Little Liar: A nail-biting, gripping psychological thriller

by Clare Boyd

  A few months back, when I had been out at the supermarket one weekend, Peter had texted me a photograph of Rosie that was meant to act as an amusing begging plea for sweets for movie night. The dark circles that ringed her eyes and the exaggerated desperation in her expression spoke more to me of pain than of fun. I had pretended to be won over, but the image of her face had stayed with me for days. She had looked unhappy, and I wondered now if such unhappiness – undiagnosed, brushed under the carpet – could lead to a lie, a big lie, a lie based on a depth of feeling I had no handle on. It was hard to examine the possibility that the decision we had made to withhold information from her about her maternal donor was festering in her subconscious. However tormenting her tantrums were, and however much I knew I needed to fix them, part of me had hoped that they were some form of cathartic release, an exposure of her frustrations, not the repression of something more hateful or sinister, something that she felt deep down, an unexplained something, something that would lead to an innate confusion about her core identity.

  As I pictured that face of hers, my whole being seemed to ache, and I wondered whether I was separate from her at all, whether there was an almost other-worldly communication between us, as though our emotional worlds were interlaced. We seeped into one another; our pain was intertwined, never more so than when we fought. And as I sat in this small, stuffy room, powerless, completely powerless to help her, I felt this more keenly than ever. If she was hurting, I was feeling it. Her pain had become mine. This was love. This was punishment. A just punishment, perhaps, for my own lies.

  ‘In the meantime, you’d better get it together for this interview,’ Philippa patted my hand.

  I squeezed her fingers as though she were my mother, panic charging through me, ‘What if they don’t believe me?’

  ‘Then you’ll be in deep shit,’ she said, squeezing my hand back.

  * * *

  Back in the isolation of the cell, bent into the same position as before, the torture of revisiting my fight with Rosie, when I had unleashed my secret, began to churn like a rumination. I am not your real mummy, I am not your real mummy, I am not your real mummy. There was no peace in my repetitive, tormenting analysis of how and why and why and how. All I knew was that the shame of what I had said in a moment of anger wrapped itself around my face like a plastic wrap.

  * * *

  DC Miles unwrapped the cellophane from a CD and placed it in the black machine that sat on the desk between us.

  ‘Have you ever been interviewed before?’ DC Miles said, smiling. Her teeth were so white I imagined diamonds embedded in them.

  Next to DC Miles, DC Bennett flicked open his black book and wrote onto the top of a clean page but remained silent as DC Miles continued.

  ‘No,’ I replied.

  The double shot of espresso that Philippa had forced me to drink beforehand had sharpened my mind and I felt a little more clear-headed.

  ‘So you’ve never been arrested?’

  ‘No, no.’

  She tapped onto the touch screen of the machine. Next to me I could hear Philippa’s gravelly breathing as she rolled her pen up and down the notebook that rested on her lap.

  ‘This interview is being recorded and may be used in evidence if this case is brought to trial. It is 19.32 on November the second 2017. Present here is myself, DC Miles, my colleague, DC Bennett, and then Mrs Gemma Bradley and her solicitor, Miss Philippa Letwin.’

  DC Miles opened her purple A4 notebook onto her lap and leant back in her seat, and looked me straight in the eye.

  ‘You’ve been arrested for the offence of assault causing bodily harm to your daughter. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention now something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Okay,’ she paused, ‘my first question is, are you responsible for slapping your daughter causing her lip to bleed?’

  ‘No, I have never slapped her. Never in my life.’

  ‘Can you tell us why your daughter would have said that?’

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know. I can’t understand it.’

  DC Miles looked over at DC Bennett, and DC Bennett pursed his pointy wet lips.

  ‘She said the left corner of her lip was bleeding and that she “was crying with pain”,’ DC Miles said, reading from her notebook.

  ‘I don’t know why she said that. She can be quite a drama queen.’

  ‘What do you mean by a drama queen?’

  ‘I mean she gets a bit over dramatic about stuff sometimes and works herself up. She has a really vivid imagination.’

