Do Me No Harm

by Julie Corbin

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t have second thoughts and neither, incidentally, do the children.’

  ‘But circumstances have changed.’ He leans in closer. ‘Olivia, if Robbie is being targeted then he clearly needs extra protection.’

  ‘The police will get to the bottom of what’s going on. It doesn’t mean the children can’t live with me.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not just being . . .’ he looks around the garden until he comes up with the right word, ‘. . . difficult?’

  ‘Difficult?’ I repeat, my inclination to shout back at him – Difficult? That’s rich coming from you! But I don’t. I take a breath and think before I answer. Am I being difficult? Am I putting the children at risk? Phil and Erika live in a modern flat several miles from here and bang in the centre of town, the distance a welcome buffer for me as it means I never meet them when shopping or eating locally. The children have their own bedrooms in the flat but Lauren, in particular, doesn’t like being so far away from her friends. Erika is on a sabbatical year and is writing up her PhD, so more often than not, she works from home.

  I turn to glance at my own house, a slightly ramshackle, Edwardian semi-detached villa that could do with some money spent on it, but the children wanted to stay in the same area as they’d lived in before the separation, so moving further out of town to benefit from cheaper house prices wasn’t an option. And although we haven’t had much money, we have spent the last six months making it our home. Now, with the locks changed and sanction from DI O’Reilly, I’m confident that they’re safe here, in their own home, with all their belongings around them.

  ‘I’m not being difficult,’ I say to Phil. ‘I appreciate your concern, but the children are better off with me.’

  ‘You truly believe they’re safe here?’

  ‘I’m their mother, Phil. Do you honestly think I’d let them stay here if I thought it was dangerous?’

  ‘Olivia.’ Erika speaks and we both look at her. She waits a couple of seconds. ‘I’m sure in your heart of hearts . . .’ she pauses and I count the beats, one . . . two . . . ‘you will agree, that it is best for the children . . .’ another pause, ‘. . . to come and stay with us.’

  ‘No, I don’t agree,’ I say, quick and sharp. ‘In my heart of hearts, I know that there’s no better place for children than with their parents. I am the primary caregiver and this is their home.’

  My words are a trigger for them both to move away from me, their bodies gracefully mirroring each other. What isn’t so graceful is the fact that they are now ten feet away and whispering. Phil takes his mobile from his pocket and dials a number. I hear him say ‘O’Reilly’ and realise he’ll be hoping to bring more ammunition into the argument, but I already know that O’Reilly doesn’t think we’re in danger as long as we take sensible precautions. When he’s finished his call, they both come back to stand in front of me again.

  ‘DI O’Reilly doesn’t share your concerns, then?’ I say. Childish, but I’m back to the point-scoring.

  He ignores this and says instead, ‘Just now seems as good a time as any to discuss arrangements for the summer.’

  ‘Okay.’ I nod.

  ‘Bearing in mind what’s happening, I thought it might be wise to get the children right away from Edinburgh.’

  ‘Well, as it happens, Declan’s been on the phone. My mother’s going into hospital and I need to fly over there.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘In three weeks. The timing couldn’t be better. School will just have broken up for the summer.’

  ‘You want to take Robbie and Lauren?’

  ‘Of course.’ I shrug. ‘They love it there. You know they do.’

  ‘I was hoping I could take them away this year.’

  ‘We’ll only be gone two weeks. I’ll have to get back to work, and there’s the whole of the rest of the summer.’

  ‘I’d like to take them away as soon as school breaks up. And . . . for the whole of the summer.’

  ‘What?’ My mouth hangs open. ‘You can’t get eight weeks’ leave!’

  ‘In fact, I can.’ He glances at Erika, whose face is lit up with a beatific smile. ‘We want to take them to Erika’s family home. It’s in Bavaria. Lauren could learn to ride. She’s wanted to do that for a while. And Robbie can fish, take the boat out, water-ski.’

  ‘It’s a wonderful place for children,’ Erika says, turning that smile on me.

  ‘Then get your own,’ I say under my breath. Erika doesn’t hear me but Phil does and his face tightens.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Erika looms towards me. She has large teeth, not unlike a horse. ‘I didn’t catch that.’

