Guilty One

by Lisa Ballantyne

  Alone in the flat, Daniel found that he couldn’t sleep, so he settled down to work. His clerk had already watched the CCTV tapes which had been released to the defence through disclosure. Daniel watched them again, in case they had missed something. During the day, the cameras were mostly facing Copenhagen Street and Barnsbury Road, turning to focus on the park after 7 p.m. Daniel fast-forwarded to flashes of the park, but there were no unaccompanied children, no one else who seemed suspicious.

  It was after one o’clock in the morning when he finished writing notes on Sebastian’s defence and only then did he lift the lid of the cardboard box which Minnie had left for him. It contained what he expected: his school photographs, photos of picnics on the beach at Tynemouth. There were his medals from primary school and prizes from secondary school, drawings and paintings that he had done for her as a child, an old address book of Minnie’s.

  There was the framed photograph that had sat on her mantelpiece, showing Minnie with her daughter and her husband. Her husband was holding the little girl in his arms and she was blowing bubbles that drifted over Minnie’s face. As a child Daniel had marvelled at this picture, because of Minnie’s youth. She was slimmer, with short, dark hair and a large white smile. He had to look carefully at the photograph to find her features as he knew them.

  At the bottom of the box, Daniel’s fingers found something cold and hard. He finished his beer as he liberated the object from the cardboard depths.

  It was the porcelain butterfly, its blue and yellow brighter than he remembered. It seemed cheap. There was a chip on the wing but it was otherwise undamaged. Daniel held it in his palm.

  He thought about her gathering up these things and putting them aside for him, about her illness and how that would have manifested. He imagined her asking the nurse to help her sit up in her hospital bed, so that she could write to him. He could almost see her, making small sighs at the effort, the shine of her blue eyes as she signed the letter, Mam. She had known then she was dying. She had known that she would never see him again.

  He tried hard to remember the last time he had spoken to her. All these years but never a birthday or a Christmas passed without her cards and phone calls. Last Christmas he had gone skiing in France. She had left two messages and sent a card with a twenty-pound cheque inside. As he always did, he deleted the messages, ripped up the cheque and put the card straight into the bin. He felt a twinge of guilt at the aggression implied in these acts.

  It would have been on his birthday in April when he had spoken to her last. He had been in a rush; otherwise he would have checked and seen her number before he picked up the telephone. He had been late home from work and was now late for dinner.

  ‘It’s me, love,’ she had said. Always she spoke with the same familiarity, as if they had seen each other only last week. ‘I just wanted to wish you happy birthday.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he had said, the muscle in his jaw throbbing. ‘I can’t talk now, I’m trying to go out.’

  ‘Of course. Going somewhere nice, I hope.’

  ‘No, it’s a work thing.’

  ‘Oh, I see. And how is your work? Are you still enjoying it?’

  ‘Look, when are you going to stop?’ he had shouted. She had said nothing. ‘I don’t want to speak to you.’

  Daniel remembered waiting for a response before he hung up. She might have known about the cancer by then. He had hung up but then thought about her for the rest of the night, his stomach tight with anger. Or had it been guilt?

  The music from the funeral was still lilting in his mind. He remembered Harriet’s accusing tones, as if it had been his fault, as if Minnie had been blameless. Daniel doubted that she would have told Harriet what she had done. Harriet thought he was ungrateful, but he was the one who had been wronged.

  Now, Daniel held up the butterfly to look at it. He remembered standing in Minnie’s kitchen for the first time and holding a knife to her face, the hard, unflinching look in her eyes. It was that he had first loved about her: her fearlessness.

  Daniel’s thoughts turned to Sebastian. He wondered what the boy had seen in him, why he had insisted on him as his lawyer. He stroked the butterfly one more time with his thumb and then placed it gently on the coffee table.

  10

  ‘Look,’ said Daniel, waving to Minnie from the yard. ‘I’m feeding him!’

  He stood with his feet together, feeding a carrot to Hector the goat. He had been at Minnie’s nearly a year now and felt a strange comfort in the muddy back yard and cluttered kitchen. He liked his jobs and he liked the animals, although Hector was only just starting to accept him.

