by Katie Lowe
I trail off. Because I hear his breath, close to my ear; catch the sour taste of the day on his skin.
‘Put the knife down, Hannah,’ Graham says.
It’s a memory, not an imagining. I know he said these words.
Evie looks at me, a hurt spreading across her face. I wonder what she’s seen in my expression.
‘I’m so sorry, Mum. Please don’t cry. I’m sorry.’
She throws her arms around me. I press my face into her sweatshirt. I smell the strawberry scent in her hair.
‘I love you,’ I say, squeezing her tight.
‘I love you, too, Mum,’ she says, squeezing back. ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you. I know you didn’t kill him. You wouldn’t.’
She goes on, trying to convince herself that I couldn’t have done it. That it wasn’t me.
But Graham’s words still ring in my mind. Put the knife down, Hannah. Please.
27
LOVE LESSONS: CONVICTION PROF CATTON’S EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES WITH BOMBSHELL BABE.
I stare at the headline, and the picture beside it: the long-legged bottle-blonde in a roll-neck sweatshirt and heels, her face a combination of pride and false grief. She’s front-page news and thrilled about it, dying to tell her story: how my husband took advantage of her, how he saw her for the innocent young girl that she was, and persuaded her to do things she’d never normally do.
I can’t stop thinking about what I’m going to do to you, when I get you to myself.
That’s what she’d said to him.
Teach me a lesson. Because I’ve been a very, very bad girl.
I grab one copy of every paper. I slam a ten-pound note on the counter and I leave, throwing the papers on the back seat. The shop assistant watches as I drive away. I wonder if she realizes who I am. If she’s seen me – my home, my car, my dead husband and his slut of a mistress – online, or in the news.
I pull over at the edge of the woods, the old quarry glinting below. Just beyond, Hawkwood House gleams, impossibly bright, against the grey sky, no signs of life for miles around.
I check the dashboard clock. Fifteen minutes, max, until I have to be back on my way to work. I wonder if that’s time enough to read the whole, repulsive story. To digest it, and pull myself back together again.
Probably not.
But I can’t help myself. It’s a compulsion, thumbing a wound that’s never quite healed.
I glance at my phone. Eagle has landed, a text from Dan reads. He’s dropped Evie at school; will continue to do so for as long as the podcast continues, thanks to the risk of some sleazy reporter – or, worse still, a stranger, of the kind who sent photos of Graham’s body to my little girl – approaching her as she walks to the gates.
Thank you, I reply. I think about it, for a moment. Love you, I add, with a kiss.
And then, I steel myself. I reach into the back seat for the papers, and rest the stack on the wheel.
The subject of true crime sensation Conviction’s latest series, Professor Graham Catton, was extremely KINKY in the bedroom – and beyond – up for ANYTHING, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE. That’s according to his former pupil, Megan Wallace, who claims that her ex-Prof was ‘the best sex I’ve ever had. Without a doubt.’
Hatred – for this woman, and for him – snakes through my veins, a livid sting. A clot of vomit lodges in the back of my throat. I swallow it down, and read on, my fingertip leaving a smudge on the page.
The lecturing Lothario – murdered in his marital bed in 2008 – was OBSESSED with Ms Wallace, passing her FILTHY poetry in class, and insisting when they met that she ROLE PLAY kinky characters from fiction.
‘I didn’t know he was married, when we met,’ Ms Wallace says. ‘But over time he opened up about it. He couldn’t not. She was quite controlling – always checking up on him. Once, she called while we were – well, you know. And he answered. Because he said she’d “literally kill him”, if he didn’t.
‘It’s bothered me, ever since he died. Because I think SHE KNEW about us. And I’m almost certain that SHE KILLED HIM for it.’
I feel the anger rising now. It’s almost freeing, the intensity of it: I understand what it would mean to be blind with rage. To see red.
I punch the car window with the full force of it.
The window shakes, violently; my fingers crumple with a gluey crack.
I let the pain seep through me.
And I scream, and scream, and scream.
‘Are you OK?’ Joanna looks up at me from the nurses’ station as I pass. I hadn’t realized she was there.
