Little Disasters

by Sarah Vaughan

  ‘No, it’s OK.’ They know she is a bad mother and now they have the evidence to prove it.

  ‘Then I would advise you to make no comment.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ They will take your children away from you, just as you’ve feared from the very start. Her throat constricts and her thoughts turn to liquid. She mustn’t cry; she mustn’t cry.

  DC Farron pushes a photocopy of an image towards her, with the date in question and the time – 18.23 – in the corner. It’s a grainy black and white, but the woman in the picture is unmistakably her: same hair, bag and coat; same sharp slant of her cheekbones as the camera catches her dipped face.

  ‘That’s you, isn’t it?’

  There’s no point denying it. She nods.

  ‘For the tape, please.’

  ‘Yes.’ She swallows. ‘That’s me.’ She looks down at her hands in her lap. She has ripped a cuticle and it’s now spitting a scarlet pearl of blood. She itches for a clean tissue to smear it away.

  ‘You look rather distressed in this picture,’ DC Farron says eventually.

  ‘That can’t be deduced from this image,’ says her solicitor.

  Oh, but it can. Her posture screams anguish: shoulders hunched, head bent as if she wants to hide herself away. I said I’d be five minutes, that’s what she was thinking as she stood there. And: Penny’s seen me; what was I thinking? But that figure caught on CCTV footage wasn’t thinking straight.

  ‘We’ve also talked to a Jill Baker, who dropped your son Kit back from football practice that night – getting to yours at around six-forty p.m.,’ DC Farron continues.

  Her heart contracts in anticipation of a fresh blow. She doesn’t know Jill well: not well enough to have asked her what she might have said to the two detectives, though she desperately wanted to; not well enough for strong ties of loyalty to bind.

  ‘Football training finished earlier that night because there was a problem with one of the coaches, and so she was with you earlier than usual,’ says DC Farron. ‘You couldn’t have been in long?’

  Jess nods. ‘About five minutes.’

  ‘She says you opened the door and she saw you for sufficiently long to be struck by your manner. She described you as “distressed and distracted”. You “looked as if you’d been crying”. She said, “Her eyes were red.” Had you been crying, Jess?’

  ‘I might have been,’ she admits.

  ‘Is it fair to say you were distressed?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Possibly?’

  ‘Probably.’ Her voice catches, and she wants to scream at him that of course she was distressed.

  ‘The question,’ says DC Farron, and he leans forwards, ‘is what happened that was so distressing it made you, an attentive mother, leave your ten-month-old baby and eight-year-old son to go out on a cold and wet night to buy wine?

  ‘Did you leave her after doing something you hadn’t intended: after growing frustrated and losing your temper?

  ‘Did you leave her after harming your little girl?’

  ED

  Thursday 25 January, 6.50 a.m.

  Thirty-two

  ‘Where’s Mummy?’

  Frankie’s face is a pale oval, hovering above him in the gloaming of the bedroom.

  ‘Frankie . . .’ Ed glances at the alarm clock: 06.50. He switches on the bedside light.

  His youngest son stands, shivering, in his pyjamas.

  ‘Dad?’ Kit appears behind his brother, one arm – Ed had momentarily forgotten – in a heavy hunk of plaster; brilliantly, incongruously white.

  ‘Hey, Kit, how did you sleep?’ The pallor of his son’s face, drained from the trauma of the past eighteen hours, distracts him from his younger boy.

  ‘Where’s Mummy?’ Frankie repeats, his voice spiking until it’s a near falsetto. A pause, and his tone is more querulous. ‘Where’s Mummy? Where is she? Why isn’t she here?’

  ‘Frank . . .’ Ed throws back the covers and tries to hold him. Last night, he and Martha fudged Jess’s absence, claiming she was staying at the hospital to be with Bets. Kit, characteristically trusting, had swallowed the story, and even Frankie, blank with fatigue, had accepted it at face value. Now, there’s no way he can fob them off.

  ‘Where’s Mummy?’ Frankie’s eyes are wild, and the explanation Ed managed to formulate in the small hours of the night momentarily eludes him.

  ‘She’ll be back very soon but she’s not here at the moment . . .’ he says, stating the bloody obvious. But the boy is already hurtling down the stairs.

