Am I Guilty

by Jackie Kabler

  She’d carried on screaming, on and on, even as the police and ambulance had arrived, and taken her away. And then, when she’d finally stopped, she had apparently admitted everything, said that what Oliver and Nell had accused her of was absolutely true.

  She’d been assessed then, and judged too ill to face trial, and instead had been sent under the Mental Health Act to Croft Park, a high-security psychiatric hospital in Wales. But the police were able to tell me they believed now that Zander’s death was entirely down to Flora, and Nell had been only her unwitting, innocent accomplice.

  ‘She told your daughter that the two of them were going to play a little joke on Mummy, while you were asleep,’ Detective Chief Inspector Alan Brook, the senior investigating officer, had told me, when he’d visited a week or so after Flora had been taken into custody. It had been raining before he’d arrived, but when I’d opened the door to let him in the sky had suddenly been lit by the most beautiful rainbow, the bands of colour mesmerizing.

  ‘She said that Nell had often told her she was upset by your drinking, Mrs Ashfield, and that she told Nell that if you got a fright, and thought you’d left the baby in the car, that might stop you using alcohol.’

  I’d swallowed hard and stared at the carpet, shame washing over me, but he’d kindly told me to ‘please, don’t torture yourself about that now’, and carried on.

  ‘Miss Applegate said she would keep watch, and that Nell should sneak in and take the baby from his pram, then run out and put him back into his car seat outside. Miss Applegate said that she would then make some noise in the house a couple of minutes later and wake you up, whereupon you would notice your child was missing and panic, and he would then quickly be found in the car. Nell thought this sounded reasonable, and went along with it.’

  ‘So this was … about three thirty, four o’clock?’ My brain was racing, trying to work it out.

  DCI Brook nodded.

  ‘Around then, yes. It seems Nell went straight upstairs after carrying the baby out, wanting to sort some things out to show her friend who was coming round later, and simply trusted that Miss Applegate was going to do what she had promised and wake you up shortly afterwards. She didn’t, of course.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I still can’t believe … I mean, I’m just struggling to reconcile the image I had of her, Flora I mean, with what she did. I know all this stuff’s come out about her being abused as a child and everything but …’

  I shook my head again, more violently this time.

  ‘Everyone’s really struggling with it. Annabelle … the things Flora made poor Oliver do too, this weird control thing, making other people do terrible things to make herself feel better. Apparently she started working on Oliver, making him hurt flies and kill that cat, to make her feel better about what she did to Zander. I’ve never heard of anything like it. Is she really a psychopath? I thought they didn’t do guilt? And if she was, she certainly hid it well.’

  ‘They generally do,’ said DCI Brook.

  He’d finished explaining then, telling me that Flora had been concerned that when Rupert came home, at around five o’clock, he might glance into the car parked out front and see Zander inside, and the same when Greg and Millie arrived a little later on.

  ‘Sadly, none of them did,’ he said. ‘And so it wasn’t until the passers-by saw the child shortly after six that the ruckus started, and Miss Applegate was able to pretend she had been alerted by them and discovered what had happened, and—’

  I raised a hand then, not wanting to hear anymore. We all knew what had happened after that.

  ‘I still don’t really get why Nell didn’t just tell me, tell you, tell anybody, what had really happened though. And how she could still be so fond of Flora afterwards, when she realized what the result of her little joke was,’ I said.

  I’d forgiven Nell, of course I had, but I was still finding the whole thing difficult to understand.

  The detective sighed.

  ‘She was very much in thrall to Miss Applegate, it seems. It was almost like brainwashing, in a way. Miss Applegate had grown very close to Nell in the months leading up to the incident … Nell had used her as a confidante when she was anxious about your drinking, your marital …’ He coughed, ‘marital disagreements.’

  The shame washed over me again.

