by Kate Bradley
‘Say it,’ he says, slamming his fist on the table. ‘Say you don’t know what I’m talking about.’
I focus, now a little scared. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘He got a puppy, Lisa.’ His eyes are cold, hard and intent upon my own. Clearly I’m supposed to understand something that I’m not catching. What is the significance of this?
He uses my words back at me: ‘The significance, Lisa, is that that was what the cage was for. I helped him make it. He had Jack’s old baby playpen and someone he knew suggested he tape the two together, so that’s what we did. Yes, he should’ve planned better, yes, he shouldn’t have fallen for a sob story down the pub and come back with a puppy, but golly, it was so cute. Still is.’
He rubs his face. When he speaks, he sounds sad again. Suddenly I wish for angry. ‘He wanted to make a real home for Jack. That’s why he agreed to get a pet. He didn’t tell you because he thought you’d lecture him about a dog being in a flat, but he thought . . .’ He picks up his empty glass and refills it with water. Then he looks at me a long time. ‘Tomorrow, you need to go to hospital.’
I feel a crawl of fear: perhaps he doesn’t mean a normal hospital, perhaps he means something else. Something with doors that buzz and treatment plans for substance misuse and people who expect you to talk about your problems.
‘Why are you not asking me about the puppy?’ He gives an angry huff of breath. ‘Damn you, Lisa, you were always so fixed, so unreachable. Do you not understand what I’m saying? Jack was only in the cage because he insisted on keeping it warm for Lennie. You know what little kids are like when they get an idea in their heads.’
I blink; my eyeballs are so dry, it hurts to move the eyelids. Puppy? I’m hearing him properly now. I’m seeing the flat. I’m seeing the ripped, torn material; the newspaper spread on the floor; the ripped sofa; the old rope; the poo. It’s not living the dream, but . . . but perhaps that was the sign of a puppy playing. I think of the kitchen – clean and tidy. The hallway that always smelt fresh.
I remember Jack, looking at me calmly. I thought it meant something else . . . but perhaps he simply was calm?
‘Where was your son when I found Jack in the cage? And where was this puppy?’
‘My son?’ He gives a dry laugh. ‘What, where was our son when you found Jack in the cage?’ He stares at me with real pity. ‘He’d popped round to the neighbour’s flat to get some loo roll. The puppy had pooed in the flat. Very sensibly –’ he clearly takes pleasure in emphasising this word – ‘he was glad Jack agreed to stay in the cage so that he couldn’t go near the poo.’
‘Then why was I able to come in, look around for a while, if our son was just next door getting loo roll? That would only take a couple of minutes.’ I’m looking for holes in this story. I know I sound desperate; I am. Because I’m visualising the flat and I’m seeing it differently now. I’m remembering how easy it was to break open the makeshift cage – how I’d tried to cut it open before realising it was hinged. Easy to open. Not a cage for Jack but a dog crate. I feel a dull, cold, dropping sensation in my stomach.
‘The first neighbour didn’t answer and the second one, their disabled mother had fallen and they needed Jack’s help getting her up off the floor.’
‘Then where was the puppy?’ My voice is a plaintive cry. ‘Why was the puppy not in there?’
‘Because our Jack is not a complete div – he didn’t want to leave a new puppy unsupervised with Jack.’
I think of Winston: was Jack scared for the puppy or for the boy?
Nick is continuing. ‘So he picks the puppy up and nips next door to get the loo roll. He only meant to be gone for a minute. And I know what you’re going to say – he shouldn’t have left Jack, not even for a moment, and what parent can say that they haven’t taken the same risks themselves?’ His eyes are fierce: I daren’t take the challenge.
‘A puppy?’ is all I can say.
‘Yes, Lisa. You ruined young Jack’s life because of a puppy. You ripped him from his father’s life because of a puppy. You didn’t attend your own mother’s funeral and you stopped me from seeing my grandson, you’ve brought him out here in the middle of nowhere, and Jack says you’ve stopped Jack from going to school, all because of a puppy!’
