The Mother-in-Law

by Sally Hepworth

  ‘What do you think happened to your mother-in-law, Lucy?’

  ‘Well . . . obviously . . . I don’t know. I thought that’s what we were here to find out.’

  ‘It is.’ He’s looking at me too intently. ‘But I’m interested in your opinion.’

  ‘Okay. I think she killed herself . . .’ I say, with what I hope sounds like conviction. ‘I mean, you found a letter.’

  ‘We did find a letter. In her study drawer. Kind of a strange place to leave a suicide letter, don’t you think?’

  ‘I . . . yes, I do think so.’

  ‘Do you think it is in character for Mrs Goodwin to do something like this?’ he continues. ‘To take her own life?’

  ‘It was in character for her to be headstrong,’ I say. ‘Once she’d decided to do something, it was hard to change her mind.’

  Housseini looks down at a manila folder on the table in front of him, then retrieves a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from his pocket and places them on his nose. ‘The coroner reported high levels of carbon dioxide in the deceased’s blood.’ Housseini glances up at me over the top of his glasses.

  ‘Am I supposed to know what that means?’

  ‘She also had bloodshot eyes, bruising around the lips, gums and tongue.’

  That, admittedly, sounds odd. Why would Diana have bruising?

  Housseini looks back at his paperwork. ‘The examiner also found fibres in your mother-in-law’s hands. Thread . . . it looks like. Gold thread.’ He shuffles through some pages in the folder, plucking out one. ‘Your mother-in-law’s house indicates she was house proud. Very tidy. Everything in its place. Matchy matchy.’

  I’m thrown by the sudden change in direction. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’

  Housseini turns the piece of paper so I can see it. It’s a photo. I recoil, expecting a picture of Diana’s body. But it’s just a picture of Diana’s place, the good room.

  ‘Does anything look wrong to you in this picture?’ Housseini asks.

  I give it a cursory glance. ‘No, nothing.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  I look a little closer. At the bookshelf, the coffee table, the deep, cream sofa with a matching cream cushion . . . threaded through with gold.

  ‘It feels like she would have a pair of these gold-threaded cushions, don’t you think?’ Housseini says. His gaze feels accusing and for a moment I wonder if he is, in fact, the good cop. ‘But we looked and looked and we could only find one.’

  I look back at the picture. He’s right, there were two cushions, definitely. I remember seeing them recently. I was at Diana’s with the kids and Harriet was picking at one, trying to pull out the thread so she could tie it to her hair and have long golden locks like Rapunzel. I had to snatch the cushion from her and put it back. Diana immediately straightened it. Housseini is right, Diana was house proud.

  ‘Well I don’t know. Maybe she spilled something on one?’ I suggest. ‘And sent it out for cleaning?’

  ‘We’re looking into that. We’re looking into a lot of things.’

  ‘Okay. But . . . wait. I thought you said you found . . . materials in Diana’s house. Suicide materials.’

  ‘We did.’ Housseini surveys me closely with his shiny, syrupy eyes. ‘An empty bottle of Latuben was found by your mother-in-law’s body. Latuben is a popular drug that people take to bring about a fast, painless death. Usually people drink two bottles of Latuben if they are trying to end their life, but even one bottle could be a fatal dose for someone of Diana’s size and build.’

  ‘So,’ I clear my throat, ‘there was only one bottle by her body?’

  ‘Only one.’ Housseini nods. ‘And in any case, the drug wasn’t found in her bloodstream. So we’ve been looking at alternative causes of death.’

  ‘Alternative causes of death?’

  ‘Yes. So in light of everything I’ve told you, I’d like to ask you the first question again.’ He watches me. ‘What do you think happened to your mother-in-law?’

  I open my mouth and repeat the answer I gave Housseini the first time, that I think Diana killed herself. But this time it doesn’t come out with quite so much conviction.

  Ollie emerges from his meeting room at the same time as I do, and Jones and Housseini walk us back down the corridor. The room that Patrick was in is now empty, and if Nettie was here, it seems she’s gone too. Housseini and Jones take us as far as the elevator, thank us for coming in and give us their business cards again. Then Jones tells us, twice, that she’ll be in touch. Probably she is just tripping over the niceties of conversation, but then again, the police TV programs I watch lead me to believe the cops don’t do anything by accident.

