Am I Guilty

by Jackie Kabler

  His voice was cold, and he’d reached out then and retuned the radio to 5 Live, the conversation clearly over. On the Daily show they were talking about sexual harassment in the workplace, but the words made no sense to me, a jumble of sounds, background noise to the sudden turmoil inside my head.

  It had been inevitable, I supposed, but even so … yes, I’d known, deep down, that my marriage was over. What man would stay with a woman who’d done what I’d done, after all? But I’d still dared, now and again, to hope. Hope that he could forgive me, one day. Hope that, for Nell’s sake, we could give things another go. But now …

  ‘I need a coffee.’

  I looked up from my magazine as Rupert stood up and stomped across the waiting room to pour himself a drink. He didn’t offer to get one for me, and I didn’t ask. I had to just deal with this now, I thought. Nell was my first priority, not Rupert, and if I was going to get through this, through the next few weeks, through the trial, I was going to have to toughen up, to harden my heart.

  There were several solicitors’ meetings in my diary for the coming days, and the thought made me instantly nauseous. The sick fear I’d felt ever since I realized the consequences of what I’d done was worsening by the day. I hadn’t just killed my child, filling me with a grief and shame that I would never recover from. There was still so much to come, so much to face. I was terrified, I realized now. Terrified of it all, but most of all about leaving Nell.

  She would go to Rupert, of course, if the worst happened – if I was locked up. It was one of the few proper conversations we’d managed to have since he’d left, and even that had been terse.

  ‘Of course. Why would you even need to ask that? She’ll come and live with me, and she’ll be fine,’ he’d said.

  But would she, really? A little girl, her mother in prison, being brought up by just her father – and, it seemed now, possibly by some woman called Mia I’d never even met? Would Nell really be fine? The nausea worsened, and I looked around for a door that might lead to a toilet, suddenly feeling that I might actually have to go and throw up.

  I didn’t allow myself to think about it, not usually, not unless I was in one of my legal meetings – I’d become an expert at banishing the thoughts from my mind, focussing only on the here and now, in recent months. But soon there would be no avoiding it – the trial was a matter of weeks away. Final decisions had to be made: most importantly whether I definitely wanted to continue to plead not guilty, as recommended, and put my faith in a jury, or change my plea, which would spare the expense of a trial and hopefully get me a more lenient sentence – a reduction of up to a third was possible, my solicitors had told me.

  It was what the sentence would be that took over my dreams, my nightmares … the permutations racing through my mind, waking me in those dark, cold small hours and making a return to sleep impossible.

  There was, in the UK, no mandatory sentence for manslaughter – it was at the judge’s discretion. Life imprisonment, a shorter sentence of up to ten years, suspended imprisonment, community service or even a hospital order – a stay in a mental health hospital. Who knew which way it would go?

  I knew already, too, what my judge, this man or woman who held my fate in his or her hands, would take into consideration when deciding my future. Were there any mitigating circumstances? Did I pose a threat to the public? Was I likely to commit another crime? Did I have any previous convictions? Yes, no, no, no. But would that be enough? Would the circumstances which surrounded this terrible thing that had happened be enough to keep me out of prison?

  I’d tortured myself with far more than thoughts of incarceration since it happened, though, of course. For weeks afterwards, I’d obsessively searched websites, newspaper articles, looking for information, trying to convince myself that Zander might not have suffered, that he may have just fallen asleep. There was no such comfort to be found. The facts appalled me, sickened me, rendered me a howling, sobbing mess of pain and guilt, seared across my heart forever.

  The car temperature would have risen ten to fifteen degrees Celsius every fifteen minutes, my baby becoming increasingly distressed, hyperthermia occurring within minutes.

  Young children overheat fast, with dizziness, confusion, profuse sweating, agitation … then, as heatstroke takes hold, headache, seizures, and the beginnings of organ failure, before a slow slip into unconsciousness. It is not a painless death – it is a horrific one.

