by T J Stimson
When it was finally over, she straightened up and wiped her face with her sleeve. Her desolation and pain were unbearable and yet it was still better than the soul-sucking numbness of the last few days. She wanted to mourn Noah. Her grief was a mark of her love for her child.
Wearily, she put one foot in the stirrups and swung back into the saddle. She had taken the first step into after, but this was only the beginning, she knew that. She had a long road ahead yet and she didn’t want to take it alone. She needed Lucas beside her. But she couldn’t live with his lie hanging between them. Even if it meant the end of her marriage, she had to know the truth.
Chapter 15
Wednesday 8.00 a.m.
Maddie poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table, waiting for Lucas to come downstairs. Her hands were shaking and she was sorely tempted to add a slug of whisky to her coffee. She hadn’t slept in days. The doctor had given her sleeping pills, but she was reluctant to take them on top of the antidepressants she was already on. She was exhausted, which made it even harder to think. If she could just focus, she was sure she’d find a way to make sense of it all.
She’d arranged for her mother to take the children, so she and Lucas would have the house to themselves for a couple of hours. She desperately didn’t want to have this conversation, but she had to clear the air, one way or another. Her mistrust had created a wall between them just when she needed him most.
She jumped as her husband thundered down the stairs and stormed into the kitchen. ‘What the hell have you been doing in Noah’s room?’
Maddie was taken aback. ‘What?’
He slammed the flat of his hand on the table, spilling her coffee. ‘First you get rid of all his clothes, and now this? It’s obscene! It’s like you’re trying to pretend he never existed!’
‘Lucas, please! What are you talking about?’
He was angrier than she’d ever seen him. ‘Don’t play dumb with me, Maddie. I know you’re hurting. We’re all hurting. But you don’t get to make all the decisions without even asking me. He was my son, too! The least you could have done was talk to me first!’
She still had no idea what he meant.
Abruptly, he grabbed her wrist and yanked her up from the kitchen table so hard she nearly kicked over her chair. ‘Lucas, stop! You’re hurting me!’
He loosened his grip but didn’t let go. ‘I don’t know what’s going on in your head, Maddie, but you don’t have exclusive rights to grief,’ he said, propelling her up the stairs. ‘What message do you think it sends Emily and Jacob, trying to wipe out all sign Noah existed? And like this! What the hell were you thinking?’
They reached the nursery and she gazed around in disbelief. The Winnie-the-Pooh frieze had been crudely scraped from the walls and now hung in tattered shreds against the chair rail. The beige carpet had been ripped away from the skirting, exposing the underlay and tacking. Most shockingly of all, a broad roller had been taken to the walls, covering the warm, creamy yellow Maddie had spent hours painting when she was newly pregnant, with broad, grotesque sweeps of dark red. To her appalled eyes, they looked like grisly splashes of dried blood.
Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh my God. What happened?’
He stared at her incredulously. ‘What happened?’
‘Who did this?’ she whispered as she took in the ugly vandalism. ‘Why?’
‘Don’t mess with me, Maddie. I’m not in the mood.’
‘I’m not—’
‘I can’t let the children see this!’ Lucas shouted. ‘It’ll scare them half to death!’
The penny finally dropped. ‘Lucas, you can’t think – Lucas, I didn’t do this!’ She grabbed at his shirtsleeve. ‘You can’t think I’d do this!’
He shook himself free. ‘Come on, Maddie. Who else would it be?’
She swung back to the walls. She recognised the ox-red paint; it was left over from the accent wall they’d tried out in the dining room a year ago. She hadn’t liked it then, either. They’d repainted it a few months later in a softer shade of burnt umber.
She touched the paint. It hadn’t quite dried; the walls had been painted within the last couple of hours, at the most. A feeling of dread gathered in the pit of her stomach. Even in one of her blackouts, she’d never have done something like this. She’d remember if she had. Wouldn’t she?
‘Someone else must have done it,’ she said wildly, grasping at straws. ‘A – a neighbour, or something. Jayne or Mum, even! I don’t know! Maybe they were trying to help!’
