An Act of Silence

by Colette McBeth

  ‘Where are ye going?’

  ‘Well, if he is up tae no good, he’ll have got away with it before their team make it past Glasgow.’

  The man has taken leave of his senses. ‘Ye can’t go out alone.’

  ‘Who said anything about being alone?’ He shoots her a wink and picks up the phone. ‘Danny, how are ye, man?’ She trails her husband downstairs. ‘We might have a wee spot of bother. A late-night trip down the West Kyle, what d’ye say? Good man. As quick as ye can.’

  By the time he leaves, he has made five phone calls. ‘We have a wee posse, so we have.’

  ‘And what if it’s nothing?’ she says. ‘Dragging them out of their beds tae chase a boat through the night.’ There’s a twist of annoyance in her voice. For someone who’s always mocked her own sleuthing, he’s remarkably keen to get stuck in. And more to the point, where does he think he’s going without her?

  ‘Then,’ he says as he walks out the door, ‘they’ll never let me live it down.’

  She grips his jacket and pulls him back. ‘Oh no ye don’t. If ye think yer leaving without me, ye’ve got another think coming.’

  Linda

  The impact of the Scot’s punch fells Charlie. She slumps to the floor. I spring up from the table to offer comfort, a kind word, whatever it is I have left to give, but Henry holds me back.

  ‘Hardly worth it, I’d say. It’s time to go up on to the deck.’

  The Scot carries Charlie up the narrow steps. Her eyes are closed but the rise and fall of her chest tells me she is still alive. For now, at least.

  The air smells of fire and frost. In the sky, a few stars burn through a ceiling of black. And the waves, the rhythm of their call, a slow clap against the boat, tell me this must be the end.

  Huxtable holds Charlie up while the Scot drags me forward, but it is Henry’s voice that speaks.

  ‘You can both go. Or Charlie can go. And you save yourself and your son.

  ‘That is your choice.’

  I rest my hand on Charlie’s shoulder, feel the cut of her bones through her clothes. I press my eyes shut, pray to God I can be spirited away.

  And maybe this once, my prayers have been answered. A bright blinding light dazzles and soaks through my lids.

  I open my eyes to see her slipping away from me.

  Falling into the water.

  Charlie.

  Then another splash.

  I look around to find there are only three of us left.

  Huxtable has jumped in after her.

  Emily Lune

  They meet at Tighnabruiach pier. Six of them who make up the small flotilla of fishing boats. The night is black save for a few wisps of grey cloud and a small scattering of stars. Tom checks the navigation system. There aren’t many boats out at night in the middle of November. Henry Sinclair has made the job of finding him very easy indeed.

  Half an hour or so down the West Kyle, Sinclair’s boat comes into view. Tom knows the one, it’s a cruiser, expensive. It has stopped in the middle of the channel, an arm of land on either side, agitated by the nighttime breeze. Tom speaks to the others on the radio. The lights go off – against the rules, but they don’t want to announce their presence, do they? They use the radar and instinct earned over years sailing these waters to guide them instead.

  When the last boat has sailed into place, the final link in the chain that surrounds Henry’s craft, Tom gives the signal and they turn on their lights.

  In an instant the black glassy waters are washed luminous green.

  Anna

  The bite of the air lifts my stupor. My head is dull with pain. A slow, cool terror trails round my body.

  John props me against the side. I say nothing. No words or screams will help me now. We are in the middle of the sea channel, cloaked by hills either side. Only the beams from the cabin scratch the water with light. Otherwise, the darkness is complete.

  They are all present: Jay, Henry, John, not a flicker of heat from any of them.

  Henry talks of a choice.

  Both.

  Or me.

  It is Linda’s choice, not mine. To push me overboard into the jaws of the waves. To become one of them in order to save herself and her son.

  Seconds pass and the water grows impatient, hungry for an answer. It smacks the boat, rocks us from side to side. Linda’s hand grips my shoulder, her fingers press into the bony nubs.

