‘I didn’t . . .’
‘Yes you did! You distracted me and she rolled off the table. You shoved me aside; you shocked me with your naughty, tricky behaviour and look what happened to this darling girl.’
‘I didn’t mean to . . .’
‘It doesn’t matter if you meant to,’ she says, as she tries to shush Betsey. She looks very, very frightened and it’s her fear that scares him the most.
He shrinks down into the corner of the room, curls as small as he can, head folded into his knees, arms tight around them. If he can make himself disappear then perhaps she’ll go away. Maybe this is a bad dream, and he’ll wake to discover that Mummy never left. He starts rocking, trying to block out the sound of Charlotte’s terror, and perhaps it works because her nasty voice stops as she cuddles his sister. ‘Shh, shh, Betsey. Shh, shh, baby. Come on, Betsey, shush. Shh, please.’
Suddenly, she thrusts her at him and he is holding his whimpering sister. ‘I’ve got to be back for George.’ Charlotte looks properly panicked. ‘She’s OK. She’ll be fine. It’s just the shock. That’s why she’s screaming. Mummy will be back soon – but listen to me’ – and here she looks more scared than he’s ever seen any adult before – ‘when she comes back you mustn’t say you saw me.’
‘But I did,’ he whimpers.
‘No you didn’t,’ she insists. ‘It’s really important. You were trying to be helpful. You tried to change her nappy and she rolled over. You didn’t see what happened. Can you repeat that for me?’
‘I was trying to be helpful. I tried to change her nappy and she rolled over. I didn’t see it happen.’
‘Good boy. Excellent!’ She smiles, and he glows under her surprising praise. ‘The thing is Mummy will be worried if she knows I was here because I know that she wasn’t.’
He nods, very unclear.
‘Mummies aren’t meant to leave their children, are they?’
‘No.’
‘And she could get in a lot of trouble if anyone else – your daddy or the police, for instance – found out she’d left you here by yourselves.’
‘The police?’ He is flooded with fear.
‘They would put her in prison,’ she whispers, looking sad.
‘I don’t want her to go to prison.’
‘I know you don’t. And that’s why you’re not going to say anything that would worry her. You don’t want the police to find out she wasn’t here’ – and her face, with its dark eyes and pronounced nose, is suddenly witch-like – ‘so shall this be our secret?’
He nods, solemnly.
‘It’s really important. Remember: you tried to change her nappy to be helpful and she rolled over. You didn’t see it. Got that?’
He nods more firmly.
‘Excellent. That’s all you need to say.’
She goes quickly after that. Leaves him there in that stinking bathroom with Bets and his worst fears: that Mummy has abandoned them and that she’ll be taken from them. Sixteen minutes she’s been gone. He stares at the digital figures on his wrist as Betsey’s cries continue. Sixteen and a half minutes, then seventeen, and she’s still not here . . .
Tears streak down his wet face as he repeats Charlotte’s words like a mantra. I tried to change her nappy to be helpful. She rolled over. I didn’t see it. Betsey sucks frantically on her fingers and he lies her on a towel; strokes her tummy; tries to dab her tears away.
At nineteen minutes, he hears the sound of the key in the lock, then the tread of feet running up the stairs. He screams. He can’t help it: what if it’s Charlotte and not his mummy? It’s a dark, guttural sound. The cry he makes when he’s desperate not to be told off but here it is anchored by terror. His mother bursts into the bathroom.
‘What’s happened? What did you do?’
She knows he is to blame: she takes that as read.
‘I tried to change her nappy,’ he gabbles, drinking in her hair, the smell of her skin, the fact she is next to him and that she is putting her arm around him as well as Betsey, that she is drawing them close together, that he is safe.
‘She rolled over. I didn’t see it.’ The words he has rehearsed spill out in one rush, followed by his guilt that he has somehow caused this.
‘It’s all my fault. But I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to, Mummy.’
LIZ
Saturday 9 June
Forty-eight
‘Shall we catch them up?’ It feels wrong to be ambling in the sunshine while Frankie is experiencing some sort of crisis. I spy Jess’s curls among the mass of parents; can just see Frankie’s dark, silky head.
