A Mother's Secret

by T J Stimson

  She hoped he was right, but last night had shocked her to the core. She’d never knowingly put the children at risk before. It was only luck Noah had just ended up with a few red marks. What if she didn’t simply lose her memory next time? What if she had a proper blackout, when she was driving or carrying the baby? Or what if she did something she couldn’t remember, like leaving the gas on or the bathwater running? She could burn the house down, and never even know it.

  ‘Well?’ Jayne teased, flicking the kettle back on. ‘Or have you already forgotten the question?’

  Maddie was about to tell Jayne what had happened. But then Emily came running back into the kitchen, asking for something to drink, and Jayne noticed some of her chickenpox blisters were weeping and went off to get some calamine lotion, and so in the end, Maddie said nothing at all.

  Lydia

  She wriggles uncomfortably in the dark. She badly needs to pee, but if she comes out of the cupboard, Mae will be very angry. Mae told her to stay in there till the lady has gone or she’ll be sorry. She knows better than to disobey Mae. Last time, Mae beat her so hard, she knocked out two of her teeth and she couldn’t move her arm properly for ages. Let that be a lesson to you. Sometimes her shoulder still hurts.

  Mae says she’s a wicked little cow who’ll get what’s coming to her. She says one of these days she’ll end up hanging from a hook in the shed, like the rabbits, with her gizzard slit. She doesn’t know what a gizzard is, but she doesn’t want hers slit. It sounds like it would hurt.

  She really really needs to pee. She squeezes her legs together tight. It’s so hot in the cupboard and she’s thirsty, too. She doesn’t know why she has to hide, but she thinks it’s probably because she was so naughty yesterday. Mae had to punish her and now she has big red and purple bruises all over her legs. She didn’t mean to be a greedy little brat, but she was so hungry. Sometimes Mae forgets to feed her, and so after Mae has gone to bed, she sneaks back downstairs and eats whatever she can find in the kitchen, like she was last night when Mae caught her.

  She wishes Davy was still here. Her brother was nearly as big as Mae and Mae didn’t get as cross with her when he was around. But Davy left. He told her he’d come back for her, but he hasn’t yet. Good riddance, Mae says.

  She doesn’t think it’s good riddance, though. She misses Davy.

  She can’t hold the pee in any longer and it starts to trickle down her leg. Mae will be angry that she wet herself, but it’s better than coming out of the cupboard and having the lady see her. Last time a lady came to the house, Davy had to leave. It was her fault, because the special sweets made her sick. They were blue and came in a little bottle. They didn’t taste very nice, but Mae told her to eat them all, a special treat, so she did. They made her feel funny. She got all sleepy and Mae let her curl up on the sofa, which is something she never usually does. But then Davy came home early from school and found her and he gave her a glass of warm water with salt in it, which tasted disgusting and made her sick. She doesn’t know why that made Davy so happy, but he hugged her and kissed her and made her promise never to eat Mae’s sweets again.

  The next day, the lady came and asked her lots of questions about Mae (the lady called her ‘your mummy’ and Mae didn’t say, Don’t you bloody call me that, you little bastard, if I’d had my way I’d have got rid of you, you can blame your father, fucking bastard I should have known he wouldn’t stick around). Mae sat on the sofa next to her with her arm round her and pinched her hard when the lady wasn’t looking, to remind her to keep smiling and be a good girl. Mae didn’t get cross with Davy in front of the lady, she laughed and said Davy had got the wrong end of the stick, it was a silly accident, she was very careful about where she kept her pills, especially when there were kiddies about, but you know what they’re like, you have to have eyes in the back of your head. She didn’t understand what Mae meant about the stick, but she hoped it wasn’t a big one.

  The lady wrote all this down and then she went and Mae stopped smiling and dragged Davy upstairs and she heard Mae shouting and Davy shouted back, and there was lots of banging and yelling and screaming. She didn’t see Davy for a few days after that and then one night he sneaked into her bedroom and crouched down by her mattress on the floor to shake her awake. His face was all purple and bruised and one eye was swollen shut. He told her he was going to track down his own dad and he’d get him to speak to the lady and make her listen this time. You poor bloody cow, he said. If you was a dog, they’d take you off her, they wouldn’t let her treat you like this.

