by Lynne Lee
All theories need testing. But for now, mine feels sound. Because it must. Because I cannot allow any alternative to muscle in and try to take up space in my head.
By now, I have already texted Isabel. I’ve explained that Nanna’s ‘friend’ Mary isn’t a friend, that she’s actually Dillon’s paternal grandmother. The mother of the man whose arm I had to amputate before Christmas – who died over the weekend, after taking an overdose – and from whom we’ve been estranged for many years. It’s a mess, I finish. The boys know nothing about it. I’m sorry. I should have told you all this earlier. Police on way. Let’s try to keep calm for Daniel.
She’s texted back. A thumbs-up emoji and a kiss.
They’ve been to Nando’s, and despite all the knots in my stomach, once we’ve put Matt’s into the oven, I find it easier to eat than I expected. Being required to seem calm and strong and optimistic and reassuring has the benefit of keeping me calm and reassuring for Daniel too, which has helped. He has segued now from fear and anxiety about an ‘if’ to a more manageable ‘when’ Dillon gets home. He’s with Nanna’s friend. It’s a muddle, a miscommunication. That’s all. So there’s little to fear.
All of which will change, I know, once the police are on the doorstep, and a part of me wants to ask Isabel to stay. But I know she is supposed to be seeing her boyfriend this evening – they have flights and accommodation to book for their trip – and, as much as Daniel, I want to reassure her as well.
So I go out to her car with her. It’s so dark now, so cold. And run through in more detail what I told her by text.
‘Wow,’ she says. ‘Complicated.’
‘Yes, you could say that.’
‘And none of this would have happened if he hadn’t had that accident, would it?’
‘No, probably not. Anyway, you get off home. I’ll let you know the minute we hear anything, I promise.’
‘I mean it. Even if it’s in the middle of the night, I want to know, okay? And I’ll be back here first thing—’
‘Sweetheart, you don’t need to do that.’
‘I do need to do that.’ She is struggling to keep her chin from wobbling. ‘I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to Dillon. If only I’d known, I could have . . .’ She clamps her mouth shut. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.’
I summon Jessica Kennedy’s words to mind, and try to force myself to believe them. Try to transmit that belief to Isabel too. ‘It won’t. Aidan’s wife said Norma Kennedy would never, ever hurt him. And I absolutely, one hundred per cent, believe her.’
But as I watch Isabel’s car turn the corner, I feel desolate. Because if she’s wrong, the fault will be all mine.
When I get back inside, Matt has texted to say he’s just stopped for petrol, and should be home, give or take, in half an hour. And Daniel’s in the conservatory, on the floor, with Mr Weasley. I get down on the floor as well, and, just as the boys often do, we sit opposite one another, legs spread, and our feet soles to soles, to make a diamond-shaped arena for him to run around in.
‘It must be weird being a hamster,’ he observes. ‘Being on your own all the time.’
‘Well, he’s not strictly alone,’ I say. ‘He has us for company, doesn’t he?’
‘But he wouldn’t have in the wild.’
‘No, you’re right, he wouldn’t. They’re solitary animals. Which is why they fight if you put them together.’
There’s a silence. Which lengthens. And lengthens. ‘It was an accident,’ Daniel says finally. Whispers it.
‘What was?’
‘My Lego. It was an accident.’ His eyes are glistening with unshed tears. ‘I just said he did it on purpose because he threatened to do it . . . he didn’t mean for it to really fall. That bit was an accident. I don’t know why I said that. I just—’
But he can’t speak any more. I scoop up Mr Weasley and scramble across so I can hold him.
‘I wish we didn’t fight yesterday,’ he sobs. ‘I wish I wasn’t horrible to Dillon this morning. What if she doesn’t bring him back and the last thing I said to him was—’ He can’t bring himself to say the word.
‘Oh, sweetheart.’ I grip him tightly, Mr Weasley clutched between us. ‘She will bring him back,’ I tell him firmly. ‘She’s Nanna’s friend, remember. Mary. It’s probably all just a muddle, and—’
He pulls back a little suddenly. ‘I remember her now,’ he says. ‘She’s Nanna’s friend from before.’
