by Sue Fortin
‘I’m sure,’ said Kit.
Gareth looked uncomfortable as he shuffled from one foot to another. ‘The thing is,’ he began, rubbing his chin. ‘The thing is, my wife … oh God, this is so awkward.’
Kit waited patiently while the other man collected himself.
‘OK. We saw on the television about your daughter going missing – and I’m sorry about that, but I’m glad she’s home safe now.’
‘Thank you,’ said Kit.
‘Well, of course, we recognised Neve straight away. It upset my wife. You see, we all had a falling out …’
Kit put his hand on the other man’s shoulder. ‘I know what happened with Jasmine.’
Gareth looked up at him in surprise. ‘You do?’
Kit dropped his hand. ‘I found out earlier today. The police told me.’
‘Oh,’ said Gareth, raising his eyes and extending the word. ‘I see. And I take it you know about the notes.’
‘Yes.’
‘Right. But you don’t know who sent them, I’m assuming?’
‘I have a pretty good idea,’ said Kit, tamping down the sigh that was threatening. He wished Gareth would just get to the point.’ ‘Am I right in assuming it was your wife?’
‘She can’t really forgive Neve for what happened. For what Neve put her through.’
‘I can appreciate that,’ said Kit, successfully managing to maintain an even tone.
‘Did the police also tell you what happened to our sister, Megan?’ asked Gareth.
‘I understand she drowned,’ said Kit. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Terrible accident. One that Neve has never been able to come to terms with. She had to have psychiatric help. She went through a phase of blaming things that happened on Megan.’ Gareth shuffled his feet some more. ‘She used to have conversations with Megan. I heard her once in her bedroom. I was just passing on the landing and wondered who was in her room. I stopped and listened and realised she was talking to herself. When I tackled her about it, she denied it; got quite angry. Told me in no uncertain terms where to go.’
‘Really? I didn’t know that,’ conceded Kit. He thought back to the first few months after his first wife’s death, he had found himself talking to her on more than one occasion. It had made him feel Ella was still with him, partly because he hadn’t been ready to let her go, even though everyone else was moving on in life. ‘Maybe it was a comfort to her.’
‘Oh, I dare say it was, but she’s never stopped doing it. In fact, earlier today outside my house when she collapsed, she was a bit delirious and thought she saw Megan and then when she properly collapsed the second time indoors, she was just calling Megan’s name over and over again. Reaching her hand out as if Megan was really there.’
‘What has the doctor said?’ asked Kit, his concern ramping up a gear. This sounded more than just the funny turn Gareth had implied on the phone. Far worse than he imagined. ‘Has she had some sort of breakdown, do you think?’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ replied Gareth. ‘The doctor wants to refer her to the mental health team when she leaves. He said it’s a disassociation thing. I don’t think when Neve was younger it was ever given a name, you know, where she almost imagined it was Megan doing stuff, when really it was her. I just thought I’d better give you the heads up about it all.’
‘Thanks, Gareth. I appreciate that,’ said Kit, retaining a calmness in his voice he didn’t feel. If he was honest, he was unnerved by the revelation. His wife hadn’t just spoken to her dead sister, she’d actually imagined Megan doing things. He needed some time alone with Neve to talk to her properly. ‘Why don’t you get yourself a coffee. You look done in. I’ll sit with Neve and see if I can speak to a doctor.’
‘If you’re sure?’
‘Of course.’
Gareth frowned, he went to walk away but hesitated, turning to Kit, his forefinger tapping his lip as if he was trying to come to a decision.
‘Everything OK?’ asked Kit.
‘You seem to really care about her,’ said Gareth.
‘I do, very much so,’ said Kit.
‘That’s good. There’s a lot to understand with my sister.’ He looked pointedly at Kit. ‘And a lot to forgive.’
Kit watched Gareth head off down the corridor, an air of tiredness, possibly sadness, hung over his drooped shoulders.
Kit stood there until Gareth disappeared through the swing doors, before returning to the ward. He leaned down and kissed Neve on the forehead, taking her hand in his. ‘Hey, Neve, it’s me, Kit.’
