No Further Questions

by Gillian McAllister

  They weren’t just robbed of a chance to conceive. They were robbed of the full potential of a life. How they wanted to make silly faces at a new baby. To teach a second child to walk, and talk, and run. To develop new inside jokes about a second person. But nothing would materialize, no matter how hard they tried. There was nothing. They were creating nothing, month after month.

  And then she had slept with somebody else. The oldest trick in the book, though he couldn’t say he blamed her, not really.

  She had confessed immediately. Came home, walked in the door one cold November day, and said, ‘I slept with somebody else last night.’

  Her dispassionate tone shocked him almost as much as her words. He wondered, at first, if it was a result of the drinking. That had been steadily increasing, hardly any days without a glass of red, the clink of the recycling getting louder and louder each week.

  But it wasn’t. He watched her lower her handbag. It made a thudding sound as it hit the floor. ‘Who?’ he found himself saying, though he didn’t care who it was.

  ‘Carl from work. And no, I wasn’t drunk.’

  ‘I thought you were staying with Jenny.’

  She met his eyes, then, and her gaze wasn’t pleading, or contrite, or anything, really. There was a challenge, in it. Let’s address it, the face said.

  He thought of all the times recently when he’d avoided talking about their relationship. Their recent meal out at a steakhouse, without Xander, where Marc played on his phone for the entire meal. Rolling away from her in bed one morning because Super Sunday was on and he couldn’t be bothered to go down and press pause, come back and have sex. The courses he did on the internet, late at night, instead of joining her in bed. Something had settled between them, widening the more they ignored it, until it became too big to cross. They had become lazy about their own relationship, and that idleness had killed it. It had been amazing how easy it had been to fall out of love. It took hardly any effort at all.

  ‘I see,’ he had said quietly.

  ‘Should I go?’ she had asked.

  ‘Do what you want,’ he’d replied.

  Those four words sealed it. There was to be no reconciliation, no recovery, no intimacy, physical or otherwise. He moved out on the first of December. She’d already had half a bottle of wine by the time he’d packed his things. He saw Xander the next day, and the one after that – Becky had always been reasonable about shared residency – but it wasn’t the same. Of course it wasn’t. They were broken: a broken home. She’d left him no choice.

  He typed a text, now, standing in the living room.

  It always feels worse at the time. I still have a list from when Xander was small. Here it is. Feed. Change. Burp. Fart. Tired. Dirty nappy. Cold. Hot. Lonely. Teething. Pain. Overstimulated. Understimulated. Ill. No Reason. xx

  It was half-time, so he googled it, then texted again.

  Internet says if crying for no reason: sucking, swaddling, music, white noise, fresh air, bath, motion, massage. Take a break. You didn’t ask for this, Samuel, when you took it on. I know that. xx

  She didn’t reply to him, so he got the carpet out of his van. He wished he’d brought a beer, now. Could’ve made an evening out of it. Still. It was alright, he had the second half to look forward to. Perhaps he could pop out and get a beer later.

  The second half had just started, and right as he was stretching the carpet – the worst fucking part – his phone rang, with the ringtone he’d set just for Becky. The lilt of it still made something open up in his chest.

  ‘Alright?’ he said. ‘Still crying?’

  ‘Yeah, she just won’t stop,’ Becky said.

  Marc put the carpet stretcher down, reached over, and switched the television off. The football players disappeared.

  ‘It will get better. And you can give her back,’ he said. ‘Soon.’

  She didn’t respond to that. If she were here, she would be looking at him, head tilted, eyes to him. Yeah, right, her expression would be saying.

  ‘Have you fed her – loads? She’s definitely not hungry?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Becky said. ‘She’s not hungry. Definitely not.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Inside. I’m in the garden. Having a break.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘Babies can handle being upset. She won’t remember.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘Honest. I’m not. It’s just – ugh.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I can come over? I’m doing a fitting but I’m almost finished.’

  ‘No. God, no need for that. Don’t,’ she said hurriedly. ‘But will you be there? I don’t know. Just be on the end of a phone.’

