‘She went the way she wanted to go, Bonita. She had a good death,’ Stephen had said.
‘I think I should go to the police,’ said Bonnie.
Stephen had rounded on her fiercely. ‘You will not tell ANYONE that you helped my mother end her own life. You will not damage her memory in that way. There will be no fuss, is that understood?’
There had been a warning in the way he said it. ‘Go and sort yourself out before the doctor arrives.’
She had not known then that her involvement in Alma’s death would be his insurance policy against her leaving him. He wanted it known that his mother died naturally until he needed to expose the truth to benefit himself.
As grim as the police cell was, it was nothing compared to the prison that had been her marriage to Stephen Brookland.
Chapter 58
Lew lay fully dressed on top of the bed in the spare room, but there was no way he would be able to sleep. He didn’t know what to do with himself. The events of the evening were tumbling around in his head like a washing machine on a high spin setting. He traced the sound of Charlotte trudging up the stairs, sniffling hard, sobbing dramatically but it did not move him one bit. It was as if his brain had built up a wall around him to keep out all emotion to stop it engulfing him like a tsunami. But it was already crumbling, realisations were pushing through the weakest cracks in the brickwork: she screwed your friend, she didn’t have a miscarriage, she lied, lied, lied . . .
There was an almost indiscernible knock on the door and a, ‘Can I come in?’ Charlotte’s voice was tear-heavy. He didn’t answer. She came in anyway. He sat up, swung his legs off the bed and watched her shuffle towards him, as if she were ancient. Her face was blotchy, eyes puffy, hair loose, wet and greasy from the cream.
‘Lewis,’ she hiccuped. ‘Can we talk, please?’ She sat down on the bed at a distance from him, looking sideways at him for his reaction. Other than a tightening of his jaw, there was nothing. Her hand came out towards his arm and he flinched back from it.
‘Don’t,’ he said, ‘just don’t.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she bawled.
‘For what?’ His head pivoted round to her. ‘For trying to touch me, for continually lying to me, for screwing my friend or getting rid of our child? Which part of all that are you sorry for?’
‘Lewis, stop,’ said Charlotte, her voice a weary croak.
Lew jumped up from the bed. He didn’t want to be near her. He couldn’t even feel the betrayal of her sleeping with someone else yet because there was no room for it in his head. He had to get out of the house. He went to his wardrobe, dragged his cavernous sports bag out of the bottom and began to stuff it with jumpers, jeans, socks.
‘Lewis, please,’ she sobbed, throwing herself at his back, her arms forming a weak band around him. ‘Please, don’t leave me.’ He pushed her away and she crumpled onto the bed, her body limp but her lungs in fine fettle as she howled loudly. He packed the bag until it was full, then at the rasp of the zip, she sat up bolt upright.
‘I’m begging you, Lewis, I’m sorry, I won’t know what to do if you go. Please, we can get through this. Don’t leave me on my birthday.’ He was at the door; she screamed at him, ‘Pleeease.’
‘Why did you marry me, Charlotte?’ Lew turned.
‘What?’
‘Why did you marry me?’ He tilted his head at her, waiting for the answer.
‘Because . . . because . . .’ Charlotte sniffed, swallowed; this was her chance to turn the tide where her full emotional display had failed. ‘…you were clever, handsome, smart, ambitious, kind. You treated me like a princess. I knew we’d be good together, I knew we’d make a great team. And we did, Lew, we are so good tog—’
‘I married you because I loved you,’ he said. Even when he had asked Bonnie why she had married Stephen, she had said that she loved him.
‘I love you,’ said Charlotte, emphatically. But it was too late. He knew that she probably did love him but it was a by-product of the money and the luxury and the comfort, something that had grown like an incidental weed in the garden of their marriage.
He walked out of the room leaving her wailing like a bargain basement Regina.
Chapter 59
Sleep did not come easily to Bonnie, but despite the adrenalin zapping around her system and the constant noise, nervous exhaustion closed the shutters on her brain and she was awoken by the detention officer pulling down the hatch on her door.
