The Good Mother

by A. L. Bird

  ‘I know,’ I tell him. Although I’m not sure I do. The bathroom approach, for instance? Why? We never went to the toilet in front of each other before; we’re not that sort of couple. Did he need such emotional brutality?

  ‘You understand, then?’ he asks me.

  I pause. Do I say ‘yes’ so we can get on to what is actually interesting to me? On to the thing that is making my heartache. To my beautiful, beautiful Cara. Or do I call him on the cruelty? The complete falling into the role of the kidnapper?

  He seems to grasp the meaning of my silence. ‘It was all for love, Suze. I know some of my methods were a little – I don’t know, tough love. But I couldn’t risk breaking your phantasy. You weren’t ready. I hadn’t fed you the medication for long enough; it would have damaged you and you wouldn’t have believed me. I only risked a new, increased dose that time in your coffee, when I thought you could handle a bit of drowsiness if it brought you back. And I never actually hurt you, did I? I kept you clean, and safe, and fed, didn’t I?’

  He looks so desperate for my approval that I know we won’t be able to move on unless I give it. And there is a sense in what he is saying. He didn’t drug toast and water; he drugged cupcakes and coffee. I had fresh fluffy towels. I wasn’t left to kill myself with mirror shards or strangle myself with a shower cord. Acts of love then, not brutality?

  I nod and smile, because that’s what’s needed. ‘You did. Of course you did.’

  ‘And work, I ignored so many calls, I must be blacklisted by now. Didn’t dare take on jobs, leaving you alone here. Plus our families, I had to lie to them about everything. Said you needed some alone time, went away, to Spain. For some sun. They bought it, at first. But you’ve no idea how hard it was. Some of them didn’t believe me. My bloody sister came nosing around – trust Marge to play detective. Craig, too. He didn’t believe me. And he kept threatening me, threatening to tell the police, threatening to take you from me, wanted money for his silence, kept threatening to reveal—’ he stops himself, then continues ‘—things.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  He pauses. ‘Let’s get on with it, shall we? I’ve got some clippings about … it.’

  I nod. I try to smile. To show my pleasure at being about to come face to face with my daughter’s death.

  He pulls a box-file from under the coffee table. A slight pause before he flicks open the lid.

  And there we have it. The big black newspaper headline: ‘Girl killed in car smash’. Girl. Girl! My Cara. My own beautiful Cara. I’m not sure I can do this. I’m not sure I can see in black and white this news, that isn’t news at all. But Paul takes another newspaper out. Beneath it there are more. ‘We’ve lost our angel, says car death mum’. Did I say that? I don’t remember. It doesn’t seem enough. I can’t imagine having a long enough break between tears to say something like that. ‘I feel responsible, says car crash dad’.

  I look up at Paul. Is that why I hated him when I thought he was the Captor? Why there’s something in my gut that still tells me to despise him? Because he was somehow to blame? He meets my gaze.

  ‘I was driving,’ he says. ‘You were busy with … your cupcakes.’

  It’s like a kick in the stomach. Guilt-flavoured fondant. How could I have prioritised work over my daughter? What is the importance of teaching some banker’s wife how to frost when your daughter needs ferrying? My fault, then, not Paul’s? Not a blameless crash, but a mother’s failure?

  I try not to dissolve. I guess there are tears on my cheeks but when are there not, now?

  I continue.

  The article tells me Paul was collecting Cara from school.

  School? But I thought she was …

  Oh, right. That was the Cara my mind invented for me, who I have to grieve too. The one whose letters I wrote to myself. Real Cara was being studious not hanging out with boys she’d met online.

  And why wasn’t I there, picking her up? I should have been, shouldn’t I? That’s what I did. Why was Paul doing it? I shake my head. I don’t remember. As Paul says, I must have been busy with my cupcakes.

  The blue Honda Civic crashed into a wall to avoid a head-on collision with another vehicle. Police are appealing for witnesses. The girl was taken to hospital in a critical condition. She never woke up.

