Forget Me Not

by Luana Lewis

  She opened the top cupboard, the one near the window. She reached up on tiptoes to where her mother kept the medicines. She took out the box and popped all of the pills out of their plastic coats.

  Then, she had another thought. An idea. A picture came into her mind. She saw her mother with frightened eyes and a mad beating heart and her bed covered in mess.

  Alexandra opened the drawer next to the sink and took out the pestle and mortar. She took the pills and crushed them up until they were powder. Then she opened the fridge and took out the round glass jug full of the green muck her mother drank every morning. She placed it carefully on the counter and peeled back the cling film on the top, taking care not to scrunch it up.

  She had watched her mother make this juice, out of spinach, beetroot and celery. Her mother had made Alexandra try it once but she had almost vomited. Alexandra tipped the powder into the drink and stirred. She grinned to herself. Her mother would see. She would spend a day in the toilet.

  Alexandra would tell her what she’d done, when her father was home and when her mother couldn’t lose her temper in front of him. They would understand then that she was telling the truth, that the pills were making her sick.

  When she had finished stirring and all of the powder had disappeared, Alexandra replaced the cling film and put the jug back into the fridge. She washed and dried the pestle and mortar and put them back inside the drawer.

  She climbed all the way back up to the second-floor landing. The light under her mother’s door was still on. She considered going inside and telling her what she’d done, and saying sorry, and asking if she might sleep in her bed. She was feeling very tired now. But Alexandra didn’t want her mother looking at her in that horrible way again. So she went back downstairs and climbed into her own bed.

  Something crackled in the pocket of her pyjamas. She reached inside and pulled out the crumpled-up medicine box and the empty pill packet and pushed them under her grey quilt.

  In the night she had to get up over and over again, half asleep, because she needed the toilet. In the morning, her mother had to call up to her about a thousand times to get out of bed for breakfast.

  When she went down to the kitchen, she got told off for staying up too late. As she ate her porridge, she remembered that her father had not come home the night before. She got up from the table and ran to the window. There was no sign of her father’s car.

  She looked at her mother’s face and decided not to ask where he might be.

  Her mother was already in her running clothes. On the way to school, she asked why Alexandra was so quiet, but Alexandra did not say that she was worried about getting in trouble because of the maths homework and worried about where her father was.

  Her mother was the prettiest of all the mothers, by far, much more beautiful than the rest. Alexandra felt proud when she stood next to her at the school gates in her tight running leggings and her bright-pink trainers.

  ‘Have a good day at school,’ her mother said. Then, ‘Love you.’

  Her mother didn’t kiss her goodbye. She turned and jogged away from her.

  Alexandra remembered then, about the jug in the fridge, full of the thick, green juice. She wondered if it would taste funny, because of the pill powder she had added. She knew she was probably going to be in trouble later. Then she wondered if she had really crushed up all those pills and stirred them in to her mother’s juice, or if it had all been a dream. She wasn’t sure, she couldn’t remember.

  Chapter 27

  My voice rings out, loud and clear in the silence of Lexi’s hospital room.

  ‘The day Vivien died, Mrs Murad’s secretary phoned to tell me she hadn’t arrived for her appointment. I had a bad feeling about it. It was so unlike Vivien, and I knew you were desperate to have another baby. At first, I didn’t do anything, I carried on with my day. I told myself it wasn’t really any of my business and that Vivien wouldn’t want me to get involved. But something nagged at me. Maybe a mother does know. Maybe my maternal instinct wasn’t completely numbed after all. Something made me go over to your house. I let myself in.’

  Ben drops Lexi’s hand. He sits back in his chair.

  ‘Ben, she was already gone when I found her.’

  ‘Oh my God. How could you be sure?’

  ‘I’ve been a nurse for over thirty years. I know when it’s too late.’

  ‘Did you try mouth to mouth, CPR?’

  ‘It was too late.’

