A Mother's Secret

by T J Stimson

DS Ballard might dismiss the idea of an evil gene, but plenty of well-respected scientists had devoted their careers to researching it. Genes didn’t just cover physical traits, like curly hair or big feet. As she’d learned online in the last twelve hours, scientists had already proved that behavioural disorders like autism had a genetic aspect, and many believed other traits like alcoholism and a predisposition to addiction could be passed on, too. The so-called ‘warrior gene’ had been scientifically linked to antisocial behaviour and violence: criminals in jail were far more likely to have it than the rest of the population. They might not have found the gene for murder yet, but why shouldn’t psychopathy be inherited too?

  It wasn’t an excuse – DS Ballard was right about that. No one was saying rapists and murderers couldn’t help it: everyone had a choice. But perhaps the tendency was there. An emotional disconnect. The right – or the wrong – set of circumstances: parental neglect, sexual or physical abuse, a traumatic childhood, and the same gene that propelled a child with a stable, loving upbringing to become a global business CEO could turn a damaged child into a monster. A perfect storm of genetics and circumstances, a fatal trigger, and evil was given wing.

  Maddie flushed the lavatory and leaned on the bathroom sink, staring at her reflection in the mirror. What had made a pretty eleven-year-old child strangle the little girl she was supposed to be babysitting? She couldn’t rest until she found out. If it had been an accident, a game that’d gone wrong, she could come to terms with that. But if it was something else, something darker, if there was wickedness in her own blood, she had to know.

  She had to find it, and root it out.

  Chapter 35

  Saturday 7.00 a.m.

  Maddie sat up in bed, not quite sure what had woken her. The doorbell buzzed again just as Emily’s blonde head appeared around the bedroom door.

  ‘Do you want me to get it, Mummy?’

  ‘No, you shouldn’t be answering the front door, not when we don’t know who it is.’ She flipped back the covers, careful not to rouse Jacob, who had woken crying in the night and refused to settle until she’d brought him into bed with her. Maddie hadn’t slept for more than half an hour at a time; she was terrified to be alone with either of the children. She didn’t trust herself anymore, not since she’d learned about her mother. It had only been the naive belief that violence wasn’t in her nature that had allowed her to trust she wouldn’t harm the children even if she had a blackout. Now, she didn’t even have that security to cling to.

  She struggled into her dressing gown and knotted it at her waist. ‘Can you go downstairs and put the kettle on, Emily, while I see who it is?’

  The doorbell rang again. Who on earth was here at this time on a Saturday morning? Lucas had a key, and she wasn’t expecting anyone.

  She peered through the gap in the bedroom curtain. She was at the wrong angle to see the front door, but an unfamiliar green Volvo estate was parked in the drive. Not the police, then. As she watched, a second car pulled up behind it, this time a blue SUV with tinted windows. Two middle-aged men in jeans and sweatshirts got out and went around to the rear of the vehicle. From what she could see, it looked like they were unpacking boxes from the back of the car. They must have got the wrong address.

  She dropped the curtain and hurried downstairs. The smudge of two figures was visible through the frosted glass pane in the front door. Before she had a chance to open it, one of the figures bent down and pried open the letter box.

  ‘Mrs Drummond! Mrs Drummond, are you in there?’

  She froze, and the letter box flapped again.

  ‘Mrs Drummond, this is Aaron Wilson for the Evening Observer. I can see you’re in there. I just wondered if we could have a word?’

  Her stomach plunged, as if she’d fallen headlong down a flight of stairs. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘We’d just like to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I think it would be better if we talked about this in private.’

  More shadows at the door. The letter box clanked as the journalist let go and stood up, and there was some jostling, and then a sharp knock on the glass.

  ‘Mrs Drummond? Peter Squire-Taylor, Daily News. Any chance you’ll be making a statement this morning?’

  ‘Why are you here?’ she called anxiously. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Mummy!’ Emily shouted from the kitchen, her voice high with panic. ‘Mummy!’

  Maddie ran down the hall to her daughter. Emily was cowering in a corner of the kitchen, scrunched into a tight ball, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, her bare feet poking out from beneath the hem of her nightie. She looked about four years old.

