The Argument (ARC)

by Victoria Jenkins

  A face flashes before her, its presence so vivid that it is almost as though the woman stands before her, her eyes pleading with Olivia’s. She blinks her away, not wanting to think about that woman at the end of their street or the little boy who looked at her with such hopelessness, as though he was silently willing her to help them. She was there for him, she thinks; that’s who she was waiting for, and that’s why she stopped Olivia. She must have known who she was. Perhaps she didn’t need the time at all; maybe it was just an excuse to talk to her.

  Didn’t Rosie say she had been found on the beach near here?

  ‘What did you do to her?’ Olivia asks. If she dies tonight, she wants to hear the truth before she goes, no matter how chilling that truth might be. None of it makes sense to her, but if what she now suspects as the truth turns out to be real, and if her father raped her mother, then he is surely capable of anything. Rosie’s words come back to her. She sees that young woman’s face again, and she believes now that Rosie didn’t make a mistake. She was there, at their house. She wanted to make herself known to them.

  Amid the chaos of her thoughts, another creeps into Olivia’s head, slowly and methodically, a parasite. Does her mother know that it was Michael who raped her?

  ‘That woman on the television,’ she says, as though her father needs prompting. ‘The one they found on the beach. Was it you?’

  Olivia screams again as her father lunges for her, and any glimmer of humanity she might have witnessed in his eyes just moments ago is gone. He pushes her towards the cliff edge that drops from the line of earth that is edged behind them, and the sound of her cry becomes tiny, stolen by the wind and thrown to the great expanse of sea that stretches below.

  ‘I’m sorry, Liv,’ he says, grappling with her as she tries to fight him. ‘I’ve tried to do my best by you, but you’ve made it impossible.’

  She screams again, but there is no one to hear her. She loosens herself from his grip and manages to free herself, but when she tries to run, he is once again too quick for her, and Olivia knows what little strength she has left in her body is fading too fast. He grips her again, pushing her back towards the edge. He is so strong, and she is so tired, with nothing more than the will to live to use as her resistance. Yet it surprises her just how powerful that will to live is.

  Olivia drops down suddenly, as though she has slipped or tripped over something. Her father lunges forward as she falls but manages to steady himself. His grasp on her shoulders is lost, and Olivia winces in pain as she lands on her already injured arm. She reaches out, clasps something cold and hard, and as her father reaches down to grab her again, her hand swings up from the ground in one swift, precise motion. There is a dull thud as the rock slams against her father’s skull. He groans in pain, staggers back and falls to the ground.

  Olivia scrambles to her feet, not daring to look back at him as she flees. The noise of the wind fills her ears and the smell of the sea lingers in the air around her, and on the tip of her tongue is the taste of the night. There is grass beneath her feet and open space ahead of her, and her legs run harder than they ever have, and her lungs are powered by the cold air of the mountain.

  * * *

  Twenty-Seven

  * * *

  Hannah

  * * *

  Two weeks have passed since Hannah was arrested. She has been denied bail. Until now, both of her daughters have refused to see her. She hasn’t had any contact with Michael, though she knows what he tried to do to Olivia. He is trying to claim everything is his wife’s fault, that she manipulated him into keeping the girls in the house and denying them a normal life. Perhaps it is true. After everything, Hannah doesn’t know what or who to believe. She can’t trust herself. She can’t trust anyone.

  What is normal, anyway? The girls have been fed and clothed. They are clean and healthy. They go to school. Hasn’t she been doing just what every parent is expected to do, trying to bring her children up in the best way she sees fit? Rules are there for a reason, for good reason if they are fair and implemented properly. Schools have them…why shouldn’t she? If she had listened to good sense when she was younger, so much might have been avoided. She paid for her mistakes. She knows that one day, Olivia will pay for hers, too.

  She waits in what has been described as the family liaison room, though Hannah knows that whatever happens between her and Olivia today, a liaison is the last thing she expects. Olivia wanted to be free from her. Now she has her wish. She glances at the woman who is sitting silently in the corner of the room, an officer who has been sent here to oversee the ‘meeting’. She has been told there will also be a social worker present. She wants to explain so many things to Olivia, but there are subjects she doesn’t want to be forced to talk about in front of these women.

  When Olivia enters the room, she looks so different to the girl she was just two weeks earlier. There is more colour in her cheeks, and she seems to have put a bit of weight on in just this short space of time. She avoids eye contact with Hannah, instead glancing to the woman who follows in behind her. There is no sign of Rosie.

  ‘Liv.’

  Her daughter ignores the sound of her name but sits down at the table opposite her. She puts her hands on the table and picks at her nails distractedly. The social worker takes a seat next to the policewoman; something is muttered between them, but Hannah doesn’t hear what is said.

  ‘Mum,’ Olivia says eventually.

  The look passed between them is impossible for Hannah to read. She has doubted for so long that she knows her older daughter; now, she must surrender to the fact that she doesn’t know her at all. She may have the same parentage as Rosie, but she is still a different creature altogether.

  ‘How have you been?’

  Olivia nods but says nothing.

  ‘And Rosie?’

  ‘She’s fine.’

