Mann's voice, “We understand absolutely, Mrs. Ballantyne, but this is a murder investigation. It's only eight-thirty, it's not as though it's midnight.”
“Let her sleep, for heaven's sake. Why can't you leave it 'til tomorrow? This is nothing more than harassment.” There was a brief silence after my mother's speech, and her claim of harassment might well have swung things in her direction, but I could not sleep knowing that there was some news. Good or bad—and my instinct was that it was the latter—I had to know. I pulled on my jeans and T-shirt and padded down the stairs in my bare feet. Finney was there too, which for some reason came as a surprise. They were all looking at me by the time I reached the foot of the stairs, and I wished I had taken a moment to splash some water on my face and put a comb through my hair. In particular I wished I'd pulled some underwear on. I felt vulnerable, exposed.
“What is it?” I asked.
Finney's eyes went in one easy move from my sleep-creased face to my bare feet.
“We're sorry to disturb you,” Mann said, “but we need to ask you a few more questions.”
“You could have rung first,” my mother complained.
“We tried. We got the answering machine,” Mann said. I exchanged a glance with my mother and she nodded. The calls were piling up both here and at my own house: Terry, Jane, Tanya, Suzette, a dozen others. I'd rung none of them back. Not yet, not until I'd sorted things out.
“Okay,” I said, and led them into the sitting room. My mother told me that the press were outside too. My escape had been short-lived.
Mann sat on the sofa next to me, and looked around at my mother's collection of kitsch while Finney pulled up a wooden dining chair from the table. My mother hovered behind me, and I wished at this moment that she would be one thing or the other, that she would leave the room and leave me to it, or remain and be professional. Her anxious, sympathetic presence was irritating me and that in turn was distracting. I could practically feel her breath on my neck.
“We need to ask you some questions about your house,” Mann started. “How long have you lived there?”
Behind me my mother gave a little snort, as if the question were clearly irrelevant, and therefore justified her claim that I should not have been woken up to answer it. My own reaction was more cautious. Why the house? What did they know that I did not?
“Just over a year. Why?”
“You moved there from Mr. Wills's Upton Park flat?”
“I was here at my mother's house briefly, while I bought mine. Why? What's this about?”
“Why did you choose that particular house?” It was Finney this time, but I was getting increasingly annoyed at their assumption that I was not to be told anything. To me it was an assumption that I was guilty.
“I liked the paintwork,” I snapped at him. He looked at me levelly.
“You did not like the paintwork,” he said.
“Well, why do you think?” I said. “I had no money. It was cheap.”
“You have a job,” Mann interjected. “You probably have savings.”
“Child care is going to cost me nearly all that I earn,” I spelled out to her, incredulous that another woman should be so obtuse.
“And your savings?”
“I put down a large deposit on the house so I could afford the mortgage payments,” I explained wearily, hating to discuss what were essentially private matters. Even my mother didn't know all this. “I also took an extended maternity leave, most of which was unpaid. As of now I have no savings, no prospect of saving in the next eighteen years, and two children to feed, clothe, and send on school skiing trips.”
“So that little council house is your future,” Finney said. “Two teenagers in bunk beds, taking turns at the kitchen table to do their homework, and no space to swing a cat.”
“Thank you, yes, but we'll have to pass on the cat.”
In the moments that followed, when no one spoke, I wished I had not let that note of bitterness into my voice. I wasn't even sure where it had come from. Then Finney spoke again, dropping words like depth charges into the sea.
“Well, you'll be all right now,” he said, “won't you?”
I frowned. I turned around to face him.
“What do you mean by that?”
Finney's eyes had a tired, world-sick look to them, and his next words were impatient. “You know perfectly well what I mean.”
“I don't,” I said distinctly, “know what you mean.”
I could feel my mother, very still, behind me.
“Who inherits Adam's flat?” he asked softly.
I gazed at him, lost for words, alarm bells beginning to ring, then clamoring, deafening me.
“I have no idea,” I said eventually, but I could scarcely hear my own words for the noise of danger in my head.
“You know perfectly well everything comes to you,” he said, not even attempting to keep the contempt from his voice.
“This is outrageous.” My mother saved me from having to speak. She had stepped out from behind the sofa and forward, as if to shield me from Finney. “You come here, you wake up my daughter, and while she's still half asleep you produce some half-baked accusation to try and provoke her to an ill-considered response.”
It was a performance worthy of any defense attorney, but this time Finney brushed her away like a fly.
“It's all in black and white,” he told her, “and its been in your daughter's possession for more than a year.”
He drew a long buff envelope from the inside breast pocket of his jacket and handed it to me. For a moment I just held it on my knee. My hands were shaking too much to open it, and besides, I knew what it was. After a moment I handed it to my mother.
She took it from me, wide-eyed, and opened the envelope. It was not sealed. It had never been sealed. She stared down at it, her eyes moving over the text.
“The last will and testament of Adam Wills,” she whispered, and handed the paper back to me as though it had scalded her fingers.
Chapter 16
I was all alone in my mother's house. Alone, that is, with the children. My mother had gone to work.
