No Escape

by Hilary Norman

  ‘You all right?’ Susan asked Lizzie as they waited for coffee after she’d demolished Italian cheesecake with wild berry sauce and Lizzie had toyed with her own dessert.

  ‘Fine,’ Lizzie said. ‘Too full to eat any more.’

  ‘You just seem a bit . . .’ The publicist went on peering at her. ‘Down.’

  Lizzie picked up her wine glass and glanced around the busy and unashamedly opulent restaurant. ‘Not down at all,’ she said. ‘Just a little nervous about the plans, I suppose.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ Susan said.

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘Sure. It’s a pretty huge undertaking.’ Susan paused. ‘You’re not worried about how the children are going to cope with it, are you? Not with Christopher organizing things for them?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Lizzie said quietly.

  Susan smiled. ‘He’s just so extraordinary.’

  ‘Isn’t he,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘What’s the matter, Mum?’ Jack asked her later, as she prepared toad-in-the-hole.

  ‘Nothing’s the matter, darling,’ she told him.

  Edward was in his room doing homework, Sophie was in bed, and Christopher, due to operate at the Beauchamp first thing, was spending the night in Holland Park. Gilly, who’d waited for Lizzie to get back, had gone off now for three days, which was fine with Lizzie, because frankly there was nothing she wanted just now more than a few days of normality with the children.

  ‘You’ve been a bit funny,’ Jack said.

  Lizzie looked over at him. At her beloved middle child, so like his father to look at, with hair the identical colour to Christopher’s, eyes the same grey, yet much less sharp, far softer than his dad’s. Even his smile almost the same. And Jack did smile a great deal, despite his sufferings.

  Nothing yet, by comparison to what was, almost certainly, to come. Jack had already endured, and been forced to discard, braces and crutches, and in time he would no longer be able to manage his manually operated wheelchair and would graduate to electric. He knew about that, managed to joke about it, boasted to Edward – who adored his younger brother and would, had Lizzie and Christopher not been watchful, have become his willing slave – that he’d be breaking speed limits long before Edward ever drove his first car.

  He knew other things, too, more, much more than his parents – yearning to protect him for as long as possible – wanted him to; Jack had learned those things through his PC, as Lizzie herself had supplemented her own knowledge. Those things, facts, details, that gave her nightmares, sleeping and waking, the things that tortured and tormented her.

  She wondered, sometimes, how it might have been if her maternal grandparents had not chosen to bury the nature of the disease along with Angela’s brother, if she had grown up knowing the chances and had been tested. Might there have been no Edward or Sophie – both healthy and strong, thank God?

  No Jack?

  Could that possibly have been better? The question Lizzie and Christopher and Angela all asked themselves over and over again, pointless and agonizing as it was.

  Not better for me. Lizzie’s response, every time, guilty, anguished, but absolute. For how else could she answer, knowing her beloved boy? The disease was not Jack. It was an alien invader, an enemy, robbing him of dystrophin, that one crucial muscle protein, in its conspiracy to hide the real Jack Wade, to trap and lock away the bold, energetic, beautiful, strong-limbed potential of him.

  His limbs might be weakening, but it had not yet succeeded in locking away any of those other things, and it had never touched his intelligence or humour. Or the lovely smile that linked him so inextricably to his family’s hearts.

  Yet, oh, dear Lord, the things that lay ahead. Operations, treatments. Pain and numbing fatigue. Frustrations no able-bodied person could imagine. Fear of the need for spinal surgery. Dread of the struggle to breathe, of tracheotomy and tubes, of carers to suction and irrigate the tubes, to feed and wash.

  ‘Not yet,’ Christopher would remind Lizzie now and again. ‘Not now. Look at our boy now.’ And he would take her hand and squeeze it tightly and make her look at Jack, and she’d see that he was right, that their son was playing some game with Edward, or stroking Sophie’s hair, which he loved to do, or reading Harry Potter, or watching a video, or listening to a CD, or doing his homework.

  Not yet. Please, God, not ever.

  ‘You’ve been a bit funny,’ Jack said, now.

  Jack Wade, over whose eyes it was not possible to pull even the finest strands of wool.

  So pull yourself together, Lizzie Piper.

