False Hope

by Lynne Lee

  He puts the memory stick down and picks up the kettle. ‘So what’s on it?’

  ‘Another of her voice recordings. A very long one. I’m still trying to get my head round it. There was a letter with it, only partly written. She’d planned to send it to a solicitor’s. You probably need to listen to it. It explains a lot.’

  ‘As in?’

  I clamber on to one of the bar stools under the kitchen island. ‘God, I hardly know where to start. She lied, basically. About everything. Well, almost. I was on the right track – he never hit her, or abused her.’

  ‘Seriously? She actually said that?’ He looks unconvinced.

  ‘Seriously. The whole lot. All lies. He didn’t do any of it. And his wife was telling the truth. He didn’t walk out on Hope either. Not willingly, anyway. She made him.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Matt says again. ‘She admitted that?’

  I nod. ‘And much more, believe me. You know what you were saying the other night about him disappearing without a backwards glance and how you didn’t buy into the whole idea of him being a martyr and doing it for Dillon? Well, it turns out you were right.’ I nod towards the memory stick. ‘Well, half right, at least. He didn’t want to abandon Dillon, but it wasn’t just altruism on his part that made him go. It was because Hope had something on him and she threatened him with it.’

  He frowns, looks confused. ‘You mean the drugs? Didn’t we already know that?’

  I shake my head. ‘Not the drugs. This goes way back. I mean years back. Back to when they were seventeen, not long after they moved in together. You’re not going to believe this, but Aidan killed his brother.’

  ‘What?’ He looks down at the stick again as if he’s only just seeing it. ‘What, as in murdered him?’ I nod. ‘Good God. You mean he actually murdered him?’

  ‘So she says.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because apparently he abused him when he was little. And for a long time, it sounds like.’

  ‘His brother?’

  ‘There were about nine years between them, don’t forget. He would have been in his teens then.’

  ‘As in sexually?’

  I nod again.

  Matt frowns. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘That does explain a lot. So how did he do it?’

  ‘During a fight. He pushed him down a stairwell.’

  ‘On purpose?’

  ‘She thinks so. But she gave him an alibi, and he got away with it.’

  ‘Wow,’ he says, tugging the beanie off, giving his head a scratch. ‘You couldn’t make it up, could you?’ Then he laughs. A short humourless bark. ‘Actually, knowing Aidan bloody Kennedy, that’s exactly what you would make up. God, what must she have been thinking to go along with something like that? If the police had found out, she could have ended up in prison herself. No wonder he was only too happy to bloody scarper. But what on earth possessed her to agree to cover up for him in the first place? Was she mad?’

  ‘That’s just it. She didn’t agree to it. It was her who suggested it. He was all for going to the police. He wanted to. She managed to talk him out of it. She thought she was doing the right thing.’

  ‘The right thing?’

  ‘Yes. Because she didn’t want to lose him. But also because she didn’t think he deserved to go to prison. Thought he’d suffered enough. She really loved him, Matt.’

  ‘She’d have had to.’

  ‘She did. It was only later that she realised she’d probably done the wrong thing. God, I can’t believe we knew absolutely nothing about it. Can you?’

  Matt shakes his head. ‘And she’s confessed all that on there?’ He nods towards the stick again.

  ‘All of it. She recorded it just after he’d gone. She’d planned to send it to the solicitors and have them keep it in case we needed it.’

  ‘We needed it?’

  ‘In case Aidan changed his mind after she’d died and tried to go for custody. Or his mother did. Which she did. It was exactly as you hypothesised. Not revenge. She was just being pragmatic.’

  ‘Hmm. That’s certainly one word for it.’

  ‘No, she really was. She knew exactly what she was doing. She needed to convince us, beyond doubt, that we had to adopt Dillon, and she knew exactly which strings to pull, didn’t she?’

  Matt’s silent for a moment and I think I know why. Because we’re both thinking the same thing and then assiduously un-thinking it. She had us adopt Dillon by deceiving us, grotesquely. Yet to feel duped, to think ‘what if?’, feels even more grotesque.

  ‘Right,’ he says eventually. ‘Soup. We need soup.’ He then strides to the window, pulls the handle up and opens it. ‘Neeps and tatties soup in ten minutes, boys!’ he shouts. Then comes back and envelopes me in a hard, lengthy bear hug.

