The Trophy Child

by Paula Daly

  Noel paused, his fork halfway between his bowl and his mouth, and said to Verity, ‘This is good. Really good, actually. You have quite a talent, Verity.’

  ‘One of my many,’ she said.

  —

  ‘I don’t see why that simple-minded nincompoop must spend all his waking moments at this house,’ Karen said as she removed her shirt. ‘Does he not have friends of his own type he can hang around with?’

  Noel was on the bed in just his boxers. He had a new vitiligo patch forming to the left of his bellybutton. His patches tended to form symmetrical patterns – had done since his late teens, when he developed the condition, and he was sure to get one on the right within a few months. He flicked through the channels one way and then the other. There was nothing on. He didn’t watch the news before bed any more as the images lodged themselves in Karen’s brain and she had trouble sleeping. The fact that she had had trouble sleeping before they met, when she had no TV in her bedroom, was beside the point.

  ‘His own type?’ Noel repeated vaguely, and Karen stopped what she was doing and faced him.

  ‘Retarded. Challenged. Whatever the accepted phrase is.’

  ‘Oh,’ replied Noel. ‘I think Ewan likes having him around.’

  Karen sniffed. ‘Yes, well, and we know why that is.’

  Noel paused on a programme about benefit fraud. If Karen noticed him watching, she would make him turn over. Noel’s last tax bill was over forty-six thousand pounds, and Karen had been horrified. If she caught sight of the fat woman in the vest who was cheating the system, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, her husband dozing on the sofa with two English bulldogs, she’d get herself into such a state she’d need to do an hour of yoga before she could even get into bed.

  Karen eyed the screen and Noel changed the channel. News-night, with the sound muted, would have to do.

  ‘We all know he does it just to get at me,’ Karen said.

  ‘We all know who does what?’

  ‘Ewan. It’s another of his little protests. “Look at my stupid friend. See, not only is he not going anywhere, he’s not even able to achieve—” ’

  ‘Karen. I think you’re being a bit harsh.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘They’ve been friends since primary school.’

  ‘Because he knew it irritated me. What I don’t get is why, every time I come in the house, that boy is in my kitchen?’

  Noel shrugged. ‘I don’t think it’s a big deal. Dale’s someone for him to hang out with. His other friends are probably…busy.’

  As soon as the word was out of his mouth Noel regretted it.

  ‘Busy? Of course they’re busy. I had that awful woman Pia Nicholls lording it over me at tap class today. “Hamish has been down to Oxford, looking around, blah, blah, blah. Thinks he might want to do PPE.” ’

  ‘Honey, I don’t think Ewan was ever on course to get the grades to go to—’

  ‘That’s hardly the point,’ she snapped. ‘When Pia tells me what Hamish is doing, I’m supposed to follow it with – what exactly? “Yes, yes, I’m so proud of Ewan. I think he’ll stay above the garage smoking weed for another year if I’m lucky. Don’t they grow up quickly? So proud. So very proud.” It’s bloody humiliating is what it is. And that’s exactly why he does it.’

  Noel thought about the young mother who had been in the surgery that morning. She had just received a definitive diagnosis of cystic fibrosis for her baby boy. She’d cried into her hands for a full hour because she knew what it meant. Knew there was a chance she wasn’t going to see her son grow up to get married, to have kids of his own. ‘It’s like letting go of all the dreams you have for them,’ she sobbed, and Noel had said, ‘Yes. That’s exactly what it was, and it was cruel.’

  Noel watched his wife through the doorway to the en suite bathroom. She was pulling cotton wool firmly over her eyelids then raising her brows high on her forehead as she removed the smudged mascara from beneath her lashes. She looked hard. She’d become hardened. Her skin stretched taut over her skull.

  She’d left her laptop open the other day on her Facebook page, and Noel had noticed she’d updated her profile picture. In it, she was unrecognizable. And it wasn’t until Noel spotted that the bedroom carpet was the backdrop that he realized Karen had taken the selfie from above, lying down. He assumed this was to make her appear younger, but instead it created a curious wind-tunnel effect. The photo looked quite unlike his wife.

