by Lynne Lee
We were still only at the beginning of the process at this point so, though we’d been assured that it would involve little more than box-ticking, given we’d been named in Hope’s will, it most definitely wasn’t a given. And it seemed Norma had other ideas.
‘She’s contesting the will,’ he said.
‘What? Can she even do that?’
‘Apparently. She has six months. And it’s not been six months yet. And there’s worse. She’s been in touch with the adoption agency and is trying to block it—’
‘What? How? On what grounds?’
‘On the grounds that Aidan only agreed to it under duress, and that we’re “not appropriate” people to be adopting him in any case. And that, bottom line, she is. Because she can look after him full-time, whereas we both have full-time jobs. Because she’s cared for him on a regular basis since his birth. Which she has. And we haven’t. Because she strongly considers it to be in his best interests.’
In short, she had fired an arrow right through my Achilles heel.
Which was why, during the short, stressful business that followed, I more than once found myself questioning whether we were doing the right thing. All I knew of Norma Kennedy was that she was Dillon’s gran and Aidan’s mother, and all of that, bar the few occasions we’d spent any time together, had been through the understandably distorting filter of my abandoned sister. And though my every instinct still told me Dillon’s place was with us, another voice niggled constantly – that she had raised valid points. Unlikely as it seemed that she’d be successful (the solicitor had been reassuringly firm on that), it didn’t mean that her case, despite her age, despite Aidan’s absence, didn’t hold at least some merit. Even my own mother had commented as much. No, she didn’t agree – Dillon obviously belonged with his cousin – but her sympathy for Norma’s case was clear.
And I was sympathetic too. For her terrible loss, the heartbreak of which I couldn’t begin to imagine. And when her appeal was dismissed, as everyone knew was going to happen, I even suggested to Matt that I write to her.
He’d been incredulous. ‘Why?’
‘Just to say how sorry we are. None of us wanted this, did we? Her included.’
‘Hen, don’t. Just let it lie now. There’s no point stirring this all up again. You don’t want to go giving her any reason for false hope. Because that’s all it will ever be now. In doing what she’s done, saying the things she’s said to you, she’s made sure of that herself. I mean it, hen. She’s the one who’s burnt her bridges. We are done with her.’
But, ironically, that ensured that I would never be done with her; with the sense of the sadness and tragedy that anyone had to suffer what she had suffered.
At least, till the morning of Dillon’s second birthday, when it was clear it would never be done for her either.
It came in the shape of an unexpected delivery: a tall cardboard box, addressed to me. We’d assumed it would be for Dillon, but what was inside perplexed us. A large flowering perennial, in a pot. It was still in bud, though the tag showed a photograph of it in flower – beautiful spikes of a deep purple-blue. An Aconitum, apparently, with the common name of monkshood.
But a note at the bottom of the laminated card held a caution: All parts of this plant are highly poisonous. Keep away from pets and children.
There was nothing on it to tell us who’d sent it, or why. The only note on the dispatch slip was a generic ‘Enjoy your gift’. It was only later that night, when Matt googled it, that we recognised it for the sick joke it was. Full of deadly toxins, the Aconitum was also known as wolfsbane. ‘Get this,’ he’d said, ‘because, historically, it was used to kill wolves. What the hell? What kind of lunatic sends a poisonous plant as a present? The woman’s fucking insane.’
We duly burnt it, and dismissed it; refused to grace it by reacting. Decided to see it for what it was – a particularly vindictive species of poison-pen letter. If anything, it felt more like the sort of thing you’d find in fairy tales – the forgotten godmother in Sleeping Beauty who, enraged at being excluded from the party, lays the fateful, vengeful curse.
But it was more than that. She had sent it to the home Dillon lived in. Chilling evidence that we had done the right thing.
PC Wallace, who arrived in my office, as had been arranged, the following lunchtime, wasn’t in fact a PC at all. ‘These days, I’m a police community support officer,’ he said, gesturing to the embroidered patch on his chest pocket. ‘Or PCSO,’ he added, ‘for my sins.’ His role, he explained, as he lowered himself on to one of the chairs, was to practise ‘the dark art of diplomatic dissuasion’. ‘To defuse things,’ he explained, looking very pleased with himself, ‘ideally, before they become things.’
