The 3rd Woman

by Jonathan Freedland

  And then, as if she had been plunged in frozen water, the heat inside her head dissipated as quickly as it had come. She would not do this, she would not give him what he wanted. She would not do this in the dark. She would not bury another secret, so that it lay rotting in the ground, forever mined by worms and maggots. She wanted this to be in the open, where everyone could hear it and see it and know what happened. Somehow, in that instant, she knew that this was the only way she would ever be rid of it, the only way she could bring it to an end. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘Not this time.’

  He gave another small nod, grabbed the syringe from her and, with swift and expert skill, plunged the needle into his own arm. His eyes closed and, by the time a carriage clock in the next room had chimed ten, he was gone.

  Chapter 58

  Quincy and Abigail were always early birds, but her mother, like her, was a night owl. When Madison knocked on her front door, she was relieved to hear the burble of the television set, on even at this late hour. She knew it drove Paola to distraction.

  She waited, allowing herself to breathe for what felt like the first time in nearly three hours. The wait at Ted Norman’s house for the police and paramedics to come, the explanation of what happened, the playing back of the recording of his confession, the giving of a preliminary statement and then the call to Jane Goldstein and Howard Burke, interrupting their dinner and telling them they needed to take the story down from the site and remake it as soon as possible – all of that had allowed no time even to exhale. She needed to collapse. But she needed to be here more.

  The carer answered the door, her face a picture of genuine surprise. ‘Well, look who’s here, Mrs W.’

  From the door, Maddy gave her mother a little wave and then, once she was by her chair, a long hug. ‘Where have you been?’ her mother asked twice and then a third time. ‘Shhh,’ was all Maddy could manage by way of a reply, said gently, while she stroked the hair by the older woman’s temple.

  Madison looked up. ‘Do you think we could have some private time, Paola?’ Once the room was clear, Maddy pulled up a chair, close to her mother’s. She took the older woman’s hand.

  ‘I think Abby can rest now, Mom, you know?’

  Her mother said nothing.

  ‘I hope I’ve been able to do that for her. It’s not been easy. In fact, it’s been very hard. But I think she can rest.’

  Her mother looked at her intently, but whether her expression was full or empty, Madison could not tell. She kept hold of her mother’s hand, enjoying its coolness. After several moments, perhaps a minute, the older woman spoke.

  ‘You look sad.’

  ‘Mom, I need to ask you about something. Something that happened a long time ago.’

  For the first time, her mother looked away. ‘It’s all gone now.’

  ‘I know. I know, Mom. But I need to know one thing. About my father.’

  Her mother’s face darkened. Maddy responded by squeezing her hand. ‘It’s OK, Mom. It’s just one thing. That night. After he’d hurt you so long. I need you to tell me what happened.’

  ‘It’s gone now.’

  ‘The thing is, Mom, with Abigail gone …’ The sentence dried in her mouth. She tried again, ‘Without Abigail, you and me are the only ones who remember …’ The falsity of that last statement, the futility of it, made her stop for a second time. She leaned back, letting out a sigh. This was surely pointless; her mother remembered nothing. But then she heard her own voice speaking again. ‘At least, I think I remember. I think I can see it and then it … it gets so hazy.’

  ‘Shhh,’ her mother said.

  Maddy gave the older woman a sad smile. ‘That’s what I always said, didn’t I? I told you to stay quiet. I told you not to tell.’

  ‘Shhh.’

  ‘“Our secret.” I must have said the same to Abigail. Maybe not those words, but she must have known. That none of us was ever to say a word. That was hard, wasn’t it? On her, on you. On the three of us.’

  Her mother was looking at her intently. Was she waiting for Madison to say more?

  ‘But we can talk to each other now.’ Madison paused. ‘Because I need to know.’

  Her mother looked down, at the floor to the right of her chair.

  Madison took a deep breath. ‘He didn’t just fall down the stairs, did he?’

  Her mother’s gaze remained fixed downward.

  ‘He was shouting at you, wasn’t he? Same as always.’

  The older woman winced.

  ‘I can see him standing over you, yelling into your face. He grabbed you by the shoulders. He started shaking you. Hard, so your head was rocking backwards and forwards and—’

  ‘Shhh,’ her mother said, still looking at the ground.

  ‘And you were by the wall, remember that wall on the landing, the one where we used to mark how tall we were getting? And he was shaking you so hard, he smashed your head into that wall. I’d just come out of my room, and I saw you there on the landing, kind of crumpled. I thought you were dead. And that’s when I noticed Abigail. She had been there the whole time. She’d seen the whole thing.’

  ‘Madison, shhh.’

  ‘And she was so little, Mom. She was such a little girl. And I remembered what had happened the last time. Was it a few weeks before? Maybe a few months, I can’t remember. But it had been the same thing: the shouting and the shoving and the rage and Abigail had got in his way, or got too close, and he had hit her. Do you remember that, Mom? He hit her. And she didn’t even cry. That’s what I remember most. She went white and still and didn’t make a sound, like she was too stunned. She was six, Mom. Six years old.’

  Her mother looked up at her for a second. Her eyes seemed to be swimming.

  ‘And when that happened, I didn’t do anything. I was just too scared. I watched him hit my little sister and I didn’t do a thing. I just stood there.’

  ‘It’s gone now.’

  ‘But that night, on the landing, it was different. I wasn’t going to let him do it again, not to Abigail. All that anger in me made me strong.’

  Her mother’s eyes were closed now, whether to shut out the memory or to witness it again, Maddy could not tell.

  ‘And then he raised his arm, like he was going to hit someone and that’s when I did it. I took a few steps over and I pushed him. Didn’t I, Mom?’