  ‘It meant that when the baby was found, and everyone, you included, thought you had been responsible, all it took was a quiet word from Miss Applegate, and Nell kept shtum. Miss Applegate told her that it had to be a huge secret, that the two of them would get into terrible trouble if she told, and that it was an accident, the baby was never meant to die, accidents happened, and that if you got the blame it might be a good thing, might help you to change. She said, apparently, that Nell would “have a better mummy” at the end of all this.’

  Tears pricked my eyes then, and I looked at DCI Brook and nodded slowly.

  ‘Do you know what? She was right. I’m going to be.’

  And it was true. Three months on, I had kicked the booze habit, taken on a new assistant now I was no longer a pariah, cut down on my working hours. Nell was getting more of my time, and she was happy. I knew she was, and it warmed my heart, filled it to bursting. I was a better mummy now, and I knew this was a change that would stay, for ever. There would be no looking back, and no going back. I’d promised Nell that, and she knew I meant it.

  There had been, DCI Brook had also told me, one incident which could have blown it for Flora much earlier.

  ‘The one time where Miss Applegate thought everything might come crashing down around her was when you sent Nell to a counsellor, a therapist?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Karen Ballerton. She practises up in Reading.’

  ‘Indeed. Well, Miss Applegate was fairly horrified when she heard about that – she thought Nell might have spilled the beans to this woman. She didn’t, of course. It seems she told the therapist simply that she felt terrible guilt about not checking that the baby had been taken inside from the car. True, of course, but the woman must have assumed she was talking about earlier, when you all arrived home. And so she did the counsellor thing, and told her that it wasn’t her fault, that the baby was your, its mother’s, responsibility. And that made Nell feel a little better, for a few days at least.’

  I sighed, remembering.

  ‘Yes, she did seem better for a few days. It all went downhill again after that. My poor baby.’

  ‘Indeed. Strangely, Miss Applegate also said she was glad that Nell felt better. It seems as though she did have some genuine affection for her, and had been worried that what she’d made Nell do would damage her permanently. She claimed, in fact, to have had great affection for you too, and for Mrs Garrington’s family, although clearly that still didn’t prevent her actions. Not the behaviour of your archetypal psychopath, maybe, though.’

  He’d left then, promising that it was unlikely Flora would be released from hospital for many years, if ever, leaving me to my thoughts, my jumbled mess of shame and guilt, grief and rage.

  Now, in the glorious May sunshine, the mess was smaller, the pain less acute. It was still there, of course it was – it always would be – but as each day passed, I was learning to live with it, cope with it, a little bit more. Learning to look to the future, to live with hope, to find the good in every day, to be thankful, so thankful, for everything I still had. My daughter, whole and healthy again. And my husband, soon to be officially my ex-husband, but now a friend again. Rupert would never forgive me for sleeping with Greg, for fathering a child with another man, not entirely. And I would never forgive him for sleeping with Mia during our marriage, not just after we split, as I had later learned – and for sleeping with Flora too.

  He’d confessed it all, eventually, but by then, I thought, what did it matter? So much had happened, so many bad things, that a couple more made no real difference. It was time to move on, and we were both trying to look to the future now, a fu
ture where we could be friends. We would always share so much, and watching Nell grow, learning to be a person, happy again, was all that really mattered, after all.

  It had struck me, shortly after the day we found out the truth, that almost everyone had been lying about something, not just Flora and Nell. Not lying about what had happened to Zander – only Flora and Nell had known that – but lying about something.

  Me, hiding such a big, dirty secret from Rupert. Him, living a lie too, pretending he believed Zander was his, sleeping with Mia and Flora behind my back. Greg, hiding what he’d done from Annabelle. And Isla, keeping my secret from Rupert, and lying about me driving the car home. She admitted that, eventually. Said she couldn’t hide it anymore, didn’t want me to think I was going mad.

  ‘You’re mad enough already, Ashfield,’ she said, and then burst into tears.

  I’d gone to court on that charge only, in the end. I told Isla I deserved some sort of punishment for what I’d done to Nell, and to Rupert. She cried again then, told me over and over again how sorry she was, how she would get help, how she would go to the police and tell them it had been her behind the wheel, but I wouldn’t let her.

