Little Disasters

by Sarah Vaughan

  She swigs savagely. I’m not sure what to say. This isn’t a standard, gentle moan, made half-apologetically with the knowledge she’s bloody lucky, but is riddled with resentment. Perhaps I’d underestimated her level of frustration, secretly thinking she has it quite easy, having a rich husband and not having to work. Or perhaps the boys are far harder than I’d thought: Frankie’s behaviour must grind her down, however adept she seems at dealing with him. I pull her to me in a hug.

  We should chat properly about this when we’re both sober, I resolve. I’m not sure either of us will make much sense at the moment. I mutter something about motherhood being much undervalued. That I couldn’t do what she’s doing and stay at home with the children; that it’s the hardest job in the world.

  ‘No one tells you that, do they?’ she says, her face just that bit too close. She wants me to understand this. ‘You think you’ll learn from your parents’ mistakes, that you’ll be a completely different mother to your mother, but no one tells you how hard it is. How there’s just so much to consider. So much to think about all the bloody time. That there’s so much that could go wrong.’

  ‘So you won’t be having another baby then?’

  I don’t know why I say this. I think because I’m tired and it’s late and I don’t want to hear my dear friend pouring out her mothering woes on this one night when we’re supposed to be forgetting about our children. Perhaps it’s because I don’t want to hear this: not from Jess, the friend who I’ve always thought is more skilled at motherhood than the rest of us, and certainly more so than me. And so, like a fool, I don’t listen but use humour to try to deflect her anxiety and, in doing so, I only make things worse.

  ‘Christ no!’ she says, and I know she’s slipped into the stage of extreme drunkenness where she’ll say outrageous things – where she’ll no longer sound like the Jess I know – but where she’ll also speak frankly. ‘Ed thinks it would be lovely: that a baby girl would “complete our family”. That it’s what I’d like, coming from a family of four children.’ Her tone tilts from mockery to sadness. ‘But a, I can’t guarantee I’d have a girl, which is what he wants; and b, I don’t think I could cope with it.’

  She rests her head back against my shoulder. I reach over and stroke her curls; drop a kiss on the top of her head. We sit there, and as I watch Mel dance as if she’s driving something from her, and Charlotte, swaying trance-like, Jess says something so quietly I have to lean closer, unsure if I’ve heard her properly.

  ‘What did you say?’ I check.

  ‘Just that I don’t want the responsibility of having any more children.’ She is looking at me intently. ‘I think I’d probably kill them if I did!’

  ‘You don’t mean that!’ Her tone is wrong: too vehement; a joke delivered oddly. I must have imagined it; or, with the pounding music, have heard it wrong.

  ‘No, not really.’ She laughs, and gets up, holding out a hand. I take it and she pulls me up so that we’re facing each other. I smile, trying to feel relief.

  She smiles, too, but there’s not much joy to it, and her tone is pragmatic.

  ‘But I think it might just push me over the edge.’

  LIZ

  Wednesday 24 January, 2018, 9.55 p.m.

  Thirty

  It’s nearly ten by the time I make it home, my body sagging with exhaustion; my mind reeling with the thought of what Jess must be going through, being questioned by the police.

  Nick makes me a mug of tea and I slump in front of the television, watching a dysfunctional couple arguing about an exorbitant house build on some property programme, but not taking any of it in. I think of Jess trying to dart past me. Remember her erratic movements; the glint of desperation in her eyes.

  ‘Coming to bed?’ At half ten, Nick pulls me up and we start getting ready. As usual, I peek into the children’s bedrooms, tucking their duvets around them; dropping a kiss on their heads. Rosa sleeps in the foetal position; Sam splays like a star. I linger, conscious that Jess won’t be kissing Kit and Frankie tonight; that Betsey won’t have a parent checking on her either. What a mess; what a bloody mess.

  I put my mobile on charge, but as I do so it vibrates. It feels ominous. My mother? Who else would ring at this time at night? I glance at the screen. Of course, it’s Ed. I can’t discuss Betsey, and I probably shouldn’t have any contact with him at all, but what friend would refuse to speak to him in a situation like this?