  Should he go? He thought about it. He could pack his stuff up. Surprise her. Go to help.

  ‘You know I will, Samuel,’ Marc said. God, it hurt him, remembering those nights, when Xander was just a baby and they would have to stifle their laughter into the pillows in the bedroom. Becky always lay on the top of the duvet, on her belly.

  ‘Look how much the mattress dips on your side compared to mine,’ she had said to him on one such night.

  ‘Thanks,’ he’d said. ‘I’m huge.’

  ‘It’s like being on a waterbed,’ she’d laughed.

  He could still conjure up the entire image of her. Her curved back. Her smiling eyes. They always had the heating up too high – their bills were astronomical – but it was worth it for those hours they spent on top of the duvet.

  ‘I’ve had a big dinner,’ he’d said, and she had laughed even more.

  How had they gone from that to this?

  ‘Don’t make this your problem,’ he said. ‘It’s a job. If it’s not working for you, then you leave. Not your circus, not your monkeys. Leave, if you want to.’

  There was a long pause before she replied. ‘No. I know. Don’t be silly. Of course I won’t.’

  He sighed. She wouldn’t leave. He wished she would. He had never liked Scott, in particular. He liked him even less now. Cheeky fuckers. He would sort them out.

  Marc looked at a slight wrinkle in the carpet, from where he had had to stop stretching it suddenly. It would need to be redone, but it didn’t seem to matter any more.

  ‘You’ll be alright,’ he said. He hoped he was right.

  His phone rang again at just gone eight the next morning. He had showered, when he got in, little curls of new carpet coming off his arms and hands in the shower. And then he had drunk too much, thinking of Becky and that special tone of voice she had used with him in the past, her curved back on their old shared IKEA bed.

  His head was thumping as he answered the phone.

  She was screaming.

  He sat up in bed, his body lurching forwards, elbows on his knees. ‘Becky? What’s … what’s?’ The room swam dangerously, as a result of his hangover or shock, he didn’t know.

  ‘Layla’s … I’m pretty sure she’s dead, Marc.’

  A horrified chill moved through him. ‘Dead?’ he said faintly. ‘Dead?’

  ‘She died in the night.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘There’s paramedics everywhere. They’re here … they’re working on her. Oh, Marc. Please come. Please come.’

  46

  Martha

  I think of what Marc said to me on the phone. Nobody came over. Followed by the beep, beep, beep: call failed. His tone was not even angry; it was incredulous.

  ‘And did you feel concerned when Becky called you that night?’ Harriet says. She looks agitated.

  Ellen shifts in her seat, and the judge interjects. ‘Sorry to stop you,’ he says, putting a hand out like he is placating a wild animal or a child in the throes of a tantrum, ‘but can you please ask that in a way which is non-leading?’

  ‘How did you feel that night when Becky called you?’ Harriet says.

  Marc shrugs. ‘I just felt bad for her. The baby was crying a lot.’ He looks over at Becky in the dock. He has the same solemn expression he wore at thei
r wedding. ‘I wanted to help her. But I wasn’t … concerned. Not exactly.’

  ‘Well, you put the words in his mouth,’ Ellen mutters under her breath.

  Harriet looks at her sharply.

  ‘I mean I was worried,’ Marc adds. ‘But only because Becky was worried. I wasn’t worried for her. I was worried with her.’

  Harriet pushes her short, dark hair behind her ear, under her wig. ‘How did you feel about the content of the text messages?’

  ‘I just felt sad because she was worried about Layla.’

  I can almost see the thoughts flitting across Marc’s mind. He can’t say that he was worried for her. He can’t say that she was having a hard time. He can’t say that Layla was difficult, that Becky had been blessed by the minimal demands of her own sleepy son, was inexperienced, out of her depth. All he can offer up are these platitudes. He wasn’t concerned, not exactly, he says.

  But then he raises his hand to his forehead, and I see him wipe sweat from his brow. He is nervous. He’s giving evidence. Maybe it’s just normal nerves. But something about his body language is off.

  ‘I know her well,’ he continues. ‘I was worried that she was in a difficult situation. But I never – if I ever thought something might happen, I would have gone over there.’ He swallows. I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down. ‘And I didn’t.’

