No Escape

by Hilary Norman

  ‘Can’t all be natural athletes like you, Ed.’

  ‘What’s an athlete, Dad?’

  ‘People who run races and do high-jump, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Jack can’t jump,’ Edward had said.

  ‘Of course he can,’ Christopher had said.

  When Sophie had come along, three-year-old Jack had revelled in his opportunity to be a big brother, cuddling his baby sister every chance he was given, liking to watch her being bathed and changed, taking pleasure in stroking her soft cheeks.

  A gentle boy.

  A boisterous, inquisitive, even-tempered, loving boy.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever known a more easy-going child,’ Gilly said.

  ‘I know,’ Lizzie agreed. ‘We’re so lucky.’

  And then, in the space of a few hours, on a February morning three months after Jack had turned four, everything changed forever, when Christine Connor, the head of Jack’s nursery school, asked Lizzie, just dropping her son off, if she might have a private word.

  ‘I’m a bit worried about Jack,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  Lizzie spoke the word lightly, like the woman she had, till that second, gone on pretending to be, the blessed, untroubled wife and mother of three. But in her mind, in her already recoiling body and clenching heart, all the lightness had already gone.

  ‘I think,’ Mrs Connor said, ‘he may have a problem.’

  ‘What sort of a problem?’

  Don’t listen, Lizzie.

  ‘For one thing,’ the other woman said, ‘I don’t think he can jump.’

  ‘I doubt he’ll ever be a gymnast,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘No, Mrs Wade,’ Christine Connor said. ‘I mean I don’t believe that Jack can jump. At all. I’ve been watching him. It’s as if, when he tries, his feet stay glued to the ground.’ She paused. ‘Haven’t you noticed?’

  No. No. Go on hiding.

  ‘Yes,’ Lizzie said quietly. ‘I have.’

  ‘Something else too,’ the teacher went on.

  Lizzie felt, thought perhaps that she felt the way a prisoner in the dock might have felt in hanging days, waiting for the judge to pass sentence. She wanted to tell Christine Connor to stop, not to say another word, to stop watching Jack, because he was Lizzie’s child, not hers, and he was fine.

  ‘It’s the way he gets up when he’s been sitting on the floor.’

  Bottom first, hands on his legs, straightening.

  ‘Yes,’ Lizzie said again.

  ‘You’ve noticed that as well then, Mrs Wade?’

  ‘I have.’

  She knew that the woman was waiting for her to say more, to ask a question perhaps, or to volunteer a suggestion, to be an effective parent. But she seemed, for the moment, incapable of that.

  ‘It may all be nothing, of course,’ Christine Connor said.

  No hiding place.

  ‘But you don’t think so,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘I think, perhaps, a word with your doctor?’

  The fear, having been allowed to surface that morning, had never gone away.

  Lizzie had gone straight home and spoken to Gilly.

  ‘I hoped it was just me,’ Gilly had said.

  ‘A lot of that about,’ Lizzie had said, and gone to telephone Christopher, who had dropped everything, just as she had known he would, handing over two operations to another surgeon, postponing a HANDS meeting, jumping into his big, powerful BMW and driving too slowly, because of traffic, on the A40, and then too fast on the M40.

  For twenty-four hours after Jack was picked up from nursery school, all his waking moments – and many of his sleeping, too – had been surveyed with a growing sense of creeping dread by both his parents.

  ‘Why are you doing that?’ Edward had asked, once.

  ‘Doing what, darling?’ Lizzie had said.

  ‘Looking at Jack like that,’ the six-year-old, dark-haired and – dark-eyed, like his maternal grandmother, had said.

  ‘We’re not, sweetheart,’ his mother had lied.

  ‘We’re looking at him like this,’ his father had said, with the natural, one-on-one, matter-of-fact approach that he felt most children preferred, and which made him, as Lizzie had always had to admit, such an especially gifted parent, ‘because we think Jack might be ill.’

  ‘Like a cold, you mean?’ Edward asked.

  ‘Something like that,’ Christopher had answered, seeing no reason, honesty notwithstanding, why the older child should have to be made afraid for what might – he was still praying, silently, frantically – be no reason.