  Pushing me backwards.

  She has no intention of pushing me to my death. She is going to jump first.

  The realisation hits me in a spray of light.

  Someone is out there. And I throw myself towards the water, send out a scream that rips through the sky as I fall.

  Emily Lune

  ‘There!’ Emily shouts. A head crowns the surface before sinking again. Emily grabs the torch and waves it across the water. ‘Tom,’ she screams, ‘over here. There’s someone in the water.’ Emily waits, counting seconds in her head to measure how long they have been in the freezing waters, how long they have left before the cold draws the life out of them. When she sees a head smash through the surface once more, she takes her chance and casts the lifebelt out towards her. She waits. Time rushes on. And then there is a hand on top of the belt and she pulls and pulls until there is no water left between the woman and their boat. Tom hauls her up. Her eyes are closed, lips frosted blue. He whips off his jumper, his coat, finds a blanket and they swaddle her in it.

  Anna.

  Charlie.

  Just as Emily knew it would be.

  There is someone else in the water too. Another figure jumped from Henry’s boat. Tom’s crew circle the spot where he fell and call out. Emily has swaddled Charlie in blankets, pushed her into the cabin, and now she is scanning the waters for signs of life.

  She finds none.

  They wait and before long the judder of a helicopter shakes the air. It hovers above, showering light on to Henry’s boat. It tries to move. But Tom’s men have him surrounded.

  He has nowhere left to go.

  PART FOUR

  Second Chances

  April 2017

  Linda

  There was one photograph that summed up the effect that night had on Tighnabruiach. It appeared a few days after we were rescued, an image of twenty or so television satellite vans parked along the shoreline, their dishes raised up to the sky, transmitting the details of our story to various far-flung parts of the world.

  Unlike most news stories, this one gathered steam rather than expended it. Every day, sometimes by the hour, came a new development. John McKee was charged with Mariela Castell’s murder. He denied it, but was convicted by a jury at the Old Bailey. Jay Huxtable’s body was never recovered. Charlie lodged her complaint against Curtis afresh; he tried, almost comically, to distance himself from Henry and claim they were barely acquainted. For a while, it looked like he might wriggle out of it again. He was all bluster and threats. How could anyone accuse him of such a thing? Ten million pounds raised for charity, thousands of children given once-in-a-lifetime opportunities by his theatre trust . . . The same old lines trotted out in his defence. His creations – Otis the Bear in The Bear Chronicles, a case in point – had been the childhood friends of millions. The soundtracks to his films were the music of early years. His work was a canvas of innocence and happiness and smiley faces, where the goodies prevailed and the evil witches were vanquished. This couldn’t be right. It was blasphemy.

  So cemented in the national psyche was his reputation for do-goodery, it required a paradigm shift to persuade people otherwise. But slowly commentators began to grasp that this was precisely what made him so dangerous. The cloak of fame had allowed him to carry on doing as he wished in plain sight.

  It was information from the unlikeliest quarter that s
ealed his fate. Henry’s wife Valerie had uncovered her husband’s offshore bank account to which Curtis made generous payments every month. He struggled to explain that away.

  News of the charges against Curtis Loewe proved a watershed. Within weeks, police were dealing with another fifty allegations of abuse. Henry, already on remand for attempted murder, was charged with ten counts of child abuse going back to the 1980s. Gradually, years after it began, the full picture began to emerge: a network of abusers allowed to flourish, thanks to an industrial-scale cover-up. The dissenting voices, those who suggested the girls might have lied about their age (They were fifteen, almost legal), the same types who defended the groping of women in workplaces as a bit of fun (It was just what people did back then) fell silent. Their noise replaced by the clamour of survivors’ stories. At long last, people were listening.

  I submitted my own statement to police. I told them what I had done, the letter to Chief Superintendent Bill Joplin that Henry Sinclair had drafted, and why I agreed to sign it. But I knew nothing could excuse what I did. It was an abuse of power. The Crown Prosecution Service investigated and decided not to press charges. I couldn’t decide whether I was relieved or disappointed. I should have paid for what I put those women through. Selfishly, I’d hoped a spell in jail might cauterise the shame I had carried around for so long.

