A Form of Justice

by Dawn Marsanne

  ‘That’s nice for you, Beth is an excellent cook.’

  ‘She certainly is, I’m sure I’ve put on a few pounds.’

  ‘Nonsense, you still look very slim to me.’

  ‘How is your therapy going?’

  ‘Well, I think it’s going well. It’s early days of course. We are talking about my childhood, it’s painful but necessary.’

  ‘You don’t need to go into it now if you don’t want to, I don’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘No, it’s OK. Did I ever tell you how I repeatedly stabbed Gina with a compass?’

  Tom looked shocked.

  ‘She pushed me too far and I snapped. Her bullying had been relentless. Every day I was worried about what I was going to encounter.’

  ‘Oh, Trish. I knew you hadn’t enjoyed school but then again, neither did I when I think about it,’ he paused. ‘It must have been so awful for you.’

  ‘It was. She deserved it really.’

  Tom looked shocked. He’d never heard Trish advocate violence like this.

  ‘I realise now that I was lucky not to get a criminal record. I assaulted her quite violently.’

  ‘As a result of provocation, though,’ said Tom, tactfully.

  Trish seemed to be drifting away from him. Her eyes stared past him towards the window, her jaw set firmly, unsmiling.

  ‘Who do you have as a therapist here?’

  ‘Oh, she’s a nice young woman, Megan. A psychologist, a trainee, I think because they are sure I’m not a suicide risk now.’

  ‘It’s good to hear you say that,’ smiled Tom. ‘So, what sort of activities do you do here?’ he asked, changing the subject.

  ‘It was impossible to forget you know,’ said Trish.

  She had become distant again.

  ‘About school?’

  ‘Well, yes, but I mean the incident where she stamped on my fingers. It was such a demonstration of superiority from her. I was on the floor, and I had no chance. I can remember it as if it were yesterday.’

  ‘Trish, let’s talk about something else,’ said Tom, rubbing her hand with his. ‘Tell me about the activities here.’

  ‘Oh, there are various things, I’m doing some craft work, quizzes, that sort of thing. I’m also going to offer to do a bit of gardening, I’d like that.’

  ‘Well, I’m trying to keep things tidy in the garden at home, it looks a bit sorry for itself at the moment though. Hopefully, you’ll be back soon, and we can plan for the summer.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Which reminds me, I saw one of those blasted squirrels digging in one of the pots the other day. I think I need to know your secret recipe for keeping them under control.’ He winked at Trish.

  Trish smiled back at her husband.

  ‘It’s a trade secret, perhaps it’s best if you leave that to me when I get home.’

  ‘Of course, you’re the expert.’

  ‘Do you need me to bring anything else when I next visit?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Besides, I don’t have much storage here for things.’

  ‘OK, that’s fine, I just thought I’d ask.’

  ‘You’re so good to me, Tom,’ she said, suddenly. ‘I’m lucky to have you.’

  ‘I’m lucky to have you too,’ he replied. There didn’t seem a need for more words, it was enough to just be in each other’s presence. They continued to hold hands, Tom relishing every moment of physical contact.

  Chapter 57

  The storm had been forecast for days, so Tom had moved some pots in the garden to prevent them from being blown over and had moved the obelisks to the shed. He had also rigged up a contraption with some spare wood to shelter the front of the guinea-pig hutch. Typically, the wind strength was increasing as night fell, and Tom buried his head under the duvet to try to banish the sounds from outside. He was awoken several times by noises from outside, wheelie bins being blown over, bottles and rubbish being blown about in the street and a muffled thud which sounded like a fence panel blowing down. At 1 a.m. he peeped through the curtains, but it was impossible to tell whether there had been any damage in their garden.

  A couple of hours later, his sleep was once again punctuated, this time by a tremendous crash from the roof. He sat up in bed and felt his heart racing. Straining his ears, he could detect a scraping noise from the roof.