  ‘Okay,’ Edward had said, losing interest.

  That had been the last thing Lizzie remembered going well for a very long time. For first their own observations, and then an unusually sombre Anna Mellor’s in her London consulting rooms, had shown that Jack’s thigh muscles were weaker than they ought to have been, and that he was also displaying weakness around both his pelvis and shoulders.

  ‘What do you think?’ Lizzie had asked the paediatrician after her examination, while Jack was playing in the room next door with the nurse.

  ‘I think,’ Anna Mellor said, ‘Jack should see a specialist.’

  ‘Why?’ Lizzie asked. ‘What do you think’s wrong with him?’

  Christopher had given her a look then, a look of such pity and such personal despair, that she had felt as if her blood were freezing.

  ‘Best just to wait and see, darling,’ he had said, gently.

  And Lizzie realized then that even Christopher, a man able to cut through skin and bone and immerse his hands in the blood of strangers, was, at that moment, no different from herself.

  Hanging on to ignorance with all his might.

  It was a blur after that, several days of phone calls from the London flat, of trying to keep Jack occupied and reassured, of doctors’ and hospital waiting rooms with out-of-date magazines and well-mannered, wretched patients and families. Of consulting rooms and X-ray departments and laboratories, with poor, uncomplaining Jack being poked and prodded and asked to walk and sit and stand – to perform, Lizzie felt, with impotent rage – by a series of men and women in suits and white coats. They saw a paediatric neurologist and an orthopaedic consultant and a geneticist, and Lizzie and Christopher were quizzed, their own questions responded to, dozens of facts and statistics and advice presented to them.

  And, somewhere amidst all that, the diagnosis, handed down like the sentence Lizzie had been waiting for since Christine Connor had asked her into her office.

  Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Bestowed on Jack by a faulty gene carried on the X-chromosome. The female chromosome.

  Given to him, in other words, by his mother.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Lizzie had said, much later that last endless day-into-night, back in Marlow. ‘How can it be? There’s no family history. Is there?’

  She had thrown the last question at her mother, who had driven from London earlier to help Gilly with Edward and Sophie.

  ‘Not as far as I know,’ Angela said, feeling – not inaccurately – under attack.

  All three children were asleep upstairs, Jack through sheer exhaustion, and Gilly had gone home a while ago to her flat in Maidenhead, and the other adults were in the drawing room, slumped in front of the log fire which crackled and glowed as usual, but seemed, just then, to give off none of its normal warmth or comfort.

  ‘What about your brother?’ Lizzie asked.

  She had known, for as long as she could remember, that there had been an uncle named James who had died very young, but Angela had told Lizzie years ago that she’d never known exactly what her brother had died of, because her parents – both gone now too – had never seemed to want to talk to her about it.

  ‘Could it have been this?’ Lizzie pressed.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Angela was white-faced. ‘I suppose it could.’

  ‘Please find out.’ Lizzie knew she sounded harsh, could not help herself.

  ‘Really?’ Angel
a asked.

  ‘Of course, really.’

  ‘Will it make a difference?’ Angela asked. ‘Knowing that?’

  ‘No.’ It was Christopher who answered. ‘No difference. Not to Jack.’

  Lizzie looked at him, wildness in her eyes. ‘But maybe they’re wrong,’ she said. ‘Maybe what James died of was something like this, but not actually it. It might be something they’ve found a cure for since then.’

  ‘They’re not wrong, Lizzie,’ Christopher told her, very gently. ‘And though there very well may be a cure in time, there isn’t one yet.’

  For a long moment, just then, Lizzie had hated him with all her might.

  As she had, earlier, found herself filled with hatred for Anna Mellor.

  ‘I went to her two years ago,’ she’d said to Christopher, in the geneticist’s waiting room. ‘I asked her if he was all right, and she said he was fine, that it was nothing to worry about.’

  Christopher had told her that he’d telephoned Anna a little while ago, while Lizzie had been in the loo with Jack, to ask her that very question, and Anna had said she’d thought of DMD right away and had examined Jack’s calves for the enlargement that was often an early warning sign in toddlers.

