No Other Darkness

by Sarah Hilary

  His anger took up too much space; it was hard to breathe down here.

  ‘I should’ve killed you!’ he screamed again.

  ‘Yes,’ Esther whispered. ‘Yes, you should.’

  The torch smashing at the wall; Matt closing in on the woman.

  ‘Carmen and Tommy need their dad,’ Marnie snapped. ‘Carmen and Tommy and the new baby. Beth can’t raise that family on her own, Terry. She needs you. Terry!’

  Matt’s head moved in confusion.

  ‘Tell me,’ Marnie said. ‘Tell me what she did. I’m listening. I want to know.’

  ‘She killed my family! My boys, my baby, my wife.’ A staggering sound in his chest. ‘Everyone. She killed everyone …’

  He put his free hand blindly to his face, as if the light was burning him.

  Marnie knew that feeling. How bereavement laid you bare, made you raw. Everything hurt – daylight, other people’s eyes on you – as if you were missing a layer of skin. She remembered the fellow feeling when she stood at this man’s side by the pavement memorial to the boys. Grief, coming off him in waves. She should’ve recognised it sooner.

  ‘I should have died. I wanted to die. When I saw Louisa, when I saw my baby girl …’ He gripped at his face until his fingers turned white. ‘I wanted my boys back, wanted them safe.’

  ‘You knew they hadn’t drowned,’ Marnie said. ‘How? How did you know?’

  ‘Archie … would never let that happen to Fred. They could swim. I taught them.’ He uncovered his face, flinching as he looked at his ex-wife. ‘The police said you drugged them, but I didn’t believe it. I could see in your face they were dead. I didn’t have any hope, not really, not when I started looking. I couldn’t ask easy questions, because I wasn’t Matt any more. It took a long time. I went to the places you used to go. Then I thought about Merrick,’ his voice spat again, ‘the fact that he was building everywhere, all those sites, derelict land he’d bought. I made him tell me about the places you’d been.’

  Which was more dangerous, his rage at Esther or his rage at himself? Grief, or guilt?

  ‘Merrick gave me a list of all the places you’d been, while you were working for him. I worked my way through the list, but it took time. I had a job, bills to pay. I couldn’t spend all my time searching. Terry took up a lot of time, all the rules I was supposed to follow …’

  ‘And you met Beth. You started a new family.’

  ‘I was responsible. That’s what they said. Matt was responsible. I didn’t want to be Matt. Matt was pathetic, useless. Responsible for you …’ He bared his teeth at Esther. ‘They locked you up for a month. Do you even remember that? They locked you up with violent schizophrenics, people who were out of control … Then they discharged you,’ his voice flooded with bitterness, ‘into my care.’

  No follow-up care, no diagnosis or treatment for Matt Reid. Just an instruction to take care of his wife when she was judged fit enough to be sent home to her young family. And later, an instruction to move on, get over it and get on with life when how could you move on? After everything had stopped and your life had been ripped out of you?

  When he spoke again, his voice was a snarl over his shoulder at Marnie. ‘I was scared. Of what she’d do, what I knew she was going to do. She didn’t even try to hide it. If I went to work, she’d phone to say she was going to kill herself, and the kids. Can you imagine getting that call? Not once, but day after day? I lived in fear of what I’d find when I got home. She terrorised me.’ The snarl swung back towards Esther. ‘You … exulted in it. Hoarding whatever you could get your hands on. Razors, combs, anything. The only time you were happy was when you were stockpiling weapons.’ He shook with rage, and terror. ‘I couldn’t watch you and the kids 24/7. How could I? How could anyone?’

  Esther didn’t speak, didn’t move.

  ‘They couldn’t,’ Marnie said. ‘No one could. But now … you’re married to Beth.’

  ‘Yes.’ The word emptied out of him, a small word made huge by his distress.

  ‘And you have a new family.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Tell me what that’s like.’

  Keep talking, focus on what you have, not what you’ve lost.