He was short, and rather portly, and looked close to retirement, and I wondered if his vision was the reason for the career shift, because he’d yet to indicate that he’d even noticed the state of my nose. I touched a finger to it. Thought about that long-ago sinister floral gesture. ‘This is already a thing,’ I pointed out. ‘Trust me.’
PC Wallace remained unperturbed. ‘So I see,’ he said, belatedly seeming to notice, ‘but you’d be surprised by the effect a little visit from me or one of my colleagues can have on a person. Anyway, I’ve taken witness statements, and I understand you wish to press charges. But I must advise you that we’d only consider submitting a case like this for prosecution if certain criteria are met. And given Mrs Kennedy’s age, and her health, and the circumstances around the assault . . . the unfortunate situation with her son, of course—’
‘So you’re not going to charge her.’
‘We haven’t ruled that out. It’s just that in the first instance, it might be more expedient to take a more softly-softly approach. As I say, given her age, and the fact that she has expressed remorse about her actions . . . would you at least agree that a sensible first step in this case is for us to go and have a word with her—’
‘You mean give her a caution?’
‘No,’ he said, stringing the word out as if gently chiding an errant toddler. ‘Not formally. As I say, in situations like this, we usually find a little chat is sufficient. Which is not to say that we wouldn’t hesitate to take further action, if—’
‘If she comes rampaging into the hospital and attacks me again?’
‘I’m sure that’s not going to happen, Mrs Hamilton.’
He rolled his eyes as he spoke. Only by the smallest amount, but enough that I caught it even so. I was also pretty sure I knew exactly what he was thinking. That I was mildly hysterical, that my choice of words was melodramatic, and that attacks by rampaging pensioners weren’t something that generally happened in Brighton. But I knew something else. That it wasn’t up to me anyway. And even if they did submit a case, it wasn’t up to the police either. No, that would be a decision for the Crown Prosecution Service. Who would almost certainly consider putting someone like Norma Kennedy in the dock to not be even remotely in the public interest.
In short, I was scuppered. She’d get a ticking off. No more. That was likely to be the most I could hope for.
I spent the next couple of days deep in thought. As my bruise began its inevitable rainbow metamorphosis (which I continued to document via badly focused iPhone selfies), so my brain spooled through what had happened and the memories that had been stirred, and I kept coming back to the same thought. Twice now my sister had been called a liar. First by Norma, and then again by Aidan’s wife.
I had expected the former, but I couldn’t help but keep going over and over the conversation I’d had with Jessica Kennedy. Yes, it was to be expected that Aidan had rewritten history for her (and his) benefit – that he’d painted a picture of my sister as some vengeful woman scorned. Yet something else began nagging at me too, and continued to do so. I lay in bed sleepless that night, going over and over it, because the nagging simply wouldn’t go away. I thought about Mum, and her addled mind, and the things I’d said to Dillon over Christmas. About how h
ard it must be to spend a lifetime relying on the information your brain gave you, and then to discover it was constantly misleading you. How hard it must be to accept that it was getting things wrong, even when the evidence was presented as incontrovertible.
Was it nagging at me because there was another potential narrative? A differential diagnosis that I’d yet to consider? Was my ‘truth’ about Aidan, what he’d done to her, the way he’d treated her, so embedded that I was unable to see what might be staring me in the face? Was there more substance to Norma’s vendetta than I’d thought?
Hope’s tumour had come with a long list of potential complications. Death, obviously. It was a particularly aggressive cancer; a swift and merciless killer. But before that, and in common with brain tumours generally, it could cause all kinds of progressive brain-related malfunctions, depending on where it was growing: some disabling, some distressing, some completely unpredictable.
