by Jennie Ensor
He got out at Vauxhall as usual. At 9.20am he arrived at the glass and steel tower near the Thames. The top four floors were Zenco Brand’s UK headquarters.
‘Morning, Paul,’ James on reception called out in a gruff voice, accompanied by the reluctant smile he reserved for rainy Mondays and the first morning back after a bank holiday weekend. Paul nodded, and walked on to the lift. His headache was worse than before. The last thing he wanted was a goddamn meeting. And there was another one this afternoon, with the MD, to hash over what was causing falling sales revenues.
He got out at the tenth floor and turned left, swiped his card and entered the open-plan office.
‘Hi, guys, hope you all had a good Easter.’ Most of his team had been lounging at their desks, talking and laughing. Suddenly, they were all alert, straight-backed. ‘Let’s get this show on the road. We’ve got a meeting in the boardroom in five minutes.’
He sat at his desk – one of the more coveted ones because it was at the edge of the building and enjoyed a sweeping view across the Thames – and switched on the computer. The familiar messages scrolled down the screen: Login Name, Password; Welcome to Windows, Welcome to Zenco Brands.
It was time to leave all the other shit behind. He couldn’t think about that in here. He had to be the tough businessman again, the decisive leader, someone who knew what the fuck he was doing.
The monthly sales figures, where were they? He found the document, printed it, then searched several folders for the file he’d saved Thursday afternoon, the one that contained the revised marketing strategy he was supposed to be going over in the meeting.
Jesus, it was hot in here. His shirt was clinging to the sweat on his back. He got up, poured a cup of water from the dispenser and drank it quickly. Linda, his PA, strolled towards him, her face dripping with goodwill.
‘Hi, Paul. How was your weekend?’
Fucking awful, he almost said, to rid her face of its gormless smile. My life is about to go down the plughole. My daughter has told my wife I’m the biggest slimeball that ever walked the planet, and my wife has left home and I’ve no idea when she’ll be back.
He assumed a neutral expression. ‘So-so. I’ve had better.’
Linda was looking at him inquisitively, her nose twitching like a rabbit’s, sniffing for clues.
He remembered that Linda had celebrated her 30th birthday over the weekend with a massive piss-up.
‘How was the party?’
‘Fantastic. We sang Abba songs until four in the morning.’ Linda was peering at him through her speckled designer frames. ‘Are you alright, Paul?’
‘My head’s killing me. Could you dig me out an aspirin from somewhere? And, Linda, will you find the latest marketing strategy document for this meeting?’
At 9.30am he took his folder of papers and walked over to the boardroom. Every seat was filled. He put his jacket over the vacant chair at the end of the table, closest to the flat screen on the wall. Opposite him hung a large, excessively colourful painting. It was meant to be an abstract, he supposed – someone must have thought it gave the company a suitably cutting-edge feel. But it looked more like the result of someone hastily retching on the canvas.
To one side of him, Sadie, the marketing assistant, doodled on her notepad. Linda’s head was stuck inside the computer cabinet as she fiddled with the controls. He waited for her to pull out her head and smile at him before he cleared his throat, pushed back his chair and got to his feet.
All eyes were on him. A rush of adrenalin and another, scary, sensation, as if any moment he was going to lose it completely.
‘First things first, we’ve had another good set of results this month.’ He pointed to the top row of the spreadsheet that was displayed on the screen. ‘Mark, congratulations for getting number one slot, yet again.’
Pervert.
He grasped for his next sentence. Sadie was looking at him with raised eyebrows. He frowned at her, trying to pull himself together.
‘As you all know, we’ve had a few setbacks lately. We need to start making a significant improvement in sales volume.’
He gulped at his glass of water. It was too hot in here; the air conditioning didn’t seem to be working. He had to keep going, stay focused.
‘Kyle finally got the BAE contract signed last month,’ he continued. ‘Good work, Kyle.’
Another voice, different to the first.