  Charlie set up her own charity to help survivors of abuse. She invited me to be a trustee, an offer I gave much consideration before accepting. ‘I don’t expect you to forgive me,’ I told her.

  ‘There is nothing left to forgive,’ she said.

  I can’t be so sure.

  Frequently, the spool of images from that night plays out in my dreams. My hand on Charlie’s shoulder and then she is gone, disappearing below the black surface.

  The shock has thinned my memory, only the outline of events remains, little of the substance.

  What I’m trying to say is that I only have Charlie’s word for what happened that night.

  Charlie

  This is what I’ve learnt:

  Being listened to doesn’t take the pain away, it just changes its composition.

  I have let go of the shame, but regret has taken its place. I am still angry about what was taken from us and how it has changed the texture of our lives.

  I wish Bex was still here but, wherever she is, I hope she knows her story has been told. That it matters. That it always did.

  Right and wrong aren’t diametrically opposed. Choices are complicated. We do what we have to do to survive. And protect.

  I’m stronger than I thought.

  You have to be strong to forgive.

  I will never forgive Henry or Curtis or all those other faces who stole from us and have yet to show remorse.

  But there are others who I have forgiven.

  Here I am, sitting in Linda’s garden on my third glass of special summer punch. We are friends, Linda and I, a wildly unlikely pairing. We are each other’s reminders that good people can do bad things.

  She gave a speech at my wedding last year, read a passage from Wonderland and said my fairytale had been delayed but was now unfolding. She said she had no right to be proud but she was nevertheless, and wasn’t she blessed that I came into her life. And no, she didn’t hold it against me that I had once wanted to kill her. All’s well that ends well . . . she said.

  The magnolia drapes overhead. Its blooms are cups of pink and cream where bees settle, lazy on pollen. The day’s residual heat lingers. My head is fuzzy with Linda’s lethal concoction.

  Beside us, my son is dozing in his pram. His fat baby cheeks are pillow soft, arms splayed in surrender to sleep.

  ‘Will you tell me?’ Linda says.

  And so I launch into the story I’ve told her countless times before. One day, I think, the repetition will remove all doubt.

  ‘I felt your hands on my shoulder, right in between the nubs,’ I say. ‘The wind was biting at my cheeks. You pulled me back and I knew you were going to launch yourself in. I stood a much better chance of surviving the cold water than you. No offence, but age was on my side.’

  She makes the pfft noise she always does.

  ‘I jumped,’ I say.

  She looks down at my son, brushing her finger gently across his cheek. ‘He’s beautiful.’

  ‘Takes after his mother.’

  I would do anything to protect that boy. Anything.

  I understand Linda’s decisions, the fierce protective love that trumps everything.

  But Linda didn’t push me that night. I jumped to save us both.

  Linda

  So what of my son, the boy who is at the beginning and end of all of this?

  I made it down from Scotland in time for his release from prison. A private moment set to the flashes of a thousand cameras. The press had rejoiced in the nightmare, now they wanted the happy ending. They’re nothing if not fickle.

  ‘Give your mother a hug,’ the photographers shouted, desperate for the money shot.

  And Gabriel, dazed by the lights, not quite himself (not for a long time after), did as he was asked. I remember that embrace, the warmth of his arms folding around me, the purity of the moment I had longed for. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said and kissed his cheeks. A new start, I thought.

  Not quite.

  My boy was sick. The life that had showered him with celebrity and wealth had turned on him quick as a flash. It was a brutal lesson in fame’s ephemerality. It wasn’t, as Gabriel had allowed himself to believe, a permanent structure, but nothing more than a shimmer that the gust of a storm could destroy in an instant.