  ‘Do you ever get angry with her about not doing her homework?’

  ‘If she’s messing around, I can get cross, yes.’

  Philippa cleared her throat. ‘When you say “cross”, what do you do when you’re cross with Rosie?’

  ‘I shout at her,’ I said, dropping my gaze to my lap where I saw how my fingers picked at the skin around my thumb.

  ‘And when you shout at her and you feel that cross, do you want to do anything else to her.’

  Philippa spoke up. ‘It’s not relevant what she “wants” to do. Please could you stick to questions relating to the charge?’

  ‘I’m just trying to understand how you feel in that moment when Rosie hasn’t done her homework.’

  ‘I get frustrated with her, of course.’

  ‘And angry? Or “cross” as you put it?’

  ‘All mothers get angry, don’t they?’

  She paused her questioning as she read from her purple notebook and smoothed her chocolate brown fringe down with both hands.

  ‘And on the sixteenth of October, you were visited by PC Connolly and PC Yorke, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me what happened that day.’

  ‘Rosie had a massive tantrum and she threw a teddy at the picture, which must’ve fallen off the wall, and when I went in, the glass was smashed everywhere.’

  ‘How did she cut her hand?’

  ‘She was trying to tidy up the glass.’

  ‘Why didn’t you do that for her?’

  ‘By the time I had got in there she had already started picking it up.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t she ask you to do it? Doesn’t she know the dangers of cut glass?’

  ‘I would have thought she’d have known, yes,’ I admitted, crushed by the thought of Rosie sitting there amongst the cut glass.

  ‘Might she have been scared of telling you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Might she have been scared of your reaction?’

  ‘I suppose she might’ve thought I’d tell her off, yes.’

  ‘How would you have punished her, by hitting her?’

  ‘No. I have told you, I would never ever hit Rosie.’ I was beginning to feel a little disorientated.

  ‘Why was Rosie having a tantrum that day, Gemma?’

  ‘I sent her to her room because she bit Noah on the arm.’

  ‘Does Rosie often have violent reactions to situations?’

  ‘She can get quite physical with me sometimes.’ I was hit hard by the vision of her circling me and screeching, and kicking, and how much she seemed to hate me.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘When she tantrums she hits me and pulls at my clothes and stuff like that.’

  ‘That must be really hard to take.’

  I gulped, trying to swallow a lump in my throat. ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘So hard that you want to hit her back?’

  ‘No. No. I do not hit her back.’ I shook my head, imploringly. No, no, no.

  ‘Do you ever feel like you are going to snap when she is having a tantrum?’

  ‘I do shout at her,’ I said, quietly, unsure of myself.

  ‘How do you think she feels when you shout at her?’

  Shrugging, I conceded, ‘Upset, I suppose.’

  ‘And scared?’

  ‘That’s a horrible thought, but yes, pro
bably scared too.’

  ‘Do you scare her to get control of her?’

  ‘No! I never want to scare her, it just comes out like that.’

  ‘I suppose you never want to hurt her either, but it just comes out like that.’

  ‘No. That’s not true. That is twisting what I said.’

  Philippa leant forward, ‘Those questions are leading. She has made it clear she has never hit Rosie.’

  DC Miles consulted her notes again, smoothed her fringe. The silence seemed to last forever.

  ‘Your next-door neighbour Mrs Mira Entwistle told us that she had been round to your house a few days before the incident on October sixteenth, and noticed that Rosie had hurt her wrist.’

  ‘Yes, she got it trapped in the door.’

  ‘Tell us how it got trapped in the door.’

  ‘She and Noah were playing and he slammed it on her hand.’

  ‘And if we were to speak to Noah, he would remember this would he?’

  I looked to Philippa and then held my head in my hands. ‘Sorry, I don’t know why I said that, I was the one who slammed her hand in the door by accident. I swear it was a mistake.’

  ‘So why did you just tell us that Noah did it?’

  I started feeling the room’s heat. Sweat stung the torn-at flesh around my thumbnail.

