The Silent Witness

by Casey Watson

  She was nodding now, so much so that I was at pains to qualify my reasoning. ‘But that’s not in every case, sweetie. Because every situation is different, isn’t it? So –’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said, gathering Dobby up against her chest in a way that made it obvious she was ready to go back to bed. She pushed the chair back. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Well, now,’ I said, ‘I’m not sure I’ve been very helpful …’ I stood up too. ‘Anyway, shall I take you back up to bed? Tuck you in?’

  Bella shook her head. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I’m okay. I can take myself up.’

  And on that solemn note, she proffered a cheek so I could kiss her goodnight for a second time, then led the way out of the kitchen and took herself off up the stairs.

  I stared after her for some time, wondering quite what had just passed between us. Something important, I decided. We had definitely reached some sort of watershed.

  Which was good. Even so, as I returned to Mike and Tyler, I couldn’t help this nagging sense that I’d said the wrong thing.

  That I had got it wrong. That I somehow disappointed her.

  Chapter 18

  Bella seemed to retreat after that. No, she hadn’t become withdrawn or uncommunicative or otherwise ‘off’ with us or anything. If anything, she was chirpy; particularly about school, where, hopefully, she’d be off to in a matter of days.

  No, it was more that she had seemed to draw a line under the conversation. And all I could do was watch and wait.

  The sense that I’d said the wrong things to her that night persisted, even so, and my brain was exhausted with trying to re-run my thinking, wondering how would one of the great philosophers have answered her question. In the end I could only ‘park it’, as Mike had suggested. What would be – where the whole family were concerned – would just be. Enough people were already engaged in the business of deciding what was going to happen, and it was pointless me trying to be one of them. To care and protect, that was my part in the equation. Just that. No sleuthing.

  The ELAC tutor, Howard, turned out to be exactly as I’d pictured him. Very posh, very jolly, very bright. Though I didn’t sit in on their session together, I could see when they emerged that they had got along famously. Howard wore a pair of very distinctive spectacles, I noticed. I wondered if he was a Harry Potter fan.

  ‘Next Monday, then,’ I commented, as Bella and I waved him off. We’ll have to get our skates on with that uniform, then, won’t we? Oh, and I’d better call Katie and rearrange your counselling appointment too. See if she can fit you in after school instead.’ I shut the front door. ‘So. Excited?’

  ‘I am, actually,’ Bella told me. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing Hannah again. But Casey?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘You know, I don’t really think I need to see Katie any more.’

  Appearances can be deceptive, however. Just as the swan, which seems to glide over the water so serenely, hides the furious, focused paddling that goes on underneath, so Bella’s self-possession hid a maelstrom inside.

  Which we might not have even known about – might not have even surfaced before she left us – had it not been for a trigger from an unexpected source – namely her watching TV with Tyler.

  It was the following evening, which was unremarkable, just a regular weekday night. Well, except that, for one night only, Lauren and Kieron were hosting the little ones to give us a break.

  And I’d used it well. The uniform had been bought, and Katie’s appointment had been rearranged. (Despite Bella’s assurance that she was no longer in need of counselling, I had decided to overrule her. Counsellors were rare commodities, and I wasn’t about to relinquish this one.)

  Mike was out – he’d gone with a mate to a local football league meeting (at the pub, of course) – and while Tyler and Bella sat in front of the telly, one at either end of the sofa, I was doing a bit of light internet shopping.

  I was just price-checking a summer dress when a change in the room hit me. They’d been watching an episode of CSI, and up to now they’d been chatting quietly as well.

  Tyler did love his crime, and this series particularly, which followed the life and times (and grisly murder investigations) of a group of crime scene investigators in Vegas, so much so that he had Mike record the late-night editions so that he could watch them uninterrupted when there was nothing else on.

  But this was their third in a row – I had long since grown restless – and it looked like they might be getting a little too engrossed, and it occurred to me that, since Bella didn’t need any further fuel for nightmares, it should also be their last.

  ‘That’s it after this one, guys,’ I said, looking across to them. ‘We’ve seen enough of the Vegas team for one night, I think.’

  Tyler instinctively put a finger to his lips. I’d obviously spoken across something vital. But then he nodded. He valued his freedoms. ‘There’s only about 15 minutes left of this one, then you can watch what you want, okay?’

  ‘Very gracious of you, I’m sure …’ I began, but then realised my mistake. There was obviously something way more important going on on-screen. Abandoning the dress for a moment, I also listened.

  I had either taken in more of this particular episode than I realised or, more likely, seen it before. Either way, the facts of the murder came straight back to me. The gist of the episode was that the team was at its wits’ end. A man had clearly killed his wife, but there was no physical evidence that placed him at the scene, and without that or a confession there could be no trial. Grissom, the lead CSI, had consequently gathered the whole team in his office.

  We could now see a bunch of photographs splayed out on his desk, the visual record of a particularly tragic murder. He pointed at each photo in turn. Then, as he usually did, which was why it had become so famous, he uttered one of his most immortal phrases. ‘We need to go back and revisit the scene,’ he instructed. ‘The truth is there. We just have to find it.’

