Lost Innocence

by Susan Lewis

  Her eyes fluttered closed. ‘So no croissants?’ she said faintly.

  ‘No croissants,’ he confirmed, and turning her mouth to his he kissed her deeply as he pulled her on top of him.

  The poetry morning had been a mere two days before he’d died, and it was the first time in over a year that Alicia hadn’t wondered, while he was making love to her, if he was thinking about Sabrina, and maybe wishing he was with her instead.

  Taking a deep breath now, as though to draw the memories back into the past, she refused to allow herself to think of how cruel fate had been to have taken him when they were finally starting to put it all behind them, and returned her mind to the present.

  It gave her a jolt when she remembered that they were about to meet up with Cameron, and for a moment she felt herself pushing that away too. It seemed wrong to be waiting for someone who wasn’t Craig, to be seeing another man at all, even if he was just a friend. But then, reminding herself of how kind and supportive Cameron had been through this dreadful summer, and how he never uttered a single word or made even the slightest gesture to suggest that he might be trying to insert himself more permanently into their lives, she felt herself relaxing again. She liked him enormously, there was no doubt about that, but for the time being at least she was still very much Craig’s wife – and perhaps as wedded to her grief now as she’d once been to him.

  Besides, until she knew what was going to happen to Nat she couldn’t allow herself to think very seriously about anything else at all.

  Sabrina was in an excellent mood. For once everything seemed to be going right. All the friends she wanted to invite for cocktails, the second weekend of September, were able to make it, the caterers and bartender were booked, and Robert was due back from yet another trip to Washington two days before, so would be home in plenty of time. Added to the success of her own party plans was the pleasure of knowing her first book-club meeting had now been scheduled for the end of next week (so she’d better get reading fast); The Buzz had achieved a higher than usual advertising take-up thanks to June’s hard work these past three weeks; and she’d received a very welcome invitation to an end-of-summer party at the Roswells, who were always extremely particular about who made their list. Not that she and Robert were ever left off, but being at the centre of all this unpleasant business of police inquiries and court appearances, they might have found themselves personae non gratae as far as the county elite were concerned.

  Fortunately that hadn’t happened, and since she’d heard last week, just after arriving back from France, that Nathan Carlyle had been shipped off to Bristol, and that Annabelle’s supporters in the village had remained true throughout, she’d felt as though her cup was truly running over. All she had to do now was get Annabelle through the ordeal that lay ahead, and if justice was done it might, with any luck, help to bring her and Annabelle closer together without having to go into all that painful business about what she’d been like after Craig. At the same time, it might even make it impossible for Alicia to remain in the village.

  Two birds with one stone, marvellous.

  ‘Mum!’ Annabelle shouted from somewhere in the house.

  ‘I’m in here,’ Sabrina shouted back from the small parlour she used as a study. Following their dreadful showdown in France there had been an uneasy sort of truce between them, mainly, Sabrina suspected, because they were both still afraid of it happening again. In a way, her relationship with Robert was travelling along the same lines, much sweetness and light on the surface, while behind the scenes something else altogether was going on. She’d tried talking to him about it, but he kept brushing it aside, saying he was too hot, or too tired to make love, or she was making too much of it.

  ‘Of course I still find you attractive,’ he’d assured her only last night, ‘I’m just not really in the mood at the moment.’

  ‘Mum!’ Annabelle shouted again.

  With an exasperated sigh, Sabrina got up from her computer and went to the door. ‘Where are you?’ she said.

  ‘I’m upstairs. I need you to come here.’

  ‘I’m busy. What do you want?’

  ‘I just told you. I want you to come here.’

  ‘I will when I’ve finished. What time is your dental appointment, so I know when to be ready?’

  Annabelle came out on to the landing and looked over the banister. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she announced.

  Sabrina turned very still as all the signs she’d tried to ignore started clashing about in her head like a bizarre sort of circus, and turning into an unimaginable reality. ‘If that’s meant to be a joke,’ she croaked.

  ‘Look for yourself if you don’t believe me,’ Annabelle cried, and she tossed the white wand with its telling blue line down to the hall.