  I shut my eyes. Memories flood back. Yes, a bedside. Tubes, drips, bandages. Sitting, holding Cara’s hand. Praying for her to wake up. Please let my daughter be safe. Please let my daughter be safe. What do you mean? No. No. That’s just not possible, it’s not possible, you don’t understand—

  ‘You spent a week at the hospital,’ Paul tells me. ‘I don’t think you slept once. They wouldn’t let us both stay, so I went home at nights. I’d come back in the morning and you’d be raw with nervous exhaustion, hyper with hope if you’d seen her eyes flicker under her eyelids. I tried to get you to leave, but you wouldn’t.’

  Of course I wouldn’t leave. How would I leave my daughter? How could I hold back doing anything that would keep her safe, keep her alive?

  ‘When the doctors finally confirmed that … she wasn’t coming back,’ Paul continues with his useless euphemism. Dead. Dead dead dead. ‘You just—you wouldn’t accept it at all. I guess the trauma, the lack of sleep, the grief, it just flipped you over the edge. Back to the old bad places.’

  Of course. Bad brain. Bad mental networks. Bad failed resilience. History of poor mental health, susceptible to psychosis and depression. Not safe to be alone. I can hear what the doctors would have said.

  ‘So I looked after you,’ says Paul.

  ‘There was a funeral, though?’ I ask.

  He nods. ‘I took you, but I’m not sure you were … there.’

  I nod as well.

  ‘There’s a grave, then?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Over beyond the woods. It’s a nice walk.’ His voice is dull, flat. That explains his visits out, coming back smelling of mould. Woodland flavours released by rain.

  An image of Cara’s name engraved in marble appears in my mind. I shake my head to clear it. No. I can’t do that. I can’t go there. Not yet. It’s one thing to accept reality. It’s another to see it carved on a headstone.

  I continue reading the article. The reporters say we are grieving. That Paul wasn’t to blame. That Cara had great potential. Nothing surprising.

  But wait. There is a surprise. Or rather an error. Because the paper says she was eight years old. So does the other one. And the other one. But my Cara was fifteen.

  ‘I don’t know who briefed them,’ I say to Paul. ‘But they’ve got her age wrong.’

  He looks at me. There’s sorrow in his eyes. When he speaks, his voice is quiet.

  ‘No, Suze. They haven’t. She was eight when she died.’

  Chapter 55

  Suze

  I feel my brain slide. I’m emitting some sort of noise. ‘Wuuh uhhh,’ I can hear myself say, but it’s all I can do. I feel faint. I need to lie down. Now. Or everything will vanish, my mind will collapse.

  ‘Suze? Suze!’ Paul is saying. ‘What’s wrong?’

  I pitch sideways so that my upper half is flat on the sofa. I bring my legs up and I curl as tight as I can into a little ball. If I could get back into the womb I would. Or Cara back into my womb.

  Because this is …

  It’s …

  Hideous.

  I could just about accept that I wrote letters to myself from Cara. Some comfort, some escape to a parallel reality, where there was some explanation for our separation other than her death, that I could somehow keep her with me.

  But to have written them from a fifteen-year-old Cara, when she was only eight?

  Ohhh … I just …

  How do you even … ?

  But no, Paul is wrong. He must be wrong.

  ‘Her date of birth,’ I tell him. ‘Her date of birth was 10 August 1999. You don’t forget your daughter’s birthday!’

  He is shaking his head.

  ‘I
’ll prove it!’ I shout at him. ‘We’ve got her birth certificate. I’ll find it, I’ll show you, you’ll see!’

  I’m on my feet now, about to head off down the corridor. Idiot Paul. What trick is he trying to pull?

  But then he speaks again.

  ‘Suze, that wasn’t Cara’s birthday. That was Belle’s … not-birth day.’

  Belle.

  Belle.

  Belle.

  Oh my God.

  I feel my hand at my mouth, holding back the retching.

  This is Belle.

  This is about Belle.

  Chapter 56

  Beautiful, tiny Belle. Belle who didn’t make it past seven months inside me, but who came out anyway.

  Little blue Belle. Stillbirth – the phrase that so horribly and yet so inadequately sums up the experience.

  Fifteen years ago, my first little girl, dead before she’d even taken her first breath.