  ‘Ed? Are you OK?’

  ‘Jess has been arrested.’ His voice breaks. ‘She’s at the police station, now. She gave Martha the slip and tried to take Betsey from hospital.’

  ‘Oh, Ed, I know. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘She said you stopped her and called the police. You let them arrest her – and you didn’t think to call me? To tell me what had gone on?’

  His aggression winds me. Before I can start to explain that the matter was taken out of my hands, he seems to realise he has gone too far.

  ‘I’m sorry, Liz. Sorry. It’s just such a shock. I just – I can’t make sense of this.’

  ‘I know,’ I say, abandoning any pretence that I can maintain some professional distance. ‘I know.’

  ‘I don’t think she could have been thinking straight. She’s behaving like one of those parents who snatch their kids from hospital to get different cancer treatments. She can’t have thought you were treating her properly. Or did she want to harm her? Are the police right? Have I got her wrong?’

  ‘Of course she didn’t want to harm her. And of course you haven’t got her wrong.’

  ‘But what was she thinking? What would have happened if Betsey had had a seizure when she was out of hospital, or if she fell down at home and the bleed got worse?’

  She could have suffered irreversible brain damage, I think. ‘The important thing is that neither of these things happened. I know it’s hard not to imagine the worst but Betsey’s still in hospital; she wasn’t harmed by what happened; and she’s stable despite all this.’

  ‘Yes.’ He sounds despondent and I realise he’s completely out of his depth.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Ed,’ I repeat. ‘I know her behaviour must seem bizarre. She’s clearly been struggling a bit and needs some help. I’m just so sorry I haven’t seen her much recently. If I had, I might have picked this up.’

  He is silent for a moment. From what I know of him, mental illness isn’t something he has ever had to contemplate: like Nick, his was a relatively uneventful childhood and adolescence. And, while he knows Jess can be anxious, he had no reason to think she might do something as erratic as this.

  ‘You mean psychiatric help? Or just a bit of counselling?’

  I hesitate, conscious this isn’t my specialty and not wanting to perturb him further. ‘Look, I don’t know. But perhaps the trauma of Betsey’s birth affected her more than we realised. Perhaps that’s triggered this. Made her unwell.’

  ‘You think she’s mentally ill? Do you think she’s suffering from postnatal depression or something?’ His voice escalates.

  ‘I can’t diagnose her, Ed. She’s not my patient. But . . . I think she needs to be assessed to see if she’s suffering from that, or postnatal anxiety.’

  ‘But mothers with postnatal depression can kill their babies, can’t they? There was that management consultant’s wife in North London who smothered her kids, and that mother who jumped off Beachy Head with hers recently . . .’

  ‘But Jess didn’t do either of those things. Those are two examples that are in the news precisely because they’re so very rare.’

  I try to reassure him that now there has been this crisis we can get Jess a diagnosis and treatment. But he barely listens, his attention flitting to what’s happening to Jess currently, and how her behaviour at the hospital might impact on her treatment by the police.

  ‘What if they have evidence that she harmed Betsey before she took her in? Or they see this as proof she could have done it?’

  ‘You don’t think that, do you?’r />
  There is a pause that goes on for too long. I’d expected an immediate denial but it’s as if he is contemplating telling me something incriminating. I wait, increasingly sure I’ve worked out what’s happening, and increasingly concerned he’s unconvinced.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says at last, as if he’s embarrassed to admit this, and his tone speaks of grief and incomprehension and a relationship stretched to near breaking point. ‘This morning the police questioned me about my movements and I was relieved because I thought at least they weren’t focusing on her. But now she’s done something this mad, this disturbing, and – Christ, I feel horrendous admitting this – now, I don’t know what to think.’

  JESS

  Thursday 25 January, 8 a.m.

  Thirty-one

  The interview room is stark and intimidating. A grey table sits slab-like between two sets of plastic chairs and the one, high-set window allows a faint shaft of wintery light.