  ‘Shit,’ he cursed. It sounded very much as though the television aerial had been blown down. There was nothing he could do but listen to the grating noise which was then followed by a sliding and scraping sound.

  ‘Great,’ he said to himself. He was certain that some roof tiles had also been dislodged and were currently sliding down the roof. He would have to investigate when it was light. No further sleep would be possible, so Tom got up and went to the kitchen to make some tea.

  **

  ‘We are going nowhere until I say so. One move and I’ll slit your throat. I like seeing you frightened. Submissive....hate you...I’ll never be well.’

  ‘Let’s talk....’

  ‘I like seeing you afraid! Should have killed you before...tried to poison you...’

  ‘.....pushed me too far..... I snapped....I’d had enough......broke my fingers’

  ‘I apologise...I’m truly sorry.’

  ‘Never had your chances...never had as good a job as you...’

  ‘Sorry...sorry...’

  ‘You are evil! Can’t forgive you....my past has been a burden...’

  ‘I’m truly sorry.’

  ‘I know that I want to end it....I’m going to kill you! You deserve to die!...I want peace!....’

  ‘We can talk....please?’

  ‘I’ve waited so long for this moment. I’ve dreamt about it.’

  ‘Let me go!’

  ‘This is where it ends!’

  **

  When it was light, Tom went out into the garden and found several smashed roof tiles. The aerial was suspended by the wire, settled on the roof in the gap created by the dislodged tiles. The wind had begun to abate, so he removed the boarding from the front of the hutch and fed the guinea-pigs. There was also a fence panel blown down, which had flattened some daffodil bulbs just coming into flower.

  However, the rain was continuing to lash down, and Tom was worried about the roof. The house had been built in the 1930s, and he wasn’t sure whether the felt beneath the tiles was in good order. If not, it would be letting water into the loft. Fortunately, it wasn’t a day he was due at the surgery so he could check out the loft.

  Tom returned inside, shrugged off his coat which was already thoroughly wet and went upstairs to access the loft. He lowered the ladder and climbed up carefully to investigate, noticing a breeze which he knew wasn’t a good sign. Cobwebs adorning the rafters were quivering in the draft, and Tom brushed them away from his face as he went over to inspect the damage.

  Although not disastrous, the partially perished roofing felt was no match for the ferocity of the rain and droplets were visible against the light in the loft.

  ‘Shit,’ cursed Tom. A roofer would need to do some remedial work on the felt as well as replacing the tiles, but for the moment he needed to make the roof watertight. There were also some boxes which were getting wet and needed to be moved from under the damaged roof. He began to rummage around and found the empty box and packaging from their TV, including some largish sheets of polythene. Until he could go to the DIY store, he might be able to staple it across the rafters to keep out the rain. Firstly, he dragged some boxes from under the damaged felt, generating clouds of dust in the process. One contained a couple of old table lamps, the next some dinner plates they no longer used. Those would be heading down to the tip later he decided, and he shuffled them over to the loft hatch. A packet of leftover laminate flooring had also been water-damaged, so he dragged that over to join the boxes.

  Tom began to cough, wishing he’d had the foresight to wear a dust mask. His hands and jeans were already filthy, and he was beginning to sweat with working in a
confined space. The last box he dragged over, was the wettest and the cardboard disintegrated, spilling out the contents.

  ‘Christ,’ he muttered. His back was beginning to ache as it was difficult to stand upright, so he knelt down and started to gather the items. They were clearly some folders from Trish’s counselling courses. He sighed. Surely she didn’t need these? They were hardly accessible stored up in the loft. He began to stack them to one side. Most of the pages had absorbed water and were in a sorry state. As he sorted through them, he realised that there were also some school notebooks. Why on earth had she kept those? They were nearly forty years old, and the paper had already turned brown with age, and some were now also wet and soggy. He’d never thought of his wife as a hoarder, the rest of the house was immaculate. Perhaps she’d forgotten about them. He would mention them the next time he visited St Martin’s. He looked through a few of the least damaged notebooks and saw some contained drawings of plants. He had no idea that Trish’s interest in gardening had started so early. Perhaps she would like to have a look at those?

