by Kate Bradley
I drink the whisky: it’s sour enough to give me a shiver. I look at the green kit and then at him. ‘How did you know where it was?’
‘About the third thing I did when I got here was look for your tablets. I found some under your bed, but I know you well enough that you only keep a stash there for emergencies. So I carried on looking.’ His head jerked in the direction of the larder. ‘And clever me, I thought that looked about the right place for your main stockpile.’ He looks sad when he says: ‘You don’t change, Lisa.’
Nothing about me has changed, least of all how I feel about you. I finish my drink. ‘Not true. I only started using again after my mother’s death. I had been clean for years.’ When Nick didn’t say anything, I changed the subject. ‘When are you going to let me see Jack?’
‘Do you want to?’ His dark eyebrows knit together and a hand rubs his face briefly, in a habit I’d forgotten that I’d even known about. ‘I mean, is that a good idea right now? You’ve both had a bad night with each other – we don’t want any more rows.’
‘Not that Jack,’ I said, hearing my own disgust in my voice as I carefully peel my socks from my feet. ‘Little Jack.’
I study Nick properly for the first time, ignoring the thwang-thwang in my feet and wrists and head, ignoring the need for another dose of something that I’m not prepared to take in front of him, and am surprised at just how different he looks. I haven’t seen him for the best part of two years. In that time, he’s changed and now looks noticeably older. Not bad old – good old, really – but his eyelids have grown heavy and white now graces his beard.
‘Lisa, I do want you to go up, but only when you’ve tidied yourself up enough to look half-reasonable – and after we have a chat.’
I don’t like the way he says this. ‘Look at what he’s done to me!’ I’m not talking about the beautiful boy upstairs now, but Nick knows this.
He stares at me. I thought he wasn’t going to speak, but in the end, he does. ‘Our Jack says you did that to yourself.’
I’m confused. My head thwangs again, heavier now. ‘What?’ I can hear my own incredulity. ‘How could I do this to myself?’
‘Well, I suppose all of the mud and scratches and your feet – you need to tell me why you’ve been outside without your shoes, by the way – is because you’ve been wandering around the countryside in the dark. Now look,’ he says, no doubt seeing my rising fury, ‘I’m not an idiot. I know what our son is like. I’m under no illusions that he’s a saint, please be clear on that right now. We’ll thrash all of this out together – I’m here for little Jack only, not to take sides – but it’s better you know what our Jack is saying before you two meet. So,’ he holds his hands up, ‘don’t bite my head off, but what he says is, is that you attacked him.’
I have no words.
‘He says that when he turned up and asked for Little Jack, you attacked him with a rolling pin.’
‘Unbelievable.’ I reach for the bottle myself. ‘Lies – as usual. He tied me up, you know.’
‘I know.’ He puts something on the table. I’m not looking at it, instead I keep on staring at Nick’s face. For some reason I don’t want to look on the table, I don’t want to see what it is.
‘He said he didn’t know what else to do to stop you from raging. He wanted to keep you in one place until I got here. Believe it or not, I only live an hour from here. Sometimes I go shopping in Hereford. Can you imagine? We could have bumped into each other.’
I feel like saying something sarcastic, but I don’t. Instead I just stare at him, willing for him to continue.
‘But he felt bad when he saw what you’d done, trying to free yourself. The burns. That’s when he called me.’ His eyes flicker to my wrists. ‘He was upset both for you and that he’d had to turn off the gas.’
I don’t breathe. Instead, I think of him standing over me while I was unconscious. Where was little Jack when this was going on?
And: didn’t I turn off the gas? I want to remember that I did, but I don’t. With a rising nausea, I realise that what Nick is saying is possibly true.
Nick reaches out and lightly rests his hand on my arm. I almost lean into it.
‘Like I say, I remember how awful Jack could be when he was little, but Lisa, he did cut you free. And – because I asked him to until I got here – he did keep out of your way as soon as he was sure you were regaining consciousness. That’s true, isn’t it, that he stayed upstairs with Jack?’
