What I Did

by Kate Bradley

  My child looked anywhere but at me and the knife in my hand. It was heavy, one of Nick’s fishing knives. I nearly asked him: why were you standing over Daddy with a knife? But I didn’t want to hear the answer.

  Jack was fishing mad and wanted to go fishing early this morning, but Nick refused to take him. It was the first time he’d refused to take Jack on a trip and we all knew it was because Jack had killed Winston yesterday. The usual fishing party of three, would’ve been, without Winston, the two of them for the first time, and I didn’t blame Nick for not wanting to take his son and pretend everything was all right.

  Now the dog was dead, it was far, far from all right.

  Nick still felt terrible about hitting Jack, had apologised, and as much as he wanted to make good, he couldn’t face just him and Jack and no Winston just yet. I totally understood and had supported Nick making a stand despite Jack’s tantrums. The words ‘social services’ hadn’t been mentioned again since Irene’s bitten cheek, but I thought we were both thinking the words anyway.

  I stared at Nick’s fishing knife. It was a present from me. He kept it in his tackle box which meant that Jack had purposefully gone looking for it. Its blade was dark and dangerous and I thought of my own childhood. I finally considered Jack, who’d edged away from me and was now standing on the far side of the bed. He just looked back at me, waiting for me to say something. But what could I say when we both appeared to be the same?

  No.

  I fought back against my shame: it wasn’t the same, not the same. I had been frightened; was trying to save my mum. His violence was all I’d ever known and it was getting worse. I used to hide under the covers, listening to her trying and failing not to scream. I could hear what he called her – bad words, so bad. I saw him play with the knife against her: I loved her and I wanted to save her.

  Nick was a great dad. Winston a great dog. No, this was not the same. I gripped the knife and marched round the bed. Taking Jack’s hand, I led him out of the darkened bedroom.

  I settled Jack on the sofa and turned on the TV. I was plaster of Paris: fragile, delicate – even the lightest of brushes could break me.

  Before I’d even reached the kitchen, I realised my life was over. I knew then that I would have to lead him much further from this flat. With Winston dead and now this, there could be no remaining here – Nick just wouldn’t ever be safe. And if he felt that – knew that – he would call Social Services and Jack would be taken away. Perhaps that wasn’t true, perhaps it didn’t work like that, but I wasn’t prepared to wait and find out.

  If I had to choose between losing Jack or losing Nick, then I made my choice right then. I decided we would go away; somewhere on our own. Somewhere where no one could get hurt. I was prepared to risk myself for my son. I also understood there was no one else who could do this for him – there was only me.

  I didn’t want him to do what I did: hurt someone and then spend the rest of his life secretly suffering.

  I stayed in the kitchen. I knew I should speak to Jack, but I couldn’t. I had no words. Our life as a family was over now; how could I sleep knowing what Jack could do in the night? Some people would say that it’s love that underpins family life, but it isn’t.

  It’s trust.

  Wordlessly, I took him a Jaffa Cake and a Ribena. I didn’t want to treat him, I just wanted to keep him quiet. I needed time to think. I hid back in the kitchen, found Nick’s whisky and poured myself an inch. I downed it and then poured another. But I didn’t drink it. The brute burn of alcohol reminded me I needed to go somewhere, anywhere. I knew I needed to pick somewhere to run to so I could leave Nick safely behind. I gripped the glass; I loved Nick, that’d never been in question. He had his faults, but I still remembered the man before we had our son. It was our love that meant I had to leave. I had to protect him from both his son and from difficult, hideous choices, because, in the end, it’s protecting people that’s true love. My mother taught me that.

  Just as she stepped up, so I decided I must.

  I thought of my dad then; so abruptly did he come to me that I put down my glass before I dropped it. He was funny, so funny – just the best sense of humour. Like Jack, he was incredibly talented with art too – drew me a cartoon of anything I asked for. I remember his smell: cigarettes, aftershave and whisky. Jack looks like him, I thought.

