The Blame Game

by C. J. Cooke

  ‘Michael, no!’ I shout, taking a step in front of Paul so that the gun is pointed at me. But Michael doesn’t lower the gun. He points it hard and firm at Paul, and there is that hard look on his face, the look I saw that night in the attic. As though he’s not quite there.

  ‘What does he mean, burned down our shop?’ Michael says. He’s speaking to me.

  ‘You did it,’ Paul hisses. ‘You set fire to that shop and let it burn to the ground. We figured we were dealing with a pair of lunatics! It had nothing to do with us!’

  I lock eyes with Michael. The silence clicks a gear, the shadows of truth hardening into shapes. Perhaps we’ve never been as honest with each other as right now.

  ‘I set fire to the shop,’ I say. ‘I never meant it to turn into what it was. Please, Michael. Please just put the gun down.’

  Finally he lowers the gun and walks to the painting of Luke and Theo. I can see Chris from the corner of my eye shaking from head to toe. Any minute now her legs will buckle beneath her.

  ‘I had to protect our family,’ Michael says, barely audible. ‘So I did what needed to be done before someone else took it all away. I thought, one final trip together as a family, the holiday of a lifetime, or a lifetime’s worth of holidays all in one. We can be together. No separation or divide or loss. They want us dead, and it’s my fault. They want to hurt us, pull us apart.’

  He turns, staring past us. The room is so charged it feels on the verge of exploding.

  ‘But the letters continued. I had no way of tracing the writer. And besides, the letters had been forwarded from our Cardiff address. They hadn’t found us in Northumberland.

  ‘And then I kept seeing this man watching the shop. I thought I was being paranoid until I saw him taking photographs. I approached him and he drove off. I knew they’d caught up with us. Just days later, the fire happened. I knew it was them. I knew that was it. We’d had a lucky escape but it wouldn’t end until we were all dead.

  ‘I was never going to let anyone hurt my family. I had to protect them. We would be together.’ A shrug. ‘The car crash was a means to an end.’

  ‘You … you tried to murder your own family?’ Paul says.

  ‘It’s not like that,’ Michael says, flinching at the word ‘murdered’. ‘We were going to be together for ever, in the best possible place.’

  It feels like I’ve been given a sucker-punch right under the ribs with a force that should launch me to the roof. I drop to my knees, winded, his words pounding all the surfaces of my mind. Michael steps forward and stands over me oddly with his hand held out, as though I’ve simply tripped over. I am torn between curling into a ball on the floor and leaping up to scratch his eyes out. And there is a third impulse, my body reacting of its own accord. To place my hand in his. As his wife. As his equal.

  I do nothing.

  His expression is unreadable. I don’t recognise it. A new element has grown in him since I saw him, since our time at the beach hut. Crouching down in front of me, he keeps his eyes fixed on mine and says, ‘Why did you start the fire?’

  I flinch, terror flooding me, primal, over-riding the impulses that stand, confused.

  ‘I think I wanted them to see.’

  ‘Who? Who did you want to see? See what?’

  He is closer to me now, his hands gripping my upper arms and I can’t tell if it’s fury or sadness on his face and everything is blurred because I am weeping twenty-two years’ worth of tears for the boy I loved and sent to his death. I am crying in harrowing realisation of what Michael has done, that Saskia’s life hangs by a thread because of his actions, that our family is over, no more.

  ‘You must stop this,’ Paul tells Michael in a thin voice, and when I look over he and Chris look terrified, all trace of grief washed away by horror. I see everything too clearly, the edges of truth so sharp they might slice me to the bone. They were watching us, seeking answers. But they did not try to harm us. The car crash was not their doing.

  It was Michael’s.

  Suddenly he lets go, as though a switch has flipped and he’s realised what he’s doing. His expression is pained, exhausted. He says, ‘I’ve only ever tried to protect you.’

  Downstairs, the doorbell rings, strange in its normality, a shrill call followed by three loud knocks on the front door.

  ‘Who is that?’ Michael says. Another loud knock, followed by a voice through the letterbox.

  ‘It’s the police,’ Paul says, shocked, looking from Chris to us.

  Michael turns to me. His eyes are like stone.