  ‘It’s like … being dead. I’m Terry, and Matt’s dead, and that’s good because I stopped hurting, for a bit. But I was scared of getting it wrong all over again. When Tommy was tiny, and Carmen, with her tantrums. Never anything like that with Fred and Archie. Carmen and Tommy are so … different.’ He spoke about the children as if they were strangers. Maybe they felt like strangers. He was mourning his lost children. That hole was impossible to fill, no matter how hard he tried, how much love he had left to give.

  ‘You bought the house with Beth,’ Marnie said gently, ‘knowing the boys were there?’

  ‘Not knowing. Hoping … I wanted to be close by. Back with my boys.’ He wiped at his eyes with his free hand, the other still full of the broken torch. ‘I thought it would be enough, to be close to them. But it wasn’t. I had to see them. I had to know. Then the parole office told me she was getting out. They gave me a date and I had to do something. I wanted them out of that hole. Safe.’

  ‘You must’ve known that finding them and reporting it would spark an investigation. You must have known we’d find out you were their father.’

  ‘I didn’t care about that!’ His voice rose. ‘I only cared about making them safe. From her. I had to see Fred and Archie. I saw Louisa,’ grief pulled at his face again, ‘they let me hold her. But the boys were gone. Washed out to sea, everyone said, but I knew it wasn’t true.’

  He pointed the torch at Esther. ‘You took their things. Nothing of Louisa’s, just Fred and Archie’s favourite toys and books. Fred’s monkey, and Mister Squirrel … Archie was growing out of toys, but he still took Mister Squirrel everywhere. That’s when I knew. I knew you’d put them somewhere, hidden them. You were always hiding things.’

  A fresh lick of anger in his voice. ‘I started going through Merrick’s list and I found Beech Rise, the field that was there before he started work. You used to take the boys walking in fields, before you got really sick. They’d come home covered in mud, leaves in their hair. Beech leaves. You kept them in a bowl … As soon as I saw those trees, I knew. They loved to climb … I knew that was how you tricked them.’

  He turned raw eyes towards Marnie. ‘I tried to give up. Get over it. But I couldn’t. Seeing Carmen and Tommy, watching them sleep, it just made me want my boys more. It hurt, it physically hurt. My arms ached for them. I pretended it was work, but it wasn’t. I wanted to hold my boys. I’d held Louisa, but not them. My arms ached all the time. If I’d just been able to say goodbye … If I only knew where they were …’

  ‘I wanted to tell you,’ Esther whispered. ‘I did want to tell you. Before the pills took hold. Before I was Alison who couldn’t remember anything … I wanted to tell you, but I was scared. They said you had a new life, and you deserved that much. I knew it was true. I hoped you were happy, that you’d started over. It was one less thing I’d destroyed …’

  ‘You destroyed everything! And you lied. You lied about what you’d done, how they died, where you’d hidden them. The other side of London, miles away! You took them miles away. I had to search for months and months … I dug those gardens until my hands were raw. You have no idea what that was like, not knowing, wanting them found.’

  ‘You didn’t give up,’ Esther whispered. ‘You never gave up.’

  ‘How could I? On them? Our boys. I had to know where they were and what you’d done. I couldn’t stand the thought of them alone out there. I had to know.’

  Marnie said, ‘You dug the gardens at Beech Rise for Merrick. That’s when you were able to check the bunkers, eliminate the empty ones. But you didn’t open the bunker at number 14, not until two weeks ago. How could you be sure the boys were there?’

  ‘I couldn’t, of course I couldn’t, but have you any idea how much courage it took to open those bun
kers? I was terrified.’ His mouth drew into a fresh snarl. ‘Just like old times. Right, love? Me, being a coward. Too scared to look and see what you’d done. Hiding from the truth. Making up stories to make myself feel better. Maybe they did drown, maybe they felt nothing, maybe they were safe somewhere … Lies so that I could face whatever you’d done this time. The same as always. Stupid, careless, cowardly Matt.’

  ‘But you opened the bunker,’ Marnie said. ‘Two weeks ago.’

  ‘I had to make them safe when I heard she was coming out. There was no choice then. It wasn’t about me any longer, it was about them.’