  I poured away my drink and pulled out the Yellow Pages and let it flop open on the kitchen countertop. I found the map and then located my mother’s prison in Send, near Woking. Then looked at large towns within travelling distance. Bracknell caught my eye. Perhaps it could be as meaningful to me as Brighton was. The fact that it begins with B was as good a reason as any.

  From the wall-mounted phone, I picked up the receiver and dialled for an estate agent I’d found. ‘I wonder if you can help me. I’m looking for a furnished flat – two bedrooms – around the Bracknell area, please.’ I realised the car was Nick’s, bought by Irene as a present. ‘And it’s vital the flat is near the train station,’ I added, marvelling at how pleasant I sounded – one wouldn’t be able to tell that my heart was breaking.

  All the time I arranged our new flat, I checked on our son without actually looking at him properly: not even once.

  Then I packed our bags, took Jack and left.

  I nearly left a note, but I didn’t. Mostly because I didn’t know what to say.

  And Nick peacefully, unknowingly, slept on and on and on.

  seventy-nine:

  – now –

  The noise is sudden and loud. The sound of gunshot. Then there’s a metallic sound as a knife – my kitchen knife, I know it is – drops to the slate tiles. He collapses to his knees. I reach for my son and embrace him again, just like I have always done. Before I was holding on to him: now I am holding him up.

  Trying and failing.

  I can’t look at Nick or the intruder; instead I hold on, so tight, eyes squeezed shut, gripping against his back, inhaling his scent of cigarettes, whisky and deodorant; he smells like my father. I’m trying, still trying to save him. But I collapse with him; together we fall.

  Really, we were never apart.

  Sorry, Daddy.

  I love you, Jack.

  eighty:

  – now –

  I climb away from my son – I don’t want to crush his breathing – but, even as I clamber off, I know from the blood spreading that it’s too late. Close-up shotgun wounds don’t leave any room for hope – his chest is meaty and messy.

  I look up at Erica in the doorway. She stares right back at me. ‘I’m going to call the police,’ she says, and she breaks the shotgun and reaches for her phone. ‘Dickheads, all of you,’ she mutters just before she requests: ‘Police and an ambulance.’ She’s cool as she starts to explain the situation and Nick then takes the phone from her and I think he’s doing his police thing. I know that if Erica hadn’t shot Jack, he would’ve killed her.

  I think she saved all of our lives. I hear enough from Nick to know that he thinks the same and is telling them so.

  He commands Erica to leave the gun outside, clearly broken open. He watches whilst she does it and then informs the operator that it has been done. Then he tells her to sit at the table, with her hands where he can see them. He is communicating with the police the whole time. She is lucky he is a senior police officer. But I’m not going to worry about Erica’s future. She did the right thing. The truth will out. I stop listening.

  My life is over.

  I kneel back down, as close to him as I can.

  ‘Jack?’

  His eyes flicker open. ‘Lisa?’ he says, then, focusing on me, he says the sweetest thing: ‘Mum.’ That word he hasn’t said in so long. There’s so much I want to say. Instead, he’s dying. His mouth works, but no sound is made.

  I lay a light hand on his shoulder and get even closer. Now it’s just the two of us. I ignore the stink of blood. ‘Jack,’ I falter and try again. So little time. ‘Jack. I love you. I’m sorry
for what I got wrong.’

  He smiles a little but his gaze is vague – it’s on me, then not, then back again. ‘When I was a little kid . . . I found a newspaper article.’

  I shake my head a little. At first I don’t know what he means, and then my blood runs cold because I do know.

  ‘I thought . . .’ He’s struggling to breathe. The blood is spreading from him fast, covering the world, smothering it, ending it. ‘I thought . . .’ He looks at me with searching eyes. ‘Is it true? Did I guess right?’

  My hand props me against the floor, now surrounded with blood. It’s warm with life. I lean closer to my son. His breath is on my skin and mine is on his. Our eyes are finally together. ‘Jack . . .’ I don’t think I can find the words that convey my depth of feeling. ‘Jack, you were always – and will always be – my boy. There’s nothing you could do –’ I think of losing Nick, my Sunningdale residents and my mother, and know it’s disappointingly and painfully true – ‘there’s nothing that could ever make me not love you.’ I smooth his hair away from his sweating forehead and even manage a smile. ‘You’ve been the hardest thing I ever had to deal with, but darling, you’ve always been the best, best thing I ever had in my life. I love you, baby.’

