by Clare Boyd
The sight of them angered me.
‘Where’s Rosie?’ I barked.
‘Can we come in please?’
‘Where’s Peter?’
I was livid. I looked out, beyond them to the gates, now closing us in.
‘It would be better if you let us in, Mrs Bradley.’
Rather than allowing them entry, I reeled back from them, but the effect was the same, and the two police officers entered my home in their thick black vests.
‘I demand to know where my daughter is.’
‘Rosie is safe. Can we ask you who else is in the house?’ DC Miles said, glancing upstairs furtively.
‘Nobody’s here. Not that it’s any of your business who’s in my own house.’
‘Calm down, Mrs Bradley,’ DC Bennett said.
‘Sorry, but this is not a convenient time I’m afraid,’ I said, feeling anything but sorry. I needed them to leave, right now. I urgently wanted to stop it before it became a reality, because the reality would be too disturbing to live through. But they continued to stand there, in my house.
‘Okay, Mrs Bradley – the time is 17.35 p.m.’ DC Miles looked at her watch and then at her colleague and then at me, speaking factually and unemotionally, as though reading through a shopping list, she continued, ‘Having spoken to your daughter, we are arresting you on suspicion of assault causing actual bodily harm to your daughter. The justification of this arrest is to allow for a prompt and effective investigation and to prevent physical injury to a person. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned anything which you may rely on later in court. Anything that you do say may be recorded and given as evidence in court.’
Shell-shocked and uncomprehending, I tried to process what she had just said but my thoughts flatlined. I held my breath as though letting it out would kill me.
‘Are you serious?’ My knees began to give way.
DC Miles steadied me. ‘Are you okay? Your husband said you’re expecting, is that right?’
‘No, yes, I mean, yes. Nine weeks. Nobody knows at work yet,’ I said, pointlessly.
‘I know this is probably a big shock.’
‘No, no, this can’t be happening. I can’t believe it’s happening,’ I said, shaking my head at her, my eyes wide, my mouth open, a dryness on my tongue.
‘We’re going to need to take you down to the station now,’ DC Bennett said.
DC Miles stepped towards me. ‘Do you think you need a glass of water or something before we go?’
‘I think I do,’ I said through chattering teeth, bizarrely grateful to her, as I had been to the cyclist. A detached, dangling thought entered my mind when I looked at her: I decided that she was too pretty to be a real police officer. Her chocolate-brown fringe was enviably shiny and her curled eyelashes widened her green eyes. She wasn’t real. This was a dream. None of this was real.
‘Which way is the kitchen, Gemma?’
‘Here, this way,’ I said, pointing and letting her lead me to the sink, where I glugged at a mug of water, tasting old tea.
She rubbed at my back. ‘Are you feeling better? Do you think you’re ready for us to go now?’
‘It’s all been a terrible mistake. I never meant to hurt her wrist.’
‘Okay, don’t talk to us about it now because we’ll be interviewing you down at the station and that’ll give you an opportunity for you to give us your side of the story, okay?’
‘Can I have some more?’ I wasn’t ready to go down to a police station. I would never be ready. Was there enough water in the tap to delay me forever?
‘Rosie must’ve explained something wrong,’ I continued.
‘As I say, it’s best you save this for down at the station, okay?’
‘Okay,’ I nodded, like a child.
‘Do you think you’re ready to come with us in the car now?’
‘Okay, I think so,’ I nodded again, looking to this woman as though she would guide me to normality, back to safety again.
The police car was unmarked, a nondescript blue, but once inside, in the backseat, I felt marked. As DC Miles drove me away, I wanted to lie down across the seats to hide away in shame. Would Mira be waiting at her window, nodding in approval as we passed her five-bar gate, tutting at me as we drove away from the cul-de-sac, away from my home, the home that I had chosen to keep my children safe and secure. How ironic. Noah and Rosie, whom I longed for now. They would be utterly confused. I was their sun and their moon. I felt my heart was being yanked out of my chest.
