by Ali Knight
‘Do you know how it feels to put thirty years into something? No, you don’t. People think family is for ever, that children are a lifetime’s work. But children live with their parents for, what, twenty years? My working life is fifty years. My work is my family, Kate. That’s a choice I made, I made it freely and I’ve no regrets. And I’m not going to let a badly drawn contract ruin that effort. It’s simply not going to happen.’
‘You’re insane.’
Portia takes a step towards me, the lighter near her face. ‘Like I said, Kate, you don’t get it. It all depends on where you stand. This is my life. I’ll fight as hard for it as you will for yours. That’s intelligence and bravery, not insanity.’
‘I never did anything to you!’
‘The world is full of victims, I’m afraid. ‘This is nothing personal, it’s just business.’
‘“Business”? You can’t kill people for that!’
‘You know something?’ She’s inching towards me. ‘I can’t stand the trite nonsense of those who spout “on my deathbed I won’t wish that I worked more”! It’s pathetic. Work is my life Kate. I love it!’ She puts particular emphasis on that word. ‘Just like Paul loves it. I live for the status, the money, the respect, the fame and, yes, the fear that power brings. Do you really think I’d let a tiny company like Forwood, run by people like Lex, take that away? Do you think I could tolerate Lex strutting into my boardroom and demanding to call the shots? Giving me my marching orders at a time when my shares are worth hardly more than I bought them for? You bring up children and expect love in return. If you don’t get it you feel cheated. Well that’s how I feel.’
I’m back against Ava’s bedroom door now, staring at that lighter. I feel the cold metal of the key in my fingers. ‘You’d be a laughing stock, the first female CEO of a bankrupt company. That doesn’t get you a knighthood.’ My toe touches something. I daren’t look down, I’ve made that mistake once before and been punished for it.
‘When I found out about Melody and Paul it was the perfect way to get the chaos going. Discrediting Forwood’s directors would have given reason to delay the sale date until conditions were better.’
I kick out at the object on the floor, lifting it high in the air. A flash of red and orange passes my eyeline and instantly I know it’s Ava’s robot. ‘Enemies attack! Enemies attack!’ It explodes into sound when it’s moved and takes Portia by surprise. She stumbles a little, which gives me a crucial second to knock the lighter from her hand and watch it bounce away down the stairs. I slam my elbow into her face and knock her out of the way. I get the key in the lock as she jumps on me and tries to yank me backwards, and the key turns as I’m pulled to the floor. My back explodes in a million shards of spiky pain and I know I have no strength to resist her any more.
Portia climbs on my chest in a parody of the play fights my children have with each other, my arms pinned by her knees. The pain sucks my breath away. From somewhere she produces a rope, puts it over my head and tightens it around my neck. My eyes bulge with the pressure, my head is about to explode. ‘That’s better. Don’t struggle. Sometimes business is unpleasant, deeply unpleasant.’ Portia wipes strands of hair off my reddening face as if she’s fascinated by the physical trauma she’s inflicting. ‘Those that stand in the way are dispatched; those that can help are cultivated’. Her melodious voice is calm, almost mocking. ‘You think Paul’s with you? No . . . Paul’s with me.’
I have no more struggle left. My eyelids are a red curtain that fall across my vision and I sense a terrible disappointment. Portia has confused me; in my last seconds I’m left wondering if Paul and her . . . I hear the noise of a heavy pebble dropping into a lake at dusk, but then the dreadful pressure on my chest and my neck is released and with great difficulty I raise those falling red curtains with a desperate intake of breath. Portia has tumbled away to my side and above me stands Paul in the doorway, the cricket bat hanging loosely in his fingers. He looks at me with a blank stare before his eyes roll to the back of his head and he collapses to the floor.
My coughing and spluttering is agony on my ribs but I grab the banister and stand. Josh appears and I try to hug him, but the pain brings me up short. The smell of gas is overpowering, clinging to the back of my throat.
‘Open every door and window, right now! Don’t use the phone in here, it might blow the house. Go out in the street and get someone.’ He sprints into my bedroom, glad to have instructions to follow.
