We all had presents and cards for her. It had been so much easier to choose this time, to pick out the obvious messages: Happy Birthday. Happy 16th. In just two weeks’ time it would be my birthday too: 27th September. I’d be sixteen as well, exactly like her again. I only hoped the trial would be over by then.
I’d wrapped her album in turquoise paper, a colour she’d always liked when we were kids. When I saw her coming into the restaurant with Auntie Anne, Uncle Robert, the twins, I stood up. How long was it, actually, since I’d last seen her? Two weeks, nearly three? Her outfit was lovely: a dark red dress that rose high about her neck. ‘You look very grown up,’ Mum said to her with a smile. She didn’t say anything about how my cousin’s collarbones stuck out. Under the make-up she’d put on, Abigail looked like she was coming down with a cold. A bit hot to the touch in my hello hug.
Uncle Robert sat her at the top of the table so she could see us all. I sat on her right-hand side. I’d been right, it didn’t matter what Lena had said. Everything was good between us. Everything was fine. As we handed her our cards and presents, Abigail gathered them into a pile at the side of her plate. She didn’t seem to know quite what to do with them. ‘You can open them,’ Auntie Anne said.
‘Afterwards,’ she said.
I looked at the pile – half a dozen in total maybe – and suddenly I thought of all the presents she had missed out on. Every birthday that had passed by when she was locked up with him, away from us. Had he even known when her birthday was? All right, well we’d make up for that now. We’d make this the nicest birthday she’d ever had. I looked around us all at the table, as the waitress lit the candles: Robert, the twins and Auntie Anne. Mum and Dad. And me and Abigail.
When the waitress arrived with our mains, everything smelled amazing. I hadn’t realized how ravenous I was, so busy all day with Abigail’s album. When my chicken dish arrived I wished I’d ordered a side. It was so tasty but there wasn’t much of a portion. Abigail had ordered some kind of risotto, topped with green stuff. She was sort of pushing it round her plate.
‘Don’t you like it?’ I asked.
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Not really.’
I looked down at my own plate. ‘Here. Wait.’ I pulled her plate towards me, made room on it with my fork. With my knife I separated a hunk of chicken for her. ‘Have some of mine. I wouldn’t manage it all anyway.’
After that, I finished my meal pretty soon and I got impatient waiting for everyone else to finish. When our desserts came, I couldn’t wait any longer. I nudged Abigail’s elbow. ‘Come on. Open your presents.’
All of us had made such an effort. They were beautiful gifts that we had chosen for her: a woven silk scarf from Mum and Dad, a board game from Sam and Laurie, and her own iPhone from my uncle and aunt. I craned across. ‘I’ll help you set up Instagram and everything. We can Snapchat, it’ll be almost like living together again.’
Now she reached for my own present, tied with a bright pink ribbon. I helped her lift the flat, heavy package. She weighed it, shook it, trying to guess. Carefully she picked off the Sellotape, pulling the wrapping paper free. Now at last she could see what it was. I leaned over, unable to hold back. ‘Look, I’ve filled it with all our family photos. There’s loads in here you haven’t seen; I don’t even think anyone else has copies. They’re from my mum’s collection, photos of you, of me, of all of us.’
‘Auntie Lillian’s collection?’ There was a strange note in Abigail’s voice.
‘Oh, Jess,’ said Mum. ‘What a lovely idea.’
Slowly my cousin lifted the stiff cover, turning through the first pages. It was a lovely idea, the whole thing was lovely, Abigail and all of us, the pretty restaurant, and the birthday cards, Abigail’s pretty outfit, and everyone here, it was just right, just how it should be. Abigail turned the pages slowly to begin with, then faster, more urgently. I’d begun with the very earliest pictures, me and Abigail as babies, then as toddlers in those years we’d spent together when Auntie Anne and Abigail lived with us in London. There we were, us with Abigail at two, at three, then all of us arriving and settling in Lincolnshire. Here she was at three and a half, four, Uncle Robert appearing on scene – so many happier shots then. Abigail turned another page and leaned forwards, her neck bent so far it looked painful.