  ‘I don’t know, I really don’t know. I would never hurt her on purpose. I was trying to keep her away from me because she was screaming at me and flailing around and I didn’t know how to control her and so I stormed out of the bedroom and pulled the door shut, but just as I closed it she put her hand through it.’

  ‘When you don’t know how to control her, do you think a quick slap might be the answer, to shock her out of it? I mean I would understand it if you felt that way. It can be frustrating when they scream and I imagine you feel pretty desperate.’

  ‘I feel desperate, yes, I feel so desperate, but I don’t want to slap her.’

  ‘Okay, right, let’s go right back to 2007, when you took Rosie to A & E for a fracture of the right ulna.’ DC Miles pointed to her right forearm.

  My mind flicked back through the years, through the many A & E incidents, back to the Whittington Hospital where we had taken Rosie when she was about eighteen months old. She had woken in the middle of the night screaming, and I had instinctively known she was in pain, though I hadn’t been able to place where in her body.

  ‘Yes, Rosie broke her arm.’ I looked to Philippa. I couldn’t understand how they knew about that.

  ‘How did it break?’

  ‘We’re not sure.’

  Philippa shifted in her seat.

  ‘Two police officers came to speak to you about this, didn’t they?’

  My heart skipped a beat. ‘Well, yes, they talked to us at the hospital briefly, but the doctor said it was standard when a baby breaks something. We think she got her arm stuck in the bars of her cot. Is this really relevant?’

  I looked to Philippa, whose expression remained unreadable. I began talking again, letting the words tumble out by way of explanation.

  ‘Peter had thought I was being melodramatic, and kept saying she’d had a bad dream or colic or something, but I knew she was in serious pain and when the X-rays showed a fracture, I felt vindicated.’

  ‘You felt vindicated when you found out your daughter had broken her arm?’

  ‘I was devastated for her, obviously, but relieved, quite honestly. I had imagined all sorts of other grim things that she might have had. Her screams were so piercing.’

  That night in A & E came back to me in full colour. It had been the most worrying of my life, as they had subjected my baby Rosie to test after test, before finally finding her broken arm. Privately, I had harboured fresh concerns about Kaarina Doubek’s medical records, fretting that she had lied or that the donor clinic had covered up a genetic condition that we were about to discover in Rosie. The police had been the least of our worries. Their attitude to us had been friendly, casual even, their presence barely registering as I had cradled Rosie. Afterwards, we thought nothing of them. I had had no idea it would have been placed on a police report and filed on my records somewhere.

  ‘Do you see that there seems to be a pattern here? Rosie hurts herself and your explanations are...’ she paused, looked to DC Bennett, and said, ‘a bit rubbish, quite frankly.’

  ‘When you mention all these things, it sounds bad, I know it does, but seriously, they are totally unrelated, you have to believe me,’ I pleaded, feeling acutely anxious now. I ripped a bit of skin off my thumb and sucked at it, tasting the metal, imagining the red absorbing into my tongue and how it might spread through my body, colouring my thoughts.

  ‘Do you lie often, Gemma?’

  ‘I don’t lie. I am not lying.’

  ‘So, if you’re not lying, that means your daughter is a liar?’

  DC Miles’ eyes seemed to have turned from green to red. Blinking it away, I clung to the edge of my chair and breathed deeply, trying to grip onto reality.

  ‘No, my daughter is not a liar.’

  ‘So she’s not lying then? You did slap her?’

  ‘I think she’s got mixed up or something and told you something that isn’t true. I don’t know why she’d do this, I don’t know why, honestly.’

  At a desperate loss, I pushed my fingers into my hair and then worried the blood from my thumbnail was smeared onto my temple. I began wiping the side of my face with my fingers, and checking for the blood on my fingers.

  ‘Sorry, do I have blood on my face?’ I said, showing the left side of my face to Philippa.

  ‘No, Gemma, you don’t.’

  ‘My thumb was bleeding and I was worried it...’ I trailed off as I noticed how DC Miles and DC Bennett were looking at me. DC Bennett bent into his notebook and scribbled something down.