  ‘Did you call them?’

  ‘No, I …’

  He takes my hand, leads me across the room and picks up the gun.

  ‘Stop!’ Paul shouts, but Michael ignores him. He walks with surprising speed out of the room and into the hallway, clasping my hand tightly in his.

  ‘Michael, please,’ I say. ‘You’re hurting me.’

  He lets go of my hand and I think I’m free, but quickly he snatches my wrist and tugs me towards the large glass apex at the far end of the corridor. I’m stunned by the firmness of his grasp, that he can be so violent. The pistol is held firmly in his other hand and he doesn’t let go, not even when he presses down on the handle of the door that swings open on to the balcony. Rich gold sunlight is streaming in, illuminating the brass fittings around the door in a celestial glow.

  ‘I think this was my dream,’ he says softly, hesitating in the doorway. He turns to me, his eyes lit with a frightening happiness. It’s as though he’s returned to his body, though he doesn’t loosen his grip on my wrist.

  ‘Will you come with me?’

  I look at him. His gaze seems to stretch beyond the balcony into some magical scene in the distance. ‘Come with you where?’

  ‘Home. The kids will come too, not now but in time. We can be together until then.’

  ‘What?’

  He opens the door and pulls me through. He’s so strong that there is no give in his step, no resistance.

  ‘Michael, stop,’ I shout. The balcony is furnished with two wooden sun loungers and several towering conifer trees in concrete pots. He drags me to the railings at the edge of the balcony, searching for a way to climb over, and I realise with horror that he intends to throw us both to our deaths. The drop is forty or fifty feet straight to a stone courtyard. Putting one foot on top he lets go to find his balance, then reaches for me to take his hand again. I back away and shake my head.

  ‘We can be free,’ he says, in a tone of confusion. ‘Don’t you want to be free, Helen?’

  With a look of white fury Michael lunges forward, grabbing hold of my T-shirt and tugging me firmly towards him, but not before I’ve grabbed one of the conifer trees. With all my strength I lift the concrete pot and bring it upwards, smashing against his jaw. He slumps against the railing, almost falling over, and I grab his arm, stopping him just in time. He slides to the balcony floor, unconscious.

  Police stream through the door and attend to Michael, who is bleeding from the wound I inflicted. I am crying and gasping for air on the ground beside him. Chris appears, shaken and wild-eyed. She spots the pistol on the ground beside Michael and covers her mouth in horror, the meaning of it all sinking in. The police bark into their handsets. In the distance, an ambulance begins its long wail.

  ‘I thought he was going to kill you,’ Chris says, kneeling down beside me. ‘Are you alright?’

  I nod. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, I’m fine.’

  PART FOUR

  53

  Michael

  26th November 2017

  In the mornings I have breakfast in the main hall with the other service users. In the afternoon there’s a range of classes – art therapy, music therapy, sometimes cookery and tai chi – and then it’s EMDR, or back in our rooms, which is where I am now. It’s brand new, this place. Designed with survival in mind. No glass, no sharp edges, no handles on anything, just gaps in the wood of the drawers and wardrobe. Even the doors come off their h
inges if you try to hang yourself on them.

  The view from my window is of the Peace Garden, where we’ve each planted our own tree. Fruit trees. Designed to bear fruit, and thereby remind us rotten inmates that we are still capable of doing good things.

  I’m not sure about that. The voices in my head tell me I’m a monster. I see the crash from a distance, as though from overhead or sometimes from the side of the road, and I remember I planned it. I see a man lifting Saskia’s broken body into the back of an army truck and I remember I planned it. On those days there is no physical pain to outweigh the kind that happens inside my brain.

  Sometimes I dream of Luke. He slips his arm across my shoulders and points at the mountain ahead of us. That there is the imaginatively monikered Mountain of Penance, he says. It’s a bit of a trek, ladies. Don’t get scared now.

  Sometimes I dream of Helen. She tells me she loves me, that I’m the most amazing person she’s ever met. I tell her what I should have told her many years ago: that I would have cut that rope whether she screamed or not. It was the right thing to do, as well as the hardest. I never cut it just because she told me to. In the dream her chest opens and a black oily liquid pours out. She starts to glow as though filled with light. She looks happy.

