The Bad Mother

by Isabelle Grey

  Janice entered the bar, looked around, located Tessa with a nod and came to join her. Out of uniform she was a plain woman, her red hair her only noticeable feature.

  ‘I wasn’t sure you’d come,’ said Tessa. ‘Whether you’d be allowed.’

  ‘I’m finished there anyway,’ she answered with odd emphasis.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘Pete knows me. He’ll bring one over.’ Janice waved to the barman. ‘Roy lost it with you today, didn’t he?’

  Tessa was a little shocked by her directness. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I saw it. There’s always a point when he can’t keep it together any more.’

  ‘You know I’m his daughter?’ Tessa asked, thinking perhaps Janice wasn’t aware of their relationship.

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Janice reached out across the greasy table and touched Tessa’s gold bracelet. ‘How do you think he managed to send you that?’

  Tessa withdrew her arm. ‘He told me you bought the card for me as well. That was kind. Thank you.’

  Janice laughed, a short bark. There was something terrier-like about her, thought Tessa, in her covetous eyes and fierce stance. ‘Though he let me think you were his new girlfriend,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’ Tessa wondered if the woman was a little mad. But the barman brought over a glass of what looked like vodka and a small tonic, and Tessa noted that he did not greet Janice as if she might be barmy. He asked Tessa if she’d like another, but she hadn’t yet finished her juice: she’d considered a stiff drink to steady her nerves when she’d arrived, and was glad now she’d kept her wits about her.

  ‘He likes to wind people up,’ explained Janice, watching Tessa shrewdly. ‘So what was his spiel today? The two of you against the world?’

  ‘He did get a bit carried away with dreams for the future,’ Tessa admitted. ‘I imagine they all do.’

  ‘Looked to me like he gave you a bit of a fright.’ Janice knocked back half her drink. ‘So what is it you want to know?’

  Tessa’s heart skipped a beat. This was likely to be the unvarnished truth, and suddenly she wasn’t sure she could face it.

  ‘What did he tell you he’s in for?’ asked Janice. ‘The tragic accident story?’

  ‘Are you allowed to talk about an inmate like this?’

  ‘No,’ Janice answered. ‘But it doesn’t matter. This is my last day.’

  ‘You’re leaving?’ asked Tessa, vainly postponing the real conversation.

  ‘I reckoned if I quit first, they won’t bother prosecuting me.’

  Tessa was alarmed. ‘For talking to me?’

  ‘For all the things I’ve done for him.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You asked about your photographs,’ said Janice. ‘They didn’t get lost.’

  ‘So where are they?’

  Janice downed the rest of her drink. ‘They were of you as a kid, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tessa. ‘He asked for pictures of my children too. That’s Ok, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is one of them a boy?’

  ‘Yes.’ Tessa was puzzled. ‘Roy wants to see them both growing up. They’re his grandchildren,’ she explained needlessly.

  Janice nodded. ‘He wouldn’t have been allowed them otherwise. But you’re still not getting it, are you?’ She laughed again. ‘You’ve seen that young guy with curly hair in the visits room?’ she asked. ‘Paul. Looks like an angel, doesn’t he?’

  ‘His mother said he has a whole-life tariff,’ Tessa remembered with sudden terror.

  Janice nodded. ‘Only his mother ever comes to visit him. Roy got your photos Ok, thank you very much. Then he sold them. But Paul said he’ll pay even more for pictures of boys. Paul likes boys. Loves them to death. Younger the better.’

  Tessa cupped her hand over her mouth, afraid she was going to throw up.

  ‘There are quite a few prisoners who pay well for certain kinds of material. Even of just a kid in a swimsuit. These perverts will take whatever’s on offer. So we keep a pretty close eye on kiddie photos.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ cried Tessa, though she knew this wasn’t true.

  Janice shrugged. ‘Unless Roy gets an extension on his sentence tariff, he’ll be out soon. He’s clever enough to fool the parole board.’

  ‘You think he’s dangerous? That he’d hurt my kids?’

  ‘You rather than your kids, I’d reckon. I’ve read his official file,’ Janice went on. ‘I bet it’s not the same yarn he spun you.’