He stands up. ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself.’
seventy-two:
– now –
A puppy. Can this be true? I don’t know what to say. I’m weak, I’m hurting and all I can think of is the gun lying on the lawn. I remember Erica’s face as she looked down on me from the landing, in silent condemnation. How could this be all my fault?
‘What about the fire?’ I finally manage, weakly. Perhaps I’ve been reading everything wrong. Is that possible?
But I do want to know about the fire. It’s all I’ve got now.
‘The fire? At your work?’
I can only nod to say: Yes, that is what I mean. I wonder if Nick will judge me harshly if I go to the larder and get a little something else. Just another 2 mg of diazepam will do it. Just a little something else to take this growing horror away.
For the first time I see a shadow of doubt cross Nick’s features. He was always confident with me, but less confident in his decision-making. He changed though as he matured, I suppose it was what helped him progress in his career. I don’t like to think about how maybe both things happened when he was no longer around Jack and me.
‘The fire started in the laundry room.’
‘I know that, Nick. I kept in touch with work. My colleague sent me the fire report. An accelerant was used. The window was left open and it was poured through.’
‘That could’ve been by anyone.’
‘Or our son.’
‘I know through work that the owner of the nursing home was dodgy. They’d overextended themselves, setting up home after home after home. They had big debts. It could’ve been connected to that. Or something else entirely. No one even looked at Jack for the arson – why would they? It’s not always about you, Lisa.’
‘Someone did it. And you don’t know that he didn’t.’
He presses his temples with this fingertips. ‘But we don’t know . . . and we have to be cautious.’
I think of Mungo and Selena and feel panic. ‘So what’s all this leading to? Telling me I’m wrong about everything. Sitting here, laying out evidence after evidence, that I’m terrible and what, our son is just a victim of me? Because of my childhood, I’m just delusional about my mother, the fire, the dog, I get what you’re saying. I don’t believe it, but what I want to know, is what’s next? You said you wouldn’t take sides, yet you clearly are. You say that Jack is going with his father tomorrow and I’m just going to wait it out in my own home, tucked up like a guest on the sofa. So what’s this leading up to?’ I feel a jellyfish whip of anger. ‘Let’s have it now, Nick. You’ve done your copper thing. Broken down my alibi, so let’s just get to the point now, shall we.
‘What’s the message you’re delivering?’
He spreads his hands out against the wooden knots and whorls of the table. He stares at them as if they are going to save him from something. ‘Lisa, in the morning it will be time to say goodbye to Jack. I’m sorry. They are both going to leave. Jack doesn’t want you to know where. He’s taking little Jack with him and he doesn’t want you to see little Jack ever again. I’m sorry. I realise this is hard. I can’t do anything about it – I want you to know that I did speak up for you. But ultimately, I’m here to make sure there’s no ugliness in front of the child. That wouldn’t be good for anyone.’
Nick has the decency to get up and put the kettle on so he doesn’t have to witness my drowning panic.
Grief is instant. I start crying. Eventually I ask: ‘Why won’t you help me?’
But Nick mishears me, perhaps because of my tears or perhaps because of his guilt, because he answers a different question: ‘I tried! Before we were over, I really tried. I tried to d
iscipline him, intervene . . . but you wouldn’t let me.’
‘You didn’t, you didn’t!’
‘I did, Lisa. I wanted him to go somewhere better for him than us – a kids’ home or something. I didn’t know what else to do – I didn’t know how to make a difference.’ His voice rises to a retch. It hurts me to hear this powerful man so fractured. ‘If I could’ve changed things, I would’ve. But you wanted to manage by yourself. You would hide from me how bad it was – you would hide it from everyone.’
‘I was ashamed!’ I shout back, crying harder now. ‘I was embarrassed.’
‘You shouldn’t have been in front of me.’ He rubs his temples, like he’s in pain.
‘Maybe not, but it wasn’t just that – I had to protect him from the world. And from himself. I couldn’t let him go into a unit. What sort of mother would I have been who did that?’
