No Escape

by Hilary Norman

  Just a note, of course, this morning, nothing meant by the word.

  Don’t spoil the day, Lizzie.

  She thought of lazing for a while, maybe breakfasting in bed, but found that all she really wanted to do was be with the children, so she showered quickly, found a swimsuit, sundress and sandals, looked in the mirror, saw that, despite all the hours of filming indoors, she was becoming quite tanned, and went down to the pool.

  She saw Christopher first, sitting astride a lounger, wearing navy blue trunks, sunglasses and his wide-brimmed straw hat. He had maintained his liking for hats, refrained from wearing a panama in summer because Lizzie disliked them, but still often wore a fedora in town, a slouch hat for country walks and regularly, from October till March, wore or carried his favourite, a now fairly battered tweed number that made him feel a bit like Rex Harrison.

  He caught sight of her, took off the hat and waved it first at her, then towards the pool, to draw her attention to Edward, just taking a dive.

  Lizzie waited a moment, watching her oldest son, then headed over to where Christopher was sitting, only now seeing that Jack was sitting just beyond his father, in his chair, wearing a white T-shirt, shorts and the pair of very cool Italian designer shades he’d bought with Lizzie in London before the trip.

  ‘Hello, everyone,’ she said, approaching.

  Sophie, sitting under an umbrella two loungers away, chatting to another girl of approximately the same age, saw her mother and waved at her. She looked, Lizzie thought, her heart contracting with love, adorable in a pink bikini and baseball cap.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’ Jack made his chair give a languid wiggle of greeting.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ Christopher said. ‘Why aren’t you still sleeping?’

  ‘Wanted to be with you lot.’

  Lizzie dumped her bag on the table between her husband and son, gave Jack a swift kiss and looked back at the pool, where Edward was now laughing with a group of boys and girls.

  ‘Daddy said you were staying in bed.’ Sophie materialized beside her.

  ‘Hello, gorgeous.’ Lizzie gave her a hug. ‘Got enough suncream on?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘She looks nice.’ Lizzie looked towards the girl Sophie had been talking to.

  ‘Daniela. She’s Italian, but she speaks great English.’

  ‘Ed’s diving again,’ Jack said. ‘Look, Mum.’

  Lizzie looked, too late – just a spray of splash marking her older son’s point of entry, and his slim, tanned body already sleeking away beneath the surface. She turned, looked at Jack, saw not a trace of envy and marvelled at his generosity.

  ‘I’m going for a swim. Mummy,’ Sophie said. ‘Want to come?’

  ‘Mummy probably wants to relax,’ Christopher said.

  ‘I’d love to have a swim.’ With a quick movement, Lizzie pulled her sundress up over her head, and kicked off her sandals. ‘How about Daniela?’

  ‘She doesn’t like swimming,’ Sophie said. ‘Come on.’

  Mother and daughter emerged fifteen minutes later, heading straight to the shower to wash off the salt from the pool, then passing Edward on their way back to the loungers.

  ‘I’m going to get Cokes,’ he told them. ‘Anyone want anything?’

  ‘Ice cream,’ Sophie said. ‘Gelato.’

  ‘It’s a bit early for ice cream,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘Oh, Mummy.’

  ‘Their OJ’s good,’ Edward suggested. ‘Fresh squeezed.’

  ‘Mm,’ Lizzie said. ‘Would you get me one, please, darling?’

  ‘Ice cream for me, please – chocolate,’ Sophie said and ran on ahead, the soles of her still wet feet slapping the ground.

  ‘Have you got enough money?’ Lizzie asked Edward.

  ‘Dad said to sign for stuff,’ he said, and was gone.

  Lizzie looked ahead towards the loungers, where Christopher was on his feet and drying Sophie with a towel. She was laughing, and it looked, from a distance as if her father was tickling her.

  Something in Lizzie’s mind went snap.

  ‘No,’ she said, so violently that several people turned to see what had happened.

  Lizzie didn’t care. Five strides, and she was there, grabbing her startled daughter by the hand and pulling her away from Christopher.

  ‘What?’ Sophie demanded. ‘Mummy, what are you doing?’