I stumble down into the hall and into the cupboard under the stairs, reeling back from the broken pipe. The hiss of the escaping gas is indistinguishable from the hissing in my head. I have to check whether Portia’s threat about Ava is true. If she’s hidden her somewhere close to the gas this is the most obvious place. I crawl into the back of the dark cupboard, too scared to turn on the light. ‘Ava!’ On my knees I try to pull at the old door that covers the disused coal cellar, my chest protesting violently at every yank. It opens with difficulty and I have no choice but to crawl in, groping blindly. She’s not here. My Ava isn’t here.
I check the rest of the ground floor, my back wetter and wetter, my vision beginning to swim again. I open the back door. No, she wouldn’t have risked carrying her across the garden, there are too many neighbours who might have seen. The clear air refocuses my fuzzy mind. A four-year-old girl is so tiny, she can be rolled in a carpet, popped in a box. I weave across the lawn, nausea coming in waves. The Wendy house is home to shrivelled leaves, the shed smells of old grass cuttings and Cuprinol and has long been undisturbed, the narrowboat doors are locked. I shout Ava’s name again, drag myself round to the far side of the boat and see that floating on the canal is my pale blue plastic suitcase, transplanted from the top of my wardrobe. I bought it for our honeymoon. Ava would fit in there. My heart drops through into a world where whole new levels of dread exist. Ava is in there.
I can’t reach it. I can’t swim, and the rowboat is moored on the far side by the towpath where I rowed it over last night and in a fit of pointless spite cut the rope that could save my daughter. I can’t jump in and save her, I can’t leave her to get help. A boat will pass and upend the suitcase. She’ll start to struggle and it will tip. I scream for Paul and I scream for Josh as the paralysis of sheer terror possesses me. She is so near and yet so far. My screams end in a whimper and I battle to get a grip. I rush to the shed and get the rake, but leaning over the side I still can’t reach the suitcase. Midway through a torrent of swearing I see the rubber inflatable on this side of the boat. Of course! I’m not thinking straight, my brain a scrambled mess that logical thinking cannot penetrate. I take off my jacket. I drop down on to the side of the Marie Rose and look at the water. It’s a long way down, but there’s nothing to do but roll off the side holding the inflatable. I pray that the splash doesn’t capsize the suitcase.
The water is freezing. My baby will be cold, so cold in there. I kick out to the suitcase and pull on the handle, my numb hands have difficulty springing the catches. The lid pops up and through the three-inch gap I see Ava’s dark almond eyes, her father’s eyes, staring out at me. I throw back the lid of this perverted moses basket and it starts to sink. Ava tips towards me in the water, her eyebrows high parentheses on her forehead. Her mouth is taped like Paul’s was, and I didn’t notice that her hands are tied in front of her. I grab her round the waist with an arm as she struggles, panic etched on her silent face, my elbow hooked inside the rubber ring. Keeping her afloat is much harder than I realised; several times my head drops under the water as we kick and tussle. ‘Put your hands on the ring!’ I splutter and kick towards the bank. We inch forwards, my movements getting slower and slower. The grotesque pain in my chest lessens. The water is so cold I’m like an engine seizing up without its oil; soon it will stop altogether. Ava is hardly moving, no signs of protest come from her. She’s in severe danger of dying out here with the cold and the shock.
I can’t get back on the boat, the sides may as well be a mountain. I chang
e direction and attempt to kick to the bank. I have no energy to cry out or shout. Ava’s stopped moving, her head slumps forward in the water, her tied hands start to come away from the ring. ‘No!’ I try to roll her over to get her face upright, the struggle seems endless. I’m not sure I can do this alone, I have come this far, we are this close.