  I swallowed down the nausea as Rupert returned with his coffee, trying to appear normal, trying to stop the sudden tremor in my hands as I turned the pages of my magazine, seeing nothing on the smooth, colourful pages. Instead, the pictures that had begun to so frequently float into my mind since they had first surfaced at the weekend suddenly seemed to dance across the paper. The images of my hands unclipping the seat belt holding Zander in place, slipping under his sleeping body, hefting his weight up onto my shoulder, floated across my vision, and I blinked hard, trying to make them disappear.

  Again? What was wrong with me? I was going crazy, I must be. We all knew what had happened that day. So why was I repeatedly now seeing this other version, the one where I didn’t forget my baby, where I brought him inside as I was supposed to do, made sure he was all right before I lay down to sleep off the booze? It was impossible, a false memory, wishful thinking, my brain refusing to accept that I did this terrible thing. Because if I had brought Zander inside, the rest of the day, the way he died, made no sense whatsoever. I knew that. So why, each time I saw it in my head, was this new version becoming more and more clear, sharpening, as if seen through a slowly focussing camera lens? This is ridiculous, Thea. Stop it.

  I closed the magazine abruptly, my hands pressing down on the glossy cover, trying to squeeze the images into oblivion. Instead, a new image, that of Flora, drifted into my mind, the shock and anguish in her eyes as she stumbled into the room that day, the pallor of her skin as she held Zander’s limp, lifeless body in her outstretched arms.

  Flora. She’d stayed afterwards, for a while, tried to keep on doing her job as usual, trying to support me through it, despite her impish little face crumpling with grief every time she passed the pram in the hallway, but she didn’t manage it for long. I knew she would leave, and I never blamed her for that. Within a month, she was gone.

  I had a sudden urge to see her now, and slowly put the magazine back down on the table, wondering if I had the nerve to give her a call. Would she want to see me? Maybe, if she did, I could talk through the events of that day with her, try to clear the confusion that was increasingly fuddling my mind.

  I felt the desperate urge to tell somebody about it, and although Isla was the obvious choice, the thought of trying to explain this to her, with her cynical, no-nonsense attitude, made me nervous. She’d dismiss it out of hand, and she was too close to what had happened anyway, whereas Flora … well, Flora would listen, I thought. And if she didn’t want to see me, well … what did I have to lose? I’d call her, later this week. Or text her maybe. A text would be easier, give her the chance to think about it before she replied …

  ‘Hi Mum, Dad.’

  Nell’s voice, chirpy and light. She was standing in the open doorway, Karen Ballerton behind her, both of them smiling.

  ‘Nell! How did it go? Are you OK?’

  ‘Fine. I feel better actually.’

  I stood up, and she skipped across the room and into my arms. Rupert and I both looked at the counsellor, and she nodded.

  ‘I’ll send you a written report, but I think she’ll be all right. She was struggling with feelings of deep sadness, of course, but also of guilt … she seemed to think that she could have saved her brother. I’ve made her see that it was … well, an accident. Given her some coping strategies for days when she feels low …’

  Nell released me from her bear hug and looked up at me, dark eyes seeking mine.

  ‘Yes, bad things happen and we have to move on, Mum. All of us. You can’t keep going over and over them in your he
ad, because it’s not good for you. You have to think about other things to help you stop doing that. It’s OK to be sad, sometimes, but then you must find something to do, like a TV programme or a walk or something to take your mind off it … that’s right, isn’t it, Karen?’

  ‘That’s right. Very good, Nell.’ Karen nodded vigorously, her enormous hoop earrings swinging wildly, and gave Nell a double thumbs-up sign.

  Rupert and I exchanged glances, and I felt it again, another brief moment of solidarity, of shared relief. Then he turned to Karen.

  ‘That’s fantastic, Miss Ballerton, thank you so much.’

  He held out a hand to Nell, and she moved towards him, away from me, grabbing onto his fingers.

  ‘Burger time, Dad?’

  He patted her head with his free hand, and grinned.

  ‘Burger time.’

  That night in bed, Nell safely tucked up in her room, calmer and more content than I’d seen her in months, I dozed off quickly. I felt a little more relaxed myself tonight, something of my daughter’s improved demeanour possibly rubbing off on me.