  ‘It went fine,’ Ollie says once the elevator door closes. But his face says otherwise. He has a blotchy look about him that he gets when he’s coming down with something. The elevator door pings open.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I ask.

  We step out into the foyer. ‘Did Housseini tell you about the autopsy?’ he whispers as we walk. ‘The bruised lips?’

  We cross the floor of the foyer, go through the automatic doors into the carpark.

  ‘Yes. And the missing cushion. And that’s not the only thing that doesn’t seem right about this.’

  Ollie stops. ‘What else doesn’t seem right?’

  ‘The cancer. Why isn’t there any evidence of the cancer?’

  Ollie opens his mouth but I get in first.

  ‘And the letter, why was it in a drawer? Wouldn’t she leave it somewhere obvious for someone to find it?’

  Ollie’s expression is as puzzled as I feel. ‘I wish I knew,’ he says finally. ‘She was my mother but as it turns out . . . I didn’t really know her at all.’

  21

  DIANA

  The past . . .

  The call comes at around 5.00 am. I turn over in bed and look at the red numbers blinking into the darkness.

  ‘The baby’s coming,’ Ollie says when I pick up the phone. ‘Lucy’s contractions are about ten minutes apart. Can you come now?’

  I get out of bed and make myself a strong coffee. I don’t trust myself on the roads until I’ve had my morning coffee—my eyes aren’t what they once were. I shower quickly and get myself dressed, double-checking everything in the overnight bag I’ve packed. These labours can go on for a long time, so who knows how long I’ll be at Ollie and Lucy’s house. I’ve packed my pyjamas, a toothbrush, a novel. I’m even bringing a little gift-wrapped Thomas the Tank Engine train for Archie. I plan to give the train to Archie ‘from the baby’, because apparently that’s what everyone does these days, at least that’s what Jan says, and Jan seems to know these kinds of things. Once I’ve confirmed that I have everything, I get in the car and make the twenty-minute drive to their house, arriving at 5.55 am.

  Ollie is on the doorstep and Lucy is half-bent over the front fence, having a contraction.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Ollie exclaims, just short of a hiss.

  I bristle, I’ll admit it. Heaven forbid I take longer than they expect to get there. No one is asking where Tom has been. He’ll wake up sometime around eight, play eighteen holes of golf and then swan into the hospital when the baby is a few minutes old, bearing an extravagant gift and promises of a trust fund, and he will be everyone’s hero.

  ‘Here’s the taxi,’ Lucy says, ignoring me entirely. She is in labour, and I know the reasonable thing to do is to forgive her for this. But a thankyou, I feel, wouldn’t hurt. Even a hello.

  It feels like yesterday I was in her position, doubled over in pain, waiting for my baby to come. But in my case, no one was on their way to help, no husband was there to call a taxi to the hospital. I was left on the steps of the hospital with a bag in my hand. And after that, I was on my own.

  I know that I should look at Lucy and see the similarities between us. We are both mothers, we have a mutual love for my son. We’re also both motherless, although my mother stepped away by choice whereas hers was taken from he
r, kicking and screaming no doubt.

  I know all this.

  But for some reason, despite our similarities, when I look at her, all I see are our differences.

  *

  When Tom arrives at Ollie and Lucy’s house later that day, I tell him he has a granddaughter.

  ‘A granddaughter?’ Of course he is misty-eyed in an instant. ‘It’s like history repeating itself, isn’t it? A son, then a daughter.’

  ‘Our story is a little different, though,’ I say.

  ‘A little,’ he agrees.

  I laugh as I notice a shiny pool of liquid gathering in the corner of his mouth. ‘You’re drooling.’ I wipe it away with my thumb, the same way I do sometimes to Archie. ‘Ollie wants us to bring Archie in to meet his sister.’

  Tom’s eyes canvass the living room. ‘Where is Archie?’

  ‘Napping. He only just went down, so I’ll give him another hour or so.’ I take one of Tom’s legs into my lap and begin massaging his calf. His eyes fall shut and he moans appreciatively. ‘Tom, I was wondering. You’re not looking for any engineers at work at the moment, are you?’