  ‘Fuck ’em all,’ he says. ‘Just for the record.’

  After lunch, dogged by duty, I take the boys to visit their grandma, so they can take her the paintings they’ve made for her. I warn them both on the way that she might be incoherent – to not worry if she babbles or talks nonsense at them. ‘It’s just the dementia,’ I remind them. ‘So don’t take it personally, okay? Whatever Nanna says.’

  Daniel, in the front with me, is only half listening, because he’s busy typing away on his mobile phone. ‘Is Alzheimer’s spelt h-e-i or h-i-e?’ he wants to know. ‘Ah, h-e-i,’ he adds, the spellchecker already having answered his question.

  Dillon’s listening, though. ‘Is Nanna going to die now?’ he asks me.

  I glance at him in the mirror. He is gazing out of the window. ‘I can’t answer that, sweetie. But no, I don’t think so. She just needs to stay in hospital till they can clear her infection.’

  ‘Can they fix her dementia too?’

  ‘No, bubs, they can’t.’ And I’m just about to add that he mustn’t fret about it, that, some time soon, she won’t even remember she has dementia, when he emits a little huff. ‘Aww,’ he says, my mother apparently forgotten, ‘Dan, look. All the snow’s already melting down here.’

  And by the time we’re on the main road to the hospital, it has.

  My heart, however, hasn’t. Not where Mum’s concerned. Will it ever? So when we arrive up on the ward to find her asleep, I’m only too happy to accept the nurse’s whispered suggestion that perhaps it’s best if we don’t wake her. ‘She’s had a trying morning,’ she confides. ‘Got herself in a bit of a state about wanting to go home. You know how it is.’ I assure her I do. ‘I’ll let her know you’ve been,’ she adds, even though we both know it’s information she’ll retain for all of a couple of seconds. ‘And she’ll be so thrilled with these,’ she says, picking up the paintings, which the boys have placed at the foot of the bed. ‘Especially knowing her grandsons have done them for her. What a talented pair you are!’

  We don’t stay long. Just sufficient for me to top up her water jug and check her stats, while the boys, at something of a loss (neither, thankfully, has ever spent time in a hospital), hover at her bedside, whispering to each other and pointing, as if examining a zoological specimen. Which I understand. Because she doesn’t look quite like their Nanna. It’s only in the nuances – her hollow cheeks, her general pallor, the paraphernalia around her – but they have never seen her in this inert and diminished way before. And till just a few days ago, neither had I. Though in my case it’s what’s on the inside that matters more.

  It transpires that I’m not the only one who’s been visiting the hospital. An hour after we’re home, the boys and Matt working on the Lego Land Rover while I catch up on emails, my mobile rings. I pick it up. It’s Siddhant.

  Siddhant, who, like me, is not on call this weekend. But who, unlike me, is still at the sharp end of his training. Who is anxious about the fiendishly hard exams in his immediate future. Who is too driven and conscientious for anyone’s good – his most of all. I have told him, more than once, not to haunt the hospital when he’s off. To relax. Get some rest. Have a social life. Have a life. Burning out is a very real thr
eat.

  I go out into the hall to answer. ‘Sid,’ I say. ‘Please tell me you’re not at the hospital.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Hamilton,’ he says. ‘Literally, it’s just for an hour only.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. We’ve spoken about this, we will speak about it again. Anyway, apart from tearing you off a strip, which I will do on Monday, what can I do for you?’

  Which is when he says something that stops me in my tracks.

  ‘It’s just something Mr Porter thought you might want to know about. About that patient, Aidan Kennedy? He was brought in again this morning. By ambulance. Another overdose.’

  Aidan. Back in hospital. Was in hospital while we were there. ‘Serious?’

  ‘Fatal. He’s just been pronounced brain-dead. They’re keeping him on the ventilator while they search for potential matches. We just saw his wife arrive.’

  ‘And his mother?’

  ‘She’s up there too. I think she is the one who found him. I think they plan to harvest the organs on Monday.’

  I thank Siddhant. Remind him to go home. As in now.