  I’d spent half an hour in a deep, hot bath, scented with orange flower oil, emerging pink and slippery, my very bones seeming to be melting with sudden weariness. Crawling beneath the duvet, I’d fallen asleep thinking about Nell. But when I woke with a start an hour later, there was something very different in my head. I’d been dreaming, or had I? It had been so vivid, more like a memory than a dream. But even so, like the earlier images, they couldn’t possibly be true, these brand-new pictures that had just flashed so clearly through my brain, could they?

  I sat up, my breath coming in ragged gasps, fingers clutching at the edge of the duvet, trying to order my thoughts. I’d been back there, yet again, back on the fourth of September. Back in the car, with Isla and Nell and Zander, pulling up at our house, expressing surprise and delight that there was an empty space right outside the front door, something which never happened. The car sliding neatly into the space, the engine being turned off, Nell, waking from her slumber in the back seat, shouting at us to hurry up and open her door, because she needed a wee.

  All of it, exactly as it happened. Exactly as it happened, except for one small detail. As we pulled up outside the house, as we parked the car, as we laughed at Nell’s impatience, it wasn’t me in the driving seat. I was sitting on the inside, the side closest to the pavement, to the house. The passenger seat. I wasn’t driving the car. It was Isla.

  20

  FLORA

  I paced the kitchen floor, up and down, up and down the polished terracotta tiles, pausing during each pass to straighten a tea towel on its peg, pick a crumb from the draining board, wipe a smear from the shiny black kettle. Why was I feeling so ridiculously nervous? It was Saturday afternoon, a Saturday off for once, and all that was happening was that Annabelle had gone out shopping with Greg and Sienna, and Olly was spending the day with a friend, leaving me at home with Millie, who was waiting for Nell to arrive for a sleepover. The issue, though, the thing that had thrown me into this unexpected disarray, was that the person who would be delivering Nell today was … Isla Laird.

  I couldn’t put my finger on it, not really. I just didn’t want to see Isla, just as I hadn’t really wanted to see Greg, not after our encounter last weekend. He’d been away all week, working at head office in London, which had been a relief, and he’d arrived home last night after I’d retired to my room with my latest box set, so other than a quick ‘good morning’ earlier, I hadn’t had to face him. I would, sooner or later, I knew that, but the longer I could put it off the better. There was no putting Isla off, though, and the prospect was proving to be strangely unnerving.

  I stopped pacing, poured myself a coffee and sat down at the kitchen table, where Millie, seemingly unconcerned by my odd behaviour, was leafing through National Geographic Kids magazine, holding it up every now and again to show me another stunning photograph of a black rhino enjoying a mud bath or a seahorse floating in azure water. Her recent school photography project had clearly inspired her.

  ‘I think that’s what I want to do when I grow up. Go to all these faraway places and take pictures of animals. Is that an actual job though, Flora?’

  ‘Wildlife photographer? Certainly is,’ I said. ‘Maybe you could work on one of those TV shows, you know? Like Blue Planet?’

  Millie’s eyes widened.

  ‘Wow, yes, I could, couldn’t I? I’m telling Mum and Dad as soon as they get home!’

  ‘Good for you.’

  She turned back to her magazine, and I got up from the table again, bringing my coffee with me, and walked to the window, feeling restless. Why the hell was I so jittery? It was, I supposed, just that I hadn’t seen Isla for months, since I’d left Thea’s. Other than Nell, I hadn’t had any close contact with anyone from that period of my life since I’d been at Annabelle’s – I’d seen Rupert briefly once or twice when he’d dropped Nell off or collected her, but we hadn’t really spoken – and I preferred it that way, not wanting to revisit that stilltoorecent past, stir up those memories.

  Today, though, I knew I wouldn’t get away with a simple ‘hello, how are you’ at the door when Isla arrived. She’d want to talk – she always did – so it was more a matter of how quickly I could get her in and out. A quick coffee, a bit of polite small talk … fifteen minutes? Twenty?

  ‘BRRRRRRRRR.’

  Down the hallway, the doorbell rang, making me jump, my coffee splashing over the edge of my mug and down the front of my grey sweatshirt.

  ‘Bugger! Oh, gosh, sorry, Millie, you didn’t hear that, OK?’

  ‘Hahaha, OK, I didn’t hear you saying a very rude word!’