‘While we were asleep?’ Lucas said incredulously. He rubbed his face, the fight suddenly leaving him. ‘Look, Maddie, there’s no right or wrong way to deal with what we’re going through. We’re all having to find our way. I shouldn’t have shouted at you, I’m sorry.’ He sighed heavily. ‘But I wish you’d just talk to me. You don’t have to hole up in your office and shut me out. I love you. I want to help you, and I need you, too. I can’t do this on my own.’
‘But I didn’t do it, Lucas,’ she said tearfully.
‘You have paint on your arm.’
She twisted her forearm up to look. Dried paint the colour of blood was smeared from wrist to elbow.
His expression softened. ‘Look, maybe it’s the drugs the doctor gave you. Perhaps you were sleepwalking when you did it, I don’t know. Some kind of fugue state or something.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I’m sorry I lost my rag. I shouldn’t have yelled.’
She started to shake. How could she not remember doing something like this? This went beyond a few hours she couldn’t recall. Even when she’d lost time before, she’d never done anything odd or out of character. This level of anger and violence – it wasn’t her.
‘I’m frightened, Lucas,’ she whispered. ‘It feels like I’m losing my mind.’
‘You’re in shock. Maybe this is your mind’s way of dealing with the trauma. You’re literally trying to obliterate what’s happened.’ He spread his hands helplessly. ‘God, Maddie, I don’t know how this works. Grief doesn’t come with a rule book. I know you don’t want to hear this, but maybe it’s time to see Dr Calkins again. He’ll know better than me how to help.’
‘He’ll just give me more pills,’ she said bitterly.
‘Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing, if it’ll help you feel more like yourself.’
‘The tranquillisers turn me into a zombie. I can’t think when I’m on them.’
‘Maddie, you got up in the middle of the night and wrecked our son’s bedroom and you don’t even remember doing it! Please, we need to get ahead of this thing before it gets out of control. Tell me you’ll at least talk to Dr Calkins.’
She stared up at the gory walls. The last thing she wanted was to disappear into the medicated, foggy numbness she’d fought so hard to escape after Jacob was born. But this loss of memory was worse than anything that’d gone before. This wasn’t just one of her ‘episodes’. She must have spent hours wrecking the nursery last night and she couldn’t remember a single second of it. How was that even possible? She was terrified at the thought of what she might do next. Suppose she had a blackout when she was driving or out with the children somewhere? She might abandon them by the side of the road and have no recollection of it. She couldn’t take the risk.
She nodded reluctantly.
He looked visibly relieved. ‘We’re going to get through this, Maddie.’
She shivered as she followed her husband back downstairs. She felt as if the ground was shifting beneath her feet. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she remember? If she couldn’t trust her own memory, there was no knowing what she might do.
Or what she might already have done.
The doorbell buzzed as they reached the hall.
‘I’ll get it,’ Lucas said.
He opened the front door. Two police officers stood there. There were no sympathetic glances or kind smiles today.
One of the officers stepped forward. ‘Mr and Mrs Drummond. W
e’ve had the results of the post-mortem on your son,’ he said.
Lydia
She doesn’t resist anymore. She knows there’s no point screaming and crying, because they’re just going to do it to her anyway. Some of them actually like it when she puts up a fight, and she refuses to give them the satisfaction. It’s not much, but it’s something; it’s a way to salvage her pride.
Mae has to let her go to school now, the stupid cow from the social checks up that she attends, like she gives a damn what happens to her. But Lydia doesn’t tell anyone what goes on at home. Don’t you breathe a word, Mae says, or I’ll skin you alive. She believes her, she knows what Mae’s capable of, but that’s not why she doesn’t tell. She doesn’t tell because, like Mae says, who’d believe a dirty little bitch like her? If they knew what she was really like, Mae says, how wicked she really was, they’d take her away and lock her up and throw away the key. She knows she must truly be the lost cause Mae says she is, or Jean would have come back for her, Davy would have come back for her.