  His face burned white, feverish. ‘I stood by that … bed. With my boys, what was left of my boys. I couldn’t bear it. Their little hands, their feet … I wanted to cover them up. They looked so cold. I knew it would mean the police, that Beth would find out I’d lied and I’d lose everything I had left, but none of that mattered. I just wanted them not to be alone. And I wanted to give them a proper burial, with their baby sister, somewhere I could go and sit and talk to them …’

  He broke off with a barking sob. ‘God forgive me, I left the peaches. I don’t know why. I wanted to leave something. I saw the tins down there and I recognised them. The Brands had a catalogue of provisions for their panic room … I knew where to buy the peaches, so I did. I shouldn’t have left them outside the house, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t … myself.’

  ‘All right,’ Marnie said. ‘It’s all right. I understand what you did. Shall we get out of here? We can talk more, but—’

  ‘No. No.’ Smashing the torch again. ‘We’re staying here. It’s not safe. I know what’s up there. Police. Doctors. People who’ll tell me it’s my fault. Who’ll take away my kids …’

  ‘I’ll explain what’s happened. I’ll make sure they understand.’

  ‘No! We’re staying here.’

  Clancy was rigid with hostility at Marnie’s side. She squeezed his hand in warning, needing him to stay quiet. She had to make Matt understand what was at stake here. More than his pain, and Esther’s punishment. A fourteen-year-old child, entrusted to his care, scared out of his wits.

  ‘We need to go, Matt. I don’t feel safe down here. Nor does Clancy. Beth and the children are waiting—’

  ‘He’s safer down here than he was with them.’

  ‘Scott and Chrissie Brand?’

  Matt’s face twisted in a new direction. ‘He wasn’t wanted. They let him know that. Not just once, in the heat of the moment. Night after night, told that he was unwanted and unloved …’ He clenched his fists. ‘It shouldn’t be that easy to give up kids.’

  ‘You wanted to help. You wanted him to feel safe. So let’s go where it’s safe.’

  ‘I couldn’t have fostered him,’ Matt said. ‘Beth didn’t know that.’ His stare found Esther, through the darkness. ‘No one believed it was just you. No one believed I couldn’t stop it. I should’ve been able to do something, that’s what they all thought. Beth thinks it, too. Whenever there’s anything on the news about women who kill their babies, she’ll ask about the dads, as if they should have been able to do something. She can’t understand the women, let alone the men.’

  Homely Beth with a toddler on her hip, making motherhood look easy, on the surface at least. Had Matt picked her for that reason? A good wife and mother, content in her domestic role. Whatever the reason, her apathy had put the children at risk. Never once had she questioned the way her husband ran the household. It was left to Clancy to do that.

  Even so, Marnie’s chest ached with empathy for Matt Reid. It was a form of blindness, her wavering recognition for this grieving man, the way a seared retina always sees the last thing that lit it. ‘You wanted everyone to be safe. That’s what I want now. Not down here. We need to go back up.’

  ‘No! I can’t! You know what I did to Merrick. I’d had enough of his lies. When he started on the boy … I’d had enough. I hit him and left him in that pit he was hoping to sell. I hoped he’d rot there.’ He flinched as he said it.

  ‘You made sure he was breathing, then you tied his wrists in front of him so that he could climb out of there when he came round.’

  ‘I hoped he’d rot … That’s attempted murder!’

  ‘You turned him on to his side, into the recovery position.’

  ‘I tied him up.’ The same insistence in his voice as Esther’s when she refused to be allowed excuses for what she’d done, but the anger was slipping now, into something else.

  ‘You fastened his wrists in front of him,’ Marnie repeated. ‘That’s a very poor attempt at attempted murder. I don’t think the CPS will be very impressed.’

  ‘I didn’t know I was capable, of that.’ His stare searched behind her, for Clancy. ‘Is he …? I’m sorry. I didn’t think I was capable of sinking so low, being that person. I thought I was in a dark place before, but that? It was like no other darkness I’ve ever known.’

  He was slipping into despair. Only one way this could end if he lost hope or decided there was nothing left to salvage from this nightmare.

  Marnie was running out of words, afraid of sliding into platitudes about loss and redemption. Thirst was making her dizzy, dry-tongued. She thought of all the ways you could push past this point, find a way back from grief and loss. By reaching for anger, like Adam, or for exhaustion in the guise of work. She’d opted for numbness, but Matt Reid had wanted to feel. He’d wanted to fill his arms and his heart, take responsibility for a new family, even for a lost boy unloved by his parents. That took extraordinary courage. She wished she could find the words to tell him how brave he’d been, how extraordinary.

