Motherlove

by Thorne Moore

  ‘Pig? What pig? I don’t know what you’re talking about. You need to see a doctor, my girl, getting hysterical, trashing things, all this shouting. You need seeing to.’

  ‘Oh, yes, that was one of your expressions. I remember. Is that what you told Dana to do? Get Craig Adams to give her a seeing to?’

  ‘What’s the silly cow’s been saying? Fucking lies, all of it. Can’t get a man so she makes stuff up. Pissed off that he never came back for more? ‘Cos if she told you it was rape, she’s leading you right up the garden path. Couldn’t get enough of it, from what I heard.’

  ‘Don’t you dare say such filthy things when you know damn well she was terrified and she didn’t want any of it! You arranged the whole thing. You make me sick!’

  ‘Hey, hey, you keep off me!’ Joan was fighting her off and Gillian hadn’t even realised she was shaking her. She had been so determined not to lose her temper, to be cold as an iceberg. Couldn’t she do anything right?

  Joan pushed her off, snorting indignantly. ‘If you think I’m going to sit around in my own house, being insulted like this, you can think again.’

  She made to rise but Gillian pushed her back down. ‘Oh no you don’t. You don’t just walk away, not this time. I left her in your care for one night. One night! And that was all you needed for your filthy little games. One night for you to hurt my girl, destroy her childhood, make her feel wretched and degraded.’

  ‘You’re bloody barmy.’ Joan was angry, and then suddenly cautious. Afraid. ‘I’m your mother. I’m an old woman. You want to listen to a pack of lies about me? Your own mum?’

  Of course Joan was afraid: of the brass poker in Gillian’s hand. When had she picked it up? She couldn’t remember, but the urge to use it was so strong she was frightening herself. And glorying in the terror in Joan’s eyes. But Joan couldn’t simply be afraid. Even in terror she had to scoff. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘What makes you think that, eh? I’m your daughter. Is there anything you’d be too ashamed to do? You sat round smirking like a disgusting old brothel madam, while my daughter was raped—’

  ‘I did not! How was I to know what they were doing up there?’

  ‘You knew exactly what they were doing. You planned it.’

  ‘I did not!’

  ‘I know you did! Just like you planned it with me! I should have killed you then, forty years ago, before you could hurt anyone else. But no, I left you to hurt my daughter, and I’m damned if you’re going to hurt anyone else!’

  Joan stared up at the round brass knob of the poker handle, raised over her. Would she still be staring when Gillian brought it down?

  She was going to. Her arm was aching with the force with which she gripped the poker. Her whole body was rigid. She could smash the witch’s skull, or skewer Joan like the pig she was.

  ‘Don’t.’

  A voice in her ear. A hand closing round her wrist, holding her and the poker.

  ‘Don’t, Mum. She’s not worth it.’

  ‘Vicky?’ How was she here? Vicky had left. Gillian had been so certain that this time she’d gone for good. But here she was, holding the poker back.

  ‘If you kill her, you’ll go to prison and she’s not worth it. Don’t let her destroy anything else.’

  It was enough to ease Joan’s panic. ‘That’s right, you stop her. Ought to be locked up. Waving a poker at me.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Vicky, quite quietly, almost politely.

  ‘Don’t you shut up me. This is my house. And don’t you go bad-mouthing me, telling your lies, young madam.’

  ‘Shut up!’ screamed Gillian, clutching the poker again.

  ‘Shhhh,’ soothed Vicky. ‘She’s a bag of wind. Don’t let her hurt you.’

  ‘But she hurt you.’ Gillian sobbed, gulping for air, feeling the violence drain out of her. ‘I should have known, because that’s what she does. That’s what she did to all of us. Why?’ Vicky had taken the poker from her hand, but Gillian could still grab Joan and shake her. ‘Why, you evil old witch?’

  ‘Witch? And after all I’ve done for you?’

  ‘What have you ever done for anyone? Don’t you dare call yourself a mother! You have never cared about anyone. Why? What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you care for anyone else?’

  ‘Why should I?’ spat Joan. Now that Vicky had pulled Gillian back, she had room to rise. ‘No one ever fucking cared for me. I had to manage, didn’t I? I had to go through it all. I had to learn the hard way. Why should it be any different for any of you? I had it a bloody sight harder than anything you’ve gone through.’

