The Woman Before Me

by Ruth Dugdall

  “Who? Emma?”

  “I heard her. Having sex.”

  Cate thought back to the witness statements. “But Emma was sleeping alone.”

  Rose muffled her face into the thin pillow, howling. “Luke, your beautiful boy. Oh Jason . . .”

  “What is it Rose? Tell me.”

  “With Luke still in my arms I went into the hall. I could hear the noises coming from Emma. Loud and noisy and then I heard him.”

  “Dominic?”

  “I heard Jason. My Jason. Saying her name.”

  Cate stopped moving her hand, stunned. “Jason was with Emma that night?”

  “I stood and listened. She’d promised me she’d stay away from him; we’d made a bargain. I’d gone to say goodbye. But she’d lied when she said she wouldn’t see Jason. He was there.”

  “So is that why you started the fire?”

  “Oh Luke! How wonderful, to never wake. To never again feel pain or loss or grief.”

  “Rose?”

  “I put Luke back into his cot. I left the house, I felt like burning the place down, but I didn’t”

  “So the fire started after you left? It was Emma or Jason who dropped the cigarette. Why didn’t you tell the police that?”

  Rose’s rocking intensified.

  Cate sat back on the cell floor, slowly realising what had happened. She had assessed Rose as dangerous because she had never accepted responsibility, but this was because she was innocent. The fire was started after she left, by Emma or Jason, and they had both let Rose take the blame.

  Cate recalled Jason’s anger and his sobbing, his repeated mantra, what have you done? Emma coming to the prison; I want you to recommend release.

  Rose’s voice was whiney and weak, her rocking erratic. “He was so peaceful. Wherever he went, Joel is there too. My two boys, side by side. With Mum, with Rita. Safe. I’m too tired for this.”

  This was suicidal talk. Cate propelled herself up and out of the cell.

  In the office Mark was still snoozing. She knocked his feet off the table

  “Cate! What are . . .”

  “Rose needs medical help. She’s having some kind of breakdown.”

  But Mark wasn’t listening. He was staring at Cate with a look of contempt. “You made me look like an idiot.”

  “Oh shit, Mark, not now. I’m worried about Rose.”

  “After what you said I’ve been the laughing stock round here.”

  “Mark, I’m sorry . . . but can we talk about this later, we really need to help Rose.”

  “You made a fool of me.”

  “And I regret it. But you’ve got to let it go. We’ll be working together for a good while, so we need to get over it.”

  “Easy for you to say. You don’t have Callahan and Holley on your back. Making out I’m not man enough to do it . . .”

  “For Christ’s sake, that’s just bullshit. Come on, Mark you’re better than that!”

  “Am I?” He looked up, shyly. He’s just a kid.

  “I want us to be friends, Mark. Let’s work together. Because right now I need you. Rose needs you.”

  Mark sat straight, as if called to attention.

  “She’s not well. I think she might be psychotic.”

  “She’s always been strange. Maybe not getting parole pushed her over the edge?”

  “We need to act fast, Mark, before she does something stupid to herself or someone else. Call Officer Todd. Get her to come over from the hospital unit.”

  Turning on her heels, Cate returned to Rose’s cell.

  Rose was her on back, swaying from side to side, her eyes were open. She was talking as if to some vision in front of her.

  “Oh Joel, Joel. Forgive me. It was only you I wanted. If only I’d been able to keep you, if only you were alive.”

  Cate put an arm around Rose, “I’ve just asked for some help to come. I think you need a doctor.”

  “Tears and the heat. The dead boy in my arms.”

  “Rose, what are you talking about? You said you’d already left the house when Luke died?”

  “Here,” Rose looked at Cate and pulled something from under her body. It was a black notebook. “You have this. You read it. It’s no use to me now.”

  Mark appeared at the cell door with Officer Todd by his side. He nodded to Cate, and took over.

  “Help is here, Rose, you’ll be okay now.”

  57

  Cate opened the small black book and read:

  Dear Jason, didn’t you wonder why I took the blame for your crime?

  This letter, this final letter in my Black Book will break your heart. It breaks mine.

  You kept silent all these years, and let me take the blame for Luke’s death. I heard you together. I saw the cigarettes on the table in the kitchen. I’ll never know which of you lit that cigarette, but it wasn’t me. I accepted the punishment because of Luke. Knowledge is a burden, which you’ll have to carry now. I can’t protect you from the truth.

  In my cell, Luke and Joel visit me. They’ve been alive in my arms and safe from harm, my sweet boys, safe from harm.

  The blackbirds are nesting, and no magpie can hurt them now.

  I only have seagulls, but where is the nest? They don’t seem to have any home.

  I’d just discovered that Luke was your son. I was holding him, seeing him closely for the first time. His golden-red hair, just like yours. I knew then that you’d betrayed me, not just once, but many times. I was angry. I was hurt.

  You never loved me, but you loved Joel. And I didn’t know what to do with my anger. Lying there in his incubator, he was so small, so vulnerable. His tiny limbs, purple against the white of the overlarge nametag bearing his name—Baby Wilks. The tag was to stop another woman taking him, to stop confusion over whether he was really mine. In those moments, looking into the incubator, he seemed so far from me. You loved him, I had seen how much. You didn’t love me. You had betrayed me.

  My love for Joel wasn’t the fleeting love most mothers have for their sons, quickly forgotten when they come home muddy or truant from school. My own mother’s love wasn’t strong. She was so weak, so ill, that she barely noticed Peter or me. She took her own life, leaving us in the dark. I would never do that to my baby.

  As I watched Joel I knew that at that moment, in that instance, my poorly, vulnerable son was loved as much as he ever could be. He was dependant on me in a way he never would be again. It was a moment of perfect love, of total devotion. If you had the choice, wouldn’t you end your life at a point when you were loved so totally, so truly, that it could not be surpassed? Wouldn’t it be the most perfect moment to die?

  What a gift I gave my precious boy, he wouldn’t suffer anymore. My hand went into the incubator and found his soft flesh, his bones visible under the thin skin. I stroked him, he opened his eyes and saw me, he knew. No pain, no tears, no grief.

  And you, Jason.

  I placed my palm, larger than his face, over his mouth and nose and cupped his delicate features. Snuffed out, like a candle. So quickly, so peacefully. When I started to cry and yell the nurse ran from where she had been chatting in the corridor. She pushed me aside and I started to shake. This would teach you, I thought. This is your fault.

  The nurses shouted, the doctors ran, and in the chaos my little boy was punctured with needles and pressed hard on the chest, his tiny face covered with a mask.

  I walked out of the room. I wanted to remember his stillness, not their futile attempts at resuscitation.

  It was hard afterwards, and I never stopped hating you for what you made me do, even when I had no choice but to love you. Then came the doubt. Those were the bad days.

  When I saw Luke, I thought he could save me. A chance to love your son, to heal the pain I felt.

  I killed Joel to hurt you. Just for one moment to be in control, for you to be the one who had a broken heart.

  That’s why I had to serve the sentence for your crime.

  Cate heard a wailin
g noise coming from outside and looked out of the cell window to the courtyard where Rose was being led to the medical centre flanked by Mark and Officer Todd. She was bent double like a newly bereaved mother, finally giving in to her grief and guilt. Locked up for four years already and two more to come, for a crime she hadn’t committed and forever haunted by the crime she had.

  Cate closed the book. As she took a step something snapped under her foot and, bending down, she saw it was a tiny birds nest, crushed on the floor. She gently collected the twigs together, holding it in the palm of her hands, realising that this was what Rose had been holding.

  She pushed the twigs carefully back into place, restoring its perfect symmetry. A home once again.