  ‘Are you sure you’re not the one getting mixed up?’ DC Miles asked.

  I couldn’t answer her question.

  ‘You understand why it seems strange to us that we have three unexplained incidents where your daughter has been hurt in your care?’

  I felt cold to the bones and my muscles began to quiver. Every scratch of pen was deafening, every creak of a chair raked across my hearing like torture.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I rasped, barely audible.

  ‘Are you okay, Gemma? Do you need a glass of water or something?’ DC Miles asked.

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know why she’s lying about this.’

  ‘Would you say you had a close relationship with Rosie?’

  ‘I love her so much.’

  The blue walls of the room seemed to wrap around me, like a much-needed comfort blanket.

  ‘Yes, of course you do, Gemma. But sometimes things can get out of hand, can’t they?’

  ‘Sometimes I think she hates me.’

  ‘Why would she hate you?’ DC Miles’ voice was soft and sympathetic.

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’

  ‘Tell us why, Gemma.’

  ‘I seem to spend my life feeling guilty about her.’

  ‘What do you feel guilty about?’

  ‘Not being good enough. Ever.’ I felt the tears rising.

  ‘Look, being a mother is tough, I understand that, we can get you and Rosie the help you need.’

  Her patronising tone agitated me. ‘I don’t need any help,’ I stated indignantly.

  ‘There is no shame in it, if it makes things better. But we have to talk about what happened first.’

  ‘I have told you what happened.’

  Philippa spoke up, as though sensing my irritation brewing. ‘I think that Gemma has been very cooperative and told you everything she can.’

  DC Miles sighed. ‘Yes, okay. We’ll wrap things up for now. Gemma, I understand today must have been very stressful for you as the implications are huge and I’m concerned about that.’

  Her words hit me with a jolt. I resented her patronising tone and the ‘huge implication
s’ she referred to. I knew DC Miles was not concerned one iota. One by one DC Miles had pushed my buttons, the last of which was the jackpot: fury shot straight out of my mouth, ‘Does it really concern you?’

  The mood of the room changed. She sat up straighter, and looked over at DC Bennett, whose hand had stopped writing abruptly.

  ‘Yes, it does concern me, Gemma.’ DC Miles smiled, calmly blinking her curly eyelashes at me. ‘I have a duty of care to make sure you’re okay and you do seem very upset.’

  ‘Of course I’m upset, because all of this is completely ridiculous. I haven’t done anything wrong and you’re acting as though you don’t believe me.’

  ‘It is not our job to sit here and judge anyone, Gemma, we are just trying to establish what happened so that we keep your daughter safe, do you understand?’

  ‘But she is safe! Or she was, until you lot barged in,’ I yelled, completely losing my temper.

  DC Miles held my gaze triumphantly, and then closed her notebook.

  ‘Okay, I think we have what we need for now. Before I finish this interview, is there anything else you would like to say?’

  ‘No,’ I said, unrepentant. They were trying to break me down into some gibbering wreck and I was not going to be broken.

  ‘Thank you everyone. The interview is now terminated and I’m turning off the tape. The time is 20.16 on November second.’

  As she turned it off, my defiance turned itself off too.

  Awkward and sullied, I stood up with the officers.

  I wanted to switch the machine back on and have a rerun so that I could do it better next time. I couldn’t face going back to that cell again. I needed so badly to go home, to see Peter’s loving face, to feel his arms around me, to hear him tell me it’s all going to be okay.

  * * *

  As I was led back to my cell, a piercing screech rang through the corridor. It was getting louder and louder. Two cell doors down, three officers held down a young woman as she yelled and struggled and kicked out. She was wearing the same fashionable black lace-up boots that I had seen placed just where she writhed now.

  ‘Fuck you, you fucking motherfuckers! I haven’t done fucking nothing and you’re locking me up in that fucking hole again, get your hands off me you fucking perverts!’ she screamed, her face red and contorted, her bobbed brown hair sticking to her face, which was wet with tears or sweat or both.