  He frowns but his eyes remain shut. ‘Engineers?’

  ‘I might know of someone, that’s all.’

  ‘An engineer?’

  ‘Yes. Very qualified. He used to build skyscrapers in Kabul.’ I rub my thumbs from the back of his knee all the way down to his Achilles heel.

  ‘Are you trying to influence me with a leg rub, Diana?’ Tom smiles and I feel that familiar surge of joy that Tom Goodwin loves me. It is without question the greatest blessing of my life.

  ‘If you can vouch for him,’ Tom says, ‘consider him hired.’

  22

  LUCY

  The past . . .

  Lightning doesn’t strike twice, that’s what they say. Well ‘they’ can jump off a cliff, because there was a man, Roy Sullivan, who was struck by lightning seven times during his life. Seven! What must Roy have thought every time he heard someone say that lightning didn’t strike twice? I get the point, of course—it’s not common. But that must have just made poor old Roy feel even worse. Roy survived all seven strikes, which is more inspiring if you ask me. He was found dead in his bed at the age of seventy-one after shooting himself in the head—and I dare say all those ‘lightning doesn’t strike twice’ folk should shoulder their share of responsibility for that. Because the fact is, sometimes lightning does strike more than once. It did for Roy and it has for me.

  Because I have a second child with colic.

  I’m sitting in my recliner holding a nipple to my screaming infant’s mouth. My recliner is in the lounge room, which is now the playroom, TV room and Harriet’s bedroom. An episode of Game of Thrones plays on the television and I half-watch it. I’ve watched this episode three times now and I’m still not entirely sure what’s going on. Too many characters in this damn show. Still, there’s Jon Snow who makes it worth the effort.

  ‘Just feed!’ I hiss-whisper to Harriet.

  I thank my lucky stars that at least Archie is out of my hair as I do this. Diana comes on Tuesdays now and takes Archie to the park for an hour and a half, and for this I’m truly thankful. Archie adores Diana for many reasons, not least of which is because she packs him full of babycinos and marshmallows and lets him run riot, and I am fine with this because I have a newborn with colic and if a murderous gangster offered to take my kid off my hands for a couple of hours I’d be sorely tempted.

  Harriet is a piece of work, I can tell this already at three months old. She won’t go to anyone else, not even to Ollie, and when I try to hand her over, she sucks in a breath and watches me with knowing eyes. Why do you even bother, Mum? I’m about to scream so loudly the neighbours will think you are trying to kill me. They might even call the police. You’d better . . . Oh there we go, Daddy’s handing me back. Don’t make this silly mistake again.

  Diana persists in trying to hold Harriet week after week, as if expecting her to have magically, since the week before, warmed to people. Each week, as we go through this little routine, I feel like telling her not to bother, but that would be denying Diana her grandmotherly rights, not to mention make me one of those crazy daughters-in-law, the ones that make everyone get a whooping cough shot before they can hold the baby. And so I let her hold Harriet. I’ve learned to play the game.

  I have just managed to get Harriet latched on when I hear Archie’s approaching giggle. My heart sinks. Already? I had grand plans for this afternoon but in an hour and a half all I’ve managed to do is fold a tiny pile of washing (I haven’t even put it away) and watch Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton battle it out in the ‘Battle of the Bastards’. Now, Archie bursts through the door, clutching a fistful of lollies. I pick up the controller and pause Game of Thrones. Archie runs around the room in a maniacal circle, pumped up on sugar.

  ‘Archie!’ I shout as he tracks a muddy boot right across my pile of folded laundry. My breast comes out of Harriet’s mouth with a painful pinch. ‘Shit!’

  ‘Shiiiiiit!’ Archie says.

  Diana appears behind Archie, looking appalled. She surveys the room and immediately holds out her hands for Harriet, who starts inhaling a nice deep breath. I hand Harriet over and look at my ruined pile of laundry, the grand sum of my day’s achievements. In true hormonal style, I find myself holding back tears.

  ‘Archie, look what you’ve done, mate!’

  I don’t scream it. There’s the ‘mate’ I add at the end, for good measure. But Archie, of course, decides to burst into tears.

