False Hope

by Lynne Lee

  They are all sitting at the kitchen island, eating toast, when we appear, Daniel still in his pyjamas and Dillon in unfamiliar and expensive-looking clothes. A Fortnite hoodie, a New York Yankees beanie, and a pair of dark, artfully distressed skinny jeans. An ombré Puffa jacket hangs off the back of his bar stool.

  I’ve already dried the tears of relief that spent most of the journey falling out of me. And before they threaten to start spilling again, just looking at the expression on Isabel’s face, I allow myself to give Dillon just a small, crushing hug – for my benefit more than his, it seems – before moving immediately into ‘sleeves up and get on with it’ mode. I know the police will be here soon, because they’ve already told us they will, and also that they’ll need to interview Dillon, probably at some length, and though I have a creeping fear now that they will make less of this than instinct still tells me they should, I decide to park it and run with the story. Whatever is going on here, it seems important that I stick with it. At least for the moment. ‘I’ll make some more toast,’ I announce to the kitchen in general. ‘I’m starving. Are you starving too?’ I ask Matt.

  ‘As a horse,’ he says. ‘A big horse.’ He looks similarly bemused. ‘Nice threads, mate,’ he says to Dillon. Then he goes across and plucks the beanie off so he can ruffle his hair. ‘Where did these all come from?’

  Dillon doesn’t miss a beat. ‘Auntie Mary bought them for me.’

  Daniel catches my eye then. There’s definitely something going on here. Something Matt and I aren’t yet privy to. He looks down again, then over at Isabel.

  ‘And spent a bit on them, by the looks of things,’ Matt’s saying, touching the sleeve of the Puffa jacket. ‘Where’s this from, then?’

  ‘That’s from River Island. We went shopping after school. Because I didn’t have anything to change into – I didn’t have a key or anything, did I?’ He looks at me then. ‘Mum, is Nanna really going to be okay?’ And for the first time since we got back, I see fear and anxiety cloud his face.

  ‘Nanna’s going to be absolutely fine,’ I reassure him. Because, as far as I’m aware, that’s the truth. Though I realise I haven’t so much as given her welfare a single thought in the last twenty-four hours. But now I do. What the hell is going on here?

  But I’m saved from having to think further, because the doorbell then rings. Presumably the police. Whose presence is going to muddy the waters further.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Isabel and I both say in synchrony. So we both go, not least so she can fill me in better.

  ‘I don’t know what is going on,’ she says, once we are safely out of earshot. ‘He seems to think he had to go on a sleepover with this Auntie Mary character because your mum was very sick and you had to stay over at the hospital. And when I asked him why he didn’t just come home and speak to me first, he said it was because she said I’d gone on holiday! I didn’t want to interrogate him about it, because he doesn’t even seem that traumatised, so I told Dan we’d better just go along with it till you and Matt came home. I hope I did the right thing. I didn’t want to frighten him unnecessarily.’

  We’re at the front door now. ‘You did absolutely the right thing,’ I reassure her. ‘Anyway, we’d better let them in. Do you want to head off now?’

  She shakes her head. ‘I thought you might want me to take Dan to the park or something? I don’t have anything else on. It’s no bother.’

  I tell her she’s a star, and open the door to DS Lovelace and DS Winters. And it’s then, when the two of them are standing in our kitchen, that Dillon’s expression changes. Now he is scared.

  And also confused. After Isabel and Daniel leave for the park, we take the police officers into the living room, where they explain to Dillon that they just need to have a chat with him, because, despite what he’d thought, none of us knew where he was.

  Now he looks truly terrified. ‘But she said I had to go with her because Mum said,’ he tells them. ‘She said Nanna Joy was ill.’ He looks at me. ‘She said you said.’ His chin begins to wobble. ‘Am I in trouble now? But I had to go with her. She said!’

  ‘No, no, son, not at all,’ DS Lovelace reassures him. ‘And your Nanna Joy—’ (he glances at me now) ‘—is just fine. We just want to hear all about it, that’s all. So. What did you get up to? Did you do anything nice? How about you start from the beginning and we’ll go from there?’