  ‘Oh. Is that it?’ Gillian stepped back, staring at Joan. ‘You were abused? Your father beat you? Your mother put you on the game? And your revenge is to hurt us in your turn? Your own children, and your grandchildren and your great grandchildren? You sick, sad, old woman!’

  ‘Yes, she is a sick, old woman,’ said Vicky, so calm and quiet. ‘Don’t let her hurt you any more.’

  ‘I’m the one hurt here,’ snapped Joan. ‘Being attacked with a poker. Assault, that’s what it is. I’ll have the police on you!’

  ‘Call them!’ retorted Gillian. ‘Go on, call them, and I’ll tell them what you did to Vicky.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything. You’ve got this bee in your bonnet about rape. They were kids having fun. If she told you it was rape—’

  ‘Vicky didn’t say rape. But that’s what it was and I know, because I went through it, all those years ago, you pushing me on Michael Ridgeley that night, locking the door so I couldn’t get back in, sniggering through the letterbox, “You show her a good time, Micky, you show her what’s what eh?” I was fifteen!’

  ‘Fifteen? So what? I was bloody twelve!’

  ‘I don’t care! I don’t care what you went through as a child. You forfeited my pity forty years ago. But instead of spitting in your face, I just accepted you as the poison I was stuck with. And I brought another child under your roof and I let you hurt her in exactly the same way!’

  ‘It’s a cycle,’ commented Vicky, as if conversing about the weather. ‘She was abused, she abuses. But you didn’t. You’ve broken the circle.’

  ‘No,’ wept Gillian. ‘Because I left you with her and that was as good as abuse!’

  ‘No! She’s the abuser. Rapist by proxy. They could do an interesting study on her. Sociopathic responses to—’

  ‘You and your bloody long words. You think you’re so clever.’ Joan’s chin was up now, the last trace of fear gone. ‘You’re no granddaughter of mine. That stupid cow there ain’t your mother—’

  ‘But she is,’ said Vicky. ‘Though I agree you’re not my grandmother. Mum should disown you too.’

  ‘Disown! I’m the one doing the bloody disowning. Get out. I don’t want you in this house. It’s my house. I say who lives here, and I want you out.’

  ‘No,’ said Vicky, putting her arms round Gillian, only partly to restrain her. ‘You’re the one who’s going to go, Joan. You’re going to pack up your things and get out. Move in with Bill. This is our home, it’s my parents who have paid for it, and you’re the one who isn’t wanted.’

  Joan laughed. ‘My name on the deeds, girl. Just because I offered my useless daughter a roof over her head, when she’d chucked all her money down the drain, doesn’t give you any right.’

  ‘Well, rights, you know, Joan, are just a matter of applied or implied force, in the end. Give a man all the rights in the world, and it’s meaningless if he’s too scared or weak to assert them. It doesn’t really matter what legal rights you have in this house, because you are not going to assert them. You are going to move out and leave us alone.’

  ‘Like fuck I am.’

  ‘Yes, you are, because if you don’t, I am going to the police to report exactly how you organised and supervised my rape.’

  Joan laughed again, blustering. ‘You couldn’t. Kids mucking around, that’s all. You weren’t underage. You can call it rape now, but you didn’t say nothing ba
ck then. You think the others will back you up? The police will know you’re crazy.’

  ‘But there’s evidence. Plenty of it, in my medical records. I went to the doctor, remember? But I don’t suppose you do. You’d had your fun, so you weren’t interested in what I did next. I went to the doctor, next morning, scared I might be pregnant or infected. I let him examine me. He could see exactly what had happened and his records prove it. He was all for going to the police then but I wouldn’t. I felt dirty. Ashamed. I didn’t want anyone knowing, so he agreed to keep quiet, but the records are there. The police aren’t going to argue with them.’

  ‘Maybe it was rape, I don’t know. How am I supposed to know what kids get up to? It was nothing to do with me.’

  ‘It was everything to do with you,’ said Gillian. She felt as if a weapon had been put into her hands at last, a real weapon, not a decorative brass poker. ‘And I’ll tell them exactly how you operate. What you did to me, and the others.’