“I can't not go, I've got appointments all day long,” she said defensively. “I've been putting people off for the last few days, but there are clients waiting for me. I can't just palm them off on someone else.”
My mother specializes in refugee and immigration work. She listed for me the clients who were waiting for her attention: a refugee woman who'd been in Britain since her childhood, now fighting deportation; a young man injured in a police cell who was accusing the officer of racism; a middle-aged man completing the paperwork to bring his recently widowed mother from Bangladesh to Britain. They all sounded a great deal more worthy than me.
She bustled around the house, gathering up papers and files, losing and then finding her car keys.
“Life must go on,” was my mother's parting shot as she slammed the door shut, but mine was going nowhere. My mother seemed to be distancing herself from me, as though she were preparing to lose me. She had not challenged me about the will. After Finney's departure the night before, we had gone to our beds with only the minimum of conversation. I'd slept badly for the second night in a row and I'd woken when the children did, at a quarter to six, with my head pounding.
My mother's silence over the breakfast table had been frightening, and the thought that she might be doubting my innocence just intensified the pain in my head. I would have challenged her, forced her to talk to me, but I was capable of little more than holding my head in my hands. I could not face food or caffeine, and preparing the children's porridge made me feel sick. When the door slammed shut behind my mother and I heard her rev the car and drive off, I felt abandoned. I glanced from the window and saw the press gathering already, several of them sipping from cardboard cups, the steam from their drinks rising into the chilly air.
Hannah and William didn't know what was going on, but their mood had become brittle and dissatisfied in
reaction to the tensions around them. My nerves were stretched taut and every whine sounded to me like fingernails on a blackboard. There was no way the children could know that any minute Finney might decide he had enough evidence to arrest me for murdering their father, but they clung to me like drowning kittens to a raft. And I could not bear their touch. As gently as possible I disengaged myself time and again from their clutches, but they welded themselves to me with increasing desperation.
These things I had done automatically for months: kneeling to wipe up the mess after breakfast even as more mess fell to the floor around me; wrestling clothes onto cobra-like limbs; shielding myself from kicking feet while I changed nappies, shit leaking all over their clothes, little heels pounding in the excrement, then pounding me. For months I had let these things wash over me, shit and all. On that morning, the second day after Adam's death, with the pain in my head threatening to burst my skull open, these same things drove me to tearful distraction.
When my mother had been gone about half an hour several things happened in quick succession.
Hannah was screaming because I had taken away from her an open carton of milk that she was pouring on the floor. I gave her a bottle to calm her, but she rejected it, stamping her feet and pointing at my glass of juice. Too weak with anxiety, exhaustion, and pain to argue, I handed it to her. She took one gulp, two, then carefully placed the glass on a stool, before swiping it to the floor with a purposeful right hook. The glass broke, showering William's legs in glass and apple juice.
I yanked him up, but not before he put his hand down on a shard, which forced its way into his palm. Blood oozed from the cut, he screamed, and I saw Hannah about to pick up a dagger of glass that would have severed an artery the moment she touched it. I yelled at her and lunged, with William still in my arms, pushing Hannah away from her trophy, but toppling her at the same time so that she fell and hit her head on the table leg.
At this moment the doorbell rang. I ignored it. I couldn't have done anything else. William was still howling, holding his hand away from him, the blood dripping all over us both. Hannah was in floods of tears, face down on the floor in the middle of the minefield, and when I tried to help her up she thrust me away. At that point something in me snapped. I couldn't help myself. I stood over Hannah and shouted down at her. I shouted in fear that turned into anger against the world. I don't remember what I shouted and I don't particularly want to. At the same time I grabbed her arm and hauled her out of danger. It must have hurt, but she yelled as though I was amputating it.
I twisted around to deposit Hannah on a safe bit of floor, and as I turned I became aware that there was another person in the room. Adam's mother, Norma, was standing behind me, her face white, jaw slack with horror at the tableau we presented. Hannah was dangling by one arm but refusing to be put down, her legs locked around my leg. I was in danger of losing my balance.
“The door was open.” Norma was always a stickler for courtesy.
“Help me,” I said, but she didn't move. Instead she seemed to swell with righteous indignation.
“What on earth is going on?”
“Just help,” I insisted. “William's hurt his hand. Take him from me.”
She stared and went, if possible, whiter, but after a moment she came nearer and held out reluctant arms. I passed William to her, realizing as I did so that my bathrobe was gaping open, but Norma would not have noticed if I was naked. She was too busy inspecting the bloody and screaming little boy in her arms. His face had gone red and blotchy with distress and Norma looked at him as though he were a martian.
With two hands free I gently lifted Hannah under her arms and loosened her legs from mine. She was sobbing as though her heart had broken, which I suspect it had. I had never shouted at her before. Even when I had her in my arms she refused to look at me, and even when the tears dried up, her bottom lip still pouted and quivered. I gave her a quick once over, but could find no cuts. Then I carried her to the bathroom and with one hand grabbed cotton wool and antiseptic spray for William. By the time I returned to the sitting room, Norma was on my mother's sofa and William had calmed enough for her to be able to dab at his hand.
