by Jane Corry
‘I am worried about you,’ Ed kept saying. ‘You’re not eating properly. Poppy won’t have enough milk.’
That could be another way for them to die, then. They could both perish from malnutrition. Then they could join Mamma in heaven.
‘She keeps dreaming about a letter,’ she overheard Ed tell the health visitor who’d been called out to check up on her. She always listened outside the door when they thought she’d gone back to bed.
‘Giving birth is a traumatic event, you know,’ came the crisp reply. ‘She’s entitled to a few nightmares.’
Nightmares? They had no idea of the turmoil churning round and round in her head. Another plan was needed. But what? There was no way out. Just an endless blackness ahead that swallowed her up, threatening to suffocate her. A woman in the paper the other day had suffocated her baby. She’d got ten years. It would have been more if she hadn’t had postnatal depression. But Carla didn’t have that. Ed said it was a myth. Lily had been fine when she had had Tom. When you had a baby you just had to accept that life had changed and get on with it.
This meant doing things his way.
‘I’ve cooked us a chicken.’ Ed took her by the elbow and steered her towards the table. ‘It will do you good. Come on, Carla. You know this is your favourite.’
Eat? How could she eat?
He poured another glass of wine.
‘Haven’t you had enough?’ she snapped.
‘What are you going to do about it then? Hit me again, like you did in front of Tom that time?’
‘I didn’t hit you.’ Carla wished he’d stop going on about it. She’d only reached out to stop him from opening another bottle, at the same time as he’d turned towards her. God knows one of them needed to be sane while they looked after Lily’s son.
‘I’m going to have another bloody drink, if only to celebrate my birthday. That’s right. You’d forgotten, hadn’t you?’
No wonder he was cross. But Poppy took up all her time. She couldn’t remember everything!
She went to the sink, pulling on her washing-up gloves, shaking with fear and rage. (‘Always look after your hands,’ Mamma used to say.)
‘Don’t wash up those pans before we’ve eaten. I’ve told you. I’ll do it myself later.’
She ran the hot water, furiously squirting washing-up liquid into the bowl.
Her heart fell at the sound of the doorbell. The man next door again? He had already complained about the rows.
‘You.’
Surely Ed wouldn’t speak that rudely to their neighbour?
‘Rupert!’ Carla felt her face flushing as she turned round to face him.
‘Forgive me for just calling in, but I found myself in the area.’
He held out a beautifully wrapped present: silver paper with curly ribbons.
Carla began to sweat with fear and excitement and terror and hope: all mixed up in an impossible way.
‘May I look at her? It’s a little girl, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Ed crisply. ‘But actually we’re about to eat so –’
‘She’s just here,’ cut in Carla.
Holy mother of God. Her husband was staring at Rupert’s red hair. Surely he wouldn’t be thinking …
Rupert’s face softened. ‘Isn’t she lovely? I hadn’t realized how small they are. Is –’
‘I said we’re about to eat.’
How rude of Ed! Flustered, Carla tried to peel off her washing-up gloves but they wouldn’t come.
‘Would you like to stay too?’ The invitation tumbled out of her mouth. Please, she wanted to say. Please. I need you. When you’ve gone, Ed will say something. There’ll be another row …
‘I think,’ said Rupert with a glance at Ed’s dark face, ‘I should go. Katie – my fiancée – will be waiting for me.’
So she was still around. All her hopes, all her desperate, crazy ideas that she’d had when Rupert had rung the bell, came crashing down.
‘Fiancée?’ scoffed Ed, barely waiting for the door to close on their visitor. ‘I’ll bet. How many times has that kid been round here?’
His voice made Poppy stir in her carrycot at the far end of the kitchen. (Ed would not let her out of their sight.)
‘What do you mean?’
Ed’s face was close now. ‘I saw you blush when he came in. I saw how you tried to speak normally.’ Spit was flying out of his mouth. ‘He has the same colour hair as our daughter. If she is our daughter.’
‘Don’t be so ridiculous. You know your grandfather had red hair. You yourself have commented on how it often skips a generation.’
He had her wrists now, squeezing them hard. ‘How very convenient! But we both know what your morals are like.’
Struggling, she spat back, ‘And what about yours? You didn’t mind leaving your wife for me, did you?’
‘And you didn’t mind tempting me away from her.’
What happened next? What happened next? How many times was she to be asked that in the next few days, the next few weeks, the next few months.
All Carla knew was this. It was sudden.
All she cared to remember was this.
There was a scream. Poppy from the carrycot. Another scream. Her own as Ed began to shake her by the shoulders.
The carving knife.
The green-handled carving knife. Another possession which Lily had left behind.
A terrible, body-shaking groan.
Blood.
And then running. Running across the park with all those thoughts racing up and down and side to side.
I hate him. I hate him.
Mamma! Where are you?
If only they could start all over again.
55
Lily
October 2015
‘A man has been found stabbed to death in his West London home. It is thought that …’
Then Tom’s shout drowns out the radio. ‘You’ve got to do it first, Mum! I’ve told you before.’