  There was a rap at the kitchen window as she crouched down beside Emily. A young man with a camera slung around his neck peered in at them. ‘Mrs Drummond?’ he called, raising his camera to the glass. ‘How do you feel about a quick picture with your daughter?’

  Maddie leaped up and rattled the kitchen blind closed. The young man simply went around to the back door and shook the handle.

  ‘Come on, Mrs Drummond. One picture, and I’ll be out of your hair.’

  ‘Go away!’ she shouted.

  ‘Look, Mrs D. Just one nice picture, maybe sitting out here on the terrace, won’t take a minute, everybody’s happy—’

  Maddie was suddenly consumed by unfamiliar fury. How dare these people come to her home, traumatise her daughter, invade her privacy and intrude on her grief, just to sell a few newspapers? Abruptly, she yanked open the back door, grabbing the shocked photographer’s camera and hauling him sideways by its strap before he had a chance to react. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she cried. ‘You can’t come round to people’s houses like this, harassing them in their own homes! You’re trespassing! Go away before I call the police!’

  ‘And tell them what?’ the young man sneered, scrabbling at the camera strap.

  ‘How about we start with you trying to take photographs of my nine-year-old daughter in her nightie,’ she snapped, flinging the camera back at him so it thumped him hard in the chest. ‘Let’s see how keen your paper is to buy pictures taken by a registered sex offender!’

  He looked alarmed. ‘There’s no need to be like that—’

  ‘Get out of my fucking garden! If I see you here again, I’ll call the police and have you arrested. And that’s if my husband doesn’t get to you first!’

  ‘All right, all right, keep your hair on. I’m leaving. But you can’t hide forever,’ he yelled, as she slammed the door on him. ‘This is a free country! People have a right to know if there’s a monster next door!’

  Maddie leaned against the door, her heart hammering. She’d got rid of one cockroach, but there would soon be a dozen more to take his place. She knew why they were here. Someone had leaked the news about her mother; maybe someone from inside the police investigation. Soon everyone would know.

  They’d be lucky if they weren’t run out of town. No one wanted the family of a baby-killer living next door, or their children sitting in the same classroom as their precious offspring. She’d read about sex offenders hounded out of their homes, bricks thrown through their windows and petrol poured through their letter boxes. A doctor in Wales had had his house wrecked by ignorant vigilantes who didn’t know the difference between a paediatrician and a paedophile. What would happen to Emily when her classmates found out who her grandmother was?

  ‘Why was that man trying to take pictures of us?’ Emily asked tearfully.

  ‘Ignore him, darling. And I’m sorry about Mummy’s swearing.’

  ‘What did he mean about monsters next door?’

  ‘He was just being silly, Emily. There’s no such thing as monsters, you know that.’

  Her daughter looked troubled. ‘Is he here to take photos of it?’

  ‘Emily, listen to me.’ She dropped down onto her haunches, so that she was at eye level with her daughter, and put her hands lightly on Emily’s shoulders. ‘T
here are no monsters, not here, not next door, and not anywhere else. That man was just trying to take photographs for a newspaper story. I promise you, there is nothing to be frightened of.’

  ‘Is the story about us?’

  Her daughter was too smart to be deflected for long. With a weary sigh, Maddie sat down on the kitchen floor, pulling Emily onto her lap. ‘Do you remember last summer, when your friend Becca’s daddy went away for a while?’

  Emily nodded. ‘He went to prison.’

  ‘Remember all those silly stories about him at school?’ Maddie asked, stroking her daughter’s blonde head. ‘People said he was a bad man, that he followed girls to the gym and murdered them on their way home. Remember? There was even that story in the newspaper about him, the Gym Killer, they called him.’