  She knocked on the window. ‘You be careful! He can be crafty.’

  The small Brampton school was better for him too. He had been given lines a few times and the strap once – for knocking over a desk – but he had also been given a gold medal for English and a silver one for maths. Minnie was good at maths and liked to help him with his homework. Pretty Miss Pringle, his teacher, liked him, and he was on the football team.

  Minnie banged on the glass again. ‘Watch your fingers.’

  Daniel heard the telephone ring and Minnie disappeared from the window. It was May and buttercups and daisies were scattered amid the long grass that edged the house. Dizzy butterflies floated from bloom to bloom and Danny watched them as the carrot became shorter. Heeding Minnie, he pulled his hand away when the stump became too small. Hector lowered his head and finished the carrot, stalk and all. Gently, Danny stroked the goat’s warm short hair, withdrawing his hand and backing away every time the goat lowered his head.

  ‘I’ll get you another one later,’ he said.

  He was getting on well with Minnie now. On the weekends they would have a laugh together. One day after market they had made a tent in the living room using her foldaway table and a bundle of sheets. She had brought her old jewellery box down to use as treasure and crawled inside with him, pretending they were wealthy Bedouins. She made him fish fingers for tea and they ate them in the tent with their hands, dipping them into ketchup.

  Another day they had played pirates and she had made him walk the plank blindfolded off the footstool in her living room. He liked her laugh, which always began with three big booms and then turned into a cackle and a giggle and would go on for several minutes. Just watching her laugh made him smile now.

  Last weekend they had decorated his bedroom, and Minnie had let him pick the colour. He chose a pale blue for the walls and bright blue for his door and the skirting boards. She had let him paint with her and they had spent the whole weekend with the radio on, stripping away the rosebuds and painting the walls.

  The door to the house slammed and Minnie stood there with one hand on her forehead.

  ‘What’s up?’ Daniel asked.

  He now understood Minnie’s face. Often she would frown when she was perfectly happy going about her work. When she was worried or angry, her frown would vanish and her lips would turn down slightly.

  ‘Come in, lad, come in. Tricia’s just off the phone. She’s coming to get you.’

  Despite the warm summer breeze and the fact that he had been sweating as he went about his afternoon chores, Daniel felt suddenly chilled. The sun was still high in a sky of aching blue, but he felt the shadows creep as if cast from his own mind over the yard, darkening the hue of the butterflies as they toyed with petal and bud.

  Daniel rested one hand on Hector again, and the old goat started away, skipping to the length of his rope in the dried-mud yard.

  ‘No, I’m not going. M’not leaving … I’ll …’

  ‘Hold yer horses, will ye. I don’t think she’s going to move you, but there’s a meeting set up with your mum.’

  Minnie stood in the doorway and clasped her arms. She looked at Daniel with her lips pressed together.

  The air seemed noisy to Daniel suddenly; the bees roared and the chickens screamed. He pressed his hands over his ears. Minnie came to him but he twisted away from her and into th
e house. She found him curled behind the piano in the living room, which was where he went when he felt like this. He didn’t feel like this a lot now.

  He watched her feet as she approached, fat in dirty slippers, and then saw her ankles appear as she sat in the chair nearest the piano.

  ‘You don’t have to go, love, it’s your choice, but I think it might be best. I know it’s unsettling. Long time since you saw her, isn’t it?’

  Daniel shifted slightly and kicked the piano a little; it sounded, a hollow moan as if wounded by him. Daniel sniffed. In

  his position, he could smell the unvarnished wood of the piano and breathed it in. The smell comforted him.

  ‘C’m’ere.’

  Normally Daniel would not go to her. He would stay where he was and she would either wait near him if he was upset, or go next door to wait if he was quiet. Today, not wanting her to go, he got up and sat on the arm of her chair. She pressed him into her. He liked the fact that she was so big. Even when he was a small child, his own mother had seemed fragile. When she held him the bones of her sometimes hurt him, needled him with their insistent pressing.

  Daniel felt the round edge of Minnie’s chin on the top of his head. ‘I think they just want to have a chat with you, OK? Then you can come back and I’ll make you roast beef for tea. When you’re out I’ll buy it specially. We’ll have Sunday roast on Saturday, just for you.’