Pervert.
Take no notice, he told himself. The voices aren’t real. Ignore them and they’ll go away.
The voices hissed in unison.
Pervert!
Sweat prickled on his forehead and the back of his neck. He loosened his tie. There was no air in this room. He swiped at his jacket.
‘Sorry, guys, I have to go. Dan, take over, will you?’
He met a wall of stares. Everyone was eyeballing him as if he’d sprouted an extra head. Sonia touched his arm, her eyes wide with alarm. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’m not feeling too well. I’m going outside to get some air.’
Thank God, he was out of there. He pressed the button for the lift, willing it to arrive before anyone came after him.
James at reception looked up with a blank face and carried on humming. Paul passed through the revolving doors, onto the street. He glanced at the sky. Dark clouds ganged up above the tops of nearby buildings.
‘Spare some change, sir?’ enquired the haggard old guy permanently installed beneath the cash machine on the corner. Paul shook his head and walked faster. The man muttered something unpleasant.
The lights were on in the café. Paul crossed over the road and went inside. No one would bother him in here, it wasn’t yet time for the mid-morning cappuccino rush. Apart from a couple of tourists tucking into late breakfasts, the place was empty.
He ordered an espresso and sat on a stool at the counter alongside the window. A worn copy of the Sunday Mirror lay in front of him, the first headline read:
Family die in blaze
Then, further down, another, smaller headline:
Sex pervert jailed for five years
He started to read the article. A man had pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting his ten-year-old niece.
Paul put down the paper. His heart beat harder than ever, it was about to gallop out of his chest. He picked up a paper serviette from the counter and wiped his brow. He was an animal trapped in a cage. Some vicious sods were prodding him through the bars with a stick. They knew he couldn’t escape. They were going to torment him until he couldn’t take it any longer.
They’d got it wrong, though. He wasn’t a pervert. No way was he one of those. He was nothing like that man who’d been sent to jail.
But what sort of man gets turned on by his own daughter? He’d told himself it was harmless, he hadn’t hurt her. Had he been kidding himself? Once, she’d been bright-eyed and talkative. She’d turned into a girl who didn’t laugh, a girl who kept things to herself. He’d told Suzanne it was nothing to do with him. Wasn’t it all his doing, though? Had he taken away Laura’s happiness, her spirit? And what about Emma? Would she stop laughing, too? He’d taken away her purity, hadn’t he? He’d seen her fear and ignored it. She’d trusted him and he’d pissed in her face.
No, no, no. It wasn’t like that. He wasn’t a bad man. He loved Laura. He loved Emma too. He had taken it too far with her, yes, he admitted that, but it didn’t make him the devil’s spawn. They were all out to get him. They didn’t understand how things really were.
A small white cup appeared in front of him. He stared at it, unable to pick it up. His mouth was dry, his heart was still hammering away like no one’s business. He patted down his face again with the serviette.
When he looked up, the fat Italian at the coffee machine was eying him suspiciously.
Paul paid and left. He turned into a narrow street and followed it to the river.
No one was around. He stood and stared at the dull metallic strip of water. A gull landed on
a piece of driftwood at the river’s edge. Pages of an abandoned newspaper fluttered on a breeze.
A thought came, desolate like the wind: what would Laura think of him now she knew what had happened to Emma? His hope was that one day she’d stop treating him so coldly. Well, he could forget about that. She wouldn’t want to go anywhere near him now. And what about Suzanne? He’d convinced himself she would always forgive him, she’d always love him no matter what he did. But she wasn’t going to forgive him, not this time. He’d been an arrogant idiot. He’d finally managed to destroy her love, just when he’d found out he couldn’t do without it.
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. If only he could let go and sob as he had as a small boy. There’d be some relief in that. It was more than half a lifetime ago, the last time he’d cried. As he remembered it, horror once again crept over his skin.