I slumped down and covered my face as well as I could by leaning into my left hand, away from the window on my side.
‘Are you all right back there?’ DC Miles asked.
‘Fine,’ I replied. I was so far from all right it was as though I had left the body of the woman she was asking. Thoughts jumbled, charging and crashing in different directions. Rage towards Mira bloomed in black clouds through my mind, dissipated only by helpless confusion and fear. Was this really happening? Even as it was happening, it wasn’t possible.
Why hadn’t Peter called? Peter would be on my side. He knew me. We knew each other so well, too well. After sixteen years of being with him, I could predict most of his moves, most of his reactions. On Sundays at the White Horse, he would always order the same half pint of bitter to start and choose the same newspapers if they were free, and curse under his breath if they weren’t. He knew my habits just as well. He knew I would always order a double shot in my latte at the end of my meal, and that I would talk too quietly for him to hear, just in case there was a mother at school at the next table, and en route home, he knew that I would always comment on the beauty of the rolling hills, and remind the children of how lucky they were to live here. He knew me. Surely he would not believe I was capable of assaulting Rosie.
When I had shut her wrist in the door, I might have been cross but it had been an accident. When I left her in her room while I danced with Noah, I was separating myself, as all the parenting books told me to do, to protect her. I couldn’t have predicted the broken glass. How could I be in this police car, now driving past the clock tower on the high street, having been arrested? It was beyond comprehension.
A tight feeling began to build in my chest as I sucked in every particle of air I could find, but the sweet taste of the air-freshener that bobbed from the mirror made me want to gag. I was about to be led into a police station as a child abuser; it took my breath away. I had no frame of reference.
As we drove cautiously through the high street, I tried to recall those intense fights with Rosie, in anticipation of questions, but the details wouldn’t come. I could have been calmer with her, wound her up less, I don’t know. My memory was messy and more about feeling than detail, like watching a screen-burst of our rage. The autumn wreath bouncing on the carpet, her fingers shooting through the door that I slammed; the teeth marks on Noah’s arm, her shoulders squeezed by my hands; the beat to a disco track, the blood on her palm. In the eyes of a stranger, cruelty and carelessness and neglect could have fuelled each scenario. I dreaded the police officers scrutinising me, forcing me to relive the shameful details. Laid out on the table, it would look bad. More so, they might have ways of tricking me into revealing more than I should, more of what my mind had put me through in those stressful minutes, more about what I had felt capable of doing to her. The legal parameters of domestic assault were a mystery to me, but I knew I had been wrong to think those things. I might not have actually hit her, but I had certainly wanted to.
Chapter Thirty-Two
TOP SECRET
Dear Mummy,
Daddy said I was allowed to take my diary to Vics’ house. Beth is asleep. She makes a funny noise when she breathes. I’m glad it’s not too quiet though. I am scared when it is. I’m so scared anyway. I don’t think I will be able to sleep all night and my pillow is wet from all my crying. I am worried you will never come back. I know that Daddy says you have gone to a police
station but I keep imagining that you have gone into the dark, dark woods where there are serpents and dragons to kill you and then what would I do without you? Daddy said you were going to be asked some questions just like the police asked me. The pretty police officer was really nice. She smiled a lot. She will be nice to you too, Mummy. The other woman Miranda Slay-something was a bit weird. She was a social worker and she had big teeth and a long grey ponytail that she kept stroking like it was her snake pet. She creeped me out. Also I don’t think grown-ups should have pink dangly pens like hers. I like your smart black pen that you use for your work and I want to have one when I am grown-up. I hope you don’t have to talk to snake-lady.
Daddy says you will be home later. Sometimes Daddy says stuff just to make me feel better and then it makes me sadder because I know he is lying. You never lie to me. I think that is really cool. I want you to come home, mummy. Please, please come home. I’m sure you can hear me.