  Lizzie let her go, felt her cheeks burning, knew she’d taken a foolish, desperately clumsy nosedive into territory she’d sworn not to, and struggled to cover before it was too late.

  ‘You were making a show of yourself,’ she said.

  Sophie stared at her. ‘I was laughing.’ She looked at her father for back-up. ‘Daddy was making me laugh – what’s wrong with that?’

  Lizzie felt Christopher’s eyes on her but couldn’t bring herself to look at him, knew she had no viable alternative but to continue.

  ‘This is a nice hotel,’ she told her daughter, loathing herself. ‘You were disturbing people.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’ Sophie’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Why’re you being so horrible?’

  She didn’t wait for Lizzie’s answer, just bent to scoop up her sundress and beach bag, stuck her feet into her sandals and ran.

  ‘That was nice,’ Christopher’s voice said, coolly.

  Lizzie did look at him then, saw that he was holding his sunglasses in one hand, and that his eyes, anything but cool, were appalled. That he knew what had just happened in her mind. She looked back in the other direction, saw Sophie running past Edward, carrying the drinks and her gelat, saw Gilly, in a striking red bikini and cover-up, long dark hair pinned up, trying to speak to Sophie but failing.

  ‘I’m going after her,’ Lizzie said, and picked up her own things.

  ‘Good idea,’ Christopher said, very quietly.

  ‘What’s up with Sophie?’ Gilly asked, arriving hastily, all set to turn around again. ‘She looked upset.’

  ‘I upset her,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘Oh,’ Gilly said, knowingly. ‘Who’d be seven?’ She smiled. ‘Who’d be a mum?’

  Lizzie forced down her own sudden urge to burst into tears. ‘Me,’ she said.

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ Gilly said, sympathetically.

  ‘Hopefully,’ Lizzie said. ‘Once I’ve apologized.’

  ‘She’s a lucky girl,’ Gilly said. ‘Having a mum prepared to do that.’

  ‘I don’t believe you could even contemplate such a thing.’

  Christopher had waited down by the pool until after Sophie had returned, and then he’d left her and the boys with Gilly and come up to the suite to find Lizzie. His suntan looked suddenly odd, as if the colour were make-up and he was chalk-white beneath, and his hands were clenched fists.

  ‘I know.’ Lizzie turned away, walked towards the balcony.

  ‘Is this something you’ve always been afraid of?’

  ‘I’ve never thought of it before,’ she said.

  It was the truth. It had never entered her mind before. Not only because it was too repellent, too horrific to consider, but because she had known – thought she’d known – that whatever Christopher might have done, might still do to her someday, he would never do anything to harm the children.

  ‘Don’t you know,’ he said now, ‘that I would never, ever, hurt a hair on their heads?’

  Lizzie turned back to face him. ‘When I first knew you,’ she said, quite evenly, ‘if someone had said that you might want to hurt me physically—’

  ‘I never do,’ he burst, passionately. ‘Not intentionally.’

  ‘You’ve hurt me repeatedly.’ She was quite calm now, was unsure how it was possible to feel so calm at a moment like this.

  ‘Then why have you stayed with me?’ he asked, quieter now, too.

  ‘You know why,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘I thought . . .’ Christopher stopped, walked over to the sofa, sank down heavily onto it.

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘You sometimes give t
he impression, to me, not just others, that you still love me. Not just as the father of our children.’

  Lizzie began to feel sick. ‘Please don’t pretend you don’t know how I feel about the things you do to me, Christopher.’

  ‘But this isn’t about that, is it?’ He stared up at her. ‘And even if it were, you can’t deny how restrained I’ve been for the longest time now, because I knew how anxious you were about this tour.’

  Lizzie sat down too, in one of the armchairs.

  ‘And even here,’ he went on. ‘You were so sure I was going to let you down on this trip, but I haven’t laid a finger on you, have I?’

  ‘No,’ Lizzie said. Not yet.

  ‘Because I respect you, Lizzie,’ he said. ‘I respect what you do, who you are. And I know, I accept that I’ve lost the right to expect the same from you – I do know that – but couldn’t you have just a little faith?’