How stupid of me. I know perfectly well that Tom needs me to buckle up my seat belt before he does his. Precisely four seconds before him, actually. He times it with his watch. It’s another of his rituals. One which, on a normal day, is surely not too difficult to follow.
But for some reason I am feeling wobbly today. Perhaps I’m still tired after being in London yesterday. Perhaps it’s the impending meeting with Tom’s headmistress about the recent ‘incident’. Perhaps it’s because I’ve got a particularly tricky appointment with an NHS official this afternoon, concerning another set of lost notes following the birth of an oxygen-deprived child. Or perhaps it’s because I am infuriated by Ed’s latest declaration that he wants full-time custody of our son.
I start the engine, telling myself that there are plenty of men who live in that part of London. Stabbings happen every day. There is no reason – none at all – why it should be someone I know. But my skin has begun to form goose pimples of its own accord. At the T-junction, I take a left and then stop – over the line – just in time to allow a motorbike, which is surely going too fast, to go before me.
‘That motorcyclist could have died if you hadn’t stopped,’ comments Tom in a matter-of-fact tone.
Thanks.
‘He could have been left with only part of his brain, like Stephen,’ he continues. ‘Did you know that your skin weighs twice as much as your brain?’
He’s probably right. Tom usually is. But it’s Stephen I’m thinking of: the boy who has just joined Tom’s class. His pram had been hit by a lorry when he was just under a year old. The driver had been having a heart attack at the time. No one could blame him. Not even Stephen, who is quite happy in his own world. Not even his parents, who are devout Christians and claim it is their ‘challenge’ in life. It puts the rest of us to shame.
Including Ed. How on earth does he think he can ask for sole custody? He can barely make his father/son weekends, often cancelling at the last minute. It’s happened more and more since Carla had the baby. She has
n’t been well, apparently.
‘Look out,’ says Tom sharply, at the same time as the lorry on the other side of the road hoots loudly.
What’s happening to me? I’m not just driving badly. It’s not just the wet autumn leaves that made me skid just then. I’m completely losing concentration. But when your husband’s wife has just had a child, it does things to you. Until then, Ed and I had shared something (or rather someone) that neither of us had done with anyone else. It had created a bond which couldn’t be broken. But now he’ll be lying next to Carla, his arm around her. They will be looking at their baby – a girl, Ross tells me – with the kind of awe that Ed and I had when we first gazed at Tom. Ed will be telling her, as he told me, that she has been so brave. And he will be promising, as he did me, that he will be the best father he can possibly be.
At night, he would get up when the baby cried out. (Ed always insisted on that, bringing Tom back to bed with us so I could feed him, propped up against the pillows.) He would – I can see it so clearly! – feed his new baby daughter with milk which Carla has expressed into a bottle for night-time convenience. And he would be drawing them, sketching furiously as they slept, his charcoal sweeping over the page with love and tenderness.
It’s so unfair. I’ve always yearned for a daughter to dress up, take shopping, share confidences with. But Ed didn’t want us to have more children after Tom’s diagnosis.
Concentrate. We’re nearly at the school. Tom, who has been pretty cool up until now considering the trouble he’s in, appears distressed. I can always tell from the way he pulls out hairs from his arm. I selected one of them for the DNA test, some time ago.
I pull into the car park and face him. My son. My boy. My special boy, whom I would defend to my last breath. ‘We’ve been through this before, Tom,’ I say, looking him straight in the eyes and speaking slowly and calmly like the consultant advised. ‘We have to explain to your headmistress exactly why you hit Stephen.’
Tom’s face is set. Rebellious. Unrepentant. ‘I told you. He kicked my gym shoes out of line.’
‘But he didn’t mean to.’
‘I don’t care. He still did it. No one is allowed to touch my things.’
Don’t I know it. It means I have to buy lots of spares for when the originals are inevitably at some point rejected. Spare shoes. Spare jumpers. Spare hairbrushes.
I lean across to switch off the radio. Please God, I pray. Don’t let them give Tom another warning. My finger hovers over the ‘off’ button on the radio, but something makes me pause. It’s been half an hour since the last news announcement. In a minute, it will be time for another.
‘A man has been found stabbed to death in West London,’ says the presenter again, almost chirpily. ‘A woman has been arrested in connection with the murder.’
It’s at this moment that my phone rings.
‘You can’t get that.’ Tom taps his watch. ‘We’re already thirty seconds late.’
Caller Unknown.
I normally get this on the few occasions that Ed (or occasionally Carla) has rung to make arrangements about Tom’s weekends. Ed started withholding his number when calling me some months ago, perhaps because I’d sometimes ignored his calls. If it’s urgent, I tell myself, Ed – or whoever else it is – will ring again. Then I gather my notes, even though I’ve already primed myself, and walk across the playground with my son, who has got hold of my phone and is fiddling with it. At any other time I’d try to get it off him. But I’m too focused on the imminent meeting.
‘Thank you for coming,’ says the head.
Her face is kind, but she’s rather frumpy-looking. One of those women, I observe as I watch Tom positioning his chair so it’s in a straight line with mine, who wear knee-length woolly dresses with flat ankle boots. She claims to be an expert in Asperger syndrome, but at times I have the feeling she doesn’t get Tom because she addresses him with emotion-driven questions. Not a great idea, as I’ve found out to my cost.