INVISIBLE INK ALERT: I want so badly to say how sorry I am. When the police wanted to talk to me again on the flowery sofa in that weird house that was not like a real house that Harriet took me to with that big weird window mirror I was too scared to tell them that my imagination was getting very big and it felt like I was writing a composition at school that I couldn’t stop writing and it ran away with me like the dog with the spoon. I feel bad because I broke the one rule that they said was the only rule in the room. (I wondered what other rule they had in the upstairs room of the house and I thought about all those different rules in all the different rooms in the world and my eyes went cross-eyed – only in my head. If I really went cross-eyed I would look like a weirdo). Then they asked me what the difference between telling a lie and telling the truth was. The story went like this: If someone stole my pencil case at school and then told me they hadn’t stolen it even though I knew they had, was this a lie or the truth? .... DUH! DUH! DAH! Even Noah could answer that dumb question.
It’s just I wasn’t really lying, mummy, I promise you. Mrs E said some stuff about her mummy slapping her and there being blood on her lip then I kind of imagined you slapped me like it was a film and then I thought I could taste the blood and see the red dripping down my lips and I was so angry with you for saying that thing about not being my real mummy that it was like the anger was boiling up inside me and the story just came out and it kind of became like real and it got stuck in my head and I couldn’t get it out until it was really real, real. Now I am imagining it again and I am thinking that maybe it was real. Was it real mummy? The blood was crimson. Crimson is the word that the writer used in that book you read me about those wolves when they died in the white snow and I remembered it and thought about the crimson blood dripping down and down onto my white school shirt, white like the snow. Get it? When I told the police about that white shirt and the crimson blood (but I said red instead of crimson and I did not tell them about the wolves) I thought they looked a bit worried like they were watching the same scary film that was in my head and I felt flutters in my stomach and I didn’t want them to stop listening to me so I went on about it a bit.
My fingers ache from all this writing. My teacher says I should be a tortoise not a hare when I write, but I feel like a hare scrambling through the woods to watch you be killed by dragons. How would I save you in my story? If I told the truth to Daddy he would hate me and I think Daddy is the only one who really loves me in the whole world. I will always love you more than you love me, but I think Daddy loves me more than I love him or maybe just the same. I love you more than anyone. If I told that pretty police lady that I lied she might send me to prison and I would get so told off and I don’t want anyone to be angry with me anymore. I want everyone to be happy and I want to be a good girl so that you love me more than I love you, so that I can love you even more than that, and then you will want to be my real mummy ALL THE TIME even when you are cross with me. Mrs E was so nice – not a Mrs Shithead at all – and I think she will understand. I think I want to ask her what to do. She won’t tell me off for lying. I wonder if I can creep out of Vics’ house like a tortoise and go to Mrs E’s house to ask her?
I’m going to save you from the dragons. You watch.
Love,
Rosie
PS I am only a bit scared of the dark. If I see a fox with shiny eyes I am going to hiss at it like a snake and it will run away.
Chapter Thirty-Three
She was knocking on the door. Mira knew it was Rosie.
Next door, the child’s beautiful home had been evacuated, as though it, too, like Gemma, was a danger to the children, in spite of its velvets and silks. It loomed empty and imposing. No lights. No chatter. No screams.
Mira herself had once knocked on a door in the middle of the night. A red door.
Cold and shivering. Knock, knock. Shuddering. Freezing. The night had closed in on her from behind. The door had been the last obstacle. Behind which there would be safety, if not love.
Bang, bang, bang. ‘Mum! Deidre! Please! It’s me!’
No reply.
On the night bus on the way there, a blue sign had instructed passengers to give up their seat for pregnant women. Mira wasn’t a woman, she was a girl. Did this make a difference, she had thought? It didn’t matter on a night bus in suburbia. It was empty. Strip-lit but sheltered at least. She couldn’t relate to The Thing – and that was what she saw it as at that stage, a Thing – inside her that would give her a huge belly like in the blue sign.
Again, at the door, she had called for them. ‘Mum! Deidre! Mum! Let me in!’
