We stood for the judge and when the jury filed in, I saw Cassingham in the dock make one move, just one: running his hands through the lengths of his hair.
Now the head juror was standing up. The court clerk’s voice filled the courtroom. ‘Foreman of the jury, have you reached a verdict on which you are all agreed?’
I thought of how everything came down to this, how it would put an end to everything Abigail had been through.
‘We have.’
I thought how it would draw the ultimate line and allow us to finally be the family I had been trying to make all this time, loving each other and trusting each other and doing everything right. That was all I had ever wanted and because I wanted that so badly I knew they had to find him guilty.
Beside me someone was fidgeting, twisting in their seat. I closed my eyes, every sense and nerve straining for the answer.
‘And on the charge of child abduction, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’
Guilty, I whispered to myself. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Beside me someone was standing, rising from their seat.
‘We find the defendant—’
She was a warrior, she was a broken child, she was an avenging angel, she was my daughter. She was all of these things in that moment.
‘Wait!’
In the echoing silence that followed, Abigail was the centre of the universe.
She twisted round to face the gallery, her knuckles glaring white on the back of her chair. I reached for her, then pulled my hands back; if I touched her I felt she would burn me right through.
‘Sit down!’ cried the judge. ‘Sit down!’
But she wouldn’t. She was staring into the gallery in a blaze of accusation, staring at the one person I never could have imagined: not me, not Cassingham, not even Preston—
Her eyes were locked on the one person I had trusted more than anyone. Huge pieces clashed – those attic walls, Jess’s whispers, a picture of a laughing child in an album.
‘“Abduction”?’ Her voice was fracturing, desperate, terrified of itself, as she hurled these words: ‘“Abduction”? You sent him photos of me!’
Chapter 34
Thursday 26th September:
Day 123
JESS
It was like there was nothing but white space, and no one else in the courtroom but Auntie Anne, Uncle Robert, my parents and me.
I couldn’t bear to look at Abigail.
Dad’s face was pale as a ghost’s, his beard no mask to disappear behind. The horror on his face was a mirror of everything I felt. He stood up, his whole frame shaking.
I dug my nails into my palms, all the safety in my world torn out. ‘Please,’ I cried, ‘please say that you didn’t!’ Because if it was true, then the monster wasn’t a stranger at all and one of us had delivered Abigail straight into his hands.
My dad stood looking down at her. But she just sat frozen, staring past me at Cassingham. From the look in her eyes alone, I knew.
It was true. She had done it.
My mum.
Chapter 35
Thursday 26th September:
Day 123
LILLIAN
I was looking at him and, in the dock, he was looking at me. His expression said, Come on now, you remember. His expression said, no need to pretend. Seconds tumbled past in which I couldn’t understand it, until he reached up and dragged his hair back from his face. He scraped it back from his forehead, his fingers stretching the strands so tight that they almost disappeared, his face appearing so much thinner now beneath.
I couldn’t pull my gaze away and I finally saw what I had missed this whole time.
Ironic really. After all, I’ve always prided myself on not making mistakes. I plan, I consider, I am thoughtful. I can see the big picture and the long game. I know what’s best. This is who I am.
My sister Annie made mistakes. Big ones. Ones I always ended up trying to put right. Take the night of the fight, the biggest fight they’d ever had. It was me who’d had to extricate her from there. God knows when – if – she’d ever have left otherwise.
It wasn’t the first time I’d had to sort things out – between them, or with Abigail – but that night was the worst. When Preston’s brother called me, it made me so angry. I could tell on the phone he was still just a kid, still in his teens, an immature voice saying, please come now, you have to do something. He didn’t even know me, but he’d found my number and he’d been that desperate. This seventeen-year-old kid trying to look out for a two-year-old because her own parents had run completely off the rails.
One a.m. and they weren’t even in the house when I arrived. The front door was half open and the inside reeked of smoke. Cigarettes and more. The place was a mess, clutter everywhere; it was clear Preston was hooked on something again. I could see places where Annie had tried to keep order, but she’d never been good at taking control.
I found them out in the back garden. The neighbours up and down the street must have heard everything. Preston was drunk, or high, who knows, yelling, swearing, I’d no idea about what. Annie was standing there in flip-flops – flip-flops, for God’s sake, in the middle of December – and pyjama bottoms and a jacket she’d shoved on. She was in tears trying to calm him down, unable to see she was only making things worse.
I marched out there – I actually marched – and grabbed my sister without saying a word to him. You can’t reason with someone in that state. He started doing something with the garden bench then, dragging it off the patio, trying to tip it over. I managed to get Annie back into the house and I didn’t stop to pack her clothes. Her handbag was slung over the back of a kitchen chair so I just grabbed that. Where is Abigail? I kept saying. Every time she replied, What are you doing here? I’d expected to hear my niece wailing away, but no, not a sound.
It wasn’t till I got back out into the front hallway that I found her. Preston’s teenage brother was bringing her down from upstairs. He was as young as I’d pictured: this skinny kid in a tracksuit, all shaved head and big eyes. She was clinging to him, completely silent. That disturbed me more than anything, far more than if she’d been bawling her head off. Back through in the kitchen, Annie was in a hopeless state, hardly able to pull her shoes on. I didn’t say a word to the kid, barely looked at him, as I stepped up the stairs and grabbed Abigail, stuck a coat on her and hauled her and my sister out of there.