‘Before?’
‘Before we moved here. She came on a picnic with us once, when we went on a sleepover at Nanna’s. And to Drusillas once, too. You know – the farm that’s a zoo?’
‘I do,’ I say. And I never knew a single thing about it. They might even have said something about it, and I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. Why would I? ‘And there you go,’ I add. ‘See? It’s probably just a big silly muddle, like I said.’
Which reassures him, but only brings my fear crowding in again. This woman has threaded her way through my children’s lives like a stripe in a piece of Brighton rock.
Or a tapeworm.
Matt and the police officers arrive almost simultaneously, the police car pulling up just as Matt is getting out of his. One is PCSO Wallace, looking a great deal less sanguine than he had in my office, the other a younger man in plain clothes, who introduces himself as Detective Sergeant Lovelace. I show them into the living room with a sense of strange dislocation, as if this isn’t really happening. As if we’re all playing roles in a television drama. Because this cannot be happening, can it? I take an armchair, Daniel sitting on the arm, pale and tense. Matt stands by the fireplace. He cannot sit. He’s too wired.
‘So,’ says the DS, once they are both perched on our sofa, ‘I know you’ve already spoken to the dispatcher, Mrs Hamilton, but can you run through what you already know again for us?’
I do so, including the discovery of the memory stick on Friday, acutely conscious of having to choose my words carefully. Acutely conscious that Daniel is listening so intently. He shouldn’t be here. But where else can he be? The officers listen in silence, the DS nodding at intervals, while PCSO Wallace makes notes on a pad. Why the hell didn’t I call the police over the weekend? Explain the connection? Make it clearer the sort of woman Norma is?
Because I didn’t think. Because I never imagined anything like this would happen. God – why didn’t I just think?
‘So,’ says the DS again, once I’ve finished, ‘Norma Kennedy is the person your son knows as Auntie Mary. Which would explain why he would be comfortable getting into her car, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
Daniel touches my arm. ‘Mum. Who is Norma?’ he whispers.
I place my hand over his. ‘I’ll explain,’ I whisper back.
Matt’s looking at PCSO Wallace. Pointedly. ‘You did speak to her, right?’ His tone is accusatory. And I tense, wondering if he’s going to mention the assault in front of Daniel. Thankfully, he doesn’t. Doesn’t need to.
PCSO Wallace shakes his head. ‘Not as yet, I’m afraid. I did try, but—’
‘What the fu—’
Matt grabs the word back before he finishes it, and shakes his head. Shoots a look at me. Lets PCSO Wallace finish his sentence.
‘Mrs Kennedy wasn’t at home,’ he continues. He doesn’t meet my eye. He looks sheepish, but not even remotely as sheepish as I feel I have a right to expect him to be. I swallow down my anger, which I know will get me precisely nowhere. Instead, I squeeze Daniel’s hand to reassure him.
‘So what happens now?’ Matt says.
‘We’ll need a recent photograph,’ the DS says. ‘If you have one you can loan us?’ He stands up, as does PCSO Wallace, flipping his pad closed. ‘We’ll get that out, and we’ll start making the usual inquiries, starting with the car and a visit to Mrs Kennedy’s home. On the face of it—’ (the DS looks over at Daniel as he says this) ‘—it looks as though she’s managed to get her wires crossed about something. I’m sure ther
e’s nothing to fear. And I’m sure Dillon’s fine.’ And though I know he can’t know that, I’m grateful for his tone. For his willingness to go along with that narrative for Daniel. Whose hand I squeeze again. ‘And while Dad does that,’ I tell him, ‘let’s get you up to bed, bubs. Let the policemen get off and find Dillon.’
He doesn’t protest. But where to start? All the years we’ve spent quietly burying the truth have made it flower into impossible proportions. Leaving Matt to see the policemen out, I take him upstairs, and potter around the bedroom while he changes into pyjamas and goes to clean his teeth, determinedly avoiding looking at Dillon’s empty bed. Then, once Daniel’s back and in his own bed, I cuddle up beside him.