  ‘Where is she?’ He races through the kitchen and darts into the snug; ducks into the utility room and the downstairs toilet, his movements increasingly frantic; his voice at fever pitch as his panic grips.

  ‘Dad?’ Kit follows more gingerly. ‘Muuuum?’ He is looking for her bag – a slouchy, metallic leather tote always kept on a peg by the door – and for her coat. ‘Daddy?’ He regresses to the form he uses when he’s apprehensive; looks at him as if he believes he will have the right answer. ‘Where is she, Daddy?’ He is bewildered. ‘Why isn’t she here?’

  ‘She’s helping the detectives with a few questions about Betsey. It’s nothing to worry about.’ He gets the words out in a rush. He and Martha had agreed they’d sit the boys down and talk them through it calmly but they’ve woken earlier than he expected and ambushed him into an explanation. Martha’s still asleep, and he knows he’s dealing with this badly on his own.

  He is shaken by the scale of their distress – though he’d feared this might happen ever since discovering that search on her laptop. Kit, always so stolid, so apparently unflappable, is inconsolable in a way he hasn’t been since he was a toddler. And Frankie? His anguish is in a different league.

  ‘Naoooooohhhhhhhhh!’ The roar fills the kitchen. Frankie’s body shakes convulsively, and when Ed goes to put his arm around him, to hold him as Jess instinctively and expertly would, his son strikes out wildly, batting him away.

  ‘Hey! No need to hit me. We don’t do that.’ The reprimand is automatic.

  Frankie turns his back, wriggling away. We don’t do that? Why the hell does he sound so uptight? Under normal circumstances his kids shouldn’t lash out, of course they shouldn’t, but there’s been nothing normal these past six days.

  He tries to batten Frankie’s hands to his sides, but his son wriggles and flails, head twisting from side to side, body jerking, hips squirming against the restraint. A foot strikes Ed’s shin and surprises him with spiking pain. ‘Lemme go, lemme go. Get off me. Get off !’ Ed does as he is told, his helplessness increasing until he feels as if he is completely out of his depth.

  He sinks on the sofa, head in his hands, eyes on the floor, incapable of looking at either of his sons. Kit slumps down too and leans against him, tears wetting Ed’s sleeve. He slides an arm around his eldest boy, taking some solace in the fact that Kit still looks to him for comfort. In front of them, Frankie has crumpled to the floor and is rocking in a foetal position, screaming shrilly.

  ‘Come on, Frankie. Get up!’ He can’t bear such melodramatic behaviour and goes towards him to try to pull him up and break the hysterical wailing. But Frankie’s eyes are wild and his cheeks streaked with tears. The corner of his mouth bubbles with spit, and when Ed bends down to explain that everything will be OK, that Mummy will be home soon, that he needs to stop this crying right now, Frankie cowers. Inching away, the boy pulls himself upright and sits, arms wrapped tight around his knees, head bent downwards, still not looking at him.

  ‘Look. I can’t help you if you’re going to be like this,’ he says, lamely.

  What would Jess do? He has always relied on her when Frankie gets stressed. Should he ignore him? Pretend his tantrum isn’t happening? Too late he realises how well his wife parents their middle child.

  There’s a clunk upstairs. The sound of a shower starting. Thank God. Martha must be awake; will be down eventually to help try to ease their anguish, and to take Frankie to school. Last night
, they had decided to try for some attempt at normality. What would they usually be doing this time? Breakfast. He should get on with that.

  ‘Let’s get us all some drinks. Hot chocolate? A milkshake?’ He’s being noisily jovial; slipping into his Daddy Day Care routine of treats all round and general jokiness, indulged by Jess because it happens so rarely. ‘Come on, Kit. Why don’t we make a monster smoothie with ice cream?’

  The boy nods mutely and sniffs.

  Incapable of knowing what else to do, Ed starts pulling ingredients from the freezer: vanilla ice cream, frozen cubes of fruit and ice cubes; takes milk from the fridge. Frankie’s soundtrack of fractured sobs continues. He should ignore him: just ignore him. But, though he tries to block out the ragged cries, something keeps filtering through.

  ‘It’s all my fault. My fault. All my fault,’ his son hiccups through his sobs.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Frank.’ It’s typical that he blames himself.