I got us a taxi straight to our flat in West London where Fraser was up waiting for us. Anne was exhausted; we made up the sofa for her – we didn’t have a spare room back then, not with London prices. Abigail we put down in the cot with Jess. We found them both in the morning with their arms wrapped round each other, sleeping like angels. I told myself then, thank God she’s too young to remember any of this. But my God, I thought now. Perhaps she always did.
It was two more years of arguments and mess before Annie finally cut contact with Preston. When she met Robert, when she at last had the chance to make a new life with him, I finally, finally put my foot down. Preston contested, but the courts decided otherwise. He was an addict, after all.
Afterwards, though, his young brother kept texting. So many texts saying, why wasn’t Abigail visiting any more? I felt for him, I really did. I’d never forgotten the way Abigail clung to him that night, huddled in his thin arms. That was how I’d remembered him. But clear lines, clean breaks; they’re so important, especially for someone like Annie. Leave a gap and she would tumble through it; leave a loophole and she would tangle herself in it.
For the longest time I ignored those texts; I never mentioned them to Annie. I suppose I’d assumed he’d eventually lose interest, but he never did. Finally, I remembered what Annie had once told me: You think you’re setting an example to people. Instead you shame them into giving up.
I mentioned courts and legal proceedings, but I sent the picture to make it clear: she had a good life now, with us. I sent him the picture to show him the evidence: Abigail aged five in red dungar
ees, smiling, happy in her brand-new house with a backdrop of white wallpaper with diagonal blue stripes. I never told Annie what I’d done. I sent him the photograph, and it worked. I didn’t hear from him again after that, the young man I’d always believed was Preston’s brother.
Now I looked at the figure in the dock, thirteen years on from when I’d last seen him, pulling back his hair so tight it appeared his head was bald – or shaved.
Such an innocent. Such a monster. I could have slapped myself for what a fool I had been.
Chapter 36
Thursday 26th September:
Day 123
ANNE
The judge was shouting, ‘Take her out of the court!’ and they were pulling Abigail away from me. I tried to hold onto her, but my arms and fingers were weak as straw, as though in a dream when you can barely move. She was breathing hard, full of fire. She was frightened and she was furious. The judge was calling for a recess in the trial. From somewhere, out of nowhere, other officers were leading Lillian, Robert, Fraser and Jess away. My sister’s face was hard as a statue’s. If they tried to put her in handcuffs, I imagined she would hold out wrists of white marble.
DS McCarthy rose up beside me, a hand on my arm, his voice low. ‘You need to come with me.’ He was pushing me out of the courtroom and at the back, through the crowds, I caught sight of Preston, his face stiff with shock. As we passed, words came tumbling out of him, ‘Fuck, Annie, I’ve realized who he is!’
I tried to call out to him, but the detective was pushing me relentlessly ahead. He led me to an interview room, an empty space among the tumult of the courthouse. ‘In here,’ he said. ‘Don’t speak to anyone until I come back.’
I fought to catch my breath. ‘Get Preston as well,’ I told him as he turned to leave. ‘Abigail’s real father, he’s out there.’ I thought, Preston, we need you, I’m sorry I never answered you before, we need you because maybe you know what this is.
The detective went out without a sign that he’d heard.
I sat there and waited for three long hours.
When he returned, he had no one else with him.
‘Where is my daughter?’ I said. ‘My husband?’
‘In separate rooms. We had to interview you all separately.’
‘And Lillian?’
‘We’ve taken her statement too.’
‘What has she done? Please, David. Tell me what she’s done.’ But I needed to tread slowly, for the sake of my own sanity. I started where it felt easiest. ‘Preston knew him, didn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me how.’
‘In foster care. They overlapped a few months. Preston didn’t recognize him until now.’
In foster care. How could anyone have known? I pressed my hands to my jaw. ‘Did you check? Is it true?’
He nodded. ‘We’ve tallied the records.’
I lifted my head. ‘He told Abigail he was her uncle.’
‘Now you see why. They both lived in the same foster home, when Preston was fourteen and Cassingham seven. Preston knew him as “little Johnny” – a sad kid with bruises he tried to help. I imagine it was the closest thing to a family that Cassingham ever knew.’
He was known to us, a bizarre extension of our complicated family. This time, when my eyes met the detective’s, a new thing passed between us, all the previous antagonism gone. My look to him said, It’s true, you were right, and his look to me said, Yes, and I’m sorry.
Now the detective was talking about the night Lillian came, the worst fight with Preston, the final straw. ‘Do you remember someone there?’ he was saying.
‘Lillian …’
‘And who else? Try to think.’
But I couldn’t think or I didn’t want to or even if I wanted to remember, there were only flashes. ‘Someone holding Abigail. Fraser? A neighbour?’
‘Lillian believes that he was there. That he was the one who rang your sister, pretending to be Preston’s brother.’