I’d researched all of this early on, even discussed Hope’s scans with her consultant, so I knew what sort of changes we might expect. And at the time, though we were all gripped with hopelessness and terror, it seemed possible that, with luck, because of the position of her tumour, my sister’s route to the destination she had no choice but to travel would at least not be complicated by the sort of wholesale mental fracturing that would effectively see her lost to us long before that.
In simple terms, there was at least a fighting chance that she would not lose her marbles till towards the end.
And so it had seemed, at least on the surface. But was that true? No amount of scans could tell us definitively. Brain tumours tended not to be accommodating like that. Perhaps changes had been taking place that were too subtle to be noticed unless you were constantly with her, which I hadn’t been. Suppose they had been happening? And no one had picked up on it? I thought back to that first recording Hope had made for me when she was putting Dillon’s memory box together. How she’d talked about the business of cleansing her soul.
It was such an odd term to use, even for Hope. And what if it hadn’t been just about explaining all her childhood transgressions? What if she’d taken the process further? What if it had become part of some bigger project, some obsession, aided and abetted by her tumour – some mania to get Dillon away from Aidan? But could that really be so? She had still seemed so, well, sane.
I was leaving the hospital on Thursday afternoon when I realised I could push away the nagging thought no further. I had emerged from the hospital to a particularly brilliant winter sunset, ablaze with the same ochres and purples and yellows that were currently trying to outdo each other on my face. I stopped to take it in – it was too arresting, too beautiful, not to. As if some celestial impressionist painter, blessed with a sudden creative urge, had been let loose with their paintbrushes and liberally daubed the whole sky with great sweeps and whorls in magnificent hues. And at its centre, beyond the skeleton of the former West Pier, the sun blazed so huge and orange that I could barely see. It was then that I had my own blinding revelation.
What if everything I’d accepted as fact in fact wasn’t?
What if Jessica Kennedy was the one telling the truth?
Chapter 12
‘You want my honest opinion or the edited-for-a-family-audience version? If it’s the director’s cut you’re after – and bear in mind that doesn’t mean he’s not still a complete piece of work – yes, knowing your sister, yes, I’d say it could be. I’d go even further, actually. I mean, I understand about the tumour and how that could have affected her personality, but even without the tumour, I can see how she might have done something like that. Can’t you? Seriously, you’ve got to know how manipulative she was.’
It was Thursday evening now, and Matt and I were talking on the phone. We usually FaceTimed, but because I didn’t want him to see my face before he had to, I pretended I was having problems with my connection.
‘But to be that vengeful?’ I said. ‘That determined to stop Aidan having access to Dillon, knowing how huge the implications were?’
‘Absolutely. In fact, maybe she’d be that determined because of the implications. Look at it this way. However she felt about Aidan by the time she knew she was dying, she had a zillion reasons for wanting us to adopt Dillon anyway. Financial security. Stability. A safe, decent childhood. Not to mention making sure he’d still have a relationship with Daniel. Because be honest, would he otherwise? Almost certainly not. Can you imagine how it must have looked to her when she worked out her options? More than likely she’d have been all too aware what would most likely happen – that he’d be off living with a father who was sniffing lines of coke for breakfast. And maybe shacked up with the girlfriend he’d been having the affair with. And, who knows? A couple of step-siblings – and, down the line, maybe half-siblings. And that poisonous witch of a grandmother in the picture, to boot. Don’t forget, she knew her far better than we did. And it wasn’t like your own mother wasn’t a factor in any of this, was it? No, I’d say it was highly possible that she embroidered it a little, just to make sure we didn’t feel we had a choice in the matter. There’s maybe no smoke without fire, because we knew what he was like, and, to be fair to her, it might not even have been primarily about revenge. She might have genuinely thought she was doing the best thing for Dillon. And you’ve got to admit, given everything that happened afterwards – everything that’s happening now, she was right, wasn’t she?’
Hope’s long-ago words about cleansing her soul came back to me again. Had deceiving us for the greater good all been part of the process? ‘But what if none of it was true?’
‘How can that be? We already know that’s not the case. They were possibly the most dysfunctional couple I’ve ever met. Was there ever a time when they weren’t tearing lumps out of each other?’