  ‘You killed your dad.’

  I want to know how he knows, but in the soup of him reading the article, visiting prison all those years with my mum, that last day with my mother when she died and him being as smart and nosy as a jackdaw, I know it’s too thick for me to sieve now: there’s no time.

  ‘I’m sorry, baby,’ is all I say. I don’t know how long he has known. I don’t know how much it has shaped him or his actions, but I do know it’s too late for us. I can stop neither the bleeding nor the reality.

  Instead I lift his head; its heavy in my arms, but I rest him on my forearm. He’s breathing slowly and I recognise it from the dying. I am at once both professional nurse and loving mother. I kiss his perspiration-slicked cheek and tell him the truth: ‘Sweetheart, I have always loved you the most.’

  He is still, amazingly, looking at me and I feel like we truly see each other.

  His mouth works again: he is trying to say something. I lean lower, my face next to his mouth to try to hear what he is saying. His hand suddenly, with a strength that is shocking, reaches for me and grabs my head and pulls me closer. But then: I feel his lips against my cheek, soft. It is a kiss. We stay like that for perhaps only seconds but the memory of it, I know, will sustain me forever.

  Then at once it’s over. His grip drops to nothing and his hand and lips fall away and when I can finally bear to look, his head has dropped back to the floor.

  His gaze is both fixed and distant.

  I ignore it. I ignore that his wound-pocked chest is not rising or falling. Instead I press my lips against his forehead and kiss him back, and just breathe him in deeper. For a moment I can pretend.

  But after a while I know.

  I know I will feel this loss later, but for now, the fact that my son did love me, means the joy tempers the grief. Love is enough.

  Love is enough.

  epilogue:

  – eighteen months later –

  Jack runs across Hove Lawns on to the beach, the pebbles spilling under his feet as he chases our dog; Lennie is yapping around his feet, already hoping for a swim in the sea. Jack is laughing and throws the ball and our dog tears off ahead, with Jack pistoning behind.

  I shout good-natured, redundant words into the wind: ‘Jack! Don’t go far!’

  I stop at my usual coffee stand. It is parked up on the wide pavement that delineates Hove Lawns and the busy Brighton seafront road; in another hour the traffic will be heavily crawling as the crowds arrive. I order a hot chocolate and a flat white for breakfast, extra hot with oat milk and, to celebrate, I buy two almond croissants. ‘For me and my grandson,’ I smile as I pay. Jack is always my grandson now; I can find the answers if people bring the questions.

  The barista gets to work and I turn my back on him briefly to check first on Jack and then look out across the crashing waves. It feels so good to be back in what feels my spiritual home.

  I accept the croissants in a paper bag. Although Jack doesn’t know it, I deserve a treat today: today marks one year of sobriety for me. Coffee is all I allow myself now. I’ve never had a problem with alcohol, but treatment has helped me understand that I don’t want to swap one problem for another.

  Treatment has helped me understand a lot, not least that I don’t need to be afraid of anything anymore. All my life I’ve been afraid of something. But not now. All the monsters are gone.

  My new therapist, Anya, is such a toughie. She questions my version of events all the time, making me reflect differently on it all. I blurred over the edges of my substance misuse, but she’s encouraged me to recognise what I already knew – that I only started taking codeine as a way of coping with my son. When my mother died, it was a major setback, and, whilst I can’t rule out another catastrophe in my life yet to come, we do agree that being prepared is part of the battle. I wasn’t prepared for what happened to my mum, but that’s not an excuse though – many in my situation wouldn’t have made my mistakes.

  My mistakes are my mine only and I own them.

  Many would’ve coped better with Jack than I did. I say his name all the time now. Many, many people deal with challenging children, and many do better than me. They are my heroes. I think, if he’d been born now, I would’ve done better. I think there would be a support group for parents like me; I think I could’ve learnt new coping strategies – even if I couldn’t have changed Jack’s behaviour, I think I could have possibly found a better way to deal with it than simply to retreat from it.

