by JT Lawrence
The judge marches in and sits down with little fanfare. She doesn’t need to ask the crowd for quiet; they all hang on her every word. She gives a short speech about how there’s no doubt in her mind that the verdict they have reached is correct, and then, with a firm grasp of the paper in her hand, she reads the verdict. In the end there had been six charges, including premeditated murder, and she announces that the court had found David Shaw guilty of every one. When Robin turns to look at Hailey, she’s gone. Susman stands up, and Devil follows. He’s right behind her as they exit the courtroom buildings. They follow Cross, who is striding, and quickly jump behind an electricity box when she looks over her shoulder. Maybe she feels their eyes on her back.
They follow her three blocks north, where there is a large, run-down park. The low gum-pole fence is falling over, the grass needs mowing. People mill around. There are some dogs on leashes, and winos and beggars sleep in the shade. There is a public toilet with a skew door which Devil and Susman hide behind. They watch Hailey Cross meet a woman sitting on a bench in the dense shade of a huge mulberry tree. The woman stands and hugs Cross, passing her the red leash of a three-legged Jack Russell who is jumping and barking in excitement.
The woman is not wearing a scarf, but when she smiles widely at Cross, she reveals a missing tooth.
The truth rushes at Robin. The scenes play out in her head as if she’s watching a jump-cut film. She may not have all the details right but she can imagine the story played out something like this: Under David Shaw’s direction, his mistress, Hailey Cross, takes his wife coffee that day. She fails to use the sedatives in her handbag. The nurse sees that David’s wife has bruises just like hers, and she confesses the affair. They bond over their shared trauma. They have to stop David Shaw before he kills one or both of them; they both know it’s just a matter of time. Together, they hatch a plan. Megan will withdraw all her money and then precipitate one last row with David—accusing him of cheating—loudly enough for the neighbours to hear, thereby establishing a motive. Megan will raid her workplace—the clinic—for the things she’ll need: hairnets, booties, local anaesthetic, syringes, needles. A bag and IV line to collect Megan’s blood. Perhaps she stops at a hardware store to buy a plastic spray bottle and a pair of pliers, or maybe she gets them from her own garage. On the night of the 21st of May, Megan uses Hailey's stolen sedatives to drug David. While he's unconscious, she lets Hailey into the house, and they kit up and get to work, spraying the bedroom with the blood they had drained from Megan’s arm, and then scrubbing around the evidence, being careful to leave just the right amount of blood. Hailey would have numbed Megan’s gums with the anaesthetic and then pulled out the incisor, tucking it into David's car seat. Hailey would have given Megan the Jack Russell to look after. Megan would have disappeared, but not before going up to the cabin and burning her green silk scarf in the trough, making sure the wind blew some of the fragments into the surrounding trees. David would wake up with a headache, search for his wife, and then report her missing.
“My fok,” says Devil, rubbing his upper lip and then reaching for his handcuffs. “We need to take them in.”
Susman can’t tear her eyes away from the women under the Mulberry tree, who are now parting ways. “Do we?”
Devil’s hand freezes on the cuffs that are clipped to his belt. “Of course we do. David Shaw is innocent.”
“No,” Susman shakes her head as she watches the women hurriedly leave the park. “He’s not.”
5
Not Waving
I’m fine, the woman told them.
I’m fine, the woman told herself.
As long as I keep treading water, I’ll be fine.
Just keep treading. Just keep kicking. Keep your head above the water, and you'll be okay. But the water was getting colder, and darker. The waves were getting bigger. Fatigue slowed her muscles and exhaustion threatened to pull her under.
I’m fine, the woman told herself.
I still smile. Life is good. Life has never been better. I still joke. There’s a lot to laugh about.
The children were smart and independent and loving. They were the best thing that ever happened to her. The six-year-old was quirky and wise beyond his years, the four-year-old had a huge heart and made up nonsensical knock-knock jokes, and the two-year-old was fierce and funny and full of love. There was a lot to laugh about, but the woman found herself laughing less and less.
Maybe it was her bank balance that was weighing on her. That wasn't so funny. Every time she saw a glimmer of hope that her books were selling, her life was working … when she glimpsed her inevitable success she thought: I was right, it’s going to be okay. I always knew it was going to be okay. Then she’d look at her hungry credit card and feel the shame flame her cheeks. No matter how hard she kicked, she was still going under.
It wasn’t just the notes and coins and the numbers on the screen. Money was her security blanket. On good days it warmed her shoulders, on bad days she couldn’t find it anywhere and felt bereft. Every time she built up a cushion of hope and finally rested on it, it got pulled from underneath her. Unexpected bills choked her. The money flowing away felt like fingers around her neck, slowly squeezing. Feelings of failure strangled her.
The scrutiny of strangers was nothing new. She'd always hated attention; would rather have spiders crawl over her body than speak in public. The spotlight made her sweat. As a pre-schooler, she chose to be spanked rather than participate in Show & Tell. They forced her to talk, forced her to eat, even when she retched.
Spanking and strawberry jam sandwiches. She still can’t eat strawberry jam.