The pain in my fist now feels like a low buzz, occasionally interrupted by a blistering current: a nerve firing off. There’s something soothing about it, this pain – so absolutely tangible, so viciously real. It’s a kind of tether: a connection to something I can’t quite explain.
I raise my hand, and she gasps. ‘I trapped it in the car door.’ I give an affected shrug. ‘Can you … Do you have a minute to help me strap it up?’
She opens her mouth, and closes it again. ‘Sure. Come on.’
I follow her into an office, the ward seeming more homely today, somehow; more of a comfort. I pass the signs pasted there, entreaties to live in letters clipped from sugar paper. I catch the saccharine smell of powdered shakes: a reminder of simpler times, the childhood pleasures of penny sweets and Angel Delight.
She pulls two chairs close together, and sits. She pats her lap, and I join her, resting my hand across it. It’s swollen, the knuckles barely visible beneath the stark red skin, the first smoky curl of a bruise appearing at the base of my hand.
‘You must’ve been really mad at your car.’ She meets my eye as she says it: it’s an invitation. An opportunity to tell the truth.
I wince as she unrolls a bandage beneath my hand. ‘Just not paying attention.’
She looks up. ‘I think it’s broken, Hannah. You need to go down to A & E and get an X-ray. Strapping it up isn’t going to do you any good.’
‘It’s fine.’ Frustration ripples through my voice. I smile, attempting to offset my tone. ‘I’ve got a meeting this morning. I can’t miss it. I’ll go and get it looked at after that.’
‘Amy’s mum?’
I nod.
‘That’s going to be fun.’
I think of my conversation with Sarah the night before; the way she’d taken the same tone.
Sarah, who still hadn’t texted me, last time I checked.
I pull my hand away, instinctively, to reach for my phone. Joanna takes it, gently, back.
‘Would you mind if I …’ She fixes her eyes on tying the bandage, light fingers careful around the bruise. ‘If I sat in? I really want to get more experience, and …’
‘Of course,’ I say, after a pause. I realize what I’ve been brought to now, trying to imagine an ulterior motive for our best nurse sitting in on a patient review. You’re being paranoid, I think, in his voice. ‘You’re more than welcome.’
She lifts my hand up, tenderly. ‘There you go. But please, please get it looked at in a bit. And keep it elevated. It’ll set wrong if you don’t get it sorted.’
I examine the dressing, and smile. ‘You’re a star. Thanks, Joanna.’
When she turns away, I let the hand drop to my side. The pulse of pain, the throb of it, sharpens me: makes the pain of a memory I can’t quite catch hold of seem real.
‘So sorry,’ I say as I close the door behind me. ‘One of those days.’
I smile at Amy and her mother first; then at the other members of Amy’s care team. Only the doctors smile back, with professional blankness. Amy’s eyes are fixed on her hands, her knuckles baring through skin, sharp as teeth.
Her mother eyes me with unbridled suspicion. I have the measure of her – both through my conversations with Amy and our previous meetings. All her life, she’s been protected by her looks, which have brought her love and unearned admiration, despite (if not encouraging) an absence of compassion or understanding for
– as far as I can tell – anyone or anything beyond herself: the living face of narcissism, old skin too taut over dermal fillers, lips perversely pursed.
That said, she’d no doubt tell me (if I could only pin her down and burrow into that psyche of hers) that she has it all: a husband who’s never around, but who happily pays for the lifestyle she thinks she deserves.
This way of thinking – valuing beauty as an asset, with thinness as one of many essential components of this – has grown thorns in her daughter. Neither, though, seems to quite see the link.
‘So,’ I say, flipping open my notepad with my working hand. ‘Have I missed anything?’
I glance at Joanna, who smiles, thrilled to be asked.
‘We haven’t started yet, no. Mrs Barker was just telling us about her holiday. Tanzania. It sounds gorgeous.’ There’s a barb in the comment, all but imperceptible, though those of us working with Amy catch it: the disregard her mother feels, to holiday – and brag about it – here, in front of the daughter she’s left in our care.
