Wronged Sons, The

by Marrs, John

  Dougie was oblivious to the person outside the door. Then the footsteps stopped as quickly as they started. My scream came out as a muffled moan as my head was pushed ever deeper into the mattress. I begged for the bedroom door to open but my guardian angel paused, and walked away.

  I let out my last cry and then, to my eternal shame, I gave up my struggle. Everything fell quiet and all I heard was his shallow breath and the clink of his belt buckle against his shoes before he climaxed.

  Even when he finished, he continued to lie on me, his whole wretched body suffocating me. He remained inside me for a few more moments but I was no longer in pain. I’d been swallowed by numbness. My senses shut down until his weight lifted off me.

  Then he pulled his trousers up and left without saying another word.

  *

  I lay there for I don’t know how long, immobilised and still partially undressed, trying to make sense of what had happened. It didn’t make sense, but I needed it to.

  I think Dougie had punished me for taking you away. Somehow I’d been responsible for you having a mind of your own and making your own choices. I’d become the one he blamed for everything that went wrong in his life and he needed to force me to understand how helpless he felt by making me feel the same as him.

  A voice shouted my name from outside in the garden below and it brought me back to reality. I stood up, took clean underwear from the chest of drawers and headed for the en-suite bathroom. I wiped myself and saw blood on the toilet paper. I flushed it away and then fell to the floor. I was sick in the basin until there was nothing left to bring up. I was empty in every sense of the word.

  I raised my head and glanced at myself in the mirror. I’d never noticed how unforgiving it was until then. I wiped my eyes and mouth and forced myself not to cry. I held my hands together so tightly to stop my arms from shaking that I thought my fingers might break.

  Then after a time, slowly and awkwardly, I rejoined the party. I looked around nervously, but Dougie must have left. I was relieved when I couldn’t find you either. I had no idea how to tell you what had just happened.

  So I carried on, as best I could, like nothing was out of the ordinary. I smiled, I laughed and I topped up people’s glasses. But the life and soul of the party was dying inside.

  When the numbers finally dwindled in the early hours of the morning, and you, I presumed, were asleep in one of the kids’ empty bedrooms, I remained wide awake. I washed dishes, scooped rubbish into black bin bags and cleaned the house until everything was spotless.

  Except for me.

  ***

  Today, 7.40pm

  The world beyond her front doorstep could have exploded into a tumbling mass of fire and brimstone but it still wouldn’t have been enough to break the eye contact between them.

  He knew that for twenty-five years, he had got things very, very wrong. And that was by no means the worst of it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Northampton, Twenty-Seven Years Earlier

  September 18, 1.25am

  I pretended I was asleep when I heard you get up and leave the bedroom, then quietly close the front door.

  I knew you’d been having difficulties sleeping and guessed you’d probably gone to put in a few more hours in your office in the garage. You’d done that a lot and secretly I was glad. What Dougie did to me wasn’t my fault, but it didn’t stop me feeling like I was the most disgusting human being on the planet.

  I’d never been more in control of my emotions than I was for those first few days after his attack. I was afraid that if stopped running even for a minute, I’d grind to a halt and fall to the floor into a thousand shattered pieces. So if I kept moving, I wouldn’t have time to think. I occupied every waking moment of my day with multiple trips to the supermarket to buy groceries we didn’t need; playing pirate games with children who’d rather have been with their friends, or digging the garden until there was no soil left unturned.

  But being in bed alone - or with you - scared me. It gave me time to think. I considered telling you everything, but in the end I decided I’d have been the only one it would’ve helped. Trusting those closest to you was such a huge part of your make-up that I didn’t want to make everything you believed about your friend to be a lie. I’d have been in pieces seeing you so unhappy.

  You might have urged me to tell Roger, but I was drunk, so who’s to say I hadn’t willingly consented, then had an attack of conscience? There were no witnesses and I’d taken so many baths to wash him out of me, there was no physical evidence anything ever happened. It was absolutely my word against his.

  Even if there’d been enough proof for the police to charge him, a court case would have meant everyone knowing about that night. I’d have been forced to relive it to a room full of strangers judging me, and his barrister ripping me to shreds. I wasn’t strong enough to be humiliated like that.

  Then there were our kids to think about. What if James found out from a friend at school who’d overheard his parents talking? How could I explain to a five-year-old what the word rape meant?

  But most important to me was our relationship. I was terrified that you’d never look at me in the same way again; that you’d think of me as damaged goods. If you’d have grasped even a small measure of how dirty I felt, I couldn’t have bared seeing my pain reflected in you. When all things were considered, our family had too much to lose.

  Instead, I bottled up my tears and when no one was around, I’d slip inside the garage, shut the door and uncork that bottle until they spilled across the floor. And when it was empty, I’d pull myself together and go back to pretending I wasn’t on the brink of a breakdown.

  September 22, 7.55pm

  The thought of ever seeing Dougie’s face again petrified me and in a small village, our paths were bound to cross eventually.