  I rolled my eyes. It was just so formulaic. This, of course, was where they would all troop back and do exactly that, and suddenly ‘see’ something that had completely eluded them before.

  And that was, predictably, exactly what happened. And as the case was closed and the culprit put behind bars, I laughed. ‘I bet you two could have solved that way before they did,’ I said.

  ‘Course I could’ve,’ Tyler said. ‘I’m the don at detecting.’

  I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that – new words popped out of his mouth all the time these days, but while I laughed I became aware that Bella wasn’t. She was still staring at the screen, in fact, watching the credits scrolling, and it occurred to me that, however much she professed to enjoy it, perhaps CSI was a bit close to the bone for her.

  ‘Turn it over, Ty,’ I said, nodding at the remote. ‘The news is just about to start and I want to catch it.’

  Tyler groaned but changed the channel. ‘Bor-ing,’ he said.

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ I said, ‘but it’s Bella’s bedtime anyway, and haven’t you got some reading to do?’

  Tyler was knee deep in a geography project for his GCSEs, and getting him to adopt a sensible ‘one page a day’ strategy for completing it was proving less than successful. ‘Ye-es,’ he began, miming a person with the whole weight of the world on his shoulders as he stood up. ‘But before that –’ he looked across at Bella, presumably for consensus over some delaying tactic or other. Then looked at me. And I at him. She’d gone deathly pale.

  She was as white almost as the proverbial sheet, in fact. And sheeny. It was a look I was familiar with. One that suggested she might soon be sick.

  And, just as I thought that, she stood up, wobbling slightly, clapped a hand to her mouth and fled the room.

  Tyler stared after her. ‘Stay here, Ty,’ I told him. Then followed her urgent footsteps into the downstairs cloakroom.

  Bella was already throwing up when I reached her, and I did what any mother would. Gathere
d her hair into a ponytail which I held aloft with one hand, while gently rubbing her back with the other.

  She heaved several times, though there was little inside her – it had been quite a while since we’d eaten our tea – and once she stopped, I flushed the loo, put the cover back on the seat, and swivelled her round to sit down on it.

  ‘Lord, where did that come from?’ I asked her, noting the improvement in her colour, as I ran the cold tap and wrung out a flannel to wipe her face.

  I didn’t expect much in the way of an answer – she looked as surprised as I did – but then her face began to contort in obvious anguish and pain.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ she managed to splutter at me, through deep, gasping breaths. ‘I can’t. I just can’t.’ Another heaving, heavy sob. ‘I’ve got to tell the truth. I just can’t not. She’ll go to prison for ever!’

  I handed her the flannel, which she took, and pressed hard against her face, her shoulders moving rhythmically as she wept.

  I squatted down in front of her, gently held her wrists and pulled her hands away. ‘Time to talk,’ I said, ‘okay? Time to get this all outside of you. Come on. Tell you what, let’s take ourselves off to the conservatory, shall we? Come on, love,’ I finished, taking the flannel from her. ‘Time to let it go.’

  She didn’t move at first, just stared sightlessly in front of her, her eyes glazed, her cheeks growing pink. But when I held out my hand to her, just as I’d done when she first came to us, she looked down, acknowledged it and took it.

  Finally, I thought, though with no sense of satisfaction. Finally, we were going to learn the truth.

  Chapter 19

  It had been a hard day at school, that day. So much harder than she’d imagined it would be. One of those messy end-of-term days she’d always enjoyed at primary school, but which had turned out to be anything but fun.

  She missed primary school, still. Missed it badly. She missed her kindly year six teacher, Mrs Huggins, who’d said ‘You’ll be okay, you will, missy’ to her, over and over again. ‘You’re bright.’ Mrs Huggins often said that to her too. Whispered it, in fact, as if it were their special, guilty secret. If only she could understand exactly how that would make things okay. Being good at schoolwork didn’t change anything, did it?

  Mostly, she missed the routine. The sameness. The security. The knowledge that school was a place where almost everything was predictable, where things were done for reasons, where nothing ever changed. Where she was safe. Where she always knew where she was, and where she should be. Where violent outbursts were the exception rather than the norm.

  She particularly missed the silence of the primary school library. The tiny library in her old school had become her refuge in all the madness. The place where she could be assured of a warm, enveloping hug – of the sunshine spilling down on her, always sprinkled with dust motes, as she’d sit cross-legged with an atlas or nature book on her lap. The big high school library, which she’d sought out as soon as she’d started there, had not been the same. It was a place of hidden corners. A place where older girls schemed and bitched and giggled and where, one time, she’d come upon a boy and a girl kissing. And more. And who’d told her to fuck off.

  There’d been chocolates, she remembered, at previous Christmases. Chocolates wrapped in coloured foil. An end-of-term treat. She remembered Mrs Huggins handing the tin round; the tin with the snowy scenes of Victorian skaters stamped on the outside, the inside full of multi-coloured jewels. Take two, she’d told everyone. It’s Christmas! Happy Christmas! And Bella had chosen thoughtfully, her hand hovering over favourites; a yellow one, finally, and an emerald green. And she had had a happy Christmas. Well, for the most part, at least. It had all got so much more horrible since then.

