Little Black Lies

by Sharon Bolton

  People I love are on that underside. One of them has already fallen. No more. Or maybe, just one. Just me.

  I step away from the warmth of my horse, push his head in the right direction and shove at his hind-quarters. Then I turn and face the cliff.

  ‘I’ve seen you do some stupid things, but this…’ Bee hasn’t gone. His head hits me square between the shoulder blades.

  ‘Go home, you daft horse. I love you. Don’t bite anyone.’ I push him again, hitting him hard on the flank, and he trots off. I can’t watch him any more. I turn and can’t see anything very much, what with the wind on the brink of ripping my eyes out. Blinded, feeling my way, I take one step, then another.

  Why couldn’t it have been Rachel standing there on the dock, falling apart? Rachel suffering as that poor bitch is doing. Why not Rachel dying inside, right now, instead of curling up on her son’s bed, rocking his warm body back to sleep? Why isn’t she staring at that bed, cold and empty, wondering where on God’s earth he is?

  I am. I’m doing all of those things. Enough now. I walk faster. I won’t stop and think about it. I will keep walking. In fact, better if I run. Run straight, and leap.

  I can’t run. I don’t quite have the nerve for that. But I’m at the edge. One last look. The beach below is covered in big, solid rocks, densely packed with sharp edges. They will shatter my skull, if I’m lucky, because that will be the fastest death, but even if my head survives, the multiple ruptures will pierce my vital organs, the bleeding will be extensive, will kill me in minutes. Maybe I’ll really luck out and my neck will break.

  I spread out my arms and lean, the wind takes me, holds me on the brink of oblivion – and my frigging horse takes a chunk out of my shoulder.

  He staggers back, planting his hooves firmly on the soft ground, taking me with him.

  ‘Let go.’ I try to pull away. I would have done it, I know I would, I’d felt my balance give way, my weight tilt.

  He can’t talk to me. His teeth are clamped together around the loose fabric of my shirt. Besides, the effort of dragging me back is taking most of his energy. Unable to pull away, I sink to the ground. He lets go and takes a swipe at my head with his mouth.

  ‘Get up, get that saddle back on me and let’s get home.’

  ‘Bee, I can’t. I just can’t.’

  ‘Lady, twenty-four hours from now, I’ll push you off myself. But there’s something you have to do first.’

  I turn to look at the soft, black muzzle, those chocolate-brown eyes, and against every inclination I know that he’s right. I’ll come back here soon, if I can. But there’s something I have to do first.

  34

  It is Bonfire Night. Being British – well, sort of – we celebrate it. Of course it’s not so easy here because November is late spring and the evenings are long. Bonfires don’t have the same impact in the twilight, we have to wait till much later before setting off the fireworks, but we make the effort all the same.

  As soon as Bee and I get home, I ask Mum if she can stay with the boys, but she’s anxious to leave. She and Dad are committed to the ongoing search for my son, and I can hardly argue with that. She does, though, agree to take them to the bonfire in the evening. I have a few more hours to get through.

  I’d like to say I spend the day putting everything in order – seeing to the horses, tidying the house, cooking dinner for Sander and the boys – but the truth is that everything has already been done for me. So I fill the hours by watching my sons, sitting close to them whenever I can. I try not to think about whether the decision I made on the clifftop is the right one. I watch the hands of the clock creeping round.

  At six o’clock it’s time. I leave instructions for Sander, where I’ve put things, how to feed the horses. I don’t tell him what I’m planning to do, or why. The first he’ll know soon enough, the other he’ll never understand.

  ‘We don’t want to go to the bonfire.’ Chris starts grumbling before he’s fastened his seat belt. ‘We want to stay here.’

  It’s an effort not to yell at him, Just get in the bloody car! ‘We always go,’ I tell him. ‘It will take your mind off things for a while.’

  ‘What if Peter comes back and we’re not here?’

  ‘Daddy will be home soon. And I’ll try and pop back, once I’ve done what I need to.’

  ‘You’re not coming with us?’ Michael wants to know.

  ‘Peter doesn’t want you.’ Chris is struggling not to cry. He always gets a bit mean when he’s upset and trying not to show it. ‘He knows you don’t love him. He wants us.’