We walk more briskly, me dragging Sam, Ed and Kit trotting beside us. ‘Dada!’ Betsey shrieks, jiggling up and down on his shoulders. He raises a hand to grip her torso; consciously slows his pace.
But Frankie drives me on. It’s not just his shrill cry. It’s my affinity with a child left alone with a younger sibling who then suffered a serious accident. Who was involved in it happening and will think he’s to blame. Because however much we reassure him that it wasn’t his fault, he’ll still feel guilty and responsible.
Frankie, who caused Betsey’s serious head injury. Just like Lizzie, who ignored her little brother until he scalded himself as he made her a cup of tea.
My heart thumps wildly. This isn’t about me; it’s about this small boy, who still looks deeply troubled. I’ve lost sight of them, though I can hear his intermittent shrieks.
‘It’s madness, racing in this heat. Why don’t you come back to ours? Have you time?’ Ed has slowed right down.
‘Great. Good idea.’ Still walking, I text the plan to Nick. But though I should relax at the thought, my heart’s staccato-ing because Frankie has somehow slipped from my sight.
‘I can’t see them. Will they have gone up here?’
We’ve reached the corner of St Albans’ Avenue, a curving road of substantial Edwardian semis that’s home to Charlotte and Andrew and forms a shortcut.
‘No, Frankie refuses to go this way. They go via the main road. Look: there they are!’ Ed gestures to a small scurrying figure, still dragging his mother far off in the distance. They’re moving at quite a pace.
We take the shortcut, past the elegant houses with their repointed red brick, their smart paintwork, their bay trees in planters, and I wonder why Frankie avoids it. Then I remember making up rules as a child: if I reach the end of the street without stepping on a line, my mum won’t be angry; if I walk to the end of the pier without stepping over a plank, Mattie will get well. Like most children I outgrew the belief I could control things if I performed certain rituals – in my case, once the acute stress of Mattie’s accident and his period in hospital were over. But Frankie is still clearly affected by what happened. Perhaps that’s what’s going on here.
*
The shortcut means we reach Jess’s house just after she and Frankie arrive. As Ed turns his key in the lock, Frankie races from the hallway to the kitchen to hide.
‘Frankie, it’s only us,’ Ed calls out, nonplussed.
‘I can’t get through to him. He completely freaked out,’ Jess says, twisting her fingers – she no longer wears her rings. She stops abruptly. ‘Frankie, sweetheart.’ She goes through to the kitchen and tries to hold the sobbing figure. ‘Shh . . . shh . . . it’s all right. You’re home now. Everything will be OK.’
But Frankie is distraught: the relief of being at home meaning he can give himself up to his distress. It’s the same near-hysterical crying I saw when Jess was interviewed by the police.
‘It’s OK, Frankie. You need to breathe. Can you do that for me? In for three . . . out for five . . .’ I try to calm him as I did then, but his sobs ratchet up into disjointed hiccups and tears streak down his flushed cheeks.
‘You . . . won’t . . .’ He is gasping to get a sentence out.
‘I won’t what, sweetheart?’ Jess manages to get both arms around him and he lets her hold him tight.
‘You won’t go to prison, will you
?’ The words fight their way through his sobs.
‘No!’
‘And you won’t be taken away from us?’
‘No-ooo!’ Jess says, her voice swooping in incredulity and sadness. ‘Is this about Lucy?’ she continues, her voice very small. ‘Lucy’s still helping us but very soon she won’t be involved: hopefully by next month. Because I’m getting better, aren’t I? And I’m not planning on going anywhere at all.’
His shoulders quiver with fear or relief, but his noisy sobs tell of the strain he’s been under these past five months. And then his anguish cranks up as if a volume dial has been swiped.
‘She was there . . . at the fair . . . and she looked at me. All witchy.’
‘Who was there, darling?’
But Frankie clamps his lips tight and shakes his head as if shaking a thought away.
‘She. Said. I. Was . . . Naughty . . . She. Said. I. Was . . . Tricky,’ he manages finally.
‘Who did, Frankie?’ I ask, touching his hand.