  Millie ran past me, giggling, heading for the front door, and I swore again under my breath, grabbing a tea towel and dabbing ineffectually at the brown stain creeping across my top, then giving up with a sigh. I’d have to stick it in the washing machine later.

  I walked into the hallway just as Millie and Nell were heading for the stairs.

  ‘Flora!’

  Nell changed direction and ran towards me, wrapping her arms around my waist, and I hugged her back, dropping a kiss onto her dark curls.

  ‘Hey you! Go on upstairs, Millie’s been dying for you to get here. But we need to have a catch up later, OK? And take your bag up with you; we’ll all fall over it if you leave it in the middle of the floor like that.’

  ‘Sorry! OK, see you later!’

  She released me with a grin, grabbed her bag then ran after Millie, and I turned to look at Isla, who was standing just inside the still-open front door. She looked exactly the same as I remembered her, although of course there was no reason why she shouldn’t – tall, her short red hair in soft layers around her face, hazel eyes outlined with a khaki colour which made them look more green than brown today.

  ‘Isla. How nice to see you.’

  I smiled at her, trying to quell the sudden rush of nerves that was making my stomach churn, and she smiled back, showing teeth that were white and even.

  ‘And you. It’s been a while, Flora. You look well.’

  ‘Thanks. So do you. Look, do you fancy a coffee? I’ve just made a pot, and it’s cold out there. Come on in for a few minutes.’

  She nodded immediately.

  ‘Aye, I could murder a coffee actually. Don’t suppose there are any of Annabelle’s famous biscuits going too, are there? I haven’t eaten since breakfast.’

  I laughed.

  ‘I’m sure I can find some. Come in.’

  A few minutes later, fresh coffee poured and a plateful of apple flapjacks and cranberry oat cookies on the table between us, and chit-chat about our respective jobs and the weather exhausted, Isla swallowed a mouthful of biscuit and leaned across the table, looking at me earnestly.

  ‘Flora, you haven’t heard from Thea recently, I suppose? I’m worried about her.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘No. I haven’t heard from her at all since I left. It wasn�
��t intentional – I’m not avoiding her or anything. It’s just that I’m so busy here and, well, she hasn’t contacted me either, so …’

  ‘Oh, don’t feel bad about it. I get it, honestly. It’s just that the last couple of days she’s been a bit abrupt on the phone when I’ve called her, and last night when I got in from London, she told me she couldn’t see me. We were supposed to be hanging out, getting a pizza, you know, nothing exciting. But she told me she was too tired, hadn’t been sleeping. She sounded bloody weird, if I’m honest. And then she asked me if I could collect Nell from Rupert’s today and take her down here. She was going to do it herself, in a taxi, obviously, as she’s off the road at the moment, but she said she couldn’t now, because she needed some time alone. I mean, that’s strange, right? She has nothing but time alone these days. What does she have to do, other than the business?’

  I ran a finger round the rim of my mug, unsure how to respond.

  ‘Well, maybe it’s to do with the trial. I mean, it’s not that far off now, is it? Mid-March? Maybe she needs time to process that, make plans for when … well, for if things don’t go her way?’

  Isla was silent for a moment, then shrugged.

  ‘Maybe. But she usually talks things like that through with me. She doesn’t usually shut me out. I’m wondering if she’s upset about Mia. When I saw Rupert earlier, he told me he’d finally told Thea about her.’

  ‘Mia? Wow. Is that still going on?’

  Isla nodded.

  ‘Yep. Who would have thought it? And out in the open now too. Must be serious, eh?’

  She raised an eyebrow and reached for another biscuit. I nodded slowly, trying to take it in. Mia. It had been Isla who’d told me about Mia in the first place, all those months ago, one night in August when Rupert had been away working and Thea had gone upstairs to try to put a wakeful Zander back to bed. We’d been sitting in the lounge – the ‘good’ room at the front of the house, not my little snug at the back – sipping wine, the remains of a Chinese takeaway strewn on the coffee table. I’d said something, I couldn’t even remember what now, something innocuous about Rupert missing out on a good meal, and Isla had snorted suddenly, tossing an errant red lock back from her forehead.