He’s wearing only his T-shirt. His underpants are on the floor by his bed. His mother has come into the room. She has seen him. He pulls the covers over himself quickly. He can’t stop what happens next. The hot wetness trickles down into the sheets.
He expects her to go away, to leave him to his embarrassment, but his mother doesn’t leave the room. Her eye muscles twitch, as they do when she’s concentrating. She walks towards him, stands over the bed.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re only ten years old and already you’re doing that filthy thing.’
He does it in the middle of the night mostly, when there is no chance anyone will discover him, not in the bright, early afternoon with his mother and sisters around. But today he feels small and lost. Everyone has forgotten about him, no one seems to care about him anymore. He needs the good feelings to wash over him and wipe the bad ones away.
‘Get out of bed.’
He hesitates. He can’t. She will see.
‘Get out of bed, Paul.’
Her voice won’t let him disobey. He does as she says. She looks without speaking. He can’t look at her but he can hear the disgust in her voice.
‘I always knew you would turn out like this.’
She tells him not to move. He hears her go into the bathroom and she brings back a towel. White, spotless.
‘Wipe it all off. Go on.’
He does what she says. She takes the towel from him.
He thinks he’ll have to stay in his room for the rest of the day and go without dinner, as he has to whenever he accidentally breaks something or plays in the yard too loudly. Or she’ll ask his father to give him the belt when he comes in from work, as she does for the most serious offences.
But this time it’s different.
‘Put those on,’ she instructs, pointing. She watches him put on his underpants. ‘Come with me.’
He follows her, afraid at the sudden coldness of her voice. They go downstairs. She opens the door to the cellar and gives him a push.
‘Down you go. Right down inside.’
When he reaches the bottom of the steep stairs, the light goes off and the door shuts. He hears the key turning in the lock. All around is black. The light switch is on the outside wall. His foot hits a small hard object. He gropes for something solid, finds the fuse boxes. His hand brushes into something soft and wispy. He pulls it back.
He’s always hated this place. Coming down here to fetch the stepladder, or to right a tripped fuse, he scuttles in and out, taking care to avoid peering into the grimy, shadowy corners. But he always puts on the light and keeps the door open. This time, he’s trapped.
He calls out for his mother. She doesn’t answer. He can see a bit more now, enough to make out a bucket on the ground and bicycles propped against the walls. He makes his way up the stairs and raps on the door. There is no handle, there’s no way he can open the door from the inside.
‘Don’t leave me here! Please!’
His voice is frightened. He’s five years old again and afraid of the dark.
He leans against the wall at the foot of the stairs. He wonders if there’s a torch or a lamp somewhere, but he doesn’t want to move from this spot to go into unknown places, where horrible things might lurk. He checks his watch, but the dial is too dark to read. His father won’t be home for hours. He listens out for his sisters. He hears muffled voices approaching. One is the nasal whine of his older sister. She is back from somewhere. He calls out again. Footsteps running away; laughter.
It is their revenge too. They blame him for everything they do wrong and he is always the one punished. Juliet scratched Natalie’s arm, leaving a red gouge, and both said that he’d cut his sister with his penknife. His mother is too stupid to see, or she just wants to take their side. He got beaten for it, with the buckle. His father thinks it’s good to be tough with him, it will shake out the ‘girly stuff’.
Soon, he needs the toilet. It’s quiet outside the cellar, it has been quiet for ages. They must all be upstairs now, or outside in the pool. Where is his mother? He tries to distract himself by counting to a hundred slowly. If she doesn’t let him out soon, he will have to pee right here.
He gets to forty then starts crying, and he can’t stop. He pushes his fist into his mouth to muffle the noise, because crying during punishments isn’t allowed and he doesn’t want to be a cry-baby. His mother doesn’t love him, he is sure of it now. If she loved him, she wouldn’t make him stay down here, alone in the dark. She knows he is afraid of the dark. She taunts him about it sometimes, saying he is too old for such childish behaviour. And now there’ll be another thing to taunt him with. The disgust was plain on her face.
