by Jennie Ensor
‘He wasn’t angry.’ She fastened her seat belt. ‘He said he loved me. I thought he was going to cry. He’s never cried, not in all the years we’ve been together.’
Shortly after they got back to Katherine and Jeremy’s house, she rang Laura to say that she had left Paul. But Laura’s home number was set to the answering machine and her mobile rang out.
26
Laura
Afternoon, 4 May 2011
Laura got off the Tube at Wimbledon station and walked towards the house. An uncomfortable sensation had taken over her chest, eroding the calmness she’d felt earlier. But that didn’t matter. At last she was ready to do it.
The streets of Wimbledon were busy with mothers and children on their way home from school. Trees and hedgerows spread their new green against a clear, pale blue sky. The sunshine was warm. It seemed like summer already – she wore a T-shirt and jeans, with her leather jacket over her shoulder. But she walked on steadily, looking neither left nor right, hardly noticing what was around her, aware only of what lay ahead.
She rang the doorbell.
After nearly a minute the door opened. Her father was shabby. A beard clung to his jaw and an old business shirt, frayed at the collar, hung over his jeans. He looked at her blankly for a moment or two, as if not recognising she was his daughter.
‘Hello, Laura. It’s good to see you.’ An unpleasant odour leaked from his mouth – tooth decay merging with whisky. ‘Come in.’ He sounded subdued, yet also pleased.
She followed him into the kitchen. It smelled of disinfectant. The table was bare. All the surfaces shone, their usual clutter gone. A lone side plate bore a green scroll of apple peel and a paring knife.
‘Do you want something to drink?’
‘No thanks.’ She stood near the door leading to the hall. He didn’t ask her to sit down and she didn’t want to, in any case. ‘You’re not going to work this week?’
‘I’m taking some time off.’ He moved to stand across from her, by a row of spotless cupboards. ‘They owe me a week’s holiday. I thought I could get some work done on the house.’ He picked up a pencil from the worktop and placed it inside a metal container that was filled with similar items.
She looked around the kitchen. None of the windows were open. The disinfectant smell was starting to react with the eggs she’d eaten earlier.
‘Your mother was over earlier,’ he began. ‘She said she was leaving me.’
He was looking in her direction, but not at her. The quietness of the room intensified. From outside she heard the distant hum of heavy machinery and a periodic rattle that she couldn’t identify. Then those noises stopped and she could make out a faint trill of birds.
‘I can understand that,’ she replied. ‘I don’t know why she didn’t leave you years ago.’
‘I know it was wrong,’ he said, quietly, as if he hadn’t heard her, ‘what I did to Emma. I wish I hadn’t ever gone near her.’
‘Why did you lie to me? You said you wouldn’t do anything to harm her.’
A look of … what was it? Irritation? Self-reproach? It was gone before she could decipher it.
‘I thought I could resist her. I tried to. But I couldn’t stop.’
Like the trip of a switch, anger overtook her.
‘I hate you, for what you did to her, and for all those horrible things you did to me when you were supposed to be my father.’
He stared at her. Drops of sweat began to form on his brow, blue veins clinging to his temples like a peculiar creeper. But she had no sympathy towards him. He was beyond sympathy.
‘Who are you going to go after next, Dad?’ She stepped towards him. ‘Do you have your next victim lined up?’
‘Laura, please. Don’t talk like this. Can’t you try to forgive me?’
‘I’ll never forgive you. You’re not my father anymore, as far as I’m concerned. I never want to see or hear from you again.’
He didn’t speak. He just moved his head slightly as if he hadn’t heard properly.
‘There’s one more thing,’ she said. ‘I want you to go to the police and tell them what you did to Emma.’
‘I couldn’t do that—’
‘If you don’t go, I will.’
She walked through the doorway into the hall, then stopped and looked back. His hands hung at his sides, fingers fluttering like trapped moths.
‘You can’t do that,’ he said. ‘They’d send me to prison. You know what they’d do to me there, don’t you? You know what they do to men who …’ He moved his head slowly from side to side. His face had drained of colour. ‘I’d be done for in prison.’
She didn’t reply. A twinge of pity threatened to overtake her anger.
No. His pleading couldn’t reach her. He had to be punished for what he’d done, and he had to be put out of reach of other girls – whatever might happen to him in prison.
‘You haven’t told Daniel about any of this, have you?’ His eyes scoured her face. ‘He doesn’t have to know, does he?’
‘I told him this morning. About what sort of a father you were to me, and what you did to Emma.’
‘What did he say?’ His voice just above a whisper.
‘I’m not sure he believed it. He didn’t think you could do anything like that.’
‘Now he’s going to hate me as well.’ It was more to himself than to her.
‘You deserve it, don’t you?’
She left him then, pulling the front door firmly behind her and breathing in the fresh, sweet smell of a spring afternoon.
27
Paul
Afternoon, 4 May 2011
Paul went to the drinks cabinet in the dining room. He poured himself a tumbler of Scotch and drank it quickly, not bothering to sit down. Then he poured another.