  ‘I do have faith,’ she said, ‘in the rest of you.’

  ‘No,’ Christopher said. ‘Clearly not. Or you would never have done what you did down there.’

  ‘I overreacted,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You all but accused me of—’ His colour was back, deepening with freshly mounting distress. ‘I can hardly bring myself to say it, Lizzie.’

  ‘It wasn’t an accusation, it was a thought, seeing you drying Sophie, tickling her, our beautiful little girl—’

  ‘Our daughter,’ he cried. ‘My own child.’

  ‘I couldn’t help it, Christopher. I saw you with her, and suddenly, this terror struck me of what might happen one day, and was that really so unreasonable, would you say, given your history?’

  ‘Forget unreasonable,’ he said, louder now. ‘It’s monstrous that you could dream up such a notion, when the one thing you’ve always granted me is that I’m a good father.’

  Shame began to flow through her, yet still she could not seem to take back what she’d begun. ‘Maybe you’ve abused me once too often.’

  ‘I haven’t touched you.’

  ‘Not for a while, perhaps—’

  ‘Not for months!’

  ‘For which I’m meant to be grateful?’ Lizzie was back on her feet, her own anger growing, and she couldn’t wholly understand why it was all boiling over now, of all times, when nothing at all had actually happened. ‘Give myself a convenient lobotomy? Obliterate everything you’ve done before?’

  ‘Things I couldn’t help, Lizzie.’

  ‘You’ve just told me how you’ve managed to restrain yourself,’ she lashed back. ‘Can’t have it both ways, Christopher. Either you can help yourself, or you can’t – make up your mind.’

  ‘But all this has nothing to do with what just happened – didn’t happen – down by the pool.’

  ‘Of course it has,’ she yelled back at him. ‘It’s all about trust, can’t you see that? It’s all about the same thing.’

  ‘Yes,’ Christopher said. ‘I suppose it is.’

  Lizzie sank down again into the chair.

  ‘It does all come down to the same thing.’ He was quieter again now. ‘To something I’ve never really understood, which is why, after all we’ve been through together, my simple need for you, my wife, should seem so very terrible.’ He paused. ‘And even if it does seem so dreadful, Lizzie, if it’s the one awful thing you have to put up with from me, once in a while, surely you don’t have that much cause for complaint?’

  ‘Because of this, you mean?’ She looked around the beautiful room. ‘Or because of our lovely homes, perhaps?’

  ‘I just think that perhaps, if you were a little more broadminded, a little less prudish, less frigid,’ Christopher said, ‘you might realize how much you actually have to be thankful for, instead of dreaming up odious, entirely groundless, accusations.’

  ‘I’ve already told you, I didn’t accuse you,’ she said coldly. ‘I just reacted, instinctively, to the sight of the man who’s abused me repeatedly over the years tickling my half-naked, seven-year-old daughter.’

  ‘Our daughter,’ he said, almost shrilly. ‘Whom I love totally.’

  ‘I know you do,’ Lizzie said. ‘And I do apologize for overreacting, especially in public. Most of all, in front of Sophie.’

  ‘And Jack,’ Christopher added.

  ‘I don’t, though, apologize for my instincts.’

  ‘Heaven forbid you should ever be entirely in the wrong.’

  ‘I daresay I’m in the wrong a great deal of the time,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘Staying with me, you mean.’

  She saw then how completely pointless the conversation was, and how dreadful, and realized that the children and Gilly would be starting to wonder where they were, decided abruptly that she’d rather it was she who returned to them before Christopher, and began to walk towards the door.

  ‘Had enough?’ he asked.

  ‘More than enough.’ She turned back to face him. ‘But just in case, just in the – please, God, unlikely – event that my instincts were not wholly groundless, you should know one thing, Christopher.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ He sounded very bitter.

  ‘Simply that if you did, ever, in any way, harm Sophie or any of our children, I truly believe that I would kill you.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Novak had gone along with Clare’s troubled instincts. There had been no question, of course, that he would, right from the first night she’d told him about little Irina, because if he’d had to name the one thing he loved most about his wife, it would have had to be her sensitivity.

