Bloody Women

by Helen FitzGerald

  ‘Do you believe in the one?’ Janet Edgely had asked during one of her many interviews. Anna had co-operated fully, thinking, like Catriona, that the book might actually help.

  ‘I do,’ she said.

  ‘Me too,’ replied Janet. ‘It took a while, but I found her . . . So . . . is Catriona the one?’

  ‘Visitors for Catriona Marsden,’ an officer yelled. ‘Special Visits Room Two.’

  Anna walked behind Irene towards the room. The pock-marked lawyer headed to the kiosk and came back a while later with bad coffee. It was forty-five minutes before Catriona walked through the door beside the kiosk and took her seat in the corner.

  ‘How are you, Cat?’ her mother asked.

  Cat didn’t respond.

  ‘Are you feeling a bit better?’

  She remained silent.

  ‘We have good news.’

  Perhaps it was the drugs, the visitors thought.

  ‘Eyewitnesses on the M8 can’t say for sure if it was you driving your car when Rory fell out.’

  Was she catatonic?

  ‘Also, we think we’ve found Janet Edgely,’ Mum said.

  ‘Cat?’ This came from Anna.

  Catriona’s eyes were vacant; she stared downwards, into space. She was pale, thin and bedraggled. The bandages around her slim wrists leaked under the cuffs of her regulation sweater.

  ‘We’re getting a good case together, aren’t we Matthew?’ Irene said.

  Anna pressed her hand onto Cat’s.

  ‘You’ve got to stop hurting yourself. We’re going to get you out. Aren’t we, Irene?’

  Cat didn’t flinch. Everyone became uncomfortable, nervous. They’d never seen her like this before. Slowly, her eyes rose until they reached her mother’s.

  ‘Did I really pour black ink into Jack Munro’s school bag?’

  ‘What was that?’ Irene sounded frightened.

  ‘Did I chop up Brett Dalgetty’s navy blue fleece with a pair of scissors?’

  ‘You did, darling. You’re not making sense.’ Irene scoured the room nervously and managed to get eye contact with an officer.

  ‘You didn’t feed me.’

  ‘Cat, what are you talking about?’ Anna seemed as confused as the other two.

  ‘I failed to thrive because you failed to feed me.’

  ‘Have you seen the doctor?’ Irene asked.

  ‘Did you starve me on purpose?’

  ‘No . . . Oh God, I don’t know. I needed help.’

  ‘You act as if it’s me who’s crazy, but it’s you who’s caused it, all this time.’

  Irene didn’t know where to look. She tried Anna, but noticed something in Anna’s eyes that definitely wasn’t wholehearted support. She tried to look at the lawyer, but he never made eye contact, ever, and now he seemed even more determined. Irene shifted her eyes around the room and into the corridor. She caught the glare of the officer again and intensified her stare.

  ‘Everything all right here?’ the officer asked.

  ‘I want to talk to Mum alone,’ Cat said.

  Irene became breathless. Her eyes narrowed as they looked hard at her daughter, at the bandages on her arms and forehead. ‘Cat, you’re not making any sense. I love you.’

  ‘My cell’s dark, Mum. I’m buried, but I’m not dead.’

  Irene stopped fidgeting. She looked to her lap and her shoulders slumped. Her chin began to tremble along with the rest of her as Anna, the lawyer and the Freak sat, breathless, poised.

  ‘I want to talk to you alone,’ Cat said again.

  21

  As an adult, Irene Marsden had only cried once. Even when her husband strayed, which he often did, she refused to shed a tear. Once she threw his belongings out the window of their upstairs bedroom, but she never cried. Anyway, her child did enough crying for the two of them. All night. Most of the day.

  Irene had been alone a lot of the time since being married, with her husband’s four-week-on, four-week-off job. Each time he arrived she’d wonder what frame of mind he’d be in. Would she need to stroke his hair and tell him ‘Everything is okay, my darling, everything is okay’? Or would she need to worry about his infidelities and spending sprees?

  After seeing her daughter bandaged and suicidal, after being accused of neglect, abuse and madness, she now felt the vaguely familiar sensation of juices multiplying and readying themselves in her eyes and mouth. She managed to stop them from leaking in the car, saying to the lawyer who drove her home from the prison, ‘I can’t talk just now. I need silence. Is that okay?’ He did as she requested, turning Radio Two on for company while she swallowed and bit her lip and imagined something happy, like Jamie when he was smiling and loving her with all his heart, like when Catriona was designing and writing her own Christmas cards as a seven-year-old.