Her eyelids gave a little flutter.
‘I know you’re not asleep. Come on, I’ve driven all this way, you could at least talk to me.’
Neve opened her eyes and looked up at him. ‘I’m surprised you came.’
‘Why wouldn’t I? My wife has been taken ill and is in hospital.’ He sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘What’s going on Neve?’
‘What do you mean? I know Gareth’s told you why I went to his house. He told me he explained on the phone.’
‘I want to hear it from you,’ said Kit and when it looked like she wasn’t going to speak, he added. ‘The thing is, Neve, I’m not really sure I do know everything. I’ve been told various things by various people but nothing from you.’
It was a few moments before she answered. ‘You know they all think I’m mad and I’ve had some sort of mental breakdown.’
‘Is that what you think?’
He watched as tears rushed to fill her eyes before she looked away, blinking hard.
‘I know I’m extremely sad,’ she said. ‘That coming here has made me sad.’
‘Why’s that?’
She turned her head to look at him again. ‘Megan,’ she said. ‘I miss her so much. And being here has made it so much worse. I shouldn’t have come. It wasn’t worth it. All it’s done is rekindle all the feelings I had managed to store away.’
Kit plucked a tissue from the box on the bedside cabinet and gently dabbed the tears escaping from her eyes. ‘Tell me, Neve. Talk to me. Let me in to your world.’
‘It’s a pretty shit world to be in,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t like it there.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that.’ He mopped more tears.
‘I just … I don’t know … coming here has made me feel so guilty.’
‘Guilty for what?’
‘It was my fault,’ she said before a sob escaped. ‘I should have listened to Megan. I shouldn’t have gone deeper into the water. And when she came in after me, I should have stayed in the water. Rescued her. Swam out of the riptide with her. Or at least tried to but I didn’t. I scrambled out onto the rocks. I saved myself.’
Kit reached out and took Neve’s hand in his. ‘Pearson told me you knew Lee Farnham when you were teenagers,’ he paused, as he took in the look of shock on Neve’s face.
‘We all used to hang around together,’ she said at last.
‘Why you didn’t tell me about Farnham.’
Neve cast her gaze down. ‘I had spent so long distancing myself from the past, I was scared to even mention that I knew him. I hoped he would just disappear the same way he appeared.’
‘Well, he’s certainly done that,’ said Kit.
‘I’m so sorry, Kit. I should have told you. When Meg died, I didn’t want to leave her behind. No one wanted to talk about her. It was like a taboo subject. I would see my mum looking at me and I was sure she was thinking things like, why didn’t you listen to your sister, it was your fault. Why wasn’t it you? Why did it have to be Megan? My dad just retreated further and further into himself.’
‘It must have been difficult for everyone,’ said Kit, remembering his own grief when he lost his wife. A time when his life should have been filled with such happiness at the birth of his daughter and was yet so tragic at the same time.
‘Megan became a no-go conversation topic and Dad just pushed on with life. It was as if everyone wanted to forget about her. I used to go to the beach,’ said
Neve. ‘I felt closer to Megan there. I don’t know exactly when it happened but, after a while, I started thinking she was with me. I could actually feel her presence. It was like I had been able to conjure her up. If I had anything difficult to face or deal with, I imagined her by my side, willing me on. Somewhere along the line that changed too. I started to picture myself as Megan. It made me feel strong, brave and confident. I could do all the things I needed to do if I was Megan. I could be all the things Neve wasn’t.’
Kit squeezed his wife’s hand. He didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t been expecting this confessional outpouring. So many things about his wife that he didn’t know. It wasn’t just facts and history he didn’t know, he was also totally oblivious to the emotional strain she was enduring. How had he missed that? Were there any tell-tale signs he should have seen?
Neve gave a sniff and wiped her nose with a tissue. ‘Now can you see why they think I’ve lost it? Not only do I talk to my dead sister, I think I am her at times.’
‘You were just trying to make sense of a tragic accident,’ said Kit, softly. ‘Such a traumatic event – it’s no wonder you were looking for ways to process it.’