  A silence held between them, maybe for a minute, maybe longer. In those moments, the last several years seemed to pool and collect between them, all the silences heaped together into one. Eventually her mother spoke. ‘It’s gone now.’

  ‘But it hasn’t, Mom, not really. I know we tried to make it go away. And you did so well, you did exactly what I asked. You kept our secret, Mom. God knows what it did to you, but you kept our secret. And so did I. Even from myself. But I pushed him down the stairs, didn’t I? From that landing, right down the stairs. We told everyone he fell but it was me, wasn’t it, Mom?’

  Now her mother placed her right hand over her daughter’s. ‘Shhh,’ she said, though her eyes seemed to be searching for words.

  Madison nodded, unable to speak. It seemed her head, her eyes, her chest were filling with water.

  ‘I didn’t mean to kill him, Mom. I was trying to look after you. I was trying to look after Abigail.’ The mucus in her nose and in her throat was making it hard to speak, but she forced out a few more words. ‘I was her sister. I was meant to protect her.’

  She was not sure her mother heard. By now Madison’s face and her body were shaking, every part of her involved in the act of weeping. She rocked back and forth, the sobs sending a cascade of tears down her cheeks, onto her chin and down her neck. The more they flowed, the more came to replace them, a tide of floodwater pent up for years. In the tide were tears for Abigail, tears for her mother, tears for all the horrors she had seen. But as her mother tried to soothe her, stroking her hair and telling Maddy, ‘Shhh, it’s gone now’, her eyes pricked with those tears that had stayed at the very bottom of th
e well, dark and unstirred for so long – the tears for herself.

  It was late by the time she was back in her apartment. There had been more calls to make, and a further statement to draft for the police. The messages had piled up, too. She deleted most of them, including several from Jeff Howe, but saved the one from Leo, listening to it twice, enjoying his voice.

  For once she did not listen to the radio, switch on the TV or check Weibo. Instead Madison Webb had a long bath. No candles, no oils, no aromatherapy, just hot water. She listened to no recommended music and attempted no ancient meditation. She wore nothing special and she did not so much as notice what she ate or drank or when she ate or drank it. Instead, she simply dried off and got into bed.

  She couldn’t say what happened next; later she would joke that that was, perhaps, the whole point. Perhaps she read for a few minutes; she might have listened to music. Or she might have been thinking of something, a fleeting memory of friends or a faraway place or maybe even her sister Abigail. All she could say with any certainty was that that night, for the first time in fifteen years or more, she closed her eyes and fell into a deep, deep sleep.

  And so she missed the first, unconfirmed reports that, in a plea bargain agreed between the prosecuting authorities and lawyers for Garrison 41 – and in the light of the latest LA Times revelations confirming the guilt of the late Edward Norman – Mr Yang Zhitong was due to travel imminently to Beijing, to face ‘disciplinary proceedings’. Nor did she hear the second lead on the overnight news bulletins: a statement from the White House looking forward to the upcoming state visit of the Chinese leadership and expressing confidence that the special relationship was now ‘firmly back on track’.

  Madison Webb slept through all that. She slept as the temperature dropped below zero and as a frost settled on Los Angeles, coating the trees and their dangling red lanterns in a sparkling white dust – a reminder from nature itself that it was still winter in America.

  Acknowledgements

  This book is only partly a product of the imagination. It is also the fruit of extensive research in both China and the United States, a process which was dependent on the kindness and generosity of many others.

  First thanks are due to Tania Branigan, then Beijing Bureau Chief for the Guardian who not only allowed me to pick her brains but introduced me to others equally willing to suffer the same fate. Among them were Professor He Jiahong and Professor Shi Yinhong of Renmin University, along with Jeremiah Jenne and Eric Abrahamsen, all of them distinguished scholars and thinkers on China. Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, then in Beijing with the International Crisis Group, deployed her formidable intellect to answer a series of ‘What if …?’ questions from me. As did a group of outstanding British diplomats, including Jeremy Page, Henry Bell, Giles Montagnon and John Edwards. The latter was especially insightful on questions of language and culture, while Brigadier Duncan Francis OBE was no less helpful on matters military. Journalists Jamil Anderlini and Leo Lewis were enthusiastic sources of inspiration, while long conversations with Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the World, and Mark Leonard, Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, proved invaluable. I am indebted to Kathy Gao who acted as both patient guide and shrewd interpreter in Beijing and beyond, and to Steve Coombe, always wise on the dark arts of security and surveillance. DJ Collins was no less generous with his ample knowledge and experience.

  Jonathan Cummings has long been the most reliable companion on these journeys: his talent for excavating the crucial fact or insight still fills me with awe. Jane Johnson is the very model of an editor; her empathy and understanding is what every author craves. Rhian McKay proved to be a sensitive copy editor, while the support of Kate Elton, Sarah Hodgson, Kate Stephenson and the rest of the tireless team at HarperCollins made a huge difference. As for Jonny Geller, he may well be weary of hearing it from me by now, but he is not just the best literary agent in the country, he is a good and constant friend.

  Finally, a word about my wife Sarah and our two sons, Jacob and Sam. Their love and support is the foundation on which everything else is built. If this book is about a third woman, Sarah is the woman who comes first in my life, now and always.

  Jonathan Freedland

  London, 2015

  About the author

  Jonathan Freedland is an award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster. He is the Guardian’s Executive Editor for Opinion and also writes a weekly column. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times and the New York Review of Books, and presents BBC Radio 4’s contemporary history series, The Long View. In 2014 he won the Orwell special prize for journalism.

  Since 2006 he has published five internationally bestselling novels under the pseudonym Sam Bourne, which have sold over 2 million copies and been published in over 30 languages.

  Follow Jonathan Freedland online:

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  www.jonathanfreedland.com

  Writing as Sam Bourne

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