His daughter had abandoned him as his wife had – as his son would too, sooner or later. Worse than that, she had disowned him. She had judged him and found him guilty. In her eyes, as well as Suzanne’s, he was incapable of redemption.
The thought burrowed into him.
He could change – no, he would change. He would no longer think about girls, or look at pictures of them. He would never again do what he’d done. He would do good deeds instead, to atone for his mistakes.
But what if Laura really meant what she had said? What if she went to the police about Emma? They’d speak to Jane … He could be charged with having sex with an underage girl; a girl, not even a teenager. A child in the eyes of the law. Sex with a girl under sixteen was automatically rape, wasn’t it? They would investigate him and everything would be public knowledge. There’d be a trial. His photograph would be in all the papers. He’d be crucified.
Even if he denied it all, even if he got the best defence lawyer in London, and Laura and Emma’s evidence was called into doubt, how would he cope with the humiliation of exposure? They’d question him about the most private, intimate things. His life would be on display for the world to see. Even if the jury found him not guilty, people would always look at him askew. He’d be labelled as a suspected paedophile, a dirty old man. The streets for miles around would be full of it – the respectable Wimbledon businessman who secretly abused his own daughter then fucked a twelve-year-old girl, the daughter of his wife’s best friend. He would lose his job. He’d become an isolated old man, unvisited and rebuffed by everyone. His friends would wash their hands of him, so would his family. Whatever he said, or did, he would never be able to make amends for what he’d done.
And what if he was found guilty? What if they sent him to prison?
He shivered.
Sex offender. He would become one of those, the most hated breed of prisoner, the lowest of the low. There would be nowhere safe for him to go. He would be set upon by his fellow inmates at any time, day or night.
His heart began to race. He heard the clang of the cell door, the scrape of metal in the lock. The voices gathering around him, the coarse jibes, the spits. The fists raised, the contempt in their
eyes. What would they do to him?
Anything … Everything. They’d make him pay for his crimes in ways he could not bear to think about. They’d take away every ounce of his dignity, every iota of what made him a man. And then they’d do it again.
He poured more whisky then set the empty tumbler down on the cabinet with a clunk.
No. It couldn’t happen. He wouldn’t let Laura do this.
28
Laura
Afternoon, 4 May 2011
She walked on without seeing what was in front of her, her thoughts twisting and tumbling, one upon the next without respite. What was she going to do? Could she really turn him in to the police, her own father? The relief she felt earlier, walking away from the house, had been replaced by a creeping sense of foreboding. At last she stopped, and wiped the perspiration off her face with a disintegrating tissue from her jeans pocket. She must have walked several miles since leaving the house.
Looking around, she saw squat, grimy-fronted terraces punctuated by corner shops. The area wasn’t familiar. The moon, a sickly yellow clown’s smile, low in the sky. It was nowhere near sunset, but the light was being sucked away by dark towers of cloud. The weather had turned – it was way too hot for May. Moisture-laden air clung to her skin like a damp blanket. A storm would come, sooner or later.
The evening commuter rush had started already. Streams of Lycra-clad cyclists dodged packed buses. The grocery on the corner was doing a brisk trade. She went inside, and bought an apple and a bottle of water. She was more thirsty than hungry, though she’d eaten nothing since breakfast.
Outside, she leaned on a garden wall. Her legs were starting to ache and her left toe was sore where it had rubbed against her trainer. She munched into the apple and juice dribbled down her chin. It was wonderfully sweet and refreshing.
Well, are you going to do it? Are you really going to do something, or was all that talk earlier just bravado?
She tossed the core into a dustbin on the other side of the wall. She didn’t have a smartphone, reluctant to pay extra just to be able to use the internet when not at home, but it would have been handy to find out where the nearest police station was. She went through what she would say.
Hello, my name’s Laura Cunningham. I’ve come to report a crime. Two, actually.
They would ask lots of questions, ask her to make a statement. They would thank her for taking the trouble to come in, and assure her they would do all they could to investigate everything fully. Maybe they would do, maybe they wouldn’t, but what other choice did she have?
Her mobile rang, making her start. Daniel’s name flashed up on the screen.
‘Hi, Daniel.’
‘Where are you? I’ve been trying to get hold of you.’
‘I’m out, walking.’ She raised her voice as another bus trundled past. ‘Sorry, I didn’t hear the phone. There’s a lot of traffic.’
‘I talked to Dad earlier. He says you’re going to report him to the police.’
Around her, rain began to thwack on the pavement. She looked up, her cheeks catching fat wet drops.
‘Is that true, Laura?’ His voice louder. Loud enough to overcome the traffic noise.
‘It’s true. I’m going to tell them what he did to me. And, while I’m there, I’ll tell them what I’ve heard he did to Emma. They’ll find that interesting, I think.’
‘Are you having me on? You’re going to turn Dad in to the cops?’ Her brother’s voice bellowed into her ear. ‘You can’t do this, whatever you think he may have done. He’s our father, not some fucking criminal!’
She pulled the phone away from her ear, nearly dropping it. Daniel’s reaction sent a bolt of shock through her body. She’d never known him to be this furious. But it awoke the anger inside her too.