  ‘What about her head, the injury?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how that happened. I assumed she’d fallen and hit her head. When I came into the house, I’d put my bag down on the hall table, and it had my phone inside it. So I left her, in the bathroom. I only meant to leave her for a few minutes, while I ran downstairs to get my phone, to call an ambulance.’

  ‘But you didn’t call anyone. Isaac did.’

  ‘On my way downstairs, something made me stop, in the doorway of Lexi’s bedroom. I stood and stared at her empty bed. Her pillow and her duvet and her quilt were all jumbled up, as though she’d been lying there only moments earlier. I thought about her little face, how devastated she was going to be. Then I saw something. A silver wrapper, sticking out from under her quilt.’

  Ben turns a pasty shade of pale under his stubble. He rubs at his mouth, scrapes his fingernails against the stubble on his jaw.

  ‘I went in there and I found the empty medicine packaging. The box was there too, on the floor under her bed. I recognized what it was – I know what those drugs can do to a person. The blister pack was empty, Ben. All of the pills were gone.’

  I clear my throat. My nervous tic.

  ‘I stood there, in her bedroom, and I remembered how unhappy Lexi had seemed at her own birthday party. I thought about how she’d refused to eat a slice of birthday cake, because it had too much icing on top. And Vivien didn’t seem to find it strange, a child refusing to eat a piece of her own cake. And she’d asked Vivien for medicine, for a headache. I remembered the way she crushed up the Calpol tablet with the bottom of a spoon and mixed the powder into her hot drink. Lexi showed me, Ben. She showed all of us. She was begging for help, but none of us were paying attention. So whatever she did, she’s innocent.’

  ‘Rose, what did you do with the empty packaging?’

  ‘I put it into the pocket of my coat. I went downstairs and picked up my bag and the set of spare keys I’d used to get in, and I left. I was in shock. I was trying to work out what I should do, the best way to handle it, for Lexi’s sake. I went home and I had a drink. I realized there was no point in trying to hide anything. I assumed I would have been seen, or captured on camera or something, going into or out of your house. I assumed Lexi would tell someone about the pills, and what she’d done. But nothing happened. Absolutely nothing.’

  I look down at Lexi. She is at peace. I stroke her hair.

  ‘Has she said anything to you, Ben?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think she’s forgotten, or she’s blocked it out. Maybe she was sleepwalking when she did it.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  But I’m not telling the truth, because I fear I do.

  ‘Ben, I think Lexi might have had something to do with Vivien’s death. I think she crushed up those tablets and put them into something Vivien was drinking. The same thing Vivien had been doing to her. I can’t imagine Lexi understood what she was doing. Maybe she thought it was normal. I don’t know.’

  Ben is shattered. He’s turned grey. He is immobilized in his chair.

  ‘I thought if I kept quiet, if I didn’t tell anyone,’ I say, ‘then I could spare Lexi from ever knowing what she’d done. And you, too. Do you understand? I wanted her to have a chance at a normal life.’

  Ben nods. He’s no longer looking at his daughter.

  There’s a knock on the door, a polite, soft tap.

  He stands up. ‘Have you told the police any of this?’

&n
bsp; ‘No. And I don’t want to, either. All I want, Ben, is to keep watch over Lexi so I can help her, if she needs me. Up until now they’ve treated me like a grieving mother, but if you accuse me of abducting Lexi, if they put me under pressure, I don’t know what I’ll say.’

  There is another soft tap on the door. It opens and a young policewoman enters the room. She’s wearing a black uniform. She doesn’t have the sympathetic expression that DS Cole does.

  I hold Lexi’s hand while I listen to Ben talking to her. He says there has been a misunderstanding; that he asked me to take Alexandra to Cambridge Court for a sleepover last night because he had a meeting that was scheduled to end late. But then, because he’s been so distracted since the death of his wife, and because he had a few drinks after the meeting, he forgot all about our arrangement. He went home and he panicked. He simply didn’t remember he’d asked me to take Alexandra home to Cambridge Court. He apologizes for wasting valuable police time.

  Finally, he reminds the officer how much stress he’s been under since his wife died.

  We all have.

