A Mother's Secret

by T J Stimson

  And then, just six weeks after their wedding, she finds herself pregnant.

  To his credit, Michael doesn’t doubt the child is his. The doctors obviously got it wrong, he shrugs, they’re only human. His sperm count may be low, but it only takes one little swimmer. He neither pressures her to have the baby, nor urges her to terminate. Whatever she wants is fine by him, he says. He warns her, however, that she’ll face the fight of her life to be allowed to keep the baby, given who she is. He’ll do everything he can to help her, after all, this is his child too; he’ll call in every favour, make whatever promises are required, but at the end of the day, social services might take the baby away from them and there’ll be nothing either of them can do to stop it.

  She doesn’t want a child. She never has. Given her own experience of mothering, how can she possibly raise a normal, well-balanced child herself? She’s spent half her life behind bars; she’s only been out of prison a year. She’s still trying to figure out the way the world works. And if there is some gene for wickedness, if it can be passed on, she doesn’t want to be responsible for bringing more evil into the world.

  But the terrible irony isn’t lost on her: here she is, a convicted child-killer, and the first real decision she has to make since her release is whether or not to take a child’s life.

  She can’t start over again by killing another child. She has to break the cycle. She can be the kind of mother to her child that Mae never was to her. This baby will have half her genes, yes, but it’ll have half Michael’s too, and he is the most decent, honest, good man she’s ever met. That’ll outweigh whatever badness the child inherits from her and Mae. It has to.

  It makes no logical sense, her baby is no more than a bunch of cells the size of a pinhead, but she already feels overwhelmingly protective towards it. If this is love, if she feels like this now, what will it be like when her baby is born? When it goes out into the world, vulnerable to the kind of wickedness that she’d once shown?

  She realises then that having this child will bring home what she did to Julia’s parents with brutal clarity. The guilt will be unbearable. And she’ll deserve every second of it. It will be her way of atoning.

  They decide that if the baby’s a boy, they’ll call him Davy, and if it’s a girl, they’ll name her after Michael’s mother.

  Maddie.

  Chapter 31

  Thursday 5.30 p.m.

  Maddie looked confused. Her gaze moved from DS Ballard on the doorstep to the unpleasant male officer glowering behind her. Both officers were staring at her mother with something akin to fascination. She turned back to her mother.

  ‘Mum?’ she said uneasily. ‘What’s going on?’

  Sarah didn’t look at her. ‘Please,’ she said to DS Ballard, her voice strangely thin. ‘Not here.’

  ‘We tried you twice at your home,’ the policewoman said awkwardly. ‘We didn’t want to have to do this in front of your family, but you didn’t leave us any choice. It would have been better if you’d told us the truth in the beginning, Lydia. So much easier, in the long run.’

  ‘Why do you keep calling her Lydia?’ Maddie asked sharply.

  DS Shortall abruptly shouldered past them all into the hallway. ‘Enough of this bullshit,’ he said nastily. ‘Lying to the police is a serious offence. We could have you both up for perverting the course of justice.’

  ‘Mike, please,’ DS Ballard said. She followed her colleague inside and took Maddie’s elbow. ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea you didn’t know. I just assumed … Is there somewhere we could talk in private?’

  Maddie pulled away. She’d never seen her mother like this, submissive and uncertain. A pit of foreboding opened in her stomach. ‘Mum, what’s this about?’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Sarah said helplessly. ‘I was just trying to protect you.’

  ‘Please,’ DS Ballard urged Maddie, as the sound of running feet and laughter came from upstairs. ‘Let’s go into the kitchen, where we won’t be overheard.’

  A knot of fear built in Maddie’s chest as she led the four of them into the kitchen. The pan of water her mother had put on for the children’s spaghetti had almost boiled dry. On autopilot, she turned off the stove and moved the spitting saucepan to a back burner. She suddenly felt chilled to the bone. ‘Will someone please tell me what this is about?’

  ‘This is going to be hard for you to hear,’ DS Ballard began. ‘I think you might want to sit down.’