  At least partly reassured – he’s still flicking his gaze back and forth to DS Winters, who is making notes – Dillon begins recounting his story. Says she drove up when he was walking home with his friends and called him over, and explained that I’d sent her to pick him up from school because his Nanna Joy was very poorly and that he had to go and stay with her.

  ‘And what about Isabel?’ DS Lovelace asks. ‘Didn’t you wonder why it wasn’t Isabel picking you up?’

  ‘I did. I asked her why I wasn’t supposed to just go and meet Isabel, and she told me it was because she’d already gone on holiday. That’s why I had to go with her instead. She said it had all been fixed up.’

  ‘And what about your brother? Did you wonder what he might be doing?’

  ‘She said he was on a sleepover with his friend.’

  ‘And she explained who she was?’

  ‘She didn’t need to. She’s Nanna’s friend, Auntie Mary. I told you. Was I not supposed to go with her?’ He’s looking anxious again.

  ‘No, no, don’t worry about any of that,’ the officer says. ‘So, where did she take you?’

  ‘To the shops first, so we could get some clothes, because I only had my uniform. Then we went for tea at Nando’s’ (Christ, I think, they might have missed Isabel and Daniel by minutes) ‘and then we went to her caravan, and we went for a walk on the beach in the dark. And then we watched telly for a bit – she has this huge telly in her caravan – and then I went to bed, and when I got scared in the night, because I didn’t remember where I was, she sat on the bed with me and read me lots of stories. And this morning she made me breakfast, and then she brought me back. I was supposed to stay longer but I wanted to go home. I was missing Mum, and I was worried about Nanna Joy being okay.’

  ‘So she was nice to you.’

  ‘She’s always nice.’

  He nods. ‘And she didn’t say anything, or do anything, that made you feel uncomfortable or frightened?’

  ‘No.’ Dillon seems to have a sudden thought then. ‘Is she going to be in trouble now?’

  ‘Don’t you worry about any of that,’ DS Lovelace says firmly. ‘We just want to be sure you had a nice time while you were with her. We’re just a little bit concerned because we think she might be poorly, what with forgetting to tell your mum and dad about you going to stay with her. They were obviously very worried.’

  Dillon looks from me to the officer and back again. ‘Does she have dementia?’

  ‘Possibly,’ he says. ‘Or something similar, anyway, and we’ll be looking into that, so you don’t need to worry. But tell me, when did you last see Auntie Mary? I mean before this.’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ he says, shrugging. ‘Not for ages and ages. We used to see her with Nanna sometimes, but not for a long time. She’s nice. She likes to play. She made me pancakes for breakfast,’ he adds, ‘with chocolate spread.’

  I touch my hand to my cheek, feel the tender spot. Remember. The same woman who made pancakes for breakfast, with chocolate spread. Who was nice. And now I know for sure what will most likely come next.

  It does.

  Because once they’ve finished asking questions, and Dillon goes upstairs to change his clothes (at Matt’s suggestion, so that they too can go to the park), both officers, for all that they accept the seriousness of the situation, have expressions that are very different now. Benign ones.

  ‘Well,’ says DS Winters. ‘This is a rum one, is it not?’ To which I object. To both the words and the unspoken suggestion – that we’re dealing with nothing more frightening than a poor abandoned grandmother, who, yes,
has snatched our son from the street in broad daylight, but who, well, can perhaps be cut a little bit of slack? But before I can open my mouth to actually say this, DS Lovelace quickly adds, ‘Not that we’re not taking this extremely seriously, Mrs Hamilton, especially in light of her assault on you last week. But the main thing is that your son seems none the worse for his adventure, and—’

  ‘This was not an “adventure”,’ I interrupt. ‘He was kidnapped. And he is ten.’

  And she’s almost eighty. He doesn’t say it, but his eyes do. ‘And when we apprehend Mrs Kennedy, which I’m confident we will, we will take the appropriate action.’

  ‘As in arresting her for kidnapping?’ Matt says.

  ‘Child abduction,’ he corrects. ‘Because she clearly didn’t take him against his will, did she? But let’s see what she says. I suspect there’s a possibility that the balance of her mind was disturbed, after the untimely death of her own son. But let’s just see what we see when we interview her. Rest assured that we’ll be in touch as soon as we have anything more to tell you. And in the meantime, let’s just be grateful that no harm’s come to Dillon.’ And in his face, once again, I see exactly what he’s thinking. That, in his time, he has seen a lot worse.