‘These are all wonderful,’ said Auntie Anne. ‘Can I see?’ Instead Abigail gripped the album tighter, the cardboard protesting under her hands. I could glimpse a picture: Abigail smiling, Abigail giggling, Abigail happy. Red dungarees, white and blue-striped wallpaper. I reached out to ease her grip but she pushed my fingers away. The heat was coming off her, like she was burning up.
‘What is this?’ she said.
My smile made it hard to speak. ‘This one is you, in Robert’s house. I think it’s when you had just moved in.’ The words came out almost under my breath. I was frightened of making a scene.
Auntie Anne was saying, ‘It’s lovely, Jess, so lovely, I’m so glad your mum saved them all,’ and Uncle Robert was saying, ‘Abigail, won’t you say thank you?’ We were all leaning in, closing in on her. That flush on her cheeks looked feverish now. She pressed the album covers shut and stood up, pushing back her chair so hard it fell over. For a dumb moment I thought she only wanted to say thank you.
Instead, she stood there and yelled at us all.
Chapter 27
Saturday 14th September:
Day 111
ANNE
‘Stop pretending!’ she yelled. ‘Stop pretending, all of you!’
And then Abigail was bolting from the table.
‘Go after her!’ said Robert, pushing himself up. For a second I couldn’t get my legs to work; Jess had given her a perfect album of perfect family photos, but the table was covered with empty plates, dirty napkins and how could we pretend we were perfect at all?
She had already set off like a hare, twisting through the candlelit tables. I set off after her but I was so slow and clumsy and I couldn’t seem to get through. The thick back of someone’s chair caught me in the ribs, knocking the breath out of me, and I stumbled out an apology, pushing my way past. Ahead of me Abigail was pulling open the heavy restaurant doors, her thin shape twisting away through the gap.
At the second door, I almost caught her, my hand catching the shoulder seam of her dress, but she twisted away, ripping herself free. ‘Abigail!’ The outer door swung back on me, clipping my wrist and she was away again, dashing right out into the street. She shoved her way outside, into the dark, where the road in front of us was full of cars, tail-lights, headlights. She went haring up the pavement, pushing through a couple coming towards us, shoving past them. ‘Abigail!’ I shouted again, running after her, and behind me I could hear Robert shouting too, coming after us, calling Abigail’s name. There was a moment when she seemed to hesitate and fall back and I thought, it’s all right, she’s stopping, you’ll catch her up now. I kept running, ready to grasp her and hold her, and she had stopped as though waiting for me, as though all she’d ever wanted was for me to reach her. So I wasn’t prepared for what happened next, I wasn’t prepared for it at all – was she trying to cross, still compelled to run away, or was it some other instinct that drove her at that point? She jibed right, veering from the pavement. The driver never expected her.
And then all I remember is my shout, a scream of brakes and a sickening thud, the sight of her red dress flying up and the sight of her beautiful, thin body falling.
Minutes later that felt like hours, there were lights, red and blue, and sirens and urgent people doing urgent things; Robert climbing into the back of the ambulance with her, while Fraser got me into our car, telling me Lillian was taking Jess and the twins, telling me to put my seatbelt on and then we were driving in the wake of the sirens.
Fraser was talking as we drove and I wanted to say to him: I know, I know, I wrote you an email and how I wish now I’d sent it, but all I could do was close my eyes, unable to speak.
‘Will
you trust me?’ he kept asking. ‘Will you trust me?’
Then we were at the hospital, Lincoln A&E, and the light was greenish. Robert was there, and Lillian, Jess and the twins, but not Abigail, she was with the doctors. We sat in the waiting area, cold, still in shock. She was going to be okay, they had told us. Concussion at most; Abigail had been lucky to miss the car, only falling and knocking her head, a glancing blow, on the kerb. They would run a few more checks and monitor her overnight. They would let us know as soon as we could see her.
Under the harsh lights, the air hung heavy, like the pressure you get when you fly in a plane – it grows and grows until you almost can’t bear it, and when it bursts, your whole head rings.