‘Give her to me!’ Josh is leaning over the side of the Marie Rose, his long wiry arms reaching down for his sister. With a final few kicks I come in closer to the hull. I don’t have the strength to lift her up. Her face looks waxy, her eyes are closed. Josh shimmies his stomach further out from the side of the boat, further forwards and down, and he manages to grabs the rope that binds her hands and starts to pull her up to safety. Water drains off my lifeless child. Her eyes flutter open as Josh pulls and I see her feet disappear over the side of the boat ‘She’s going to be OK, Mum, they’re here, they’re here.’ He’s waving urgently behind him at someone in the garden. ‘She needs to get warm, she’s four years old!’ he’s shouting. Josh looks so tall from down here. My baby’s growing up, he’s taking control. He stands with his hands on his hips as I feel the boat rock with many heavy feet, hear disembodied and confused voices. He looks like a man. He looks like his dad.
A second later a burly bloke with a camera round his neck and tattoos on his arm bends down and fishes me out of the canal. ‘Bit parky in there!’ He puts a hand gently behind my neck and I fold backwards. I see other men with cameras standing and taking pictures, a skinny bloke rushes over and puts a throw from the sofa over my shivering body. The press pack from the street outside who were once tormentors have changed into saviours.
‘Great job, son,’ the burly man says to Josh. ‘The paramedics are on their way, love,’ to me.
I try to sit up. ‘Ava . . .’
‘She’s breathing, we need to warm her up.’ He peers across at something before looking back and smiling. ‘She’s under every duvet you’ve got in your house.’
‘Paul . . . Paul—’
But he stops me. ‘Now Mrs Forman, you need to lie back and think of England.’
I look up at the white sky, feeling a tear or maybe the start of the next rain shower trickle down my cheek. I hear my daughter’s tiny cry as the tape is ripped off her mouth. Never has a yelp of pain sounded so good. The paparazzo gives me a gap-toothed smile as his warm hands smooth sodden strands of hair from my face. I dare to have a small flutter of hope that another day will come to us all.
Epilogue
The hairs on my arm sway in the water like seaweed in a tidal swell. My fingernails appear milk-white against my suntanned fingers. I stand and poke my swimming cap behind my ears; the gurgle and woosh of my own body is distracting and I like hearing my children squeal and their feet splatter across the marble of the poolside. Ava’s wearing a rubber ring in the shape of a swan; Josh is growling like a lion.
I take a deep breath and put my hands together, leaning forward in the intense blue and feeling the grooves between the mosaic tiles under my feet. The other end of the pool looks a long way away, but I’m very determined. I splash a little water on my face and squint against the relentless Mediterranean sun. A tall, dark figure in bright shorts wobbles in my water-clouded vision. Paul is holding a pool net by his side, just in case. ‘You’ll never be more ready, Eggy,’ he coaxes.
I’m learning to swim. Maybe I’ll take a cordon bleu cookery course next. But today I’m getting to the end of this twenty-five metres.
I got to sit on the sofa with Marika. I got my moment in the television sun. Marika sat closer to me than she ever sat to Colin and held my hand several times as she insisted I told my story, my way. And I did. My bruised neck was invisible under the thick television make-up. The viewers couldn’t see the stitches across the gash in my back or the pills in my bag for the pain in my ribs. Paul wasn’t there. Marika’s eyelashes had lowered even further in sympathy as I explained that he was still in hospital, that recovery from the severe impact to the head was taking longer than doctors had hoped. For a while it was touch and go, but I was confident he’d pull through. He was a fighter, after all.
The water slooshes between my breasts under my one-piece. My years of wearing a bikini are over and I feel little regret at their passing. Jessie walks past into the house in a fashionable sarong and a cowboy hat, holding a barbeque fork aloft. Her newly separated Adam follows a step behind with a large bowl in which shellfish from the local market suffocate slowly. The wheel of life never stops turning. It’s lovely to have her here and this house is big enough for a crowd. Paul suggested we needed to get away from London for a while, recover ourselves, escape bad memories. He was right; the media exposure was intense and, after all, we can afford it.
I kick off from the bottom and doggy-paddle away from the edge. It’s not stylish but it’s effective. A bit like me, some might say. I’ve had fan letters at Crime Time to just that effect. When I showed them to Paul he got worried about a stalker, but I laughed it off. Let’s not get above ourselves, I said.