  Brain-dead. So Aidan’s dead. So he’s gone. So he’s done it. And the wildest thought occurs to me. But perhaps it’s not so wild. Has he always assumed I might already know about his brother? Has that particular sword of Damocles been hanging over him all his adult life? Has encountering me again made that life – that fear of exposure – unbearable? I don’t doubt his wife leaving him will have had the greater impact, but I almost wish now that I hadn’t found what I found.

  No, I profoundly wish I hadn’t. Because seeing him in this new light, as the victim of such horrific circumstance, has thrown everything I trusted as being truth into chaos. I’m not naive enough to glibly mark people down as essentially good or bad – behind almost every bully is a damaged soul. I know that. But now everything is coloured by the tragedy of his youth. By the knowledge that he was not the man Hope persuaded me to think he was. By the real man behind the avatar I have hauled around for two decades, and whose ghost will now haunt me forever.

  Matt’s looking at me quizzically, a part-constructed piece of Lego in his hand. ‘What?’ he mouths.

  ‘Aidan,’ I mouth back at him. ‘He’s killed himself.’

  ‘Back in a tick,’ he tells the boys, and follows me into the kitchen. ‘Did I read that right?’ he asks. ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Technically. They’ll keep him on life support till they have as many matches as they can find for his usable organs. Oh, Christ, Matt. I don’t know what to think. This is awful.’

  He looks shocked at this. But then he hasn’t listened to Hope’s confession, has he? I mentally check myself. Is confession even the right word? ‘It is what it is,’ he says firmly. ‘Look, I know it sounds harsh, but the guy was a train wreck. By rights he should have died when he smashed into that lorry, and perhaps he knew that too. Perhaps he was always living on borrowed time. Look, the bottom line is that at least this means we can put it all behind us. Move on with our own lives without it all hanging over us. We know the truth now. And given some of the things his wife told you, perhaps it was always going to end up like this.’

  ‘God, his poor wife. She’s going to blame herself. She—’

  He shakes his head. ‘Not our problem. It’s not even our business. This is nothing to do with us. Don’t even start going down that road. No, just be grateful—’

  I gape at him. ‘Grateful? Matt, he’s dead.’

  ‘Let me finish. Grateful that nothing else has happened. Grateful that this will hopefully be the end of it. Of course it’s a tragedy. But it’s not of our making. And perhaps now we can lay these ghosts to rest.’

  Ghosts again. The ghost of Hope. The ghost of Aidan. The ghost of Aidan’s dead brother. I think again of Norma – about how I’d feel if I lost one of my children. Beside myself. Enraged. Apoplectic.

  ‘She’s lost both her sons now.’ It’s a thought, but it comes out as a statement. ‘And her grandson. And almost certainly her granddaughters too now – well, as good as. How much loss can a person take before they lose it altogether?’ I touch my hand to my cheek, the action unthinking. Automatic. ‘Matt, it won’t be the end of it. What about Norma?’

  Chapter 21

  Both the sun and the rising temperature have gone about their business. The snow has completely gone by the time I wake up on Sunday morning. Every last vestige of it, even up here on the downs, bar a small, grubby ice ball in the middle of the lawn, with two bark chips and a carrot sticking lopsidedly out of it, and wearing Matt’s Glasgow Rangers scarf as a necklace.

  In the far distance, our wedge of sea view is a uniform grey, the colour I still associate most with my childhood. Like many kids raised at the seaside, I spent a great deal of time with it. Sometimes reading, sometimes not, sometimes walking, sometimes sitting. On a groyne, on the shingle, or, out of season, cross-legged on a favourite bench.

  It’s those times I remember most vividly and clearly. Not the high-summer days of endless blue and crowded pavements. The grey days, the chilly days, the angsty, need-to-get-out-of-the-house days, when I’d escape the oppressive confines of our dark, unhappy home and walk, sometimes for miles, along the seafront. And always accompanied by the waves’ comforting babble, as they slurped up the shingle and hissed and gurgled back again, leaving lace bubbling down into the pebbles.

  It was one of my constants, that sea. A much-needed antithesis to the tumult of my home life; an undemanding, comforting, largely unchanging vista. A fitting gunmetal backdrop to so many winters of discontent.

