by Ros Carne
Then, heaving herself up, she walked to the hall, picking up the car keys from the hook. As she turned for the door, she sensed him behind her. His hands were on her shoulders, pressing into her flesh and bones. She twisted to face him, met his blazing eyes.
‘You can’t stop me,’ she snapped. But he continued to grip her tightly. ‘Let me go,’ she said, ‘I need to do a finger-prick test. I’m taking the car.’
It worked. He stepped back. She opened her kit bag and took out her meter. He watched in silence as she inserted the strip, pricked her finger and smeared on the drop of blood. The reading was high, but within bounds. She needed to get out of the flat.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘Just for a drive.’
‘It’s past ten o’clock.’
‘I’m restless. I need to get out.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No.’
‘You’re eight months pregnant; you’re in a state; your blood sugar’s all over the place. I don’t want you going.’
‘What the fuck do you know about my blood sugar?’
‘I’ve lived with it for two years.’
She met his anxious eyes. ‘Don’t go there, Luke.’
‘We tried, Tash. Guilty people get off all the time. You need to accept it.’
‘I can’t.’
‘It must have been tough for her too.’
‘What the fuck?’
‘Being on trial. Imagine how she must have felt.’
‘For Chrissake.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘And then there’s her son. Jacob. He was the one on your computer, wasn’t he? I recognised him in the restaurant. It was the same guy.’
‘I told you it meant nothing.’
‘You denied it in court. Your barrister said there were no photos.’
‘What did you expect? Anyway, it’s over now. Finished. Done.’
‘What did you say to her?’ He wore his pained look, the one where his handsome features became sharp and tight.
‘What does it matter now? You heard Melanie. She made Jacob delete everything.’
‘That’s not the point, is it, Tash? The point is Jacob’s photo was on your computer. I saw it. Was that why she hit you?’
‘For fucksake, Luke. Why you raising this now? We lost the case. I’m about to have your baby.’
‘Tash, we talked about it after your arrest. It’s not just the shoplifting. There’s other stuff. Please, don’t go out. Not tonight.’
‘Let go of me.’
‘You know I’ll always be here for you. You need help. Especially now.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it. You have no idea what I’ve been through listening to that lying cow.’
‘Stay here. Have a nice hot bath.’
Bloody Luke. He thought a nice hot bath was the answer to everything. That or therapy. But he wasn’t going to stop her. Nothing would stop her. Let him think what he wanted about Jacob. She wasn’t going to explain anything. It was not like she’d done anything criminal. And she’d been in the witness box long enough. She snatched up her keys, grabbed her jacket and walked out before he could stop her, slamming the door behind her.
Rain splattered her windscreen as she set off towards the river. It was hard to see the route through the swishing wipers, but she knew the address from previous research and the satnav led her there through crowded streets. Even at this hour the traffic was bad, with road works and detours, and it was an hour before she arrived in the quiet north London street with its solid Edwardian red-brick homes. 57a. She parked near the front door. There was no umbrella in the car, and she had only her short jacket. Too bad. She crossed the pavement in the pouring rain, walked up the path to the porch and rang the bell marked ‘Goddard’. Wet and cold, she waited. No one came. She rang again. Mel’s voice drifted out through a grille.
‘Who is it?’
‘Your pupil.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want to talk to you.’
The Entryphone clicked and there was silence. Natasha pressed the bell again. No reply. Of course. Mel would not open the door to a visitor at eleven thirty at night, particularly this visitor. In her mistaken imagination, Mel had opened the door and would be standing before her, vulnerable, in her nightdress. Instead Natasha was the vulnerable one, a fat helpless cow, dog-tired, sopping wet, on the wrong side of London, with nothing to show for her ridiculous journey. She tried to console herself. At least she had interrupted Mel’s evening, hinted that life might not be exactly as it once was when you got away with a serious assault charge.
She rang one more time and was about to leave. It had not been a complete success, but something had yielded. Getting out of the flat had helped. The itch was partially relieved. She’d had the last word. Then, as she was turning towards the car, the front door opened. Jacob stood in the doorway. His round eyes were tired. His hair was rumpled and his T-shirt half out of the jeans which hung so well on his slender hips. She ran her eyes over his body. Defeated, weary, angry and pregnant as she was, it still gave her pleasure to look at him.
‘Leave us alone,’ he said.
‘I came to see Mel.’
‘Please go.’
‘But it’s nice to see you.’ She felt a smile creep up towards her eyes.
His expression was steely, but she would not turn away.
‘Must have been a shock to hear all that stuff in court,’ she said.
‘I said go. Now.’
‘Not just the photos, but the violence. And you only four years old. That’s horrible.’
‘Fuck off, Natasha.’
She had her hands in the doorway. If he slammed the door he would break her fingers and she knew he wouldn’t do that.
‘She’s guilty, you know that, don’t you? She bloody threw me down and got away with it. That’s why I’ve got this.’ And she pulled back her hair to expose her scar. It was small, not much more than a centimetre beyond her hairline. But it was a visible reminder of what his mother had done.
