by Kate Bradley
But instead of feeling better, forewarning him only added to my sense of fear. What if he did let me in, what then?
Then, like an addict lifting the fag to my mouth even though I didn’t want to, I took my coat down and pulled the door of my flat behind me.
forty:
– before –
I drove slowly round to his flat. I was nervous. It was dark; it was only five o’clock in the evening, and on a Saturday, normally the town would still be busy, but the heavy wind and rain meant nobody was around.
Gripping the wheel, I kept thinking through my plan. The key was to be relaxed, but the more I thought about seeing him, the more nervous I became.
My heart wham-whammed and I realised I was terrified. I didn’t know why – it should be perfectly fine. I suddenly wished I could go home, but I thought of Jack’s stammer getting worse and with Nick in Cheltenham, there was no one else to deal with my son. I wanted to leave, but his inconsistent behaviour couldn’t go on unchecked. I needed to try and bridge the gap between us and to see what life was for my grandson when he wasn’t with me.
As I trekked up the stairs, I clutched my bag; it felt like an optimistic joke that my son would want to sit and eat a bit of cake with me. Why he didn’t I couldn’t be sure, but the fact he wouldn’t still hurt me greatly. But I carried the bag anyway, a talisman for Jack.
Reaching his front door, I found it ajar. I could see the hall light was off and checked around me, unsure. Of all the imagined scenarios I had been through, this wasn’t one of them. It seemed strange it was unlocked and instantly I felt even more unsettled. I looked around – but he wasn’t nearby. Shaking, I reached out, tentatively, as if I was putting my hand down a rabbit hole. I knocked once. There was something in the way the door moved that made me think he was gone.
Could it be that he’d left with Jack?
I could only wait a few seconds; I was so adrenalised, so twitchy, that I just couldn’t think clearly. I couldn’t breathe.
I knocked again; the noise of my knuckles rapping was louder than I’d expected. Even though my heart was pounding, I was thinking crazy thoughts: He’s left! Jack’s been taken! He’s hiding behind the door!
But the door opened easily into the hall. ‘Hello?’ I said into the silence. I tried again, hating to hear the waver in my voice. ‘I’ve texted!’ I called out, adding that I had Jack’s spelling bag. When no one answered, I knew I could never live with myself without finding if Jack was safe, so I stepped inside to my son’s flat before I could change my mind.
forty-one:
– before –
I stood in the hall, dim with no lighting, still unsure. ‘Hello?’ I tried again, my voice a dry rasp, filled with uncertainty. There were five doors. The two on my right were shut, but one on my left was open and I could see into the unlit kitchen. There were no sounds of life in the flat – no washing machine, no TV or radio playing, nothing. Another door was ajar onto a darkened room, but I could see a cord switch hanging down: a bathroom.
The door at the end was closed, but light spilled from the gap at the bottom – the steady light of perhaps a side lamp, not the flickering light of a TV.
I took a deep breath. In my hand, I still clutched my bag. ‘I’ve brought Jack’s spelling book!’ I repeated. Silence. ‘Hello? I’ve just popped round!’ My voice sounded too carnival bright. Danger seemed everywhere. I felt watched and couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a trap.
To get to the door at the end – the sitting room? – I would have to pass the closed doors on my right. I could open them, but I didn’t dare.
I hesitated, but decided to call out again.
And then I swear my heart stilled because in reply, beloved Jack’s voice called back in a thin, reedy voice that at once told me all was not OK: ‘G-g-g-granny?’
I wanted to rush to him, throw open the door and see him, but I didn’t dare. In my mind’s eye, I saw his father lounged out on a sofa, perhaps asleep with a can in his hand. If I rushed in . . . I could stand the violence, but I couldn’t bear for little Jack to witness it. So instead I hung back.
‘Hi!’ My voice now no longer bright, but instead clearly fearful. ‘I just wanted you to be able to do your homework . . . I wanted to give your book to your dad . . . is he there?’
