Little Black Lies

by Sharon Bolton

  DAY FOUR

  Thursday, 3 November

  31

  ‘She’s not right. She hasn’t been right since—’

  One of the gossiping mums at the school gate spots me. I see an elbow shoot out, the speaker interrupted.

  ‘Well, so what? I’m not saying anything we don’t all know.’ Her voice has lowered, but fractionally. I long ago ceased to be someone whose feelings are taken into account.

  We are waiting for the school to open. It’s one of those days when the sky is still clear, but the clouds are gathering and we know there’s going to be rough weather later on. They’re banking up, out to sea, the line getting thicker and darker as each new mass joins the ranks and the shadow beneath is spreading across the ocean. Right now the sunshine-streaked coloured roofs of Stanley are gleaming. Another couple of hours and they’ll be cowering like washing left out in the rain.

  Three years ago today it was unusually calm, unseasonably warm. The kids had been on the beach and as I drove Ned and Kit home I remember thinking I’d have to vacuum the car. I never did, of course. The sand, pebbles and other beach debris went into the sea with the boys.

  The weather was perfect, the day Ned and Kit died.

  Storms come quickly here, but we learn to read the signs. The massing army out to the west of us will grow in strength throughout the morning. Then, to anyone watching, a moment of stillness will fall, when those unfamiliar with the place might think the worst is over, but then a newcomer arrives, a long low shadow of a cloud, moving faster, sinking down. It’s the advance guard, coming on hard and fearless, spurring on the rest, and then the full force of nature rains down.

  And now the storm-blast came, and he

  Was tyrannous and strong

  Ignoring the gossiping women, I pretend to watch Michael being chased around the playground by his brother. The older child jogs ahead then waits for the younger to almost catch up, before sprinting away again. The little one will tire of this soon, but for now it’s entertaining him.

  ‘I don’t know how she could. One after another, like an execution.’

  ‘That is her job, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Could you do it? I couldn’t. Over two hundred of them. Tiny ones and pregnant mums and everything.’

  It’s Catrin they are talking about. Not me.

  ‘She found the little boy though.’

  ‘She found both boys. One of them dead. That tells you something.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to get on her bad side, I know that.’

  That’s it. I turn and step closer to the group. ‘How many lambs does your Allan slaughter every spring, Alison?’ I stare at the woman with permed blonde hair and red cheeks. She and her husband own a sheep farm on one of the smaller islands. ‘How does he do it, exactly?’

  She stares back. ‘That’s different and you know it.’

  Alison and I were at school together, although she was a year or so older than me. I seem to remember her wit being faster than her intellect, which makes her tricky to argue with.

  ‘Mass slaughter driven by necessity,’ I say. ‘Lambs are killed because we need the food. The whales were put down to prevent them suffering. Arguably, what Catrin did was far more compassionate than what you and your husband do.’

  She sneers, takes a little step forward. My chest tightens. She leans towards me, puts her face directly in front of mine. ‘Well, excuse me. I was forgetting you’re our expert on killing innocent creatures.’

  And there is nothing I can say to that. No possible way I can react. Most of the women around us – we have attracted a sizeable crowd by this time – look uncomfortable, but I can see a few faces enjoying the drama.

  No way can I win this. What I did has taken away for ever my right to have an opinion on anything, to argue any case. I cannot, ever, challenge anyone again, because they have a weapon that can destroy me utterly. I killed two kids. And for that I will pay, over and over again, every hour of every day.

  ‘They’re going in.’ The group breaks apart, some of the mothers run to say goodbye to their children. The rest cluster around Alison like a pack of dogs waiting for me to show just enough weakness. I feel tears pricking. No, I cannot cry. Not now, not in front of them.

  ‘Mum! Peter’s trying to come inside.’

  Chris’s voice. He is over by the railing, holding up his brother. Michael has already disappeared. I go to meet him and bend to take the child. He doesn’t want to come with me, of course he doesn’t, who would? He leans back towards his big brother, squirming and kicking. Great, a full-blown tantrum.