As she had pounded her fists, she wanted to be back on the bus, where a little bit of hope had still been alive, where she had imagined her mother and sister would forgive her for what she had done with Craig. Denial was better than this rejection; being on the bus was better than being shut out, with a home but homeless, at fifteen years old and pregnant.
Had her mother lain still in her bed listening? Had Deidre sat by the window watching? Had Craig tossed and turned on the bed that they had shared? Had he felt bad for sending a pregnant fifteen-year-old girl away? Had any of them felt bad?
Mira lay still in her bed. She felt bad. Rosie would be cold, too. Goosebumps would be prickling her skin, her breath would be gauzy, her feet would be damp.
She imagined how a ten-year-old might sneak out of the house after lights out. It would be easy. If her father and friends were still awake, she would most likely have to escape through a back door. Mira imagined Peter Bradley’s face covered by his hands as his friends consoled him, talking in circles, weary with worry about Rosie and the damage Gemma had inflicted, while Rosie quietly slipped away unnoticed. It was not easy for Mira to know she had been the cause of this. But if Barry had hurt her baby, she would have wanted to know and she would have killed him for it.
The yellow dot of Barry’s earplugs, lodged safely in place, reassured Mira that Rosie’s knocks would not be heard.
She climbed out of bed and down the stairs, grabbing her coat and torch on the way.
Rosie was frowning at the door, her arms crossed over her towelling pink robe, her sheepskin slippers, wet at the tips.
‘Sssh, come this way,’ Mira whispered with her finger to her lips. She led Rosie around the side of the house, past the chickens, right to the bottom of their long garden where her potting shed sat, near the compost heap.
The padlock to the door was stiff and rusty, and it took a few tries to unlock it. The lightbulb hung at the centre of the shed, illuminating the pine shelves of tins and pots and tools and casting a dull light on Rosie. Mira was shocked to see how her skin was as white as the mist and her eye sockets as black as her hair.
‘Sit yourself down there,’ Mira said, pointing at the metal stool, bracing herself for the child’s tirade. But Rosie sat as timid as a mouse.
‘I’ve an old kettle in here and some malt drink. Fancy some?’
Rosie nodded. ‘Granny Helen has that.’
‘Does she make it for you
when you go and stay?’
The plastic kettle rushed, steaming up the small window above the workbench. Mira brushed some old soil away, wondering how long it would take for Rosie to say what was on her mind, reminding herself of the sweet peas she wanted to pot for Rosie. She thought it would be good for the child to do some gardening, and if she potted sweet peas, Rosie could add them to the charming collection that Gemma and Peter’s gardener tended to so beautifully on their south-facing wall.
‘We don’t really stay at Granny Helen’s for sleepovers we just go for tea or lunch or something.’
‘Is she nearby then?’
‘She’s in London.’ Her teeth were chattering as she spoke.
‘That’s a long way to go for tea.’
‘Mum says she is best in limited doses.’
‘Ha. Families are a bit like that. Everyone goes their separate ways when they’re grown-up. It’s hard to imagine that at your age.’
‘I don’t ever want to move out of home.’
‘You think that now, and then suddenly you’ll be dying to get out.’ Mira stirred the two tin cups of malt drink.
‘I won’t.’
Strange, Mira thought, that a child clings to a dysfunctional home. Strange that Mira had longed to see her mother’s face again after the period away from her at Craig’s house. Even her wrath was preferable to no mother at all.
That closed door had been an injury. The fear that she would never again talk to her mother had brought her to her knees on the doorstep, where she had curled up all night, with her bag clutched to her middle, until her mother had finally let her in.
‘How’s your mum doing?’ Mira asked pointlessly. The silences were awkward. They reminded Mira of how wrong it was to have Rosie here when she should be tucked up in bed.
‘I don’t know,’ Rosie murmured, barely audible. She hung her head. When Mira passed her the hot drink, Rosie’s big eyes were shot through with veins, and Mira’s guilt spiked, knowing she had been responsible for separating this girl from her mother.