  Karen caught his gaze in the mirror. She scowled a little. She hadn’t always been this way. They hadn’t always been this way. Granted, with second marriages, and with stepchildren involved, there was always going to be an element of pretence, an element of fake joviality; it was necessary to keep the show on the road. But they had had their moments. Enough moments to constitute what most considered a happy existence.

  When had things changed?

  Perhaps Ewan starting senior school had been one of the triggers. Not that Noel was blaming him. The kid had seemed to like school well enough up to that point, but failing Reid’s entrance exam had been a real blow to his confidence and, after that, he seemed to coast. Well, wilful disengagement might be more accurate. Karen took the whole thing personally, as though Ewan’s lack of application and subsequent poor reports were a direct reflection on her. That’s when Noel first noticed her ‘step up’ her mothering of Brontë to another level. It was when he began to think of his second wife as ‘achievement-obsessed’. Brontë could only have been three or four at the time.

  Then, of course, Verity had to move in with them and that, too, had not been without its own set of problems.

  Noel softly patted the pillow beside him. ‘Come to bed, love,’ he said.

  And Karen dropped the cotton wool in the waste basket before striding across the room.

  ‘It’s just so bloody humiliating,’ she said again.

  7

  Sunday, 27 September

  At 2.30 p.m. Verity and Brontë turned left out of their driveway and began to walk the short distance down the hill towards the recreation ground. The air was thick and hot, the sky a cloudless blue. They were sisters but were allowed precious little time together usually, but because Clive Lishman, musical genius, had cancelled Brontë’s piano session at the very last moment, here they were. Together.

  Karen had been apoplectic. And Verity had found Brontë at the bottom of the stairs, crying, unable to say why exactly but, reading between the lines, Verity assumed it had something to do with Karen’s raised voice coming from the kitchen.

  Karen had no qualms about subjecting her children to her rages, unlike a lot of Verity’s friends’ mothers, who would seethe quietly next to the kettle, as though they weren’t sure whether to trust themselves with the hot water. Unlike them, Karen let it all out. And whoever was close by got the full force of it. Which led, naturally, to each of them escaping as best they could – with the exception of Brontë, who couldn’t escape. Brontë was Karen’s pet project. And if you asked Verity, it was tantamount to child abuse what that woman inflicted on her poor half-sister.

  When Verity was hospitalized after the attack, people had kept asking her if she knew why she’d tried to strangle her stepmother. And she’d answered them truthfully: ‘To stop Karen.’ But, apparently, this was not enough of an answer, as Karen had been left with purple bruises necklacing her throat, so Verity had to stay in hospital for another five days while her head was CT’d, her hormone levels measured, her responses to various stimuli tested. No conclusions were drawn except to say she was not considered a danger. Neither to herself nor to Karen. Which Karen didn’t exactly agree with. She had taken to walking out of any room Verity occupied and to shielding Brontë, not allowing the sisters to be alone together in case Verity should suddenly get the urge to attack.

  And since Karen also insisted on filling every moment of Brontë’s time with something constructive, something productive, something life-enhancing, Verity barely got to see her sister, and s
he missed her.

  Verity had moved in with her dad and his new wife when she was eleven years old. Not an easy age for a girl, particularly a girl like Verity, who was still mad as hell at her father for moving in with Karen and her unborn child five years before that. Verity had hated this child. Had hated Brontë with a vengeance. And, over the years, Verity’s mother had fuelled that fire.

  When Verity was packed off to her dad’s for good, what she had not expected was that she would grow to love her little sister. Love her to the point that she would do pretty much anything for her. Because Verity understood that, on some level, if it were not for Brontë, she would not have survived life with her dad and Karen and Ewan. She was too mixed up. Too full of hate about her new situation. And Brontë had become her relief valve.