I don’t speak because I can’t agree with this, even though this is the truth.
Instead, I look at the table: I can’t help it. Now, I want to know what has been placed in front of me.
sixty-seven:
– now –
I drop my gaze to the tabletop to see what it is that Nick has put in front of me.
It’s the cable tie. It’s been cut. I thought I had burnt it off. It’s a little bit charred, but I can see the neat edge of a cut from a blade. It is unquestionable.
For the first time, I feel just a tiny – so tiny – flicker of doubt.
It seems like years ago I had tried to free myself, but glancing at the clock, I can see that only three hours have passed.
I reach out and touch it, turning the strip of plastic under my fingers. I couldn’t really see it, so how can I be sure? Although it looks the same, it could so easily be a lie.
Because he lies, I remind myself.
I hold onto this now, gripping this fact like a buoyancy aid because it’s all I have to guarantee my sanity. That and Jack. ‘When can I go up and see Jack?’ I persist, not wanting to think about the neat edge of the cable tie and what it might mean.
Nick rubs one finger around the rim of his glass. ‘I don’t know, Lisa. It might be better if we all waited until morning now. Perhaps it would be better if you were fresher and—’
‘No! Why?’
Nick eases away as if my voice is a blast to be avoided. ‘Jack hasn’t seen his son in a year – because of you. Don’t you think he’s entitled to a little time?’
‘No. He doesn’t deserve anything after the way he treated him.’
Nick shakes his head as if he’s weary of this conversation already. ‘You need to go to sleep, Lisa. It’ll all look better in the morning. I’ve made up the couch for you.’
‘You’ve made up the couch for me?’ I can’t believe it. Nick has been back two minutes and is already taking control of my home. How is it that I have been evicted out of my own bed?
‘I’m sorry, Lisa, I think it’s safer if you sleep downstairs. Our Jack and I are going to camp out in your room. In the morning . . .’
‘In the morning?’
At least he has the decency to drop his gaze to his glass. ‘In the morning, Jack’s going to contact social services. He wants to tell them that he plans to take Jack back full-time. He says . . .’
‘He says what?’
‘Lisa.’ He sighs like a dying man’s final fight. ‘He wants to make what you’ve done, official. He wants it recorded in case you ever try anything again. But he’s being reasonable – he says, if you let them go without any trouble, then he won’t file the complaint with the police. You don’t want that: kidnap carries a heavy custodial sentence.’
I stare at Nick. Our eyes lock together across the table, across the years, across the wasteland of our disappointment. This is all we have now between us – an unspoken but shared sadness for how it turned out. Our hopes, our dreams: our baby.
Nick’s a good man and always was, and it’s to my shame that I let anyone else think otherwise. Even now, after all these years, I’m amazed I can see the memory of my love for him so clearly.
‘I’m sorry that this has happened when, before all this, you were so great for little Jack. I know you think of him as your own,’ he says as he takes my hand.
Nick means this to be kind, but I shake him away. ‘After all we went thorough together, I can’t believe you’d help him to take my Jack from me.’
My hand grips my glass, but it’s empty. I pause before pouring any more into it, but then I think: Fuck it. I know I’m not going anywhere tonight. My body is shot; I’ve got a stolen shotgun lying outside the back door; for all I know the police or the farmer are looking for a crazy woman who broke into a farmhouse to steal it; my feet are so damaged I couldn’t even put Crocs on; a head injury; a burnt, drugged self; I’ve done enough visits to prisons to know I never want to be in one and now Nick’s presence bringing my old pain into even sharper focus.
It’s game over.
I’m not sure I’ve got more fight in me anyway – not when I see that neatly cut cable tie. I wish I could place the memory of it coming off my hands. I was so sure I burnt it off, but maybe I never did. I can’t remember.
I catch Nick looking at me as I look at it. I know he knows what I’m thinking. Angry, I give him a jab back. ‘Did Anne-Marie let you out tonight then?’
‘Don’t, Lisa.’