  A few years back I went to the Gower coast, in South Wales. A girls’ minibreak, with Julia, my old friend from med school, who by that time had a holiday cottage there. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a sea, a beach, a stretch of coast so lovely. So wild and exuberant and untamed. So seductive. A technicolour dreamcoat to this comfortable grey old cardigan.

  Which I thought I’d feel happy to slip back over my shoulders. But I don’t. Because what’s been happening, what has just happened, has coloured almost everything. I want so desperately, suddenly, to be back in my real home. To just bundle all of us into the car and drive north.

  I’m first up – no surprise after my disrupted Friday night – and as I pad around, feed Mr Weasley, put the kettle on, empty the dishwasher, I’m overcome by the strongest sense of not being where I should be. Realise that what I feel is homesick, right to my very bones.

  An hour later, breakfast made and eaten, Sunday morning marches on, and the feeling – the compulsion to run away – persists. It isn’t helped by the fact that, at some point, I will have to go back down to the hospital and see my mother. Because however much I wish it, I cannot visualise a scenario where avoiding this onerous duty won’t make me feel worse than if I do go. Because it will. That’s the nature of my personal beast.

  Also persistent – distressingly – is the image of Aidan Kennedy, currently lying in an ICU bed, dead but not dead, while his fate as a donor awaits. I wonder who signed the consent form. Jessica Kennedy, almost certainly. Not Norma. Because his wife will still surely be his next of kin. That dotted line – Just here, my love . . . That pen so gently proffered. Those closely packed paragraphs, each explained, with due solemnity. So that others can live on after his death.

  Matt’s scrolling through his iPad. The world keeps on turning. ‘D’you wish we’d never moved here?’ I ask him. ‘Tell me honestly.’

  He rolls his eyes. ‘Seriously? Hen, can we please just not go there?’

  ‘Seriously. Because I do.’

  It’s a while before he speaks. ‘We don’t have to stay here forever.’

  ‘But the boys . . .’

  ‘Will be fine. As long as we’re fine. As long as you’re fine. Look, let’s not talk about this just now, eh? It’s a pointless conversation.’

  ‘So you do, then. Look, it’s fine,’ I add, seeing his frown. ‘Genuinely. I should never have asked you to. It wasn’t fair. It was
selfish.’

  ‘Will you just stop it with the “I made you do it” line? Please?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You made me do nothing. And you’re responsible for none of what’s happened either. So how about we just—’

  He’s interrupted by an ear-splitting shout from the living room. A bellow, almost – which sounds like Daniel – and another then, from Dillon. We both rush in, to find the precious Lego Land Rover, constructed so painstakingly and carefully, over so many weeks now, now deconstructed – and fatally, too. At least half of the 2,500 pieces (or so the box said) are strewn in clumps of various sizes around the floor. I have sons. I know Lego. There is no remedial-work option. It will have to be completely broken up and rebuilt from scratch.

  Daniel knows this too. From painful experience. And is lunging at Dillon – and for a second time, I calculate, as Dillon, red-cheeked and flinching, already has his hands clenched across his stomach.

  ‘Whoa!’ Matt barks, as he grabs Daniel’s wrist. ‘Enough,’ he says. ‘Enough, now. Enough. What just happened?’

  Daniel, clearly in no mood to furnish him with an account, yells again at his brother. ‘You dickhead! You idiot! I’m going to get you for this!’

  Presumably hoping for sanctuary, Dillon rushes at me, flings his arms round my middle. ‘I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it! You’re the dickhead. I didn’t mean it!’

  ‘He did!’ Daniel is railing mostly at his father now, gesticulating with his free hand. ‘I saw him! He did it on purpose. I saw him! Don’t lie,’ he screams at Dillon. ‘You so did! Tell the truth!’

  ‘I didn’t!’

  ‘God!’ Daniel is growling now. ‘He’s a liar! You are such a liar!’

  ‘But, sweetheart,’ I say to him. ‘Why on earth would Dillon do that?’

  ‘Are you sure, son?’ Matt adds.

  Daniel has tears in his eyes too now. ‘I saw him do it!’ he barks. ‘God! Why won’t you believe me? I saw him! He deliberately pushed it off the table! He did it because I wouldn’t let him play FIFA!’

  ‘You never let me play!’ Dillon is properly sobbing now.