  ‘With Yorkshire puddings?’

  ‘But of course, and gravy, and some of your carrots that you’ve grown yourself. They’re the tastiest that the earth’s ever produced. You’ve got a knack, so you do.’

  She eased him up off the chair. ‘All right then, go clean yourself up. Tricia’ll be here soon.’

  Daniel looked over his shoulder at Minnie as Tricia led him towards her car. He was wearing a checked, short-sleeved shirt and blue jeans. He had a familiar feeling in his stomach, as if his insides had been taken out and replaced with pieces of crushed paper or dried leaves. He felt stuffed, but empty and light. He had put on his mother’s necklace and he now rubbed it between finger and thumb as he sat next to Tricia in the car.

  ‘You’ve been doing a lot better, Danny. You keep it up.’

  ‘Am I going to live with me mam?’ he asked, looking out of his side window as if a passer-by might answer.

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘Are you putting me someplace else?’

  ‘Not for now, I’ll take you back to Minnie’s tonight.’

  Still looking out of the window, Daniel bit his lip.

  ‘Will I get to be on me own with her?’

  ‘Yer mam? No, Danny, it’s a supervised meeting, I’m afraid. Do you want to listen to the radio?’

  Daniel shrugged and Tricia twiddled the dial until she found a song she liked. Daniel tried to think about collecting eggs or planting carrots or playing football, but his mind was dark and blank. He remembered sitting in the wardrobe in his mother’s smoke-blackened flat.

  ‘What you sticking out your tongue for?’ said Tricia suddenly.

  Daniel withdrew his tongue. He could taste the charcoal.

  ‘Eeeh, wee man, look at the size of ye.’

  The bones of her were still painful to him. He tensed even before she embraced him in expectation of rib and elbow. She looked the same, but her eyes were black underneath. Daniel was shocked that he didn’t want to touch her.

  Tricia stood holding her handbag in two hands. ‘I’ll go get us something to drink, give you a few moments to catch up, then I’ll come back and help you through it.’

  Daniel was not sure who she was talking to. He didn’t know what they needed help with.

  He saw that his mother was about to cry. He stood up and stroked her hair in the way that she liked. ‘It’s all right, Mam, don’t cry.’

  ‘You’re always my hero, aren’t ye? How you been? You living somewhere nice?’

  ‘S’all right.’

  ‘You been playing football?’

  ‘Bit.’

  Daniel watched as she wiped her eyes with her bitten nails. She had bruises on her forearms, and he tried not to look at these.

  Tricia came back with two cups of coffee and a can of juice for him. She sat down on the sofa and placed one cup of coffee in front of his mother. ‘There you go. How you getting on, eh?’

  ‘I can’t do it. I need a fag first. Have you got one?’ She was standing up, looking down at Tricia with her hands in her hair. He hated when she did that; it made her face seem thinner. ‘Have you got one, Danny? I need a fag.’

  ‘I’ll go get you one,’ said Daniel, but Tricia stood up.

  ‘No, stay here. I’ll … I’ll get some cigarettes.’

  They were in the social work office in Newcastle. Daniel had been there before. He hated the sloped-back, orange and green chairs and grey linoleum floor. He slumped down in one of the chairs now and watched his mother pace back and forth. She was wearing jeans and a tight white T-shirt. He could see her spine and the sharp angles of her hip bones.

  With her back to him, she said, ‘I won’t say this in front of her, but I’m sorry, Danny. Sorry I’ve been rubbish. You’ll be better off, I know that, but I just feel shit, like …’

  ‘You’re not rubbish …’ Daniel started.

  Tricia came in and handed cigarettes and a lighter to his mother. ‘Managed to scrounge half a pack of Silk Cut from a colleague. He says you can keep them.’

  Daniel’s mother leaned over the table and lit her cigarette with her hand cupped around it, as if she were outside in a wind. She sucked hard and Daniel watched as the skin of her face clung to her skull.

  ‘Yer mam and I were at court this week, Danny,’ Tricia prompted.