I learned to swim with a former marine called Bobby. I treated myself to private lessons. ‘I don’t want you to pick up the bad habits you see in pools all over Britain,’ he said, lying me back in the water in the shallow end and aligning my body correctly. ‘It’s all about your head. A human head is very heavy, it weighs the same as a melon.’ I jackknifed to vertical in a panic, spitting water. His comment had brought back the image of Portia’s head being split open by that cricket bat . . . It was too vivid and too soon. I force the picture away and look over at my children. Josh is doing a cartwheel near some lavender bushes as Ava watches him, scratching her shin with her foot. We took the kids to counselling, of course. Eloide provided a host of celebrity recommendations. Their resilience has been a marvel to us all.
I’m out in deeper water now, knowing the bottom is angling away from my feet. I need to concentrate, but most of all I need to keep calm. Bobby said with an air of wonder that I was one of his most difficult pupils, that I was stubborn in my fear. ‘It’s all in the mind, Kate. Free your mind.’ I think Bobby’s a bit of a secret hippy. ‘It’s never going to happen!’ Unfortunately this didn’t offer me any comfort. I know that it can – and that it did.
Marika asked the hard questions as we communed on the couch. I tried to ignore my nerves and Livvy giving me the thumbs-up behind the cameras. ‘So you really thought for a while that your husband, who you’ve been with for ten years and is the father of your two children, had murdered his lover and his business partner?’
‘Yes.’
Marika sighed theatrically. ‘But how did that make you feel?’
My nerves fell away as I watched Marika’s glossy lips twitching in anticipation of some juicy revelations. ‘Just very determined to get to the truth. That was the most important thing of all. For my children, for myself – and for Paul.’
‘You’ve been called a bloodhound, as we know, for your tenacity and your spirit!’
‘I miss Lex very much. We often didn’t see eye to eye, but he was his own person and I respected him immensely. Without his message to me I would never have got to the truth. I think I have quite a dark side, I’m prepared to believe the most terrible things about people, and that includes those closest to me.’
‘Are you together with your husband – as a couple, as a family – now?’
‘Yes. We’re very happy, happier than we’ve ever been.’
‘Tell us, Kate, how is it possible to rebuild the trust, to love again, after having those thoughts, those terrible suspicions – and let’s not forget, your husband did have an affair, which was broadcast to the nation, by you?’
Paul is walking along the side of the pool watching me. ‘Halfway, Eggy.’ His washboard stomach is tanned a deep brown. He’s still regaining the weight he lost in hospital. The sun has etched deep laughter lines round those big brown eyes. Jessie’s started calling him a playboy and I’m not sure I like it. I might have to tell her to stop. He keeps pace
with me in silence, knowing better than to give me instructions. I’m using Bobby’s method and no one else’s. I’m over the deepest part of the pool now and I can feel cooler water ballooning up from the depths. Swimming is tiring and the end still looks far away.
I didn’t pull my punches. I told Marika the story of Paul’s affair. Told her we were working it through, that we had a new honesty and appreciation of each other, that having come so close to losing everything I had forgiven him entirely. I didn’t tell her how easy it was. I never wanted to leave Paul for a second, and every gesture and look of his suggested he felt the same. We were fighting an external enemy bent on destroying us and this fused us together in a way few things could. When it was all hanging by a thread, we realised the depth of our bond to each other.
‘Now, Kate, you more than most have had your most private moments captured by our increasingly filmed world – the narrowboat video obviously, but the press even took pictures of Gerry dead in your living room, of your daughter being rescued from the canal. Is this a step too far?’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Lex would have loved it. He would probably have said it was reality TV taken to a new level. I’m just so thankful that Portia didn’t succeed.’
Josh chases Ava through the large sliding doors, John swings in a hammock under the willow tree. Sarah and her family are arriving in two days, even the M&Ms said they might drop in later in the summer. All’s right with the world until I accidently suck water into my mouth. I start coughing and lose my rhythm. Paul stops his poolside amble. I start treading water too quickly and begin a mental fight between panic and sanity metres from the end of the horizon pool. Paul takes a step towards the edge, swinging the long pole to upright, his senses alert for the next development. We lock eyes. ‘You’ve done the hard bit. You know the rest. Come on.’