As a toddler she locked her mother out of the car before school, made her promise she'd never have to go back to the place that made her retch. The mother hid her under her desk at work until she found a better crèche.
The old jam-scented memories surfaced when the woman attended a meeting with her two-year-old’s preschool teacher.
She won’t speak to the class, the teacher said. She doesn’t like to be the centre of attention.
The woman’s stomach contracted. Nor do I, she replied. Nor does my mother. A genetic curse. Sometimes fear travels like disease through generations.
She’ll come out of her shell, the teacher said. She’s only two.
But the woman knew better.
The woman kept kicking, but she was getting tired. She realised she'd been exhausted for years. When she was pregnant with her third child, the obstetrician asked her how she was feeling.
Exhausted, she had replied.
He laughed. He had three kids of his own. He woke up at 3 am every weekday to prepare for surgeries and was on call 24/7.
You’re not going to get any less exhausted, he said.
After seven years of cycling through infertility, pregnancy, breastfeeding and sleep deprivation, the woman sometimes felt that her body was nothing less than a miracle. In bleaker times she felt that it had been leached all the way down to the marrow; if you cut open her bones you’d find nothing but white sand.
The water was getting darker still. The woman would cope; she had always coped. She was naturally optimistic, persistent, resilient. She knew how to push herself; she knew how to achieve goals. She kept kicking. She thought she was fine, but then she realised her babies were in the water with her. Her sons could swim, but her daughter couldn't. The woman knew that you couldn't hold a baby and keep yourself afloat at the same time. Her sons were scared, hanging on to her and yelling. She couldn't hear what they were saying past the roar of panic in her head. They didn't mean to, but they were pulling her down. The two-year-old, terrified, began to scream.
The woman used to think the world was a safe place. (It’s not.)
Danger is a swift enemy. You think you’ll have time to react, to fend off the peril, but bad things happen quickly.
The woman’s baby almost died.
The night before, the baby was running around with her brothers and eating pizza f
or dinner. The next morning her breathing was coming in short puffs. At the ER, the woman and the doctor fought with the baby, holding down her thrashing arms to insert the IV into her tiny vein. They plunged a needle into her thigh, pumping her body full of adrenaline. The paramedics were kind.
“Don’t panic,” they told the woman, setting out their intubation equipment in the ambulance. “We probably won’t need this. But kids are unpredictable.”
The woman stayed at her baby's side, holding her hand, stroking her head. Seven days and seven nights. She slept on a stretcher and showered in the middle of the night to make sure her daughter wouldn't wake up alone in the strange room. She nebulised the baby every six hours and called the nurses every time the child's breathing became laboured. They began to roll their eyes, but she didn't care.
There was some sad news. Their beautiful cat, a loyal friend of ten years, had died while the woman and child were being held hostage at the hospital. The woman paced the room, crying, feeling like she was going mad. Just a week before, life had been happy and full of hope. They’d just bought a bigger house. Book sales were climbing; the children were thriving. The woman felt too lucky. She had been right.
The woman cried when her baby got better, and she cried when her baby got worse. The tide rose and fell, rose and fell. She was a piece of broken driftwood being dashed against the rocks.
The baby railed against the perpetual IV line, the oxygen tubes plastered to her nose. She wanted to leave the room, but she was a prisoner in her metal crib. Desperate, the screaming infant did everything she could to escape. The woman pretended to be strong while her daughter was awake and wept into her soft muslin sheet while she slept.
It was a long and slow process, but the baby recovered. Finally out of the hospital, they spent hours together on the armchair while the woman held the nebuliser against her baby's nose and mouth. Traumatised, the child fought the medicine, as she had in the hospital. It was cuddle time, the woman would say. Storytime. They both got used to it. They had survived.
They were still alive, but the woman felt as if she had been struck by lightning. She had a constant echo in her head. It was wordless, but it always held the same message.
The world is not a safe place.
The world is not a safe place.
The world is not a safe place.
The woman began seeing danger everywhere. She was living in a new reality where her brain was filled with the television screen static of anxiety. Headlines assaulted her. Polar bears starved to death. Nations elected predators to presidents and rape was a national sport. Men shot their fiancées in the face. The woman began to read less news, to protect her state of mind, but it didn’t stop the long-abused planet being ravaged by flooding and fire. The stories and the bodies piled up and she felt the weight of them on her shoulders and in her stomach.
She went to bed overwhelmed and woke up exhausted. Noises startled her. The clang of a teaspoon dropping on the floor spiked her adrenaline so hard she felt like running. Irritable and on edge, the voices of her own children grated her. Being gradually eroded, she stopped dancing in the kitchen, stopped trying to make her kids laugh. She didn’t answer the phone. Friends and family chatted and laughed. The woman laughed along, but deep down her mind was saying Don’t you know my baby almost died?
I would have died, too.
But you don't say that in polite conversation. You don't say that while everyone's talking about power cuts and drought and travelling to Panama and craft gin. While the woman's mind wandered to the ambulance ride, the needles, the blood on her baby's pacifier.
On dark nights the woman sticks a needle into her own heart: You should have taken her to the doctor sooner. You should have taken a stand with the nurses. You should have done more. If she had stopped breathing it would have been your fault. You are her mother.