  ‘There’ll be plenty of corroboration,’ added Vicky. ‘Doctor White probably still has the semen sample too. DNA. That will be enough to prove who it was, and what do you think Craig Adams will say when he’s questioned? He’ll drag in the others and they’ll blame it all on you. And of course it will get out and the whole estate will know about it. Remember how they blew up when Noel Ashford was suspected of being a paedophile? It doesn’t take much to get the mindless hypocrites going. Your choice, Joan. What would you prefer? To be charged or lynched? Or would you rather just move in with your toy boy and leave us alone? One way or another, you’re out of here.’ Vicky smiled her contempt, in command.

  Joan’s thin lips were working. ‘I tell you something, I’m not staying in this house tonight. Not with a couple of lunatics like you. Murdered in my bed, likely as not.’ She marched to the door, picked up her case, dropped it again in favour of the bag with the whisky bottles. ‘Don’t you think you’re having it all your own way. I’m getting the police onto you, right enough. You don’t scare me.’ She was already out of the door, sparrow legs hurrying down the path.

  ‘I’m hoping Mum and Dad will sell and move,’ called Vicky after her. ‘If they do, we’ll pass on a quarter share. That sounds reasonable. Consult your solicitor.’ She shut the door and moved the suitcase disdainfully out of the way. Then she looked back at Gillian.

  Gillian embraced her, her voice thick with emotion. ‘Oh God, oh my darling, I thought I’d lost you.’

  ‘No,’ said Vicky. ‘It seems not.’ She let herself be embraced. Tentatively, experimentally, she hugged Gillian back. ‘She’s gone, you know. She won’t dare try coming back, whatever she says.’

  Gillian held her closer. ‘I’m sorry, Vicky, so sorry. I should have been there for you. You had to deal with it all alone. Thank God you thought of going to the doctor.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. Of course I didn’t. I went to my room and locked the door.’

  ‘But – if she goes to the police—’

  ‘She won’t. Don’t you know her well enough by now? She’s out, gone, and we’re rid of her. It’s all right, Mum. It’s all right. I can deal with anything now.’

  x

  Kelly

  Kelly took the motorway home. Fast and inhuman. That was all right, she didn’t feel human anymore. She was an advanced primate with vocal chords, language skills and opposable thumbs. No emotions. Emotions hurt too much.

  Who was to blame for all this? Roz, of course. Her sublime determination not to think of the consequences of her actions or inaction. Roz was to blame for the past. But the misery of the present, that was all down to herself. Why had she had to interfere? Why had she had to investigate, stumbling in with a big smile, expecting everything to fall into place around her? For what? Who had reaped one tiny grain of benefit from her interference? No one. Not Victoria Wendle, not the Norris family, not Roz, and certainly not Kelly herself. She had begun with the whole world, and now she had nothing.

  Nothing except Roz.

  When she got in, Roz looked at her, shut her eyes, looked again, not daring to believe. ‘You’ve come back. I didn’t think you would. I didn’t think you’d want me any more.’

  ‘Well, I do,’ said Kelly, dully. ‘It looks as if you’re all I’ve got.’

  CHAPTER 10

  i

  Heather

  ‘Now, Mrs Norris…all right, love? Can you answer some questions? About what happened? Can you talk? We need you to tell us as much as possible.’

  He was a policeman in plain clothes. Heather found that easier to cope with. At first the police uniforms had been reassuring. Authority, people who could put things right, make this nightmare go away. But then the uniforms just seemed to make it all seem more surreal. She could no longer tell what part she was supposed to be playing in all this.

  She was in a house. How had she come to be here? Wide window with horizontal bars curving round the corner of the room. She could see through it the Buckingham Road gates of the park. This must be that weird cubist house she often saw from the bus, the sort they kept featuring in Poirot. Often wondered what it must be like inside—

  Why was she thinking about architecture? For God’s sake! She should be thinking about Abigail. Except that she couldn’t think any more.

  They had brought her here, the nearest place. A la-di-da woman, magistrate type, standing on the doorstep ushering them in, Heather and a policewoman. Other officers were in the park, questioning the man in the black coat. Where was the policewoman now? Oh, she was with Bibs.