‘A sane one?’ His face drops. ‘Sorry, Lese, sorry I said that. He’s turned out well. You did the right thing. I couldn’t see it at the time, but you were right. And I want you to see now that you were. He’s different now. He’s matured. And that is all credit to you.’
‘But what if it isn’t? What if you only think he got better because you’re looking at him from a distance? ’
‘I think he’s changed, Lisa.’ He strokes my hair. ‘It’s been a long time.’
‘But how do you know?’
He rubs at his temples again; I bet he wishes he was sitting on the sofa next to Anne-Marie instead of having this conversation with me. But that thought doesn’t make me feel bitter – I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to talk to me either.
I just wish that I knew who I could’ve been if I hadn’t done what I had done. My eight-year-old self made a flash decision and it’s still shaping my life. I don’t even remember making it. I understand why I killed my father, but who I could’ve been if I hadn’t, I will never know. Who my parents could’ve been, what would’ve become of our family, I will also never know. There’s a lot of sadness in that. That’s a sadness that was between my mother and me – she never told and I never told. Even to the end, she protected me.
I think in life, all the love songs and all the poetry are about wanting that connection with that special someone who understands us – truly understands the bones and blood of us. Friends, lovers, even children, see us for who we are and it’s a real self. But it’s that special connection that is one in a million: it’s the love that, if we are lucky, we have once in a lifetime, that tortures.
I could never have that connection.
Oh yes, you’re a handsome man, we could fall in love, get through all that shit that everyone gets through – but not have the same thing in common. We like the same songs, we love the same literature but we don’t both know what it is to watch a sharp knife held against the skin of our father’s neck and see it pressed hard enough so it didn’t just cut, but cut deep enough to end life.
No one knows how I feel and I can’t tell them about the memories that shadow me. So I can’t share who I am.
Oh yes, we went through similar things, didn’t we? We know what it is to watch how quickly the blood pumps out of an open wound (shockingly so) and how the eyes do open. He was asleep: but he didn’t stay asleep. Despite the suddenness of his death, he was afforded one last waking moment. I alone saw his eyes open and meet mine. I alone saw his stare: his shock, anger, fear.
Then the hurt of betrayal.
About how the hands don’t reach for the knife-bearer, but instead clutch at their own throat, blood pushing through the fingers. And then there was no grip.
It’s a memory that keeps me alone; an archipelago of one. No one knows about the road I have taken. The person I might have been, I will never know.
Instead, I am left with me. And I don’t think about what I have done, I really don’t. It’s just . . . sometimes, if I was careless and I looked directly into my son’s eyes, I knew I could really see my father. How funny he has come back to get me, not through dreams but through my own body. It’s like standing in a cave and shouting, and now my own scream has come back, bouncing off the stone walls of time, finding its way back to me.
I press my hands against my forehead. I think I’m going to have to stop the echo.
‘I’m going to accept it, Nick.’ I say it and it surprises me – I can see by his widening eyes that it’s surprised him too. ‘I still think,’ I add carefully, ‘that he’s not the best parent for Jack. But I can’t fight it. I’ve got no rights. Besides, perhaps I’m not much better.’
‘Oh, Lisa,’ he says and squeezes my arm. ‘Obviously, I don’t really know little Jack as well as I probably should, but it’s been great catching up with him tonight and he’s a lovely boy. Bright, sweet, you’ve clearly done a great job. Again. You’ve done a great job again.’
I ignore the flattery. ‘You promise me though, Nick, if you’re supporting this, you have to keep in touch with Jack. I bet his dad won’t let me, but you have to speak with him on Skype or something at least once a week if they don’t live near you and be careful to watch for signs that he’s happy. Or unhappy.’ Even as I say it, my heart breaks because I understand just how impossible a task that is. Nick doesn’t even really know him.
But finally I see that there’s nothing I can do.
I debate just how I might fall apart tonight, when Nick’s phone rings. It’s her: his wife, I think. Anne-Marie.