  ‘Stop,’ begged Tessa.

  ‘You asked to talk to me.’

  ‘I can’t take it all in.’

  ‘Roy was on bail when he cut his girlfriend’s throat,’ Janice went on remorselessly.

  ‘He said she was strangled!’

  ‘He was also charged with two counts of rape and assault. Those charges were left to lie on file.’

  ‘But she was ill,’ Tessa protested. ‘Paranoid. Her parents turned her against him.’

  ‘If she was ill it was because he’d terrorised her for months. She’d left him because he wouldn’t let her out on her own. Took away her shoes, her phone, her computer. He had double-glazing installed with locks on all the windows.’ Janice paused. ‘She was a bright woman, a solicitor. Yet she didn’t manage to stop him.’

  Tessa felt faint. Why had she never asked, positively avoided wanting to know? How idiotic and unkind she’d been not to recognise Hugo’s love and concern when he had questioned her. Under the table, she pulled the gold bracelet off her wrist and dropped it into her bag. When she looked up she found Janice watching her with a mixture of triumph and sympathy.

  ‘He had two previous arrests for unlawful imprisonment,’ Janice continued. ‘Even a suspicion of arson, but no one could make it stick.’

  ‘I think he raped my mother,’ Tessa said, ‘but no one believed her.’

  To her surprise, Janice nodded, her face losing its fierceness. ‘I was like you when it started,’ she said. ‘He made me feel special. Beautiful, desirable. I actually looked forward to going to work. When you started visiting and I saw the way he held your hand, kissed it, looked into your eyes, I wanted to die. I’d have done anything for him.’ She paused to signal to the barman for another vodka. ‘He loves that control. Really loves it. But that’s all he loves.’

  ‘But you’re an officer! You’re in charge.’

  ‘I didn’t want to lose him.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘He’s up for parole in three months, and I’m scared.’

  ‘He’s not that bad,’ pleaded Tessa. ‘He can’t be.’

  ‘The word of a disgraced prison officer won’t count for much with the parole board. But his daughter …’ Janice waited for the barman to put down her second drink and walk away. ‘You can write to the parole board, tell them about the photographs. He’s a lifer. They don’t ever have to let him out if they don’t think it’s safe to do so. And this would be more than enough to turn him down. I’ll back you up,’ she continued eagerly. ‘He doesn’t know yet that I’ve quit, so he won’t have got rid of them.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Tessa. ‘He’s not actually done anything to hurt me.’

  ‘I’m not making it up. It’s all on record. I can move away and change my name if I have to. Not so easy for you, I imagine.’

  Tessa cast around for some hope to cling to, desperate for none of this to be true. ‘He offered to pay for my son to go to university.’ But as she uttered the words she heard Roy ask his favour in return: don’t forget to bring more photos.

  ‘You want him turning up on your doorstep?’ asked Janice.

  ‘No, but I’m his daughter.’ Tessa knew she was clutching at straws. ‘He says I belong to him. Surely he wouldn’t …’

  Janice gave an ugly laugh. ‘That’s what he said to me.’ She downed her second vodka. Her hand shook as she lowered the empty glass. ‘And he really means it. Believe me.’

  FORTY-THREE
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  The full horror of her self-delusion hit Tessa on the road home. She pulled into the nearest lay-by and sat shaking as cars, lorries and coaches thundered past. She hardly dared look at the rear-view mirror in case she caught a glimpse of her blind, ridiculous, stupid face. She hated herself. She could never go home and face up to what she had done. How was she ever going to admit to her family that she had been taken in by this abusive, controlling man; worse, that she had been only too willing to let herself be taken in? And what could she say to Erin?

  Roy had repeatedly assured her that it was all about her, about enabling her to be her best, her real self, and she had swallowed it, drunk down his words, told herself he was the only one who understood or cared for her, that her family’s concern was mere jealous interference. She pulled the driving mirror around and made herself look into it. Who was she? In whose eyes did she exist? She shrivelled at the thought of how she’d quoted Roy’s trite phrases back at Hugo and Mitch. This man had raped her mother, and she had rushed to his defence. Her behaviour was even more culpable than his.