‘I’d like to launch straight in, if that’s all right,’ she begins. ‘Tom, perhaps you’d like to tell me again why you hit Stephen even though we don’t tolerate violence in this school.’
Tom stares at her as if she’s stupid. ‘I’ve already explained. He kicked my gym shoes out of line.’
Did I say Tom doesn’t do emotion? Yet his eyes are welling up and his neck is going blotchy. Moving things in Tom’s book is against the law. His law. Tom’s Law, which only he understands.
The head is taking notes. I do the same. Our pens are competing. My son versus this woman who dresses so badly.
‘But that doesn’t excuse hitting someone.’
‘Carla hit Dad the other week. He wanted another drink and she was telling him not to.’
There’s a silence. Our pens stop moving at the same time.
‘Who is Carla?’ asks the head in a dangerously neutral voice.
‘My husband’s wife,’ I hear myself say.
The head raises her eyebrows. They need plucking, I notice. They’re grey and bushy.
‘I mean, my ex-husband’s wife,’ I add. It still feels odd to say it. How can someone else be Ed’s wife? How is it possible that Carla can be wearing his ring? Sharing a bed is one thing. But marriage? To the child who used to live next door?
The head’s voice is deceptively gentle. ‘Do you find it difficult, Tom, now your father is married to someone else?’
I rise to my feet, my hand on my son’s shoulder. ‘I’m not sure you should be asking questions like this. Not without an educational psychologist.’
Her eyes are locking with mine. I can see that behind the frumpy skirt and the boots there is a will of steel. I should have seen that before. Was I not frumpy once?
Suddenly a dog barks. At first I don’t twig. But then I remember Tom fiddling with my phone in the playground. He must have changed the ringtone. Again. This time it sounds like a Baskerville hound.
Ross.
The head’s eyes are disapproving. Tom is tipping his chair in deep anxiety.
‘Sorry,’ I say, fumbling to switch it off. But somehow I press the speakerphone button instead.
‘Lily?’
‘May I ring you back?’ I make an apologetic face at the head and turn it off speakerphone. ‘I’m in a meeting.’
‘Not really.’
My mouth goes dry. Something’s happened. I know it.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.’
‘Tell me,’ I want to say. But the words won’t come out. The head is staring. Tom’s chair is about to fall.
‘It’s Ed. There’s no easy way of saying this, I’m afraid. He’s dead. He’s been murdered.’
‘Dead?’ I repeat out loud.
Tom’s chair is back on the ground but his right index finger is digging round his teeth. It’s a sign of stress.
‘Murdered?’ I whisper.
‘Yes.’
A trickle of wee is running down my leg. Not in the headmistress’s study! It seems, ridiculously, more important than this terrible news.
Then the radio announcement comes back to me. The one in the car when Tom and I were parking.
A man has been found stabbed to death in his West London home …
No. NO. People on the radio bear no relation to people in real life. Victims of crashes on the motorway or stabbings in Stockwell, they all belong to other families. Not to mine. Not my husband who isn’t my husband any more.
‘Carla has been arrested.’ Ross sounds like he can’t believe it either.
And then the radio announcement continues in my head. A woman has been arrested in connection with the murder.
Tom is tugging at my sleeve now. ‘Why is your face funny, Mum?’
‘In a minute, Tom.’
Cupping the phone, I turn away from the head and my son. ‘She … she did it?’ I whisper, my words falling out around themselves.
I can sense Ross nodding. See him now standing there. Trying to hold himself together.
/> ‘She’s in a police cell. But that’s not all.’
What? I want to say. What else can possibly have happened that compares with this?
‘Carla wants to see you, Lily.’
There’s a strange sound.
As though someone has just sat on the floor, heaving a big sigh.
If I didn’t know her better, I’d think it was a ‘giving up’ kind of sigh.
Listen, I try to say. Maybe we can sort this out together.
But my words won’t come out.
I don’t have enough breath to speak.
What if I’m dead by the time they find me?
Will they work out what really happened?
56
Carla
No comment.
That’s what you told your clients to say when they were arrested. It was one of the few parts of criminal law that had stuck.
‘No comment,’ she repeated. It was becoming a refrain. A tune that accompanied the pulse that was beating on both sides of her head.
‘Tell me what happened,’ said a voice. It was a woman’s voice, coming from a dark-blue suit sitting opposite her at the desk. But she must not look at her. If she did, she might say something she should not.
Breathe deeply.
No comment.
Inside her head, the events of the last few hours rolled over and over again like a film repeated in quick succession.
Rupert’s visit.
Ed yelling.
A knife.
Blood.
Poppy yelling.
Ed groaning.
A face.
A man’s face.
Then running.
The sudden realization that she’d left Poppy behind.
Mamma’s voice in her head.
Telling her to get rid of the gloves.
A hand on hers.
A firm hand.
Sirens.
Handcuffs.
People staring.
The shame of the police car.
No comment.
Stairs going down.
A mattress.