‘Lovely.’ My tone is one of professional sweetness. Already, I feel my dislike for this woman rising to the surface of my skin. I contain it. ‘OK, so let’s crack on. Amy, is there anything you’d particularly like to chat through today?’
She looks up. Today, more than ever, she reminds me of Lucie. The patient I lost; the one whose bones I feel aching, alongside my own. She turns to Joanna, as though for moral support. ‘Not really.’
‘All right,’ I say. ‘Well, I’ll start things off. Obviously this is Amy’s fourth stay with us, which suggests that the treatments we’ve been through so far haven’t quite managed to stick – but that doesn’t mean they won’t. I’ve told Amy this before, but it bears repeating – many of the patients we’d consider to have had what’s termed a “successful recovery” have had to go through the programme multiple times before they see a marked improvement. But that doesn’t mean they don’t get there, over—’
A phone buzzes, abruptly. Mrs Barker reaches for it and snaps it off with a blood-red nail. ‘Sorry. Go on.’
I try to pick up my thread. ‘One of the things we’re keen to work on, this time around …’ Her expression changes a little: a strange flash of a look I can’t place spreads across her face. I look back at Amy. ‘One of the most important—’
‘Hold on,’ Mrs Barker says. ‘Stop.’
The silence seems endless. I see her revelling in it: in having wrested control of the meeting before it’s begun.
‘Yes?’ I say, finally.
‘When you say “we’re keen to work on” things, you don’t mean you, surely.’
It isn’t a question. I feel the eyes of the clinical staff on me. Amy, too, looks up now, brought into sudden focus from her daze. ‘I don’t think—’
‘I mean, really, I assumed I’d been called in to speak to the Clinical Director. To find out why, exactly, this hospital – this taxpayer-funded NHS hospital, for God’s sake – seems to consider an accused murderer an appropriate guardian for my child.’
I feel the words like a slap. I look down at my hands, their position the echo of Amy’s moments before. I press one into the other, the hot swell of pain a tether to the moment. She’s lying. I invited her in. She knew she’d find me here. She just wanted to take the chance to tear me down, face to face.
‘Mrs Barker,’ Joanna says. ‘I don’t think that’s—’
‘Don’t try to cover for her.’ Her tone is unflinching. ‘I know who she is. She killed her husband. And I thought you were bringing me here to apologize for letting her treat my daughter, and to explain to me how such an obscene oversight could have happened.’
Hate kindles and sparks in my chest. ‘Amy,’ I say, my voice ice-cold. ‘Would you like to wait in the lounge for a little bit? We’ll come and fetch you when we’re done here.’
She nods and stands, pacing silently to the door. It closes behind her with a click.
‘Mrs Barker.’ She looks at me, a cruel smile on her lips. ‘If you would prefer that I find another doctor to work with your daughter, I’m sure we can arrange for that to happen. But Amy and I have been working together for quite some time, and she has made progress, compared to her first stay with us. To interrupt the relationship now—’
‘As opposed to what? When you go to prison?’ She laughs. ‘I’d rather take my chances.’
‘OK then.’ I snap my notebook shut; Joanna flinches beside me. ‘I’ll start making arrangements.’ I stand, my legs unsteady, no longer my own. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
In the corridor outside, I walk until I’m out of sight; then break into a run.
I push the toilet doors and slip into a cubicle, my heartbeat thunderous.
‘Fucking bitch,’ I scream, pressing my bruised hand against the metal toilet-roll holder. ‘Fucking cow.’
I hear a laugh from the next cubicle, and I freeze.
One of Amy’s bright pink trainers peeks out from beneath the gap. ‘She has that effect on everyone, trust me.’
‘Oh my God. Amy – I’m so sorry. I didn’t—’
‘Seriously, don’t worry about it. It’s literally my internal monologue whenever I’m home, so …’
I laugh, grimly. I can’t help it. I try to adopt my usual professional tone. ‘Well, it was inappropriate of me. I shouldn’t have said that, whether I thought it or not.’
There’s no answer. I unlock the cubicle door, and I wait.