‘Indecent assault, sex with a minor, rape. Whatever you call it, Daniel, it’s a crime.’
‘If you believe that.’ He didn’t try to keep the scepticism from his voice.
‘Did he tell you what he actually did?’ Her voice came out too loud, distorted.
‘He said she was egging him on and he lost control.’ Her brother sounded embarrassed, took a long time to finish his sentence. ‘She was touching him and he couldn’t stop himself, he started touching her back.’
‘What?’ The heat left her body. She couldn’t find any words.
‘I know, it’s totally gross. But he swears that’s all he did—’
‘He’s lying, can’t you tell? He’s trying to shift all the blame onto Emma—’
‘OK, OK. I get you, Laura, I do. But do you really want Dad to end up in court? Think for a moment.’
‘I think he should have to go to court, yes. Absolutely he should.’
Her brother carried on. If their father was prosecuted, their lives would change. Even if he wasn’t found guilty, people would assume he was. His name would be in the papers and on social media, and so would theirs. Even if they could keep their names out of the media, people would find out somehow. This would follow them around for the rest of their lives. He’d be ashamed to use his real name. He’d have to admit to his fiancée that his father was a child abuser. If he had kids, what the hell would he tell them about their granddad? Did she want to bring all that down on him? On herself too? And what about Mum?
Daniel’s voice faded into the sound of rain and tyres on wet tarmac. A tear slipped down Laura’s cheek.
‘Hello, are you there?’
She couldn’t speak. She switched off the phone and fumbled for a tissue to wipe her face. It was useless. More tears came, mingling with the rainwater sliding down her face. Without thinking, she started to walk. She stepped off the kerb to cross the side street, straight into the path of a cyclist turning right. Just in time she stepped backwards, feeling the whoosh of air as they brushed past. Another cyclist flashed by, close behind, draped in fluorescent yellow.
Back on the pavement, her legs gave way. She sank onto a damp paving stone beside the kerb, hugging her knees, hiding her face in her arms. The rain came more steadily, heavier now.
‘Oh, God.’
She said it aloud. A prayer, of sorts. She was utterly drained; she couldn’t think, couldn’t move. She would just have to sit until the rain floated her away.
For several minutes, footsteps came and went around her, as if it were quite normal for a young woman to be sitting by the kerb in the pouring rain. Her hair was sticking to her brow and her T-shirt’s cool dampness hugged her skin. She closed her eyes.
Someone was tapping on her shoulder.
‘Excuse me.’ A face came into view. A guy in a raincoat, carrying an umbrella. ‘Sorry to disturb you, but hadn’t you better get out of the rain? If you stay there you might get pneumonia or something.’
The guy hurried off before she could speak.
At home, Laura made a cup of tea and peeled off her damp clothes, put on her dressing gown and turned on the hot water for a shower. The light on the phone handset was flashing. She played the message. It was from her mother:
‘Hello, darling, I’m in Woking. I saw the solicitor this afternoon about getting a divorce. I’m having dinner with a friend now. I’ll be back at Katherine’s later tonight.’ The line crackled, making her mother’s voice hard to hear. ‘Daniel phoned earlier, he’s very upset. He says you’re going to the police about your father. Please, Laura, don’t do anything yet. I need to talk to you—’
A static-filled announcement interrupted.
‘I know he’s done some terrible things, but he’s still my husband. What if he ended up in prison? I don’t know if I could cope with that on top of everything else. And your father … it would finish him off—’
A long beep cut her off mid-sentence.
Laura drank more tea. Her hands were trembling. She was being squeezed, bit by bit, into a small box. Both her mother and Daniel wanted to shut her up – what chance did she have now?
She undressed and stepped into the shower, staying in until the water ran cold,
ruminating on her mother’s voice in the message. Composed, just about. Yet there was something jagged and frayed below its surface, like the howl of an animal in pain.
She dried herself slowly, thinking she ought to eat something. There’d be leftovers in the fridge, enough to make a meal. Against the bathroom window, the steady swish of rain. It was properly dark now.
The ring of her mobile phone cut across her thoughts. She wrapped the towel around her and hurried to the bedroom where she’d left her bag. It would be her mother, most likely.
But ‘Dad’ flashed up on the screen.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s me. Your father.’
She flopped onto the bed. After their last conversation, she hadn’t expected to hear from him.
‘What do you want?’
‘I want to know what your intentions are. You’re not going to tell anyone about this … situation, are you? You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?’
His voice was badly slurred. She’d not heard it like this for a very long time. It contained an echo of something from years ago, which she couldn’t quite bring into memory. He’d drunk Scotch in the evenings sometimes when she was growing up, not usually enough to affect his speech, just enough to make him darkly morose and even more unpredictable. But it wasn’t that. It was something else, something icky.
‘I haven’t gone to the police yet, if that’s what you—’
‘Laura, listen to me. You can’t tell them about me and Emma. I’m fifty-three years old, I’m hanging on to my job by a thread. If this comes out, I’ll never work again. Your mother has left me, and now you’ve gone too. I’ve got no one left except Daniel, but if you keep down this path he’ll be gone too. Is that what you want?’