  Verity would not let Karen mould her sister into some weird, unhappy little automaton. She would not stand by and watch her drain the life from Brontë. And that day, when she found Brontë crying on the stairs and Karen shouting into the phone, Verity suggested they go to the rec to take Brontë’s mind off things for a bit. She wrote Karen a note and left it on the kitchen counter: ‘At the rec. Back 1 hour.’

  Now, Verity intertwined her fingers with Brontë’s as they came close to the road, ready to cross. When Verity had been around the same age as Brontë, soon after she’d moved in with her dad and Karen, Karen had allowed her to go to the rec on her own. She’d also allowed her to go to the library, the post office, even to Boots, where she could kill close to an hour on a Saturday afternoon, swiping lipsticks on the back of her hand and different-coloured nail polish on each fingernail. But things had changed. That’s what Karen had said about keeping Brontë at home unless there was a suitable adult to go along with her: Things have changed.

  When Verity asked her stepmother what exactly she meant by this, Karen told her that children could not go out alone any more because it wasn’t safe. And when Verity asked why it wasn’t safe, Karen glared at her, nodding her head towards Brontë, which is what she did if something wasn’t suitable for Brontë’s young ears, before mouthing: ‘Kidnapping.’

  But because practically everything out of Karen’s mouth was a total load of shit, Verity decided to do a little investigating of her own. What she found was that kidnapping was rare. Super-rare. Brontë had more chance of growing up to become prime minister than of being kidnapped. She was twice as likely to die in a plane crash – and don’t even get her started about being struck by lightning. It was a wonder Karen let her move unsupervised between the house and the car, the odds were so stacked against her.

  Verity presented her findings to Karen after Brontë had complained that her friends were meeting on the rec without her, going to the corner shop on their own, some learning to be independent in preparation for catching the train to Kendal, where they were going to attend secondary school. But Karen had looked at Verity and frowned, wrinkling her nose in distaste, as if she could smell something bad.

  ‘That’s okay for everyone else, Verity. But not for me. Not for my child.’

  My child.

  Not my children.

  Verity knew she didn’t count as one of Karen’s children; she was her stepdaughter, and that was okay by her. She didn’t want to be Karen’s child. But what about Ewan? Where did he figure in all of this?

  ‘Never run across the road chasing after your friends,’ Verity warned Brontë now, as they stood at the kerb.

  It was ridiculous. Brontë should have been taught this stuff when she was six.

  ‘Promise,’ Brontë said, in her small voice.

  ‘Never believe a boy if he tells you you’re ugly,’ Verity said.

  And Brontë looked up at her older sister, wide-eyed and innocent. ‘All right,’ she said.

  If Karen wasn’t going to prepare Brontë for independence and teenage life, Verity would do it herself.

  Somebody had to.

  —

  The girls had been at the recreation ground for almost half an hour when Verity decided there was no real reason not to pop across the street and pay her mum a swift visit. She’d left the house with the idea that she might, and had packed a small gift for her mother, just in case. The sun was warm overhead and Verity had rolled her jeans up to above the knee and pulled the straps of her vest wide to try to rid herself of the white marks she had acquired over the summer.

  Minutes earlier, she’d seen Dale, with his newly dyed black hair, finishing off his duties. He was doing an apprenticeship for Lake District Landscapes – a firm that dealt with grounds maintenance and street cleansing, mostly for the local authority. Often Verity would see Dale emptying rubbish bins at the side of the road, clipping hedges, that kind of thing. This being a holiday area, Dale didn’t do the usual Monday to Friday, but tended to work weekends and be off work midweek, when it wasn’t so busy with tourists. Dale did what he always did when Verity was near, and that was blush and drop his head low, before lifting one hand and showing his palm, staying like that for just a second too long. It would be clear to anyone watching that he wasn’t a full shilling.