  Diana squats down, transferring a wailing Harriet to the opposite shoulder as if that will make a difference, and tries to comfort Archie.

  ‘That folding is all I managed to do while you were gone!’ I explain. ‘Other than try to feed Harriet, where my efforts were just as pathetic.’

  Diana glances at the television where a picture of Jon Snow is frozen on the screen, then back at me pointedly. ‘Maybe you could try multitasking. When Ollie was a baby, I used to unload the groceries, vacuum the house and pay the bills while feeding him.’

  Obviously Diana is lying. She never unloaded the groceries, vacuumed the house and paid the bills while feeding Ollie. It’s physically impossible. I know because I’m well versed—not to mention recently well versed—in breastfeeding. But it doesn’t matter what I know because mothers-in-law are allowed to say things that aren’t true. Whether they’re lying or misremembering is entirely beside the point:

  ‘Richard took his first steps at three months old.’

  ‘Susie never cried. Never!’

  ‘I started feeding Judy solids while she was still in the hospital.’

  ‘I washed all of Trevor’s clothes by hand in home-made laundry powder.’

  ‘Philip loved vegetables. Loved them. He devoured everything I ever served him. Brussels sprouts were his favourite!’

  Daughters-in-law know their mothers-in-law are lying, but it doesn’t matter a jot, because how does one prove it isn’t true? More importantly, how does one prove something isn’t true whilst trying to be polite to their mother-in-law? It is as impossible as breastfeeding an infant while unloading the groceries, vacuuming the floor and paying the bills. And so, mothers-in-law get to say whatever outlandish statements they like about motherhood. Mothers-in-law win, every time.

  ‘You could put Harriet down for a minute or two and do some laundry,’ Diana is saying. ‘Throw both kids in the pram and take them to the grocery store. Put a puzzle down for Archie and pop Harriet in the bouncy chair while you cook dinner. You shouldn’t need to be sitting in that chair around the clock when she’s three months old.’

  It takes me a moment to collect myself. I should be clear, I don’t have postnatal depression or anxiety or any postnatal mood disorder to speak of. I know people who have suffered. My cousin Sophie confessed to me once that she felt indifferent to her daughter Jemima. She felt hopeless about her role as a mother and would have done anything to turn back the clock and not hav
e had the baby. My friend Rachel reported being trapped in a world of exhausted insomnia for months after having Remy, where she would lie in bed, her mind locked in an OCD cycle of If you don’t move your right leg right now, Remy will be dead in the morning. I, on the other hand, am mentally well. I adore my children. Apart from the (I am told, totally normal) hormonal moments when I decide my baby (or husband) is the devil incarnate, I am very fond of my life. I enjoy being an at-home mum. I even like my teeny tiny workers cottage with the unrenovated kitchen.

  What I don’t like is being told what to do by my mother-in-law in my own home.

  ‘Thank you for that advice, Diana,’ I say finally. ‘That is . . . incredibly helpful. I can’t wait to try your suggestions.’

  We lock eyes. We both know I’m being sarcastic. But calling me on it will be futile because I’ll deny it. It is an unexpected little win for me and I bathe in it. Harriet, who is still screaming in Diana’s arms, reaches for me and I take her. The crying stops instantly. Another win.

  It occurs to me that only a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law can have an all-out war without anyone so much as raising their voice. The funny thing is, if any of the men were here, they wouldn’t have a clue that anything other than a pleasant conversation was going on. If Ollie were here, he’d probably comment on ‘what a nice afternoon that was with Mum’. In that way, men are really quite simple, bless them.

  Archie comes and sits on my lap next to Harriet, and for an unexpected moment both my children are content. I find, to my surprise, that I’m quite enjoying myself.

  ‘All I’m saying is I don’t know if you’re using your time effectively,’ Diana says finally.

  And what business is that of yours? I want to ask, but that, we both know, would be breaking the rules. I must not attack, but defence is allowed. I think of my high-school netball days. I’m goal defence. If I’m good enough at my job, the other team won’t score. And so I come up with something else.

  ‘You’re right,’ I say with a smile. ‘You don’t.’