Don't Tell Teacher

by Suzy K Quinn

  But I kept out of it. It was Elizabeth’s business. I stuck my head in the sand, didn’t get involved.

  I pass the downstairs mirror and see myself, eyes creased with worry and sadness.

  There’s nothing good about getting old. Beauty fades, leaving only truth.

  My father used to say the real monsters of the Second World War were the people who did nothing. Who pretended everything was okay. He was a Jewish-Austrian immigrant so he knew a lot about it.

  I look in the mirror and try to smile. It’s very important to have a nice smile; I learned that by watching others. I have lovely veneers and I take very good care of them.

  That little boy William died.

  He died.

  I leave the medicine bottles in the wardrobe and lock the house up tight, sticking a Post-it note on the breakfast bar for Elizabeth:

  Did what I could but no cleaning products, going home now, Mum.

  I get in my car and search for Olly Kinnock’s number on my mobile phone.

  K, K, K …

  There he is.

  Oliver Kinnock.

  I still have his number.

  Lizzie

  The front door is locked. This means Mum has gone. Thank goodness.

  My hands shake so badly I can barely turn the key. The bus stopped at every red light in town, and I’m beyond stressed.

  Inside the house, I race upstairs taking two steps at a time. We’ll leave all this chaos behind. Go far away.

  I grab a scuffed Quiksilver backpack from my bedroom wardrobe and drag it downstairs, throwing things inside. This used to be Olly’s bag and it smells of camping – earth and damp.

  Clothes, medicine …

  Medicine causes the seizures.

  Since they found the injection marks on Tom’s arm, I’ve been a lot more careful. I inject in his groin now and knock him out first, rather than wait until he’s asleep. Any movement risks bruising and swelling around the injection site.

  A few hours after Tom comes around, I put more crushed-up tablets into his orange juice. Coupled with the stuff racing around his blood stream, this causes him to fit if I get the dose right.

  The medicine doesn’t just cause seizures. It causes mood swings, drowsiness, aggression, a sickly pallor. I’m fascinated by the effects, seeing what each different tablet does and then trying out combinations.

  Medicine … More precious than gold. The source of everything: praise, attention, identity.

  And control.

  The red metal security box sits on top of a pile of cookery books, too high for Tom to reach. I grab it, holding it briefly to my chest.

  Inside are over fifty bottles and packets of prescription drugs, all collected from Olly, my mother and hospitals over the years.

  I stash the empty bottles in another box in the back of the wardrobe and dispose of them in bulk whenever we visit London, dropping them in different waste bins. It wouldn’t do to throw them away with my rubbish. What would people think?

  Now that box of medicine is a liability.

  I can’t take empty medicine bottles with me and risk them being found on my person. And I can’t leave them here.

  The solution is obvious in the end.

  I soak the labels off so they can’t be traced. The cleaned bottles are with the bathroom waste now, stuffed under toilet roll tubes and sanitary products.

  When I left Olly, I thought I might be noticed just for being a mother. A real person in my own right, even without a brighter, shinier human being to cling onto.

  But it didn’t happen. So it started all over again, the medication and the control.

  Of course, there’s no Olly to medicate now. Olly became dangerous. He worked out who I really was. So it has to be Tom.

  I’ve already bought ferry e-tickets on my mobile phone. We leave from Aberdeen and will reach Stuart’s new home on the Shetland Islands by tomorrow morning. We’ll be safe from the British child protection services there and I’ll make a plan.

  I can’t stay with Stuart long-term – he’s too logical. The sort of man who’ll see things that don’t add up. I need someone more romantic.

  Like Olly. He was a hopeless romantic, willing to believe I was perfect. Buying into all my fantasies.

  The violence, the abuse – I’m good at making up stories. The trick is to convince yourself they really happened. I write them down. Get every detail perfect. Once you believe it, everyone else does too.

  It worked on Tom, too. I told him over and over again. Remember your wrist? Remember what Daddy did?