  ‘I’ve had a bit of a headache,’ she lied. ‘Nothing too bad.’

  ‘Sure that’s all?’

  ‘Absolutely sure,’ she said, and carried on with her toad-in-the-hole.

  ‘Loads of Bisto, please,’ Jack said.

  ‘But of course, Mr Gourmet.’ Lizzie smiled, then paused. ‘Are you quite happy about us all going away this summer, Jack?’

  ‘Course I am.’ The smile was there like a flash. ‘It’s going to be wicked.’ He hesitated. ‘Is that why you’ve been weird, Mum? Worrying about me and the travel and stuff?’

  Lizzie grasped at the excuse. ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘A little.’

  ‘No need to worry,’ Jack said. ‘Not with Dad taking care of it.’

  She smiled at him, turned back to supper, tried for a moment to remember exactly when ‘Mummy’ had given way to the more grown-up, more independent ‘Mum’.

  ‘Of course not,’ she said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Regularly, in the course of Joanne’s ongoing struggle to keep Irina safe, she pored over her options, wondering if she might have overlooked something, anything, that she could do to salvage her and her child’s future. Divorce was impossible. Tony had told her, loudly and clearly, that he would never let them go. Joanne had tried telling him that it would surely be the easiest solution for him: peace and quiet, no more ungrateful daughter or wife.

  ‘Tempting,’ Tony had said. ‘But not quite tempting enough, with all I’ve forked out over the years.’

  ‘We’re not an investment,’ Joanne had reminded him.

  ‘Pity,’ he’d countered. ‘If you were, at least I could cash you in, get something back out of it.’

  She’d left it, of course. She always did, knowing that every reproach, every murmur about separation carried with it the threat of another punch, his anger always, still, directed at Irina. Still punishing Joanne through the little girl.

  ‘Is Irina all right?’ Sandra Finch had asked her daughter, just last week.

  ‘Fine,’ Joanne answered, her stomach clenching. She had begun to dread taking Irina anywhere these days, even on the swiftest visit to her grandmother.

  And, of course, Irina was far from all right. She knew that. Irina seemed, to Joanne’s increasingly fearful eyes, to be fading. Like an unvarnished painting that had at first been vivid and bright, and gradually, over time, had dulled.

  ‘Don’t you see what you’re doing?’ Joanne had asked Tony a day or two before that visit to her mother. ‘Not just to her, but to yourself?’

  It had been morning, breakfast-time, the safest time of day for daring any kind of challenge, the least drunken time.

  ‘Of course I see it,’ Tony had answered, flatly.

  Joanne had stared at him, not sure if she’d heard properly.

  ‘Think I don’t know I’m a monster?’

  She’d looked at him. ‘Then why?’

  ‘Can’t help it,’ he’d said, stood up and gone to work.

  Two Saturdays later, while Joanne was in the lavatory upstairs and Tony was watching Channel Four Racing, Irina got up from the corner where she’d been quietly looking at one of her library picture books, walked over to where she’d earlier left her favourite purple and white stuffed dog, and tripped over the too-long aerial cable near the television.

  ‘Look where you’re going, for God’s sake!’ Tony shouted from his chair.
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br />   ‘Sorry, Daddy.’ The little girl began to get up, but one of her Start-Rite shoes was caught beneath the cable and in trying to disentangle herself she pulled too hard, dislodging the aerial connection from its wall socket.

  ‘Jesus!’ Tony jumped up. ‘Can’t you do anything right?’

  ‘Rina sorry!’ the child cried with fright.

  ‘Let me do it,’ her father yelled.

  She saw him coming, struggled again to pull her foot free. The cable snaked to one side, the small metal plug at its end lashed through the air and hit the TV screen.

  ‘I said leave it!’ Tony bellowed.

  Upstairs, Joanne heard him, froze, opened the door.

  ‘Tony?’ she called.

  And heard her daughter’s screams.

  This time, in A&E, she knew, with sickening certainty, that it wasn’t her imagination that the questions were being more carefully posed, that the receptionist and the nurse and then the doctor and then the X-ray woman were all looking at her and at Irina differently.

  ‘She tripped over some wires and hit herself on the table and wall.’

