The Silent Witness

by Casey Watson

  ‘Jesus H,’ the one on the floor said. ‘Jesus flaming H.’

  Then, soon – between the crying, and the smell, and the way the policemen filled the room, she wasn’t clear how soon – there were more people, a man and a woman in broccoli-green uniforms, and another woman, an old one, who wasn’t in any sort of uniform, and who kept squeezing her shoulder and shunting her out of the way. First while a stretcher was brought in (could the room fit any more in? It was getting like Mary Poppins’s carpet bag), then again, as her dad – still flat, still silent, grey and limp, and now with a plastic mask on his face – was taken out on the same stretcher, into the hall and away. Then again, as the sound of a siren outside filled the air, her mother, still sobbing, still shaking, calling ‘Bella! Love you, Bella!’, was taken away by the two giant policemen.

  Belatedly, her mind suddenly jerking back into focus, Bella realised the enormity of what was about to happen to her. That the woman who wasn’t in uniform had a third policeman with her. Who was actually a policewoman. That this was it now. That bad things were happening. That they were now going to take her away as well. But to where? She felt her insides start to liquefy.

  ‘Up to your bedroom, sweetheart, yes?’ the first lady was telling her gently, at first confusing Bella, and making her heart leap – was the lady putting her to bed? Was she going to have to stay up there on her own? ‘Get some bits together,’ the lady clarified. Bits? What did she mean by bits? ‘Night things,’ the lady said, though Bella hadn’t actually asked her. ‘You know, toiletries and so on. Any books? DVDs you like? Toys? Some warm clothes and that, certainly. All the usual bits and bobs …’

  Bits and bobs? But it was like the lady was talking to herself. Reeling off a familiar list in her head. An image of the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang came into her head. Would there be a cart outside, to carry her away, with bars she’d have to cling to? You and that imagination of yours, Bella! That’s what Mrs Huggins always used to say.

  And meanwhile, the policewoman was marching round, touching everything. She had gloves on. Like in hospitals. When had she put those on? Marching round, touching and checking and doing. Sniffing. Turning the lamp off. Checking the patio door. Marching off into the kitchen. Getting tape out – stripy tape, like Bella had seen on the telly. Marching round her home as if it wasn’t a home. Just a place. In a police show. As if she owned it.

  Perhaps she did now. For the moment. Because home was now a ‘crime scene’, she realised. So she duly packed – packed whatever her gaze landed on, feeling panicked. As if there was a time limit and a buzzer might suddenly go off, like she was in a game show. She packed what the lady suggested, and she packed stuff at random, but without a plan, because she couldn’t really think straight. How did you pack when you didn’t know where you were going? How did you pack when you didn’t know how long you’d be there?

  So some stuff from her drawers, some stuff from the washing pile. The stuff from the bathroom that was hers, like her flannel. The stuff that strictly wasn’t, like the one tube of toothpaste. The ‘family toothpaste’, she thought. But what would her mum do for toothpaste? No one had asked her to ‘pack a bag, love’, had they? What would her mother do for clothes?

  And would her dad even need toothpaste? Her not-your-fucking-dad? She could feel the dent of his big drunken thumb halfway down it. ‘I’ll fucking squeeze it where I fucking like, bitch!’

  No more.

  It had stopped sleeting when they emerged back into the front garden, where the light net still resolutely refused to sparkle. It felt cold outside. Cold enough to snow? But not at all Christmassy.

  ‘What’s going to happen to me?’ she asked the lady without the uniform, who’d come in a different car to the policewoman and who led her out into the road now – no Child Catcher’s cart – while the policewoman stayed behind, by herself, at their home.

  Someone a few doors down was standing at their front gate, watching. Bella couldn’t tell who because it was so dark. ‘So bloody rude.’ She could hear her mum saying it, because she said it so often. Could hear her shouting down the road, too, like her ghost was still here. ‘Know me again, love? Get a bloody life!’

  Bella didn’t stare back. She just got in the back of the lady’s car as directed.