‘Bit of breakfast for you. And your solicitor will be here in about twenty minutes.’
Sausage, beans and scrambled egg fresh from the microwave and a coffee. Bonnie had never gone to bed without brushing her teeth before and her mouth felt dry, her breath rancid.
‘Thank you,’ she said. She’d been lying on her arm and it was stiff and painfully prickly as the blood flow increased. She couldn’t eat but drank the lukewarm coffee in thirsty gulps. She used her hands as a comb and tried to plait her hair, then licked her fingers to wipe around her eyes and mouth then sat on the bed and waited. She thought of Lew. Would she ever see him again? She couldn’t remember what the police said would happen now. Did someone tell her that she would be up in front of magistrates or was she mixing that up with television programmes? Stephen would make sure she was in the newspaper: Bonnie Brookland, aged 41, arrested for murdering her mother-in-law. She would have to give up her lovely little house, the Pot of Gold and Lew. What would he think when she didn’t come into work tomorrow? Would the police let him know she had been arrested? Her horizon was colourless, black, nothing beyond it but more black and her dad’s grey rainbow.
The door opening dashed away all thoughts. ‘Come on, love,’ said the detention officer. Love? He would never know how much that one little warm word jerked Bonnie back from the lip of a very deep well.
‘In you go.’ He opened the door to a dingy, windowless room, bare except for a table and four chairs which were screwed to the floor. A man rose from one of the chairs, hand extended. He was tall, slim with thick salt and pepper hair, aviator glasses and a smile. He introduced himself.
‘David Charles. I’ve been asked by my colleague to help you in this case because you have a specialised need. Duty solicitor would have been neither use nor ornament to you. Please sit down.’ He gestured towards the chair opposite to his own. Bonnie stumbled over the leg and it set all her nerves jangling. What must he think of her? She looked a mess and she knew she smelt of sick.
‘Try not to worry,’ he said, clicking the top of a pen. ‘Easier said than done, of course. Why exactly were you brought in? You should have been advised that you could attend on a voluntary basis.’
‘I was,’ said Bonnie, nudging her hair back from her face because her plait had unravelled already. ‘I wanted to meet it head on. I did what I’m accused of.’
‘Ok-ay,’ said David Charles. ‘Mrs Brookland, the law is a set of complex rules and it’s not what you think you’ve done, it’s whether you fit within the framework of the offence. And it’s not for you to say whether you’re guilty but a court to prove that you are. If it gets that far, of course.’
There was a knock on the door and the detention officer appeared with two coffees and sachets of sugar. When he had exited, David Charles took a sip and grimaced. ‘Kenco eat your heart out. Right, Mrs Brookland, or can I call you Bonnie?’
‘I’d prefer it if you did,’ she said.
‘Shall we start from the beginning?’ said David Charles, pen poised.
‘Please,’ replied Bonnie, more than ready to offload what had been sitting inside her like a rotten, festering egg for five long, cold years.
Chapter 60
Lew was awoken by the flashing light of a text coming through on his phone. Ironically it was Patrick.
Hi Bud. New address alert. I’m at Marlene’s flat. 5a Jasmine Court. Flockton. Must get together soon. Life is good. Pat.
So Patrick had vacated the local Holiday Inn, where Lew now found himself and he wondere
d if the place was being bankrolled by estranged partners.
When he examined his phone, he found that he had missed eleven calls from Charlotte, four voicemails and had six waiting texts from her – all of them asking him to meet up and talk. He was going to delete the voicemails without listening to them but changed his mind. She was crying on all of them, borderline hysterical on the second, angry on the third, contrite on the fourth. Please come home, I love you. He felt nothing but bitterness and anger and that was all he wanted to feel because it was all-consuming and kept hurt and grief at the door.
He sat up and pressed his temple where a stress headache was drilling into his skull. He needed ibuprofen, coffee, toast and his car. He had felt stone cold sober when he left the house but he was over the limit thanks to the celebratory champagne consumed at Gemma’s so he’d sat in his car and ordered a taxi which had taken over half an hour to arrive. The drive had taken him through a sleeping Dodley and his thoughts drifted to Bonnie, tucked up in her little house in Rainbow Lane, before he switched them off because she had no place in the present black state of his mind.