  Going to pick it up, Sabrina registered it and felt her head spinning. She looked up at Annabelle, whose eyes were like deep, haunted pools in her ghostly white face, then back to the blue line. She wasn’t sure how long she went on standing there, she only knew that when she looked up again Annabelle had returned to her room, and that she couldn’t get her mind to function beyond the fact that what she was holding in her hand was the first evidence of a child that had her and Craig’s blood running in its veins.

  Oliver’s Mendenhall’s forbiddingly hawkish eyes were regarding Nat across Jolyon’s desk. ‘We’re still putting pressure on the CPS to drop the rape charge,’ he told him, ‘but unfortunately he’s digging in his heels. It’s likely he’s getting pressure from other quarters,’ he added. He wouldn’t tell Nat about his father’s history with Detective Inspector Caroline Ash, because he hadn’t yet been able to discover how much sway that was having with the prosecutor, and besides the boy didn’t need to know. It was enough that Mendenhall knew, and though he wasn’t completely without sympathy for Ash’s position on what had transpired after Craig had got the arsonist’s case thrown out, the law was the law. She hadn’t done her job properly, so in Mendenhall’s book that made her every bit as responsible for the tragic deaths that had occurred, possibly even more so. And just in case she was leaning on the prosecutor, he was ready to play her prejudice as a trump card should the CPS make the grand mistake of going to trial.

  ‘So I still have to attend the committal,’ Nat said, his dark eyes partly concealed by an overly long fringe.

  ‘Yes,’ Oliver replied, ‘but it’ll be brief and quite informal again. They’ll set the date for the Plea and Case Management hearing, which should probably be around four to five weeks later.’

  ‘And that’ll be in the Crown Court?’

  Oliver nodded.

  ‘So that’s when I have to stand in the dock and plead not guilty?’

  Again Oliver nodded, picking up on the boy’s dread as Nat looked away.

  ‘There’s a judge in Taunton now who can hear these cases,’ Oliver told him, ‘but I think it’s more likely you’ll be referred here to Bristol. This is presuming it gets that far, and I’m still very hopeful it won’t.’

  Nat looked at him, then at Jolyon who was standing against the windowsill listening.

  ‘I’ll be with you for the committal,’ Jolyon told him. ‘Oliver will take over at the PCMH.’

  Oliver glanced at his watch. ‘I’m afraid I have to go now,’ he said, ‘I’m due back in court at two. I’m glad I’ve had this opportunity to see you,’ he told Nat, getting to his feet. ‘The case I’m here for is likely to go on for a few days, so if you want to get together at any time, just let me know.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Nat said, standing up too and shaking Mendenhall’s hand. ‘I’m going back to Somerset tomorrow. School starts next Tuesday.’

  ‘Ah,’ Mendenhall responded. ‘Well, good luck with that.’

  Nat’s expression remained taut.

  ‘I’ll be at the end of the phone if you have any questions,’ Mendenhall assured him, ‘or if you simply want to talk. Otherwise Jolyon will keep you abreast of developments, especially if we receive some good news from the CPS.
Oh, and by the way, Jolyon tells me you’ve been extremely helpful around here these last two weeks. Well done.’

  Nat glanced at Jolyon and tried to smile a thank you.

  Much later in the day, having taken the bus back to Jolyon’s flat while Jolyon went to a meeting at the Law Society, Nat sat in his room for a long time trying to decide what to do. In the end, knowing Marianne was about to come home, he let himself out of the flat and walked across the road to the bridge approach. With rush hour still under way traffic was streaming by, slowing to a stop at the red brick towers that housed the tollbooths before speeding on to the other side.

  It was cloudy and dull, but not cold. The air smelled of fumes and seaweed from the river, way below, and the roar of engines was drowning the sound of gulls and footsteps. He wasn’t really registering much – his mind was strangely empty, his thoughts, his decisions had ground to a halt.