  ‘We’re going to take you somewhere safe, sweetheart,’ the lady told her, trying to help her with her seatbelt. Fussing around her, like she was six, rather than twelve, and couldn’t manage on her own. She found she didn’t mind at all. She knew she should – she was too old for ‘Santa Stop Here!’ signs, after all – but she didn’t.

  The lie was almost too big for her to carry, and she wished she could be six once more. Back in the primary school library, back to a time almost before she could remember, where bad things – truly bad things – only happened in books.

  Not in real lives. They drove off into the night.

  Chapter 21

  At some point – how long ago now, I had no clue any more – I had reached across to one of the wicker chairs and tugged off the throw that was draped across it. It covered both of us, and inside it was now almost too warm. Bella was close beside me, and while I had one arm around her, she’d slung one pyjama’d leg over my own legs, which now felt stiff and hot as well.

  Tyler, I knew for sure, had long since gone to bed. As had Mike, who’d barely put his head round the door, before retreating wordlessly and leaving us to it.

  It had been a long time in the telling. Perhaps a real-time account, even. But Bella had still yet to finish it.

  ‘Then I remembered,’ she said, in the same toneless voice she had told me her whole story in. ‘Dobby. I’d forgotten Dobby. I couldn’t leave without Dobby. Just the thought of him alone up there …’

  I squeezed her leg. ‘So you went back for him?’

  I felt her nod against my chest. ‘I made the lady turn the car round. First of all she said we couldn’t. She said it was too late now, and that she’d go back and fetch him for me in the morning. And first of all I said okay. But it wasn’t okay, was it? I sat there in her car and it was like I was having trouble breathing. Like I had asthma or something, like Ruby does – that bad. Except I don’t. It was just because I couldn’t breathe. Because it wasn’t fair.’

  ‘So you asked her again.’

  This time a headshake against my chest.

  ‘I didn’t exactly ask her. I couldn’t get any words out. I just screamed. I didn’t mean to. I just couldn’t stop it coming out. Though I really tried. She was frightened, I think, and she was driving. So she pulled over and stopped the car. I think she was shaking as much as I was. I couldn’t speak at all then, when she opened the car door and tried to get me to calm down. But I couldn’t breathe. It was like I was a fish who’s just been fished out of a river. Just gulping. Trying to get air in. And she said – no, she almost shouted. Holding my shoulders and going, “Okay, okay, calm down!” like that man does in the adverts.’

  ‘And you did?’

  ‘Eventually. I just couldn’t get my breath, so she made me do this counting thing, holding it in. I was so scared. And going all dizzy and my heart was, like, exploding. I thought I was going to die.’

  ‘A panic attack,’ I said.

  She twisted her head and looked up at me. ‘That’s it. That’s what the lady said.’

  ‘Anyway, she drove you back to the house …’

  ‘Yes. And then she had the policewoman go and get him for me. She wasn’t allowed in. I wasn’t even allowed in,’ she finished. ‘It was like it wasn’t even my home any more. The policewoman was outside guarding it. I had to wait in the car while the lady went and spoke to her. But she was nice. She told me he’d missed me and that it was a good job I’d come back for him. I know it’s babyish,’ she said. ‘But I felt better then.’

  And did she feel better now? That’s was the big question, wasn’t it?

  I suspected yes. Just by her demeanour. I hoped so. As for me, I was being shaken
up by a fizz of information. Of nothing any longer being what it had seemed. Twelve, I kept thinking. What was the law when you were twelve? Ten rang a bell, but twelve? Perhaps I should have spent time in the library.

  I eased out the leg I’d foolishly tucked under me at least an hour since. I had no idea what time it was now; only that it had long since swapped being very, very late for being very, very early. I could tell just from my heavy, sticky eyelids.

  My leg freed, I tried to ignore the pins and needles that were beginning their progress up it. ‘Sweetheart, I have to move,’ I said, pulling down the throw as Bella slid her own leg off. ‘I’m stiff as a board and my shin’s currently on fire.’

  Bella pulled the rest of the throw off and stood up herself, helping me to get up as she did so. ‘Be careful,’ she said. ‘I sat for hours like that once and when I stood up I had a dead leg and fell right over.’