  I was banned from the road for twelve months, but I was OK with that. There were trains, taxis. I could manage. And I had plenty of offers to drive me around these days, when I needed it – guilt, maybe, on the part of Isla, Rupert, Greg, Annabelle, Rupert’s parents, my wider circle of friends again now too, everyone who thought I’d killed my child and now knew the truth.

  But I could have done it, that was the thing. It could easily have been me who left him in the car. I knew that, even if they didn’t. And so I was grateful, so very, very grateful, for what I had now, for what I still had, when a few short months ago I thought I had nothing.

  BRRRRRRR.

  The doorbell rang, and I went to open it, Rupert leaning in to peck me on the cheek with a smile as he said hello. He’d started doing that again recently, and I liked it. I liked Mia, too, rather to my surprise. More importantly, Nell liked her. I turned to the stairs for a moment to yell: ‘Nell! Daddy’s here!’, then gestured at Rupert.

  ‘Come in. She’ll be down in a minute.’

  He stepped inside, smiling again and meeting my eye as our daughter’s happy shriek echoed down the hallway.

  42

  ANNABELLE

  I scribbled ‘advertise for second assistant/part-time’ on the end of my evergrowing to-do list, put my pen down, leaned back in my chair and stretched my arms above my head, trying to ease the tension in my shoulders. Good tension though, I thought. The sort that came from hard work, not stress or anxiety.

  Along with Verity, the girl I’d taken on six weeks or so after Flora – well, after Flora went – I’d spent yesterday trying different chair layouts at the Pittville Pump Room, the beautiful Grade I listed former spa building in Cheltenham which would be the venue for Thea’s first major fashion show. We’d picked the main hall for the catwalk, deciding its crystal chandeliers and striking domed ceiling would be perfect to impress the hundreds of buyers, fashion photographers and magazine journalists on the guest list, and I was confident we were going to pull off a fabulous event next week. It had to be fabulous, because it was for Thea.

  I snorted softly, as I often did when I paused for a moment to contemplate our friendship. I was heading to Cheltenham this evening, to chat through final arrangements for the show, to eat dinner with Thea, and although this was now a regular thing, the unexpectedness of it all still tickled me sometimes.

  We’d first got together just days after Flora had been sectioned, oddly both writing emails to each other within the same hour and saying almost exactly the same thing, expressing a desire to talk through everything this girl had done to us. When we met, for coffee in town, we ended up chatting for two hours, finding common ground and shared ambitions that we had somehow managed to go through years of acquaintance without discovering. We talked too, of course, about the elephant – or, the great big hairy mammoth, elephant somehow seeming too small a creature – in the room: the fact that my husband and Thea had slept together, and produced a child.

  Very, very strangely, though, that no longer seemed important to me. Greg and I had talked it out, through two long, tearful days and nights, and I’d somehow, for reasons unclear even to me, decided to forgive him. I finally understood now the real reason he’d been so distracted in the run-up to Thea’s trial date, his anxiety about what might be revealed gripping him, and that had almost been a relief. He’d gone through so much pain, and I loved him, and I knew that he loved me, and was truly, desperately sorry.

  I knew, too, that I’d neglected my marriage, too caught up for years in work and my children. That was still no reason for him to sleep with another woman on a drunken night out, and I knew many of my friends would call me a fool, if they knew. But they didn’t, nobody did except our little circle, the Garringtons and the Ashfields, and Isla Laird, and we’d all agreed to keep the secret. Flora knew too, of course, but she didn’t matter anymore.

  And if I could forgive Greg, then I could forgive Thea too. She sobbed when I told her that, gripping my hand across the table, promising that it had meant nothing, and I believed her. Fool again, maybe, but I didn’t think so. It was time to move on, and so we did. Even Greg and Rupert were OK now, all of us agreeing to leave the past where it belonged. Now, Thea and I were real friends … proper friends, ‘like me and Nell’, as Millie had pronounced with great delight.

