by Kate Bradley
I can’t even breathe. It occurs to me that I might die tonight; I might have a heart attack. I am overwhelmed. It then occurs that actually I might want to die, just here and now, I could just expire. Nick will look after Jack; he’s a kind man and I know he can be trusted.
‘So, although I know you loved Winston, what I mean is you were always cool with him.’ He took my arm briefly. ‘I hope I’m saying it right. I don’t want to offend. And I certainly don’t want to blame you. Jack was bloody awful – and you got the brunt of it, for sure. I worked long hours – we needed the money and I was too bloody ambitious. It was all our fault, all of us in different ways.’
If my heart were simply to stop beating, I could be with my mum. I really want my mum, right now.
I press my hands against the surface of the table and I’m glad that it hurts my burns. ‘He killed my mother.’
Nick sits up and looks startled. He runs his hand through his silvering hair. ‘What? What do you mean, Leese?’
‘I think he murdered my mother. Don’t you understand? If I was angry, it was because I didn’t know how to handle a boy capable of such things. I knew what he was like – I always did, but you – you . . .’ I feel angry now I’m making the accusation. See? a thought whispers – he’s right, you are so angry.
But I dismiss this: of course it’s right to be angry in such circumstances. It would be wrong not to be. Instead I plough on, feeling myself warm to this. Enough is enough. ‘You, Nick, were always out working.’
Nick holds up a hand, tries to interrupt, but I won’t have it. ‘You!’ I continue hotly. ‘It’s all right for you to be bloody contrite about it now, but the reality was that I was stuck at home with him every day, day in, day out, on my own, doing it all. Only one day off from him a week and that was thanks to your mother! At best it was boring, and at worst, I knew I was dealing with a psychopath! Don’t shake your head at me: he frightened me, even then!’
He tries to interrupt me again, even standing now. But I answer him by rising out of my own chair. ‘You got to be busy and virtuous,’ I continue, jabbing my finger at him, ‘but I was isolated because I was going through this big thing with our son and I couldn’t tell anyone. I’ve always been on my own – all my life. And having a family wasn’t like I thought it would be. I blame myself, of course I do, but I also blame you,’ I say as I jab again, ‘and I blame him,’ I say, pointing upstairs, crying now. ‘He just shut me out, even from the beginning. He wouldn’t even breastfeed! Do you remember?’
Nick nods slowly, never dropping his eye contact with me. I can tell he’s remembering.
‘Do you remember the pinching of the other children at nursery? The biting? Can you remember the manager ending up asking him to leave? And the next one and the one after that?’ I rub my hand against my eyes, as if by forcing them to shut, I can no longer see – no longer remember.
But I do remember and it hurts.
‘But how is it that after a few years of being with the lovely Anne-Marie you get to remember a different version, one that blames me and exonerates him?’ I jab a finger in the direction of upstairs. ‘Of course, if you don’t have to blame your own flesh and blood, you don’t have to bear any responsibility. How bloody convenient.’
His eyes widen a fraction and I know my dart has hit the bullseye.
I’m hot now with rage, and the heat makes me braver than anyone. ‘Yes, I know I’m a pill addict, but when you’re raising a child that’s dangerous and no one is around to hold you at night, do you blame me for blurring the edges of my reality? I was still there every day, doing the laundry, serving the breakfast, making his bed. Then he kills my mother like a brat breaking a toy and yet I’m branded the angry one?’ My voice drops to a new low pitch I haven’t used before. ‘And I haven’t even told you about the fire I think he started that and killed fourteen people I loved from work – yes, I’m not sure he did – but in my heart, I believe he did. And since I always loved him, never treated him badly, always did my best – I am not responsible for that. So yes, I’m angry. I’m. So. Bloody. Angry. And that’s OK. So, if you don’t mind – and even if you do, I’m going to get my boy.’
sixty-nine:
– now –
Nick holds his hands palms out to show he means me no harm. ‘Lisa,’ he says, using his best taming-the-tigers voice.
He stares at me for a long time.
I realise I’m holding my breath, waiting.
Waiting.