  I look across at Ellen. She is watching him closely.

  ‘Thank you,’ Harriet says. ‘And how did you feel the next morning?’

  ‘Complete shock, when she called me.’

  ‘And finally: had you previously been irritated when Xander had walked into traffic?’

  ‘Yes. I had.’

  ‘And so you can understand why he had reason to lie in A&E.’

  ‘Yes. I can.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Ellen stands up. Her first cross-examination. ‘Marc,’ she says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You separated from the defendant. About how long ago?’

  I look at Marc, then at Harriet. She’s watching the proceedings, sitting back in her chair, her left arm slung across its back.

  ‘Eighteen months or so,’ he says.

  ‘And why was that?’

  Marc spreads his arms wide, expansively. ‘Why does anyone?’ he says. ‘There are loads of reasons.’

  I am struck, suddenly, by how unlikely it would be for Scott to have this broad view of us. If we ever broke up. He would say, nodding seriously, ‘It all unravelled because I failed to stack the dishwasher one Tuesday.’

  But Marc has always understood that. And Becky, too. They would never become bogged down by details and miss the broad view. ‘I’ve got a lovely wife and a great kid and the sun is shining,’ Marc once said happily at a party before cracking open a can of beer. The big picture. At least, that was how I had always viewed him. Before.

  I close my eyes. Am I mad, suspecting my brother-in-law? People don’t know when they’re going insane, do they? Perhaps I am. Perhaps I have been sent mad with grief.

  ‘You can’t ask that,’ Harriet says, getting to her feet and looking at Ellen. ‘What relevance is the defendant’s marital breakdown?’

  ‘Given you have called her ex-husband to give evidence, I’d say it’s very relevant.’

  ‘I will allow it,’ the judge says.

  ‘Our child, I guess,’ Marc says carefully. ‘Well, no. Not him. Parenthood. No. Just … life. That led to our problems.’ His eyes look wide and frightened.

  Who can possibly say what has led to the breakdown of their marriage, under oath?

  ‘Your child?’

  ‘We had Xander, unplanned, when we were very young, and it was … it’s a lot of pressure, and change, for a relationship. We couldn’t have a second. We tried for … for ages. We grew apart. And then she was unfaithful.’ He says this in a low voice, quieter still.

  He doesn’t look at Becky, but I do. She has a palm on the glass again, like a monkey at the zoo, waiting sadly for escape.

  ‘I see,’ Ellen says. ‘So she has form for deceit. But you are on good terms with the defendant now?’

  ‘Yes. We still see quite a lot of each other.’ He ignores the dig. Form for deceit.

  He has sidestepped it in that adult way of his, but the jury has taken it in, that unchallenged comment landing like a fact in their laps.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘We text most days. It used to be about Xander but it’s more than that, now. Jokes. We sometimes chat. On Friday nights. We get the same takeaway. We choose it, from afar, and eat it on the phone. I don’t know.’ Marc shakes his head. He’s babbling.

  I want to warn him, my brother-in-law. ‘Stop giving them this stuff for free,’ I want to say, but then I remember the words he used – nobody came over – and how shifty he looked when asked about that night on the stand, and … I want them to catch him out.

  ‘Why do you do that when you’re separated?’

  ‘Text?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s just … you know.’ He shrugs again. ‘We like each other, still. We mean a lot to each other.’

  Becky is staring at Marc, her eyes round. I have seen that look before. She had it on her wedding night. She had it when she brought Marc home to meet all of us at Christmas.

  Despite myself, my eyes fill with tears. To be separated, on the verge of divorce, and to have all your personal history gone through, ransacked, in the witness box. Your poor, blurred boundaries. The weird things you do that you are glad nobody knows about; here they are, looming large in a courtroom for all to see. Projected on the wall just over there. The jury will remember it for ever, Marc and Becky’s private business.

  ‘So you wanted to help her, when she asked. It was natural to you.’

  ‘Yes. Of course. We don’t fight or anything like that. We just help each other.’