  Emily twisted around to look up at her mother. ‘But it was true. He did kill someone, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, but that wasn’t the whole story, was it? He’d knocked a poor girl off her bicycle when she was cycling home from the gym and she died. He’d been drinking, so the police arrested him and sent him to prison for a while. But he hadn’t murdered anyone. It was an accident, he hadn’t done it on purpose.’ She tucked a strand of hair behind her daughter’s ear. ‘He’d made a terrible mistake. He’d done a terrible thing and he was punished for it. But he wasn’t a bad man. We all knew he wasn’t a monster, like they said in the newspaper, that’s why Daddy stayed friends with him after he came out of prison.’

  ‘So the newspaper people made it all up?’

  She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. ‘They wanted to make the story sound more exciting, so more people would read it. They didn’t lie, exactly, but they made a big drama out of something that was very ordinary and very sad. Then people who hadn’t even read the story, who’d just heard about it from friends or seen something on Facebook, repeated it, and every time, the story got bigger and bigger, and in the end no one really cared what was true and what wasn’t.’

  ‘Becca had to leave school,’ Emily said sadly. ‘Is someone going to make up a story about us?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hope not, but I think they might, yes.’

  ‘Because of Noah? Are they going to say we killed him?’

  God, she was smart. ‘It doesn’t matter what they say,’ Maddie answered staunchly. ‘We know what’s true, don’t we?’

  The doorbell rang again. Moments later, she heard the metallic chink of the letter box opening and people calling her name.

  She stood up, and ushered Emily towards the stairs. ‘I need you to get dressed, darling, as quick as you can,’ she said quietly. ‘Put Rabbit in your backpack and anything else you want to bring with you. I’ll pack your clothes and your toothbrush.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Somewhere these vultures can’t find us.’ She chivvied her daughter up to her room. ‘Quickly now, Emily.’

  She packed a holdall with Emily’s clothes, then went into Jacob’s room and added what he needed. Leaving Emily to fill her backpack, she returned to her own bedroom. Jacob was still sleeping in her bed, and she checked on him quickly, then left him to sleep while she threw a few things into a second bag for herself. Jeans, a couple of T-shirts, underwear. She had no idea where she was going to take the children, but she couldn’t subject them to this. They’d have to hole up in a hotel somewhere, until the frenzy died down.

  She hooked back the edge of the curtain with one finger and peered down into the drive. She was shocked to see how many people had gathered outside. At least a dozen journalists and photographers were hanging around the front door, trampling the flower beds as they tried to see into her downstairs windows, heedless of the fact they were trespassing. Maddie felt a growing sense of outrage as she counted five cars blocking her driveway, with others double-parked on the main road. She hadn’t done anything wrong, yet these ambulance chasers were invading her privacy and terrifying her children for the sake of selling a few newspapers. It was still not quite eight o’clock on a Saturday morning, but the disturbance had brought curious neighbours out into the street, some still in their pyjamas, where they huddled in small knots, staring openly at her house. She wished Jayne wasn’t in Scotland, if only so she’d have one person on her side.

  Someone must have spotted her at the window. There was a sudden shout, and the journalists swarmed across the small front garden in a pack, shouting her name.

  She dropped out of sight and crawled to the bedside table, unplugging her phone and pulling up her list of contacts. Her car was blocked in and she had no intention of running the media gauntlet on foot, especially with Emily and Jacob.

  DS Ballard answered on the first ring. ‘You don’t have to explain,’ she said wearily. ‘We’ve already had several calls from your neighbours. We’ll have someone over there as soon as we can.’

  ‘This had to have come from someone in your team,’ Maddie snapped. ‘Someone leaked it to the press, and now I have journalists poking cameras through my windows, trying to take pictures of my children!’

  ‘Maddie, I am truly sorry. I’m trying to get someone there as soon as I can. It’s the weekend, it’s not easy. I’d come myself, but I’m in Birmingham.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do in the meantime?’

  ‘Just sit tight. I know that’s easier said than done, but try to be patient. To be honest, Maddie, there isn’t much we can do anyway. We can remove them from your property if they’re trespassing, but unless they’re posing a danger they have a legal right to be in the street.’

  ‘So I just have to put up with it?’

  ‘I’m sorry. They’ll get bored eventually.’

  ‘They’ll get bored? That’s the best you can do?’