‘No, but specifically. Not the infidelities. We know they were all true. I mean the cruelty, the controlling behaviour, the violence. What if she had made all that up, because she knew it would jerk my strings? That’s what I keep thinking back to. That because I knew what he was like, I just automatically believed her. Because you would, wouldn’t you? Especially given the stress they were under. With her illness, with a baby, with all their money worries – you just would.’
‘And his conviction for GBH or whatever it was. Course you would. And perhaps that was her plan. And it worked, didn’t it? But don’t forget, he still walked out on her. He can’t airbrush that away, can he? And he didn’t even try for contact. He didn’t even stay in the same city. If he was innocent of all the things she accused him of, he would have stuck around, surely? Put up a fight. Why didn’t he do that?’
‘I don’t know. That part of it doesn’t make any sense to me. Well, it does if you believe the noble-sacrifice narrative, but I don’t. But that’s not even my point. My point is what if she did do all that, drag us into it – God, not that I’d change anything, obviously – just to get back at him for being unfaithful? What if she did do it primarily as a final act of revenge? I mean, she’s my sister, and I hate even thinking it, but, Matt, if she did do that, that’s terrible. It means she knowingly engineered things to steal Dillon from his own father, and his grandmother, don’t forget, against their will.’
‘If it’s true. You don’t know that. And even if it was, he obviously accepted it as a fait accompli pretty quickly, even if his mother didn’t, so my heart’s not exactly bleeding for him right now.’
‘Nor mine, obviously. But that doesn’t make it right, does it? And if she did, then it’s no wonder Norma hated her. Hates us still. Hates me, specifically. I mean, we cut her off, completely, from her own flesh and blood.’
‘Hang on – we didn’t do that. She brought that on herself.’
‘Yes, but perhaps it was always going to end up like that eventually. Because it could never have worked, could it? Not once Dillon got older, even if she hadn’t done what she’d done. And, let’s face it, we were only too happy not to have anything to do with her an
y more.’
‘Too right we were. But you need to stop feeling bad about it all. None of it was our fault. And these sorts of rifts and forced separations happen all the time. Death, divorce, whatever. It’s not like she’s the only grandparent in the world this has happened to. And you’re still missing my point. About Aidan. He didn’t even try to argue his case, did he? If he’d cared that much, he would have. And he didn’t. He ran away. Only one person deprived Norma of her grandson and that was Aidan. If he’d stepped up to his responsibilities, we wouldn’t be where we are now, would we? The idea of us taking on Dillon wouldn’t have even been on the radar. No, if you ask me, it all worked out exactly as he’d hoped. I think they probably had a big bust-up over that girl he was seeing, and while she saw it as the writing on the wall for Dillon’s future, he saw it as the perfect opportunity to walk away, start again. If anyone needs to feel bad about his mother, it’s him.’
‘God, I hate talking about Dillon like this.’
‘I know, hen. Me too. But you have to separate where we are now from how we ended up here. And be honest. Isn’t that the more likely truth of it? And we’re never going to know now. And I’m not sure I even want to. I’m much more concerned about the here and now. What that lunatic bloody woman might do next.’
‘Exactly. That’s my point. I can’t stop putting myself in her shoes – thinking how I’d feel if someone tried to take Daniel or Dillon away from me. I’d be beside myself. I’d be raging. So can you imagine how much anger she must have carried around with her all these years? Especially given that she’d already lost a son. Especially since Aidan then disappeared. And don’t forget, even if it isn’t true, to her it must have all seemed premeditated. She probably thinks we cooked the whole thing up together.’
‘Which isn’t terrifically far from the truth, is it? But listen, I need my bed,’ he added. ‘And by the sound of you, so do you. Oh, and by the way, I have an afternoon site meeting tomorrow, so I’ll probably go back to the office and do some work before I head back, rather than sit on the M25 for three hours. And listen, in the meantime, you be sure to chase the police. Make sure they have been to give her a warning. And make sure you’re on your guard at work, okay?’
