This I Would Kill For

by Anne Buist

  The sensation was immediate—the bean felt like it had done a complete somersault.

  Bile filled Natalie’s mouth as lights started to flicker at the edge of her peripheral vision. She groaned and rolled over; fell to the floor, with Malik half on the couch and half on the floor beside her.

  Even if she’d had something to hit him with she wouldn’t have been able to manage it—just breathing was hard enough. Nor would she have been able to focus on looking for the phone or speaking on it if she had found it. It’s too early was all she could think, as waves of regret seemed to pass through her whole body.

  What had Malik intended? Natalie didn’t know, though she was pretty sure Chris wasn’t on any plane yet. If so, there would have been no need for Malik to take Chelsea before the police arrived. More than likely Ama, Youssef and Chris were at the airport waiting for Malik and Chelsea. Whether Malik wanted to harm Jenna and Natalie, or just immobilise them, only he would ever know.

  Natalie saw him try to stand, wondered if he would kick her, and curled up to protect the bean. Its level of activity suggested distress, and it might be in its last moments of life. What happened next was a blur. She remembered saying sorry to the bean, feeling an overwhelming sense that she was never going to get a chance to be a mother. The shattering regret that came with the realisation.

  There was a blood-curdling scream, and she couldn’t make sense of where it had come from. Malik’s expression was more bewilderment than anything else; it seemed out of keeping with the sound. He fell onto one knee, face white, toppling over. Natalie managed to shift sideways so that he didn’t fall directly on top of her—instead she found her legs pinned underneath his prostrate body.

  She half-raised herself. Looked to Jenna, who had now picked up the gun and was watching her ex-husband. She turned and their eyes locked. ‘I had to,’ she said calmly. ‘He was going to kill us both.’

  Malik hadn’t moved. Natalie slowly turned towards him. Tried to make sense of the blood that was spreading across the back of his shirt, away from the knife handle that was protruding from between his ribs. Not arterial, she thought, too dark, too slow. Too far off centre to get the aorta or vena cava, the big blood vessels. But internally? Right side; it might have got his liver. Might well kill him.

  Kill him. Blood. A lot of it. Her memories would come when the time was right, Declan had said. And as Natalie battled to stay conscious, it seemed like the time had come. For a moment, she was in another room, in another time, thirty years earlier. And there was blood there too.

  Childhood memories, walled up in their own little capsule—but now the walls were crumbling.

  Two uniformed policemen came through the door from the kitchen, guns drawn. Several things happened at once.

  Jenna swung around, Malik’s fake gun in her hand, and as they yelled, ‘Drop it,’ Natalie screamed, ‘It isn’t real,’ and a gunshot was fired.

  Or at least she thought that was what happened. But maybe she was seeing things too, because she was sure it was Liam who was holding her before she passed out. She thought she said to him, ‘Tell Damian I’m sorry about the bean.’

  55

  Natalie woke in hospital. She wanted to yell I don’t belong here, it’s too early; instead she focused on looking at a white ceiling as she was wheeled from the emergency department to ultrasound, back to the ED, then to the ward.

  The room had mildew, and there was a vase of orchids in one corner. The low swish of a ceiling fan drowned out the voices of the nurses handing over at the end of the shift. It took her back to the ICU, to rehab. After the motorbike accident, hospital had been her home for nearly a year. Back then, she couldn’t move. Now she didn’t want to.

  She was going to lose the bean. Of course she was. What sort of mother would she have been anyway? She pictured Damian picking up his daughter—dressed in a mini-goth outfit—and them fighting over what was appropriate. They’d told her it was a girl, heart still beating when she’d arrived, but the placenta…

  She looked at the fan and counted rotations. Tried not to picture the daughter Damian might never get to dance with.

  Liam was there when she got to the hospital. He had been at Luke’s house: he’d arrived at the same time as the police, but hadn’t been allowed in the ambulance.

  ‘My car has a tracker,’ he told her. ‘I was thinking up how many charges I could bring against you and McBride.’

  ‘Damian? What did he have to do with anything?’