  ‘Oh, stop pussyfooting around,’ her colleague snorted. ‘Your mother’s a psycho, that’s what she’s trying to tell you. She killed a kid!’

  DS Ballard glared at him.

  ‘What?’ he said belligerently. ‘You think you’re doing her a favour, dragging it out?’

  ‘Mum had nothing to do with Noah’s death,’ Maddie protested.

  ‘Your mother’s a convicted murderer,’ DS Shortall told Maddie contemptuously. ‘And right now, I’m wondering if the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’

  ‘I don’t know how you think this is helping,’ DS Ballard hissed furiously. ‘Go outside and wait in the damn car!’

  ‘What is he talking about?’ Maddie asked, aghast. ‘Why would he say that?’

  DS Ballard glanced towards her mother, but Sarah was staring blankly through the kitchen window, kneading her fingers together with nervous intensity. It was clear no assistance would be forthcoming from that direction. ‘Lydia Slaughter was convicted in 1974 for killing a four-year-old little girl she was babysitting, Julia Taylor,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Lydia herself was only eleven at the time.’

  Maddie was more confused than ever. ‘I’m sorry, but what does she have to do with Mum?’

  DS Ballard looked like she’d rather be anywhere else than here. ‘Lydia was sent to a young offenders’ institution at first, and then to an adult prison when she turned seventeen. She served six years there before being released on licence and given a new identity.’ She hesitated again. ‘Lydia changed her name when she came out of prison. To Sarah.’

  It took a second for Maddie to connect the dots. She laughed. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong Sarah. Obviously it’s not Mum! Someone’s got their wires crossed.’

  A beat fell. Neither her mother nor the policewoman spoke.

  ‘Someone’s made a mistake,’ Maddie insisted again. Fear sharpened her tone. Why wasn’t her mother saying anything? ‘Don’t you think we’ve been through enough without this? First you turn up at my home and accuse me of killing my own son, and now this? Maybe I should call my solicitor—’

  ‘Enough,’ her mother said suddenly. ‘I’m Lydia.’

  Suddenly Maddie couldn’t breathe. She knew the name, of course she knew the name. There’d been one of those true crime documentaries on Channel 4 just a couple of years ago, to mark the fortieth anniversary of the case. Emily had been only a few years older than the little girl who’d died and Maddie had watched it with a kind of horrified fascination. The case had been hashed and rehashed over the years by newspapers covering the trials of other children who’d killed children, like poor little Jamie Bulger: Lydia Slaughter, a name synonymous with wickedness and evil, alongside Myra Hindley and Rosemary West. Lydia Slaughter, the startlingly pretty eleven-year-old child who’d put her small hands around a little girl’s throat and squeezed the life out of her, then covered her body with rubble and coolly concocted a story of a tall man with his arm in a sling to conceal her own crime.

  Lydia Slaughter, who grew up and was set free and given a new name …

  The ground tilted beneath Maddie’s feet. ‘You can’t be,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not … it’s not possible. You can’t be.’

  Still Sarah didn’t look at her.

  ‘Mum,’ Maddie said fearfully.

  ‘I meant to tell you,’ Sarah whispered. ‘I meant to tell you, when the moment was right. But by the time you were old enough to understand, it would have caused more harm than good.’

  Maddie fought back a wave of nausea. She looke
d at her mother’s hands, small and well-kept, the fingernails neatly painted with pale pink polish and trimmed to a sensible length. She pictured those hands around that little girl’s throat, around Emily’s throat, and nearly vomited where she stood. ‘Old enough to understand?’ she choked out. ‘How could I ever understand?’

  ‘You have to remember, I was only eleven—’

  ‘Eleven is enough to know the difference between right and wrong,’ she spat. ‘Emily is only nine, but she knows! She’d never do anything to hurt her brothers, never!’

  Sarah reached for her, but Maddie slapped her hands away.

  ‘Don’t!’ she screamed. ‘Don’t touch me!’

  ‘Maddie, please—’

  How many times had her mother rocked her grandchildren in her arms? Fed them and bathed them and smoothed their sweet, innocent faces with those pale, soft hands? Her babies had a killer for a grandmother and Maddie had trusted Sarah with their lives. ‘How could you?’ she shouted. ‘How could you not tell me?’