  So he’d done some checking, taken some time to observe the Patstons.

  The husband, Tony, good-looking man with one conviction for actual bodily harm, now working solo at Patston Motors in an alleyway off the North Circular near Walthamstow, going to the pub for liquid lunches, downing too many pints for a man working with potentially dangerous machinery, knocking off at about six-thirty, going home to the semi in Chingford Hatch for an hour, two at most, then heading out again to his local, sometimes alone, sometimes with his neighbour, for a longer session.

  Joanne Patston, nice-looking too, but manifestly beleaguered, seeming to scurry everywhere, never leaving the house without the little girl, the child for whom Clare and Maureen Donnelly were both so fearful.

  And Irina herself, gorgeous little kid, no outward evidence of ill-treatment, no visible bruises – though Novak knew, of course, that they existed – but always clinging to her mother’s hand without any of the natural, healthy eagerness to be free that characterized most four-year-olds.

  Adopted. He’d learned that much without difficulty, but then he’d struck a dead end more swiftly than he might have expected, and, just as swiftly, he had withdrawn his enquiry lest he make waves.

  ‘So what do you think?’ he asked Robin Allbeury in the second week of August, sitting on the solicitor’s terrace with its extraordinary views over the Thames and beyond, drinking a cold beer while the other man finished reading his report. ‘Anything you could do?’

  ‘Tough call,’ Allbeury mused. ‘Presumably this question mark over the kiddy’s adoption could be enough to stop the lady leaving or divorcing him, even if it were what she wanted.’ He paused. ‘I’d be concerned that any of my efforts within legal goalposts could end up getting Irina taken away from Mrs Patston, not just the father.’

  ‘More misery all round.’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘I’ve never asked much before,’ Novak said, slowly, ‘never wanted to know too much about your methods for making certain things happen.’

  Allbeury smiled. ‘What are you asking now, Mike? That I move outside those legal goalposts?’

  ‘Just asking you to try and help,’ Novak answered simply. ‘Just telling you that my instincts seem to be siding with Clare’s and Maureen Donnelly’s.’ He shook his head. ‘Nothing much more to go on than that. I haven’t seen Patston shout at his daughter, let alone hurt her.’

  ‘Then again—’ Allb
eury glanced down at the notes ‘—you haven’t actually seen him out with her, even at weekends, which is a little off, in itself.’

  ‘Definitely,’ Novak agreed.

  ‘And clearly what we’re all concerned about,’ Allbeury said, more grimly now, ‘is that the two visits to Waltham General may only be the thin end of the wedge.’

  ‘Mrs Patston scared of her husband and, maybe, losing the child.’

  ‘Too anxious, perhaps, to take Irina back to A&E, even if she’s really hurt.’

  ‘Robin’s going to make some enquiries of his own,’ Novak told Clare later on her mobile, it being one of her evenings in Wood Green with Nick Parry, her private patient.

  ‘Is that good news?’ Clare asked, while the young man with gaunt cheeks and merry eyes that often hid his inner frustrations and bleaker moods – who had, until a few moments before been playing Internet poker with a woman in Fiji – zipped back and forth in his wheelchair, making coffee. ‘Or does he usually do that?’

  ‘He said no promises,’ Novak said. ‘But I could tell he was concerned.’

  ‘I just hope he doesn’t waste too much time,’ Clare said.

  ‘He’s a careful man, my love. And he knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Thanks for trying.’

  ‘I don’t see we have a choice,’ Novak said.

  ‘Coffee’s ready,’ Nick Parry announced from the doorway as Clare put her phone back into her bag. ‘Though you look like you could use something stronger.’

  Clare grinned at him. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’ He waited till they both had their mugs. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Tell me what’s up. You know you always feel better when you tell me.’

  She smiled again. Parry had once told Clare that he was better than most shrinks because he’d been there himself – pretty much all the way down there, he’d said – for a good long while after his accident, and it hadn’t been therapists who’d got him through, but other things entirely: the welcome discovery that he could still, albeit more seldom than before, get hammered with some of his old mates; the better of his carers; and his still-developing love affair with his computer and the Internet.