  ‘I figured that’s whose house it was. Thought the cops there were his mates. You can imagine my surprise when I walked into…’ He shook his head. ‘Just get better, okay? Do what you’re told for a change?’

  He paused. ‘No matter what happens, remember all parents have regrets at times. Be kind to yourself. If you lose the…bean…it was an accident.’

  Natalie stared after him as Liam was ushered out to allow another medical examination. Hadn’t she told him to piss off? She closed her eyes and concentrated on not crying. Listened as she was told she’d be confined to bed to give the bean any chance at all.

  She did the police interview in the hospital room the next morning. Damian watched as she gave her statement. She told SC Hudson that they needed to talk to Stephen Radford about the abuse rather than Luke, but he appeared to have already heard this and wanted to focus on the assault.

  ‘Malik Essa attacked you when you went to call the emergency line?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what happened then?’

  ‘Until then,’ said Natalie, ‘Malik had us both at gunpoint. He’d made it clear that he wanted Chelsea and that he was then going with—or following—the rest of his family and his other child to Egypt. Jenna took the only chance she had to stop him.’

  She had always known this case might force her to choose between the truth and loyalty to her patient. The law is my domain, Liam had told her. Let the judge decide. And Declan: You’re not Solomon.

  ‘You thought he was going to kill you?’

  Natalie hesitated. ‘By the time I tried to call the police, I was pretty sure the gun wasn’t real.’

  ‘How could you tell?’

  ‘I knew he imports replica guns.’ Natalie anticipated the next question. ‘Sorry: patient confidentiality. But…’ She looked directly at SC Hudson. ‘He attacked me. He may have killed my unborn child.’

  SC Hudson paused, frowned. ‘So, you were both in the living room, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you tell me how Jenna came to have the knife?’

  ‘I don’t know when she got it.’

  ‘You were going in and out of consciousness?’ SC Hudson asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So while Malik was attacking you, she could have gone to the kitchen?’

  Natalie paused. ‘Is that what she said?’

  ‘Can you answer the question, please?’

  ‘Yes, it’s possible.’ And it was. Without her having to play Solomon.

  After SC Hudson left, Damian didn’t mince words.

  ‘You’re dangerous, you know that, right?’

  Natalie shrugged. ‘Chelsea and Jenna are okay?’

  ‘Yes. Chelsea was with Luke—they were waiting for a phone call from Jenna. She’d told Luke that she wanted to discuss things without the children there—told him she could do better with Malik one on one.’ Damian’s expression suggested he didn’t believe a word of it.

  ‘And Malik?’

  ‘Stable in ICU. Lost a lot of blood from the liver nick, but they think he’ll make it.’

  ‘Did they find Chris?’

  ‘The plane hadn’t taken off. They all had Egyptian passports. Might be fake, but they were good enough to get them through.’

  ‘Hadn’t Jenna’s lawyer put an alert on to stop them being allowed to go?’

  ‘No idea.’ Maybe her lawyer had contacted the passport office, rather than Border Force.

  ‘Will they be charged?’ asked Natalie.

>   ‘Jesus, I’d like to throw the book at the lot of you. Stephen Radford will be brought in for some serious questioning. Seems Jenna’s keen to press charges, both in her own right and for her daughter. Other charges? Ama for trying to take the child illegally? Yes. Malik? A string. Jenna?’ His eyes narrowed.

  If it were up to him, Natalie thought: yes. But SC Hudson’s questions hadn’t been designed to elicit anything other than the simplest answer.

  In the end, at least Jenna was trying. Better for Chelsea to have her than essentially lose both parents and both sets of grandparents in one day.

  Natalie nodded, stared at the ceiling. ‘You’re feeling guilty you flipped me off. Don’t be, Damian. Wasn’t your fault. I’m…I’m sorry about the bean, if…you know.’

  Damian was still fuming. ‘You aren’t a fucking policewoman, Natalie. And if you were, you’d know better. You’re pregnant. What the hell were you thinking?’

  He got up to leave. ‘Did Liam speak with you?’ she asked suddenly, thinking of what Liam had told her.