‘Ah, you might feel sympathy for me now, but do you know where it all led to?’
Kit nodded. ‘I know about the baby. I’m so sorry. I had no idea it was so late in the pregnancy. You never told me.’
‘It was easier to tell you it was a miscarriage. It’s what I’ve always told people. No one could cope with what happened. It made them feel uncomfortable. They didn’t know what to say so, in the end, I stopped telling people the whole story.’
‘I wish you’d told me,’ said Kit, rubbing the top of her hand with his thumb.
‘After what you’d been through? It didn’t seem fair. Too much grief for one person, let alone two people who are trying to make a new start in life together.’
‘I feel so selfish,’ admitted Kit. ‘I burdened you with my grief but never let you feel there was room for yours too.’
‘You’re too generous,’ said Neve. ‘You’ve no idea what sort of woman I am.’
‘I do. If you’re referring to Jasmine, I know.’ He looked her firmly in the eye. Of all the things he had learnt about his wife, this was the hardest. The one that he found most difficult to associate with her. It also sent a nagging doubt at the back of his mind about the temporary disappearance of Poppy, but at the moment he couldn’t deal with that thought. He needed time to face that demon. Christ, he so wanted it to be untrue and he needed this time with Neve to convince him.
‘When I was pregnant, I knew we were having a little girl,’ said Neve. ‘I thought I was forgiven for not saving Megan. She was going to be called Olivia Megan. I thought I could have a little bit of my sister in my own daughter. A memory to her. To show everyone that I hadn’t ever forgotten Megan. So, when … when Olivia Megan … when I went for a scan and they discovered there wasn’t a heartbeat, it was so hard to bear.’ The tears came again, and Kit waited patiently for his wife to compose herself. He sensed that this was a cathartic moment for her, being able to tell him all the things she had kept locked away for so long. ‘I didn’t cope very well,’ said Neve. ‘It affected me deeply.’
‘Is that what made you take Jasmine?’
‘I was so confused. In so much pain,’ replied Neve. ‘The only way I could cope was channelling my sister. What would Megan do? It’s been a question I’ve asked myself so many times. What would Megan do? Well, I suppose in my confused state, I somehow embraced Megan completely.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Megan was the reckless, life-lover, go-getter of the family. She was impulsive, courageous, adventurous. When Gareth and Lisa asked me to look after Jasmine for the day, I was happy to do so. I think they felt they were helping me get over my loss. Everyone thought I was getting better.’ She dabbed quotation marks in the air. ‘They thought it would help me look to the future. Try for another baby. They meant well, but no one understood the pain I was experiencing.’
Kit stroked a strand of hair from Neve’s eyes. ‘People don’t know what to say. They don’t know how to deal with someone else’s grief,’ he said.
‘I took Jasmine to the park and I don’t really know what happened, but it was like I was watching a film, starring Megan. She was in the park with Jasmine and somehow in my mind I could picture Olivia. And I was watching Megan, packing a bag and driving the car down to Devon. To our childhood haunts. To the beaches we played on as children during our family camping holidays. It was all so surreal. The doctor said afterwards that I had experienced some sort of disassociation from real life and from myself. I was at a point in my life where everything was black and I could see no light.’
‘So, you took Jasmine away for the weekend.’ Kit ignored the nagging voice of suspicion in his head. Neve had taken a child before, a member of her own family, driven by the loss of her own baby and a desire to have another, what was to say she hadn’t done it again? She had been desperate then and he knew how desperate she was this time. She was under a tremendous amount of pressure, maybe it had stopped her thinking straight. She’d definitely been acting out of character lately and particularly so the last few days.
‘I don’t really remember much about taking Jasmine,’ said Neve, breaking his thoughts. ‘Gareth and Lisa were out of their minds with worry. Gareth phoned and phoned, texted me, pleaded with me to bring Jasmine home but I wouldn’t listen. In the end they called the police and they came and found me. I was going to bring Jasmine home, I really was but everyone was scared of what I’d do. Gareth refused to press charges and only stopped Lisa from doing so by promising never to have anything to do with me again.’