  Anya suggests that people cope with domestic violence in different ways. For a long time I struggled to use that term, but in the end, she made me read the definition off my phone and then challenged me to say why it was different to what I had experienced.

  I could not.

  We talk about how I grew up with it and then how I suffered it as an adult. It feels like the two things are related. Anya doesn’t make suggestions; she just listens to me as I make my own. I know that I took painkillers as a way of escaping my mental suffering. It’s hard doing the thinking now, it’s hard to think about how my father’s violence shaped me and how, in turn, I shaped my son. Somewhere, an ancestor of mine threw a stone into a puddle and the ripples kept going, hitting into another until the ripples hit my father and then hit me and then my Jack.

  I know it’s still not over: I know that little Jack suffers the considerable loss of his parents, but I’m doing well with him and he’s in counselling too and seems to be happy and thriving. When I get down about it, Anya reminds me that I’m doing the best I can for Jack’s future. It’s not what I’d choose for him, but I also know that lots of people compromise all the time, and I also know that kids thrive every day in the space between perfect and necessity.

  I shut my eyes and turn my face towards the salty wind that blows off the sea. I think I’ve forgiven my father for his behaviour. It’s too new an emotion to know for sure, but I feel this forgiveness now, weigh it carefully, and it feels right. Forgiveness always is, I think.

  Even better, if I forgive him, then I have to forgive myself because his behaviour and mine are bound so closely and inextricably, together. Besides, I have to have some peace, not just to minimise the ripples hitting Jack, but because I need to feel better about me. Is that selfish? Anya champions the idea that it’s not. She says living is more than just survival.

  Grateful, I sip my coffee: I don’t think I ever got over missing having a decent coffee when living at our little cottage on the hill. Then again, so much of living in isolation wasn’t for me. But it served a purpose, I think, as I glance at the marks on my wrists.

  The burns were never as bad as I perceived they were at the time; I think that would be a good metaphor for how I’ve looked at some things over my adult life. My most
recent therapy breakthrough was recognising how weak I’ve always been, how passive. To some people, they might want to shake me, and tell me to stop sleepwalking through things – perhaps that’s what Issy wanted to do, all those years ago. She got the perp wrong, but her ideas were right. I have been weak; I can accept that. But I can also accept why that is: when you’ve committed a terrible thing in childhood it’s easy to become scared by the power of oneself. To see one’s muscle flexed at its most strong, is overwhelming. I’m not surprised I took a step back and instead stayed timid and safe.

  And that timidity – at least in part – might’ve driven Jack’s behaviour. Every time he pushed up against me, I always took a step back. And then another step. And another.

  That might be a factor. Possibly.

  I accept that my reluctance to challenge bad behaviour might not be Jack’s full story. I still don’t know why my son was the way he was. Together, Anya and I agreed that it’s not appropriate – or within our gift – to diagnose him; instead she suggests it’s better to stay with his behaviours. She says it’s easier to stick to my truth that way. Nick has his truth and Jack had his – therapy has taken me a long way. With it, I accept that I’m allowed mine.

  But I haven’t forgiven myself. I never will. Just because I can’t understand where I went wrong, doesn’t mean that I didn’t. All the dead at Sunningdale are testament to that.

  Anya says only my behaviour can be a testament to me. Whether or not that’s true, it’s helping me to look forward.

  The sun, released from a cloud, shines brighter and my face greedily absorbs the heat. I’m blessed to have much to look forward to. Jack’s stammer is so much better too – not completely gone, but some days I forget he even has one. It means that he’s liberated from his self-imposed silence and instead – amazement layered on amazement – it turns out he’s chatty. I don’t think I will ever tire of him talking. He talks on the phone too, to Nick and Anne-Marie and their children. It makes me feel good that he’s got another set of grandparents out there and two young aunties who just adore him. It was even my idea that he stays with them for the last few days over the Christmas holidays.