by Jennie Ensor
‘Do you blame me, Laura? Is it my fault, what he did to you?’
A tear rolled down her daughter’s cheek, unchecked. Laura swallowed, her head moving slowly from side to side.
‘No, I don’t blame you, of course I don’t. Dad hid what he did from you, I know that. I just wish you’d noticed something was wrong. I wish you’d asked why Dad was always so nice to me and why I wasn’t happy anymore. I wish you could have done something to stop him.’
‘I’m so sorry, Laura. Please, forgive me.’
Suzanne reached across the gap between them and gave Laura’s hand a squeeze. They sat, she in the armchair and Laura on the coffee table, the silence broken by occasional noises: doors slamming in the block, cars passing, the clatter of an object being tossed into a wheelie bin.
‘Have you talked to Emma, Mum?’ Laura’s voice was urgent, suddenly. ‘Did she tell you what happened?’
‘No, Jane told me.’
‘When did Emma tell Jane?’
She tried to work it out; days had seemed like years recently. ‘A few days ago. Four or five days ago.’
‘Emma waited all this time before saying anything?’
‘She thought her mother would blame her for what Paul did.’ Suzanne dug her fingertips into her brow. Anger ignited inside her, directed at her husband. ‘He had it all worked out, he must have been planning it for ages. Emma was desperate to be a model and he knew it. He got her to come to the house to take some photographs of her, then he tricked her into taking her clothes off.’ She skipped over the next bit, though images were already in her head. She mustn’t think about that, not yet. ‘Afterwards, he blackmailed her so she wouldn’t tell anyone. He manipulated me, too. When I told him what Emma had accused him of, he denied it all. He made up a story about Emma kissing him and I believed it. I must have been mad.’
‘I thought you said Dad wasn’t going to see Emma anymore?’ Laura’s face was flushed. Her eyes had the hard shine in them that came into Paul’s eyes when he was very angry. ‘You said she had something else to do.’
‘After I spoke to you, Jane asked your father if he would take Emma swimming again. She was worried about her seeing a school friend who’d been getting into trouble. She thought it would be better for her to be with Paul.’ The irony of this hit her. If only Jane hadn’t made that request. But it was too late now, of course.
‘If I’d known,’ Laura said, ‘I could have done more to stop him.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I went over to Jane’s house, to warn Jane about Dad, but she wasn’t in and I got fed up with waiting. So, I talked to Emma instead.’
‘Emma?’ She tugged at her blouse. A mesh of sweat clung to her skin.
‘I told her she shouldn’t see Dad anymore, that she shouldn’t be alone with him. I said he might take advantage of her. But I didn’t spell it out, I didn’t say he was dangerous. I should have made it clearer.’ Laura frowned and kicked a leg of the coffee table. ‘I thought she’d tell her mother – I asked her to tell her mother. I was expecting Jane to call me sometime. Then, when she didn’t, I guess I got caught up with other things. Trying to get a job then working late at the club.’
‘She couldn’t have told Jane,’ Suzanne said. ‘Jane would have stopped your dad coming over if she’d known.’
‘Maybe Emma forgot to tell her. Or she didn’t want to tell her.’
‘Why wouldn’t she want her own mother to know?’
‘I have no idea. She really believed he could help her become a model?’
Neither of them spoke. Suzanne searched in her handbag for the small white tablet. Amitriptyline. She didn’t like to take them anymore – they made her calmer and flat, drained of emotion – but she needed one now.
Laura went over to the window and stared out.
‘Has Jane gone to the police?’
‘The police?’ Laura’s question hung in the air for a while before the words began to make sense.
‘For sex with a minor. It’s a serious crime.’
‘No, no, not yet. Not as far as I know.’
‘I guess there’s no evidence that he did anything to Emma. Not after all this time. If they charged him and he denied it, it would just be his word against hers. It might not even go to court.’
‘You think Jane should go to the police?’
‘Of course. What if he does this again, to someone else? He might have already, for all we know.’