  ‘Bibs. My son. Is he all right?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Norris, he’s fine. WPC Line is looking after him.’

  ‘Don’t let him have any more biscuits. He’s had too many, they’re not good for him.’

  ‘Don’t worry, no more biscuits. Now, can you tell me about Abigail?’

  He was very gentle, very kind. Like a doctor. She couldn’t remember his name. He had introduced himself but she just couldn’t remember.

  ‘Tell me what happened, Mrs Norris.’

  For the hundredth time, and each time it became more unbelievable. Heather looked down at her hands in her lap. They were shaking. Not as badly as they had been, when she had collapsed in the park. ‘We missed the bus in town, so I thought we could catch one in Buckingham Road. We’d been at the playground. Keeping Bibs occupied. We were going, and Bibs saw the ducks on the lake. He ran away, down to the lake, do you see? And I didn’t want to push the pram through the mud, so I left it on the path. Abigail was all right. I swear, she was sleeping, she didn’t even notice I was gone.’

  She put the back of her hand to her mouth, biting flesh and bone, hoping the pain would drive away that deeper agony. Abigail was gone and she hadn’t even said goodbye.

  He leaned across and patted her hand. ‘All right, Mrs Norris.’

  Parker. That was it. DC? DI? She couldn’t remember, but his name was Parker. Thunderbirds, Lady Penelope’s chauffeur. He did look a bit like him.

  ‘So you left Abigail asleep in her pram.’

  ‘It wasn’t far,’ she explained, trying to show with her hands how small the distance was from the path to the lakeside. ‘Just across the grass. I could still see the pram, always, when I looked back. But Bibs wanted to feed the ducks. We weren’t there long. I swear. A minute or two. He didn’t want to leave the ducks, you see. But I took him back in the end, and when we got back to the pram—’ She tried to get her mouth round the words and could not. She could not say it. She could feel the hysteria rising within her again.

  ‘And when you got back to the pram, the baby was gone,’ Parker prompted.

  She could only nod.

  He gave her a moment. ‘Now, try to think about this, Mrs Norris. Did you see anything?’

  She shook her head, violently.

  ‘Anyone? No matter how innocent, how far away. There must have been other people in the park.’

  ‘No! There was no one! I looked. There was no one in sight. Just a couple of dogs. The do
gs took my baby, didn’t they?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Mrs Norris. Just think once more. You are quite sure about this? You didn’t see anyone afterwards.’

  ‘Not until the man in the black coat.’

  ‘Alan Gregory, the man who called us after you found Abigail missing?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘What about before? Think, Mrs Norris. Try to think back. While you were pushing the pram along the path, before your son ran down to the lake, do you remember seeing anyone then?’

  ‘No.’ She did what he said, tried to think, dredging her memory. She hadn’t noticed anyone on the path. She had had Bibs and Abigail to concentrate on. ‘There might have been. I wasn’t looking! In the trees. Maybe. Something. I don’t know. I don’t know!’

  ‘All right.’ He patted her arm again. ‘Is there anything else you can tell us, anything at all?’

  She shook her head, her shoulders heaving. How could something like this happen without any warning?

  ‘And you were down by the lake for no more than a minute or two, you say.’

  ‘Just time to feed the ducks. It couldn’t have been more than five. No, no, it couldn’t have been. It wasn’t ten.’

  A door opened and Parker stood up. ‘All right, Mrs Norris, we’re going to get you home.’

  ‘But I can’t leave. You’ve got to find Abigail.’

  ‘We will look for Abigail, Mrs Norris, don’t you worry. We’ve got men searching every inch of the park. The moment we have any news, you’ll be the first to know. But for now, it’s best if you go home. We’ve contacted your husband; he’s coming home to be with you. And a doctor. So you go with PCs Michaels and Line here and leave the searching to us.’

  They took her and Bibs home in a police car. Bibs liked that. He liked it even more when PC Michaels put the siren on for him, just for a second. People in the street jumped, stopped and stared at the woman and her son being driven by in a police car. Under arrest, probably. Yesterday, she would have cared what they thought. Now she couldn’t care. Even so, she saw them all. One of them must have Abigail. Her eyes were fixed, waiting to focus on the one human form she sought. One glimpse of her baby would be enough.