  ‘Ouch,’ he winced as a splinter penetrated his jeans at the knee.

  He needed to go to find a stapler or a hammer and some tacks in order to pin up the plastic, and leaving the loft, took down the boxes for the tip along with Trish’s folders and school books.

  **

  ‘OK, thank you. Next Tuesday is fine as the aerial people are coming on Monday to put it back up or replace it, so that will free it from the roof,’ said Tom. ‘Give me a call on this number if you need to reschedule. OK, bye.’

  Tom looked at the forecast and saw that there wasn’t too much rain for the next week, so hopefully, his makeshift repair would hold. He had bought several metres of strong plastic at the DIY store to form another waterproof layer beneath the roofing felt.

  He felt shattered after his efforts and was now eating a cheese sandwich for his late lunch. Next, he needed to try to fix up the fence panel, which was really a two-handed job, he just hoped that his neighbour, Bob would be willing to help. Work tomorrow would seem easy, compared with today, and he was almost looking forward to it.

  As he boiled the kettle, he looked over at the school notebooks. They were beginning to dry out and he kept opening them at different sections to dry out the pages. Tom poured water on to his teabag and wandered over to the window. A cat scurried along the fence, and his mind drifted back to Trish’s account of her father’s poisoning of their neighbour’s cat. Just how terrible had his wife’s childhood been? She had told him some of the incidents at school but were there more?

  Tom squeezed out his teabag, added a dash of milk and sat down at the table. Although he felt sympathetic towards Trish, he was still resentful that she had kept so much from him, recalling her devious behaviour around the e-cigarettes being one example. She was clearly mentally damaged but was there another side to her which he really hadn’t known? He had recently observed changes in her mood and demeanour when she seemed to change into a different person.

  Tom loved Trish dearly, but that love had, and still was being tested. How he wished she had broken down and admitted she was struggling to cope. Instead, she had repeatedly lied to him, capitalised on her friend’s illness to imitate her appearance, drugged Gina in a way which could have been fatal and taken extreme measures to elicit a confession. Even with the burden of mental illness, was this acceptable?

  Tom realised that so much of Trish’s destiny had been defined by her school years but how much of her recollections about it were factual and how much had been distorted by the painful events? There was no doubt that dreadful things actually happened, her skin graft was a manifestation of the consequences, however, would he ever really know the truth of her school years?

  Tom selected the notebook containing the botanical drawings. As Tom began to read, all awareness of the present moment vanished. Trish had focussed on a particular aspect of all the plants she had listed, and he was shocked.

  ‘Oh, God,’ were the words which escaped from his lips.

  Chapter 58

  Tom kissed Trish and they sat down together on the sofa in the visiting area at St Martin’s hospital.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, fine thank you. And you?’

  ‘OK, thanks. Sorry, I didn’t come over the other day, I had to sort out the storm damage at the house. It was a nightmare getting hold of anyone as so many people had the same problem.’

  ‘Yes, someone said a couple of trees got blown down here,’ replied Trish.

  ‘So, any news?’ prompted Tom.

  ‘Not a lot, but the Adult Mental health team think I’m doing well. They actually suggested I might be able to come home for short periods, not to live at home but just to see how I manage for a few hours.’

  ‘Oh,’ replied Tom. He had been dreading this visit. Since reading Trish’s notebook, he’d had hardly any sleep. His mind had been a maelstrom of conflicting emotions so that in the small hours of the morning he couldn’t think in any logical way.

  ‘You seem worried? Is something wrong?’

  Tom nodded.

  ‘What is it? Are you ill?’

  ‘No, not ill, but I think I’ve made some misjudgements.’

  Trish frowned. ‘Has something happened at work? Did you make a mistake?’