  Sarah looked ashen. ‘Maddie, there isn’t a day goes by I don’t wish I could go back and change what I did,’ she pleaded. ‘I swear to you, I didn’t mean to hurt Julia. Not the way they said. Not on purpose. I was just trying to make her be quiet. I was just a child myself, I didn’t even understand what death was.’

  ‘Did my father know?’ Maddie demanded. ‘Did he know what you’d done?’

  ‘Yes. He was my parole officer. He knew everything.’

  Her entire life was a lie. Everything she’d thought about her childhood, about her mother, about herself, was a lie. Whatever wickedness flowed in her mother’s veins flowed in hers, too. She was tainted by what her mother had done. She wanted to rip the evil out of herself, to claw her own body and rip it to shreds.

  ‘You should never have had me!’ she yelled. ‘How could you get married and settle down and have a baby like nothing had happened?’

  ‘Maddie, I realise what a shock this must be,’ DS Ballard intervened. ‘I swear to God, I had no idea till we got here that you didn’t know. I would never have sprung it on you like this if I had. I’m so sorry—’

  ‘Why didn’t you warn me before? She’s been looking after my children!’

  ‘We only found out today. It’s been more than thirty years since your mother was released. Technically, she’s still on licence, but in practice …’ She spread her hands. ‘She hasn’t even had a parking ticket in three decades. Her case officer has long since retired. It’s a different department, it wasn’t flagged on our computer system. I’m sorry. It should have been.’

  ‘You know I would never hurt Emily or Jacob,’ Sarah protested.

  Maddie stared at her with repulsion. Her loathing was so visceral, it surprised even her with its intensity. Her mother hadn’t just lied to her, she’d made a mockery of everything. All those years she’d looked up to her mother, tried to be like her, tried to please her. She didn’t even know who she was anymore.

  ‘You should never have been allowed to have a child,’ she said bitterly. ‘You’re not fit to call yourself a mother!’

  ‘This isn’t helping,’ DS Ballard said. ‘Let’s just calm down and talk this through—’

  Maddie covered her ears. ‘I don’t want to know any more. I don’t want to hear her sick excuses. I want her out of my house and away from my children!’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Sarah asked suddenly. ‘Don’t you want to ask me if I’m the one who hurt Noah?’

  Chapter 32

  Thursday 7.30 p.m.

  Sarah sat down at the kitchen table and folded her hands neatly in her lap. All of a sudden, she was chillingly calm. Her entire world was crashing around her, and yet she appeared utterly composed. The panicked woman who moments ago had begged for Maddie’s understanding had vanished. This was the mother Maddie had grown up with: controlled, contained, never impulsive, never melodramatic or irrational. She hadn’t ever seen her mother lose her temper in her entire life. Even now, her self-control was terrifying. For the first time, Maddie was beginning to understand why that might be.

  ‘I did not hurt Noah,’ she said, slowly and clearly. ‘I would never do anything to harm you or your children.’

  ‘Why should I believe you?’ Maddie hissed. ‘I don’t even know who you are! You’ve lied to me my entire life!’

  ‘Only to protect you,’ Sarah said evenly.

  ‘Protect me? You’re the one I need protecting from!’

  Sarah nodded. ‘You’re right. It was never my intention to have a child. But if you’d just let me explain—’

  ‘I told you, I don’t want to hear it!’

  ‘Maddie—’

  ‘How could you have a baby, knowing what you are? How do you think it feels to have a mother who’s a murderer?’

  ‘I don’t expect you to listen to me now,’ Sarah said. ‘But at some point you’ll need to talk to me. I know you’re hurt and angry, but I’m the same person I’ve been your whole life. What I did will always be a part of me, and I have to live with that every day, but it happened such a long time ago, before you were even born. I’ve changed. The person I am now, the person you’ve always known, that’s not Lydia, don’t you see?’