  ‘I’d best hang on then,’ I said. ‘Hope you’re feeling strong … yweeooowww! Oh, now that’s better,’ I said as I bent down to pummel it, and stamp some life back into it. ‘I can stand on it okay, now, it’s just – oh, sweetheart,’ I said then, looking up and seeing her stricken face. I held my other arm out and beckoned, and she scooted straight into my embrace. She’d been dry-eyed for so long now – for at least the last couple of hours of her telling me her story. But I could tell that my confident diagnosis of ‘better’ had been short lived. It had now hit her like the pins and needles had hit me.

  ‘I know you have to tell now,’ she said solemnly, and once again the words were spoken into my chest. ‘The lady told me. The lady who first took me away – she told me. She kept on telling me. So did the foster lady I went to first.

  ‘That was the thing, always. That I knew that whatever I told either of them, they would have to tell. That anyone I told the truth to would have to tell. But I have to now. I know I do. It doesn’t matter what my mum said. I have to tell the truth, or my mum will go to prison for ever, and I’ll have to go to hell.’

  ‘My mum will go to prison for ever.’ She’d said that to me earlier. The penny dropped. Not ‘I’m telling the truth despite it meaning my mum will go to prison for ever.’ She had to tell the truth or her mother would have to go to prison for ever. She was telling the truth now to free her.

  I sat her down again, the fire in my leg having been replaced now by an insistent thrumming in my brain. It had been her. Oh, God – why hadn’t that ever even occurred to me? ‘Bella, that isn’t true,’ I said. ‘You’re not going to hell, okay?’

  There was a silence. I became aware of how she was clutching at my sweatshirt.

  She looked up at me, her eyes brimming with a queue of unshed tears. ‘But I have to go to prison now instead, don’t I?’

  Had it been any later, we might have been saved by the bell. My alarm, at least, set, as ever, for half past six.

  As it was, there was a low noise, of the door into the conservatory being opened. And then the looming shape of Mike, moving carefully in the darkness, coming in.

  I hugged her close to me. ‘Bella, you’re not going to prison, either. And that’s a promise.’

  And one I could at least make with confidence, I thought miserably. Because if it be so decided that a custodial sentence was appropriate (oh, how I wish I’d read up on that earlier) a juvenile wouldn’t ever be sent to a prison. They would be sent to a ‘youth offenders’ institute’. Or a ‘young persons’ facility’. Or some other similarly un-prisonish-sounding place.

  But it would be a prison just the same.

  Chapter 22

  I woke up completely disoriented the next day. First by the light flooding in from the gap in the curtains, and then by the sight of the clock radio beside me, which read 11.10.

  Despite the lateness of the hour, I felt exhausted. But it took a full thirty seconds or so to regain sufficient consciousness to remember the events of the night before.

  I groped for a note that I saw had been propped beside a mug of what was presumably cold coffee. Not so much the night before as the morning after.

  The note was from Mike, who had presumably long since gone to work.

  Morning, love

  I thought I’d leave you to sleep! Got Tyler up and he said he’ll see you after school (I gave him his lunch money) and last time I checked Bella was spark out. Give me a ring later, after you’ve spoken to John.

  Love M x

  I flung the covers off and leapt out of bed. We were in new territory now – new and potentially dangerous, and the last thing Bella needed was to wake to an empty house. New and frightening territory. I was frightened. About what she might do.

  My night hadn’t finished when I’d finally got Bella up to her bedroom. Though she’d seemed almost eerily calm for most of the telling of her story, the final admission that she had been the one to strike the blows that had felled her stepfather had brought with it an understanding of something which I think she’d been trying to bury for many weeks. That it was she who should be standing trial for his attempted murder.