  Why had she believed in him and not in the people who loved her? Tessa was afraid of the answers: selfishness, stupidity and vanity. No wonder Sam and Lauren and Mitch were all better off without her. How could any of her family ever love her now?

  She drove the rest of the way home trying to imagine how she could ever begin to put things right. As she let herself in, Charlie Crawford came out of the guests’ sitting room.

  ‘Your housekeeper said you’d be back an hour ago.’ His statement was an accusation.

  ‘Sorry, I was held up. Hello.’ Tessa tried a smile, but it was not returned.

  ‘I have to talk to you at once,’ he said. ‘I need to get back to London.’ He disappeared into her sitting room.

  Tessa did not follow him but instead went downstairs to get a drink of water and let Carol know she was back.

  ‘I gave Mr Crawford some coffee,’ Carol told her. ‘I wasn’t sure whether you were expecting him or not.’ She pointed up at the board where the names of the night’s guests were written. ‘The first two dropped their bags and have gone out. The others aren’t due till late, but I can stay on if you need me.’

  ‘Thanks, Carol. But you can get off now.’

  Carol’s tactful silence as she fetched her bag and cardigan seemed ominous, so Tessa drank her water standing at the sink, looking out at the small back lawn beyond the area wall. The ground around the magnolia that Hugo had planted for her birthday hadn’t yet settled, and the young tree looked somehow both makeshift and defenceless. It was an effort to bring to mind what Charlie Crawford could possibly want, and she felt blank, unprepared to cope with whatever he had to say. Rinsing her glass, she went upstairs to find out.

  Charlie was standing in the middle of the room. He held out his hand, and for a moment she thought he meant to shake hers; then she saw that he was brandishing a mobile phone. ‘Look at this,’ he ordered.

  Tessa took the phone and sat down, curling into herself to guard against his peremptory manner. She looked at the little screen and saw a photograph of a young girl, naked, on a bed. Shocked that Charlie should show her this, and still reeling from the obscenity of Roy’s betrayal, she handed the phone straight back to him. ‘No, I won’t.’

  He refused to accept it. ‘Scroll through,’ he ordered again. ‘Look at the others.’

  Her head full of what a convicted paedophile had paid to do with holiday snaps of her by a rock pool in Brittany, she covered the screen with her hand. ‘No, I won’t look. They’re private.’

  ‘Your son took them.’

  Now Tessa looked, and realised the young girl was Charlie’s daughter, Tamsin.

  ‘There’s more,’ he said. ‘Of him too.’

  ‘That’s not Mitch’s phone,’ Tessa managed to say.

  ‘No. It’s Tamsin’s. She left it in my car.’

  ‘Then you have no right to look.’

  ‘She’s barely sixteen.’

  ‘You still have no right. I don’t want to see them.’

  ‘I’d like to know how long this has been going on,’ Charlie insisted.

  ‘Have you asked her?’

  ‘You know Mitch turned up at her school? In Kent.’

  Tessa did not know. She realised with a jolt that for months she had seldom known where Mitch was or what he was doing; had not cared, if she were honest, so long as he made no demands on her.

  ‘The teacher who found them said there was an empty vodka bottle nearby.’

  ‘No!’ cried Tessa in disbelief.

  ‘Where is he?’ demanded Charlie.

  ‘I’ve been out all afternoon. I …’

  Charlie went out into the hall. ‘Is he here?’ he called out.

  Tessa went after him. ‘Please. Come back in here.’ She had a sudden recollection of Charlie’s magnetic effect on the crowd at the opening of Sam’s brasserie, but saw now the petulance and self-indulgence that lay beneath his air of command. ‘Tell me what Tamsin has said,’ she insisted.

  ‘Tamsin’s leaving. She’s going to spend the summer with her mother in Los Angeles.’ Abruptly Charlie softened, looked a little chastened, and consented to return to the sitting room. Tessa closed the door behind them.

  ‘I’ve sacked her nanny,’ he said. ‘And spoken to Sonia, our housekeeper.’

  Tessa froze: she could guess the flavour of Sonia’s gossip and didn’t want to hear it from this man. ‘Let me fetch Mitch,’ she told him. ‘He’s probably upstairs.’