The change in his face was miniscule, an eyelid flickered, there was a quiver in his lip. It was enough for Natasha to detect the shift from certainty. Something in her words had dented the mask of his assurance. It was hardly a triumph. But it was a seed. With luck he would lose faith in this woman who had hit him as a child, taken a married lover, lied in court. What was a bit of Facebook flirtation compared with all that? But he only said, ‘Go’. And when she didn’t move, he grasped her shoulders, squeezed them and pushed her away back from the door. And as he squeezed her she remembered this was how Luke had held her before she left under an hour ago. There were only so many ways you could take control of a heavily pregnant woman.
‘You’re hurting me,’ she squealed.
‘Good,’ he said, moving back inside.
‘Little shit,’ she countered. And he shut the door in her face.
The moment she switched on the ignition, her phone started ringing. Luke.
‘Where the hell are you?’
‘I’m coming home.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Driving around. I feel better now. I’ll be back soon. I love you, Luke.’
It was not what she had imagined, Mel distraught, begging forgiveness, but it was something, telling the boy, who seemed to hear her. She felt calmer, relieved, physically soothed, as if she had cleaned the house and thrown away the rubbish. Her world was tidier now. There was space to think and move. She could look forward. Even the rain had eased. Yet as she tried to reassure herself, edging through the traffic on Blackstock Road towards Islington and Holborn, she felt her body tense. Pain shot through her groin. Surely it could not start now? Over the last two weeks it had stopped kicking and there were times when she found herself wondering if it were dead.
She had an appointment at the hospital in two days’ time. Her bag was already packed, and they’d told her they might have to induce early. Luke had wanted to buy a cot and baby th
ings, but Natasha had refused. She felt superstitious about making plans. It was still hard to believe she could ever be a mother. Some part of her felt she never would, that this thing was happening to someone else, another Natasha who inhabited the same body and was ready to step onto the stage of motherhood, while the real Natasha waited in the wings in disbelief. She was beginning to feel faint. Her blood sugar might have dropped but she wasn’t going to stop and check it now. She was probably just tired. The shooting pain ceased.
The car rolled on towards Holborn. Lights gleamed confusingly through the night air. London felt too big, too threatening. But she would be home soon. Luke would have waited up for her and they would fall into bed and snuggle up. She needed to be close to him. No sex these days, but that was fine. She was too enormous to enjoy it and Luke was always worried about the baby.
She turned into Gray’s Inn Road. It was quiet here at night. No clubs, few pubs, everything closed by eight p.m. But this was a special place and she loved it. It had been a struggle to get here. She had so nearly made it: the good degree, the tricky Bar exams, call to the Bar, the precious pupillage, clearing every hurdle but the last, the tenancy. As she thought about all she had nearly won, she pictured the woman who should have helped her but instead had stood in her way like a locked door, keeping her from everything she had fought for.
‘Forget it. Put it behind you,’ Luke had said. ‘You’re still a barrister; she can’t take that away. You’ll be great in the CPS, prosecuting criminals. Don’t say that isn’t important.’
It wasn’t the same. Who remembered the great prosecutors? And she was worried. There had been no action on the arrest but the CPS representative in court had noted down everything she said. She owned up to the caution because if it hadn’t come from her, Mel’s barrister would have raised it. But she had failed to mention it on her application. What if the job was taken from her?
The traffic was light now, and the rain was easing as she approached the river. She drove onto Blackfriars Bridge and headed south for Brixton.
Her phone was ringing. It would be Luke again, still fretting. But she couldn’t stop on the bridge and when she got to the other side there was no safe place to pull in. She’d forgotten to plug in the hands-free. He would have to wait. If he was going to sound off about her staying out late, she would rather hear it at home than in the car.
She was negotiating the enormous Elephant and Castle roundabout when the pain returned. Like period cramps, only worse. Not the stabbing pain they had warned her about, but tough, intense, lingering. Headlights were coming at her from all directions. She carried on driving, breathing deeply as she’d been taught. After a few seconds the pain subsided.
She wouldn’t ring Luke. Not unless it got too bad for her concentrate. But as she set off down Walworth Road it returned, rising and falling in waves. She carried on, speeding up a little, never mind the speed limit. Suddenly there was a cool wetness between her legs. The seat felt slippery and cold. She was already wet from the rain, but this was different. This was coming from inside her. Alone in the car she heard herself shouting, ‘Stop. Stop.’
She hardly knew how she reached Moorlands. It seemed that some benign force took her there. As she drove onto the estate, something twisted inside her, her guts were being wound around a corkscrew. What she had thought of as pain was nothing in comparison to this.
Their flat was in the first block. She managed to stop the car, opening the door and scrambling out, falling forward against the wing and the wet bonnet. It seemed she would die from this agony, and that she would welcome that sweet oblivion. Then as suddenly as it had arisen, it ceased and there was only exhaustion. She straightened, looked about her. The car park was empty, the rain had stopped, the black tarmac was shiny with puddles under the floodlights. A new puddle was forming beneath her, water still trickling down her thighs. Their block was a few steps away. She turned towards it and pressed the buzzer.
‘Haven’t you got a key?’ he called.
‘Help me,’ she cried into the intercom.