‘So,’ I say. ‘Auntie Mary. She isn’t just Nanna’s friend. You know my sister, Dillon’s Mummy Hope, who died when you were little?’ He nods. ‘Well, he also had another nanna – as well as Nanna Jean in Scotland, this is – a lady called Norma. And before his Mummy Hope died – this was back when Dillon was still a baby, which is why he doesn’t remember it – she would look after him sometimes, to help out when she went to work, and so on. So once Dillon became your brother, and came to live with us in London, we would bring him down here to Brighton to see her from time to time, because she missed him. And then, because that’s how it works in life sometimes, we stopped taking him to see her, and—’
‘But why did Nanna call her Auntie Mary?’
‘Because . . .’ I grope for words. For truth. For the right truth. For now. ‘Because by that time he wasn’t seeing his Nanna Norma any more. Wasn’t supposed to be, anyway.’
‘Why not?’
Another perfectly reasonable, logical question. I grope for words again. ‘Because . . . well, because it was getting confusing for Dillon,’ I settle for. ‘Because lots had changed. Because he had a new mummy and daddy now, didn’t he? And a new life, and a brother.’ I squeeze his shoulder. ‘And we knew it was only going to get more confusing for him. And, well, we ended up having a bit of an argument about what was best for him. For all of us. And that was why Nanna told you her name was Auntie Mary. Because perhaps she thought I might be cross about you both seeing her. Because of the argument. You know what it’s like with arguments—’
‘But why did she go off with him today?’
‘Well, I think it’s because something sad has happened for her. And she’s probably upset, and, well . . . I think, maybe, she just wanted to see Dillon for a bit. To cheer her up, perhaps.’
‘So she fixed it with Nanna Joy?’
‘Kind of, I expect, yes.’
‘And she’s her friend.’ It’s not a question. ‘So she won’t hurt him.’ He grabs the thought as if a passing life raft. Then finds another. ‘But why didn’t she just ask you if she could see him?’
I am struggling now. How the hell do you explain stuff like this? You just don’t. You just can’t. You just shouldn’t. You shouldn’t have to. But he’s here, and needs an answer. ‘Probably because she knew I’d say no,’ I say eventually.
‘But why?’ His tone’s sharper now. ‘Why couldn’t you just have let her?’
‘There are lots of reasons, but mostly because it would just become too difficult. Too upsetting. And she’s sick, sweetie. That’s the main reason. She’s not very well. She’s upset and she’s sick. So if she had asked, we wouldn’t have thought it would be a good idea, that’s all.’
He seems to accept this. ‘And she’s going to bring him back again? Definitely? You’re not just saying that?’
‘Definitely. Now, shall I stay here till you fall asleep?’
‘I’m not going to fall asleep till Dillon’s back. I know I’m not.’
‘I know, bubs. I’m not going to either. Not till he’s home.’
But after I sing three rounds of ‘American Pie’ he finally drops off, and once I’m sure he won’t wake again, at least for the moment, I carefully extricate myself, then tuck him in, and tiptoe silently from the room.
I leave the door open so the light from the landing can spill in, and the sight of Dillon’s empty bed – that horrible flat expanse of duvet – sends such a stab of fear through me that it makes me catch my breath. And something else. An emotion so powerful that it takes me by surprise. I’ve never felt anything like it, but I recognise it. It’s rage.
If anything happens to him, I decide, I will track her down myself. And when I find her, I will tear her limb from limb.
‘What the fuck do we do now?’ Matt says when I find him in the kitchen.
‘I think we try to keep calm, and—’
‘Calm?’ he snaps. ‘Calm?’
‘Yes, calm,’ I tell him firmly. ‘There’s food for you in the warmer. Shall I—’
‘No,’ he says. Then he frowns. ‘Sorry, hen. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. I just – Jesus.’ He looks despairingly at me. ‘What the fuck do we do?’
We do nothing. Two hours tick by with unbearable slowness, because there is nothing we can do. I try and fail to think of any time I’ve felt so wretched and helpless. So unable to do a single thing to change my situation. Ever wished quite so hard that I could be in theatre, the only place where I can obliterate every single other thought.