  And, infuriatingly, I know he probably has.

  They apprehend Norma Kennedy later that afternoon. Matt and the boys are out in the garden – he’s on a mission now, has become a zealot, a tree-house evangelist – when DS Lovelace calls to tell me they have found her.

  ‘It was a call from a member of the public,’ he explains, ‘concerned that she was ahead of them, driving erratically, out towards Shoreham, before driving her car – they say intentionally – as some speed, into a wall. She was lucky – the airbag saved her. Car is written off, obviously. A bad business.’

  ‘Was she badly hurt?’ I force myself to ask.

  ‘Not physically. As I say, the airbag—’

  ‘So what’s happening now? Has she been taken to hospital?’

  ‘To the psychiatric hospital. Her physical injuries were fairly minor, but I believe she’s been sectioned. They decided to call the duty psychiatrist, and to detain her under the Mental Health Act for her own protection.’ He leaves a pause. ‘Perhaps the enormity of what she’d done had sunk in by then and overwhelmed her mentally.’

  ‘In what way? Can you be more specific?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Mrs Hamilton. I’m not a medic.’

  Yes, but I am, I want to say. I don’t.

  ‘So what will happen now?’ I ask instead.

  ‘Well, to be honest, Mrs Hamilton, not a lot. She’s in the care of the NHS now, so it’s difficult to predict. And, to be equally honest with you, we’ll be setting this aside for the time being; there’s no action we can take until we know she has capacity. And who knows when – or if – that’s likely to happen? At the very least, they have a twenty-eight-day order. It’s also debatable whether there is anything likely to be achieved by mounting a prosecution if and when it does. She’s a very elderly lady, and very frail, by all accounts, and given the circumstances around her actions . . . Well,’ he puts into the space where I assume he was expecting me to agree with him, ‘let’s just see what happens, shall we? We’ll obviously keep you informed going forward.’

  ‘I’d be grateful if you would,’ I say. ‘Because I’m not going to be able to relax knowing she might be back out there somewhere, am I? I know PCSO Wallace doesn’t think she represents much of a threat to anyone, but I know the history. I know what she’s capable of.’

  ‘I understand. Though to be frank, I think the person she most represents a threat to is herself. Which is easy to say, I know, and I do know how distressing this has been for you and your family. And the hospital will let us know if they decide to lift the section. And if that does happen, I will of course let you know. In the meantime, you have nothing to fear from her. Anyway, how’s your little boy doing? Is he okay?’

  I look out into the garden. See three heads together, Matt drawing on a pad. ‘He seems to be,’ I say.

  ‘Good,’ says DS Lovelace. ‘Well, anyway.’ I’m expecting him to add ‘all’s well that ends well’, but thankfully he doesn’t. Instead, he surprises me by adding, ‘As I say, we’ll keep in touch, but let’s hope this really is the end of it.’ He sighs. ‘Ah, life’s many vicissitudes, eh?’

  To which rhetorical question there really is no answer.

  And perhaps he’s right. Perhaps this is the end of it. Perhaps she’s done what she set out to, and it’s over. And perhaps I should draw the proverbial line beneath it now as well. Because, actually, I find I don’t care about taking Norma Kennedy to court. I can imagine the process, and I have absolutely no appetite for it. No, more than that, it feels wrong, because it’s not as if I have a need for her to suffer more. To keep this going now just feels too much like vengeance. No, I can’t find it in me to feel compassion for her. I’m not sure I ever will. I just don’t want all the hate to infect me. Most of all, though, I just want my family to be left alone; for the archaeological site of our past, and all the horrors that have been excavated, to be filled in, stamped back down again, grassed over.

  And I have another gentle reminder that it’s the right way to think later that evening. When I’m tucking Dillon into bed – happily, because he’s anxious to go to school tomorrow and be the centre of attention – he has something on his mind.

  ‘Mum, you know Auntie Mary?’

  ‘Yesss . . .’

  ‘I think she does have dementia. You know when I was in her caravan?’ I nod. ‘Well, she said something really strange. She said I was to never forget that she loved me more than all the tea in china. That was a weird thing to say, wasn’t it? What does it even mean?’