Shame rises inside him, filling him. Then it turns to anger, and the anger turns to hate. His mother will mean nothing to him, he decides. He won’t let her hurt him anymore.
Paul held himself very still. The pain of the memory was leaching out of the deep place he’d kept it all these years. His heart was tight, like someone with iron hands was squeezing it and trying to squash it into a pulp. For the first time since that day, he wanted to cry.
No, he couldn’t let himself cry. He never cried. It was too late for that.
He walked on, along the path towards nowhere in particular, the first drops of rain wetting his face.
22
Laura
26 April 2011
Laura put down the casserole dish she was about to wash. The phone was ringing. The sound had hardly registered amid the chaos of her thoughts.
It was her mother, thank goodness. Mum hadn’t answered any of her calls since their conversation at the flat two days ago.
‘Mum, are you alright? I’ve been calling your mobile for hours.’
‘I’m sorry, darling, I should have told you earlier. My mind’s all over the place at the moment. I couldn’t face being in the house any longer with your father, so I left this morning. I’m staying at Katherine’s for a bit. I only got my phone up and running just now. I left the charger at home and the battery ran out.’
Her mother’s voice was frail and distant. Laura pictured a thrush lying injured on the ground. There had been one yesterday, outside the entrance to the block of flats, just alive. She’d picked it up, covering it with her other hand, intending to take it to a safer place; so light, so tiny, from time to time gently fluttering against her hands. But when she uncovered it a minute later, it had stopped moving.
‘Well, I’m glad you’re still alive. Will you be OK?’
‘I hope so. I’m doing my best to cope with everything.’
‘Do you want me to come over?’
‘You don’t need to. Katherine’s looking after me, plying me with tea, and gin and tonics. I couldn’t ask for a better friend.’
‘I did the right thing to tell you, didn’t I?’ Telling her mother what Dad had done to her years ago had been a relief, a burden finally lifted. But not for her mother.
‘Yes, you were right to tell me. Only it’s hard to take it in, what he’s done.’ Her mother’s voice grew wobblier. ‘I just can’t get my head around it, how he could have done those
things to you. I feel so bad that I wasn’t there for you. That I didn’t do anything to stop him.’
Laura said nothing. She too felt guilty. She’d guessed what her father might do but had done too little, too late. She’d hardly slept last night, thinking about what she should have done to stop her father from seeing Emma one more time. Then everything would have been different.
Her mother carried on. ‘I’ve got to face it though, haven’t I? Life doesn’t always deal you the cards you’re hoping for.’
‘What Dad did to Emma, I think it’s my fault.’
‘How could it be your fault?’
‘I guessed he might do something, that he might go after her. I should have done something to stop him. I should have waited for Jane and told her myself that Emma was in danger—’
‘You couldn’t read his mind, could you? You weren’t there to see what he was up to. He manipulated us both, Laura. He made us see what we wanted to see.’
The words were meant well, but she knew she hadn’t done the right thing. Why hadn’t she tried harder to protect Emma, rather than her mother? Why hadn’t she waited a little longer for Jane to get home, to tell her everything?
‘Is someone going to tell the police what he did?’ She heard her words come out sharper than she’d meant them to. This too had been preying on her mind.
Her mother didn’t reply.
‘Don’t you think they should know?’
‘I don’t know, Laura.’ Her mother’s voice became a small tremble. ‘Maybe Jane will tell them.’
‘I hope so. How long will you be at Katherine’s? Are you going to go back to Dad?’
‘I don’t know, I can’t decide anything just yet.’ Her mother’s tone changed. ‘Do you think Marmaduke will be alright on his own with your dad? He’s only got four tins of Whiskas left. Your father might forget to feed him.’
‘I’m sure he’ll be OK, Mum.’ She couldn’t help a trace of annoyance entering her voice. Her mother seemed more concerned with the cat’s well-being than trying to deal with this situation.