  It was free for pedestrians to cross the bridge, so he walked on past the Clifton-side tower, feeling a warm blast of air on his face as a lorry went by. The walkway was separated from the road by solid casings, and the rails between him and thin air were thick iron struts that soared like bastions to the sweep of the suspension. He’d studied the construction of this bridge once, in year eight or nine. He knew Isambard Kingdom Brunel had designed it, and that it had first been opened in 1864, after Brunel’s death. A local wine merchant had financed it, but he couldn’t remember the merchant’s name.

  He was standing three hundred feet over the gorge now, halfway across the bridge and wondering if he could really feel a sway, or if it was just his imagination. He was so high that the river below was no more than a ribbon of sludge in the mud banks, and the cars clogging up the Portway were like toys. He looked out over the city, his eyes travelling from the tangled roads that made up the Cumberland Basin, across a myriad Victorian rooftops to the Mendips in the distance. Somewhere beyond those hills his mother and sister were going about their day.

  His eyes dropped down through the gorge again, passing over the cragged rock face much faster than anyone could fall. At the bottom a blade of light struck the grimy water and was gone.

  Suddenly his mind was filling again, a clamouring chaos of thoughts that seemed to have no beginning or end. Not guilty …Forced himself on me …She was begging me …Why did you lie? Penetrated with your penis …Nathan Douglas Carlyle, you are accused of the rape … His eyes closed. He felt sick and giddy. The world was swooping and pitching. He could sense everyone watching him. Accusatory and contemptuous eyes. His mother would be in court, torn apart with grief and shame. She’d hear how he’d touched Annabelle when she was twelve. It would all come out. Everyone would know and call him a pervert, a child molester, a rapist.

  His hands gripped the rail. He squeezed it so tight his knuckles cracked. His mind was emptying again, like a chorus pausing for breath. Then he could hear his father’s voice, but not what he was saying. He wanted his father so much it seemed to hurt in every part of his soul. He’d have the answers, he’d know what to do. Yet how could he? His father wasn’t who he’d pretended to be. He was a fake, a liar, a cheat. He hadn’t loved his wife, and thinking of his mother unloved, when he knew how deeply she’d loved his father, wasn’t something he could bear. The mere thought of anyone causing her pain made him want to hurt them in every possible way, but his father was no longer here to face his shame. In dying he’d cheated his family again.

  He looked up at the security caging, the uncompromising bars that attempted to keep people in and death out. If he went to prison he’d be treated like scum. They’d beat and rape him and turn him into a miserable, toadying fag. The dream of a career in the law would end the day he was convicted, and for the rest of his life he’d bear the label of a sex offender. No one would want to live near him, wherever he went frightened parents and vigilantes would drive him out. He’d never find a job or a wife, he’d have no friends or children of his own.

  And all because of that one crazy moment with Annabelle.

  Why was she doing this?

  Would he, if he could break through the bars, make the jump?

  The answer, he realised to his shame, was no, because he didn’t have the courage. Or maybe it was because he knew what it would do to his mother. And there was still, please God, a very slender chance that he might not be punished for a crime he hadn’t committed.

  Though she was scared and horrified by her pregnancy, Annabelle knew exactly what needed to happen. Her mother would make an appointment at a clinic in London, then she’d drive her there and a couple of hours later they’d come home again. ‘It’s easy,’ she declared. ‘I know three people who’ve done it, and they only had a day off school.’

  Sabrina was appalled. ‘Who are they?’ she demanded, casting a nervous glance at Robert. Since he was paying for Annabelle’s education he’d surely take a very dim view of the kind of trouble the girls were getting into.

  ‘I can’t tell you that,’ Annabelle answered, starting to colour, ‘but don’t worry, they’re not at Bruton, if that’s what you’re thinking. Sadie Virran’s the only one who’s ever got pregnant there, and if she hadn’t been stupid enough to tell everyone she probably wouldn’t have been expelled.’

  Sabrina’s eyes rounded. ‘Is that why she…? I thought it was to do with drugs.’

  ‘It was, but…’

  ‘We’re getting off the subject,’ Robert told them. ‘As much as I dislike the idea of Annabelle having to go through a termination, I think she’s right, it’s what needs to be done.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Annabelle agreed. ‘I mean, I can hardly have a child at my age, can I? It would ruin my whole life. Plus, who’s going to look after it while I go to school and uni?’