She’s not a baby anymore. She knows her own name from school. She’s eight years old and she understands how the world works now. You have to look out for number one, like Mae says, because nobody else is going to do it for you. She doesn’t hate Mae for what she makes her do. Mae’s just trying to survive, like everyone else. But the men – that’s different. She hates the men with every ounce of her scrawny being.
The things they’ve done to her. Awful things, terrible things, things that feel bad, and taste bad and hurt and leave scars. She’s not big enough to stop them, not yet, but she will be one day. And then she’ll cut off their little white worms and shove them in their slobbery mouths and watch them choke and she’ll laugh. She’ll laugh and laugh while they choke and bleed to death and she won’t care.
She hears Mae on the stairs. Her bedroom door opens, and when she sees who’s with her mother, when she catches sight of the white, narrow face and dead eyes, she shrinks back against the wall. Of all Mae’s men, she hates and fears Jimmy the most.
He smells her fear, and he smiles. He’s one of those who gets off on other people’s pain. Mae jerks her head for her to come with them, and she reluctantly gets to her feet, feeling the bugs crawling all over her. She hates Jimmy and his long, pale fingers, his shark eyes, she especially hates his wet red lips, lips that suck the life out of you and leave you dead and empty. But she’s not going to let him see how scared she is, she’s not going to let him win.
She empties her mind of everything, floating high above herself, and she doesn’t cry out once, no matter how much it hurts. Only when Jimmy puts his hands to her throat and squeezes does she struggle, she can’t help it, she can’t breathe, but then the room begins to blur and black spots dance before her eyes and she yields to it, to the wonderful sense of release, as everything fades away into blessed nothingness.
She comes to, alone on the floor of her own bedroom. She feels sore all over and it’s hard to swallow. It’s always like this after a visit from Jimmy. She looks down at herself, at the scratch marks on her legs, the welts and the bruises and the bite marks. She knows from past experience it’ll hurt for days when she goes to the toilet, and she’ll have to wear her collar turned up at school tomorrow to hide the bruises around her neck.
Wearily, she gets up and goes into the bathroom to scrub herself clean. The house is silent, her mother has probably passed out drunk, so she risks filling the bath with hot water, as hot as she can stand it, and climbs in, leaning back and closing her eyes. She wishes she hadn’t woken up, that Jimmy had finished the job. One day, he will.
Suddenly, the bathroom door bangs open and Mae storms in screaming and yelling, who do you think you are, lolling around like the Queen of Sheba, you’ve used all the hot water, you selfish dirty bitch! She leans over the bathtub and seizes her by the shoulders and pushes her down, pushes her under the water. Lydia splutters and coughs and takes in a lungful of water, but Mae doesn’t stop, her face is red and contorted with fury and a sadistic kind of pleasure.
Her lungs are bursting with the need for air as she fights her mother, her limbs flailing against the sides of the bath. She grabs at Mae’s arms, trying to prise her off, but her mother’s too strong. Lydia feels her strength begin to fail, the room is going dark again, and she is about to let go, to give up, give in, when something stirs deep inside her: a spark of the old anger, of resistance, a refusal to let Mae win. Mae has been trying to get rid of her since before she was born, but she won’t be rubbed out, she won’t be dismissed and ignored.
Instead of pushing against Mae, she pulls, and the move catches Mae off balance. She falls into the bath with a loud screech, and Lydia seizes the chance to squirm upright, breathing in deep gulps of air as she kicks and hits her mother as hard as she can, wriggling free.
She clambers out of the bath and stands on the bare boards of the bathroom, naked and dripping wet. Mae struggles to sit up in the tub, and the two of them glare at each other. Something has changed, and they both know it.
‘I don’t want Jimmy to come anymore,’ Lydia says.
Mae doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t scream or shout or threaten to flay you alive, you little cunt. There is something new in her eyes along with the familiar hate and resentment, a grudging respect, an acceptance, and Lydia realises her mother knew this day was coming, was waiting for it.