  The tunnel stank of the four of them.

  Too human, too hurt.

  Trying to find a way back.

  ‘Thank you,’ Esther said softly.

  Matt’s head jerked in her direction.

  ‘For finding them. For never giving up. Thinking of them every day, all the days when I couldn’t because the pills … wiped them out. Thank you for being with them all that time, never forgetting or giving up. Their dad, their brave dad, who never stopped loving them.’

  Matt shook his head, but he was watching her. Hearing her.

  ‘I took them into the fields,’ she said.

  Her voice was low, steady.

  ‘Fred couldn’t climb the fence, but Archie helped him. He was always helping him. You remember. When Fred was funny about his food, when he wouldn’t go to sleep at night. Or brush his teeth, or get dressed. Archie was his big brother. Fred would do anything for him.’ She stopped, sounding out of breath.

  Matt hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken.

  Esther said, ‘It started out such a nice day. Sunshine. Then the rain came and they were happy … They were happy to get into the shelter. It was a shelter.’

  Her voice frayed, drawing echoes into the dead space.

  ‘It was a game. We were playing a game. I don’t know how … I don’t remember where it went wrong. I was sitting with them in the shelter. They were shining their torches on the walls and I was making shadow puppets. Archie wanted me to make a blackbird, like the one outside their window. I tried, but I was never very good at shadow puppets. You were best. Fred said, “Daddy’s best at shadows, Mummy,” and I said, “He is,” and then Archie made a shadow puppet and said it was you, and we laughed. We wanted you there with us.’

  A smile fractured her face. ‘In the shelter. With us. We wanted you there.’

  Marnie could hear the thin scratch of Matt’s breath in his chest.

  At her side, Clancy was quiet, watching Esther, watching Matt.

  ‘Louisa was with my mum that first day. I wanted her with us too. All of us together. It was never about me and them, shutting you out. They’d never have stood for that anyway. They wanted their dad. Archie wanted you there. I think he understood I wasn’t well. He was such a bright boy, and Matt … he was so brave. They both were, but Fred thought it was a game. Not just that first day, but later. When I
took the sleeping bags and the books down there, Archie knew. I think he knew. But he would never have left his brother.’

  Her face twisted in self-reproach. ‘I suppose I counted on that …’

  The torch creaked in Matt’s fist, but he still didn’t move.

  ‘They were your boys.’ Her voice was swollen with grief. ‘They were your boys and I stole them from you. I killed Archie and Fred, your brave boys. I didn’t go back for them, and I didn’t tell anyone, and then I couldn’t remember, and I don’t know why. I don’t. Matt … I can’t remember. Only one day … There’s only one day that’s clear. The day the rain came and we took shelter, playing shadow puppets.’

  In the torchlight, her face shone with tears.

  ‘And Archie wanted you there with us, so he made a shadow puppet of you and we laughed because we were happy, all together.’

  43

  It was like walking into a wall of floodlights.

  Outside the tunnels, Merrick’s site was filled with police. Squad cars, their sirens circling, were parked between potholes, with an ambulance. Paramedics.

  Marnie pointed Clancy in their direction. She was stumbling, clumsy, gutted by exhaustion. But she’d got them out. All of them. Esther and Matt reduced to silence finally, faces ruined by tears, but out.

  Someone caught her, a hand under her arm saving her from falling on her face.

  ‘Got you …’

  Noah.

  ‘Esther,’ she managed to say, ‘and Matt …’

  Noah nodded. ‘We’ve got them too.’

  44

  Later

  Clancy Brand sat with his big hands dangling from his knees. His appropriate adult was a thin man in spectacles who didn’t look much older than Clancy.

  Marnie pulled up a chair to sit facing the boy, catching the sharp smell of the tunnels on his skin. ‘How are you?’

  He nodded before moving his stare away from her.

  ‘I need to ask you about what happened earlier today, but before that too … With Terry, and Beth.’

  ‘Okay.’