  When I was outside, I stopped at each street corner and looked around in fear of coming face to face with him. And home alone, I’d lock the doors and keep the curtains closed. Anyone in their right mind wouldn’t have dared to return to the house of a woman he’d raped. But someone who could degrade and violate another person wasn’t in their right mind anyway.

  I never brought his name up again, but strangely, neither did you. He just disappeared from our conversations. You didn’t go to the pub with him again. You never asked why he hadn’t been round for dinner, or invite him over to watch a football match on TV. It was like he’d suddenly ceased to exist to you too. The kids were the only ones who seemed to miss him.

  “Is Uncle D coming for tea tonight?” Robbie asked us over breakfast.

  “No,” you replied quickly, without raising your head.

  I can’t explain how relieved I was to hear that two letter word, but I couldn’t ask why. So it was only when I bumped into Annie in the Post Office that the murky waters cleared.

  “It’s a shame about Dougie, isn’t it?” she began.

  I swallowed hard. “What about him?”

  “He’s gone back to Scotland, hasn’t he? He popped a note through our letterbox saying goodbye. Seems very sudden, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I replied, trying to disguise my relief.

  “Simon must be disappointed.”

  I had no idea what you were thinking any more. I paid for my stamps and hurried home, asking myself why you hadn’t told me your best friend of more than twenty years had suddenly moved away. I was growing ever uneasy over how our lines of communication were becoming disconnected. But if it was true, that the animal had crawled back to Scotland, maybe I could start to try and live again.

  At a time when every part of me craved normality, we were drifting apart in separate lifeboats.

  *

  Sex and intimacy were the furthest things from my mind, but I was crying out to feel like a normal woman again. I desperately hoped that by making love to you, I could push that night from my mind.

  Physically, I was still sore but I forced myself to make you want me because I didn’t wa
nt to equate sex with pain for the rest of my life. But even during the act, which is exactly what it was, I knew we were both only going through the motions. If I’d felt it, I’m sure you had too.

  But it was the start I needed to repair what someone else had almost ruined.

  December 18, 9.25am

  I hadn’t guessed I was pregnant even when I missed my period.

  I presumed that while I’d been focused on blanking things out, I’d simply neglected my body by missing meals and broken sleeps. I chalked it up as an off-kilter cycle and my body’s delayed reaction to trauma.

  But when the second month rolled by with still no sign of its arrival, I nervously made a doctor’s appointment. Three days after my test, Dr Willows rang with the results. I slumped onto the stool by the telephone; the wind knocked out of my sails. I was pregnant and I had no idea what to do.

  I was already stretched to breaking point with three under-fives, a workaholic husband and trying to hide the mental scars Dougie had left me with from the people closest to me. And I was mortified at the thought of being left to cope with another little one.

  It would’ve been another distraction that stopped us from repairing our relationship. And I didn’t want us to become the couple who, once their children had flown the nest, reluctantly learned all they had in common in their thirty years together were the young adults who’d just left home.

  I’d accepted that our sex life had shifted from passionate to sporadic and unfulfilling, but at least we’d made a little effort to be intimate. But unlike our other kids, this one hadn’t been conceived through lovemaking.

  I seriously considered an abortion. I imagined organising it while you were at work and the kids were at school. And by the time you all poured through the door at teatime, none of you would’ve been any the wiser.

  But I’d have known. I loved motherhood and I had no right to stop a second heart beating inside me because mine was broken. Poor timing was an excuse, not a reason, and a pretty weak one at that. So I forced myself to come to terms with it. I had gotten through tougher times.

  I didn’t know what the future would bring for us. But I knew there was a future for the baby inside me.

  ***

  Northampton, Twenty-Seven Years Earlier

  September 18, 1am

  “Why? Why?” I bellowed while my fists took on lives of their own, raining blow after blow upon Dougie’s face and body.

  Four days had passed since I’d heard you together, and I’d barely been able to look at you. You’d been uncommonly quiet and withdrawn; ravaged, I hoped, by contrition over what you’d defiled.

  I made a backlog of office work my excuse for spending time away from both you and the scene of your crime. But concentration was impossible and I’d sit at my desk, haunted by the noises you’d made behind our bedroom door. And although you’d desecrated my faith in you, the crux of my physical fury was aimed towards Dougie.

  I was unsure if I was more enraged by his devious, cowardly betrayal of our friendship or at my own naivety for never having doubted his loyalty. You aside, I’d been closer to him than any of my friends. But he’d made a mockery of all I’d presumed and try as I might to contain it, my anger refused to simmer until I made him feel as weak and vulnerable as I was.

  I waited until the early hours of the morning when you were asleep before I walked to his rented house. Both the upstairs and downstairs curtains sealed off unwanted prying eyes, so I ventured to the rear and peered through his kitchen window.

  The light was on and an unconscious Dougie was sat inside on a plastic patio chair; his head tilted backwards, surrounded by empty beer cans lying like fallen soldiers. While my life was imploding, he’d been celebrating. My rage piqued.

  He only became aware of my presence when I slipped my arm around his neck and jolted him backwards to the floor. Startled, his blurred eyes opened wide but the alcohol in his system made any attempt to reclaim gravity futile. I straddled him and rapidly recast the structure of his face into a tapestry of blood, hair and mucus. My knees pinned his helpless, failing arms to the ground but even fracturing my knuckles as I broke his nose and jaw was not enough to curb my ferocity.