  But Davy never came back. Mae said good riddance, just like your father, they’re all the same. Mae said it’s your fault he left, you wicked evil little bastard. Mae must be right, or else why hadn’t he come back for her like he promised?

  She hears the door slam now and Mae stomping up the stairs. She scrambles back away from the cupboard door, trying to make herself small in the corner. Even though she didn’t come out of the cupboard, she knows she’s going to be in trouble anyway because of the pee and because she’s a bad lot who’s got it coming to her.

  The door flies open and she blinks in the sudden light. Mae reaches in and grabs her arm and yanks her out, and she tumbles onto the bare boards, scraping her knee. Mae doesn’t give her time to stand up. Her arm feels like it’s being pulled out of its socket as she’s hauled along the hallway, and she has to bite her lip hard to stop from crying.

  Mae stops suddenly and flings her into a heap against the wall. You dirty little bastard! she screams. Four years old and you’re still wetting yourself! You little cunt!

  She curls into a ball as Mae aims a kick at her, trying to protect herself. She didn’t know she was four years old. There are so many things she doesn’t know, including her own name. Davy called her peanut and Mae calls her little bastard and dirty bitch and fucking slag, but she doesn’t think any of those are her name.

  Mae grabs her arm again. She just has time to scramble to her feet as Mae drags her down the stairs. She is shocked when Mae hauls the front door open and yanks her outside. She’s hardly ever allowed outside.

  There are so many things she wants to look at as Mae pulls her down the street, but she’s too busy trying to keep up with her. Then they get on a bus and she bounces up and down in her seat, so excited she forgets to be scared. A bus! Davy used to get a bus to school every day, sometimes she watched him from the window, but she’s never been on a bus! She wonders where they are going. Maybe Mae has found Davy at last. Maybe she’s not angry with him anymore and they are going to get him and bring him home.

  She is sad when they get off the bus, but Mae grips her hand and marches her down a big street, much bigger than the one where they live. It is filled with shops with big glass windows with plastic people standing in them, wearing the cleanest clothes she has ever seen.

  Suddenly Mae halts by a black door with gold writing on it and pushes her through it. There are no plastic people in this shop, just a pretty lady with long yellow hair sitting behind a desk. Opposite her is a lady in a blue hat, and an old man with a shiny bald head. The lady with the blue hat is crying.

  You want a kid? Mae says roughly. Here. You can have this one.

  Chapter 4

  Wednesday 7.30 a.m.

  Emily looked much better the next morning when Maddie stopped at her mother’s house, where Emily had spent the night, to see how she was doing. Her daughter’s spots had started to scab, which her mother said was always a good sign with chickenpox, and her temperature was almost back to normal.

  ‘You didn’t have to come over,’ Sarah said briskly, putting the kettle on to boil. ‘I told you last night we’re fine. Emily’s helping me make some posters for my sale this morning, aren’t you, darling?’

  Emily nodded. ‘We’ve got glitter pens,’ she announced. ‘And special stickers.’

  ‘Another fundraiser?’ Maddie asked, surprised. ‘Didn’t you have one just last weekend?’

  ‘That was for Child Rescu
e. This is the Mercy Foundation.’

  Maddie kicked herself for even asking. She’d long since given up trying to keep track of her mother’s good causes. Sarah was an indefatigable do-gooder; Maddie had grown up surrounded by boxes filled with cast-offs destined for jumble sales and had learned to sort china and check pockets almost before she could talk. When her mother wasn’t volunteering at the local soup kitchen, she was helping out with Meals-on-Wheels. It was impossible not to admire the energy and commitment she put into her charitable work, but Maddie had always felt slightly resentful. Her teenage Saturdays had been spent sorting jumble or posting flyers through letter boxes, while everyone else at school had been out shopping and having fun. It was no wonder she’d found it so hard to make friends. Even now, Sarah’s diary was twice as hectic as Maddie’s own. Unless Maddie was in crisis, she had to book lunch with her mother a month in advance. There was always another cause more worthy of her attention.