  I dream of Reuben, and in those dreams it’s about the way he looks at me. With pride. With a desire to make me proud. And Saskia, the way she cuddled me at bedtime. Just one more story, Daddy. I’m writing her stories now. A whole series of stories about ballerina ponies.

  One day, I want to read them to her. I want to tell Helen the truth, to see the look of relief on her face.

  That is my dream.

  54

  Helen

  20th January 2018

  ‘I want you to know something.’

  Jeannie turns off the ignition.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shane and are going to buy a house here in Northumberland. Whatever happens, I am here. OK?’

  I nod. I attempt a smile, but I’m much too anxious. This is too big a day to pretend I feel anything but terrified.

  ‘I love you, Jeannie.’

  ‘I love you, too.’

  On 30th August, our family travelled by car following a wonderful holiday on the coast of Belize to catch our flight departing from Mexico City. Several hours into the journey we were struck by a van driven by Jonas Matus, who had been paid by my husband to crash into our car at high speed and ensure we were all dead. I know now that the boots by my face at the scene of the crash were indeed Matus’, who was scanning the scene to check his victims were deceased. Small mercies: we were all unconscious and Matus thought the job was done. Or perhaps Matus chickened out of finishing us off.

  Either way, Michael was jointly responsible. At Château du Seuil he chose to hand himself over to the police without resistance. He received a sentence of fifteen years in a high security psychiatric unit in County Durham. Matus is serving twenty years in a high security Belize prison.

  My own sentencing hearing happened last month. The insurance claim for the bookshop has been dropped, of course – though the insurance company threatened to file a fraud claim against me – and the police prosecuted me for wasting their time. I expected to be locked up for a year, maybe more, but my solicitor had me assessed by a psychologist, Dr Moreno, who probed into the event on Mont Blanc. Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, she said. Exactly what Michael has been diagnosed with. Some characteristics of complex PTSD are avoidance, dissociation, and self-sabotage. It can take a long time for symptoms to manifest. Setting fire to the bookshop was consistent with these symptoms.

  Because the fire didn’t endanger any lives and no major structural damage was caused, my sentence was reduced to two hundred hours of community service.

  I sent Vanessa Shoman a return ticket to London with three nights at a hotel right beside Harrods. She was the over the moon. I suggested she see a show.

  As for me, I’ve started dancing again. Reuben is doing better, too – his friendship with Josh has helped, and he’s developed a group of friends at school who are all hell-bent on saving blue whales.

  Dr Hamedi greets us both with a kiss on the cheek.

  ‘You feeling OK?’ she asks, and I nod. We had a meeting about today’s procedure last week. Saskia may not wake. She may wake and be severely brain damaged, requiring round-the-clock care for the rest of her life. The outcome is likely to be indicated by the response she gives in her first moments, if she gives any response at all. She may wake and be paralysed. She may not wake at all. The short version is: no one knows what today will bring.

  And that is the only truth I live by.

  ‘Let’s get to work.’

  She leads Jeannie and me down the corridor to the room where Saskia lies.

  Guilt can motivate a person in two ways: to try and repair damage caused, or to dodge blame. But what happens when no repair can be made? In Michael’s case, I think he believed that the weight of the guilt at causing Luke’s death would destroy him. After all, Luke had been one of his closest friends, and he never intended to kill him. He was placed in an unbearable position.

  But you can’t dodge guilt. You can hide from it, ignore it – but it’ll always find you. I know this with every fibre of my being. My own guilt at Luke’s death all but destroyed me. In Michael’s case, his efforts to avoid guilt grew monstrous, controlling. He became someone I don’t recognise. He became defined by what happened on the mountain.

  I won’t let it define me.

  I visit Michael often. I visit him on days that he is half-conscious due to the effects of a new medication. I visit him when he relives the night he went online and contacted Jonas Matus. On the days he wants to die because of what he did in Belize. I visit him on days that he is exactly like the man I married: sweet, kind, funny. The man who taught me what love really is.

  I miss that Michael.

  The machines stop. I wait, turned inside out with anguish, as the doctors retract the tubes, leaning over and calling her name.

  Saskia, darling? You alright? Can you hear me?