  “Why her?” I spat. “Why my wife?”

  “I’m sorry,” he choked, “Stop, please stop…” but I didn’t allow him to continue. Another blow thrust his front teeth to the back of his throat like pins in a bowling alley.

  I dragged him to his feet by his stained shirt collars and held him against the wall. His head hit a clock and it fell, spraying glass across the lino.

  “I don’t know why,” he gasped, his breath reeking of booze and blood. “I didn’t plan to…”

  “Shut up!” I snarled. “You’ve destroyed us, Dougie. You and me; her and me; all of us. Everything…”

  My voice weakened then faded into nothing. Hearing myself verbalise what he had done to me suddenly made the sheer enormity of it all too real. I let him drop to the floor and he curled up into a sobbing, bloody ball. I gawped at him like he was a strange, injured creature in the last throws of life. I questioned how I could have been so foolish as to have loved something that worthless.

  I needed to get out of his house and stop breathing the same polluted air as him. So I headed towards the back door, his wheezing growing quieter with every footstep.

  I could have left him there to reek in his stink but deep inside me, I knew it wouldn’t have been enough. So I stopped in my tracks and turned to face him.

  His swelling, blackened eyes were reduced to slits so he was only aware of my shadow when it hovered over him. Even when he watched me take the bread-knife from the sink, he didn’t try to protect himself.

  I slowly pulled back my arm and plunged the blade into his stomach once, twice then a third time. It took surprisingly little effort. His face remained expressionless but the physical trauma forced his body bolt upright. There he remained conscious, but still.

  I stood back to share his final moments. His eyes briefly dilated as his last few shallow breaths merged with the sound of gasses escaping through his wounds. He didn’t try to clutch them or fight for his life. He simply waited five long minutes before it drained from his carcass and his neck lapsed limply to one side.

  We both knew what I had done was right.

  *

  I reacted to the events of the night with clarity.

  Beth’s family had removed almost every stick of furniture from their house when she sold it, so he had little to furnish his new hovel with. I searched each room for something suitable to put his body into. But all he possessed were empty take-away containers, beer cans and free newspapers. It was a pathetic legacy.

  I wiped his blood from the floor with dirty towels and newspapers. Then I bundled his body into the boot of his car. I drove through the village, passing our house, before I turned off the headlights and navigated the lane by the woods using my memory.

  I grabbed the spade and torch I’d taken from Dougie’s garage and headed deep into the copse. The ground was frosty and hardened so it took sweat and determination to dig. But after an hour, his makeshift grave lay ready for him. My arms, weakened and jarred by fury and determination, made dragging his bulky frame to the hole arduous, but I persisted until I rolled him into the earth.

  I threw the stained towels and papers in and without giving him a second glance, I shifted the soil back into the hole, trampled the ground to an even level and scattered fallen leaves to disguise my movements. I used an old blue towrope that lay on the ground to mark his grave.

  I left his car in a notorious area of town with the keys in the ignition then caught two night-buses home. I made my way to the bridge where I’d take the kids pretend fishing and washed his filth from my hands in the water below. And with my adrenaline spent, my physical pain began to manifest itself as sharps bolts of lightening. They ran from my broken knuckles and up into my shoulders and made my chest tight. The letters I’d type to Roger and Steven could wait until morning.<
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  With my fists locked tight, I could barely extend a hand to brush the tracks of my tears from my cheeks and chin.

  October 27, 3.50pm

  I longed to hear you confess and beg for my forgiveness. Because only then might you understand how far from my old self I’d shifted since I’d heard you two together.

  You had asphyxiated the ‘me’ you thought you knew. Now you only lived with an impression of Simon Nicholson; a man so anesthetised and glacial, the fluids inside him ran cold.

  I was so detached from everything that happened before that week, I’d wiped Dougie from my history. Even having my best friend’s blood on my hands had failed to humanise me. My actions were justified, I knew that; I had the strength to do what my father should have done to the many lovers Doreen had humiliated us with.

  But dealing with you was a different matter. I reckoned I’d gain more satisfaction from slowly snuffing out your flame than any physical retribution. I wasn’t sure how I’d do it, but somehow I would eek a confession from you. Then I’d make you hang with uncertainty for weeks until I pretended to make up my mind about our future.

  And once you thought you could see a glimmer of hope in my open, forgiving arms, I’d abandon you and make sure my children and all your friends knew exactly what you had done. They would hate you like I did.

  But I underestimated you. While I was balking at your naivety in thinking you had gotten away with it, you’d become an expert mistress in blindsiding me.

  June 1, 8.20pm

  I may have terminated Dougie’s life, but he’d found a way to live on, inside you. Inside all of us.

  It hadn’t been enough for him to decimate our marriage while he was alive. Even one mile away from my house and six feet under the ground, he still rubbed salt into my open wounds.

  You wore the cloak of a troubled woman the night you put the children to bed early and ushered me into the dining room.