Stop pretending. How could I have thought all this time it didn’t matter? How could I ever have thought she’d forgotten what I’d done?
Sam and Laurie lay slumped against Robert, worn out by the ambulance, the panic. Fraser sat with his hands pressed to his knees. ‘What is it?’ said Robert. ‘Please tell me what is going on.’
When Fraser went to speak, Lillian half stood, her voice a warning shot, but he held out a palm. ‘We all need to hear this. Yes, even Jess.’ Fraser took his daughter’s hand in his. Jess was sitting so upright in her plastic chair, ready and not ready, her features a blur of both adult and child.
‘Lillian?’ said my husband. ‘Fraser?’
Fraser looked at me for a long time, then slowly switched his gaze to Lillian. When she sat back down, it felt as though some contract between them had been finally broken.
When Fraser spoke, it was as though he’d been preparing the words for years. ‘It was wrong of us, Lillian. It was wrong of us, Robert, and I’m so sorry about it though we all meant well. Lillian – I think what Anne told you is right. I think Abigail remembers those moments on the train. We should never have kept this buried. I think it’s time now to say what happened.’
How many mistakes were you allowed? How many times was too many? What if they were only small mistakes, tiny, hidden stitches that could easily be unpicked? What if they were huge, what if you messed up the stitch that was supposed to hold everything together? Lillian and Fraser had kept my secret for the longest time – too long – Lillian insisting it was for the best.
They had been the first ones to answer my phone call, Fraser lifting the receiver to hear me half hysterical, gasping, I left her! I left her! And then Lillian was there, stepping in, correcting, putting everything right, one more stitch in the pattern of our whole lives. She was only doing what we always had done. It was only one more little white lie. Don’t say that, Anne. You lost sight of her, in that crush, in those crowds. That’s all that happened, isn’t it? That’s all.
We had left it like that ever since. It had caused such conflict between Fraser and Lillian, this decision to hide the truth, and I’d always lived in fear of what it might do to me and Robert if he found out: not only what I had done, but how I had lied afterwards. All these years I’d fought so hard to be the kind of person Robert wanted: good, kind, capable like him. All these years, I’d known I was letting Robert down. Now I knew it meant risking tearing our marriage apart, but for Abigail’s sake, I had to tell him. And afterwards, it would be for Robert to choose.
In all the evidence they’d gathered, all the questions they’d asked, nobody had ever probed this one. Why was it that when the train doors closed, Abigail had turned and burrowed away, not screamed or cried or clawed at the glass? Why had she ridden that escalator so quietly? Now I confessed it all to him in the sickly green waiting room, with the twins asleep with their heads in our laps. I was glad that they were there – a precious bond that tied me to Robert, while slowly my words unravelled everything else between us.
Lillian listened to me, stony-faced; beside her sat Fraser with compassion in his eyes. He was a truth-teller, and always had been.
That evening the Underground was heaving. It was rush hour, thousands of rain-drenched commuters scrambling to get home. At the hospital, Robert and I had argued and now I was heading back to the hotel through a downpour: the twins in the double buggy and Abigail big enough to walk by herself. Quite big enough; it was just that she didn’t want to. All the tension at the hospital had upset her; I had been so angry. I just wanted to get back to the hotel where I could feed them, run a bath and put them to bed. Robert’s mum had made me feel so bad about myself and now I was trying to manage all this on my own: three small children in the chaos of London. All week I’d had messages on Facebook: hope visit goes well, thinking of you, hugs. But Facebook messages didn’t help to wheel a double buggy and Facebook messages didn’t help keep an eight-year-old in check. Abigail was dragging her feet through the wet – with every step, she was complaining – and the twins were grizzling, hungry; it wouldn’t have taken much for one of them to start screaming.