  ‘I said—’

  ‘Erika, darling.’ Phil cuts me off, placing himself between me and her. ‘Would you mind waiting in the car?’

  ‘Of course not, my love.’

  I look away as they kiss, wondering how much longer this love-in is going to last.

  ‘Erika and I love each other, Olivia,’ Phil says, his eyes fixed on Erika’s retreating back. ‘It really is time for you to accept that.’

  ‘I think I’m doing rather well, all things considered.’

  He stares back at me. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘A neutral party might have watched this exchange and accused you of rubbing my nose in it.’ I throw my arms out. ‘All this touchy-feely, look-how-much-we-care-for-each-other stuff that you’re so fond of now.’

  ‘You’re accusing me of not considering your feelings?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘I’m not guilty of that.’

  ‘No, of course not! Because you’re never guilty of anything. You didn’t leave me because you fancied lying between another woman’s legs – oh no! It was much more worthy and much more urgent than that. If I remember rightly, you felt our relationship “was stifling you as a man and as a psychiatrist”.’ I pause. ‘Whatever that means.’

  ‘If I’d wanted to rub your nose in it, I would have told you that Erika and I are getting married. In Germany. In the summer.’

  For several long seconds I’m completely stunned. My head says, That figures, while my heart gives a wail and my eyes fill with tears. It’s not as if I want him back. For the first six months I did, but lately I’ve been so much better. It’s just the fact that he was once mine – my one true love – and he has moved on seamlessly to another woman, looking much happier than he did during the last half a dozen years with me. How can that not hurt?

  ‘You shit!’ I say. ‘You were going to take the children to Germany, without telling me, or them, that they would be coming to your wedding?’

  ‘Because I suspected you would be like this.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Bitter.’

  ‘I’m not bitter.’ I walk a few paces away from him. ‘I’m angry.’

  ‘You do yourself no favours taking this tone.’

  ‘Oh fuck off, Phil.’ I stare up at the sky and shake my head. ‘Just fucking fuck off! I don’t care. Marry Eva Braun! Move to Germany permanently. Now there’s an idea.’

  ‘About the summer—’

  ‘Not now.’ I head towards the house and he follows me. I shut the door right in his face and wait for him to ring the bell. I hope he does – there’s a lot more I can say to him – and I hope he doesn’t – I’ve said enough. I don’t want to be this carping ex-wife who places hurdles at every juncture. I want to move on, and in an odd, abstract kind of a way, I even wish them happiness. It’s just that the bruising hasn’t quite healed and I feel as if he’s kicked me in the softest of places.

  I watch through the living-room window and see him climb back into his car. The thought of him marrying is bad enough, but taking the children to Germany for the whole summer? Not to see either of their faces for eight weeks? I couldn’t cope with that. I need my children. I know that part of being a mother is letting go but I can’t. Not yet. Lauren is far too young and anyway, I’d miss them too much.

  I take some steadying breaths, t
hen climb the stairs and find Robbie and Lauren in Robbie’s room, sitting in front of his computer monitor.

  ‘Mum, listen!’ Robbie says.

  I lie down on his bed. ‘I’m listening,’ I say.

  He reads from the screen. ‘Stems of plastic flowers can be filled with calcium cyanide and a crystallised acid that reacts with water to form cyanide gas.’ He sits back on the seat and raises his eyebrows. ‘Beware Interflora.’

  ‘What on earth?’ I lean up on one elbow and look at them both. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘It was my idea,’ Lauren says, swivelling round on the seat. ‘To do some research so that we’re prepared for whatever comes next.’

  ‘Somebody doesn’t like us,’ Robbie says.

  ‘They really don’t,’ Lauren echoes.

  ‘So we need to try and second-guess them,’ Robbie says.

  ‘Just in case,’ Lauren affirms.

  ‘What’s this got to do with cyanide?’ I swing my feet back round on to the floor and stand up.

  ‘Flowers could be delivered. That could be the next thing,’ Robbie says, as if it’s obvious.

  ‘So if any flowers arrive, don’t put them in water without checking the stems,’ Lauren says.