Suzanne closed her eyes. Her brain felt like a full rubbish bin, trying to eject any extra items she crammed in.
‘I thought I’d forgotten most of it, you know.’ Laura spoke in a distant voice, as if to herself. ‘But the things he said, the way he looked at me. It’s still there in my head, somewhere. It’s like he’s haunting me.’ Her voice hardened. ‘I’ll never forgive him, you know. For what he did to me, and for what he did to Emma. I hate him.’
Suzanne flinched, went cold. What could she say to her daughter? She couldn’t defend Paul. Emma would be deeply affected by what he had done to her. For years, if not her entire life. And what about Laura? What would become of her? Would she ever recover from the damage he’d inflicted? Paul wasn’t just a man she’d known for a while and had grown to trust, he was her father. He’d knowingly taken away Laura’s innocence, just as he’d taken away her trust and her faith that the world would provide what she needed. He had been prepared to ruin his daughter’s life – for what? She got to her feet.
‘Laura, come here.’ She was slight in her arms, all ribs and shoulder blades. ‘I’m so sorry about what happened to you.’
‘I know.’ It was no more than a murmur.
Suzanne let herself sink into the armchair again.
Laura went away and came back with two small glasses of amber liquid. ‘Get this down you. It’ll do you good.’
She drank the alcohol gratefully.
Thick shadows crowded the room. It would be dark soon. Outside, a crow landed on the roof. Its beak dug into the moss. She thought of Paul, at home, waiting for her.
‘I have to go now, darling,’ she said, reaching for her handbag. ‘It’s getting late.’
‘You can stay here tonight, if you like? If you don’t want to go back home.’
Home. The word sounded wrong, somehow.
‘I’ll go for a walk, I think. I need to sort out some things in my head. Then I’ll go home and speak to your dad.’
The sun was low as Suzanne drove away. She didn’t really know where she was going. She passed a row of shops and several sets of traffic lights then turned onto a dual-carriageway.
He’s betrayed me.
The thought ran on in a loop. Paul had spoilt everything. Their marriage was a lie and she’d never even noticed.
She opened the window to let in some air.
Later, she realised she was driving towards Wimbledon Common. There were spaces to park on the road alongside it, past the pub. She parked and set off on her usual path towards the wooded hill.
A breeze swirled her hair. She stepped across a large puddle; the path was muddy from recent rain. Her feet would get wet in these flimsy shoes and her jacket wasn’t waterproof. But no matter. A large dog bounded past, trailed by a sullen-faced man. She scanned the common. No one else was in sight. Normally she’d never come out here by herself so close to dark. But that didn’t matter now either.
Near the brow of the hill she sat against a tree and looked down at the distant buildings silhouetted against the sky. The sun hid behind wisps of rose-tinged cloud. Damp seeped through her jeans.
I’ll stay here a while, she thought.
She recalled the look on Paul’s face a few hours earlier, when she’d told him she was going to visit Laura. He must have worked out why she was going. He must have known she would discover the truth sooner or later, or had he imagined that he could do those things to Laura and Emma and somehow get away with it? Perhaps he thought he was invincible.
It was quite clear, finally. The
pieces of the jigsaw fitted perfectly. Paul had driven Laura away from both of them. He had sacrificed his family and his marriage. He had poisoned everything.
‘Damn you, Paul! I hope you burn in hell!’
The rawness of her cry disappeared into the trees.
An hour later, perhaps two, she realised she was shivering; her bottom, hands and feet were numb from the cold. She looked at her watch but it was too dark to make out the hands. Through patches of scudding cloud, a faint glow that could have been the moon. An aircraft light bleeped through the murky sky.
She started to walk downhill. Though she tried to keep to the path, it kept changing direction and she could scarcely see what lay beneath her feet. Every so often she splashed into invisible puddles and stumbled over sudden spiky clumps.
Eventually, she stopped. The path had gone. There were only vague outlines of bushes and trees. She was lost. She would never find her way out.