Save me from myself, Nick, I think savagely, desperately. Perhaps you were the only one who ever could. I love this man still, I suddenly think, both savagely and with sorrow. I love him and I have missed him and I have to stay silent about it. I suddenly feel the extent of how much I have missed him, through my addled, pain-filled, opiate-soaked brain. I want to step into his arms and press my face against his neck and inhale the smell of him. I don’t want to have to fight with our son anymore and I don’t want to try to save anyone anymore. I am tired and in him I could find rest.
I don’t want to do this, I realise. I don’t want to keep running. I don’t want to keep looking over my shoulder. I want to live somewhere where there are people; I want to drink a decent coffee; where I can get a dog and talk to other dog owners in the park; where Jack can go back to school. I want to smell the sea again. I want these things. These are normal things.
I think I even want a man. I can’t have this one anymore; there are too many feelings between us that aren’t just love. There’s too much disappointment, too much hurt for us to find a way back to each other. And he already has another – better – family. But I realise that I do want to love another man again. I want to be able to rest my head on someone’s shoulder again. I want to move to slow music with someone; I want to cook a curry for someone who wants to eat it. I want to go to bed with someone who makes me laugh; who thinks I’m interesting . . . sexy even. Golly, I want to find the depths of another who isn’t just me. I really, really want these things.
I can’t have any more of this: this isolation.
I’m an island and I have been all of my life. Growing up first with my maternal grandmother – and then when she died, my father’s sister – and my mother in prison, I never knew anyone who had the same experiences as I did. No one who knew what it’s like to look at your father dying with the blood pumping out of him, out of his neck, and –
– what it is to hold the knife. But holding the knife wasn’t the problem. It’s what I did before then that was the problem. That is what I can never truly, fully accept. It took anger, it took fear, it took force and it took for him to be asleep first. It took for me to feel it was the right thing.
Even after, to feel the mass of it and the weight of the shock at what happened is all just stuff, awful stuff around what I did that blew my life and the lives of my family apart. It was so messy: it was such a surprise.
I remember looking up and seeing my surprise mirrored on my mother’s face. Her shock and horror reflecting my own. I’d seen my father threaten my mother with a knife so many times – saw him rest the point on her neck for a game. But now he was gone and it seemed so clear, no more complicated than a simple equation: three minus one equals better.
Seeing her face, though, I knew I’d got it wrong.
Secrets like that can hold you back. They hold you back from developing real friendship. They hold you back from having a happy marriage. They hold you back from trusting your own child.
seventy:
– now –
Nick says: ‘Lisa.’
His voice is really soft. I stop looking at the knife and instead look at him. He is still standing there with his palms up. I’ve been gone a while, I realise. Somewhere else; some other foggy world in my brain.
‘Nick?’ I speak so he knows I am with him.
‘Lisa.’ His voice is calm, but clear.
‘I’m listening.’ He always liked me to tell him that I was listening. I used to be irritated: I thought it was to do with
his job; it was the cop in him that demanded I stay focused. Now . . . now I’m not so sure. Maybe Nick helped me more than I gave him credit for. I’m just not sure about so much.
‘Lisa.’ His craggy face is serious. ‘Jack didn’t kill your mother.’
‘How do you know? You weren’t there, I was.’
‘Because I saw the autopsy report.’ His breath leaves his body like the longest sigh. ‘Lisa, she died of natural causes. She had a massive heart attack – no one can fake that. I should know, shouldn’t I? As a copper? Her doctor confirmed she’d had high blood pressure for years. And she was smoking pot – did you know that?’
I sink into the kitchen chair, never once taking my eyes off Nick. I knew about her blood pressure because I found her pills, but I still can’t believe it’s true, I just can’t. I tell him this and Nick patiently repeats what he’s told me. He adds medical jargon as a way of adding authenticity but I still don’t believe our son wasn’t involved.
‘But why? Why would you rather think that your mother has been murdered, than just accept that she died of one of the most common causes of death, in this country?’
‘Because of her neighbour for a start! April Dale was clear that she thought someone had broken in . . .’ Was she? Even as I say it, I’m rethinking the scene.