  I almost laugh but stop myself because I completely understand their need to try to get ahead of what’s been happening. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t.’ I kiss the top of Lauren’s head and look at the screen. They’re surfing the net and I see from the Google bar that they typed in ‘Different ways to kill someone’.

  ‘And look at this one!’ Robbie shouts, pointing to a photo of someone who has huge red weals all over him.

  ‘Don’t.’ I nudge him. ‘You’re going to frighten your sister.’

  ‘Lauren asked me to look!’

  ‘I did, Mum.’ She pulls at my T-shirt. ‘You know, once I watched a TV programme at Amber’s and it was about this woman who had a stalker and she kept getting emails and text messages and then she opened her front door and there was a dead rabbit on the step.’ She shivers and has a quick suck of her thumb. ‘Then Amber’s mum put the TV off so I don’t know what happened in the end.’

  ‘Real life tends to be a bit different from TV dramas,’ I say, pulling her towards me for a hug, knowing that real life can end up being exactly like a TV drama – or worse.

  ‘Everything happens in threes.’ She looks up at me, her eyes wide with a mix of fear and imagination. ‘First there was Robbie and then the house was broken into and what will be next?’

  ‘Nothing, Lauren,’ I say, holding her close. ‘Nothing will be next.’

  8

  Sunday and I wake at four thirty, ridiculously early and not quite daylight. I pull on a tracksuit and go downstairs. Benson starts his dance around my feet and I open the back door so that he can run about in the garden reacquainting himself with all the familiar smells. Before I close the door behind him, my attention is caught by the sky. One of the reasons I love this house is that it has a southeasterly aspect, and with no tenements to block the panorama, I can see across to the horizon where the sky is churned up like raspberry ripple ice cream.

  Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning, my dad’s voice automatically pops into my head. It never fails to amaze me how much of our thoughts and feelings are hard-wired at a young age; how many of our responses are like grooves in vinyl and we sing the old tunes as easily as treading the path from living room to kitchen. I remember what O’Reilly said about reinventing ourselves, but it seems to me that, for most of us, that idea is pure fantasy – our public face maybe, but our private face is never reinvented. We carry our past with us always, like clothes we can’t take off, covered up by newer, more fashionable ones, but still present when we strip back the layers.

  I’ve never been a smoker and I’m not much of a drinker. I know that a cup of coffee will only make me feel jangly on the surface, while underneath the fear and fatigue are intermingling in the same way as the pink and reds in the sky. I have to go to the Royal Edinburgh Hospital today, to satisfy this need to rule out Trevor Stewart as the man who almost killed Robbie and came to our house on Friday. As the children are no longer spending the day with Phil and I don’t want to leave them on their own, I’ll need to talk to them about going to friends’ houses. Leila would welcome them both. She has an endless capacity to absorb other children, especially mine, into her home.

  It’s far too early to ring her yet, so I go through to the living room and stare at the wall. Although MURDERER is now gone, and there are no telltale indentations remaining in the lining paper, in my mind’s eye I can see exactly where it was – the M was several feet above the plug sockets and the final R was above the desk where I keep bills and letter-writing materials, spare paper and pens. It’s gone now, though, I tell myself. Anyone coming to the house would have no idea what had been written. It would simply look as if we were in the process of redecorating.

  I make myself a cup of tea and sit down with a book, but the bare wall fills my peripheral vision and within five minutes, I’m up again. It’s still only six o’clock. I can’t walk Benson and leave the children home alone, so it looks as if I’m caught with my thoughts, heavy-duty reproach and recriminations. If my past mistake has brought danger to Robbie, and perhaps also to Lauren, I’ll never be able to forgive myself. I may have started out as a reluctant mother, but during Robbie’s first year I grew to love being a mother more than I could ever have imagined, the feelings almost frightening in their intensity. While my career is important to me, my children are my whole world. It sounds like a cliché but it’s the truth. Without them, I’m nobody.