He showered, wishing the water could wash off the filth he felt crawling under his skin. He turned the tap to cold and let the spray pulse against his temple, battering at the persistent throb. He dressed and went down for breakfast amongst couples and businessmen. He ate toast, drank coffee and then ordered a cab to take him back to Woodlea to pick up his car. He didn’t even look at the house but drove away from it then he parked up around the corner from where he texted Gemma. He needed to talk to her.
*
Half an hour later, the detectives came into the room: Barrett and Henderson, with his trusty A4 daybook. Many recent notes had been added to it, information supplied by the family liaison officer. She had only just been appointed and already Brookland had phoned her a number of times to feed things through to the detectives which might be of interest to them.
Bonnie sat with her hands clamped between her knees. She looked as if she had shrunk overnight, thought Henderson.
‘What was the relationship like between you and your mother-in-law Alma Brookland?’ he began, after he’d told her he hoped that she’d had not too bad a night, and a brief exchange with David Charles.
‘At the beginning it wasn’t good, in fact it was awful,’ replied Bonnie. ‘She didn’t like me at all and she’d belittle me at every opportunity. I could never do anything right for her: my cooking was always substandard, she’d drag her finger over everything trying to insinuate I didn’t clean properly, telling me that I looked as if I’d put weight on, criticising what I wore, and she always called me Bonita even though she knew I hated it. It doesn’t sound much I know, but she was continually pecking at me, breaking me down. She was very protective over Stephen, my husband, her son. She thought I was a gold-digger. And before you ask, no I wasn’t. My dad was in a home because he had dementia. He’d put savings away all his life to make sure I’d be well set up. Dad died when I’d been married nearly four years. What he left me was mostly eaten up by costs for the home.’
‘Did you ever say that you wanted to kill her?’
Bonnie nodded slowly.
‘For the benefit of the recording, could you please answer that verbally,’ said Barrett.
‘I’m sorry, yes I did, I admit it. I’d just found out that Dad had pneumonia and Alma said that you got what you deserved in life. She was goading me into saying something in front of her friend. She was pointing at me, smirking, telling her friend that I looked as if I wanted to kill her and I said that I did. I’d given up trying to make her like me by then. She was hateful. She knew that my dad was my weak spot, you see, and that I felt guilty about having to put him in a home. He was six foot six and had arms like a windmill when he got upset and didn’t know what he was doing.’
Tears were coursing down Bonnie’s face, too fast to wipe away and snot was dribbling from her nose. Barrett leaned over the table between them and handed her a tissue.
‘Thank you,’ said Bonnie, giving her nose a well-needed blow. ‘She came to the house every fortnight for tea and I used to dread it. I know she told everyone who’d listen that I was using her son and that I’d wormed my way into his life and that I wanted her put in a home out of the way just as I’d done with my dad.’
‘And did you?’ asked Henderson.
‘God no,’ Bonnie protested, raising her head, looking him in the eye. ‘I can’t tell you how much it hurt me when she used to say that, but Stephen never spoke up for me. He just said he couldn’t stop his mother believing what she wanted to believe and I shouldn’t let it bother me. But it did. Alma was very good at mind-games. I know she enjoyed ridiculing me, especially in front of an audience. Before she got ill, that was; then things changed.’
‘How did they change?’ asked Barrett.
‘She became frightened, needy.’
‘What exactly was wrong with her?’ asked Barrett.
‘She was diagnosed with progressive bulbar palsy. It’s a neurological disease, very aggressive. When she could speak she told me that she’d thought what had happened to my dad was the worst thing that could happen to anyone: that their body remained fit and their mind died. What she had did the opposite, her body closed down whilst her mind stayed alert and aware. She said it was worse for her that way round.’
‘How long did she live at . . .’ Henderson checked the address from his notes ‘. . . Greenwood Crescent with you?’