  ‘No, not at work.’ Tom put his head in his hands. He had thought long and hard about this conversation for days. He had been racked with self-doubt since reading the notebook, and it had been eating away at him, festering inside him. Perhaps he shouldn’t say anything at all until he had spoken to someone in an official capacity? He’d done lots of research and reading on the Internet over the last few days, but the situation was still far from clear.

  He looked up. Trish was staring straight ahead, absently picking at her skin graft on her arm.

  ‘I’ll try to explain.’ Tom sighed. ‘Some stuff in the loft got wet, and I had to sort through it. There were some folders of yours from your counselling.’

  ‘Oh, they can be thrown away, I’d forgotten they were there.’

  ‘Sure you don’t want them?’

  ‘No, just dump them.’

  ‘OK, I will. But there were also some school notebooks.’

  ‘Really?’ said Trish.

  Tom looked at her carefully to see whether she appeared perturbed but she remained calm.

  ‘They are rather brown and tatty, but some have survived.’

  ‘You can get rid of them, I don’t want them,’ she said dismissively.

  ‘I had a flick through them, I hope you don’t mind?’

  ‘Well, it hardly matters does it as you’ve already looked at them,’ said Trish pointedly.

  ‘No, that’s true. I was struck by your beautiful plant sketches.’

  Trish shrugged.

  ‘Not only that, you made lots of notes about the plants and I realised you have been interested in gardening for much longer than I thought.’

  Trish smiled. ‘My father was a good gardener. A horrible man but good with plants.’

  ‘The thing is, Trish, all the plants you sketched were poisonous ones. In fact, you made notes about which parts were the most toxic, how to use them to make people ill. In some cases, how to actually kill people with them.’

  Trish looked him straight in the eye. ‘Some plants are very dangerous, everyone knows that.’

  ‘Well, some people do, but you had a fascination with poisons. And you admit killing the squirrels in that way.’

  ‘Squirrels are pests, you are allowed to kill them.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true, but I’m worried.’

  ‘Worried? How?’

  ‘That in the past you used poisons on people.’ He waited to see whether this would prompt Trish to elaborate. It didn’t.

  ‘When I came to visit you in prison you mentioned something about cakes and there being nothing wrong with the ones you sent to Gina, that’s right isn’t it?’

  Trish nodded.r />
  ‘But you never said anything about another time? It made me wonder, that’s all. Whether you had tried to poison someone with cakes before?’

  ‘I think you might be getting a bit carried away, Tom,’ said Trish.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he replied. It was clear that he wouldn’t receive the answers he wanted. Since his discovery he had constantly asked himself whether he was getting carried away with his own thoughts. He was still having trouble processing everything that had happened, and he had to admit it might be clouding his judgements.

  ‘Can we talk about your father?’

  ‘I don’t want to. He was a complete bastard. I hated him!’

  ‘Do you think his heart might have been affected by one of his plants in the garden? Wolf’s Bane for instance?’

  ‘Look, it wasn’t my fault if he was careless in the garden with the plants. He shouldn’t have grown the Wolf’s Bane.’

  ‘Trish, did you kill your father?’

  ‘No I did not. Why? Do you think I did?’

  Tom waited for what seemed like ages but was probably only twenty seconds or so.

  ‘I don’t know what I think. I know you used plants to drug Gina, and to make her sick. You also experimented on your guinea-pigs. It makes me wonder if you took things one stage further.’

  ‘We’ve been married so long and been through so much together, and yet you are making accusations like this.’ Trish shook her head.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I did offer you the chance to have a fresh start, yet you said you wanted to stay with me. Does this mean you have changed your mind?’

  ‘I don’t know what I want at the moment. I need to think about our life together.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you had better go. You’ve already said enough.’

  ‘If that’s what you want?’

  ‘I’m not going to beg you to stay with me, Tom. Perhaps it’s for the best.’

  ‘OK, well, I’ll go.

  ‘You really think they can prosecute me for my father’s death over thirty years ago?’