been thrown out on appeal—’
‘I don’t want to believe it any more than you do,’ Maddie said. ‘But someone close to Noah hurt him. Deliberately hurt him. It might not have been Lucas, but I think he’s covering for Candace. I can’t let him come home. I can’t trust him anymore.’
‘I know Lucas hasn’t been entirely straight with you,’ her mother said. ‘Of course he should have told you why he really wanted that bank loan, I’m not making excuses for him. But lying is a long, long way from condoning murder, darling.’ She squeezed her daughter’s hand. ‘He shouldn’t have lied to you, but he’s apologised, and you need to let it go. Come on, darling. He wouldn’t cover up the death of his own child, not even for Candace. You’re not thinking clearly.’
For a moment, she was tempted to do as her mother said. She wanted to believe in Lucas, she so much wanted to believe in him; he was her husband, the father of her children, the man she still loved. But there was simply too much at stake. She couldn’t gamble Emily and Jacob’s lives on giving him the benefit of the doubt. She hadn’t told her mother the real reason why Lucas had moved out two days ago, allowing her to assume it was over the second mortgage; Sarah had always tended to side with Lucas, as she had over the loan, and Maddie hadn’t been ready to have her reasoning questioned yet again.
‘He tried to have me sectioned,’ she said bitterly. ‘He called Calkins and tried to get me locked up.’
‘Lucas didn’t call Calkins,’ Sarah said.
‘Mum, stop trying to defend him. He did call Calkins, he—’
‘I was the one who called him, not Lucas.’
Maddie’s jaw dropped. ‘What?’
‘Darling, no one thinks you’re crazy. But you are traumatised. Who wouldn’t be, with what you’ve been through? You need time and space to heal. Dr Calkins can help you do that.’
‘How could you, Mum?’ she shouted. ‘Lucas is trying to make everyone think I’m going mad, and now you’re helping him! I found his T-shirt hidden in the shed, it had red paint all over it, he was the one who vandalised Noah’s room!’ She sounded crazier than ever, she knew that, but she couldn’t stop. ‘He and Candace, they’re in this together, Mum, she was here the night before Noah died, and she came to the house when I was asleep and gave Jacob the Calpol—’
‘Maddie, stop.’
‘I know it sounds insane, but—’
‘Stop,’ Sarah said forcefully. ‘You were the one who painted Noah’s nursery. Emily saw you.’
Maddie was literally rendered speechless.
‘Emily told me this weekend,’ Sarah said, more calmly. ‘She was very upset. She heard a noise one night a few days after Noah died, and when she got up to see what was going on, she saw you ripping up the nursery carpet and rolling red paint all over the walls. She said you were crying and saying Noah’s name over and over again. She didn’t know what to do, the poor child must have been terrified. In the end she just crept back to bed.’
Maddie’s head spun. She had done it? She’d been the one who’d wrecked the nursery.
‘I can’t have,’ she said, shocked. ‘I’d remember.’
‘Grief does strange things to us all, darling.’
Maddie groped for a chair and collapsed into it. Just as she’d thought she’d made sense of the madness engulfing her, her world was upended yet again. Lucas had been telling the truth. He’d been cleaning up the mess she’d made of the nursery, just as he’d said. He hadn’t been plotting to get her locked up: her mother had been the one who’d called Calkins, not her husband. And if he’d been telling the truth about all of that …
She’d been wrong. She’d been wrong about everything.
She was the one who was going mad. She covered her face with her hands. ‘Lucas will never forgive me, Mum. I said such terrible things to him—’
‘He’ll understand. He knows you’re not yourself, sweetheart.’ Sarah sat down next to her and took her hands. ‘Grief takes many forms. Sometimes it can lead you to think things that aren’t true and get strange ideas into your head. It doesn’t mean you’re crazy. But you’re not thinking straight either. That’s why I told Lucas we needed to get Calkins to see you. There was nothing sinister about it. No one’s plotting to get you out of the way.’ She smoothed Maddie’s hair away from her forehead. ‘This is my fault. If I’d had any idea you were blaming Lucas for calling him, I’d have told you before.’
‘What about Emily?’ Maddie said wretchedly. ‘She must have been so scared when she saw me in the nursery.’
‘Emily and I had a long talk. She understands now you were just very sad about Noah, and seeing his room upset you. Maybe it’d be nice if I took her to spend a few days with me. I think she needs some alone time, away from Jacob—’
She broke off as the doorbell rang.