  Tessa climbed the stairs unwillingly. She felt unqualified to negotiate her way through whatever was about to unfold, feared that she would get it wrong, and prayed with every step for someone else to appear and to wave a wand to make everything all right. After what she’d learned from Janice, she had no way of judging what humanity might be capable of, what depravities she might fail to consider. She felt shaky, incompetent, a danger to others.

  As she reached the attic flat Mitch came out of their living room, a book in his hand, and smiled warily at her. She knew she deserved it: he’d tried to talk to her about Roy and she’d cut him short, not trusting his good intentions. She reached out now to give him a hug. He submitted, but barely returned it.

  ‘Charlie Crawford’s here,’ she said. ‘Did you know?’

  ‘No. What does he want?’

  ‘You’d better come down.’

  ‘Wait, Mum. What does he want?’

  ‘It’s about you and Tamsin.’

  Seeing how he flushed a deep red, Tessa felt completely overwhelmed. ‘You’d better come down,’ she told him, turning away.

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘Mitch, I’ve had a very long day. You have to sort this out for yourself.’

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ he asked. ‘To the prison again?’

  The accusation she heard in his voice was too much. She felt panicky and hysterical, knew it would be better not to speak. ‘What have you been up to?’ she demanded. ‘Do you know what he’s just made me look at? I shouldn’t have to deal with this!’

  ‘Mum, wait! What are you talking about?’

  ‘Have you and Tamsin been having sex?’

  Mitch hung his head, and Tessa thought he was about to cry.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she shouted at him. His face crumpled the way it used to as a kid when punished unfairly, and her anger fell away. ‘Mitch, I’m sorry.’ She reached out for him again but he dodged aside, out of her grasp, and headed downstairs. It took every ounce of her strength to follow.

  Charlie had drawn himself up just enough to be able to look down at Mitch, who, though clearly apprehensive, greeted him courteously. ‘Is Tamsin Ok?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s on a plane to LA,’ Charlie replied.

  Mitch swallowed hard. ‘For how long?’

  ‘We’ll have to see. I don’t want her back here if you’re going to harass her, keep turning up at her school.’

  ‘Once! And she asked me to go!’

 
; ‘I don’t want this sort of thing to continue.’ Charlie held up Tamsin’s iPhone. Mitch looked puzzled. ‘If I’d known about this when the school rang me, I would’ve called the police. Maybe I should do it now.’

  Mitch, frowning and incredulous, turned to Tessa, who could see that he had not yet understood what Charlie meant about the phone.

  Tessa was afraid. She knew nothing of what Mitch had been up to, but he must have taken these photographs of the two of them naked together. What if Charlie did call the police, and they found out that Roy was Mitch’s grandfather? What if Charlie were right, and Mitch had been hassling Tamsin at school, stalking and controlling Tamsin the same way Roy had any woman he thought belonged to him? Terrified, she looked into her son’s unblemished face and suddenly saw only his physical resemblance to Roy.

  Mitch looked back at her and must have seen her momentary dread, for he paled and backed away.

  ‘I love Tamsin,’ he cried to both of them. ‘I went to see her because she was upset.’

  ‘Upset about what?’ demanded Charlie.

  Mitch gave Charlie such a look of contempt that even Tessa could see Mitch had hit a nerve. ‘Tamsin was upset about you and Quinn,’ Mitch said. ‘Ask her.’

  ‘If you’re going to start inventing ridiculous stories—’

  ‘Ask her!’

  ‘I’m not listening to this garbage,’ said Charlie.

  ‘I saw you with Quinn. You know I did.’

  ‘You stay away from my daughter, do you hear? I should’ve known better than to let her mix with you.’

  ‘When is she coming back?’

  ‘Never, so far as you’re concerned.’

  ‘You know we go up to her bedroom,’ Mitch cried. ‘But you never cared because it suited you. You’re useless!’

  ‘How dare you say that to me! Who do you think you are?’

  ‘You never even noticed that she took cocaine out of your room, never made sure she was Ok.’

  Tessa whirled around to face him. ‘You’ve taken cocaine?’ A terrible image of Mitch at a table in a fluorescent tabard flashed into her mind. ‘Have you?’