  Her eyes peel open, a hand stretching wide, fingers flexed. Her lips are puckered and dry. She moves them.

  ‘Saskia?’ I say gently. ‘I’m here, darling. I’m here.’ Her fingers curl loosely around mine.

  Good girl, there we go. Well done, my lovely. Can you feel your legs? Can you give me a blink of your eyes if you can feel your legs? One for no, two for yes.

  She blinks.

  And blinks again.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ I say, my voice shaking. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

  Acknowledgements

  Each book is its own journey, with parts that almost break you and parts that are exhilarating and joyous, with sunshine on your face and the wind at your back. Often these elements are in human form, and with this in mind I’d like to thank my agent Alice Lutyens at Curtis Brown and my editor Kimberley Young at HarperFiction for challenging me to make this book the absolute best it could be and for bringing so much genius to the process. You are both rock stars. My utmost gratitude to all the other legends at HarperCollins, particularly Eloisa Clegg, Felicity Denham, Kate Elton, Martha Ashby, and Louis Patel.

  A big thank you again to former DCI Stuart Gibbon for assistance with all matters police-related, and to Graham Bartlett for last-minute queries.

  For guidance on coma-related procedures and head trauma, thanks to Professor Karim Brohi at Queen Mary, University of London, and Eliot North, fellow poet, GP, and medical advisor extraordinaire.

  For help with climbing matters, my thanks to Andy Fitzpatrick. For help with Minecraft and other gaming matters, thanks to Kelvin MacGregor and Vik Bennett.

  Thank you Gemma Davies and Helen Rutherford for advising on legal procedures – my court scenes ended up on the cutting floor but they made the story all the richer.

  All deviations from fact in the pursuit of good storytelling are my fault entirely.

  Huge thanks to my f
abulous colleagues at the University of Glasgow, especially Colin Herd, Elizabeth Reeder, Zoë Strachan, and Louise Welsh, and to the University for granting me a sabbatical right when I needed it most.

  Thank you Max Richter for your beautiful music which provided the emotional stimulus needed to craft the layers of this story.

  As always, my deepest love and gratitude to my children, Melody, Phoenix, Summer, and Willow, and to my husband Jared, not only for being an excellent human being but also a school run champ and an ace at remembering packed lunches, for remaining good humoured when I researched Mont Blanc so heavily that I temporarily ceased to function in the real world, and especially for brilliant feedback as I was shaping the plot. I love you so much.

  A Q&A with C. J. Cooke

  Can you tell us a little about what inspired you to write The Blame Game?

  I think there are numerous points of origin for this story. I was interested in exploring the relationship between the past and present and the consequences of guilt, and how blame can trigger a set of actions that easily spiral out of control.

  The plot emerged quite out of the blue one day in Spring 2017 when my husband and I were in our car at a junction, waiting to take a right turn. A car narrowly missed us, and a scenario arrived in my head: what if he’d hit us and the blame lay somehow with my husband? That question seemed to trigger a whole host of plot points and scenarios, from the hospital disappearance to the backstory in 1995.

  I actually experienced a serious car accident in Belize in early 2003. I didn’t ever think I’d write about it but it re-surfaced in plotting this book – and I figured some first-hand knowledge of that kind of place and the experience itself could be put to good use! I have not, however, climbed Mont Blanc, or anything like it, though I’m fascinated by mountains.

  What was the writing process like? Did you have to do a lot of research?

  The first draft was written fairly quickly – a total of three months – and yes, I had to do lots of research … It is always exciting to plot out a story, but then the reality of fact-checking kicks in and it quickly becomes very labour intensive! The biggest problem I had was in terms of researching climbing and Mont Blanc – the more research I did into this the more it appeared I still needed to do! Research can easily become insurmountable, and the trick lies in figuring out what you need to know. I knew I wouldn’t be able to arrange a trip to Mont Blanc, much as I would have liked to, but I soon came across a wealth of YouTube videos, where climbers had attached a camera to their climbing helmets to capture the entire trek. I watched hundreds of hours’ worth of footage, including training videos, and filled in the blanks with diaries I’d kept during holidays to Austria, Switzerland, France and Germany.