  I take a deep breath. Chris was always the smart one.

  ‘I love you,’ I tell him. ‘I love you and Michael more than anything else in the world. Please do this for me.’

  ‘But not Peter.’

  ‘Of course I love Peter.’ I take hold of him and press him close to me so that he can’t look me in the eye. He’ll be taller than me soon. One day, I’ll hug him and he’ll be the bigger party. And then I realize that may never happen now and it feels as though an Antarctic wind has blown straight through the car. I let him go and he pulls sulkily away.

  I say goodbye to them in their grandparents’ driveway. I want to hold them both again, to say something that might be meaningful in time. Except, I know that if I start I’ll never get away.

  It’s a short drive to the police station and stray fireworks are already going off around me. I pass houses with their coloured tin roofs, see Guys slumped against fences, families setting out for the bonfire, and I feel as though I’m seeing it all for the very last time.

  ‘Hello, Rachel.’

  I’ve known the desk sergeant since I was little. Now, I watch his face fall. ‘I’m not sure we have any news, I’m afraid, but I can call DS Savidge down for a word?’

  The station has an empty feel about it – everyone must be out supervising the fireworks, or simply enjoying them. I feel the need to be close to the sergeant all the same, to speak quietly.

  ‘Is Catrin still here? I know she was released last night, allowed to go home. Has that happened again?’

  Frowning, he shakes his head. ‘She’s still here. But, Rach – let me call Josh down.’

  I wait in the reception area, watching the lines of the sergeant’s face twitch as he has a muttered telephone conversation.

  ‘He’s on his way.’ The telephone receiver clicks back into place. ‘Can I get you something? Tea?’

  I shake my head. I don’t want him to do anything now that he might be sorry for later. And that includes showing me acts of kindness.

  Josh Savidge looks tense when he appears after a minute or two. He thinks I’m here to demand answers, to blame him for my son’s continuing disappearance. He’ll soon be wishing I were.

  ‘Rachel, I’m sorry. There’s nothing new.’ He looks round, as though for inspiration. ‘Look, come and have a cup of tea. The interview room’s free, isn’t it, Neil? No, actually, let’s go into the staff room.’

  Everyone is determined to be kind to me. ‘You might want to make it a bit more formal. I’ve come to make a statement.’

  He blinks at me. ‘OK, right.’ He blinks some more. ‘Remembered something, have you? OK, then. Well, if you’d like to follow me.’

  The walls on either side of the corridor seem to be closing in.

  ‘Next on your right.’

  We enter a standard box of a room, with a barred window high in one wall and a table that is too big for the four chairs arranged around it. A pile of four more chairs is stacked in one corner. There is recording equipment. Through the window, I see a rocket fly into the sky. It explodes into lilac stars and I can’t help remembering that Peter hated fireworks, that he cried and cried last year when we took him to see them. ‘Bit too horrid, Daddy,’ he whimpered into his father’s shoulder.

  ‘It seems quiet here. The station, I mean.’

  ‘Most people are out at the fireworks. There’s a lot of people from the Princess Royal in town still a
nd things are a bit – we only have a skeleton staff here.’ Josh is looking guilty, as though expecting me to blame him for not having all hands on deck when my son is still missing. Except, why should they? They believe Catrin has killed him and the urgency to find his body doesn’t merit running up a massive overtime bill.

  Skye McNair joins us seconds later, banging her shin on the table as she sits down. There is what looks like a ketchup stain on her collar and her bun is crooked.

  Savidge has a notebook open in front of him. After a few seconds of fumbling around, Skye pulls one out too. They both find a moment of stillness, wait for me to start.

  ‘You said there was something you’d remembered, Rachel,’ Savidge prompts.

  I take a second to steady myself, then look him directly in the eyes.

  ‘I killed my son, Detective Sergeant. I killed Peter Grimwood.’

  35

  Silence in the room. Somewhere there is a clock, maybe on the wall behind me, I can hear it ticking. Then the rumble from someone’s stomach. I look steadily back at Savidge, can see Skye from the corner of my eye. They think they’re hearing things. I give them time. In fact I start to count in my head. One, two … when I reach four, Savidge leans across the table towards me.