  Olivia looks at her now, holding her eye with an attention that makes Hannah feel uncomfortable. ‘Why did you do it?’

  Hannah exhales softly, knowing that however she chooses to answer that question, Olivia will fail to understand. She could never understand. Her eyes are steely, seeking explanation. Her jaw is tightened as though to stop herself from crying. Hannah doesn’t want to see her cry. She has never wanted to see either of her daughters crying, no matter what people might be saying about her. On the television and in the newspapers, they are calling her a monster. Unnatural.

  But no one knows what her life has been like or why she has lived the way she has.

  ‘I thought I was doing what was best. I only ever wanted to protect you.’

  It isn’t the answer Olivia wants. She looks frustrated; angry, even. ‘From what? From being normal?’

  ‘I never wanted what had happened to me to happen to you. That’s why I was so upset that night you went to the party. I’d snuck out, Olivia, just like you – I’ve told you what happened. I’ve always told you how alike we are. I didn’t want to see history repeat itself.’

  ‘In case I got pregnant and lumbered with a child I hated?’

  The words are unnecessary and unfair, but Hannah knows they have been uttered with the intention of hurting her. ‘I don’t hate you. I’ve never hated you.’

  But Olivia doesn’t believe it. Her silence says as much.

  ‘They told me you and Rosie are with the same foster family. Are they nice?’

  Olivia nods. ‘You remember Miss Johnson?’ she asks, and Hannah feels a knot form in her chest, tightening around her heart and threatening to cut her breath. ‘She has relatives who foster. We’re staying with them for a while.’

  There is a look in her daughter’s eye that lets Hannah know her words have been designed to cause injury, and she wonders for a moment whether she is telling the truth. Olivia must surely realise what she thinks of that teacher, the woman her daughter chose to share her secrets with.

  She doesn’t respond, not wanting to give Olivia the satisfaction of knowing she has hurt her.

&nb
sp; ‘Do you remember that story you used to tell me,’ Olivia says after a while, sitting back and folding her arms across her chest. ‘The one about the monster who comes into the house when the windows haven’t been locked at night?’

  Hannah nods.

  ‘It terrified me for months.’

  There was good reason for the story, which Olivia knows perfectly well. It wasn’t Hannah’s intention to scare her without reason, but Olivia was always questioning things, forever demanding to know ‘why this?’ and ‘why that?’. Better for Olivia to have a few months of nightmares than a real one that would stay with her and haunt her for life.

  ‘I did what I thought was best.’

  Olivia leans across the table, shooting a look at the women in the far corner. She lowers her voice to a whisper. ‘You locked us in with the monster.’

  Hannah feels dizzy with sickness. Despite everything that has happened, she still doesn’t want to believe that the man who raped her that night all those years ago was the man who then turned up to save her and rescue her from her life. She had met him not long before, just a few months earlier, and he had given her a confidence she had never thought she was capable of. He made her see things differently, offering her the promise of something better. New things seemed possible; a different life was all she had ever wanted. He had asked her not to go to that party, but she had never really been to one before and she couldn’t see what harm there was in it. Everyone else was doing it; she didn’t see why she always had to be the outsider. She had just wanted to be like the other girls, to get dressed up and get drunk, to just lose herself and her life for a few hours.

  It seems to be impossible to Olivia that Hannah couldn’t have known it was him, and yet they had never had sex before; that had happened for the first time five months after the attack, with him never putting pressure on her for any kind of intimacy. She didn’t recognise him, not in the darkness and with the blow to the head. She couldn’t have known it was him.

  ‘I swear to you I didn’t know what he was.’

  Olivia shakes her head. ‘Yes, you did. You must have. No one can be that naïve – you must have known what he was all along, you just didn’t want to accept it. How did you think you were going to keep us there for ever?’

  Hannah doesn’t have the answers Olivia seems to so desperately crave. She hasn’t lived Hannah’s life; she could never understand where she came from and what it meant to her to be freed. Michael wasn’t a monster, not always. The man she had met was kind and compassionate and generous. Her mother had warned her of the age gap, of how quickly Hannah was allowing things to move, but she hadn’t wanted to hear any of it. Her mother only wanted to keep her to herself. No one would have been good enough because any man would have been regarded a threat.

  ‘I didn’t know about that girl. I never thought he was capable of anything like that, I swear to you.’

  ‘That girl’s name was Carly,’ Olivia reminds her, as though Hannah needs reminding of the fact. ‘And you didn’t think he was capable of anything like what? Anything like murder, you mean? Just say it. For once, just speak the truth.’

  Hannah shakes her head. She knows it is true, but she still doesn’t want to hear it. Rapist…murderer…husband. Everything she thought she knew is a lie. He found her when she was at her most vulnerable, just as he did with Carly, and he lured her with the promise of security. When she closes her eyes, that evening comes back to her like a recurring nightmare, the outlines shifting into focus with every replay of the memory. It was him - she knows now that it was him. Perhaps somewhere, in a part of her brain she has trained herself to shut down, she has always known.

