When she looks up, it is Hannah’s turn to look away. She feels a shame of some sort, of course she does, though it is difficult to identify when it feels so alien to her. She allowed Michael to convince her that Olivia was responsible for the strange things that had been going on – the break-in at the house, the phone call to the school; Hannah’s mind so confused that she even believed that her daughter was involved in the missing keys, that Olivia would have had to have come home from school to move them.. She feels an element of regret for her suspicions, though anyone would be forgiven for assuming the worst of Olivia given all else she was guilty of. It makes sense now why Michael instructed her to go to Olivia’s room on Saturday evening, despite them having already agreed that she would remain shackled to the bed for the night. He wanted her freed so that she could then appear guilty of the crime he had orchestrated with another woman, one as blind to his true nature as Hannah has been.
Above all else - and stronger than any other feeling that may have passed through her during those past couple of weeks - is the conviction that she only ever did what she thought was best, as any mother would. The girls weren’t hurt; they were never beaten. Whenever Olivia was restrained, it was usually for her own safety, to stop her doing anything that might end up hurting her. She has never known what is best for her, not in the way that her parents do. The authorities are accusing Hannah of child abuse, but nothing could be further from the truth. Her children have been kept safe and sheltered, clean and fed. They haven’t been abused, not physically and not sexually. They were safe. No one knows their children like a mother does. No one can look after them like she can.
‘Your mother used to hit you, didn’t she? It says so in the diary.’
‘All the time,’ Hannah says too quickly, reaching out for what appears to her to be a lifeline. ‘If I didn’t do what she’d told me…if I was too slow to get something done. Sometimes I think she did it just because she could.’ Hannah sits forward and reaches across the table, but Olivia withdraws from the touch of her mother’s fingers against her skin. They have never been physically close; now, apparently, it’s far too late for that now.
‘You see,’ Hannah continues, ‘I’ve done everything I can to give you a better life than the one I had. I’ve never hit you, have I?’
Olivia looks at her incredulously. ‘You kept me chained to a bed,’ she says, her voice flat and emotionless. ‘You kept me overweight so that no one would ever look at me with anything but pity. There’s more than one type of abuse.’
‘I wanted to keep you safe.’
‘By keeping me fat and frightened?’ Olivia says, spitting the words across the table. ‘By making sure I never had any friends and that no one wanted to know me?’ Olivia pauses and takes a deep breath. ‘If she was really so awful to you, then why wouldn’t you have done everything you could to be better? If she was such a terrible mother, why didn’t you try to be a better one? If you hadn’t let him dictate,’ she continues, spitting the word ‘him’ as though just thinking her father’s name is more than she can stomach, ‘we could have been happy, just the three of us, but all you’ve done is the same as your own mother did, try to control and manipulate.’
Once again, Hannah feels as though she has been slapped by Olivia. Her daughter’s words crush her. Is this really what she thinks of her, that everything has been so bad? Has she really been such an awful mother? She can remember happy times. All those hours she spent playing with Olivia, trying to force a love that had never come naturally to her. She had thought herself convincing for the most part. She had done her best.
‘I’ve given you all I could,’ Hannah says.
‘Except you haven’t,’ Olivia says, nodding to the social worker. ‘Because even now, you can’t bring yourself to say sorry, can you? You don’t think you’ve done anything wrong.’
Hannah says nothing. Nothing she can say will be what Olivia wants to hear.
‘Do you remember what you said to me not so long ago?’ Olivia asks, leaning across the table. ‘You told me that when I’m older, when I’ve got kids of my own, I might finally understand you.’ She pushes her chair back and stands. ‘You were wrong,’ she says, looking down at Hannah. ‘I will never understand you. I never want to understand you.’
Hannah watches her daughter leaves but says nothing. Olivia hasn’t changed; she is still her stubborn self, still the same girl who sees the world through the eyes of a child. All Hannah has ever tried to do is keep her safe, and all Olivia has ever done is throw her efforts back at her, refusing time and time again to see the world for the awful place it is. She is on her own now, she thinks. Let her do what she will with her freedom.
20
Dear Diary,
* * *
I’m sorry I haven’t written in you for a while. I haven’t known what to say. Something terrible has happened, something so bad that I haven’t been able to put it into words. I feel dirty. It feels like time has just stopped and my life is over. I keep going back over that night, trying to work out what happened, how I let it happen, but I can’t make any sense of it. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, I know that, but it feels as though I could have stopped it. I should have been able to stop it. I can’t tell anyone about what happened. My mother would kill me. Michael knows – he has been amazing. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know what I would have done. I wish I’d listened to him now and not gone to that party. None of this would have happened. I feel sick. I always feel sick. I thought at first that it was just the thought of what happened that was making me feel this way, but now I know different. I did the test this morning, I had to steal one from the supermarket when I was doing mum’s shopping. I couldn’t pay for it - she’d have seen it on the receipt. I am so scared. I don’t want this thing inside me. It feels as though I am carrying around an alien, a monster, and I just want it to go away. I could make it go away, but Michael tells me that I shouldn’t. He says that this is something beautiful come from something terrible, that we can make it work if I’ll let him. There aren’t many men who would offer to do what he is. I am so grateful to have found him, and I never want to let him down again. I’m going to keep it. I will learn to feel differently, I suppose, in time. Michael loves me, I know that. If I hadn’t already known, this would be more than proof of how he feels. He can take me away from this life, give me something so much better. He can save me. I want to be saved.
The Argument (ARC) Page 22