She didn’t say that.
Nick speaks at my silence. ‘Mrs Dale told me that your mother had come round in the morning needing milk. She hadn’t brought anything to pour it into, so Mrs Dale offered to tip some into a mug for her. She said your mum was flustered and pale, and just wanted to borrow the whole thing and said she’d bring it straight back—’
‘Flustered because he was there!’
‘Or because her heart was already in trouble. Your mum didn’t come back. Mrs Dale got caught up in a long phone conversation and afterwards she wanted a cup of tea herself and so Mrs Dale went to retrieve her milk and that’s when she found your mother dead on her bed.’
Nick just looks at me, waiting for some reaction, or perhaps is just being kind and giving me time to process it. ‘Lisa, Mrs Dale said that when she found you mum’s body, she came out into the hall. She was about to ring for an ambulance, when she saw you standing by the door, so she let you in first. The rest you know.’
He sits back as if satisfied with this version of events. But this can’t be right – it can’t be. ‘She gave me the cash my mum kept for emergencies.’
‘Yes. She was flustered and told me it felt wrong to keep it in her flat with your mum being gone. But it wasn’t a statement of not expecting to see you again: she was confused when you weren’t at the funeral,’ he says. ‘She asked me and Jack as—’
‘He went to my mother’s funeral?’
‘Of course. It was his grandmother’s funeral – why wouldn’t he?’
The pain is terrible – he was there and I wasn’t. I’m so confused. I shut my eyes briefly and try to remember what happened. He was there, I know he was there, at my mother’s. I just need facts to convince Nick.
To stay convinced myself.
No. No. I am convinced.
‘I couldn’t tell her why you weren’t there – we knew you’d run with Jack but we thought it was just for a few days. We thought you’d been overcome with grief but would be back for the funeral. We phoned you, texted you; it all went to your voicemail. And don’t think I didn’t tried to trace you: I know you binned your phone. You went off-grid.’ He lets go of me and sits next to me and takes the knife out of my hand. I let him. ‘We were both very upset.’
‘You and Mrs Dale?’
Nick’s forehead creases with annoyance and he presses his fingers against his temples. ‘Jack. Goodness, Lisa, if I’d stayed with you, you’d have driven me to drink.’
I want to say something biting but I’m thinking about my mum’s funeral; I want to know what Mrs Dale said about me not being there, but all I can do right now is try to imagine my son upset.
I can’t imagine it. Instead, I remember him being upset about his Peter Rabbit money-box. Thinking of the tears, the snot, the absolute rage, I remember what he did. I also remember what Nick did, his standing by and watching our son attack me for too long before he finally stepped in and stopped it. He later apologised: he’d called me names and was furious himself, but he knew he was in the wrong.
I forgave him, though, because I shouldn’t have broken it. Neither of us always got everything right.
‘We thought you’d be there, Lisa, and you weren’t.’
I don’t need to look at him to hear his surprise and disappointment.
‘We thought you would turn up and Jack would be dressed in a little black suit and you’d apologise—’
‘Apologise! Apologise? For saving Jack?’
‘What did you have to save him from?’ Nick’s hand is flat against the table, but I notice that its tightening to a fist. ‘What? He had a place in a great school; he lived mostly with you but also saw your mum and his dad every week. Jack had been the most settled he’d been in years, he had a job and was finally doing okay, he’d managed to rent a lovely flat, but you ruined it—’
‘How do you know the flat was lovely?’
‘I viewed it with him and then gave him the deposit.’
‘You?’
‘Yes. Who else was going to help him?’
My mouth is incredibly dry. ‘Why didn’t you come and see me, if you were in the area?’
Nick rubs his face; I know he’s tired. ‘Sorry.’ He shrugs a little. ‘I should’ve done. Planned to, even. But we were buzzing around, so busy with getting furniture, prices for carpets and things, and Amelia – my daughter – had a dance thing one time and flu another and I had to get back, you know, long drive back and all.’ He shrugged again. ‘I meant to, though. Wanted to.’ He pats my hand, the dry gesture that should only be reserved for maiden aunts.