  Boys of nearly three in a rage are incredibly strong. It is as much as I can do to pin him in the buggy while I fasten the restraints, and it is mortifying that I have to do it under the judgemental stares of Alison and her mates. One of his flying fists catches me in the eye, causing a second of extreme pain, and I shout at him without thinking.

  ‘Stop it, you little shit!’

  Conscious that all of them are still watching me, that even Chris, at the railings, has seen my humiliation, is sharing it, I cannot do anything but turn the buggy and walk away.

  * * *

  We spend most of the morning crying. I surround my son with toys, put a video he likes on the TV and stay in the room with him. He’s picking up on my mood though, is difficult and fractious, sometimes clinging to me, other times taking himself into a corner to hide.

  My heart aches with pity for him. When Sander and the boys are out, which is most of the time, this tiny little thing has no one but me to rely on. I can see him longing for something his small, unformed brain can’t visualize or articulate. He has no idea what it is that he needs, only that something essential to his life is missing. He cries and he screams and each sign of his misery yells at me to sort myself out, to be a mother, to take care of him the way I did, still do, with my older two and I just can’t.

  I can’t.

  Eventually, I turn on the radio to find something, anything, to take my mind off myself and my own life. I’ve missed the big press conference but the later news bulletin brings me up to date.

  The remains found on the Endeavour have been formally identified and the family of seven-year-old Jimmy Brown will be able to bury him soon, to grieve properly. The police have no reason to believe his death was anything other than accidental.

  The news reader, not Dad, goes on to say that the police now believe that Archie was abducted after all, and that they are working on the theory that whoever took him lost his nerve and abandoned him. The hunt is on for an abductor, and the Princess Royal will not be allowed to leave in the immediate future.

  At three o’clock, when I still have the better part of an hour before the boys get home, I strap Peter into the car and drive to Catrin’s house. I know she’ll be at work. Not once, in three years, has she been on the spot where her sons died at the exact moment the car went over the edge. It is a grim vigil I keep alone.

  I get out of the car, having first checked that my small charge is safely strapped in and the handbrake firmly on. I didn’t do either three years ago. Then I walk up towards the house. Three years ago, I did this with my face glowing and my heart hammering, knowing Ben was at home and that I was an hour earlier than Catrin had told him I’d be. Three years ago, I was walking into the unknown.

  I turn back at the door, I never go any further than this, and for a second, my car seems to be sliding forward, just as it did then. It isn’t, of course, it’s a trick of the light, but it has me racing back to it all the same.

  * * *

  The sound of a car turning in the road outside drags me from the doze I’d fallen into. I hear Cathy calling goodbye, the sound of Michael and Christopher running up the path. I sit up, shake my head, rub sleep from my eyes.

  As I stand there is a rush of blood to my head and I wobble on my feet. Beneath the window I can hear Chris and Michael talking quietly to each other. In the next room, Peter calls out to them.

  I head for th
e bathroom, use the toilet and wash my hands and face.

  ‘Mum!’ Chris usually comes straight into my room when he gets home. Other boys get back from school to find their mums in the kitchen, making dinner. Mine wake me from drug-induced sleep.

  ‘I’m in here.’ I try to sound normal. ‘Give me a sec.’

  ‘OK.’

  He runs back downstairs again. I hear voices outside. I look at myself in the mirror and don’t recognize the woman staring back.

  Then I realize the room is darker than it should be and remember the eclipse. Chris and Michael. I don’t want them climbing down the cliff path in semi darkness.

  Another car, coming up the hill. At this time of day it can only be Cathy. She must have forgotten something.

  Not the red saloon I’m expecting. This is a silver Land Rover with a black roof. Catrin’s car. I’ve never seen her drive past the house in the daylight before. She’s going fast. Much too fast on this narrow, poorly repaired road. She brakes hard and a second later I can smell the burned rubber.