  Chapter 28

  One month later

  Like my daughter, DS Cole has good posture. She sits with her spine straight and her shoulders back on my grey-upholstered armchair. I sit opposite her, on the matching sofa. DS Cole has the look of someone who will go far. She reminds me of my daughter in that way, too. She has a certain air of confidence and of determination. I always admired those qualities in Vivien. I like to think that she inherited them from me.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call ahead,’ DS Cole says. ‘I won’t stay too long. You’re probably on your way to work.’

  ‘Actually,’ I say, ‘I’ve had to take some compassionate leave. I help Ben with my granddaughter most days now.’

  Her eyes move to the small suitcase standing in front of the bar heater.

  ‘I stayed over at the house on Blackthorn Road last night. Ben was in Cambridge, at a hotel near to the specialist unit where Cleo is being treated.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’s doing better, I believe, but they don’t know whether she’ll ever make a full recovery. Her speech was affected by the head injury, and she has severe weakness on her right side, so her mobility is compromised.’

  Ben and Cleo, I think, remain suspended in time. When they are together, they conjure up my daughter and neither of them is willing to let her go. I understand. Grief is a physical sensation, a pain that makes us want to search and search, until we find the person we have lost.

  ‘We have evidence of her stalking behaviour,’ DS Cole says, ‘of the surveillance photographs she kept in her flat and on her laptop. If you’re ever worried, we can take action to keep her a safe distance from your granddaughter.’

  ‘I know. Thank you.’

  The platinum blonde of DS Cole’s hair emphasizes her bright-green eyes. She’s wearing her usual outfit of tailored white shirt, black trousers and masculine brogues. The shirt is nipped in at the waist, the top buttons open.

  I’m wondering about the reason for this latest unexpected visit. I’m not quite sure whether DS Cole is here in an official capacity.

  I’ve set out a tray with a teapot and two teacups. The china is a matching set, white with a delicate silver stripe below the rim. An old Christmas gift from my daughter, I found it, still in its unopened box, and I decided it was too beautiful not to enjoy.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s no milk,’ I say. ‘I haven’t had a chance to get down to the high street today.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ DS Cole says. ‘I’ll have mine black. With one sugar. Thank you.’

  She crosses her legs and leans forward. ‘You weren’t at the inquest,’ she says.

  ‘I couldn’t face it. I didn’t want to have to sit there and listen to the details.’

  I lift the teapot and pour.

  Lexi is doing better, I think. She only suffers from her nightmares when Ben is away. I sleep lightly when I’m in the house on Blackthorn Road; a part of me is always listening out for her. Last night, sometime after midnight, I was woken by the softest pitter-patter of footsteps on the stairs. When I heard Lexi leave her bedroom, I felt along the floorboards with my feet until I found the blue velvet slippers that used to belong to my daughter, then I walked out onto the landing. Lexi’s door was wide open. As always, I felt the familiar flutter of dread as I made my way down to the kitchen, to bear witness to her night-time ritual.

  I always find her in the same place, at the island in the middle of the kitchen. She removes the pestle and mortar from the drawer and then she grinds her imaginary pills. Over and over. Time and time again.

  I dare not interrupt her, or she will become distressed. She will scream and scream, as she did that night in Ben’s arms. I have to let her finish.

  Then, I walk over to her and offer her my hand. Her skin, at night, still feels a little too cold. She lets me lead her back upstairs, back to bed. I tuck her in underneath her quilt and she hooks her little finger into the hole she has made along the edge.

  By the time she falls asleep, I am wide awake. And I have my own ritual.

  ‘I thought you might want me to explain the coroner’s findings,’ DS Cole is saying. She sets the delicate teacup down on the tray, and looks at me, waiting for my answer.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I would. Thank you.’

  I see myself as I walk up the staircase on Blackthorn Road, past Vivien’s wedding portrait, and down the passageway that leads to her bedroom. I open the door to her bathroom, the one Ben always keeps shut. I step out of her slippers and onto the grey marble tiles.