  ‘I would have killed him, I know I would,’ she had whispered between the continuing gulping sobs that kept racking her body. ‘If Mum hadn’t have stopped me, I’d have just kept hitting him with that brick. It was like it wasn’t even me doing it. I really, really couldn’t stop. I just couldn’t. If I stopped he would kill my mum – that’s all I could think. That he would. He was strangling her, Casey …’ Her voice broke and the shudders overtook her once again. ‘I didn’t dare stop,’ she whispered eventually. ‘I couldn’t let him kill her. Will the police come and take me away now?’

  But even the most distressed person has to succumb eventually, and, a little after four, she finally fell asleep in my arms. I’d disentangled myself gingerly, as anxious about her waking up as you’d be about a new and fractious baby, but she was a dead weight, exhausted, and was soon deeply asleep.

  Sleep didn’t come for me, though – my mind was whirring too much. And after deciding against waking Mike – he would have to be up soon, and it just wasn’t fair – I slipped quietly out of the bed I’d so recently slipped into and went downstairs, where I spent almost an hour emailing everything to John while it was fresh in my mind.

  I must have returned to bed less that an hour before the alarm was set for, but had clearly fallen into such a deep sleep myself then that neither the alarm nor the shower could wake me.

  I was wide awake now, though, even though I’d still had precious little sleep. It just felt as if I couldn’t sleep until Bella’s revelations had been acted on. But I obviously didn’t need to worry about Bella herself, not for the moment. She was soundly asleep, her features unlined by anxiety. And though her face was streaked with the evidence of just how hard she’d cried, she looked as free from care as a porcelain doll.

  I headed to the shower then. I knew I would feel better for it. And within half an hour, washed and fresh again, I was ready for action. And I knew the first action would be one that would present its own problems. I already knew what John would require of me once he’d read my pre-dawn email. That I explain to Bella (persuade Bella, and, with the new day, and new clarity, she might need some persuading) that the most important thing now is that she tell her story again, this time to a stranger.

  This was all new territory too. I’d dealt with lots of different care situations and observed all kinds of protocols, but I’d never cared for a child who was over the minimum age of criminal responsibility and who might well be charged with attempted murder. But would she? Could that even be possible? Due process, I remembered. She’d committed a violent act and it was the state’s responsibility to respond to it – and the responsibility of her own lawyers (would she be appointed one by social services?) to defend her and to hopefully see she was acquitted.

  Because surely she would be acquitted. How could she not be? I might have missed the mark completely in terms of what had happened, but the bigger picture remained the same. They had both been driven to breaki
ng point by Adam Cummings’s alcohol-fuelled violence. The only difference was who administered the blows.

  Even by the time I was dressed, Bella was still sleeping, and I wondered if, left alone, she might sleep through the day. And if so, so be it, I decided once I considered it. Anxious as I was to begin setting the record straight, an exhausted, distressed child would be no good to anyone.

  It also left me space in which to properly chat to John, who’d not as yet even called me. Bless him, I thought, once I gave it a moment’s thought. He’d have seen the time of my email and put two and two together. He was doubtless giving me time to cat nap too. So I phoned him. Only to find myself listening to his answerphone, and on hearing it I hung up and dialled the main office – better to know what he was up to than just sit and wait. For all I knew, he might be out of the office all day.

  But apparently not. ‘I’m sure he won’t be long,’ the receptionist told me. ‘He’s just been called away to deal with a report of a missing child.’

  A missing child obviously trumped pretty much everyone. So I made coffee and slipped a couple of slices of bread into the toaster, the events Bella had recounted to me still swimming around in my head.

  If what Bella had told me was the absolute truth, which I strongly believed it was, then one thing I had been entirely wrong about was Adam Cummings. Or, more accurately, couldn’t fathom what was going on with Adam Cummings. Had he kept quiet about what happened because he too wanted to protect his stepdaughter? Perhaps. But equally it could be true that he didn’t care about Bella. That seeing his wife go down for almost killing him was a win–win situation. If it were true about her various liaisons – or the possibility of her liaisons – what better way to get his revenge?

  But I didn’t know. I knew nothing. And it was driving me nuts. And while I’d never profess to doing such things unconsciously, ten minutes later I found myself firing up the laptop, and doing something I’d heard of, but never done before. My kids called it stalking.