I kept nagging Abigail, telling her to pick her feet up, not thinking of how I was going on and on. Eventually, we got through the ticket gates and down the escalators to board the Northern Line. I was lucky to find a space for the buggy, and Abigail could stand next to it in the vestibule area. There were dozens of people pushing on after us, ramming the carriage full. I hung onto the buggy – I couldn’t let go of the twins – and Abigail, with her frowning face, was hanging onto the pole by the door. The bell rang and the doors closed and we were packed in, waiting. But we didn’t move. The train was hot, suffocating as we stood stationary. Eventually, an announcement came: this train would go only six more stops.
The train doors grated open again. Now some people wanted to get off. I shoved the buggy in as tight as I could and kept as far in as I was able. The passengers nearest the doors were doing their best to move aside, but Abigail was still just clinging to the pole. She needed to make room, but she was being so stubborn.
I should have realized then what was happening between us, recognized the tightness, the way it would build, where it could take me. But it had been so long. For years things had been so much better, everything else a distant memory and I’d been so sure we’d come past all of that now. All I was thinking was, everyone’s getting so impatient, we are such an inconvenience to them. So I told Abigail, sharply, to do what other passengers were doing: let go of the pole and step down onto the platform. She would still be right there within arm’s reach, and she was only stepping down for a moment.
Now the station was filling up all over again, a disgorge of passengers from yet another train. The doors were still open and the people who’d stepped down were clambering back on, plus other people too, running up the platform. I had to keep hold of the twins in the buggy, but with my free hand I gestured to Abigail: all right then, step back up. I was frustrated and no doubt it showed; but Abigail just stood there on the platform. She just stood there.
Everyone was so busy, only thinking of getting home, mad at the delays; they didn’t stop to look at some kid belonging to God knows who, and I was just some woman with a buggy, taking up all the room. But I had been nagging at her for the last twenty minutes, going on and on at her, not minding my tone, not holding onto my frustration, and now Abigail stood there with the hard, furious look of her father on her face, the look that said, I’m so angry with you.
Something slipped inside me then. We had come so far, for months, years she had been so good, we had been so good. I couldn’t bear to see her looking like that. The past was the past, she was supposed to be a happy child now, loving her was supposed to be easy, and we were supposed to be so much better than this.
When the bells went a second time, I know what I should have done. I should have grabbed my daughter and hoisted her straight back onto the train, like you do with a toddler screaming in the supermarket, you just scoop them up and carry them off. But in that moment, that tiny sliver of a second, I didn’t want to deal with it. I didn’t want to deal with a child like that.
So instead I did the other thing you do, when you feel that way, undermined, defeated. Anywhere else, anywhere else, i
t wouldn’t have mattered when I turned away, frustrated and exhausted, when for just one split second I said to myself: Fine.
But then. But then—
But then the doors closed and the train pulled away and by the time I got to the emergency cord we were already in the tunnel on the way to the next station, and then it was simply, utterly too late.
All of these words spilled like a river into the harsh light of the waiting room. Robert sat with his hands gripping his knees as though if he let go he might topple right over. ‘You knew?’ His question was for Lillian, for Fraser.
Fraser answered him, laying a hand over mine. ‘Lillian and I were only trying to do what was best. We made a decision and then it became so complicated to undo. We carried on. We shouldn’t have.’
I saw the hurt on Jess’s face too, twisting her mouth, tearing up her eyes. It was so hard for me to look at her. What I’d done to Abigail, I had done to all of them. I never meant to, I never meant to, but this one moment had brought on everything else, a thousand more wounds that might never heal. A tiny second that turned into seven whole years, and a scar that underlay everything she had suffered.
Robert was about to speak again when a doctor appeared. We could come and sit with Abigail now. At that, Robert told the Bradys to go home. When they protested, he insisted. I watched them go, the jagged secret standing between Robert and me. Now it was just us.
They had moved Abigail to the children’s ward. On slippery chairs with the twins in our laps, we tried to sleep. Close to the end of the night-shift they came to say she was being discharged. They let her go with a bandage taped across her forehead. At home let her sleep, they said, but keep a close eye on her. Any blurred vision, any headaches, bring her straight back.
Little White Lies Page 21