  ‘She said his legs seemed normal,’ Christopher had told Lizzie, ‘which was a great relief.’

  ‘I’m glad Anna was relieved,’ Lizzie had said with venom.

  ‘She’s very upset for us all,’ Christopher had told her, and then added, with quiet but vast pain: ‘I didn’t see it either, Lizzie, or if I did, I chose not to.’

  ‘Did you?’ she had asked him, quickly, violently. ‘Did you see?’

  ‘I saw our beautiful little boy, who wasn’t as athletic as his older brother.’ Christopher had striven for honesty. ‘I knew that he’d begun walking later than some, I saw his difficulty with kicking balls and running fast and jumping, and I saw that he was sometimes a little clumsy-looking, but I told myself it didn’t matter, so long as he was happy and healthy.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Lizzie had said.

  ‘But I’m supposed to be a healer.’

  ‘You’re a plastic surgeon,’ Lizzie had told him, being kind.

  But her hating stage had begun, being aimed in all directions, at Anna Mellor for not realizing till now, at the paediatric neurologist for realizing, at all the parents in those waiting rooms whose sons did not have DMD, at Christopher – whatever she’d told him to the contrary – for not recognizing the signs, and then at Angela, for not making her parents tell her about James, not finding out that she was a carrier.

  But then she had remembered that if there was hating to be done now, if there was blaming to be done, then it ought surely to be Christopher directing it at her.

  Her faulty gene, after all.

  Yet he did not do that, neither that night, nor at any time after, had remained, even through their darker hours, as Jack’s nightmare-to-be had begun unfolding, the most tender of husbands. Comprehending the irrational, yet perhaps inevitable, guilt that Lizzie was suffering, Christopher’s kindness had known no bounds, his care and love for Jack and Edward and Sophie wondrously all-enveloping.

  And the only thing that had changed, that had insinuated itself back between them – though on different terms now – had been that three months after Jack’s diagnosis, Christopher had come to her again, quite openly, with the more perverse sexual needs that he had, for so long, been managing to suppress.

  ‘The counselling,’ he told her, ‘has rather shifted emphasis, as you might expect, isn’t really helping me much any more. And I don’t ever want to go to anyone else but you, Lizzie, and I’ve been trying to hang on, but I’m not as strong as you, and I do, shameful as it is, seem to need this, and so I’ve been praying that you’ll try and understand how it is for me.’

  She did understand. Which was, in a way, one of the stranger features of what had happened inside herself – everything altered, innocence gone, priorities radically dislocated. She could not begin to comprehend her husband’s urges, but she was sufficiently imaginative to see that this might be something he now genuinely needed to help him cope with their sorrowful new world; a dark channel through which he might release at least a little of his pent-up anguish and pain.

  So she had agreed to try. And she had almost forgotten, had managed to blot out, how he could be, how ugly, how utterly unlike the other Christopher. Yet she saw how much he hated, even in the midst of it, the thought of hurting her badly, and that helped a little, and anyway, the pain, she found now, was nothing by comparison to her heartbreak over her son. And besides, perhaps this was another part of her punishment for what she had brought to Jack.

  She felt contempt for herself, sometimes, lying in bed with her husband driving at her, doing things to her that she had sworn never to allow him again. But then she made herself think about what lay ahead for their child, and, like the pain, the self-hate became nothing.

  I don’t count, she told herself. Not any more.

  And in the light of day, knowing precisely what she was doing, Lizzie had consigned memories of the night, of her pain and degradation, to her emotional bottom drawer. No longer despising Christopher, she had seen instead, over and over again, why she had fallen in love with him, seen again all his real goodness and strengths. It was, as he had told her when he had first unloaded his weakness, his own private sickness, trying to plead his case. His good qualities did, after all, outweigh his failings.

  And besides, Jack adored him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Though Shad Tower was probably one of the least historically respectful and, in her own eyes, least admirable structures in the riverside area around Butler’s Wharf, it was also, Helen Shipley had to admit, as she gave her name to the doorman, far and away the most glamorous apartment building she had ever visited.

