Guilty

by Siobhan MacDonald

  ‘… can contact the incident room on …’ The reporter was still talking.

  Horrified, Luke tried to follow the rest of the report.

  ‘It appears that the injured child lay on the road for some considerable time before discovery. A normally busy road, it would seem that most local people were absorbed with the country’s fortunes in the soccer match. And tragically, for little Maisie it would appear that what the medics call the golden hour, was lost.’

  Luke felt his knees might buckle. White noise engulfed him. Fear, regret and deep self-loathing screamed inside his skull. To think the child had been alive, this was the worst. There could be nothing worse. How would he bear this revelation? What had befallen him? He could have saved her. What had happened to his guiding moral code, ‘Do no harm’?

  The impact of the accident and his negligence bore down on him. He was guilty of murder. Here he was, a medical professional tasked with administering care to the ill and dying, and he’d knocked down a child, abandoning her to die on the road. He might have saved her; because of his inaction a child was dead.

  Why had he taken Alison’s word? He should have confirmed her vital signs himself. He thought the child had been killed outright. That was horrendous enough, but this? To think he could have saved her. He would never bear it.

  ‘She was alive, Alison,’ he whispered. ‘She was alive when we left her. Did you hear what the reporter said? Alive.’

  He said it not in accusation, just repeating the fact.

  ‘I think she gets that, Luke.’ Cornelius adjusted his glasses and pushed the off button on the remote. Alison stared out the window at the horses, her expression unfathomable.

  ‘I could have saved her,’ said Luke.

  ‘You don’t know that,’ came Cornelius’s swift reply. The old man creaked to his feet. ‘What happened was terrible … of course it was. You knocked a child down. It was an accident. Accidents happen.’ He shuffled to the drinks cabinet. ‘We’ve been through all of this. There’s nothing to be gained from blaming Alison … or yourself.’ He tugged at a cork.

  Luke had never been more certain about anything in his life. It was his fault. What he’d done was unforgivable. Even if he could find a way to bear what he had done, he knew that it would stain every waking and sleeping moment for the rest of his life.

  Cornelius poured two glasses of cognac. Luke watched him shuffle back across the creaking floorboards and hand one to his daughter. With a steady hand she took the glass.

  ‘I said it last night and I’ll say it again. What we do is lay low, keep our cool.’ Cornelius sipped his drink. ‘You too, Luke,’ he added as if suddenly remembering that Luke was part of this. ‘We carry on as normal.’

  ‘Normal?’

  Luke’s incredulity went unremarked as Alison and Cornelius fell into a conversation of their own. Did Cornelius have any idea what normal was, Luke asked himself? It wasn’t any version of normal that Luke had known. He felt himself sinking deeper and deeper into the mire of Crow Hall. He felt lost.

  ‘Are you OK, Luke? We can stop here if you like?’

  ‘What …?’ Luke found himself hauled back to the present, staring mindlessly at the rubber plant in the room. He curiously noted how all the leaves bar one had been swept free of dust.

  ‘I can see this disclosure is traumatic …’

  ‘It’s OK, I’m fine,’ he lied.

  ‘Very well, if you’re sure. You were talking about you and Alison carrying on as normal,’ said Terence encouragingly.

  ‘Normal,’ Luke repeated. He shook his head. ‘I guess I must have loved Alison once. Or at least the idea of who I thought she was. Back then, like now, she was always full of surprises.’

  ‘Can you elaborate on that?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  Luke began.

  Alison was sticking to her father’s advice. She didn’t speak about what happened. In the days that followed, she immersed herself in her new PR business and horse riding. Unlike Alison, Luke was in turmoil. He spent as much time as he could at the hospital, and the time he did spend at home, he spent writing papers. The thrill of moving to the Glasshouse was gone. When an architectural magazine asked if they could come and photograph the house, Alison was excited. Her enthusiasm confounded him. How did she have the capacity to find pleasure in anything?