  Maddie turned away from her. She groped for the kitchen sink and leaned on it, her legs shaking. She felt physically overwhelmed by the enormity of what she was trying to take in. Her mother had murdered a child. A little girl, just a few years younger than Emily. It didn’t matter how long ago it’d happened. If she was capable of killing once, she could do it again. Could already have done so, in fact. Had her mother hurt Noah? Lost her temper, as she had so many years ago with that little girl? Was that why she’d been so insistent Lucas and Candace were innocent, because she’d known the truth? Or did she still believe it was Maddie herself who had killed her own child? Perhaps that was the real reason she’d called Dr Calkins. Maybe she thought evil was in her daughter’s genes.

  ‘How could you not tell me?’ Maddie choked out. ‘How could you let me find out like this?’

  ‘Don’t you think I’ve wanted to tell you, so many times?’ Sarah pleaded. ‘But I was so afraid of losing you. I couldn’t bear for you to look at me the way you are now.’

  ‘Every time I look in the mirror, I’ll see you,’ Maddie said bitterly. ‘Half of me is you. No wonder the police thought I killed Noah.’ She turned to DS Ballard. ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, that’s what he said. Isn’t that what you’re all wondering?’

  ‘Whatever DS Shortall might think, that’s not the way I do police work,’ DS Ballard said crisply. ‘I look at the evidence in front of me. Evil isn’t inherited. We’re not talking red hair or blue eyes here. If you had anything to do with your son’s death, trust me, I’ll hold you to account, but you certainly won’t avoid responsibility by blaming it all on your genes.’

  Maddie was starting to feel light-headed. Black spots danced before her eyes and she gripped the edge of the sink more tightly for support. She needed to get out of here before she fainted. She needed air.

  She needed Lucas.

  ‘You have to leave,’ she told DS Ballard abruptly. ‘Take my mother with you. Lock her up and throw away the key for all I care. I’m going to find my husband.’

  ‘What about the children?’ Sarah said. ‘Who’s going to look after them?’

  Maddie turned to her incredulously. ‘I’ll take them with me. You think I’ll ever let you near them again?’

  Maddie could hear her mother calling her name as she locked herself in the bathroom and rested her head against the cool tiled wall. This couldn’t be happening. Any minute now, she was going to open her eyes and discover it was all just a hideous nightmare. Her baby would still be alive. Her husband would still be the honest, trustworthy man she’d married. And her mother would be an ordinary grandmother, who organised charity raffles and made papier-mâché blowfish with her granddaughter, her most guarded secret the recipe to her Christmas rum cake.

  Lydia h
ad only been two years older than Emily when she’d strangled that little girl. Dear God, what could have driven her to do such an evil, unforgivable thing?

  Maddie pressed the heels of her hands hard against her eyes and shook her head as if to clear the images away. She could feel the darkness threatening to engulf her. She couldn’t allow it to win. She had Emily and Jacob to think of.

  She opened her eyes again. Emily was shaking her shoulder. She was no longer hiding in the bathroom but sitting behind the wheel of her Land Rover, the two children buckled in behind her. She had no idea how she’d got there. Her mouth felt dry and cottony, as if she’d been drugged.

  ‘Mummy,’ Emily said. ‘Why aren’t you driving? You said we had to go and get Lucas. You said it was urgent.’

  Maddie struggled to focus. Her brain was foggy, and she felt unbelievably tired, as if she’d run a marathon. Another memory blackout. Thank God she hadn’t driven anywhere in her fugue state. If only she could forget everything that had happened in the last fortnight. Sleep, and never wake up.

  ‘I’m sorry, Em,’ she said thickly, starting the engine. The police vehicle and her mother’s car were no longer in the driveway. She didn’t know if the two detectives had arrested her mother, and she didn’t care. ‘I’ll take you to Auntie Jayne’s—’

  ‘Auntie Jayne is in Scotland till Saturday,’ Emily said. ‘She promised she’d bring us back a haggis, remember?’

  ‘Yes, of course she is,’ Maddie said, flustered. ‘I’ll have to take you to the sanctuary, then. Bitsy and Izzy can look after you for a little while. I’ll come and get you before bedtime.’

  ‘I hate the sanctuary,’ her daughter said mutinously. ‘Why can’t we come with you?’