  That injury was for Tom’s own good. I had to show Olly in a certain light or else I’d never have got sole custody. And without sole custody, what would I have been? There’s a big difference between shared custody after divorce and a vulnerable woman escaping abuse. People sympathise with one, but not the other.

  Tom didn’t see who knocked him to the ground. The broken wrist happened when he was unconscious. I used Olly’s ski boots, then put Tom in bed ready for Olly to find him when he came around.

  I do such a good job with Tom, planting the stories, just like my own mother used to do.

  After I broke his wrist, I ran through the park with him, telling him we were escaping, running away. Making him afraid of his father.

  I watched my mother do this sort of thing, manipulate thoughts until people believed her version of reality. It took Dad years to see beneath her mask. To realise that behind the pretty face was something very ugly and dysfunctional.

  I learned from my mother how to be a victim. How to make everything someone else’s fault and have people pity you and look after you.

  With Tom it was easy to make him feel protective over his poor, vulnerable mummy. He even started having nightmares about what he thought Olly did.

  Have I got everything?

  Yes. I think so.

  Everything except Tom.

  I pull the bag onto my back and head out, slamming the front door behind me. It’ll have to be a bus to the hospital. I can’t afford another taxi.

  Hurrying along the street, I think I hear the rattle and wheeze of Olly’s old camper van engine. A vehicle, definitely. Coming this way.

  It’s just a car, I tell myself. Don’t be paranoid.

  But then, as I reach the end of the street, bright lights approach.

  Instinct flattens me to a wall and I slide down an alleyway, watching the street.

  It’s … oh God. A police car.

  When the car passes, I head out of the alleyway towards the mini-supermarket where there is a bus stop. The no. 65 is just pulling in.

  I need to get back to the hospital.

  There isn’t much time.

  Olly

  I’m held at a red light, white knuckles clutching the steering wheel. There is a blue sign ahead: Hospital.

  Come on, come on.

  Lizzie’s mother just called me. She told me Tom has had another seizure and is being treated at this hospital. I’m nauseated with worry, foot over-revving the accelerator, eyes fixed on the windscreen.

  Finally.

  The only thing that’s got me through these last few months is believing that someone will see through Lizzie and help me find Tom.

  I never guessed it would be her own mother. Ruth thinks Lizzie has been medicating Tom and giving him seizures. This is both believable and unbearable.

  I rev the engine as the light changes, hot tears rolling down my cheeks.

  The hospital staff will be rallying round Lizzie, no doubt. Telling her what a wonderful mother she is. It’s what she’s good at, evoking sympathy. She copies and imitates until the feelings look real. But inside, she’s empty.

  The police believe I’m a violent, sexually abusive partner. London social workers think I’m a lunatic. All because of Lizzie’s fantastic ability to manipulate.

  The only people who’ll give me any time are solicitors. They’ve been mounting an appeal, although they’re ‘not hopeful’. One of them even told me I w
as wasting my money.

  I put Lizzie on a pedestal, my little elfin-faced nurse, so timid and vulnerable, I thought. In need of my protection.

  But Lizzie is none of those things. She’s an expert liar, clever and ruthless.

  Little and often, drip, drip. Like coffee filling a cup. You hit me. You’re violent.

  Showing me bruises on her body. Tampering with my medication. Throwing herself down the stairs. Altering clocks. Moving things around the house. Distorting my reality.

  I didn’t stand a chance.

  She must have done the same with Tom. Daddy hurt you. Daddy hurt you. Until he believed it himself.

  God knows what else she’s done to him – I can’t bear it. Christ, he had a broken wrist. I thought he fell out of bed, but Lizzie must have … It makes me sick to think of it.

  I overtake a bus, veering dangerously into the other lane, not caring about the beeps from oncoming traffic.

  Getting myself off the medication – that was the first step to clarity. Not so difficult, actually, because Lizzie took all the medicine when she left. I’ll probably never know what she gave me or what it did to my brain.

  Lizzie was clever. She had me believing I’d done something. I thought I must be blacking out. A Jekyll and Hyde sort of thing. It was terrifying. I think that’s why the court case was such a mess. I didn’t know what was true and what wasn’t.