  She’s getting out. She’s actually out of the car. Her dark hair is flying up around her head. There is something in her face that frightens me. So many times, I’ve wanted her to initiate contact.

  Not today. I can’t face her today.

  She vanishes from sight, ducking down low behind the hedge. Then she stands again.

  She has my child in her arms.

  I watch, open-mouthed, as she turns back towards the vehicle. The woman who hates me, who wishes me dead, the woman who revealed herself yesterday as a cold-blooded killer, has her hands on my child.

  DAY FIVE

  Friday, 4 November (late evening)

  32

  Only when the house is quiet do I break through the stupor that’s engulfed me for most of the day. The police, the well-wishers and the merely inquisitive have gone home, my mother is snoring in the spare room and my two remaining sons are collapsed in miserable exhaustion, curled up together in one bed. Only now do I get up and leave my bedroom, make my way through the darkened house.

  I can’t actually remember much of the day; were it not for the night sky outside, I’d be unsure whether it had happened at all. And yet the hours have ticked past and something must have filled them.

  I step carefully down the stairs, not sure who I’m frightened of disturbing, and as I do so I look in each dark corner, just in case. Just in case there’s something small and insignificant that I’ve forgotten. Such as what I actually did with my youngest child. Oh yes, here he is! How could I forget I tucked him into the small boot cupboard at the bottom of the stairs? Sorry, everyone, panic over, he’s been here all along.

  I gasp for breath, and not nearly enough seems to make it inside me. I tell myself to think back through the day, to remember everything, to give my mind some anchor to hold on to. Breathe in, breathe out.

  We heard the news of Catrin’s arrest early this morning. Of course, as soon as the police arrived yesterday, I told them about her stopping outside the house, about her picking up the child. What could they do but make her their prime suspect? They learned quickly that she’d left harbour in her boat and naturally they launched a full-scale search, but Catrin knows the Falkland waters very well and in the time it took to get a helicopter in the air, darkness had fallen.

  They didn’t find her until first light, by which time there was no sign of anyone on the boat but the dog and Catrin herself. No one has said to me that Catrin had Peter for over twelve hours, that she could have done anything with him, abandoned him anywhere, but I know that’s what they are all thinking.

  Yesterday was the third anniversary of the accident, when I left two children unattended, in a car dangerously close to a cliff edge, never dreaming for a moment that my doing so would result in both plunging to their deaths in icy water. The anniversary cannot have escaped people’s notice. How many will be wondering if Catrin chose that day, deliberately, to do the same thing to my son?

  We’ve had courtesy phone calls from the police throughout the day, mainly, I suspect, because Dad would drive them daft if they didn’t keep us informed. So we know that Catrin has been interviewed at length, but has admitted nothing beyond seeing the child in the road, picking him up and returning him to the garden. There were hairs on her sweater and a child’s fingerprints on her bag, but alone they’ll prove nothing beyond the fact of her picking him up, and that she freely admits.

  At the bottom of the stairs the hallway is cold, the tiled floor uncomfortable beneath my bare feet. Sander has been calling continually. I think he’s going out of his mind so far away, unable to do anything. As if he’d feel any different, any less powerless, were he here.

  The police are convinced that Catrin is lying, mainly because they found a toy on her boat, a little stuffed rabbit that I identified immediately. It’s an old one of Michael’s that his younger brother adopted and that we have been unable to find anywhere in the house. The police see it as proof that she had him on the boat, that she took him out to sea. Divers have been in Port Pleasant for much of the day, looking for anything Catrin may have thrown overboard. At least, that’s the official line. We all know they’re looking for my son’s body.

  The kitchen still smells of the spaghetti bolognese that Grandma cooked for the boys. We all watched her put out three plates, including the little Peter Rabbit one that Peter always uses, and nobody had the heart to say anything. When she realized what she’d done, she fled the room. We could hear her sobbing in the hall. It was Chris who got up and put his brother’s little plate away in the cupboard, who served spaghetti to himself and Michael.