Silence. Jack didn’t reply but nor did my son. I expected him to rush to the door with a What the fuck are you doing here? But there was nothing. In some ways the nothing was worse. Like a scare you know is coming on the pier ghost train, but hasn’t yet happened. I wanted this dread to be over.
‘Jack?’ I called again. ‘Can you get your dad for me, please? I don’t want to intrude,’ I added for my son’s benefit. See how thoughtful I am. Don’t hit me, I didn’t want to intrude.
Except I did.
And he would know that.
‘He’s not here.’
Again I was stumped. Not here? Not in the sitting room? I flinched, looking over my shoulder – was he about to come out of a bedroom?
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s gone out.’
I threw open the sitting-room door. Inside was a main room, sofas and a TV on one side, and against the other wall, a small dining table with two chairs. But in the middle sat a monstrosity.
What had my son done?
Even as I stood there, I couldn’t name him, couldn’t call him Jack. I think to call him by his real name was to open up a window to our past selves – the way we had been when I was his mother and he was my son. But although I refused to call him Jack until he started calling me Mum again, I still loved him. I knew that. And I carried that love like a dirty secret, because he couldn’t bear to hear about it.
No matter what he did to me, I have always loved him because he is my child. We always felt like one. We had spent so much of our lives together; I was so dependent on him, he was so dependent on me. I still hold dear the days when we were so close, when it was so blurred that I didn’t know where he started and I finished. When being together was difficult but enough.
But it went wrong, so wrong.
It was wrong way, way before we had his son to consider and it was still wrong now.
His lounge was messy with fish-and-chip wrappers on the carpet, an upended ashtray, rope (why does he have rope?) and it stank – of poo and urine. But – but worse, worse, worse was the terror in the middle of the room.
Why had Jack never told me?
I struggled to fit this room to the rest of what I’d understood about Jack’s life here. He continued to wear new, clean clothes back from his dad’s. I always washed and ironed them and took them into school on a Friday afternoon to give back, but I rarely saw the same ones again. The flat always smelt fresh, when standing at the front door. Was that just air freshener as part of the facade?
Is this why my son always pulled the door to – so I couldn’t see inside? Couldn’t see the mess? Couldn’t see the monstrosity?
There, in the centre of the room, was a horror: fashioned out of two kids’ playpens, with one upended on the other and bound everywhere with Gaffer tape. And seeing that horror, perhaps my last glow of love finally, finally, finally dimmed to nothing.
Because even in the dimness, I could see the smallness of Jack trapped inside a cage.
forty-two:
– before –
With Jack in the cage and his father out of the flat, I knew I had a window of opportunity to rescue Jack. I was so relieved too, that I had trusted my instincts and come looking for my grandson. But I didn’t know how long I had and I knew if he came back and found me, there was a very good chance he might kill me.
I remembered the violence with bile. I hated the physical pain, the shock, but most of all I loathed the shame. There was the shame that someone might see, either the attack itself (and over the years, people had witnessed the violence, often dropping their gaze and withdrawing into themselves in the subtlest of ways, with a tilt of the head or a turn of the shoulder bef
ore finally escaping, taking their embarrassment at watching the poor woman who clearly can’t cope with her own horrendous child and leaving me in a puddle of my own disgrace), or the evidence of a previous attack.
There’s no help for someone like me, a sufferer of domestic violence from their child. I realise for many women, they’re too frightened – with good reason – to leave their abusive partners, but for me, I’ve always been even more trapped.
But Jack was not trapped – I would not allow him to suffer. There are laws on child abuse and I would ensure that Jack would never see him again.
‘Jack,’ I said, ‘where has Daddy gone?’
‘T-t-t to-to-to go –’ he gulped, his way of coping with the struggle of getting his words out. He took a deep breath: ‘T-t-t to-to-to . . .’