Chapter Forty-eight
Mel
‘I told her to go away,’ said Jacob.
He ran a hand through his hair which was greasy, needing a wash.
‘What did she want?’ asked Mel. She had been unable to stop him going to the door.
‘She’s angry. Says you got away with it. Plus, I reckon she wanted to see how I took it.’
Natasha had done her a favour. It was the opening she needed. ‘And how have you taken it?’
‘I’m really happy for you, Mum.’
She studied his tired face. Whatever he had done or not done in the past, whatever teenage lies he had offered her, she was convinced he now spoke the truth. There were a thousand Jacobs and she would never know them all. But she knew the son that mattered to her. Just as he knew the mother that mattered to him.
‘I’m sorry about all that stuff,’ she said.
‘Gran told me about the cat.’ He chuckled, opening the fridge for another beer. She sat over the single glass of wine she had been nursing all evening, wondering why she found it so hard to drink. Contrary to Georgie’s proposal, they had come straight home. There had been no champagne. Not tonight. There would be time for that.
‘I didn’t realise you were there. You weren’t there when I started in the witness box.’
‘I couldn’t face going to college. I just turned around on the way and got the tube to court. You were giving evidence, only the usher let me sneak in. So, like, you’d have said something different if you’d known I was there?’
‘Of course not.’
He stood looking at her as if waiting for her to speak and she said, ‘You did nothing wrong, Jacob.’
He shook his head. ‘I fucked up.’
‘I don’t think she’ll do anything with the photos. Not now her barrister has denied they exist.’
He sat down at the table and stared at his beer.
She said, ‘We should go to bed. You’ve got college in the morning.’
Still staring into his beer, he said, ‘You’re not seeing that Paul bloke again, are you?’ She wanted to say ‘no’, but the word took too long to come out and he carried on. ‘Only that, you’re too nice. Like, if he’s married to someone else, that sucks. I mean, like, I know it didn’t work with Dad but you’ll… Shit. I mean, if you want, when I go to university. If you want to get married again. I won’t mind.’
Something in the way he spoke reminded her of his protest in the police station, some deep struggle to say the right thing. Where did that come from? Surely not from her.
‘So you’re going to university?’ Last week he had threatened to give up college and work in a bar.
‘I guess so. It’s what people do isn’t it. Like getting married.’
He was deadly serious, and she reminded herself that Jacob didn’t do irony. Like getting married, she thought.
‘I’ve finished with Paul,’ she said.
He continued to stare into his beer.
* * *
The next morning, she went into chambers for the first time for four months.
‘Hi, Mel,’ said Andy as if she had never been away. ‘A few of your solicitors have been asking for you. There’s a big care case at the Principal Registry next week if you’re up for it.’
‘Great. Thanks, Andy.’
He handed her a bundle of papers. ‘I’ll send the rest over by email.’
She drifted along the corridor and made tea in the galley kitchen, noting the coffee grounds and lipstick blotches on the unwashed cups that had been left after the morning rush for the High Court. She had eaten no breakfast and the biscuit tin was empty, as usual. A couple of colleagues dashed past her with quick nods of greeting as she took her tea and climbed the stairs to her room.
The desk she used to think of as her own was piled high with other people’s papers. She walked to the window and looked out over Temple Gardens. The sky was a pale grey and the false st
arts of an early spring lay under a melting film of sleet. There was a lump in her throat, her eyes pricked with tears and suddenly she could not hold back and she wept for her love of this place and the colleagues who had trusted her when she didn’t deserve their trust and who welcomed her now as if she had never left. She had been drawn back in the easy, offhand way she might have expected. Soon there would be work in the diary and, in that sense, everything was just as it was. But something fundamental had changed and it could never again be as it was.
On Sunday she would go down to Dulwich to see Isabel. Jacob had promised to come along and had asked to bring Don.
Chapter Forty-nine
Mel
In Isabel’s kitchen Don and Jacob were arguing over the rules of some incomprehensible strategy game. Jacob had his hands deep in hot soapy water. Don was wiping a plate with a tea towel; she looked up to smile at Mel standing in the doorway then reverted to her discussion with Jacob.
‘If you two are OK here, I’ll head off home and get some work done. Gran’s having a snooze.’
‘OK. See you later, Mum.’
‘Bye, darling.’ They hugged. Jacob smelt of sweat. He probably should wash more, but she loved that smell. Don looked on, smiling. Mel had feared how it would be when Jacob found a girlfriend. Would she take him away? In some curious way Don seemed to be bringing him back.
She went into the sitting room and whispered to her mother who was sitting in an armchair. Her eyes were shut.
‘Mum, I’m off home, I hope you don’t mind. I’ve got a bit of work.’
‘You and your work,’ muttered Isabel. But she opened her eyes and smiled. ‘Of course, darling. Thank you for coming.’
‘It was a pleasure. Lovely lunch. Look after yourself. I’ll call you in the week. And, Mum – thanks for everything.’
‘It was nothing. Any mother would do what I did.’
Mel pressed her lips against her mother’s cool, powdery cheek. Briefly she held the fragile bony hand which felt as if it would break at the slightest pressure. There was so much she wished she knew. So much she had never asked.