  ‘It is,’ Frankie is insisting. ‘It’s all my fault she’s going to prison.’

  ‘She’s not going to prison. Of course she isn’t.’ His denial sounds excessive: he lowers his voice, trying to make it all sound perfectly normal. ‘She’s just having a chat with the nice policewoman you’ve met.’

  ‘She might though, Dad.’ Kit watches him, craving reassurance. They needn’t know that Jess has been arrested. It’s bad enough that they’re aware she is talking to the police.

  ‘She’s just helping the detectives,’ Ed repeats, and how he hates trotting out that line. He clears his throat; tries to minimise the drama. ‘All that means is that she’s answering a few questions about how Betsey got hurt and it’s much easier for all of us if she doesn’t have to talk to them here.’

  Kit nods slowly but Frankie’s cries redouble.

  ‘My fault. My fault . . .’

  He’s not going to be able to deal with this except through distraction.

  ‘Right. Let’s make that milkshake, shall we?’ The ice cubes clatter around the blender as the mixture blasts for twenty seconds. A pause. Then Ed quickly blasts again. Kit puts his unbroken arm around his waist.

  ‘Here’s your drink, Kit. Straw?’ He reaches into the cupboard for a paper one. ‘Don’t worry about Frank. He’ll cry himself out eventually.’ He pauses, uncertain. ‘That’s what Mum would say, isn’t it?’

  Kit sniffles. ‘I don’t know, Dad . . .’

  ‘If we ignore him he’ll have to stop,’ he says, not feeling the least bit confident. ‘Now. What do you want for breakfast? Eggs? Cereal? Porridge?’ What do they normally have on a weekday? He hasn’t a clue. There’s not much bread in the breadbin: not the usual array of spelt sourdough, English muffins and granary. And the contents of the fridge, despite an apparent supermarket delivery, are uninspiring. Everywhere, there’s the sense of the usual order of life being abruptly abandoned. Of Jess losing her grasp on things.

  He wishes Martha would hurry down but she was so distraught last night, he suggested she have a lie-in. She was contrite, too; blaming herself for suggesting the boys miss school. He is all too aware of her selflessness in moving in and the importance of not taking advantage of this, but still, he’s at a loss. He pulls out his phone. Mel would know how to deal with this, and even Charlotte would be a help. No one would describe her as particularly maternal but she’d be no-nonsense: George would never behave like this because she wouldn’t allow it. But he doesn’t want to contact Charlotte, and Mel will be preparing for work. Besides, he ought to be able to deal with this himself.

  And yet he can’t bear to look at his youngest son, thrashing around in a rage as he repeats that phrase over and over. He is failing him as a father. Falling so badly short. If he’s closed his eyes to what’s happening to Jess – and Liz’s suggestion makes sense the more he dwells on it – then he’s been just as blinkered about Frankie: has been since the day he was born.

  He wrenches open the fridge, and peers into it, trying to pull himself together because the last thing the boys need is for him to cave in to this recrimination and self-pity. The very last thing they need is for him to fall apart. The cold air hits his face and he peers into the brightness, not taking in the fridge’s contents but just trying to shock himself into getting a grip. His wife is being questioned for abduction; their baby remains in hospital; one son’s just been discharged from there while the other lies prostrate and inconsolable, and he has the audacity to think about himself?

  The doorbell jolts him alert. 7.10 a.m. He is suddenly frightened. No one, apart from the police, ever comes to the house at this time.

  What has Rustin found out? Will she tell him they’ve charged Jess? Or has Jess somehow, erroneously, implicated him? If she’s capable of imagining harming her baby, who knows what else she’s been imagining?

  ‘Just a minute, boys – I’ll get that,’ he tells them.

  He strides to the door and with more vigour than he’d intended, flings it open wide.

  LIZ

  Thursday 25 January, 7.10 a.m.

  Thirty-three

  ‘Hello! Can I come in?’

  Ed looks shaken.

  ‘Sorry – perhaps I should have texted, I know it’s early but I can’t stop thinking about Jess and how you’re all doing.’

  He blinks and I wonder if he’s still angry and whether it was completely stupid to drop in on my way to work.

  ‘No, no, it’s fine. Of course.’ The colour comes back to his face. ‘Christ! It’s good to see you. The boys are distraught and I’m being a bit hopeless, to be honest. Come in, come in.’