  Verity watched Brontë. She and her friends were on the other side of the rec, sitting in a circle, playing some sort of game where, periodically, one girl would stand and recite a few words, before dropping down to sit cross-legged again.

  To the left of the girls was a young woman with two Rottweilers. She stood a fair distance from the group. The dogs were on leads, lying watchful; though they seemed well behaved, Verity’s protective instinct kicked in. Just when she was thinking that perhaps nipping across to see her mother was not such a good idea, the woman received a call on her mobile and began shouting a string of abuse into it. She dragged the two dogs to their feet and marched off. A powerful breed, Verity thought, as she watched the dogs move. Yet they walked with such grace. Verity had always wanted a dog, something small that could curl up on her lap while she watched TV, nestle on her pillow at night-time. But Karen was not a dog person. Nor a cat person, come to that. She’d allowed Brontë a lop-eared rabbit, on the strict understanding that it was Brontë’s sole responsibility. Brontë being so busy, though, she had forgotten to clean out the hutch regularly, and the wet bedding had caused the poor thing to die of hypothermia in the middle of winter. Verity had felt responsible. She should have attended to it. Brontë’s eyes still teared up at the mention of him.

  Verity got to her feet, grabbed her rucksack and made her way across the grass to where the girls were sitting.

  As she drew near, they stopped their game, momentarily embarrassed by her presence. ‘Will you be okay for a bit?’ she asked, and Brontë looked up at her questioningly. ‘I’m just going across the road to see Mum.’

  ‘Can I go to the shop?’

  ‘You don’t have any money,’ Verity said.

  ‘I brought some.’

  Verity said it would be better not to. They’d go together on the way home and buy an ice cream. Maybe a magazine. One of those pre-teen things that had lots of pictures of Taylor Swift – but not so many of Miley Cyrus, now that she had her tits and her tongue hanging out half the time. Verity warned Brontë not to leave the rec without her and said that she’d be back in ten.

  Fifteen at the very most.

  —

  It was not like a normal nursing home. Verity had never been inside a normal one, so she had nothing to compare it to, but when her father had found a place for her mother here he kept emphasizing the point that it was not like a normal nursing home. Those, apparently, were filled with rows of wingback chairs, vacant-faced old ladies hem-rolling their skirts, and with a TV blaring out soap operas that nobody watched. That’s what he had said, and Verity had no reason not to believe him.

  Applemead was known locally as a Cheshire Home, but its correct title was ‘Applemead – part of the Leonard Cheshire Disability (registered charity no. 218186)’. That’s what it said on the plaque above the door, and Verity would study the number, thinking that there were an awful lot of chari
ties out there.

  Before her mum became ill, Verity would pass Applemead and barely notice the place. It was a large three-storey stone building with numerous turrets, and with a semi-circular lawn in front. You could hardly miss it, but it blended in with all the other buildings of Windermere. Once her mum became a permanent resident, Verity could virtually sketch the place from memory.

  Incidentally, Leonard Cheshire had been an RAF pilot. He started the charity after the war, opening a residential home for disabled ex-servicemen, and Verity’s father said he was the kind of good egg this country didn’t produce any more. By the 1990s, there were almost three hundred Cheshire Homes worldwide, mostly set up by groups of volunteers from the local community. Their aim was to provide support for disabled people and encourage moves towards independence. This was written on a plaque on the wall in the reception area and Verity would read it each time with a heavy heart, because that was not part of the deal for her mother. Jennifer Bloom would not become independent. She would remain here as long as she stayed alive.

  Her father said that most nursing homes housed the elderly: people waiting to die – so that was the other difference. Applemead was home to people of a variety of ages. Her mother was only forty-five, and there were other, youngish ‘residents’ with neurological problems, like her mother. One poor woman with early-onset dementia was in her early fifties, and this was a real tragedy, so Verity understood. But not for the woman herself, who appeared perfectly happy wandering around the place, moving ornaments, smiling benignly at visitors as if this were her house and they were all welcome guests.