  And her father kicked her in the ribs.

  ‘Rina fell down.’

  The cover story, faithfully supported by her poor, frightened little girl.

  Please, God, let her be all right.

  ‘Rina foot got stuck.’

  If she’s all right this time, God, I’ll find a way to stop him.

  ‘It’s all my fault, doctor. I’ve been meaning to get those wires sorted.’

  If they believe me, God, I swear I’ll find a way.

  ‘Just waiting for the X-rays, Mrs Patston.’

  Please, please, God.

  She almost didn’t take Irina home that night, almost grabbed at that blessed moment when the child was given the all-clear and ran with it, almost drove off with her into the night, never to return, almost turned the car towards the road that led to the M25 – and any motorway would have worked for Joanne that night, so long as it led away from the man who kicked his daughter and said he couldn’t help it.

  Almost.

  God had listened, but Joanne wasn’t sure if He’d done her that great a favour, after all. Definitely not sure if He’d done much to help Irina.

  Free will, Joanne.

  Not up to God, not really.

  Up to you.

  To help her daughter.

  No motorway. No point. Not without enough cash and somewhere to go. She had a credit card, and a cash card, but Tony controlled them both, would stop them both, and even if she went to a hole-in-the-wall now and took the maximum, how long would that last?

  She actually pulled over then, stopped the Fiesta at the side of the road, to rummage in her handbag.

  ‘Mummy?’

  Sleepy voice from the back.

  ‘It’s all right, baby. Go back to sleep.’

  She’d left her cards at home.

  So no cash. No motorway.

  Home.

  She began to fantasize. About escaping, about safe places to hide with Irina, faraway places where Tony would never find them. She began keeping Irina by her side every single minute of every day, even when she went to the loo, even if Tony was out, in case he came back suddenly, without warning.

  ‘Can I come over?’ Sandra asked one morning on the phone.

  ‘We’re just going out.’

  ‘Maybe I could meet you?’

  ‘It’s just a bit of shopping.’

  ‘I could come when you get back.’ Sandra paused. ‘Since I know you won’t bring her to me, even though I’ve no idea why.’

  ‘I’ll bring her soon, Mum.’

  ‘You’re hurting me, Joanne, and I don’t understand.’

  ‘There’s nothing to understand. It’s just been so busy lately.’

  ‘Of course,’ Sandra said coolly.

  ‘I love you, Mum.’

  ‘And I love you,’ her mother said. ‘And I love my granddaughter, too.’

  ‘I know you do.’

  Joanne knew she was hurting her mother, but it couldn’t be helped, because she was too afraid that one of these days Sandra would worm the truth out of Irina, and she couldn’t take that chance – she was taking enough chances just staying with Tony, and she wasn’t sure she could bear any more tension, and one day, one day when she’d found a way out of the nightmare, she’d explain it all to her mother.

  No more fantasy, she told herself. Do something.

  She took Irina to South Chingford Library in Hall Lane, sat her down at a table by the window with a book, kept her eyes on her and tried to find out from the leaflets around the library – not asking anyone, she couldn’t actually come out and ask – about shelters, refuges for people like her. She took the number of a twenty-four hour crisis line to a phone box two streets away and spoke to a lovely, sensible woman while Irina nestled between her legs. But even while the woman at the other end of the phone talked to her of help and places of safety and injunctions and legal aid, Joanne knew that none of these things were for her and Irina, because she was, when it came down to it, a criminal, because she had illegally brought her little girl into the country, had aided and abetted her husband in paying for their daughter.

  Nothing compared to standing by while he slapped her.

  Kicked her.

  No hiding places for her. All just fantasy.

  Hopeless.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘You never get used to it, do you?’ Maureen Donnelly said to her friend, Clare Novak, over dinner at one of the small Greek restaurants off Charlotte Street.

  ‘I never did.’ Clare dipped a small piece of pitta into taramasalata, looked at it, then put it down.

  ‘Sorry,’ Maureen said. ‘I shouldn’t be talking about it.’

  ‘Yes, you should,’ Clare told her. ‘It’s on your mind. Better to unload.’