  ‘Hang on, before we start making rush decisions,’ Sabrina said. ‘An abortion is a very serious issue, and not one to be taken as lightly as you seem to be…’

  ‘Oh my God, you’re not saying I should keep it, are you?’ Annabelle cried. ‘There’s no way…’

  ‘I know you don’t want it now,’ Sabrina interrupted, ‘but later on, when your studies are over and you’re a little more mature, you might feel differently. In fact, I know you will when you see it, because every mother does.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be really sweet and gorgeous and everything, but I can hardly walk around school with a great big pregnant belly, can I? And what about breast-feeding and stuff?’

  ‘All I’m saying is let’s consider this rationally. I understand that it’ll be inconvenient to be pregnant while you’re at school, you probably won’t be able to do games and a few other things, but it happens, other girls have…’

  ‘I’m not other girls! I don’t even want anyone to know, so…’

  ‘And after,’ Sabrina pressed on, ‘when the baby comes, you can fit back in with everything and I’ll be here to take care of it.’

  Annabelle’s jaw dropped. Was this really her mother speaking?

  ‘I think you’re missing the point, Sabrina,’ Robert said. ‘It’s not about games and other things, it’s about how she came to be pregnant in the first place.’

  ‘I was raped, in case you’ve forgotten,’ Annabelle threw at her mother.

  ‘Yes, but this is a totally separate issue,’ Sabrina insisted.

  Robert was stunned. ‘How can you say that?’ he protested. ‘They’re one and the same, and I can’t quite believe we’re having this conversation. Are you really saying you want her to carry a child that was conceived through rape?’

  ‘Well, it’s not as if Nathan Carlyle’s some kind of monster, or from the wrong sort of background, is it?’ Sabrina pointed out.

  Robert’s shock hit new heights, until a horrible understanding dawned. He couldn’t continue this in front of Annabelle, but continue it he would, and Sabrina had better be prepared to start thinking straight or he’d be taking some drastic measures to make her.

  ‘What are you on, Mother?’ Annabelle cried. ‘One minute he’s the
Devil incarnate and you can’t wait to drive him and Alicia out of town, now, suddenly, you’re going on like he’s …’ She stopped suddenly as the penny dropped for her too. ‘Oh my God,’ she said incredulously. ‘You want me to have this baby because Nathan is Craig’s son.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Sabrina snapped. ‘It’s got nothing to do with that.’

  ‘Yes it has. In your head you’re starting to think of this as the baby you and Craig never had.’ She looked at Robert and saw, to her horror, that he wasn’t going to contradict her.

  ‘Will you please stop talking nonsense,’ Sabrina growled angrily. ‘I’m only thinking of you…’

  ‘That is such crap. It’s yourself you’re thinking about, as usual, and…’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Sabrina raged, springing to her feet. ‘I’m just trying to get you to see alternatives and you start accusing me…’

  ‘Alternatives that suit you and no one else,’ Annabelle broke in.

  ‘They might suit you too, one of these days. You have no idea what’s going to happen in the future. What if, for some reason, you’re not able to have any more children? You’d really regret letting this one go then.’

  ‘And what if I told you Nathan Carlyle might not be the father?’ Annabelle shouted.

  Sabrina’s mouth fell open as her face drained of colour.

  Annabelle’s face was turning white too. It was too late to take that back, and she couldn’t think how she was going to get out of it.

  ‘So if – if it isn’t his, who else’s could it be?’ Sabrina stammered.

  ‘I don’t know. I…’

  Sabrina reeled. ‘You don’t know?’ she cried. ‘How can you not know?’

  Annabelle tightened her mouth and tilted her head away.

  ‘I want an answer,’ Sabrina demanded.

  Annabelle looked at Robert, whose head was in his hands. ‘I don’t know, because I don’t want to tell you,’ she retorted. ‘Anyway, it could be Nat’s, but I bet you don’t want me to go through with it now you know I’m not sure.’