Finally, Amy emerges. In the mirror’s reflection, she’s Lucie: her ghost made bones and flesh.
‘I’m really sorry, Amy,’ I say, finally. ‘I wish I could’ve carried on working with you, but … your mum wants you to see another doctor.’
She looks down at the floor, her expression wounded. She’s been let down so many times. And now I’m walking away – without a fight. ‘You shouldn’t let them. My mum doesn’t know what she’s talking about.’
‘If I can get back on board with your treatment, I will.’ I reach for her shoulder and squeeze. ‘I promise, Amy. I’ll do whatever I can. And if I can’t work with you directly, I’ll still work with whoever’s taking over to make sure they’re … doing right by you.’
She says nothing. Her silence is devastating.
‘Amy …’
‘I’d better get back to the lounge,’ she says, flatly. ‘They’re probably looking for me.’
I nod, my throat clenched tight. ‘Right. I’ll see you around – OK?’
‘Yeah. Whatever. Bye.’
28
London, 2005
I feel him before I see him: leering over me as he so often does, while I’m trying to work. I wait, for a beat, and I look up.
‘Dr Andrews.’
‘I think you and I are on a first-name basis at this point, surely?’
The nurses’ eyes flit back and forth, watching the tension ricochet between us. I wonder what conclusion they’ve jumped to. Likely the most obvious, from the tone he takes only with me: that we’ve had, at some point in the past, a torrid affair, or a drunken fuck at a networking event. That I’m lying to myself, having come to Buyon on his invitation – that he isn’t expecting it to continue.
Favours for favours, after all.
He rests his hand on the back of my chair; I feel his knuckles brush the nape of my neck. ‘Can we have a quick chat?’
I shift in my seat, as far from his hand as I can get. ‘Sure.’
‘In my office, please.’ My stomach flips. I’ve done something wrong. He gives an icy laugh. ‘Jesus, Hannah. Don’t look like such a deer in headlights. I’m not quite the bastard you think I am.’
Oh, but you are, I think as I fix on my most accommodating smile and follow him through the gardens. I resent it, but it’s true: the Buyon is an exceptional clinic. Private, of course – luxury bathrooms and Egyptian cotton bedding don’t come as standard on the NHS. But their ‘treatment philosophy’, too, is stunningly perceptive. I can imagine it working for the patients – clients, I se
lf-correct, still stuck in my old habits – far better than anything I’ve ever used before.
And yet, I wonder what it was, exactly, that made the board at Buyon select Darren Andrews, of all people, as their Clinical Director. I wonder what quality he has that I can’t see, my image of him tied up with the memory of a red-eyed, drunken student, imposing in the same rugby-built way as Graham, but with none of my husband’s charm.
I remember him, regally perched on a tattered couch one night in student halls, pressing faces together between ape-like hands. ‘I’m a matchmaker,’ he’d said as the girl squealed, half-playful, though I saw the tight fist around her ponytail. ‘Just go with it. Trust me. You’ll enjoy it.’
And she had, in the end, though she hadn’t had much choice. The boy she’d been paired with leered forwards, their skulls knocking together with a meaty thud – Darren grinning between them, all chapped lips and tombstone teeth.
I remember, too, the ‘Who, me?’ shrug he’d given, on another occasion, tipping a pot of steaming coffee over Sarah’s handwritten essay, an hour before deadline, resenting her for being so much better – so much more capable of the work – than him. ‘Misogynistic fuck,’ she’d called him in response. And in the decade or so since then, he’s done nothing to prove her wrong. If she and I were still in touch, I’d tell her everything about him, every day: all the tiny, awful ways he’s still the bullish boy we used to know.
He opens the door, and I step quickly through, avoiding his inevitable touch. A voice calls after him. ‘Dr Andrews – can I talk to you a minute?’
The girl striding towards us clearly isn’t a patient: she has the flushed cheeks and build of a girl who spends her time outside, blonde hair tied up in the tight bun of an athlete or a dancer.
‘Ms Wexworth. How can I help?’ His tone is snidely obsequious, as it always is, with our patients’ families and friends: the kind of charm that burns.