  Please, just let me be with my daughter. Let me hold her close. So close I can almost hear her breathe. Almost, but not quite.

  I still hoped I could love her to life. If I just held her enough. If they just let me hug her one more time, I could succeed where all the oxygen masks had failed.

  Shh, little baby, don’t you die, Mummy’s going to sing you a lullaby.

  But I couldn’t.

  So, me, back then. Broken, shocked, grieving. Rampantly grieving. Grieving more than Craig with his facile little brain could understand. So one-dimensional – a security guard, made good, but not as good as I originally thought. Working for a ‘security enforcement company’. Everything black and white in his thuggish brutal mind. Couldn’t understand why I wanted to cradle her, take her home, why I was so upset when they rushed her away for analysis – my baby, my baby, what have you done with my baby? – couldn’t understand why I could hear my baby crying when she ‘wasn’t there’. But she was there for me. Some nights I could have reached out and touched the source of those cries, they seemed so real. Why did I have to give up the idea of her so quickly? Why was I supposed to focus on the positives, look to the future, have a nice shower, plan for another baby? Why did I have to be in an institution designed to suppress, repress, cancel out her life and my own natural inclinations? Because I was ill. Of course. Ill. Not unhappy. Not distressed. Not pushed beyond my level of endurance. Ill. A risk to myself. Maybe even others. So they decided, with Craig. So I was ‘treated’.

  And now … this … They must have been right, then, mustn’t they?

  Craig must have been right.

  Because what I have done is, I have done it again. Except more so. I’ve made Belle and Cara real together.

  And neither of them is real.

  And this creation was never real.

  It means I’ve really lost her then, haven’t I?

  Cara.

  Because if that’s what I’ve made her, this Cara of Belle’s age, then I don’t remember Cara. The real her. I don’t have her most recent actual self in my mind at all. I might as well have invented her ever having existed.

  All that I held dear as I was writing those letters, it was all a fiction? All about the boys, the shopping trips, the mother–daughter intimacy – all of it was untrue? I was reliving memories that weren’t real?

  ‘She’s gone,’ I manage. ‘She’s completely gone.’

  And how mad am I? Did she die seven years ago? Have I made up the difference, counting her lost years? I snatch at the newspaper. It’s this year’s date. At least I think it is. Have I been here, in this false mental state for so long that I don’t even know what year it is, how old I am?

  ‘Paul, did she die this year?’

  He nods.

  So. I’ve just made up this life. Oh, poor horrible sad brain – to prolong Cara’s life in that way. To give her the chances she missed. The boys she would have kissed. And to resuscitate Belle at the same time, the way she couldn’t, I remember, oh God, how painfully I remember, she couldn’t be resuscitated at the time of her non-birth. Brain, your motives were pure. Paul, your motives were pure. But I’m sick. I’m ill. I need treating. Call an ambulance!

  But then, with a flash of remembrance, I see hospital gowns. I see male patients groping me. I see nurses patronising me. I feel the horrible powerlessness of being unable to make myself understood through layers of medication and prejudice. The inability to discharge myself. When I finally was let out, rushing back to Craig as if he was somehow a pillar of strength in my life, even though he instigated me going there. Because I was so shattered by that place, on top of everything else, that I had no alternative to cling to what I knew.

  No. No. I’m not going back to that. Maybe it was fifteen years ago, but nothing moves on that much.

  I must just stay here. I must stay here and I must try to get back my daughter. My actual daughter. My Cara. I must remember her as she was when she was eight.

  There’s only one thing for it.

  I stand up.

  ‘I’d like to go back to my room now, Paul.’

  ‘What?’ he asks, clearly alarmed.

  ‘I need to go back to my room. Where you were keeping me. I need to be with my Cara. My real Cara.’

  Chapter 57

  Alice

  ‘We should have done this a long time ago, Alice,’ says Alice’s mum. ‘I’m sorry.’

  They’re standing, the three of them – Alice, her mum and her dad – in front of Cara’s grave. Hand in hand. Each of them looks at the granite headstone. The dates between birth and death so short. ‘C A R A’ chiselled in spooky but solid white. ‘A daughter, much loved’. Roses, withered. A card: Dad.