  I drop my bag and scarf in the hall. From the kitchen, I can hear Frankie crying. I glance at Ed, surprised he isn’t rushing to his side. He shrugs. Ed’s never, ever there. It’s just me who’s responsible all the time. Jess’s words have never been more pertinent and I think of how she’s shouldered the burden of three kids all these years. It’s not sustainable and I feel irritated by his little-boy-lost act, though I suspect Jess once found it attractive. Not any longer. This is crisis point.

  I shove my frustration to one side: now’s not the time; he’s also due some compassion. ‘I don’t suppose you heard anything?’

  He clears his throat. ‘I haven’t, no.’

  ‘I just wanted to say I’ll do whatever I can to help Jess now. I’ll talk to Lucy about the possibility of getting a psychiatric assessment and, because I think the impetus will have to come from Jess herself, perhaps you could get her to go to the GP when this is over, as well?’

  He looks at me blankly. Perhaps he thinks I’m being too forthright but I’m desperate to make up for not realising what might be wrong. ‘Do you really think it will be that easy? That Rustin will let her go with a rap on the knuckles? She doesn’t strike me as the sympathetic type.’

  ‘Jess isn’t well, Ed. The police will have to see that.’

  His face crumples in on itself and his mouth does an odd sideways twist as if he’s trying not to cry.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘It’s going to be OK.’ I touch his arm. ‘Oh, come here,’ I say, giving him a quick hug and feeling the tension coursing through him. ‘Now: shall I try to talk to Frankie? What have you told them?’

  ‘That she’s helping the police with some questions down at the station.’

  ‘Does he think she’s going to prison?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ed rubs his hands over his face. ‘Christ! How did we get to this?’

  ‘Ed, listen to me.’ I place my hands on either side of his upper arms and look him firmly in the eyes. ‘It’s going to be all right. We’re going to help her get through this. But first of all we need to help Frankie. I don’t like seeing him this distressed.’

  I go into the kitchen, relieved I can finally try to help this child, whose face is puce as if he’s tantrumming like a baby. ‘Hello, Frankie.’ I kneel down and put one hand gently on his stomach. He’s surprised and his hysteria lessens just a bit.

  ‘It’s my . . . it’s my fau . . .’ he tri
es to say through hiccupped sobs.

  ‘That’s OK. Take your time. Can you try to breathe for me? In for three . . . out for five . . . That’s it. Try to calm yourself a little . . .’

  He nods, supping at air.

  ‘There you go . . . that’s better. I’m sorry Mummy isn’t here. I can see that’s upsetting . . .’

  A rush of renewed sobs and my heart aches for him. I remember being just eighteen months older and dealing with questions about Mattie’s accident: knowing something absolutely horrific had happened over which I had no control. He reminds me of my terror; my conviction that I was responsible; my understanding that the person I loved most in the world was in peril. I thought Mattie would die. Prison isn’t quite as permanent a separation as death – but for a child, it comes close.

  I take Frankie’s hand. He grips it and manages a watery smile. I smile back. We understand one another, my smile says. We can do this together. ‘Now: what were you trying to say?’

  ‘It’s all my fault, my fault . . .’ Frankie manages, more clearly now.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Ed interjects. ‘Everyone thinks that they’re to blame when something scary happens. It’s perfectly natural but none of this is your fault, or Kit’s.’

  ‘It is. It is.’ He catches Ed’s eye and there is something about the sharp terror distilled in his pupils that forces Ed to be quiet.

  ‘OK,’ Ed lowers his voice. ‘All right.’

  ‘OK,’ I repeat, giving Ed a look that I hope conveys that I can get Frankie to open up if only he’ll leave me to it. ‘Just try to keep breathing, Frankie . . . that’s right . . .’ He sits up, our faces so close, our breath is intermingling. ‘Can you do that for me?’

  He nods, his sobs quietening.

  ‘Now . . . can you tell me why you think it’s your fault?’

  He screws his eyes up tight: that childish trick of believing that if you can’t see someone you’re invisible.

  ‘Mummy didn’t hurt Betsey,’ he manages eventually. A pause and a snuffle. ‘The police have got it wrong.’