Normally I gave him all the time he needed, but I did what I never did and cut him off. ‘Don’t worry, darling!’ I said in my best fake-happy voice. ‘Tell me later!’ There would be time to get the facts. How often do you sit in here? Why does he say he puts you in here? Does he hit you? Why didn’t you tell me? Does he always leave you alone? Is the flat always this filthy?
The only thing that mattered now was for me to get him out as fast as I could. I tried to yank at the thick, black tape. It was bound round and round each corner of both playpens, binding them together. I struggled, infuriated, overcome, tears blurring my vision. Then through the bars I saw him, his small face tilted up towards me. Jack looked so innocent – so patient and unconcerned, those beautiful eyebrows finely drawn, lifted in a parenthesis of some question I hadn’t raised – that I just stopped.
Just stopped.
I couldn’t breathe.
Grief crushed my lungs and I couldn’t inhale. I was overcome at how far my failures as a mother now extended. This scene of misery, of emotional deprivation, was my fault, and only my fault. I shouldn’t have even had a child, I realised. I wasn’t fit; I never had been. I was my father’s daughter and as such I shouldn’t have tried to be anything else. I was a drug addict and I was broken by life and then I’d brought a child into my mess, my life. And this was the result. The type of horror story that I would see on the news – but this was my horror story.
I gripped the plastic bars under my hand.
‘Are you all right, Jack?’ I managed, amazed at how utterly normal my voice sounded.
‘Yes!’ He reached round for something and held it up: Bunny. ‘I-I-I-I’ve got Bunny with me. Sh-sh-she-she knew y-y-y-you would come tonight!’
I reached through the bars. The playpen on top was blue plastic and looked worn and battered. The one underneath, which Jack sat in with Bunny, a couple of cushions, a blanket and a sippy cup, was multicoloured. Although it worked well at keeping Jack in, I realised it would be easy for me to release him.
‘I’m going to get you out, Jack. I’m going to get some scissors or –’ a knife – ‘or something.’ I gave him a bright smile. ‘I’m just going to go into the kitchen. Will you . . . be all right here?’
‘I-I-I-I . . .’
Part of me wanted to listen to him, what he was trying to say, but there was no time. He was so calm, so relaxed, I knew it then as sure as I knew my own name, that he was used to his father putting him in there. It didn’t concern him like it might a child who had never been there before.
Oh, Jack. Oh, my beautiful, beautiful Jack.
I ran into the kitchen.
forty-three:
– now –
The loud music has stopped and the opening doorway of the farmhouse throws a precious ingot of light onto the black lawn. For the briefest of moments, I feel like it’s all going to be all right. But the figure starts to emerge, a silhouette against the bright light; and my eyes, as they struggle to adjust, pick out a stature that is both shorter and much slighter than I’d hoped. I was hoping for a big, burly farmer – someone who’d load me and his dogs straight into his Land Rover and drive me back to my cottage. But this isn’t him.
I breathe in. ‘Sorry to trouble you—’
‘Go away.’ A female voice, hard like jade.
‘Oh!’ I try to hide my surprise and aim for warm and reassuring. ‘Look, I don’t want to disturb you, but I just need some help. I’ve—’
‘You have to leave. Now.’ There’s a cold authority behind this voice; a strong local accent, and also stubbornness. She’s a young adult, maybe very early twenties, I think and one who sounds like she’s used to getting her own way.
For a moment I’m stunned. I imagined many scenarios but not this. ‘I don’t mean you any harm if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m on my own.’ She doesn’t say anything. I look around and realise that I’d guessed right, it’s clearly a working farm. Although not impossible, perhaps there are more – and hopefully more helpful – members of the family around somewhere. ‘If your parents are in, would you ask them to come to the door?’ For some reason I think of my grandmother and lift my chin a little. ‘Please.’
My maternal grandmother told my mum to hold her head up high in the dock. She told my mum to be fearless – to meet each and every juror’s eye when she told them what my father did to her. She kept a steady gaze as she told them about the nightly beatings – she never faltered. I saw that gleam of pride in my grandmother’s eye when she told me, years later. We both knew by then that my mother was wrong to be so bold: she’d expected to be acquitted, but she wasn’t. Looking unbeaten probably went against her. But I still saw my grandmother’s look of pride and I wondered then, and I wonder now, what sparked it. My family’s name was forever tarnished and my father’s murder forever shaped my life in ways that neither she nor I would’ve wanted.