  No, that was petty and mean. Sarah was the first port of call for a dozen local charities and a lifeline for many of them. Her mother wasn’t given to self-pity, but Maddie knew she hadn’t had it easy, losing her parents while still in her late teens and then being widowed when Maddie was just two. Maddie’s father, who had been nearly twenty years older than Sarah, had ensured his wife and child were provided for; their bungalow had been paid off and there’d been just enough money that Sarah didn’t have to work, as long as she was sensible. She’d chosen to pay it forward by volunteering and fundraising.

  At fifty-four, she was still an attractive woman, with a neat figure and the same rich strawberry-blonde hair Maddie and Emily had inherited. She’d have no shortage of eligible suitors, should she choose. But she’d never looked at another man since Maddie’s father had died. ‘I’ve already been luckier than most women,’ she said, whenever Maddie raised the subject. ‘I have you, and the children, and my charity work. That’s all I need.’

  Maddie finished her cup of tea and stood up. ‘I’ll come back and pick Emily up this afternoon, after work,’ she said. ‘The nursery rang this morning, and said half the children are out with chickenpox, so I’m sure the boys will get it too. I know Lucas will hate it, but there’s not much point keeping Emily in quarantine with you if they’re all going to come down with it anyway.’

  ‘Oh, please, can’t I stay with Manga?’ Emily exclaimed, using her childhood name for her grandmother, which had evolved when she’d mangled ‘Grandma’ by saying it backwards. ‘I’d much rather be here.’

  ‘How about you come back and help me with the sale on Saturday afternoon?’ Sarah said. ‘Your spots should be nearly gone by then, and I could really use some help setting up the stalls. It’d just be you and me. The boys can stay with Mummy and Lucas. How does that sound?’

  ‘Could we go to the Lucky Duck afterwards?’ Emily said eagerly. ‘Can we order burgers? The ones with the special thousand island dressing?’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  Emily cheerfully opened a bag of silver foil stars and emptied them onto the kitchen table alongside her poster, good humour restored.

  Maddie hugged her daughter goodbye, and put her empty mug in the sink. ‘I’d better get going,’ she said. ‘Izzy’s arranged for a photographer to come and do some PR shots for the Courier. I promised I’d help her set up some jumps for the horses.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ll come and see you off. I’ve got to put the recycling out.’

  ‘I can do that for you.’ ‘No, I’ve got it.’

  She slipped her feet into her gardening clogs and followed Maddie out, wheeling the recycling bin to the kerb. Maddie unlocked her twenty-year-old Land Rover, jiggling the key carefully in the sticky lock. It’d already had a hundred and fifty thousand miles on the clock when she’d bought it, eight years ago; one of these days, it was just going to collapse into a heap of rust.

  ‘Are you OK, darling?’ Sarah asked as she walked back towards her. ‘You look awfully tired.’

  ‘Not you as well,’ Maddie sighed. ‘I am tired, Mum. What do you expect? I have a nine-week-old baby to look after. Noah was up all night again last night. I finally got him to sleep around three, and then Jacob woke at five and climbed into bed with us.’

  ‘And Lucas slept right through it all, of course.’

  Maddie paused, half-in and half-out of the car. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Nothing, dear.’

  ‘No, if you’ve got something to say, Mum, spit it out.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing against Lucas, darling, you know that. I think he’s been very good for you in lots of ways.’

  ‘But?’

  Sarah hesitated. ‘He has been very good to you,’ she said again. ‘But you’ve been very good to him, too, Maddie.’

  Maddie bristled. First, Jayne implied Lucas wasn’t pulling his weight, and now her mother. They had no idea how hard he worked. He wasn’t as hands-on with Noah as he had been with Jacob, admittedly, but he was working hard towards making partner at his firm. And sometimes he could be a bit bossy, a little bit controlling, especially when it came to the children, but that’s because she was too soft. He was an incredible father. She refused to hear a word against him.