He answers it. ‘Oh, hi!’ He sounds surprised. He glances at me, before subtly turning his body away from me. ‘Yes, we are done here.’ I watch him closely. He seems relaxed; I can tell by his shoulders, his easy movements away from the table. He doesn’t want me to hear this conversation.
‘Oh!’ he says, instantly changing. He looks at me now. ‘Why?’ His voice is a bark, and he frowns. ‘Where?’ He sounds cross. What has she done?
‘I’m coming. Don’t go anywhere. No! Now. Now. I said so, didn’t I? I won’t be long.’
He stares at his phone as if it has let him down. ‘Fuck,’ he says.
He looks at me like he’s trying to move rusty cogs in his jaw. What has she demanded? I wonder.
‘It’s our Jack.’ His breath comes jagged, panting, and I know at once he’s nervous.
My breath freezes: I don’t move. I can see in his face, the drawn eyebrows themselves a question mark, that something isn’t as he expected it. He’s nervous: and that makes me nervous. Suddenly, the thought that something has happened to my son is the worst thing in the world.
‘He’s not here.’
‘What do you mean, he’s not here? He’s upstairs with little Jack.’
‘No. He was but . . . he’s just said he’s not here now.’ Nick is already looking around the kitchen. ‘I’ve got to find my car keys. Something’s wrong.’
‘He can’t have left . . .’ But I realise he could’ve done. Right out of the front door. No, I would’ve heard the creaking of the stairs. I bet he went out of the bedroom window.
‘Where is he now?’ My voice is so high and clipped it doesn’t even sound like me. ‘What did he say?’
‘He’s just down the lane. Something . . . I don’t know. He says he had to get out of here.’
He stops looking around the kitchen and instead stares with an intensity at me instead. ‘You go upstairs and check on Little Jack and I’ll go and find our son.’
I hold on to the table, gripping the pine tight under my fingertips. ‘What do you think’s happened?’
He shakes his head, his bewilderment clear. ‘I don’t know, Lisa. I thought . . .’ He bites his bottom lip. ‘Go. I’ll get my keys, I’ve just put them down somewhere . . . but go now. Stay here with Jack. Wait until you hear from me? Check that . . .’
. . . he’s OK.
He doesn’t have to say it aloud. I understand it. I see it: I see doubt and concern in his eyes. He’s been so sure he’s had all the answers, but now . . . now he’s not so sure.
; ‘Go now.’
seventy-three:
– now –
I’m no longer thinking; instead I take the stairs two at a time. I’m at the top of the landing within seconds. The floorboards complain under my feet as I cross to Jack’s bedroom in a heartbeat. My hand is on the door handle before I take a breath.
My bladder is cold; my lungs are fire. I don’t know what I’ll find.
It occurs that there’s a simple reason why my son has fled the property and left Jack here. My hand, on the door handle to Jack’s bedroom, drops like a dead bird.
I remember the blood; so much blood.
Will I open the door and find that here? Will this be what structures my life? Blood and death at the start; blood and death at the end? Because if he’s hurt or taken Jack, it would be the end. I would only go down and find my stash and slip them silently down my throat, until they were all gone, until I was gone. I wouldn’t waste my time seeking justice – I watched my mother lose twenty-two Christmases with me at the request of Her Majesty’s sense of justice, before she was finally released. I’ll not waste my time.
I grip the handle and open the door.
The room is hot. It’s dark, but the curtains are now open again. The flickering light from the grate reminds me of Sunningdale burning. Jack is in bed, a small hump of perfection under the duvet. So small, it’s as if he’s not even really there.
I cross the room. I need to know.
I stand above the shape in the duvet, my hand hesitating as I reach out. I realise so much, and I embrace my addiction and all that it’s caused, if only, only, that this anxiety is also true. I make a deal with God. Please, God, I’ll accept my faults, if Jack is safe – please. I’ll be better if I can just be wrong about this.
My fingertips touch the top of the cover and just before I pull it back, I realise that I haven’t seen him move – it’s motionless, this lump, the same as if it’s just a childhood trick with a pillow, the oldest in the book. I know Jack’s no longer here: he’s already gone.