I felt sick and terrified of what this meant. I wanted Robert here with me but it was just me with the whole world cracking under my feet.
‘If he was there that night,’ the detective went on, ‘if he had Lillian’s number, we suspect that he was stalking you. We imagine he tracked down Preston at first, became obsessed with him. Then later, you and baby Abigail.’
I dropped my head into my hands, my scalp crawling, and I told DS McCarthy about all those times I’d felt someone had been invading that flat. ‘Preston never believed me and I thought it was just me, my mind going crazy. But you’re saying it was him. In our home? In our lives?’ It was so hard to breathe; my chest was so tight. ‘I still don’t understand. I don’t understand! Did she give her to him? Did she give her …?’
DS McCarthy shook his head; a slow, graceful movement. ‘I don’t believe it was like that. No conspiracy. Lillian claims her intentions were good. That she only sent the picture to get him to stop contact.’
This awful thing, this terrible act. How could I be sure she hadn’t done this on purpose – my sister who never, ever made mistakes? But to believe otherwise would be to tear everything apart and I had to trust in the goodness of my family.
‘But why didn’t he tell all this to the police? Why did he never say that he knew us? He could have put the whole blame on us.’
‘Because you heard it, didn’t you, in the trial? A fantasist maybe but he knew right from wrong. He had stolen from you, he had trespassed. Prior knowledge of you would suggest premeditation. None of that would have worked in his favour.’ DS McCarthy smoothed a hand across his cheek. ‘We suspect his stalking continued even after Lillian’s message, and after you moved away to Lincolnshire as well. You can do it – the Internet, Facebook.’
My stomach dropped to the floor again. ‘That’s how he would have known we’d be down in London,’ I whispered. ‘At the hospital. I put it on Facebook. David, I put everything on Facebook back then and I didn’t even know how to make my account private.’ Because back then I was happy and naïve and stupid, and because I always, always made mistakes.
‘We can check for him on CCTV there.’
‘How long had he been planning this thing then?’
But the detective was shaking his head. ‘I don’t think he planned it at all. I think he only meant to see her. He didn’t follow you into the Tube station, did he, and he couldn’t have known that she’d come back out. The rest was a coincidence. The rest was opportunity.’
I gripped the edges of the table in front of me and fought with myself to push away the guilt. If I hadn’t left her, their paths would never have crossed, it was because of me that moment happened, a million to one moment that sealed all our fates.
The words I’d heard on the police tape came back to me: … at the station steps, I’d thought that was it. I was simply wandering, outside in the rain. Suddenly I could see the whole scene so vividly, as though I’d stepped right into his mind. He is there with us, quite deliberately, at the hospital, seizing his chance to see her even for the briefest time. Afterwards he tails us to the Tube station, extending the precious minutes before he has to say goodbye, hearing me nagging at her the whole way. Outside the station entrance, from under his umbrella, he watches Abigail disappear inside. He has seen her, filled his eyes with her, all that he wanted, but he’s too overcome with emotion to return home yet. Half in a daze, he circles the station. Then just as he’s about to head home, the impossible happens, telling him this was always meant to be: he turns around and like a miracle my daughter reappears.
And he takes her.
I wiped my eyes and looked up at the detective. ‘So what happens now?’
‘Now I present these facts to the judge. And he will decide if this trial can continue.’
He led me back to where the rest of my family was waiting: Fraser and Lillian, Jess, Robert, Abigail, in a room with chairs round a conference table. I sat down, straight across from my sister, feeling Abigail’s dark eyes on me. We sat t
here and went through everything, bringing each piece of the jigsaw to light.
‘You did it,’ I said to Lillian. ‘You sent him photographs.’
‘Yes.’ My sister lifted her eyes to me. ‘Though for the record, there was only one.’ It was the first time in our lives I’d ever heard her confess to a mistake.
Now, for the first time since her outburst, Abigail spoke. Her voice was slow and thick, the way she sounded when she talked in her sleep. ‘He said he used to watch over me. He said he knew me since I was born. He did, didn’t he? He was there the whole time, and you never knew.’
‘But why didn’t you tell the police about the photo?’ It was Lillian speaking and it took me a moment to realize it was my daughter that she was asking.
My daughter curled herself back in her seat. My sister was right though: why hadn’t Abigail told them? Instead she’d waited to shout it in a courtroom, instead of telling the police so that we all could have known. Her voice came out barely above a whisper. ‘Because for so long I was so scared of making it true.’
I felt my eyes fill with tears. I imagined the horrors that Abigail had lived with these last four months. No wonder she had lashed out at us. No wonder she had feared she was going mad. Now, more than ever, I had to convince her. I had to wipe that whole slate clean. I leaned towards her across the wide table though she was too far away for me to take her hand.
‘Cassingham twisted everything,’ I said. ‘He’s guilty of more than we ever thought. He lied to you and he made victims of us all. He used it all against you, Abigail, but none of it was true. We are your family. None of us did this.’
In the wake of my words came Lillian’s quiet, commanding voice.
‘You do believe us, Abigail. Don’t you?’
Chapter 37
Little White Lies Page 25