  It was a long day, that end-of-term day, despite the teachers’ so obvious wish for it to be over. They rolled their eyes, all the teachers at her new, scary high school. Talked – joked, even – about the ‘lunatics taking over the asylum’, barked warnings about ‘nonsense’ and ‘stupidity’ and ‘detentions’, and issued threats about next term coming around all too soon.

  Even so, despite the cartoon they had democratically agreed to watch in their year seven form room, there was this growing sense of anarchy beyond its walls. Shouting, running, swearing, the sound of chairs tumbling and doors slamming. High school was a big, frightening place when you were eleven; where year eleven boys routinely stalked the corridors like angry giants, their acne like eruptions of malevolence, seeping from their faces. Where a year eleven boy was often as big and as powerful as a grown man.

  That day, despite everything she knew she’d be going home to, Bella couldn’t wait to get home.

  Had that been it, partly? That she’d fooled herself so completely? That, because it was nearly Christmas – if you believed the carols, a time of goodwill to all men – she’d expected something different? That her mum and her dad would be somehow different? That her dad wouldn’t shout and her mum wouldn’t scream, and the spirit of Christmas, even if she didn’t believe in Father Christmas, would somehow make it all go away?

  The school bus had, thankfully, been half empty. It wasn’t a school bus as such, just the bus that happened to pass the high school at the right time of day. Anyone could use it, but very few who didn’t actually go to the school did. Who would, if they had the choice of getting another, more civilised one, after all?

  But today, because so many of the older kids had bunked off the afternoon, the journey through the sleety drizzle – that looked nothing like snow – was a still time, a quiet time, and she made it home unmolested; no jeers from the ‘popular’ girls, which she’d learned were a particular tribe there. No ‘accidentally but on purpose’ being bumped by backpacks.

  But then she’d turned into their road and the first thing she’d noticed was that the fairy-light net her mum had draped over the bush in the front garden wasn’t flashing its welcome, the way it had done since the previous weekend, when they’d put it there. The ‘Santa Stop Here!’ sign was also missing.

  She’d been in two minds about the sign, because she was really too old for it, but it was only from the pound shop and her mum wanted her to have it. ‘You’re never too old to make a wish, B!’ she’d said.

  Bella wished now. Wished the fairy lights into sudden, winking brilliance. Which might yet happen; they worked on solar power, and it was only just properly dark now, after all. And then she saw the sign – well, half of it, anyway. Lying splintered in the middle of the road.

  Bella wished again. That what she knew had happened hadn’t actually happened. That the evidence of her eyes was telling her lies. But wishes didn’t tend to come true, despite what her mum always said. The proof was there, in the front garden, which was a sorry-looking garden. (An embarrassment to the whole street, one of their neighbours had once said.)

  There it was. The top half of the ‘Santa Stop Here!’ sign, and strewn close by, in the dirt, was the net of Christmas lights. And she wanted to run then. Run all the way back to primary school. To Mrs Huggins, who had never said, but Bella knew had an inkling, and maybe more. She wanted to run all the way back to primary school and tell her all of it. Perhaps then she’d learn how Mrs Huggins knew she’d be all right.

  But she couldn’t do that because she had to help her mum. Who – she’d said it to Bella again, and again, and again – had to help her dad because he couldn’t ‘help himself’. Her stepdad. She’d been thinking a lot about that lately, after spending almost her whole life not ever thinking about it at all.

  But how could you not think about it when it was spat into your face? Didn’t matter how many times her mum had told her he didn’t mean it, he did. He had. Because he’d said it to her, hadn’t he? And you just didn’t joke about stuff like that. And her mum hadn’t been there, so she didn’t know how he’d said it. How he’d yelled at her. ‘Fuck off out of my face, you little brat!’ And she’d said, ‘Stop it, Dad! Stop it!’ and then he’d turned round
and just said it. Raised a fist, too, even though he’d never hit her before – he only did that to her mother – and said, ‘And I’m not your fucking dad! Got that? You GOT that?’

  He hadn’t hit her. She didn’t think he ever would, for some reason. But then again, he hadn’t really needed to.

  She’d shrugged off her backpack, placing it on the doorstep rather than the wet garden, and spent some time trying to sort out the stricken fairy lights, draping them once again into place over the sodden bush. To make things better. Make things right. To put off going inside, mainly.

  But it was hopeless. The solar sensor was face down on the damp ground. And had obviously been lying there a while. She put her hand over it, and was rewarded with a faint glow from the LEDs, but with the scant daylight they’d had, all of it cloudy and sleet-soaked, she knew they were all but expired. She pushed the spike back into the ground and set it up for the morning anyway. At least tomorrow night they would light up, which mattered.

  There was nothing to be done about the sign, though, so she ignored it. And with little in the way of options – their mostly old neighbours were mainly horrible, not like the friendly, twinkly-eyed ones you always read about in children’s books – she picked up her backpack, retrieved her newly minted, high-school girl’s door key, weighed it in her hand and slipped it into the lock on the front door. Happy Christmas, she thought, smelling beer.