  On one side of the table sit DCs Rustin and Farron; on the other Jess and Liam McFadden, a solicitor acquired by Ed. He’s a thickset man, whose sturdiness seems designed to reassure and yet she shrinks from his presence. When they met, he gripped her hand and told her intently, ‘You’re not to worry, Mrs Curtis.’ But he might as well have told her not to breathe.

  DC Rustin unwraps a DVD and explains that the interview will be recorded. ‘There’ll be a buzzing noise for a few seconds and then we’ll start.’ She states the time and date and all of those present, and Jess notes the calm, apparently untroubled look on her face. Beside her, DC Farron is unreadable. She remembers his relative sympathy in that first interview: her hope that he might view her as a decent mother. Now his gaze slips over her like running water: not a hint of a smile.

  They go through what happened at the hospital.

  ‘Why did you try to take Betsey from the ward, Jess?’ asks DC Rustin.

  ‘Because I love her.’ The answer is simple.

  ‘But taking her away meant she couldn’t get the right treatment.’ A line appears between DC Rustin’s eyebrows as she tries to get this straight.

  ‘I . . . I wasn’t thinking,’ Jess tries to clarify. ‘She didn’t seem to be in danger. I just wanted to hold her – and then, I suppose, I wanted to take her away from those machines, all that intervention. That’s why I tried to get her away from there.’

  ‘Do you always try to keep Betsey safe?’ DC Farron leans forward. His gaze has shifted; is now warm and encouraging. For a split second she imagines being completely honest and telling him everything. But that’s impossible.

  ‘Yes.’ She is grateful for his use of the present tense. ‘Isn’t that what mothers are supposed to do?’

  ‘But you didn’t in this instance. You took her away from the environment and medical expertise she needed.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking clearly,’ she says.

  ‘You didn’t keep Betsey safe on the day she went into hospital either, did you, Jess?’ DC Rustin leans back in her chair, her pale blue eyes resting on her.

  ‘Yes I did.’

  ‘You took quite a while to bring her into hospital. Over six hours if she sustained her injury when you say she did.’

  ‘I didn’t want to overreact.’ The police officer’s suggestion that she lied about the time frightens her: what else does she think she lied about? ‘I’ve explained all this before. I didn’t realise it was any different to a tumble my boys might have taken when they were toddlers. She cried at the time but’ – and she’s embarrassed by how ineffectual her explanation sounds now that her baby remains in hospital five days after being admitted; now that she’s had a series of seizures; now that the situation has escalated beyond anything she could have imagined – ‘I don’t think I realised how serious it was.’

  ‘You didn’t bring her in even when she had been sick in her cot – a clear sign of concussion?’

  ‘I hadn’t realised she was sick. I was asleep.’

  ‘You were in bed, with the duvet over your head, according to your husband.’

  ‘I . . .’ Her lungs feel emptied. Had Ed said that? That she was trying to block out the sound of Betsey’s screams? I was scared to go to her in case I hurt her. How can she admit this? Shame engulfs her body, heat spreading up her neck to her cheeks. ‘I was dozing; was trying to get back to sleep; I was so exhausted I don’t think I properly registered her crying, or the extent of her crying. But if I knew she’d been sick, or was so distressed, of course I’d have gone to her. I wouldn’t have ignored her then.’

  ‘By all accounts – your husband’s, your neighbour’s, your sister’s – you’re usually an attentive mother,’ says DC Farron.

  She is flailing in the quicksand of their conversation. An attentive mother is the opposite of what they think.

  ‘Your children are always well dressed and well nourished; there was no sign of any of them being harmed when your boys had their medical examinations and Betsey her skeletal survey,’ the detective says, and he smiles as if to say: it’s fine, you can agree with this.

  ‘Yes. That’s right.’ She glances at her solicitor for confirmation. He shifts in his chair and nods, indicating that this isn’t a trick question, but the coil in her stomach still doesn’t ease.

  ‘And so what I’m struggling to understand, Jess’ – and here DC Farron’s face morphs into something approaching compassion, though Jess knows it’s a mask – ‘is what happened that night that made you dismiss Betsey’s injury as something that didn’t need hospital attention, and then ignore her as she lay screaming in her bed?’

  She doesn’t know what to say.