  Then one night, Luke arrived home late from the High Dependency Unit. There had been a suspicion of endocarditis with a patient who’d been fitted with a defibrillator. It hadn’t been a patient of Luke’s, but he’d stayed, maintaining vigil long after the team assured him they were competent to manage the situation. The truth was that he was more comfortable in the hospital than at home.

  Returning to the Glasshouse and waiting for the gates to open, he could see the house was in darkness. He guessed Alison had gone to bed. She seemed able to sleep. Inside the house, his footsteps echoed off the marble floors and the smell of fresh paint filled his nostrils.

  At the rear of the house, through the glass in the garden room, he could see the gently lapping water of the lough reflecting off the walls in the moonlight. The rain from earlier in the day had cleared and it was beautiful, but he couldn’t allow himself to be soothed. Anguish was his new companion. Collapsing onto the sofa, he reached for the TV remote.

  All day he’d kept busy. But it had been there in his mind all the time, the fact that the funeral was today. He flicked through the channels, searching for the news, hoping in a way not to find it. He skimmed past it at first then backtracked to the local channel. With a knot in his gut, he stared at the screen. The church was overflowing, a large crowd outside, solemn-faced in the rain as they listened to the eulogy on a loudspeaker.

  The bulletin reported all sections of society were represented at the funeral. The Mayor was there and the President had sent his aide-de-camp. All decent society was appalled that a child celebrating her first communion had been mown down and left to die on a usually busy road.

  Luke stared at the screen. The crowd parted. Four pall-bearers, heads downcast, appeared at the mouth of the church, carrying a coffin. A white coffin. A couple, arms linked and dressed in black, appeared behind.

  The parents.

  As someone stepped forward to protect them with an umbrella, the mother stumbled and buried her face against the father’s shoulder. The crowd gasped. A guard of honour lined the path to the hearse and two rows of children in school uniform wiped their faces as rain and tears streamed down their cheeks. Luke thought his skull would explode. Suddenly, he was rigid. He couldn’t have seen that. He’d imagined it. His mind was playing tricks. Such a thing would be obscene. Straightening himself, he watched as mourners approached the bereaved couple, shaking hands, moving off, wiping away tears.

  And … there she was.

  His stomach lurched.

  It was her.

  There was no mistake. There she was. Stepping into their space, bending her head, hugging the bereaved mother.

  Alison.

  He could hardly believe what he was seeing. His wife’s back was to the camera as she lingered a while, then turning, tissue in hand, she patted underneath her eyes. He was aghast. What was she doing?

  In the days before the funeral, Luke and Alison had observed their code of silence. There hadn’t been a single mention of the accident or the upcoming funeral. He was happy to stay out of Alison’s way, much as, he imagined, she was happy to stay out of his, both too upset to face what lay between them. But this? Alison going to the dead child’s funeral, paying her respects to the child’s parents? It was grotesque.

  Turning the TV off, Luke got to his feet. Upstairs, moonlight streamed through the enormous glass rooflight bathing the mezzanine hallway in its soft glow. A sliver of light shone through a crack in the bedroom door. He could hear Alison breathing. He went to the side of the bed and stood looking down at her. She was in a deep sleep.

  ‘Alison?’

  No response.

  ‘Alison?
’ More loudly now.

  ‘What …?’ She opened her eyes. She pushed herself back on the pillow. ‘Jesus! What is it? Why are you staring at me like that?’

  ‘I’ve just seen the news … coverage of the funeral.’

  ‘Yes. And …?’

  She looked puzzled.

  ‘You were there, Alison. I saw you. On the TV. You actually went to that child’s funeral – commiserated with the parents.’

  She sat upright.

  ‘Yes, that’s right, I did.’

  ‘Can you explain to me why you would do such a thing?’

  ‘Of course I can.’

  She spoke slowly as if she were explaining a difficult concept to a child.

  ‘The President’s aide-de-camp was going. All the figures in local public life were going. Dad wanted to go too but he had chest pain this morning. Someone had to go to represent him.’