Mae nods shortly and Lydia picks up her threadbare towel and wraps it around herself. All these years she’s tried to appease Mae, to be a good girl and do as she was told and keep Mae happy. But Mae is a bully, and like all bullies, there is only one language she understands. Lydia is not as strong as Mae physically, not yet, but she knows now that her will, her anger, is stronger. Despite everything Mae has done to break her body and crush her spirit, she is still here.
She’s not going to be Mae’s good little girl any longer. She’ll be as hard as Mae, as ruthless. She’ll watch, and she’ll wait. And one day, when she has the chance, she’ll get her own back on everyone who let her down.
Chapter 16
Wednesday 11.30 a.m.
Lucas and Maddie followed the two police officers outside. For a moment, she wondered if they were going to be handcuffed and driven away in the back of the police car, like criminals, but when Lucas asked if he should follow them to the station in his own vehicle, they simply agreed.
The two of them drove there in silence. The officers had given them no more information, other than that the post-mortem results were back; they’d refused to provide any specifics. Maddie’s mind whirled with questions. Noah had died from cot death. The paramedics had said so. The doctor at the hospital had told them he couldn’t officially be sure until the post-mortem, but she’d assumed – they’d all assumed – it was just a formality. So why were they being dragged down to the police station now? Had they done something wrong? Lucas had called the ambulance as soon as they’d found Noah. Should they have tried CPR? Or did it have something to do with the bruises on his cheek? Were they going to be arrested for child abuse?
‘Do we need to call a solicitor?’ she asked Lucas suddenly.
‘Why would we need a solicitor?’
‘They must think we’ve done something wrong. Why do we have to go to the police station to talk to them? Why couldn’t they just ask us their questions at home?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said wearily. ‘Procedure, I suppose.’
‘What do you think was in the post-mortem? Why wouldn’t they tell us?’
‘I don’t know, Maddie. Let’s just get there and find out.’
He’d shaved this morning for the first time in days, but he still looked tired and drawn, his skin almost grey. He hadn’t ironed his shirt properly, either; there were uneven creases down the front and he’d missed his cuffs entirely.
‘You’ve got paint under your fingernails,’ she noticed suddenly.
‘I don’t have time to worry about that now,’ he said tersely, as they pulled into th
e police station. He unbuckled his seat belt. ‘Come on. They’re waiting for us.’
She stared up at the building. It was a sixties red-brick build, charmless and boxy. She’d never been inside a police station before. She’d never even had a parking ticket. ‘I’m scared, Lucas,’ she said.
‘Don’t make so much of this,’ he said, getting out of the car. ‘They only want to ask us a few questions. Let’s just get this over with, so we can go home.’
Reluctantly, she followed him. Inside, it was bland and institutionally anonymous; it reminded her of the reception office at Emily’s junior school. A young, bored-looking policeman sat at a glassed-in counter; behind him, two secretaries were laughing as they shared a blueberry muffin. On the walls, posters exhorted the public to beware of pickpockets and report suspicious packages.
One of the two officers who’d come to their house indicated a row of orange plastic chairs. ‘Take a seat. DS Ballard will be with you shortly.’
Maddie sat down obediently. She’d never claimed to be one of life’s rebels; she had an innate respect for authority and anyone in a uniform. Lucas, however, had no such limiter in place. He paced up and down the small reception area, not troubling to hide his impatience. She had to fight the urge to tell him to sit down before they got into more trouble.
Finally, after about twenty minutes, a door to the side of the reception desk opened and the red-haired woman they’d seen at the hospital emerged, an open manila folder in her hands. ‘Mr and Mrs Drummond? I’m DS Natalie Ballard. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.’
‘What’s all this about?’ Lucas demanded, ignoring her outstretched hand.
She closed her folder. ‘If you’d like to come with me,’ she said, more formally.
She didn’t wait for them to reply. They followed her past the reception desk and along a narrow, windowless corridor. It smelled of stale biscuits and burned coffee and floor polish.