But, then, standing on this doorstep, I suddenly thought of something I hadn’t considered before. Perhaps, when that knife slid stealthily, steadily, into my father’s neck while he was sleeping, there might have been a bit of my grandmother who approved of my father’s murder and would’ve chosen to have driven the knife in herself, perhaps even deeper, pinning him like a butterfly to his pillow as he slept.
My plea, or perhaps her curiosity, draws her out a little from the doorway. ‘Oh!’ she says when she sees me, then again: ‘Oh!’
I’m aware of what I must look like. I’m standing in socks, and I’m holding my hands up high either side of me, at right angles to my body just like a newborn keeps its hands up either side of its head as it sleeps. As I crossed the fields, it helped reduce the pounding in my wrists. Now, I realised, it looked as if I was showing her the damage, wrists up and turned towards her, as if wanting her to see the red, exposed flesh.
I lower my wrists and try for a smile. ‘Sorry, I look a state, I know. I promise I’m a normal person, I’ve just been . . . in a car accident.’ I don’t want to scare her with the truth. The farmer needs the truth, but not her. ‘My car rolled, my handbag is in the car so I haven’t got my phone. I just need someone –’ someone my son can’t attack – ‘who can help me get sorted.’
‘No one is here. I can’t help you.’
I feel a flicker of frustration. But I suppose it’s remote out here, isolated. Perhaps she’s been schooled to be defensive.
‘What can I do? I can’t just wander off like this.’
‘Cleasong is north,’ she says, gesturing with a curt nod of her head.
I blink, not believing that someone could be that cold. ‘Really? You won’t help me?’
‘If you leave now, I’ll call the police for you. I’ll tell them you’re on the Cleasong road.’
I decide I do not like this young woman. ‘Please!’ I take a step forward. ‘Look, I’ve got a head injury. I don’t want to cause you any trouble, I just . . .’ I falter as she lifts something in her arms. It’s long and dark and dangerous and desirable: a shotgun. I know farms are susceptible to robbery – she is used to standing guard.
‘I’ve already told you – there’s no one here,’ she says. ‘Just go. The pub at Cleasong will help you.’
‘Cleasong’s four miles away!’
‘Ask at the Red Lion. I work there – tell them Erica sent you.’
‘You’re Erica?’
‘Erica who will shoot you – if she has to.’
I feel a flash of indignation: it never occurred to me that someone could be so unkind to another in need. I’ve got my faults, but I would never ignore a cry for help. ‘Look, I’m a woman on my own, hurt. I’m not in any shape to walk to Cleasong – I haven’t even got shoes. If I passed out because of my head injury, nobody would find me until at least morning. Don’t you think your parents would want you to help me?’
‘They’re practical people, just like I am. They’ll understand. And in case you’ve got any funny ideas, don’t think they’ll be long, neither. They’ve got the vet out for a mare, but since he charges more than its bones are worth, they won’t be lingering.’ She stays in the doorway; she’s savvy, she’s in a place of safety. And like the expert she no doubt is, she’s got the shotgun cocked over her arm. I wonder if it’s loaded.
I decide that it probably is.
Around me the wind blows; it lifts her hair to her face but she doesn’t move to control the strands. We stand motionless.
She drops her gaze first and seems to notice my shoeless feet for the first time. Her eyes widen a fraction, then narrow, showing her new thinking. ‘How did you lose your shoes in a car accident? Don’t seem that possible to me.’
I pause just a second too long – shock and pain and head injury and codeine making me slow – and I know that now I’ve blown it, as clearly I’ve run from something terrible. Her gaze moves thickly from my feet, to my wrists, to my head. She’s figuring it out.