‘Don’t?’ I’m a raging lion. No. I’m a cornered raging lion. I hate not being able to remember about the cable tie. And I hate that another woman has succeeded with my husband where I failed. I met her once: insipid, thick, just too nice. Gawky-looking too. But apparently better at marriage than I am. And worst of all: she is a better mother than me. If we’ve had children with the same man and her children are normal, what does that suggest about me? I can’t bear it. ‘Don’t what?’ I challenge.
He shakes his head as if he was expecting this mention of Anne-Marie.
‘Where is she?’
‘At home with the girls.’ His voice is careful, considered.
The girls. Feel the burn, Lisa, feel it deep. Girls who probably play piano, dance, and pass their tests like they were born to do nothing else but be perfect and easy and straightforward and nice and, and, and – normal.
I bet they are normal.
I bet they’ve never snapped their pet’s back under a Woolworths broom handle.
Winston.
He’s a lifetime away but suddenly I see him, panting his smile, the drool falling from his velveteen, flobby mouth as he gazes at me with loving eyes.
‘Don’t do this, Leese.’
Nick is covering his eyes, but it just makes me angry. I want to thump the table but my wrists won’t let me. ‘You’ve traitored Winston’s memory.’
Nick barely flinches. ‘I loved that dog, too, but it was twenty years ago. It has to be water under the bridge.’ He squares up to me in his seat and sighs. ‘Lisa, I’ll tell you again: I’m not here to side with him. But just because someone is an awful, violent, challenging child, does not mean they are not entitled to raise their own son, if they so wish.’
‘But you know how dangerous he is.’
‘Yes, agreed, he was utterly dreadful – but. I’m telling you this and you have to accept it: as an adult he is squeaky clean. This kid is his and therefore if he wants to raise him, he can. You don’t have to like it and maybe there’s even a bit of me that’s . . . a little anxious about it too, but the facts are the facts. The law is on his side.’
‘He killed him.’ I swipe at my glass and it smashes to the floor, a punctuation mark to my anger. I feel unreasonable; melodramatic; off-key, but . . . . I still trust my instincts.
Nick doesn’t move. I sit watching him, only hearing the sound of my rapid breathing. I wait. I want Nick to react. He may have fully forgotten what he was like, but I haven’t. And with Jack upstairs with him, it’s never been more important for him to remember.
When he doesn’t say anything, I decide to prod again. ‘I loved that dog.’
‘Did you?’ He says it so quietly, I’m not sure he has even said it.
But the way he looks at me . . . in my hands now is the cut cable tie – why am I holding this of all things? I turn it between sweating fingers, seeing again the neat edges, not burnt at all – not as I remembered.
sixty-eight:
– now –
I feel the throb of my burns; I turn over my wrists and stare at them. I appraise them in the light; they are not as bad as I thought. Perhaps I didn’t hold them over the flames as long as it felt like. Maybe time constricts and expands. The blue light of my burns starts to thrum in time with my head. I can feel a scratching of wanting to unlock some memory – something perhaps gone, long gone . . .
. . . or perhaps it was never there.
Nick has been gone so long, our quarrels too antique to have life, but it still feels vital that I’m understood. ‘Don’t you remember,’ I say, wanting to steer the conversation towards what I want to talk about – not this, never this – ‘how difficult Jack was when he was young?’
Nick nods, again rubbing his face to show how tired he is. ‘Of course I do. Who could forget?’
‘The violence? You haven’t forgotten?’ For one awful moment, I think he’s going to deny it. I think he’s going to say that it was all my imagination.
‘I remember, Lisa. I couldn’t forget something like that.’ He looks at the smashed glass on the floor and then at me, before he gets up to fetch a glass of water. ‘He was a very, very difficult child.’
I pause, nearly lose courage, but still want to know. ‘Your girls, they’re not . . .?’
He turns off the tap and looks at his glass filled with water as if the answer is there. Of course he understands what the implication of this question is to me.
‘They’re fine,’ he says finally. He puts the water in front of me.