  How would I ever guess Lizzie was giving herself bruises? That someone could be that crazy, while seeming so sweet and vulnerable?

  I suspect our neighbour, Stuart, was inadvertently involved with some of Lizzie’s bodily markings – the ones Lizzie couldn’t do herself. He probably threw her around a bit when they had sex. Gripped her too tightly. Didn’t realise his own strength.

  She was having an affair with him – one of my friends kept trying to tell me. I didn’t believe the friend at the time, even though he’d been a mate of ten years.

  Lizzie told me my mate had made a pass at her and she’d rejected him – that’s why he was making up stories. Jealousy. I wanted to believe her. I wanted the fairy tale. I loved her so much. But none of it was real.

  Confusion. Aggression. Paranoia. Depression. Dizziness and disorientation.

  That’s what Lizzie gave me.

  But I’m to blame too.

  If I’d told the doctors how I was feeling, they might have done blood tests. Worked out something was whizzing around my body that shouldn’t have been there.

  Stupid, male pride.

  I’m not a religious man, but now I pray every day.

  I’m on my way, Tom.

  Dad is coming.

  Lizzie

  The pharmacy is clean and quiet, a gentle ticking clock measuring the stillness. Outside, sheets of rain slosh against the window.

  ‘You’re soaked,’ says the pharmacy lady.

  I give her a meek smile, squeezing water from my hair and sliding the prescription slip over the counter.

  Yes. Poor me. I’m ever so vulnerable but I never complain.

  ‘Who are you in for today?’ she asks, reading the slip. ‘Your husband again?’

  ‘No. It’s for me. I’m going on a trip. My brother is getting married in Thailand and I’m maid of honour.’

  ‘You’re going out there on your own?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re brave.’

  I grip my bag strap.

  The pharmacy lady pushes the prescription slip through the little window. Usually, a white packet is passed back through the window almost immediately. But today the pharmacist himself comes out of the medicine room, a tall man in a white coat. He has serious black glasses on his nose.

  ‘Name?’ he asks.

  ‘Elizabeth Kinnock.’

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Apartment 11F, Primrose Gardens.’

  ‘You’re aware these can have quite a few side effects? Just to double-check, you haven’t any history of mental illness in the family, have you? The doctor asked you about that?’

  ‘He did. No. No history.’

  The pharmacist hands me the packet. ‘Are you off to Africa? Somewhere like that?’

  ‘South-East Asia.’

  ‘It’s important to start taking these a week before you travel,’ says the pharmacist. ‘Otherwise, you won’t be sufficiently protected.’

  ‘Thank you.’ My hands close around the paper packet.

  Before I leave, I order two packs of codeine, a bottle of cough syrup and an antifungal Candida tablet.

  I leave the pharmacy with a spring in my step, not minding the rain in the slightest.

  When I get home, Olly is still in bed. His leg is especially painful today because I did his physio earlier. I left Tom sleeping in the cot next to him.

  ‘Sweetheart?’ I call out.

  ‘Hey, Lizzie,’ Olly groans back.

  ‘I’ve just come from the doctors,’ I say, decanting the white Lariam tablets into a plastic cup. ‘I told him you were still in pain. He’s given you something extra. He thinks it might help.’

  ‘What would I do without you, Lizzie Nightingale?’

  I feel myself smiling.

  He thinks he’s in charge, but I am. It’s such a powerful feeling – better than any drug on earth.

  I think to myself, I did that. I changed you and you didn’t even know.

  No more shadows for me. Not when I have this sort of control.

  Kate

  9.04 p.m.

  The police picked me up as soon as I called. They made very good time, actually – just over five minutes.

  ‘We’ve got the flashy lights, haven’t we?’ Sergeant Leach explained, when I complimented him on his swiftness. ‘We can cross the town in five minutes flat.’

  It was actually five minutes and fifty-two seconds, but I don’t point this out.

  As we pull up outside Tom Kinnock’s house, I say, ‘So what will happen now? Will you arrest her?’