  Olivia sits back and something in her face changes. She looks at her Hannah with such sadness that it is almost as though she has aged a decade in those few moments. Hannah is no longer looking at a child. She is looking at a young woman, someone who knows far more than her years may suggest.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘What wasn’t?’ Hannah asks, with the vain hope that her daughter might excuse all the sins of which she knows she is guilty.

  ‘The rape. You said something before, something about wearing too little, or something. You made it sound as though it was your fault, like you’d been asking for it. You weren’t.’

  They sit in silence. Hannah doesn’t know what to say. It has always felt to her as though it was her fault, as though some God she was always unsure of anyway was punishing her for betraying her duty to her mother and for then disobeying Michael’s request. He hadn’t wanted her to go to that party. All he had ever done was try to protect her. She had let him down.

  ‘Did you know it was him?’

  ‘No. Of course I didn’t.’

  But Olivia is looking at her with scepticism, her young face filled with doubt. The same doubt sits in Hannah’s mind, gnawing away at her what remains of her sanity. Did she know? Was there ever something, anything, that might have questioned just who Michael was and exactly what he was capable of? If there had been, Hannah knows she had chosen to ignore it.

  ‘Why didn’t you go to the police?’

  Hannah presses her fingertips to her eyelids. She knew the question was coming, and though she has been over and over it with herself, she realises it will never sound credible to anyone else. Carly might have understood it, she thinks. She and anyone else Michael may have done this to, because Hannah feels sure now that there will have been others. She thinks about how he was there for her in the days and the weeks that followed that night. He was the only person she confided in; she could never have told her mother what had happened. Michael had consoled her, comforted her, waited for her until she was ready. His real character was kept hidden behind a façade of concern and respectability, and now Hannah wonders how many other women – how many other girls – have fallen for the act.

  ‘I’d been taking money from my mother’s bank account. I had access to it to do the food shopping, pay the bills, whatever, but I thought if I could put just a little bit aside here and there, it would eventually give me enough to get away.’

  Olivia shakes her head sadly. It hasn’t taken her long to work out who instigated the theft. ‘He’d told you to do it?’

  ‘It’s more complicated than it sounds. My mother had so much more money than anyone had realised, yet we’d been living like paupers for all those years. The house needed so much work doing to it, but she’d always said she couldn’t afford to get it done. My bedroom had damp in it. I wore the same clothes for years, until they had holes in them. That’s where our lives are so different, can’t you see? I had nothing. You’ve been given everything.’

  Olivia shakes her head. Hannah hates the look she is giving her, so defiant and so filled with contempt. She wants to believe that her mother is evil, that everything is her fault, and she suspects that this is what she will continue to believe regardless of what she tells her. All these people – the police, the social workers, her teachers – are helping to fill Olivia’s head with the nonsensical notion that she and Rosie are the victims of some sort of abuse, but no one knows the truth, and Hannah can sleep at night with the knowledge that she has only ever been a good mother to her girls. She isn’t responsible for her husband’s sins, no matter how much they may want to try to pin the blame upon her.

  ‘All these nice things you’ve been so keen to have,’ Olivia says, eyeing her mother with cynicism. ‘The show home and everything just so. What’s the point in a spotless house that no one ever gets to visit? Or have you just been trying to scrub something clean for all these years?’

  When Hannah gives no response to either question, Olivia sits back in her chair with her arms folded across her chest. ‘I still don’t know why you didn’t go to the police.’

  ‘My mother noticed money missing. She pointed the finger at me – she couldn’t wait to – but then she realised that one of her rings was missing. I’d sold it. I was so angry with her for all the lies she’d told, about money, about
her health…it just felt right at the time. I’d been her carer for years, doing everything for her, but she’d never given me a thing. She owed me, Olivia.’

  Olivia says nothing, waiting for her mother to fill the gaps that remained in what was left of her story.

  ‘I had a change of heart. It was her mother’s ring – I shouldn’t have taken it, not that one. But I didn’t have the money to buy it back from the shop I’d sold it to – I’d already given it to Michael for safekeeping. I asked him for it back, but he said I’d be stupid to try to buy the ring back.’

  She hears the truth like a klaxon in her head, the sounding of a warning bell that she should have heard so many years ago. Michael did to her what he went on to do to that poor girl whose body was found on the beach, the only difference being that Carly had been cleverer than she was, smart enough to see just what he was doing. But not before it was too late. Just as with that girl, everything he had orchestrated with Hannah had been pre-meditated. Nothing happened by chance.

  ‘Mum started talking about reporting the missing ring to the police. I just panicked. When Michael wouldn’t give me the money, I stole it from the shop and put it back in mum’s room, somewhere it would look as though she’d just managed to misplace it. But I told him what I’d done. After that night, the night I was attacked, he told me that if I reported the rape, the police would take my fingerprints and DNA, that they do that with everyone who reports a crime, especially where there’s been a sexual assault. He said once they linked me to the theft of the ring that they wouldn’t believe me anyway. He said I’d get a reputation and I’d never be able to get rid of it. I was only seventeen, Olivia, I didn’t know any different. I believed he wanted what was best for me.’

  Olivia looks down at her hands. ‘Just like you both told me I could never tell anyone about the locks on the windows and the cuffs on the bed because me and Rosie would be separated?’