I remember looking out of an upstairs window, listening to Nick smashing our plates and knowing it was over. Perhaps it wasn’t just my DNA. ‘And your marriage?’ Do you smash plates? Does she smash glasses?
‘Anne-Marie is good to me.’ He’s found the dustpan and brush. I watch him sweep up the broken glass, which is now a metaphor for my heart. It takes time to sweep in the grout, and he covers the whole floor very carefully – it keeps him too busy to look at me. I watch him, this man, my husband for many years, but not now, now someone else’s. She’s lucky I think, Anne-Marie. ‘So, she treats you nicely?’
His foot triggers the bin lid and he tips the glass in. ‘Yes, she does. She’s very kind.’
‘Was I kind?’ This matters suddenly, even after all these years, it matters more than anything.
He looks up, but looks away too quickly. ‘You did the best you could.’ He reverted to staring into the bin.
‘What does that mean?’ Fear flutters crow wings inside my chest. ‘You don’t think I was a good wife?’
‘It was hard for you.’ He releases the bin lid and it clangs shut, punctuating his statement. ‘Jack was hard, even right at the beginning, even when he was tiny. It was a terrible labour – it was all just . . .’
Terrible?
‘. . . from the start, just so hard.’ He fills the kettle. ‘We should have something hot. Tea. No more booze for you.’
‘Can I have something else for the pain?’ I hesitate. ‘A bit more from the larder?’
‘You don’t need to ask me.’ He laughs, but not meanly. I like the way his eyes crinkle now; it suits him. ‘You never used to ask my permission.’
‘My head hurts.’ I sound like I’m grumbling. I’m surprised when Nick gets up and goes to the larder. He comes back with a light dose of Valium.
‘How did you know these were what I wanted?’
‘They always left you in the best mood.’
I swallow them. ‘I didn’t know that you . . . noticed what I took.’
Nick sighs and briefly closes his eyes. ‘Lisa.’ He pauses. ‘There were times . . . there were lots of times when you . . . just weren’t there.’
I open my mouth to argue: I was always there. But of course, he doesn’t mean that. I know what he means. I feel my throat thicken.
Maybe he feels it too because he rests his palm lightl
y on my arm. ‘You did your best. I know you did your best and I never doubted that, not once.’
I open my mouth to respond, but I don’t know what to respond to.
He increases his pressure on my arm, just enough for me to know he’s about to say something. ‘You didn’t grow up with a family. You didn’t know what it would look like.’
‘Are you saying this, all this, is because of me? Jack’s behaviour is because of me?’
Nick looks puzzled, his eyebrows drawing together. ‘Don’t you think that? Isn’t that what you thought went wrong between us?’
‘No! He was born . . .’ I yank my arm away from his touch. I want to say he was born wrong, but that sounds brutal. ‘He just came out that way. He was just . . . angry.’
Nick doesn’t say anything, but he pours himself another drink. Just for himself. Up until now, Nick has been quiet, kind, but when he speaks his voice comes like a punch. ‘You were so angry, Lisa.’
‘Me?’ Why are we still talking about me?
‘Yes, you were – always.’ He holds his chin up like he’s a defiant child. ‘Nothing would stop your anger. You would be angry over anything, everything. All the time. Only that,’ he said, jabbing a finger at the larder, ‘would keep you quiet.’
I shake my head, bewildered. ‘I’m not an angry person; in fact I’m the least angry person I know.’
Nick is rubbing his finger around the rim of the glass again; he never used to have this habit and I decide I don’t like it; it’s irritating and a clear excuse not to look at me. Then he surprises me by both looking at me and speaking. ‘Lisa, your mother was taken to prison when you were eight after she killed your abusive father. You were the same age as little Jack is now – I can’t imagine how awful that was for you. So, of course you’re angry. Just because you don’t shout and throw things, doesn’t mean you didn’t show it. You just showed it in a different way, a withheld way. You were always so . . . remote. It was as if . . .’ He turns his head, his mouth pursed, clearly trying to reach the right word. ‘ . . . as if you were careful of being too close to us.’