  Damian stopped in the doorway. ‘He seemed to be under the impression we were an item.’ He paused. ‘I told him that was my fantasy, not yours. You obviously love the jerk, Natalie. Seems he feels the same.’ The brief puzzled expression confirmed for Natalie what she had always known. Damian was a decent bloke, but it wasn’t in him to do what Liam was prepared to do—raise another man’s child. Not with her, anyway.

  Her hospital room seemed to have a revolving door. No sooner had Damian left than her mother was there.

  ‘Declan would probably tell me not to yell at you for worrying me half to death. Again.’

  ‘And he’d be right.’

  ‘You gave us all a scare. Even Blake. He nearly passed out when he heard the police almost shot you because of a replica gun.’

  Natalie gave her mother a wry smile.

  ‘And Maddison…says you can even have first name option. Her choice is Lauren if it’s a girl.’

  Natalie managed to stop herself laughing. Just. ‘Tell her it’s fine—that one’s all hers.’

  Jan looked at her awkwardly, fiddled with the flowers.

  ‘Declan said you know that I’ve been asking him for advice.’ Natalie nodded.

  ‘It…he hasn’t told you it’s more than that. I’ve known him…for a long time.’

  Natalie stared at her mother. Declan’s my father. If Jan knew what she was thinking, she didn’t rush to confirm or deny. She looked the way she always did, right before Natalie launched into an attack and they would both end up angry, not speaking for days.

  This time Natalie stopped the words that had already formed. The You lied, the You had no right. In her mother’s awkwardness, even now at fifty-five, she saw the woman Jan had once been. The lioness, fiercely protective if misguided. More than that, she saw herself. The uncertainty in her own eyes every time she looked in the mirror and asked herself, Should I try and make it work with Damian, for the bean versus The bean will be happy if I am…and Liam is more right for me despite everything.

  This time, Natalie took a breath. Said to her mother, ‘Declan is a good listener and…you found a wise counsel for me.’

  Her mother must have sensed the unspoken question. ‘I saw him when you were two years old, Natalie.’

  Ah. His patient, not his girlfriend. Thank God. It might have taken her another thirty-four years to forgive Declan for not telling her.

  ‘Actually,’ Jan said, sitting on the chair by the bed, ‘you saw him.’

  ‘I saw him?’

  Jan nodded. ‘You were nearly three. Very verbal—full sentences. You could do a good argument even then.’

  They both smiled, cautious smiles that identified a vulnerability for them both, though Natalie only half-knew where her mother was going. She closed her eyes, remembered the blood seeping across Malik’s shirt. How it had taken her back to another bloody scene from long ago. ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ and another teddy bear song, ‘Round and Round the Garden’. She felt a wave of guilt and shame—pain that made no sense, yet was there in her gut as if it had been yesterday.

  ‘Then…’ Jan waited for Natalie to open her eyes, locked with them, a silent plea to be forgiven. Before, Natalie had seen only her own pain and reacted defensively with anger. Now she sat with it. Allowed the inner turmoil of a three-year-old to bubble inside, despite the panic that threatened to push her to the edge.

  ‘You stopped talking. Wouldn’t say a word. To anyone.’

  ‘Declan helped me speak again.’ Which was why she had trusted him in the midst of her adolescent anger. Part of her had recognised him, years later.

  Jan nodded.

  Natalie looked at the tears rolling down her mother’s face. ‘Why, Mum? Why did I stop talking?’

  Her mother broke away from Natalie’s gaze, and for a moment Natalie thought she would leave. But she got up and walked over to the window, gazing out over the busy street below.

  ‘Declan tells me I have to tell you. That you’re ready.’ Jan took a breath. ‘I hope he’s right because I’m not sure I am. And I’m breaking a promise to do it.’

  ‘A promise to my father?’

  Jan nodded. ‘In the end…you are more important than he ever was. I only ever kept it because I thought it was best for you. Declan says it’s not—last time I saw him he was pretty blunt—and he’s right. Lately I’ve kept my mouth shut because it’s easier for me.’

  There was a long pause while Jan gathered her thoughts. Her courage.