‘Come on, Suzanne,’ she said aloud. ‘Don’t be so bloody silly.’
For a moment, the moon shone brightly through a gap in the cloud, turning the landscape a ghostly silver. A breeze tugged at her clothes. She waited, watching the sky until there was another gap in the clouds. The moon reappeared. Now she could see the path, further to the right.
She ran over the grassy mounds, her feet sinking into the sodden earth. When the ground levelled out she could see the row of houses along the road where she’d parked the car.
The living room curtains were closed; behind them, a light was on. He was still up then. Suzanne pressed the doorbell.
Paul came to the door blinking, his reading glasses perched over his head. His hair was dishevelled. He must have fallen asleep in the armchair.
‘Where have you been?’ He looked her over. ‘You’re covered in mud.’
She removed her jacket then sank onto the hall chair and pulled off her soaked shoes.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ His voice surged through the house.
Behind the anger, she heard his fear.
‘I know what you’ve done to Laura. She’s told me all about it. And you don’t have to pretend anymore about Emma. I know what you did to her. You’ve been lying to me all along, you bastard.’ She went into the kitchen and filled a glass with tap water. With trembling hands, she drank.
‘Suze, it’s not like you think.’ In the dim glow of the fluorescent up-lights, Paul’s eyebrows hung heavily over his eyes, which seemed to shrink into the recesses of his face.
‘I didn’t mean to do those things.’ Paul’s Adam’s apple moved. ‘They just happened, I couldn’t help it. I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time, but I was afraid of what you’d do. I was afraid you’d stop loving me.’
She wondered if she’d heard right. Surely, he didn’t mean to offer that as an excuse for what he’d done?
‘You must think I’m an absolute idiot. For months, you abused my daughter behind my back. You kept it carefully hidden from me all this time, then you turned on my friend’s daughter. You groomed her, then you groped her – molested her.’ She gulped some air. ‘How could those things have “just happened”?’ Her words came straight out without hesitation, as if another woman was talking, a woman without fear. Not the tongue-tied woman, who was always trying to make things better, ever ready to forgive.
‘I tried to stop but I couldn’t. Suzanne, listen to me. I tried to stop, I didn’t want to do anything bad. But I couldn’t stop myself.’
‘You’re pathetic!’
He recoiled as if she’d struck him.
‘You waited until I was safely out of the way, then you put your filthy hands on my daughter. Not just once, lots of times. What sort of man are you?’ Words were spilling out of her in an unstoppable torrent. ‘Laura was only a child, for God’s sake! I can hardly believe what she told me. She said you made her put it in her mouth. Your fucking prick.’ The word, new on her tongue, made a satisfying crunch of sound. She noted with relish the shock on his face, which seemed to freeze except for a tiny wobble in his lower lip. ‘You bastard. How could you do that to your own daughter?’
‘Suzanne, please—’
But he wasn’t going to shut her up. He wasn’t going to convince her to see things as he wanted her to see them, not this time.
‘And you couldn’t make do with just Laura, could you? You had to go and play your sick games with Emma too. Only you had to have more fun with her, didn’t you? You had to stick your pathetic little willy into her.’ She gasped for breath. Her anger was consuming her, like no anger she’d ever experienced. ‘Are they the only ones you’ve preyed on? Or are there other girls that I don’t know about?’
‘No, there are no others.’
There was a chance, she thought, he was telling the truth. But that meant nothing. Why wouldn’t there be others? How could she believe anything he said now?
‘I swear, Suzanne, I’ve never done anything like that before. And it wasn’t nearly as bad as you think—’
‘Are you serious? Did you ever think for a moment how much harm you’ve done to that poor girl? She trusted you, she thought you were helping her, and all along … all along you …’ She couldn’t find any more words. She hated him then, more than she’d ever hated anyone. ‘And did you ever imagine that Laura could be damaged by what you did to her? Or did you sit there with your stinking hard-on, thinking of nothing but yourself? Christ, I can’t believe I didn’t see who you really were for all these years. I’ve been an absolute fool.’