  The detective sighed. ‘What do you want me to say, Maddie? I told you, the press has a legal right to be there.’

  There was a sudden crash of breaking glass, and Emily screamed.

  Moving faster than she ever had in her life, Maddie scooped her sleeping son from the bed and ran into her daughter’s bedroom. ‘Are you all right?’ she cried. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘It was downstairs,’ Emily said, her eyes huge with fear.

  From the top of the stairs, Maddie could see broken glass spilling across the floor of the sitting room.

  ‘You see what you’ve done?’ she shouted into the phone. ‘Bricks through my window! What next, petrol through the letter box? You need to get someone here now!’

  ‘A patrol is on the way,’ DS Ballard said tersely. ‘Stay inside, Maddie, and stay away from the windows.’s

  Chapter 36

  Saturday 8.00 a.m.

  Maddie sank onto the top stair, doing her best to calm Jacob as Emily pressed herself against her mother’s side. She put her arm round her daughter, the three of them clinging together in fear as the noise outside intensified. They could hear angry shouting, the rattle of gravel against the windows, the shatter of more glass. She didn’t know if some of her own neighbours had turned against her, or if word had got out online and vigilantes were taking up arms from far and wide. They were under siege, here in their own home in an ordinary cul-de-sac in the middle of the English countryside. But she was so inured to shock now she didn’t even have the energy to be surprised.

  A particularly loud bellow outside made them all jump, and Emily screamed as the front door flew open. Lucas stood in the doorway, a hulking great bear of a man, roaring at the assorted photographers and journalists and rubbernecking neighbours like the fairy tale giant who’d scented the blood of an Englishman. Maddie had never been so glad to see him in her life.

  Emily’s blonde hair streamed behind her as she flew down the stairs, launching herself at Lucas two steps from the bottom and clinging onto him like a human limpet. Lucas hooked one huge arm around her waist, swinging her up and settling her on his hip as if she were no heavier than Jacob, and then swung back towards the driveway. ‘Get those cars off my property!’ he roared. ‘Now!’

  Journ
alists scrambled over each other like Keystone Cops. Lucas had never thrown a punch in his life, but they weren’t to know that. She guessed the respite wouldn’t last long, and they’d regroup and gather again on the street, but she savoured it anyway.

  Her husband strode out to his car with Emily still in his arms, glowering ferociously at the photographers, daring them to take pictures. Maddie loaded the two holdalls she’d packed into the back of her Land Rover, then strapped Jacob into his car seat. There hadn’t been time to switch the seat to Lucas’s car, and she needed her own vehicle anyway. She watched Lucas roar off down the road, then jumped in her own car and reversed out of the drive to follow him.

  She called Lucas and put him on speakerphone. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Heading over to the Edenbridge Hotel. Meet me there, and make sure the bastards don’t follow you. I’ve already booked a junior suite for tonight, with a roll-away for Emily and a travel cot. It’s in Jayne’s name, just to be on the safe side. We can figure out once we’re there what we do next.’

  ‘How did you know the press were at the house?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  It took her a moment to realise what that meant. ‘You were coming home,’ she said, her throat suddenly tight. ‘You forgive me.’

  ‘You’re my wife,’ he said simply. ‘There’s nothing to forgive.’

  It was the first time since Noah had died that she felt they were truly on the same side.

  She parked the distinctive Land Rover out of sight at the back of the hotel and walked around the front to check in, waving away the teenage porter who offered to take her luggage. She could manage a single overnight bag and a backpack on her own, even carrying Jacob.

  Her own holdall she had left in the car.

  ‘You’re going there now?’ Lucas exclaimed, when she got to the hotel suite and explained what she planned to do. ‘Maddie, you saw the media circus back there! You think those journalists won’t have had the same idea as you?’

  ‘I’m hoping they’ll be too busy running my mother to ground for the next day or two to worry about me,’ she said, lowering Jacob to the floor with a sigh of relief. He was getting too heavy to carry far these days. ‘And as long as the reporters stay away from you and the children, they can follow me to Timbuktu for all I care. In fact, I hope they do, if it keeps them away from you.’