  ‘You’re right, about it being on my mind.’ Maureen drank some retsina. ‘This one’s really bugging me. There was nothing definite, you know. It really could have been what she said – injuries commensurate with what they both said happened. And God knows kiddies do fall over all the time.’

  ‘But you didn’t believe it.’

  ‘Not really, no,’ Maureen said. ‘But it was strange, in a way. I usually only care about the children – don’t give a damn about the mothers who let it go on, you know.’

  ‘Not this one though?’ Clare’s soft hazel eyes were intent.

  ‘She was so tormented.’

  ‘Guilty.’

  ‘God, yes.’

  ‘Not her doing, then?’

  ‘Definitely not.’ Maureen shook her head. ‘God, that kiddie tore at me, Clare.’ She paused. ‘And the mother, too.’

  ‘Do you think,’ Clare asked Novak later that night, as they were going to bed, ‘that you could maybe take a look at these people?’

  ‘To what end?’ Novak touched their duvet cover. ‘This is nice.’

  ‘Bought it in the John Lewis sale.’ Clare turned out her bedside lamp. ‘Mike, do you think you could do that?’

  ‘Why?’ He snuggled down, put his right arm around her, drew her close.

  ‘In case you think it might be a case for Robin.’

  ‘You hate Robin.’ Novak was surprised.

  ‘I’ve never said I hated him, just that I don’t necessarily trust him.’ Clare paused. ‘Or at least his motives.’ She pulled away slightly, leaned on her left elbow, looked at him in the dark. ‘I need you to take me seriously about this, Mike.’

  ‘I always take you seriously.’

  She lay down again, tried to relax. ‘So?’

  ‘I thought Maureen said there was no real proof it wasn’t a fall.’

  ‘Not this time, no. Which is exactly why someone should try to help.’

  ‘Before there’s a next time.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Novak stared into the dark, picturing a small girl with dark, haunted eyes and bruises on her body. ‘I love you.’
r />   Clare felt for his hand. ‘I love you too.’ She paused. ‘So will you?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Novak hated disappointing her. ‘She hasn’t asked for help.’

  ‘The mother, you mean,’ his wife said. ‘The child hasn’t, either.’

  ‘She can’t, can she.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Clare said again.

  They fell asleep after that, but Novak had woken again to hear Clare moaning in the midst of a bad dream, and when he switched on his lamp he saw tears on her cheeks, which disturbed the hell out of him.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked next morning, while they were getting dressed.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Now I know you’re going to try to help that little girl.’

  ‘I said I wasn’t sure,’ Novak said, zipping up his trousers.

  ‘I can’t see how it could hurt.’ Clare dabbed on a little grey eyeshadow. ‘Just checking out the Patston family.’

  He looked at her. ‘Isn’t this what you got away from when you left A&E?’

  Clare sat on the edge of the bed. ‘She’s already in my mind, Mike. So it’s too late, isn’t it? If we don’t at least try to help, I’ll just worry more.’

  ‘What if I find out it’s very bad, and we still can’t help?’

  ‘That’s what Robin’s about, though, isn’t it?’

  Novak sat down beside her, looked into her challenging eyes.

  ‘Isn’t that exactly what he says he does?’ she persisted. ‘Takes care of women who can’t get help any other way?’

  ‘Even Robin can’t help everyone,’ Novak said.

  ‘But at least he could try.’ Clare paused. ‘Just take a look, Mike. Please.’

  Novak went on looking at her. Nothing fragile about her now.

  ‘Please?’

  He smiled. ‘Give me the details.’

  Chapter Twenty

  The Lizzie Piper Roadshow assembled in its entirety for the first time on Sunday, the twenty-eighth of July, in Vienne, south of Lyon. Lizzie and Susan had flown from London to Lyon, from where they had driven, in a hired Peugeot, to a house that had been rented by the Food and Drink Channel on the outskirts of town. Richard Arden, the producer, and Gina Baum, his PA, having travelled by Eurostar two days earlier, arrived – with smug smiles that spoke volumes of the two nights they’d spent in Paris – in a rented Citroën on the same day as Lizzie and Susan. The crew – a horde, it seemed to Lizzie, feeling panicky – came later that evening, in a minibus and lorry, out of which they unloaded tons of equipment.