  The two anonymous notes I received are being kept confidential for now. Stopford himself says it’s usual in these cases, to keep something back from the general public, although we do know that Catrin herself has denied sending them. A close examination has found no fingerprints other than mine and those of the woman who manages the post office. She, of course, sells lots of the stuff. A sample of Catrin’s handwriting will be sent away for comparison but until it comes back with a positive result, the notes don’t constitute evidence of any useful kind.

  With nothing else to do, I go back to my bed. Fireworks have started to go off around Stanley. Each one sounds like gunfire.

  * * *

  I’m first up next morning. I dress quickly and go outside, across the garden, to the cliff path. As I draw near to the edge, the sky starts to colour, picking up reflections of a sun that I know is coming up fast. Normally, there are few sights more heartening, more lifting to the spirits than a sunrise, the glorious announcement to the world that night is over. Nothing uplifting about this one. There are no soft pinks, no pastel shades of orange in the colour palette building around me. The clouds, as thick and heavy, and banked as high as they have been the last twenty-four hours, are becoming a mass of dark shadows and the harsh Falun-red that we used to see dug out of copper mines. This is the hot and copper sky of Coleridge’s poem. Then the sea colours too, and its rise and swell starts to look like congealing blood. The deep, dark reds around me intensify, even the grass, the gorse, the rocks are gleaming crimson. The world has turned red.

  If ever a red sky in the morning felt like a portent of something sinister, this one does. This feels like the dawn to mark the death of a child.

  * * *

  I get back to the house to find the police waiting for me. Catrin has confessed.

  DAY SIX

  Saturday, 5 November (five hours later)

  33

  I don’t go home when Callum and I finish reading Catrin’s diary. I cannot. In any case, I don’t need to. The boys are with my mother and, for all that she drives me nuts, she is a great grandma. Chris will feed, muck out and ride Strawberry. Dad will guard them all with his life, if he has to, I know that much about him. In a few hours, Sander will be home and he is the best father any child could ask for. They don’t need me. They think they do, but they don’t.

  I need never go home aga
in.

  Once the initial shock, the misery, is over, they will be so much better off. Like an otherwise healthy body after a gangrenous limb has been removed. So I don’t go home. I ride instead to the nearest cliff tall enough for what I have in mind.

  God, the wind. It’s howling, screaming into my face. It feels strong enough and angry enough to lift the whole of East Falkland up out of the sea. It will help, I think, take responsibility away from me. I can lean into it, hover beyond hope of changing my mind and allow the wind to choose the moment when it lets me go.

  I slow Bee when we get within twenty yards of the edge. The wind is bothering him, I don’t want to scare him by taking him any closer.

  She isn’t human in my eyes now.

  How well she puts it. I’m not human in anyone’s eyes. What is it she called me? An event, a living disaster, a void. I am the storm that wiped out two young lives, the foul wind that blighted so many more.

  The man I loved, my best friend, the man who loved her, all of them twisted by grief into something even they barely recognize. And then there are my sons, husband, parents, all tainted by their association with me. One of them has already paid the reckoning that should have been mine. One of us, the smallest, most vulnerable, has been sacrificed. That has to be enough.

  I slide off Bee’s back, remove the saddle and bridle and lay them on the ground. They’ll be found, soon enough, like clues in a treasure hunt.

  ‘What in the name of God do you think you’re doing now?’

  I hadn’t really expected my horse to take this quietly so am hardly surprised. I lean against his ribs, feel his coat damp from where the saddle lay and stretch my hand up to cradle the underside of his jaw.

  ‘Shush now, be good. Go home.’

  She’s the reason the world has lost all balance. While she’s around, the universe is tilted and those of us on the underside are on the brink of falling straight down into hell.