  ‘Well, there is a lot of tea in China. As in the country, that is – not as in cups and bowls and plates. So it means the same as when I tell you I love you more than all the stars in the sky.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Like, a lot, then.’

  ‘Yes, a lot,’ I agree. ‘And who wouldn’t?’ I place a kiss on his forehead. ‘And I love you even more.’

  He looks anxiously at me now. ‘She’s not going to be in trouble, is she?’

  I think of all I know. All I could tell. All the evidence I could produce. And, for the first time, I realise that power does rest with me.

  ‘No, sweetie,’ I tell him firmly, ‘she’s not.’

  Chapter 26

  One of the last promises Hope extracted from me before she died was that I would not waste time getting mad with the man who had so wronged her, and not try to get even with him either.

  It was a couple of weeks before Christmas and we’d gone down with presents, and it was probably the time when I had felt the most fury. Felt it as such an elemental, intensely physical force that I was struggling to contain it. We’d just finished stringing up the outside fairy lights so she could see them from the window. I remember standing looking out through the steamed-up French windows into her barren little garden, in the centre of which were the rusting remains of Aidan’s old part-cannibalised motorbike, stripped to provide parts for the latest one, which he had, of course, taken with him when he left. It felt like the cruellest kind of metaphor. I remember standing there and thinking how much I’d love to smash something. Anything to do with him. Had there been an axe to hand, I would have taken it to it.

  Weak as Hope was, I could still sense the strength coming off her, just as she could feel the anger coming off me. I wonder now, of course, if there was a part of her that was by now weak with relief; she had done what she’d set out to, after all. But instead she was calm and pragmatic and philosophical, in a way perhaps only the dying can be.

  ‘He’s not worth it, Grace,’ she told my back, from the sofa she was slumped on. ‘Dillon’s all that matters, now, okay? Let go of your anger. Just forget him.’

  It took a long time for me to be able to do either of those things. And it’s ironic that, having done so, the eve
nts of the last couple of months have ensured that the one thing I’m never going to be able to do now is forget Aidan Kennedy. Even when I reach a point where I can consign his mother back into my mental strongbox, the sheer tragedy of his life, and its horrible consequences, are going to haunt me in a way they never would have before.

  The anger I do still have to deal with is much more pressing and important. And a call on Friday morning brings it sharply into focus, when the question of my own mother – the reason I came back here, and demanded so much of my family – can no longer be anything other than addressed: she’s due to be discharged on Monday, her consultant tells me, with a new, ‘enhanced care package’, and if I’m to be any use to her, ‘going forward’, as DS Lovelace might have it, I’m going to need to get over myself. And not just for me. For the boys. What kind of example would I be setting them if I don’t? Of all the qualities I hope to inspire in them as adults, compassion is surely one of the most important.

  Matt’s back in London, but with one major change to his schedule. He has around four weeks left to work on the project he’s finishing but, under the circumstances, has been in conversation with his bosses about doing most of what he can from home instead. Which means tonight, for the first time, home will be home. In the meantime we’ve been having endless Skype conversations about it all, and whether rightly or wrongly – logic says the former, gut instinct the latter – trying to help the dust settle by sprinkling it with rose-coloured water. Because it’s actually entirely reasonable to see this as the end point for Norma. Driven to extreme behaviour by Aidan’s death, and with little left to live for, she snatched Dillon for the simple reason that she was desperate to spend time with him, before – and Matt has pointed out that this was always my theory – taking her own life, putting an end to the pain.

  And has failed. Dillon’s words come back to me. Never forget I love you more than all the tea in China. She did. She does. I must remember that as well.

  I spend most of the morning in trauma clinic with Siddhant, who is in an uncharacteristic state of excited agitation because he’s been invited to present a research paper at a big surgical conference; another feather in a professional cap that will soon be bristling with them. I feel rather emotional about it myself. As a consultant, part of my job is now to train junior doctors. Siddhant will be the first of many, but he will always be my first. When he observes that he’s going to need a new suit, and needs advice – ‘grey or blue? And do you think pinstripe will be too “surgeon-y”?’ – it’s all I can do not to hug him for joy.