  ‘Could you repeat that, Rachel?’

  ‘Sarge—’

  ‘Hang on a minute, Skye. Rachel?’

  ‘Sarge, we need to caution her.’ Skye turns too quickly and her chair almost tips. ‘We should switch the recorder on.’

  He sees the sense of this and gets up.

  Skye looks at me with wide frightened eyes, then round at the senior officer, who is fumbling with the recording equipment. ‘Rachel Grimwood, you are here voluntarily to make a statement,’ she begins. ‘You are not under arrest at present, but may be in the near future. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  Savidge takes his seat at her side and looks at me as though I’ve changed right in front of him. As, I guess, I have.

  ‘Sarge, was that OK? What I just said?’ Skye is glancing nervously at the man next to her.

  ‘It was fine. Well done, love.’ He can’t take his eyes off me.

  ‘Rachel.’ Skye again. ‘Do you understand your rights as you’ve just been, I mean, had them read to you?’

  Their utter bewilderment has a calming effect. It feels as though I am in charge, not they. ‘I do, thank you.’

  Savidge speaks the formalities into the tape. We give our names, and then he asks me once again to repeat my confession.

  ‘I killed my son,’ I say. ‘It wasn’t Catrin Quinn. It was me. I’m sorry I’ve been wasting your time.’

  They’re struggling to take it in. I wait for them to ask me when, where, to give a full account of how, exactly, I committed the most unspeakable act that either of them can think of.

  ‘Why?’ Skye asks instead. I don’t mind. This one is easy to answer.

  ‘I didn’t love him,’ I say.

  They continue staring.

  ‘I never did love him,’ I repeat. ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘You love your other two sons?’ Skye asks me.

  ‘More than anything.’

  ‘Then why not Peter?’ Her voice is pitched low, gentle, as though she is speaking to an invalid.

  It’s a good question, but one I’ll struggle to answer properly. This is something I have never before articulated. I’ve spoken to no one about my relationship with my youngest son. Not to anyone, husband, parents, even my horse, have I admitted my feelings for him to be anything less than they should be. I’ve never even allowed myself to think it, but the truth is, it has always been completely impossible for me to feel anything akin to love for him.

  ‘Three years ago, before you came back from college in England, Skye, I killed two children. I know you know about it. Josh certainly does.’

  ‘I know there was an accident.’ In the dimly lit room, Skye’s hair seems to be an extra source of light. ‘A terrible accident. That’s not quite the same thing.’

  ‘Try telling that to my best friend.’

  ‘Go on, Mrs Grimwood,’ Josh tells me. ‘In your own time.’

  ‘After the accident, I never felt I deserved my own sons to be alive, let alone that another one should be born. I used to think it would have been fairer if one of my boys had gone over that cliff and one of Catrin’s. That would have been dreadful but fair, don’t you think?’

  I wait for the answer I know I’m never going to get. As if fairness has anything to do with the random cruelty that is accidental death.

  ‘One of my sons should have died. Then Catrin would still have had one child. Her life wouldn’t have fallen apart, she wouldn’t have become ill, wouldn’t have lost the baby she was carrying.’

  They are looking at me as though I am slightly mad. Only slightly? I have more work to do.

  ‘If that had happened, we’d both have two children now and the grief would have been terrible, but we’d have coped with it, together. We did everything together. That’s how it should have been.’

  ‘You’re saying you wish one of your sons had died?’

  ‘No, of course not. Just that it would have been fair. If you have to choose between terrible grief and terrible guilt, I think grief is easier, in the end. Don’t you?’

  Skye starts to speak, but it’s suddenly very important to me that I get something in first. ‘Not that I could ever decide which I’d have given up. I love them both so much, my big, serious clever boy and my little cuddly one. I love my two sons more than anything.’

  ‘But not your youngest one?’ She has asked me that already, just doesn’t seem able to absorb the truth of what I’m telling her. I gave birth to a child. I didn’t love him.