“Why are you here?” I was still standing, on the defensive, Hannah in my arms.
“These are my grandchildren,” she said in the precise tone that had always driven me mad. She did not look at me as she spoke. Cleaning William's hand gave her an excuse not to. She didn't raise her voice, but she was almost spitting.
“You have kept them from me for quite long enough. I had to learn about their existence from a newspaper.”
“I am sorry about Adam,” I said. It had to be said and I wanted to distract her from her grievances against me. It was Adam, not I, who had kept them from her, but this was not the time to split hairs. The woman looked shattered, a good century older than she had when I last saw her nearly two years before. She wore all the right things: the Country Casuals coat over the Jaeger skirt and the Bally boots. I'm guessing of course, but she's a woman who sticks to her brands. What was unusual was that it was all thrown together, nothing matched, and her white hair, usually so neatly coiffed, was flying in wisps around her head. Her mouth was working desperately as though she were chewing on something, and there was a tic at the corner of her eye. Here she was, holding her dead son's son in her arms, and all my animosity was washed away in a flood of pity. What I only understood afterward was that she was crazy with grief.
“You kill my son, and then you have the effrontery to say you are sorry.” She took a deep breath, and her shoulders rose in outrage. She stood with William still in her arms. He had stopped crying and was watching his grandmother's face closely. It was a new face and it was doing interesting things.
“I didn't kill your son,” I said softly.
“Look at you, you slut,” she hissed. “Not even dressed, broken glass on the floor, yelling at your children. You are not capable of looking after them and you have forfeited whatever rights you ever had to be their parent.”
She turned and started walking toward the door with William still in her arms. For a moment I stood paralyzed. I could not believe what was happening, that this woman should walk in off the street and seriously attempt to kidnap my child. A red tidal wave of fury rose inside me.
“What are you doing?” I caught up with her by the door and stood in front of her, blocking her exit. She lunged to the left and I obstructed her, but the coat stand toppled to the floor missing us by an inch.
“He's in danger, you'll kill him next.” She was shaking with anger.
“Give him to me,” I ordered her, but she ignored this and tried to step around me. I managed to block her again, but I was hampered by Hannah who was clinging to me, whimpering at the anger in our voices.
“Sorry,” I whispered to Hannah, and tried to put her down beside me on the ground, but she would not let go and Norma seized the opportunity to push past me to open the door. I grabbed her arm, put out a foot to jam the door, and suddenly we were wrestling, Hannah still clinging to my ankle, William shrieking in distress, holding out his arms for me, his hands clawing at my bathrobe, pulling it away from my body.
Norma hauled the door open, and we fell, a jumble of flailing limbs. Then, all at once there were people over us, hands lifting William from my neck, where he had attached himself like a limpet. There was something wet in my eyes, I rubbed it away and saw blood. A hand seized mine. I pushed myself to my knees and stood, only to be faced by a surprised cameraman who never expected that the story would fall at his feet.
“Get inside,” Finney muttered and shoved me back through the door as cameras clicked behind us. I looked around in panic for the children and gathered up one under each arm. Mann, never far behind Finney, was with Norma, who was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, her head in her hands, shoulders heaving. I carried the children, sobbing and clinging, into the sitting room. Finney followed me, agitated.
“What the hell happened?” His eyes
took it all in, the broken glass on the floor in a pool of juice, the wad of bloody cotton wool.
I shook my head, robotically patting and stroking, comforting my children. I was shaking with anger and humiliation, and I could not trust myself to talk.
“She's an unfit mother.” I heard Norma's voice from the staircase, still precise even in the midst of hysteria. “I won't let her kill my grandchildren just as she killed my son. I won't allow it. The court will take my side. They will live with me. I'll take good care of them …” And here her voice trailed into sobs.
Finney blew out his cheeks.
“Here,” he said. He handed me the packet of cotton wool. “Clean up that cut. D.C. Mann will take her home. We had some more questions for you but they'll wait.”
When they had gone I cleaned up the glass, then myself, and I sat the children, who were calmer now, in front of the television to soothe them. I rang my mother and told her what had happened.
“There's no way she could claim custody is there?”
“I doubt it,” she said, but I knew her tone of voice too well. She was worried and she could not give me the cast-iron guarantee I needed.
Chapter 17
WHAT was I thinking? That Richard Carmichael would open the door to me and say, “Ah, the girl who drove her car over her lover, come on in, what can I do for you?” I suppose I was still operating in an alternative universe where I was innocent until proven guilty. It's amazing how one can get so old and still be so naive.
In fact it went more like this. Under cover of early darkness, as press thin out, murder suspect leaves house by back door and walks around block to approach door of neighbor with whom she has recently had relatively civilized conversation after death of said neighbor's wife. Murder suspect lifts brass ring, knocks on door. Neighbor takes a while but eventually opens it and stares at her in disbelief, frown lines between eyes. Murder suspect, already on defensive, starts to speak. Starts to gabble really.
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