‘George’s mummy,’ he wails, as if it should be obvious.
‘Well, of course you’re not naughty or tricky.’ Jess looks at me bemused. ‘What an unkind thing to say! Ed – do you know anything about this?’ she asks, and I hear the unspoken allegation in her tone: your friend said this about our child.
‘I’ve no idea what he’s talking about. I can’t imagine why she’d say that. We’ve been so clear that it’s not his fault. That he’s not in any way to blame.’
‘She. Said. It!’ Frankie looks up at his father. ‘I’m not lying!’
‘Well, she’s completely wrong,’ Ed tells him. ‘You’re a good boy, we all know that. Mummy, me; Liz as well,’ he says, enlisting my support.
‘Absolutely.’
‘Maybe you misunderstood her? I can’t believe she’d say something like that to you.’
‘Ed!’ Jess is close to tears.
He shrugs. ‘Well, when would she have said it? There must have been crossed wires, or something. Look, I’ll give her a call, try to work out what’s happened. There’s no way she’d have meant to make him this distressed.’
He picks up his phone and moves out of the kitchen, where the sound of the wailing is quieter.
‘It’s all right, Frankie. Daddy believes you. We believe you, and Charlotte’s completely wrong,’ Jess says, hugging her boy.
But Ed just made a good point. When would she have said it? The families no longer socialise, Charlotte cutting Jess off completely after the involvement of the police. George has had a Spanish au pair since February, so Charlotte’s never at the school gate.
‘He doesn’t like George’s mum and he’s scared of George, too,’ Kit offers, as he and Sam watch, wide-eyed. ‘He won’t come near us in the playground if we’re playing with George. He says he hates him.’
‘Is George bullying you, Frankie?’ I ask. ‘Is that what’s going on?’
He shakes his head.
‘Why don’t you boys go and play?’ I tell Sam and Kit, realising Frankie is unlikely to open up with them there. They oblige, chastened by his anguish. I sit back on my heels as Jess rocks him, trying to fathom the reason for his distress.
I remember him glancing over his shoulder at the mass of parents, as we left school: there were hundreds of us but one in particular terrified him. I think of his refusal to walk past Charlotte’s house, and his sudden hatred of George, which chimes with something Rosa recently said.
Then there’s Charlotte’s behaviour: her clear withdrawal from our group, and her decision to send George to prep school a year early. Her behaviour at the fair, when she kept her distance and refused to be photographed in a group. Please, Liz. Let’s not force things. It was a perfectly reasonable request, and yet she was shifty: standing deep under the sycamore tree as if she didn’t want to be seen.
There’s that slight hardness to her, too; something I identified as social awkwardness but which reminds me of my mother. Her defensiveness. Her belief that her opinion is always right. Then, her relationship with Ed. When I overheard them earlier, had she just suggested they become more than friends? Because it sounded very much as if he was rebuffing her. And, perhaps allied to this, there’s her willingness to think the worst of Jess: her barely disguised delight when she suggested Jess had left both her children on the night of Betsey’s accident. Perhaps she wasn’t there, Charlotte had suggested – and yes, she had been right.
And yet she hadn’t told the police, had she? She’d told me – perhaps as insurance in case a neighbour mentioned her being there that night. But she kept it quiet despite clearly having an animus against Jess. Why was that? Why hadn’t she alerted them? Could it be because she didn’t want them to know that she had been there? What was it she’d said? I rang the door but no one answered. I tried the landline but it just rang out. I could hear Betsey crying. She’d gone to the garage to fill up with petrol, she said, but what if she hadn’t? What if she had rung the doorbell and someone – a visibly troubled little boy – had answered it, after all?
The answer comes at me clear and hard like a sudden blow to my solar plexus. And, Christ, if I’m right, he will finally be absolved of all blame.
‘Frankie,’ I say, and he gives me the smile of a child who is failing to hold everything together.
And I smile back as I ask him: ‘When did Charlotte say this?’
LIZ
Friday 13 July
Forty-nine
The boy comes hurtling down the school playing field, arms and legs flailing, a look of intense concentration on his face.