Paul didn’t reply. He looked stunned, as if she’d just punched him.
‘I’m going to sleep in the guest room.’ She walked past him and up the stairs.
‘Please, listen—’
‘Leave me alone, Paul. Just leave me alone.’
She took out her pyjamas from under her pillow and opened the door of Daniel’s old bedroom. His childhood dartboard stuck out from under the wardrobe, one of the many things she hadn’t had the heart to throw away. She took off her damp clothes, sat on the bed, and started to cry. The man she’d loved for twenty-five years was gone. No, the man she thought she’d loved was gone, whoever he was.
21
Paul
26 April 2011
Paul drained the coffee from his cup. He looked again at the short message beside the toaster that had greeted him half an hour earlier, scrawled in red pen on the back of the gas bill envelope:
Gone to stay with Katherine.
Suzanne must have crept out when he was asleep – he’d not heard a sound from her. He crumpled the envelope into a tight ball and tossed it in the bin, then checked his watch: 8.10am. If he didn’t leave soon he’d be late for his 9.30am meeting. He put his laptop inside his briefcase, picked up his raincoat, and closed the front door behind him. The sky was overcast, threatening rain. Moisture hung in the air.
He aimed his car key at the driver’s door and froze. The words stretched across the windscreen of his Porsche in bright orange, two-inch-high capitals:
FUCK YOU TOO
The Porsche was parked in the street – Suzanne’s car had until recently occupied the driveway – its windscreen visible to everyone passing by. Half the street might have seen it by now, this despoiling of his car by his demented wife. Paul reached across and touched the F. The outline did not smudge; it was marker pen, he realised with a sinking heart. He spat on the F and rubbed in his spittle with a tissue then went back inside the house. He returned with a bottle of window cleaning fluid and a sponge. For ten minutes, he scrubbed until there was only a small hint of what had been there.
He turned the key in the ignition.
Pervert.
His heart kicked against his chest. The voice had come from inside his head. What was wrong with him? Mad people heard voices. They’d be putting him in a straitjacket next, locking him up in a padded cell.
He reached the end of Elgin Drive and accelerated into a gap in the traffic. Suzanne had been angry, she didn’t know what she was saying. He wasn�
�t a pervert. He’d only done what tens of thousands of men secretly longed to do. His yearning for Laura had tormented him, day and night. What man could have resisted her? A neutered half-wit maybe, not a man of flesh and blood, with a man’s instincts. He’d fought against that yearning for so long.
And she’d never pushed him off, had she? She’d never fought back or run away.
OK, OK, he was making excuses. He should have left her alone. But he’d never intended to harm her. His desire had sprung from love.
He drove towards the station. Yet another squeak came from a rear wheel. He breathed a sigh of exasperation. What the hell was wrong with the car this time? First the driver seat motor had packed up, now this. You didn’t expect a brand new Porsche to start falling apart after six months.
His train was delayed by ten minutes. He paced up and down the platform. A throb of pain was starting in his temple. At this rate, he’d only just make the meeting.
There were no empty seats on the train. He stood in the narrow aisle, holding on to the nearest seat, trying to ignore the other passengers who bumped against him, blared music through their headphones, and talked inanely on their phones. He tried to think about the meeting, to remember the points he needed to make.
But Laura came into his head. Laura aged ten or eleven, with that brace, and the fringe that kept flopping into her eyes. On her face that impish look she used to have, and the lightning smile that came from pure joy. It had stopped coming as she got older; she’d looked at him with sad eyes, eyes that spoke more than she’d ever said.
He thought of Emma, that night he’d driven her back to Jane’s for the last time.
He hadn’t meant to harm Emma either. He should never have agreed to take her swimming in the first place. He’d kidded himself that he could walk away if he wanted. But he’d been wrong. A kind of madness had taken him over. And now, he was paying the price. Everything was coming unstuck. The police would come to arrest him, sooner or later. His life would be blown apart. Soon, everyone would know what he’d done.