  ‘I couldn’t. I was never cruel to him. I didn’t mistreat him. I fed him and kept him clean. But I couldn’t play with him, or sing to him, or cuddle him the way I did with the other two. And the bond wasn’t there. The postnatal chemicals didn’t flood my brain the way they’re supposed to, telling me that I’d give my life for this tiny soul. All the normal mother–baby stuff simply didn’t work with him.’

  And the guilt that was already eating me up had a fresh banquet to feed on.

  From outside comes the sound of shouting, running footsteps. A can is kicked along the street. It’s time for the bonfire to be lit, for the barbecues to start serving food, but not everyone, it seems, is at the school field.

  ‘Were you diagnosed as having postnatal depression? That can be pretty serious.’ Skye seems to have taken over the interview.

  ‘I had every type of depression ever listed, and quite a few new ones as well.’ In a strange way, saying all this aloud for the first time is something of a relief. I certainly never said any of it to Sapphire Pirrus during the enforced counselling sessions. ‘I barely remember the first year of his life, if I’m honest. Then suddenly, I had this screaming, demanding toddler to deal with. It was as though he’d appeared from nowhere. As though a little changeling had come to live with us.’

  ‘Changeling?’ Josh has woken up. ‘What’s a changeling?’

  Skye turns to him for a second. ‘Fairy child. British folklore, Sarge. The fairies stole away human infants and left fairy children in their place. Only they were mean and bad-tempered and ugly. Is that how you thought about Peter, Mrs Grimwood?’

  I have a sudden image of the child, gazing at me through the bars of his cot, plump from sleep. ‘No, of course he wasn’t any of those things. He was a pretty little boy. Just not my pretty little boy.’

  Josh clears his throat. ‘So what happened on Thursday afternoon? The afternoon of the third of November.’

  I give myself time. This will be harder.

  ‘I was in my room.’ I’m seeing it as I speak. Waking to find the late-afternoon sunshine had fled, to be replaced with an eerie, ominous darkness. I can h
ear the sound of the ocean through the open window, catch the bitter salt smell that wafts in from time to time.

  ‘The boys came home.’ I hear the car that drops them off, Cathy shouting goodbye, their footsteps on the stairs. I hear the baby yelling for their attention, but they always come to me first.

  ‘They came into my room.’ I was in the bathroom by this time, trying to shake off the dopiness. ‘I told them I had a headache.’ I didn’t, I just couldn’t face those noisy few hours before bedtime. There are times when I feel as though my children are throwing tiny stones at me, because one demand comes after another. Mum, can I have a packet of crisps? Mum, can I have a biscuit? Mum, Peter’s got a dirty nappy. Mum, my finger hurts. It’s relentless, dealing with three boys, even when they’re not quarrelling, which is a good 50 per cent of the time. Sander knows I struggle with tea and bedtime. He usually comes home early.

  Something hits the outside wall. Savidge jumps up and goes to the window. ‘Kids,’ he mutters when he comes back. ‘Go on, Mrs Grimwood, the boys were home from school, you had a headache.’

  ‘Chris and Michael went into Peter’s room.’ I hear his squeals of delight when he sees them, the low grunt Chris makes when he picks his brother up. ‘I think Chris changed him.’

  More shouts from outside. Both pairs of eyes opposite flick to the window and back. Skye nods at me to go on.

  ‘Then they all went outside. I could hear them, running about, shouting to each other.

  ‘They were so good with him, my two. So fond, so caring of their little brother. Then the sounds of giggling and shouting fell quiet. I couldn’t hear them any more. I remembered my mother’s warnings about the loose garden gate. I remembered the eclipse, that Chris and Michael would probably head down to the beach to watch it.

  ‘I got up. I heard a car outside and went to the window. I saw Catrin’s car, then Catrin herself getting out and bending down in the road.’

  ‘You told us all this when we spoke to you before.’ Skye frowns and starts flicking back through her notes.

  ‘When she stood up again, she was carrying the child,’ I ignore Skye’s interruption. ‘He must have got out on to the road somehow. I told you all this. What I didn’t tell you is that I then saw her lean over the gate, put him down and get back into her car and drive away.’