At ten, I go upstairs, undress, run the shower, and get in. Then, once I’m done and dry, I re-dress, in the same jeans and sweater. I need to be dressed because I need to be ready. I have to be in a state of readiness, for whatever happens next.
Where is he?
As I start down the stairs again, Matt’s talking on the phone. I hurry down them, and when I get into the kitchen he’s just disconnected and is ferreting in the pot on the worktop for a pen. He’s been on my phone, I realise.
I look hopefully at him. ‘News?’
He shakes his head. ‘Hang on,’ he says, casting his gaze around and settling on the takeaway menu. He writes a name on it. DS Winters. In my current state of gloom, it seems horribly prescient. ‘PCSO Wallace,’ he says. ‘Just checking in as he’s about to go off duty. This guy’s taking over from him.’
It’s a small comfort. ‘And? Anything to report?’
‘Not yet. They’ve searched her house, found her phone—’
‘Her phone?’ I begin. ‘So can’t they use it to—’ I stop, immediately realising the idiocy of my question.
‘They think she probably left it there precisely so they wouldn’t be able to track her. And they found something else too. A photo of Dillon in his school uniform. As in a school photo. Which I’m guessing she must have got from your fucking mother.’
The missing school photo. So she has been round to Mum’s. And now we know why. So she could find out where he went to school. Oh God, oh God, oh God.
‘Christ, I could do with a beer,’ he says.
‘Have one.’
He shakes his head. Opens a cupboard. Starts making coffee.
I clamber up on to a bar stool and start towelling my hair. ‘God, I just wish I could work out what she’s thinking.’
‘Well, good luck with that,’ he says. ‘The woman is a fucking lunatic.’
‘I just keep thinking about what Hope said on that recording. You know, at the very beginning, about how scared she was of the urges she kept having, to take Dillon with her. Suppose Norma’s got something like that into her head too?’
He bangs two mugs down on to the counter and shoots me a warning look. ‘Don’t even go there.’
‘Think about it, though. What has she got left to live for? She’s lost both her children. She’s lost her granddaughters – well, as good as, because I don’t doubt for a moment that Jessica Kennedy will be going back up north now, and like a shot. And Dillon . . .’ I can hardly bear to voice what I’m thinking, but equally I have to say it. ‘What if she’s decided that if she can’t have him, then no one else can? What if she plans to kill herself and kill him as well?’
‘Stop it,’ he says. ‘Just stop it, hen, okay?’
But how can I stop it? It’s too obvious. Too logi
cal.
I’m a mother. Which I realise means I do know what she’s thinking. And to me, it all makes terrifying sense.
Chapter 24
Matt goes upstairs just after midnight, to lie down for a bit. He doesn’t think he’ll sleep, even though he’s been up since five – he’d had to get out early to inspect a site in the Midlands – but he’s physically drained, and needs to be horizontal. I don’t go with him, because I cannot even bear to go to bed. Instead, I lie on the sofa in the conservatory, with just the hum of the hamster wheel for company, and, despite trying my best not to, start thinking dark, complicated thoughts.
Just after Dillon was born, Matt and I decided to try for another baby. It wasn’t a decision that was in any way related – we’d always planned to have two, and to have them close together, because I wanted them to grow up side by side. To be friends. And now I was done with exams for a bit, it had seemed the perfect time. But then along came Hope’s tumour, and then her terminal diagnosis, and we decided to wait for a bit. Which decision was, of course, very much related.
At first, that ‘for a bit’ felt like a good thing, the right thing. The subconscious mind works to an uncensored agenda, and mine, ever pragmatic, saw the immediate future with clarity. To have a baby in the midst of what would almost certainly be my sister’s dying months felt intuitively and profoundly wrong. Whereas to have a baby after her death (my conscious mind would have never entertained such a selfish thought) would be something to cling on to, a reward for our forbearance. A light after the darkness.
But then, in a way we’d have never imagined, Dillon came into our lives. And the light was snuffed out.