  DS Cole takes another sip from her cup of tea and then she begins to speak in her low, clear voice. ‘Vivien had a fatal arrhythmia. But the coroner has given what we call a narrative verdict. He ruled there was not enough evidence to record Vivien’s death as a suicide.’

  ‘I see.’

  Vivien is still there, waiting for me. She lies, crumpled, on her side, one arm flung out towards me as though she is trying to grab hold of me with her cherry-red fingernails. I kneel beside her and I touch her cheek, but she is cold and she is empty. She has no pulse. Her pupils are fixed, dilated. Even so, I shake her, and I call her name. Like the parents on my ward, I understand, time and time again, that this is the end of my world as I have known it.

  ‘Vivien didn’t overdose on her antidepressant tablets,’ DS Cole says, ‘as you might expect a depressed person to do. But as you know, she had higher than normal levels of an amphetamine derivative, in her system. It’s likely that she died because she took these pills on top of underlying, long-term damage to her body. It seems she’d been malnourished for a number of years. So, in a person of a different weight, with a different medical history, the outcome might have been different.’

  ‘I understand,’ I say.

  The bone-china teacup, feather light, feels strangely heavy in my hands and I have to use all of my energy to lift it to my lips.

  ‘We don’t have enough evidence to determine Vivien’s state of mind, her intention when she took the overdose.’

  ‘You’re saying it could have been an accident? That she didn’t mean to kill herself?’

  ‘We simply don’t know.’

  To my relief, DS Cole doesn’t raise the issue of the missing medicine packaging. Ben told me that they assume Vivien took the pills while she was in the park. That she disposed of the empty packaging there. DS Cole is young and idealistic. I’m guessing she has no children of her own. Talking to a parent about the death of their child isn’t a job one ever gets used to, and I think the young detective has done well. She never allows herself to become emotional, she retains a certain professional detachment, but at the same time she never comes across as uncaring.

  I think she does care. And though we’ve met several times now, and she is not my friend or my confidante, sometimes I wish she was both. I long to confess. But that would not help Lexi. So instead, I concentrate on holding the lid of th
e teapot in place as I top up her tea.

  ‘I also wanted to reassure you about the head injury,’ DS Cole says. ‘We had some concerns initially, but we now think the most likely explanation is that Vivien fell and hit her head against the side of the bath, when she lost consciousness.’

  I remember holding Vivien and stroking her fontanelle.

  I remember lifting her up, and then smashing her head against the side of the bath. I was in a panic. I wanted to do something, anything, to hide what Lexi had done. I wanted it to seem as if someone else was with Vivien when she died, as though there was someone else who wanted to hurt her.

  I will never be able to explain what I did when I found her body. I acted on instinct, not logic. I was consumed with grief and with guilt. I had a primitive urge to protect Lexi. Perhaps DS Cole would see what I did as a crime. I don’t know. I’m not proud that I’ve lied to DS Cole, or that I seem to have got away with it. I’m not proud that I left Vivien lying alone, in that bathroom.

  But if I have saved Lexi from a lifetime of suffering, then I might have done something good.

  My right hand is a little unsteady as I replace my cup in the saucer.

  DS Cole looks thoughtful as she sips her tea. I think she understands me. ‘There is one more thing,’ she says. ‘I thought you’d like to know what happened to Vivien’s missing earrings.’

  ‘You found them?’

  ‘Yes. The waitress who works in the café at Regent’s Park has come forward with more information. She wasn’t entirely honest with us in her first interview.’

  As I fold my hands in my lap, I notice that the bruises on the back of my left hand have all but disappeared. The headaches too are less frequent.

  ‘This woman, Oksana, is from the Ukraine. She’s been in the UK for three years, and she left her child behind, with her mother. She’s the breadwinner and she sends money home to her family. She said that she and Vivien would talk sometimes, and that she’d told Vivien about her daughter. On the morning she died, Vivien came in to the café and gave Oksana a pair of extremely valuable diamond earrings. She told Oksana she wanted her to have them, to sell them, so she’d have enough money to bring her daughter over here to live with her.’