  When Robin Allbeury had phoned the previous afternoon – the second Friday in April – to alert her to his return from Brussels and to tell her, in a deep, mellow voice, that he could see her at any time convenient to her the next day, Shipley had willingly dropped her own Saturday morning plans (Tesco, launderette and vacuuming), and headed south, first thing, to the fifteen-floor building near Tower Bridge.

  No prejudices, she tried telling herself on arrival, but it was hard to shake them off in the marbled, magnificently carpeted lobby or in the quietly rising lift – complete with its own videophone system and cameras – that served just one man’s home, let alone entering an apartment that smelled more like the Savoy than a private residence. Shipley’s own flat was a first floor walk-up that reeked, when the wind came from the north, of rancid fish and chips, and she’d only recently got around to having the lino in the bathroom covered with a bit of pale blue cut-off she’d snapped up in a local carpet sale. Yet still, whenever she closed her front door behind her, a real sense of home, of privacy and individuality, wrapped around her.

  How could anyone feel properly at home in this?

  ‘Good of you to come so far.’ Robin Allbeury – wearing casual slacks and a blue cotton sweater – awaited her as she emerged from the lift, his hand outstretched.

  ‘Good of you to call so soon.’ Shipley looked the millionaire – surely, with this for his home – in the eye, became abruptly and annoyingly aware of the comparatively inferior cut of the trouser suit in which she’d begun her day feeling smart enough, then turned her gaze deliberately back to the gorgeous flowers and stunning artwork in his entrance hall.

  ‘This not your cup of tea,’ Allbeury said astutely.

  ‘I’d love one,’ Shipley countered.

  ‘Coming right up,’ the solicitor said, then bade her sit down in his living room and went off, apparently, to make the tea himself.

  ‘Shit,’ Shipley said softly, taking a look around.

  The room itself had been fascinatingly decorated and furnished, embracing a blend of Eastern and European styles, but the views of the river and beyond were clearly the star attractions, wall-to-wall gla
ss doors opening onto a sweeping terrace, with big, handsome telescopes both inside and out. The walls themselves were plain and softly-coloured, with large, delicately painted, Chinese-looking wall-hangings; black lacquered tables, richly woven rugs on the parquet floor, and slender vases everywhere of what Shipley – who scarcely knew a daffodil from a rose – thought might be lilies or perhaps orchids.

  ‘I had to use bags.’ Robin Allbeury carried in a tray with a teapot, cups and saucers and a plate of biscuits, just as she was sinking into one of his comfortable armchairs. ‘Hope that’s all right.’

  ‘Fine.’ Shipley had anticipated something more exotic. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I was extremely sorry to hear the news of Mrs Bolsover’s death.’ Allbeury poured their tea and handed Shipley her cup.

  ‘Murder,’ she amended.

  ‘So I gather.’

  Allbeury offered her the plate of biscuits, and Shipley, seeing that they were ordinary Cadbury’s fingers and McVitie’s digestives – both of which she loved – took one of each and waited for the solicitor to apologize for having nothing ritzier, but he just took a bite out of a digestive and leaned back in his own armchair.

  ‘How can I help you?’ he asked.

  ‘By telling me everything you can about the victim,’ Shipley said. ‘Anything you can think of, whether you feel it relevant or not.’

  ‘Right.’ Allbeury crossed his legs. ‘Victim, I’m afraid, was the right word for Lynne Bolsover, long before someone killed her.’

  ‘How long ago did you meet her?’ She paused. ‘I gather this might have had nothing to do with your firm. “Unofficial” business, I think, Mr Novak said.’

  ‘Something like that.’ He smiled slightly. ‘I met her last August, though she had come – been brought – to my attention a month earlier.’ He paused. ‘I’d never have known she existed, Detective Inspector, but for an anonymous letter.’ He saw his guest’s sceptical expression. ‘I know. I felt that way the first time I received one.’

  ‘Get them regularly, do you?’ Shipley asked wryly.

  ‘No, thank goodness. Just once before.’

  ‘What did this one say?’