  Moonlight had illuminated one side of her face, making her seem ethereal and angel-like; the other side was in shadow. Outside, where the lawn fell away to the shore he noticed a fluttering. Night-time creatures winged by. Bats, he guessed.

  ‘Are you going to stand there and stare at me all night?’ she said after a while.

  ‘I could stand here and stare at you for the rest of my life and I’d never understand what you’ve just done.’

  She fell silent, considering his response. Then sliding under the sheet again, she said, ‘Come to bed, Luke. It’s late. You’ll feel differently in the morning.’

  But Luke did not join his wife that night. He turned his back on her, not leaving the bedroom door ajar but shutting it firmly behind him. He returned to the lower floor. He swung his legs up on the sofa and covered them with a throw. There he stayed in the moonlight, staring out at the lough until dawn streaked the sky, cold and unforgiving.

  ‘I’m sorry, Luke. Can we pause there a moment?’ Terence held up a finger. Sounds outside his office heralded the arrival of another client. ‘Let me just check on something.’

  As he went out into the hallway, he left the door ajar. Luke could hear him speaking in hushed tones at reception. He tensed. Terence had heard enough. He was probably out there calling for the police.

  Diagnosis

  Terence re-entered the room. ‘I’ve just asked her to reset my next appointment by half an hour. You’ve been through a traumatic disclosure. I’d like the chance to put a few things in context for you.’

  Luke experienced a sudden surge of panic. This was a delaying tactic, keeping him there until the police arrived. ‘There’s no need.’ He made as if to stand. ‘I have to be gone in the next ten minutes. I have a long list back at the hospital.’

  ‘Look, I appreciate you’re pressed for time. But I really think you should hear me out, as one professional to another.’

  Luke made a quick recalculation. Given Terence’s reaction so far, Luke suspected in reality the therapist was unlikely to call the police just yet. It wouldn’t be his style. He wanted Luke to come clean on his own terms and he’d already hinted it was in Luke’s long-term interests to reveal his part in this nightmare.

  Perhaps Luke should stay a little longer. He wasn’t in control of himself. He should compose himself before taking off for the hospital. ‘Give me a second.’ He pulled his mobile from his pocket. He searched for Hugh. They sometimes covered for one another. Maybe he could squeeze in an extra twenty minutes.

  Terence waited.

  As soon as Luke had finished texting, Terence continued, ‘I hear what you’ve been telling me about Alison and her father, and I’ll come to all that later. But for now, I think we both agree that you’ve been suffering deeply with a post-traumatic stress disorder.’

  Luke nodded.

  ‘And if you recall what brought you here to me in the first place, it was your care of a young girl suffering trauma. I’m guessing she too had been in a car accident …’

  ‘A hit-and-run,’ Luke confirmed. There it was. That awful expression. His mobile pinged. He checked. It was Hugh:

  Happy to oblige, if patients happy to settle for little old me of course.

  Terence signalled that he should deal with his phone.

  Cheers. I owe you.

  If Luke’s patients had any inkling what he’d done, they’d desert him in droves.

  Terence pressed ahead. ‘Presumably you’ve attended other children in similar circumstances since the accident fifteen years ago?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Where was Terence going with this?

  ‘But there was something in particular about this recent accident, something about this recent patient that caused you trauma. There were similarities with what happened fifteen years ago?’

  ‘It wasn’t the accident itself,’ Luke confessed, ‘but the parents’ reaction to the hit-and-run that brought it home to me. They couldn’t believe that someone could knock their child down and just take off. They couldn’t comprehend how someone could leave the scene of an accident …’ He paused. ‘It must have been like that for the parents of the little girl that I … that I knocked down all those years ago. It came home to me … the enormity of the pain and suffering I had inflicted. It’s been with me all this time, it never went away, but to be confronted with it head-on like that … it made itself so real to me that night.’

  ‘Would I be right in saying that up until the accident on the twenty-seventh of May fifteen years ago, that you thought yourself a strong person, and you saw yourself in a positive light?’

  ‘Well … yes. I’d always derived satisfaction from feeling that I was doing valuable work.’