  ‘Your father was part of my brief rebellion,’ Jan said. ‘Nan didn’t like him and made the mistake—’ Jan shook her head. ‘One I didn’t learn from. Remember I told you Eoin was no good for you?’

  Eoin who died in the bike smash that put sixteen-year-old Natalie in hospital for a year. ‘Yes. It made him so much more attractive.’

  ‘Which was exactly what happened with your father,’ Jan said. ‘It wasn’t that he was that bad a guy, but he was from a very different kind of family and pretty wild.’

  What sort of wild?

  ‘We went out for a few months. I…we’d already broken up when I found out I was pregnant.’

  Repeating patterns. Natalie shook her head at the stupidity of life. How on earth had she managed that?

  ‘We tried to make it work for a while. He and his family wanted us to get married. Nan thought we should too—old school. But…’ Jan shrugged. ‘I already knew Craig. I’ve loved him since I was fifteen. He was my best friend’s brother; he had another girlfriend when I was going out with your father.’

  She’d always loved Craig? Natalie stared at her mother. Her life-long fantasy was that her father had been the love of Jan’s life; that she’d settled for Craig…Of course her mother loved Craig. It was why they were so damn happy. Craig. The stepfather who she had given hell—because she had played out on her mother’s feelings of guilt. And who, despite everything, had been a great father to her.

  ‘He waited for me,’ said Jan quietly. ‘Didn’t put on pressure, just waited for me to sort it out. And was there to catch us both.’

  Like Liam.

  ‘What happened, Mum?’

  ‘Oh, your father adored you. Made it harder not to keep trying.’ Jan had the grace to give Natalie an apologetic look. ‘Not that he was any use, of course. Never changed a single nappy, never stopped long enough to do anything practical that a baby needed. He was good at getting you out of bed; didn’t seem to realise babies need to sleep as well. But God, you loved him. Your eyes lit up every time he came into the room. Dad was your first word and you’d call for him when you were upset. It was me that had to manage the fallout, though.’

  Natalie caught the remnant edge in her mother’s voice. Being fair wasn’t part of the deal kids gave you. The parents had to be the adults.

  ‘You never said Dad again, after. Ever. You started talking again, but it was like you’d wiped everything.’

  Which she had; dissociation and denial was how the br
ain coped with trauma, and the trauma had been enough to keep the memory buried. Right up until the last few months, when working with Chelsea had touched the memories and the bloodshed in Luke’s house had ripped the last of the scab away.

  I am standing at the door, and in my hand is my favourite teddy bear that goes with me everywhere. I must have come into the room ahead of my mother, because this memory does not have her in it, only me, calling Daddy and expecting him to pick me up in his arms and throw me into the air, to sing songs and whirl me around in that breathless moment where I am loved; where I am the centre of the universe.

  But something is wrong. His eyes are glazed and he isn’t looking at me. Then there is water. Water everywhere and it’s not the way the bath normally is. It’s red; and I hear screams and my one-eyed teddy is lying in a puddle staring at me, blaming me, and then my Daddy disappears. And I am left with the certainty that I killed him.

  ‘We’d had a fight the night before,’ her mother was saying, over thirty years later. ‘And you and I had gone to stay at Nan’s. He had been very…erratic. I didn’t understand then, but…’

  ‘He had bipolar.’

  Jan nodded. ‘Undiagnosed. I’d tried to get him to see someone but he wouldn’t. He…he’d slashed his wrists to the bone and there he was in the bath. It was…’ She shuddered. ‘Terrifying. And you saw him first.’

  ‘Oh, Mum.’ Natalie held her arm out and her mother took her hand, giving it a clumsy squeeze. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘It felt like it was. I blamed myself for arguing, for leaving him alone. I blamed myself for getting pregnant…Not for having you, but…Well, when you were an idea rather than a person it would have been easier…But then I felt guilty for thinking that, for subjecting you to…For mucking up Craig’s life. In the end, I just had to get on with it. And part of that was leaving Nick and his family behind.’

  Nick. Her father had a name.

  ‘Did his family…want to be involved?’

  Jan nodded. ‘I didn’t have any beef with them, but in the end, they respected my wishes, more or less.’