‘Well, what about when I rang you? I rang to tell you that Jack had turned up, wanting Jack at the weekends, and you never said you knew about it!’
He covers his face briefly. ‘My mistake. When you rang, I was literally keys in hand, about to go shopping, Anne-Marie was in a tizz about guests we had due and I felt bad, back-footed because Jack had asked that I ring you and I didn’t . . . I forgot, things were busy. I did ask you to call me back. I wanted to explain properly, but you didn’t call back. It was easier for me to let it go.’
‘All that plotting with him.’ I shake my head, bewildered. ‘I’m so shocked that you’d help him set up round the corner from me and not find a space in your life to clue me in.’
‘Don’t get angry. I realise I was wrong. Truth is, Leese, I just put it off. I knew you’d go mental about it and . . . I just put it off. Too long, I know. I am sorry.’
I didn’t know what to say to him. I just felt overwhelmingly heartbroken. I thought of us kissing by the bus stop, that first time; his hands in my hair, the urgency of his mouth. I thought of us lying in bed, making sure that every bit of our bodies were touching whilst we stared into each other’s eyes. And now, even when he was in the neighbourhood seeing our son, there was nothing left for me . . . no wanting to see me. I felt ridiculous for thinking it, but I realised for the first time that Nick wasn’t even a little bit in love with me anymore.
Not even a little bit. It seemed so incomprehensible, when I felt like I did, that we’d had so much love and – for him at least – it had drained to nothing.
I sit there, trying to breathe. The drugs have dug in deep now; I can survive anything. And it feels good: now I’m on the safe ground of righteousness because Nick let me down. No one could pass that off as a medical misunderstanding; this was not me getting it wrong. I realise it’s time to dig in: I want Jack back.
It was me that lifted him to safety. ‘Nick, no more of this. The facts are plain. He was keeping him in a cage. The flat was disgusting, poo on the floor, mess everywhere.’ I lifted my chin. ‘I want an apology for saying I ruined our son’s li
ttle set-up. Then I want you to come upstairs and help me rescue Jack.’
But Nick doesn’t ask after the cage. I thought he would; I thought his eyes would widen and he’d interrupt and say: What cage, Lisa? Jack didn’t mention that. And then I would tell him, and Nick would become angry and say: You did right, Lisa. I understand now! Let’s go and tell Jack now that you must have the boy and we’ll fight him all the way. Together!
But he doesn’t say any of that.
Instead all he does is look at me with a sourness, a seriousness, as if he’s tasted old milk. ‘You got it so bloody wrong.’ He shakes his head, slowly.
I swallow against the dry in my throat: this is not going the way I thought it would. I’m confused why this is about me when I did not put anyone in a cage. My belly feels funny; perhaps I was the only one who ate something old, something sour. Why is it that he looks so angry with me?
His hand balls to a fist. ‘You silly, silly . . . I’m sorry, Lisa, but really. You’ve ruined so many lives. For what? A drugged-out mind’s misunderstanding. You didn’t know, did you? You didn’t know the facts and you jumped to one hell of a conclusion, all on your own. But that’s you, isn’t it? Always running in your own lane, no thought for anyone else.’ He shakes his head again, goes to say something, but stops himself. ‘You didn’t know,’ he finally says, but this time, he just sounds so sad.
The cold has slid from my stomach down to my bladder. I want to wee. I am frightened about what he is going to say. I thought I was on safe ground, finally. I don’t want to hear I was wrong again.
I don’t want to know, so very, very much.
seventy-one:
– now –
‘The puppy, Lisa. You didn’t know about Lennie, did you?’ I don’t answer but he bangs his hand against the table. ‘The puppy, Lisa. Lennie. You didn’t know, did you?’
I find my head shaking. No, I don’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t know who Lennie is. I’m a little transfixed by the anger in Nick’s voice. He looks like a caricature of himself. If he was a cartoon, he would be drawn with a pink face and puffs of steam leaving his ears. I’m properly stoned, I realise, sorry, not sorry.