  The kitchen door opened slightly and Oliver’s head appeared in the gap.

  ‘Mum, me, Millie and Sienna are going to walk down the fields to the village shop to get our mags. Need anything?’

  I felt a little surge of love.

  ‘No, thanks, darling. Walk carefully.’

  He snorted. ‘How do you walk un-carefully? See you later.’

  Then he winked at me and vanished, his big trainers squeaking on the tiled floor of the hall, his still-boyish, high-pitched voice raised as he called for his sisters to hurry up. He was nearly twelve now, my son, my first born, and I wondered how long it would be before his voice broke, before my baby turned into a man.

  He was well again, happy again now, my Oliver. It had only dawned on us afterwards that the changes in his behaviour had only begun after Flora arrived. It was almost as if he’d been brainwashed by her – something Thea had said too, about what she’d done to Nell.

  The police officer in charge of the case had come to see me, not long after Flora had been taken away, screaming and shaking, leaving us chilled and frightened, stunned by what we had just seen and heard. DCI Alan Brook had told us, calmly and matter-of-factly, that ‘Miss Applegate’ had started to use Olly to try to regain her own sense of control, when the guilt she felt over what she’d done to Zander threatened to overwhelm her.

  ‘Guilt? I thought the whole point of being a psychopath was that they never felt remorse or guilt?’ Greg had said angrily, and the police officer had shrugged.

  ‘There’s a spectrum, maybe,’ he said. ‘She has certainly expressed some level of remorse, and of depression, as a result of her actions.’

  So our son had become a victim too, like Nell, like Zander. She had started gradually, using his frustration with his little sister, telling him he would feel better if he released his feelings by taking control, by having power over weaker lives. I still shuddered every time I thought about the wingless, helpless flies, Hamish’s limp, damaged body lying in the mud, the blood streaking through Olaf’s fur. But it was the potential consequences for Sienna that still woke both Greg and I up in the early morning hours. We knew that if Flora had stayed much longer, if Nell hadn’t finally spoken out, it might have been Sienna who was Flora’s next victim: that she might, if Oliver had been as taken in, as brainwashed by her to the degree we believed he had been, have made our son murder our daughter.

  Oliver knew that too, now, and like Nell, he had spent some time in residential treatment, emerging
a calmer, quieter, more thoughtful child. I had watched him closely for weeks after he returned, panic shivering through me every time I realized he and Sienna were in a room alone together, but now I knew it was over. He had made his peace with what he had done, accepted that it had not been his fault, forgiven himself, and even apologized to Sienna; although she, just turned four, had simply looked puzzled and told him he was a ‘big silly’.

  So we had made peace with it too; Greg and I exchanging contented looks these days when Sienna would run eagerly to her big brother when he got in from school, waving her latest drawing, and he would dump his schoolbag on the floor, scoop her into his arms and inspect her work carefully, dropping a kiss onto her forehead before depositing her again.

  Millie was OK again now too. Distraught for weeks after Flora had been taken away, she had told us how Nell had confessed to her, months ago, that she had put Zander back into the car, and that somebody had made her do it. She’d quickly withdrawn the claim, telling Millie it had been a joke, but Millie had worried about it, eventually going to Flora and asking her what she should do. Flora, of course, had told her that it simply wasn’t true, that Nell was confused, that losing a loved one could play tricks on your mind and to just forget about it, and so, of course, poor, trusting, loyal Millie had never breathed a word. We’d talked to her at length, Greg and I, reassuring her, telling her nothing was her fault, and she too seemed happy now, everything right with her world again, the darkness lifted.

  I heard voices outside the kitchen window and stood up to look, watching as my three children headed down the garden to the gate in the fence at the bottom, from where they would trek across the fields, their shortcut to the village. Oliver and Millie were jostling each other, Millie giggling as he tried to grab her little denim handbag from her shoulder, Sienna skipping ahead of them. My children, My family. My life. My heart swelled with love, and I stood there, watching, until they were just three little bobbing dots in the distance.