  Alice wonders which dad. At home dad, or meeting in strange cafés dad. Mr Belvoir dad. Either way, it looks like they can’t be bothered to visit too often.

  Her parents didn’t let her go to the funeral. They said it would upset her too much. She knew which day it was on, and sat in her room wearing black and wanting to be with Cara. Alice looks at the grave now. She no longer wants to be with Cara. Not there. Not now. It’s too final. Not like the happy times in school corridors or each other’s bedroom. Alice had thought for a while that heaven might be like that, full of whispers and giggles. But this grave doesn’t show any sign of it. It doesn’t show anything of her Cara at all.

  If only Cara hadn’t agreed to go on that car journey to see her ‘real’ dad. And made Alice an accomplice. If only Cara hadn’t felt the need to hide from her mum that she knew her dad wasn’t her real dad, and that she was visiting the real one. Or maybe if only she’d lived with her real dad the whole time. Because what her fake dad had done was horrible. So horrible. Alice thinks back to when Mr Belvoir/ aka real dad had first told her what he suspected, that time in his car. When he made Alice show him where Cara lived. Alice had such shivers and chills. The idea that someone would lock up their own wife in their own house, when their daughter had just been killed in a car crash! How could people do that to each other? Maybe it was a good job Cara was dead, if her fake dad was so crazy. Was Cara’s mum still there, locked up, or had Mr Belvoir managed to set her free? Maybe she should try again – not just ringing the doorbell and running away.

  Alice’s dad squeezes her hand. She looks up. Maybe she doesn’t need to do anything. It will all work itself out, without her. Even though she’s nine next birthday, there’s a limit to how much she can do. It’ll be different when she’s ten. When you’re ten, you’re practically a grown-up.

  Poor Cara, to miss out on that.

  For now, the adults will have to sort themselves out. But there’s still one more thing for Alice to do. She breaks her handhold with her parents and puts a hand in her pocket. She pulls out a friendship bracelet. Pink and purple. Cara’s favourite colours. Solemnly, Alice advances to the grave and places the bracelet down in front of it.

  I didn’t betray you, Cara, she think-whispers to the gravestone. I’ve helped. I helped Mr Belvoir. I told him what I knew. I told him where you lived. Where your daddy –
or fake daddy – lived. And now your mummy will be safe. All will be well again. You can rest in peace.

  Chapter 58

  Paul

  I don’t know what to do.

  She just stays in the room.

  The door isn’t locked, but she just sits there, on the edge of the bed, one hand pressed against her forehead.

  I try to go divert her, go in and keep her company. Tell her stupid anecdotes. Remind her of when we first met. Sing. Cry. Shout. But she either ignores me, or just fires out random questions:

  ‘Did she have pigtails?’

  ‘Did she prefer maths or English?’

  ‘What was her favourite colour?’

  ‘How many of her milk teeth had she lost?’

  ‘What was her favourite bedtime story?’

  ‘We’d shown her ‘Pinocchio’, hadn’t we? I love ‘Pinocchio’. With that little cat, whatever it’s called. But oh, the wooden boy, not a real boy …’

  Then tears. Always tears.

  I’m questioning now, really questioning, whether I’ve done the right thing. Because drugs alone, they can’t handle this, can they? She needs proper medical and psychiatric help. Help that I can’t provide. Five times a day, I’m this close to calling an ambulance, or a mental health services team. I’ve Googled ‘depression’ and ‘psychosis’ and ‘when does it end’ and ‘what the fuck should I do’ innumerable times. Seek help, it tells me. And then my search engine advertises self-help books down the side of the page.

  She takes food, thank God. I’m still making up the two sets of trays, one for her, one for me. Doesn’t look at the food – I could feed her a processed Mr Kipling cake and she wouldn’t blanch. Takes the pills too. Possibly even sleeps – hard to tell, with her hand shielding her eyes all the time.

  But, what’s worse is, I can’t answer all her questions. I only came on the scene when Cara was four. I don’t know about ‘Pinocchio’. I don’t know whether she had a red phase before the purple one. I don’t know whether she’d ever been to London Zoo. All I know is that Suze is in agony.