  ‘He’s my husband,’ she said firmly. ‘We’re in this together, Mum. We don’t keep track of who does what. And to be honest, if we did, I’d be the one in the red, not him.’

  ‘I’m not criticising him, Maddie. I’m just worried about you. You’ve got a lot on your plate. Three children and the sanctuary to manage, on top of everything else.’ She laid a cool hand on Maddie’s arm. ‘If you don’t get enough rest, it’s easy for things to become overwhelming.’

  Maddie shook her off. ‘I’m fine, Mum.’

  ‘Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness—’

  ‘I said I’m fine,’ she snapped, and then instantly regretted it. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to bite your head off. I just wish everyone would stop watching me all the time. Don’t worry. I’m taking my pills. I’ve been checking in with Calkins. I’m just tired, that’s all.’

  ‘Remember. I’m here if you need me,’ Sarah said.

  Maddie buckled her seat belt and backed the Land Rover out of the driveway, glancing briefly in her rear-view mirror as she paused at the junction with the main road. Emily had come out to find her grandmother, and as Maddie saw the two of them standing together, she was suddenly struck by how very much alike they were.

  And the resemblance went beyond the physical; at nine years old, Emily already had the same quiet, self-contained composure as her grandmother. She and Sarah were made of the same unbreakable steel. Even as a baby, Emily had never seemed to need Maddie the way Jacob and Noah did. She’d lie outside for hours in her pram at the sanctuary, placidly playing with her own fingers and toes. When Maddie had been at her lowest ebb after Jacob’s birth, Emily had quietly found ways to amuse herself, never complaining or demanding attention. She lived in a world of her own, perfectly content with her own company.

  Maddie never had to worry about Emily. It was the boys she found so exhausting, and so hard to manage. There were times, although she would never admit it out loud, when she couldn’t help thinking how much easier life would’ve been if she’d stopped at one child, like her mother.

  Chapter 5

  Wednesday 10.00 a.m.

  Later that morning, Maddie leaned on the split-rail fence along the edge of the bottom paddock, watching as Izzy took Finn over a five-bar jump and landed him neatly on the other side. Both horse and rider had seen better days, but they were still poetry in motion.

  On the far side of the jump, a photographer with a floppy boy-band fringe snapped away.

  ‘Did you get what you need?’ Izzy called, as she pulled Finn up.

  The photographer fiddled with his lenses. ‘One more time?’

  Finn’s chestnut flanks rippled in the sunshine as Izzy took him over the jump again. He was a former show-jumper, one of the most beautiful horses Ma
ddie had ever seen. He’d probably earned a great deal of money for his owner, before the trophies had stopped coming and he’d been sold and then resold and finally dumped by the side of the road by an unscrupulous dealer, abandoned without food, water or shelter. When he’d arrived at the sanctuary, Maddie had been able to count his ribs, and his feet were in such a bad state, he could barely walk.

  The photographer snapped away as Maddie fed Finn some Polos. She was grateful when he left.

  ‘Please tell me we don’t have to do that again soon,’ she grumbled to Izzy, as they led Finn back up to the yard.

  ‘Play nice,’ Izzy chided. ‘The Courier’s promised us two pages if they like the photos.’

  They certainly needed the publicity. The sanctuary’s finances were in a perilous state; when Maddie had first started working here full-time eleven years ago, there had been seven members of staff, plus a couple of pony-mad teenage girls trading riding lessons for sweat equity. Now they were down to just three: Bitsy, the last remaining stable-hand, a gruff, weather-beaten woman who’d worked at the sanctuary since she was sixteen; Isobel Pyne-Lancaster, who spent most of her time circulating the begging bowl around her smart friends; and Maddie herself.

  It was a daily battle just to keep their doors open. Maddie couldn’t bear to turn any horse or pony away, no matter how short of funds they were. But it cost thousands of pounds a month just to keep the sanctuary running. Some of the money came from riding lessons and the odd gymkhana, but the rest came from donations. Maddie might find it difficult to ask for something for herself, but when it came to her horses, it was a different matter. In that, she supposed, she was just like her mother.