  ‘We’ll get the wheels in motion,’ says Sergeant Leach, a muscular man with grey-blond hair and a perfectly fitting, pressed uniform. He and Constable Matthews climb out of the car.

  Matthews, a younger woman with brown hair in a loose ponytail, opens the car door for me. ‘Nice place,’ she says, looking over the large, Victorian corner plot. ‘Front garden could do with a going-over, though. She’s let it go wild.’

  Sergeant Leach goes to the grand front door, nestled between two pillars, and bashes his fist on the wood.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  ‘Miss Riley?’

  A pause.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  ‘Could you open the door, Miss Riley?’ he calls through the letterbox. ‘It’s the police. We’d like to talk to you, please.’

  My eyes wander over the grassy front garden and closed curtains. For all its grandness, it has the same vibe as Leanne Neilson’s place. Unloved. Neglected.

  Everything is still.

  ‘Could we have missed her?’ I ask. ‘She might be on her way back to the hospital.’

  ‘You’d best go round the back,’ says Sergeant Leach, pounding on the door again.

  Constable Matthews disappears through a back gate.

  ‘Mrs Kinnock,’ Sergeant Leach shouts, banging harder. ‘Come to the door. If you don’t, we have the right to enter your property.’

  We wait for a moment.

  Then Constable Matthews reappears, a little out of breath. ‘I think the house is empty,’ she says, resting her hands on her thighs and exhaling. ‘I had a little look around. The back door was unlocked. It’s a right mess in there.’

  Sergeant Leach pulls his hat firmly on his head. ‘Kate – stay here.’

  ‘I’d like to come in,’ I say. ‘I need to see the state of the house.’

  ‘Best not. She could be hiding inside somewhere. We don’t know what she’s capable of.’

  ‘Constable Matthews thinks the house is empty,’ I point out. ‘And if Lizzie is in there, there’s only one of her.’

&n
bsp; ‘Yes,’ says Matthews. ‘But she sounds like a psychopath.’

  ‘Only one psychopath,’ I reason.

  I follow them through the tall gate, treading on ready-meal packets and weeds in the back garden.

  ‘It’s a state, isn’t it?’ Matthews says. ‘Wait until you see the kitchen. It’s filthy. How could this woman have been given custody?’

  ‘She’s an excellent liar,’ I say, following her through the back door. ‘Very good at playing the perfect parent. The virtuous, vulnerable single mother.’

  The kitchen is indeed filthy. Unwashed dishes. Flies. Piles of clutter.

  Sergeant Leach and Constable Matthews head upstairs, while I look around the chaos.

  Then Leach reappears. ‘No one’s home. But look what I found.’

  He holds up a black bag, opening it to show empty medicine bottles rolling between empty hair-dye bottles and cardboard toilet roll tubes.

  ‘It gets better,’ says Sergeant Leach. ‘Matthews found a prescription medicine label stuck to the bath. She must have soaked the labels off in a hurry.’

  ‘For a mother to be doing that to her child…’ Constable Matthews shakes her head. ‘Giving him tablets. Making him sick. It beggars belief. She’s a monster.’

  ‘That’s probably why she got away with it for so long,’ says Sergeant Leach. ‘Who would believe a mother would hurt her own son?’

  Lizzie

  On the bus back to hospital, I sit on shaking hands. It lurches through town, then finally up, up the hill towards the hospital.

  As soon as the bus doors open, I’m running – across tarmac, past flowerbeds and patients having sneaky cigarettes, into the hospital, upstairs and along lemon-coloured corridors.

  As I reach Tom’s ward, I’m lucky. A nurse is coming through the double doors. She holds one open for me. ‘Hi Lizzie.’

  I smile back – my timid smile that tells people I’m small. Vulnerable. That I mean no harm. And then I pass through the door, into the bright lights of Tom’s ward.

  No one suspects a stressed-looking woman with a shy smile.

  Mothers are good. Angelic. Beyond fault.

  I learned that a long time ago.