  Our rapprochement didn’t last long. No more than a few days before I had to explain that Hugh was not his real father, that Curtis Loewe, the most vilified man in the country, was the secret I had kept hidden. It shattered him. Our whole foundation rested on a lie, he said.

  ‘No,’ I told him. ‘It is built on my love for you.’

  But they were just words, with no power to reach him.

  I suppose this is my penance.

  My relationship with Gabriel resists repair.

  It survives in some form because Jonathan is too stubborn to let it die. Gabriel moved in with him shortly after his release. It was a temporary arrangement, born one evening when he broke down halfway through Jonathan’s beef en croute.

  ‘Who the hell am I?’ he cried.

  ‘Trust my cooking to provoke an existential crisis,’ Jonathan said. He made him a bed in the spare room and insisted he stayed. It was Jonathan who coaxed his emotions out and ultimately persuaded Gabriel to seek the help he needed.

  He tricks Gabriel into meeting me, lunches where he omits to mention I am coming. He breezes through awkward silences. Leaves us alone to talk. Even locked us in his house on one occasion – ‘quite by accident’ of course.

  To this day, it is the only time we allowed the past to spill out. And Gabriel spoke honestly about the memories that have jagged his mind all these years: the day in the park when he was all alone.

  ‘You left me, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did.’

  Depression, I told him. That’s what you would call it. Everything has a name now. Back then I could have been diagnosed if I’d insisted. Instead I tried to push through. And most days I succeeded, maintained a relatively even keel. Work kept me afloat, the desire to do good. Other days were inescapably black, like when I found my boy acting out Curtis’ film, telling me he hated me. In those moments, my mind twisted out of shape.

  I left the park that day because I couldn’t be around Gabriel. I couldn’t be around myself. He was right. I walked away and left an eight-year-old on his own.

  Some mother.

  ‘I always felt I had to be perfect for you to love me. It makes sense now, I suppose. I had to be perf
ect otherwise I might be like . . .’ He didn’t finish. No need, we both knew who he was referring to.

  We talked and talked, exhausted ourselves going round in circles. Whatever answers I offered did nothing to make sense of his confusion. And we left empty, both of us. We wasted hours but made no progress.

  Perhaps this was the way it would always be.

  ‘The healing powers of truth are vastly exaggerated,’ I told Jonathan over a drink that evening.

  ‘That’s because you haven’t told him the truth,’ he said. ‘I wish you would . . .’

  ‘You promised not to say a word.’

  ‘As long as I live,’ he said.

  May 2017

  Gabriel

  It’s Jonathan’s birthday and the old bastard is up to his tricks again. We’ve been waiting half an hour, Mum and I. Only the wisened black olives are left and we’ve hoovered up the bread. I’m in danger of being spectacularly pissed before we’ve even ordered the starters if he doesn’t hurry up.

  Mum and I have given polite conversation our best effort, but we’re running seriously low. If I tell you we’ve just finished a discussion about the relative merits of the Swedish education system over our native one, you’ll get my point. I’ve never been to Sweden and neither has Mum but we have nothing else to talk about – or maybe we have too much. I can never tell.

  It’s not that we don’t speak. We’re perfectly civil. I visit her from time to time . . . Christmas, her birthday. I like to think we’ve reached an understanding; there are certain things we can’t get past no matter how much we talk. I can’t forgive her lack of taste in Curtis. I hate what it did to Dad, although I can’t dwell on it too much otherwise I get swallowed by a cloud of existential confusion. After all, I wouldn’t exist if she hadn’t. Now there’s a concept to fuck with your head.

  Jonathan takes it as a personal affront that we’ve resisted his efforts at reconciliation, and honestly, I wish it were possible, if only to please him. The guy is a legend, admittedly a curmudgeonly cynical semi-alcoholic one, but still, I wouldn’t have survived without him. He was there in the car waiting for Mum and me when I got out of prison, shouting at the paps to bugger orf now they had their shot. On day two, I found him in my back garden, having shimmied over the wall to avoid the photographers outside.