He streaks ahead of the other eight-year-olds but the fact he is so clearly in the lead doesn’t prevent him from expending every last ounce of effort.
‘Come on, Frankie. Come on!’ Jess shouts. ‘You can do it. You can do it!’ she urges as he flies over the finishing line.
My boy chases after him, chest thrust out, arms flung forwards. ‘Well done, Sam!’ I yell as he thunders past us, though I’m secretly relieved that Frankie’s won.
‘Sorry. Did I sound like a hideous Tiger Mother?’ Jess asks.
‘Just a little bit,’ Mel says dryly as Connor arrives in last place.
‘I think it’s allowed,’ I add, noting her flushed cheeks, her palpable excitement; thinking back to the woman with the fearful, closed expression who turned up, six months ago, at A&E.
Beside me, Betsey wriggles in her arms. Jess puts her down and shadows her as she runs around, picking up speed despite her nappy sagging.
‘I just can’t believe . . .’ Mel begins.
‘I know. We were very lucky. I was very lucky,’ Jess preempts her, and her expression darkens with thoughts of what might have been.
‘Come on. Shall we find the girls?’ I suggest as Jess straps Betsey back into her buggy. ‘Their relay starts in ten minutes.’
We amble across the playing field, filling each other in with the week’s news. Mel and I have made a concerted effort to be more supportive: to text Jess regularly, to talk, however briefly, every few days. At first, we devised a rota, stunned and shamed by what Jess had experienced and we’d failed to notice. But as the habit continued, we slipped back into a closeness we had come near to losing, and had forgotten we might need.
I’ve been on nights all week, though, and so haven’t filled them in on my latest gossip.
‘Neil is retiring in September. They’ll bring in a locum but if they hold off advertising the permanent job for at least six months I think it could be mine!’
Both seem thrilled and so I tell them that Fousia made a formal complaint after Neil swore vociferously in front of a patient. The department, already concerned about his bullying and uncollegiate behaviour, presented him with a choice: face disciplinary action or agree to step down.
‘Of course, the trust will have to advertise, and they might not want me. Might get someone far better,’ I backtrack, wary of jinxing my chances.
‘Rubbish, you’re a good doctor with a great track record,�
�� Mel says as Jess nods emphatically. I shove my failures to the back of my mind – not least my failure to diagnose my mother, or to spot that Jess was struggling – and think of my patients who are doing well thanks to my quick judgement and treatment. And, as we near a group of children who include the younger boys, I think about Frankie.
He’s powering towards us, now, having broken away from his classmates.
‘Mummy!’ His voice is clear and high.
‘What’s happened now?’
It’s clear from his cry, and the jagged urgency of his running, that he’s distressed.
‘Mum-my!’ he repeats, his voice spiking as he flings himself around her waist, then barricades himself behind the buggy.
‘What’s going on?’ Jess asks as Andrew walks briskly towards us.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ he says. ‘I just smiled at him and he rather took fright. George and I have been trying to keep out of your way but he bounded towards me.’ He wipes sweat from his forehead. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten him.’
‘That’s quite all right,’ Jess manages. ‘I know you would have meant to be kind.’
Charlotte hasn’t been seen since the summer fair. The police have interviewed her with a view to prosecuting for neglect but the CPS has made no decision on whether to bring charges. Nevertheless, Andrew has clearly felt the impact of what she did. His air of clownish goodwill has vanished, and he looks quite broken: his cheeks have hollowed and his gently protruding stomach has melted away.
‘I’m incredibly sorry,’ he repeats. ‘Best if we just go now. We’ll be taking George out of school from Monday. There’s only a week left, and we’ve no desire to cause any further problems.’
‘That’s OK, really,’ Jess repeats.
But Charlotte’s husband is insistent. ‘No. I nearly didn’t come today but I couldn’t let George down. Please. Frank has been through too much. Believe me. This is for the best.’
He turns and plods away, and as he does he meets George and puts an arm around his shoulders, holding him in a manner that’s more loving, more instinctive, than I’ve ever seen.
‘Poor man.’ Mel watches them go. ‘Living with a partner who’s holding a secret like that.’
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