‘Just over two months. She started getting ill about three months before that. I noticed that Alma had started using her left hand to lift a cup. I suspected she wasn’t well but Stephen hadn’t noticed anything and told me not to fuss because she wouldn’t like it. Then she started to go really downhill very quickly and Stephen was forced to take her to seek medical help. She didn’t want to go, she was terrified of hospitals and doctors. She had self-diagnosed on the internet and had a good idea what sort of disease she had.’
‘Were your husband and his mother close?’
‘She was very close to him,’ Bonnie replied. ‘He was . . . dutiful towards her.’ She chose the word carefully and Henderson asked her what she meant.
‘There was no warmth from him, no overt affection. She was scared and she wanted someone just to hold her and give her comfort but he didn’t want to do things like that. Even when she died, I never saw him break down, he just got on with things. He was like that though with everyone, very dry emotionally. But she idolised him.’
‘So Mrs Brookland did attend hospital?’
‘Yes, she had tests and they more or less confirmed what she knew already. She didn’t want anyone to know or see her degenerate. She even managed to keep it secret from her best friend Katherine. She didn’t see Alma for the last three months of her life because she always went to Spain just before Christmas to stay with her daughter who lives out there. No doubt you’ll be speaking to her though.’ Bonnie shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘She won’t shed a very kind light on me. She had Alma bitching about me into her ears for eight years.’
‘Did Mrs Brookland have any visitors when she was at your house?’ asked Henderson.
‘Other than a doctor and a couple of nurses at the beginning, no. Katherine was her only real friend. I think she scared everyone away. She had plenty of Get Well cards from people at the church and the bridge club she liked to go to but no one actually came to see her.’
‘Whose idea was it to ask her to move in?’
‘Alma asked. It was a massive thing for her to admit that she couldn’t cope and so she asked Stephen if she could move in with us.’ She gave a small huff of sarcastic laughter and Henderson questioned it.
‘He said no. He told her it was me that didn’t want her there. I know that because I found out the next day when she got a taxi over to the shop where I worked. She was in a terrible state and she begged me to let her stay with us, which was so out of character for her. I was fuming – at Stephen not Alma – but I d
idn’t want her to think badly of her son so I pretended and said that I’d changed my mind. I made up the spare room for her and when Stephen came home from work, she was already in situ and he couldn’t exactly throw her out. She was so grateful she cried. I’d never seen her cry before. To be honest, I didn’t even think her capable of it.’
‘What were his reasons for not wanting her to stay?’ asked Barrett, exchanging knowing glances with Henderson. There were a lot of contradictions between Mr and Mrs Brookland’s stories. Stephen Brookland had insisted that it was very much his idea to have his mother move in with them.
‘He said it was impossible because we were both working. But I think he was a bit revolted by the idea of having to nurse her, wash her, feed her, that sort of stuff, because she refused point blank to have strangers come in and do that for her. So I did it all.’
Barrett was confused. ‘You’re saying that she didn’t like you, but yet she let you look after her. Doesn’t sound right to me.’ She huffed sarcastically and Henderson gave her a sideways glance.
‘I think it might be appropriate to have a short break,’ announced David Charles in a clipped tone, also casting a warning look at Barrett.
‘I don’t want a break,’ said Bonnie, turning to the solicitor. ‘I want to carry on. Really.’
Henderson nodded. ‘Okay, let’s carry on then. You were saying that she let you look after her.’
‘Yes she did,’ said Bonnie. ‘Better the devil you know.’ Then she puffed out her cheeks, because that probably wasn’t the best thing to say in the circumstances. ‘My boss then, Harry Grimshaw, let me take unpaid leave to look after her. I sat with her and I read to her and we watched TV in her room together. She loved to do quizzes.’
‘You became friends, did you?’ asked Henderson.
Bonnie smiled. ‘I don’t know if she ever saw me as a friend, but she softened towards me. I suppose she just got to know me properly. She trusted me. She must have.’
The Queen of Wishful Thinking Page 26