‘And that’s when you left Wales and moved to West Sussex?’
‘Not straight away. Me and Scott tried to make a go of things. I tried so hard to put what happened behind me, but I couldn’t. Every time I went out, I thought people were staring at me, whispering behind my back, pointing me out to their friends … I was the woman who stole the child. And not just any child, my own brother’s child.’
‘Didn’t you get any help or support from your GP?’ asked Kit.
‘I did at first, there was a counselling programme, but I only went to a few sessions. I bumped into Ashley and he was the only person willing to talk about Megan. It was so comforting. I didn’t want to go back to the counselling. By that point, I was disguising my grief with anger. I was angry at everyone and everything.’
‘I get that, I really do,’ said Kit. He remembered his own GP telling him it was one of the stages of grief he had to go through. Neve wouldn’t look at him, her eyes were fixed on their hands. He was reminded of Gareth just now and how he seemed to want to say something but couldn’t find the words. Neve had that same tormented look on her face. He wondered if it was connected with what Pearson had told him about her. Something that she had never shared with him and now that he knew, who could blame her. ‘Neve,’ he began. ‘I know about the drugs.’
Her head flicked up. There was a look of shock on her face. ‘You do?’
Kit nodded. ‘Pearson told me.’
‘And you still came?’
‘I wanted to hear what you had to say about it. Your side of the story, if you like.’
It seemed like an age before she spoke and when she did, Kit had to lean in to hear her.
‘I went off the rails after that thing with Jasmine. I was in a dark place.’ Her finger was tapping Kit’s hand at an ever-increasing rate. ‘I did … I looked for a release … I started taking stuff to help me cope.’
‘Stuff?’
The finger tapping upped its pace. ‘Drugs,’ she whispered. ‘Class A. Coke.’
It sounded so different, hearing Neve say it to the way Pearson had delivered the information. Pearson had taken a stern, disapproving tone. One where he had no tolerance for the substance or its users. Whereas, hearing Neve tell him, it sounded close to heart-breaking and unbearably painful.
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‘Pearson said it was only because Scott hired a top solicitor that you got off without a custodial sentence. He said you would have just got a caution if you’d named your supplier.’
‘It was my first offence. I had a tiny amount on me, so it was obviously just for my personal use. There was no intent to supply,’ said Neve.
‘Why didn’t you name your supplier?’
Neve looked up to the ceiling and closed her eyes. ‘The supplier was Ashley. I wasn’t going to get him in trouble.’
‘That wouldn’t have been the first time you protected him, would it?’
‘To be honest, it was easier than grassing on him,’ said Neve. ‘No guilt. No repercussions.’
Kit inhaled deeply as he took a moment to gather his thoughts. ‘And Scott stood by you?’ he said eventually.
‘For a while. He tried, he really did, but it was awful. No one would talk to us. We lost our friends. I was known as the junkie wife,’ said Neve with a sigh. ‘We even tried moving areas, but it turned out it wasn’t just our community who turned on us, we turned on ourselves. It was bad. We argued all the time. I had become almost reclusive and Scott couldn’t deal with that. He thought I was a total fruitcake when I said I wanted to try for another baby. He said he couldn’t trust me with children. He would always be scared what I would do, even to my own children.’ Neve’s grip tightened on Kit’s hand.
‘Wow, I don’t know what to say to all this,’ said Kit. He felt exhausted just listening to his wife’s confession, or rather confessions. Just when he thought there was no more to learn, she threw in another curveball.
‘I would never do anything to harm a child,’ Neve said with force. ‘Never. Scott was wrong. I wouldn’t hurt my own child. Or anyone else’s for that matter.’ She sat up straighter, looking intently at Kit. ‘Have you ever had the slightest doubt about me and Poppy before now? Answer me – have you ever thought I’d hurt Poppy?’
‘No. Not before all this,’ admitted Kit.
‘And now?’
‘I don’t think you would hurt her,’ said Kit. He sat back in his chair, he suddenly felt exhausted both mentally and emotionally.