  ‘She said she was worried about Layla and herself.’ Ellen reads from the sheet of paper in front of her, even though the words are surely burnt on the brain of everybody in this courtroom. She is building up to it. I can tell. She’s going to ask about his alibi.

  ‘But she didn’t mean … it was just a figure of speech. It was her way. She was … she’s, like, quite comedic. She’s very funny. So she was just making a joke, you know? Like, I’m worried about this bloody crying baby and I’m worried about myself, too. In case I … but she didn’t mean in case I do anything.’

  Ellen is watching him like he is prey, letting him fill the silence with his prattle. ‘So what did she mean, then? If not in case I do anything?’

  ‘She just meant it as a joke.’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Burrows. What’s the joke here? Am I missing it?’ Ellen’s face relaxes into a friendly smile.

  Harriet crosses and uncrosses her legs, then leans forward, looking at Marc.

  I wince. It is like watching somebody get fired. Like watching a public humiliation. And isn’t it?

  ‘Well, she was talking about what she might do but it was a joke.’

  ‘What she might do. As in, harm Layla? That’s the joke?’

  ‘Yes. But it was just a joke.’

  ‘A joke, right.’ Ellen looks meaningfully at the jury, as though joking in such matters was so abhorrent. But it was before: that text. That silly text. Wouldn’t all of the contents of our iPhones look pretty damning, if read out selectively at a murder trial? I had said this to Scott, a while back, and he had given me a strange look that said: Um, no, mine wouldn’t. And I suppose his wouldn’t. He’s straight-up like that. A pragmatist. A simple soul, like Marc but also totally different.

  Ellen pauses, picks a pen up, and clicks it twice. In the silent courtroom, it sounds like the cocking of a gun. Click, click. Click, click. She appraises Marc seriously. This is it. She is going to ask about his alibi.

  Eventually, she speaks. ‘Are you really saying under oath that you weren’t worried about her?’

  ‘I wasn’t worried she would do something.’

  �
�That’s not what I asked. You were the last person to speak to her, Mr Burrows, before she killed baby Layla. Now answer my question: were you worried about her?’

  ‘Yes, I was worried about her.’

  ‘Because she seemed disturbed during the call?’

  ‘Not disturbed, exactly, no. Just upset.’

  ‘Upset. I see. What do you think she was upset about?’

  ‘Because she couldn’t settle Layla.’

  ‘Ah, I see. She was upset with Layla.’

  ‘No, for her.’

  ‘So,’ Ellen says, ‘why do you think Becky was contacting you that night?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Yes. You specifically.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Ellen pauses again. ‘You see,’ she says. Here it comes. ‘I would say that, given your closeness, and everything you have told us, Becky would turn to you, out of desperation, if she thought she might be about to do something she would regret. If she was feeling desperate, and frightened, and fearful that she might lose her rag. Do you agree?’

  ‘No, I …’

  ‘No? Who else would she turn to?’

  ‘If she was—’

  ‘Yes. If she was desperate and frightened and angry. Perhaps she couldn’t say as much. Perhaps she couldn’t admit seriously that she was worried about herself. And what she might do. But is there anybody other than you who she might turn to, if she were feeling such things?’

  Marc’s eyes flit towards me, in the public gallery, and then he looks away again. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Not in those circumstances. It would be me.’

  ‘Yes. She turns to you in her darkest hour of need. Sends a cry for help. Nothing further.’

  She didn’t ask. She didn’t ask if he was there that night. If he has an alibi. I am deflated, and furious, all at once. It’s not about him, I suppose. He is not on trial: Becky is. She’s the prime suspect, so why would they look to somebody else? I shouldn’t have asked the prosecution. I should have asked the defence lawyer. Harriet would have been more likely to help me than Ellen. Ellen wants to secure a prosecution.

  Marc looks across the courtroom. Not at me, but at Becky. Their eyes seem to meet, and something seems to pass between them.

  I keep staring, watching them. Nobody else seems to be looking. He is conveying a message to her. A slight shake of his head. She nods at him. She looks grateful. He looks … what? He looks like he’s done her a favour, that’s what.