  Daniel watched Tricia’s face. She was looking at his mother with too-wide eyes. His mother was looking at the table and rocking slightly. The hairs on her arms were sticking up.

  ‘I had my last chance, Danny. This is the last time I get to see you, like. No more visits ever; they’re putting you up for adoption.’

  Daniel did not hear the words in the right order. They swarmed at him like bees. His mother didn’t look at him. She looked at the table, elbows on her knees, inhaling twice before she finished what she had to say.

  Daniel was still slumped in the chair. The dry leaves inside him shifted.

  Tricia cleared her throat. ‘When you’re eighteen, you will have the right to resume contact if you choose to …’

  It felt as if the leaves had suddenly ignited in the sparks from his mother’s cigarette. Daniel tightened his stomach muscles. He jumped up and grabbed the cigarettes and threw them in Tricia’s face. He tried to punch her but she had his wrists. He managed to kick her on the shin before she pinned him to the chair.

  ‘Don’t, Danny,’ he heard his mother say. ‘You’re just making it harder on everybody. It’s for the best, you’ll see.’

  ‘No,’ he screamed, feeling the heat in his cheeks and the roots of his hair. ‘No.’

  ‘Stop it, stop it,’ Tricia was shouting. Daniel could smell the milky coffee on her breath.

  He felt his mother’s fingers through his hair, the gentle tingle of her nails on his scalp. He relaxed under Tricia’s weight, and she stood up and then lifted him up to sit on the chair.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Tricia. ‘Just behave yourself. Remember you’re on your last chance too.’

  Daniel’s mother stubbed out her cigarette in the foil ashtray on the table. ‘C’m’ere,’ she said, and he fell into her. He smelled the cigarettes on the fingers that touched his face. The bones of her yielded for him again, and he felt the pain of them.

  Daniel let his head roll from side to side as Tricia drove him back to Minnie’s. He felt the vibration of the tyres on the road. Tricia had the radio off and every now and again she would talk to him, as if he had asked for an explanation.

  ‘So, you’ll be at Minnie’s for now, but we’re applying to have you adopted. It’s a great opportunity, really. No more moving around �
� your own home, a new mum and dad, maybe even brothers or sisters, imagine that … Of course you’re going to have to keep behaving yourself. Nobody wants to adopt a boy with be’avioural problems, do they? No new mum and dad is going to want to get kicked or punched … Like your mam said, it’s for the best. Older boys are ’ard to place, but if you’re good, we might be in luck.’

  She was silent as they drove down the Carlisle Road and Daniel closed his eyes. He opened them when the car jolted to a stop. He saw Blitz approaching, his tail wagging and his tongue hanging out.

  Daniel swallowed. ‘If nobody else wants me, do I get to stay here then?’

  ‘No, love … Minnie’s a foster parent. There’ll be another little boy or girl needing to come here. But don’t you worry. I’ll find you a great new—’

  Daniel had slammed the door before he heard Tricia utter the word home.

  11

  Once inside Parklands House, Daniel was searched and scanned. A dog sniffed his clothes and briefcase for drugs.

  An attendant brought him coffee and said that Sebastian would be along soon. Charlotte had called Daniel to say that she was running a little late, but to begin without her. He felt apprehensive in the small room. It had to be kept locked at all times, he had been advised, but there was a panic alarm to use if he needed anything. He felt the paper and leaves sensation in his stomach, dry and shifting; it made him uneasy.

  Sebastian was brought in by a care assistant.

  ‘Good to see you again, Seb,’ Daniel said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Not really. I hate it in here.’

  ‘Do you want something to drink?’

  ‘I’m all right, thanks. I just had some orange juice. Can you get me out of here? I hate it. It’s horrible. I want to go home.’

  ‘Have your mum and dad been to see you a lot?’

  ‘My mum’s been a few times, but I want to go home … Can’t you sort it out? I just want to go home.’

  Sebastian’s head fell suddenly into the crook of his elbow. He curled his other arm around him.

  Daniel stood up and leaned over Sebastian, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder. He rubbed and patted. ‘Come on, you’re all right. I’m on your side, remember? I know you want to go home, but we have to work with the law. I can’t get you home just now. The judge wants you here as much to protect you as anything else.’