‘I’ll get it,’ Sarah said.
Maddie sat frozen in her chair as her mother went into the hall. Her mother might think Lucas would forgive her, but Sarah hadn’t been there; she hadn’t seen the look of hurt and betrayal on his face. Maddie had accused him of being complicit in the murder of his own son, based on nothing but suspicion, paranoia and what she saw now were a few flimsy – at best – pieces of circumstantial evidence. What in God’s name had she been thinking? She felt as if she’d been groping around in the dark, and someone had suddenly switched on the light. She had to call him and explain. Beg for his forgiveness, agree to see Calkins, promise to do whatever it took to get her head straight and put her family back together.
She shoved back her chair and ran towards the front door. ‘Mum, I need you to mind the children. I’m going—’
She broke off as she saw the red-haired detective on the doorstep. They must have come to tell her officially that the investigation was over. Either that, or they were here to arrest her after all.
But DS Ballard didn’t even look in her direction. The woman’s eyes never left her mother’s face.
‘Hello, Lydia,’ she said.
Lydia
Davy is driving down the M6 on his way to see her at the halfway house when a fifty-three-year-old mother-of-two tries to undertake him on a rain-slicked stretch of road and loses control. The woman clips Davy’s car, sending him spinning into the central reservation. The car flips onto its roof, killing him instantly. Seven other cars are caught up in the crash and more than a dozen people are injured, though no one else dies. The woman gets away with a broken ankle and sprained wrist.
Her blood alcohol level is twice the legal limit.
The accident makes front-page newspaper headlines. Of course it does, it’s an irresistible story. There’s a strong suggestion of karma in some of the editorials, as if it serves Lydia right to lose someone she loved. They bring up Davy’s own criminal record, too, like it somehow makes what happened to him less terrible.
The drunk driver is initially accused of causing death by careless driving, but she pleads guilty to a lesser charge, some bullshit about being in charge of a vehicle while unfit through drink, instead of murder, which is what Lydia thinks she bloody well should be charged with. The judge sentences her to three months in jail, suspended for two years, bans her from driving for thirty-six months and fines her £2,500. She’s a respectable Surrey housewife, after all; her husband is some rich wanker in the City, her mother has just died, her kids need her. If she’d been a single mother from Peckham, maybe the judge wouldn’t have been so understanding.
Lydia wants to throttle the woman who killed her brother. She wants to squash that drunk driver like a cockroach, to look into the woman’s bulging eyes as she squeezes the life out of her, and if she had the opportunity, she’d do it without
a second’s thought. Mae is right, and the shrink is wrong. She is a bad seed. There’s a wickedness inside her she can’t control. She can bury it like nuclear waste, encase it in well-intentioned concrete, but sooner or later, it’ll burst to the surface. All it needs is the right trigger.
She isn’t even able to go to Davy’s funeral, because of the press. Instead, her probation officer takes her to visit his grave a few weeks later, under close protection, just in case.
She knows Michael Conway is already half in love with her. Unlike most people, it isn’t her looks that attract him. He’s simply one of those men who’s drawn to damaged souls. His mother was an alcoholic, his first wife a schizophrenic who eventually committed suicide. Michael wants to fix people. And she clearly needs fixing.
Three months after her release, he resigns as her probation officer and takes her to dinner. Another three months after that, on her twenty-third birthday, he proposes and she says yes. They marry in a very quiet ceremony at a register office, no guests and two strangers off the street as witnesses. It’s the first time she’s officially used her new name.
She marries Michael, because he’s a nice man, a decent man, because he plainly loves her and makes it easy for her to love him back, because, despite everything he knows about her, he still wants to marry her; and because, after Davy’s death, he is the only person left in the world who cares if she lives or dies.
Children aren’t part of the plan. That deadness inside her, that lack of conscience: she won’t be responsible for passing that on. Michael can’t have children anyway, thanks to a case of mumps when he was twelve. He’d grieved their absence when he’d been married to his first wife – though given her diagnosis, it was probably a good thing – but he’s reconciled to it now. Lydia asked the doctor who’d signed off on her release if she could be sterilised, but he’d looked shocked and said no, they couldn’t do that to a young girl, no matter what she’d done, it wouldn’t be allowed. So she’s relieved when Michael tells her he’s infertile; one less thing to worry about.