  I’ll drive myself to tears thinking like this, so I distract myself in the kitchen. We have half a dozen overripe bananas in the fruit bowl, a packet of chocolate chips in the cupboard and, next to it, a sticky jar of molasses and some medium oatmeal that’s approaching its sell-by date. I pull bowls and scales out of the cupboards and occupy myself with making banana bread, parkin and chocolate-chip cookies, with Benson and the radio for company. And while the baking is in the oven, I rummage through the fridge and find enough vegetable leftovers to make a pot of minestrone soup. The baking is cooling on the wire rack when the phone rings.

  ‘What’s this about Friday evening?’ It’s Leila, her tone worried. ‘Robbie sent Mark a text saying your house was broken into.’

  ‘Not exactly broken into.’ I fill her in on everything that happened, from when we arrived home to when we went to stay at the hotel.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ She sounds hurt. ‘You could have come here.’

  ‘You had the wedding yesterday. I didn’t want us turning up on your doorstep when you had such a busy day lined up.’

  ‘That’s what friends are for, you silly cow.’ She sighs heavily. ‘Sometimes you’re not very good at asking for help, Liv.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but you know how it’s been since Phil left. I’ve grown used to sorting everything out myself.’

  ‘Well, I hope you know I’m always here for you. A trouble shared and all that.’

  ‘I do. And thank you.’ I pull Benson on to my lap and stroke the back of his ears. ‘I’ve been baking this morning. Fancy a visit later on?’

  ‘Definitely. Why don’t you all come for Sunday lunch?’

  ‘We’d love to.’ Problem solved. I know Leila won’t mind if I slipped off after lunch to visit Trevor. ‘I’ll bring banana bread and some cookies. See you around two?’

  ‘See you then.’

  I put the phone back on its cradle and hold Benson on my knee while I stare through the window. The earlier promise of inclement weather is about to be fulfilled. Moment by moment, the sky is darkening as clouds roll in from the west. I haven’t told O’Reilly about Trevor Stewart but should I tell Leila? Back when it happened she was sympathetic, and perhaps I should turn to her now. I hum and haw for a bit, undecided. I wonder what’s stopping me and realise that I can’t voice my suspicion because it feels that to do so will make i
t real and I’m hoping that this is a case of my imagination running away with me. I’m hoping that O’Reilly will suddenly appear and tell me that Tess Williamson has cracked, that she had some sort of obsession with Robbie and decided to act on it.

  Nothing to do with me and my past.

  Just one of those things.

  Leila lives in a state of organised chaos. They have a huge rambling house that stretches their salaries to breaking point but, despite the usual spats between children, they are the happiest family I’ve ever spent time with. When we arrive, Sunday lunch is still being prepared. Leila’s three daughters and Lauren set the table while the two boys go outside with Archie to chop and stack wood for winter fires. After the rain this morning, the day is now damp but fresh, the water having washed the streets clean and turned the grass emerald green.

  ‘It’s like Little House on the Prairie,’ I say, scrubbing carrots. ‘Division of labour according to sex. I thought the sixties put a stop to all of that?’

  ‘It’s nice though, isn’t it?’ Leila replies, closing the oven door with her foot. ‘I always hankered after the sort of Sundays where everyone pitched in with family stuff, but we had to help Mum and Dad in the shop. Every day was a work day.’

  ‘But look how you’ve all turned out.’ I eat a finger of raw carrot. ‘Your parents must be so proud. It has to be some sort of a record: four children, four doctors.’

  ‘They were asking after you, yesterday.’ She plonks a roasted leg of lamb down on the worktop next to me. ‘They haven’t seen you in a while.’

  ‘I know. I keep meaning to pop into the shop but it’s so difficult getting parked at Tollcross now.’ I inhale the steam rising off the meat. ‘Mm. Smells delicious. But tell me, how was the wedding?’

  She starts a long story about the bride and the wedding party, her three girls pitching in with their comments on the clothes and the more outrageous behaviour of some of the guests. I forget about Trevor Stewart and what might be ahead for us, and it isn’t until lunch is over and we’re all sitting back with full stomachs and laughter reddening our cheeks that I remember what I need to do. Everyone helps clear the table, then the girls run off to play on the trampoline outside, the boys to listen to music in Mark’s room and Archie to fall asleep with the Sunday papers on his lap in the sunroom.