  ‘Because when an attentive mother sleeps she is always aware that her baby might wake up crying, particularly if she’s banged her head, isn’t she?’

  She cannot answer.

  ‘An attentive mother doesn’t lie there, ignoring her, with the covers pulled over her head, does she?’

  ‘My client has said she was exhausted,’ Liam McFadden interjects, and she is grateful, and suddenly thankful for his physicality, and all the trappings – woody eau de cologne, starched shirt, designer watch, too ostentatious for these dour surroundings – that lend him weight.

  DC Farron raises his eyebrows as if Liam’s comment is barely worth a response.

  ‘What did your husband think of your relationship with Betsey?’ he continues.

  ‘What?’ She is confused by this conversational swerve.

  ‘Did he think you were “bonded”?’ He says the word selfconsciously. ‘That you were in tune with your daughter?’

  The air is punched from her. Has Ed told them he was concerned she seemed detached with Bets?

  ‘Was that why you argued on the Thursday night and why he came back to see you on the Friday lunchtime?’ DC Rustin joins in. ‘He was concerned about your relationship with your daughter?’

  ‘I . . .’ She shakes her head. ‘He was worried, yes.’

  ‘And how did it make you feel? Your husband checking up on you like this?’

  Has he told them everything? Something dissolves inside her: the residual belief that he will support her. Her eyes burn with tears.

  ‘Did it make you feel angry?’

  ‘No,’ she manages eventually. You’re a bad, bad mother.

  ‘So angry that you took it out on Betsey?’

  ‘No!’ You’re a bad mother. An evil mother.

  ‘So angry that you were a bit brusque, a bit cack-handed when you changed her nappy? A bit frustrated, perhaps, so that you accidentally banged her head?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ she insists.

  DC Rustin pauses, leans back and watches her again.

  You’re such an evil mother you slammed your baby on the changing table so hard you split her head open. It’s what they think, and how can Jess convince them of her innocence when her own thoughts whisper this? Her rings were confiscated – along with the rest of her jewellery, her keys and her belt – and so she crosses and uncrosses her fingers, over and ove
r. Let this be over. Let me convince them. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three.

  ‘So you’re an attentive mother.’ DC Farron interrupts her internal monologue.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘One who didn’t ignore her baby when she was crying but was too exhausted to hear her?’

  ‘Yes . . .’ That’s not quite right – she heard her, of course she did, but she didn’t go to her because she feared she would hurt her. ‘I didn’t register the extent of her crying.’

  ‘You’re an attentive mother – but you delayed bringing your concussed baby to hospital?’

  ‘My client has said that she didn’t realise the severity of the injury. She thought it was a fall of the kind experienced by her boys as toddlers.’ Liam’s tone suggests such repetition is tedious.

  DC Farron ignores him. ‘But if you’re this attentive,’ he says, and his tone is suddenly suffused with sarcasm; a shift that grates and pulls her up short, ‘then you’re not the sort of mother who would ever leave a small baby alone in the house, are you?’

  The atmosphere is freighted with expectation. Jess’s insides turn fluid. They know. They seem to know.

  ‘I think you know Mr Yadav, don’t you? Nihal Yadav?’

  ‘What?’ She is blindsided. Nihal Yadav? ‘I . . . I don’t think I know anyone with that name. No. I’m not sure . . . Is he a parent at school?’

  ‘Nihal Yadav runs Superb Deli Stores, a mini supermarket and off-licence seven minutes’ walk from your house.’

  Her solicitor clears his throat and edges forward as if to intervene but Jess knows what is coming. Blood thuds through her head. You’re a bad, bad mother. They have her here. ‘We have a witness who recognised you in that shop, and we have CCTV footage showing that you were there, buying a carton of milk and a bottle of wine at six twenty-three p.m. on Friday, nearly two and a half hours after you say your baby daughter sustained her head fracture. Far from being attentive, you are on your own.’ A pause. ‘We know Kit was at football training but where were Betsey and Frank while you were there?’

  ‘I must object to this evidence being sprung on my client like this without our having a chance to discuss it. I would like a few moments with my client alone,’ says Liam.