The world is not a safe place.
My baby almost died.
I would have died, too.
The woman and her family survived.
They began to settle into their new house. The remaining cat mourned her life-long friend for months. The woman sometimes felt a ghost feline wrap his tail around her legs, only to look down and see nothing; just the shadows that had crept in, reminding her of her new, dangerous world and the dark water.
The bigger house was wonderful and cursed at the same time. The pool was a warm oasis that would keep the children occupied for hours, and at the same time it was a cold black abyss that would haunt the woman's dreams; her baby drowning in it, over and over. The big, beautiful tree in the front garden she had fallen in love with while house hunting turned out to be infested with tiny moth-like insects that drifted down like snow in summer. The tree sprayed black all over the cheerful walkway, all over the white walls. During water restrictions, there was a leak beneath the house that cost thousands and thousands in lost water alone. In Cape Town, the drought was so dire that people were queuing for water. The knowledge twisted inside her. She couldn't look at the invoice; she was still hurting from the hospital bill. Because of the massive leak, the beautiful parquet flooring began to lift, the wooden tiles damaged beyond repair. The woman didn't want to guess what other devastation the water had wrought below the ground; she imagined that soon the whole house would collapse into a hole.
When it rained, the house was a sieve. The children would tear around, hunting for leaks. They would put down buckets, bowls, towels, bathmats. More timber tiles lifted. The grass died. The courtyard lemon tree was attacked by mould. The pool turned green.
Once, while the woman was working, there was a small movement in her peripheral vision. She looked across and saw a mouse scampering down the bannister. She had a sudden and irrational urge to burn the house to the ground.
We’re just getting used to it, they told themselves and each other. We’ll be able to keep up with the maintenance soon.
But the working hours were relentless and the children more so. The electric gate stopped working. Load shedding meant they’d go without electricity for hours every day. Sometimes, the water was cut off, too. Another burst pipe, this time under their driveway, which refused to be fixed. The woman fought the feelings of despair, but they fought back.
The children loved their new schools and grew like weeds. They always demanded more than the woman could give them. She loved them fiercely and without restraint. Her eyes pricked with tears when she hugged them goodnight and smelled their warm, sweet skin. They were everything, but they also took everything. Stop growing, she used to tell them.
I want you to stay small forever.
I want you to be mine forever.
I love you too much.
The days were long.
The woman and the man were in survival mode. Some days were easier than others. They would look at each other over their mugs of tea at night, relishing the silence of slumbering children, and say It’s getting easier, isn’t it? They’re such great kids. They’re doing so well.
Some days getting the children to school seemed impossible. Three mouths to feed, three bodies to wrangle, three sets of teeth to brush. Don’t forget the sunscreen or the hats or the snacks or the library bag or Show & Tell. Don't forget to enjoy every moment because they're only small once. Late for school and rushing, the four-year-old threw a tantrum and refused to walk. The woman ground her teeth and forcefully strapped him into the pram and put the two-year-old on the wheelie board behind. The toddler didn't want to be there and kept hopping off until the woman forced her back on and scolded her with a violent whisper. They both began to howl. The six-year-old was upset; he was late for school. He was worried he'd get a black mark. Cars sped past them. It began to rain, and in her rush to leave the house, she had forgotten her umbrella. The woman's anxiety ramped up to a new, all-time high. A stone burned in her throat. Don't forget to enjoy every moment.
The woman focused on the good times. She reminded herself to breathe, to spend time in nature. She led a privileged life and had
little reason to complain. She kept treading the water. Things were going to get better.
The man complained of chest pain. The woman made him take an aspirin. A year before, she wouldn't have worried—he was healthy and in great shape—but the lightning bolt had taught her to fear. It's not just children who are unpredictable. The pain went away for a week, then came back late one night. They packed a hospital bag and called an Uber. The woman wanted to go with her husband to the ER but had to stay at home with the children, who were fast asleep in bed. She paced the room, the office, the kitchen, waiting for his messages. When she got tired of pacing, she sat and forced her adrenaline into her work. She couldn't think straight. Finally, the text arrived. The man was okay; his heart was fine. ECGs don't lie.
Stress? They wondered. Panic attack? Acid reflux? The man has always been a Stressed Eric. He had a short emotional fuse and his first ulcer when he was twelve.
The next time he had chest pain, they ignored it. It went away. When it came back, it was more intense. He made an appointment with a well-respected cardiologist, just for peace of mind. The consultation was weeks away. They continued in survival mode. Had they ever not been in survival mode? Wasn’t that what life was, for most people, anyway?
The pain didn't go away. On a bicycle ride in the middle of nowhere, the man felt off-colour. The woman was worried but reminded herself of the ECG. His heart was fine. The woman had three children pulling and hanging on her like nagging vervet monkeys. They were hungry, they were fighting, they needed a bath, they needed their mom. The woman didn't have time to worry about a healthy heart, so she pushed it down, pushed it down into the black water she was treading. In a parallel world, her husband was swimming at the gym in a pool so clear it looked like glass. When he pushed off under the water, he felt his heart squeeze.