  ‘That figures.’ Terence leaned in, making steeples of his fingers. ‘What happened to you is like a shellshock, if you can imagine it like that. A number of assumptions you subconsciously made about yourself have been shattered by this tragedy. Your belief in your own personal invulnerability has been shattered. Your perception of the world as a meaningful place has been destroyed. And thirdly and perhaps most damaging of all – your ability to see yourself in a positive light has been damaged.’

  Luke sat back, absorbing what he had heard. ‘Yes … yes, that’s all true,’ he said. ‘I see what you are saying.’

  Terence had summarised his situation perfectly. While Luke had been fumbling about his consciousness trying to articulate these feelings, Terence had come up with an accurate and grim analysis of Luke’s mental state. Being able to put into words how he was feeling made Luke feel more in control. For the first time, he felt like someone understood. Forgiveness was not what he was looking for. That was out of the question.

  ‘You’re in a profession that seeks to heal and repair people physically,’ Terence carried on. ‘You enjoy doing good. To heal yourself, you need to rid yourself of this secret. You have made the first step, here, with me. The next step is up to you. What do you want to do next, do you think? What does Luke want?’

  Luke had thought about it plenty. He was cautious. ‘I need more time.’

  ‘Take all the time you need. You will make the right choice, I know that. And I want you to own that choice.’

  Part of Luke hoped that he could somehow reassemble a fractured version of himself. Another part was so tired that he wanted it all to be over. But he couldn’t just hand himself in to the police. It wasn’t that simple.

  And then it came to him. Why not explain to Terence his reluctance to go to the authorities? Why not explain what would happen if he did? Let the therapist decide what was wise. Let him decide if it was worth it.

  ‘Believe me, Terence,’ he said, ‘I’ve thought about handing myself in to the police many times. But I’m going to tell you a little story. I’m going to tell you what will happen if I do that. Then I’m also going to explain what will happen if you do.’

  Terence stopped clicking his biro.

  ‘It’s not a threat,’ Luke spoke softly. ‘But you need to know what I’m dealing with. I probably have twenty minutes or so to play with. Do you?’

 
Terence nodded, looking grave. He checked the clock above the filing cabinet.

  ‘My next appointment isn’t until half-past.’

  ‘All right, then …’

  The time had come to talk about the homecoming.

  Daughters

  February

  ‘It was nerve-wracking taking Nina out of the orphanage, out of Russia, and back to Ireland for the first time,’ Luke said.

  ‘I’m sure it was,’ said Terence.

  ‘I remember sitting in the back of the car with Nina, and I remember stopping at the crow-topped pillars to drive up the long avenue to Crow Hall.’ He closed his eyes picturing that afternoon.

  The gates to the avenue were open. They turned in off the narrow lane. To their right, over the line of hedging, he could see the three large chimney stacks of the former hunting lodge. The hedge obscured the facade of the seventeenth-century house. The place gave Luke the creeps. The single-storey, five-bay lodge had been extended and remodelled over the years. It was an ugly house. Behind the house were the stables and the scrapyard.

  Luke’s hand tightened on Nina’s and he fixed a smile on his face. As they approached they could see everyone waiting on the front porch. A Welcome banner was draped across the stone columns on either side of the front door. None of this had been Luke’s idea. He’d wanted to take Nina to the Glasshouse, his and Alison’s home. Cornelius was turning what should have been a small, intimate, gathering into something resembling a trade delegation. Altogether unfitting and ill-considered for the arrival of a young child with only a few words of English.

  ‘Isn’t this sweet?’ Alison checked with them in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Peachy,’ said Luke.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so sarcastic.’

  Alison had been amused by his insistence on sitting in the back with Nina. He was regretting that now, feeling queasy. ‘See, Nina.’ Alison glanced over her shoulder as she drove. ‘Grandpa’s organised everyone at Crow Hall to welcome you home.’

  ‘This is Grandpa’s home, Nina,’ Luke was quick to point out. ‘You, me and Mummy have our own home, a short drive from here.’