  The lawyer dropped her at the house she’d lived in since her wedding, where she and Jamie had taken Cat home together, crying, and where – six weeks later – she found her husband fucking a twenty-three-year-old from the pub. It was an image that had never faded.

  Irene was in the house now. She was looking at the very sofa where her husband’s bobbing backside had been. She was peering into the bedroom where her daughter had never slept as a baby, where – as a teenager – she had painted and decorated wildly, her love and talent for design already flourishing. She was walking into the bathroom.

  She was remembering the last time she’d cried.

  Catriona was fifteen years old, sleeping soundly in bed. The phone was ringing.

  ‘Jamie, get that,’ Irene had yelled, assuming her husband was already up. ‘Jamie!’

  Getting out of bed, Irene saw that her daughter had beaten her to it. She was standing in her pyjamas, the handset to her ear. She was handing the phone to her mother. ‘It’s the police,’ her daughter whispered.

  Irene held out her hand to take the phone, but she already knew.

  Afterwards, they held each other and cried.

  Jamie.

  They buried him with his ancestors on the Black Isle one rainy Friday afternoon and then walked away, never returning again, leaving their anger and pain safe in the dirt, with him.

  The tears came now. Her daughter was the same. She would kill herself. And perhaps it was her fault.

  She fell to her knees on the living room floor and prayed for the first time in many years. ‘God, please help me. Please help me.’ She sobbed on the floor for over an hour, rolling on the carpet, her face distorted with howling, her fists pounding the ground and pulling at her clothes, her fingernails scraping at the skin on her arms, legs and face.

  She had been a bad wife. She had been a bad mother. She had sought too much help. She had failed to feed her child properly. Now, perhaps because of her, her daughter was going to die in Cambusvale Prison. It wasn’t hard to do. She’d manage eventually.

  Irene picked herself up from the floor. She packed a bag with toiletries, pyjamas, underwear and photographs. She paid the electricity, gas, telephone and council tax bills. She organised a file with her bank cards and pin numbers and pensions. She rang the police.

  ‘This is Irene Marsden . . . Yes, hello Bill. I have something very important to tell you. Can I come into the station . . .? Good. I’ll be there in a few hours. I need to go somewhere else first.’

  22

  My mother was going to be arrested soon. After visiting me, she told me she was going to tell the police about her Munchausen’s by Proxy. She would confess that she purposely starved me as an infant so they would admit me to hospital, then she would get help, attention and pity. She would confess that for years she pretended I had severe psychological problems when, in truth, she had caused the symptoms herself. She would admit to three counts of murder as some kind of fucked-up attention-seeking grand finale.

  Sick and exhausted, I couldn’t stop crying. The hours were interminable yet I didn’t want them to end. I wanted to take back the accusations I’d made and the conversation I’d had with her. I wanted to wa
tch the life drain red from me until successfully emptied. Sheet-less, pen-less, paper-less, and watched, I had no alternative but to endure a different kind of wait, one that I hoped and prayed would go on forever.

  Three long nights drifted in and out. Doors banged and keys clanged and alarms sounded and voices floated.

  Then the door flung open.

  ‘You’ve got bail!’ the Freak yelled. ‘Pack your things.’

  I’d been tricked by the ‘You’ve got bail’ line once before so I didn’t really believe it, and this time, I didn’t want to anyway.

  ‘Did you hear me, Catriona?’ the Freak said. ‘You’re free to go. Get your things together. We just need to process you at reception and that’s you.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ I asked.

  ‘I am,’ she said, sitting down beside me.

  ‘After your visit, your mother drove to the police and confessed.’ ‘Oh God . . .’

  ‘She took the secateurs with her. The DNA of the three men was all over the blades. Her fingerprints were all over the handles. They have nothing on you any more, Catriona.’

  I couldn’t move.

  ‘They’re looking into the Munchausen’s thing. Are you okay?’

  ‘No.’

  Of course I wasn’t okay. I loved my mum. Could I really have believed that she’d harmed me as a child to get attention? That she’d gone so far as to kill people to keep me close and to be someone? I’d ruined everything again. I’d hurt her, just as I’d always hurt everyone I got close to. I couldn’t pack my things into the black bin bag the Freak had handed me. Could I really swap myself for her? Let her spend her life in a place that was worse than death?

  The Freak packed my things for me. She escorted me over to the reception area, directed me to a changing room and gave me clothes I’d not had on for months, the very ones I’d worn on the sunny morning of my non-existent wedding. She helped me to the front door, gave me my travel voucher and release allowance, and said, ‘I always knew it wasn’t you. Take care, Catriona,’ before patting my shoulder and going back inside.

  It was as easy as a door swinging shut behind me – a push and a swish and a bang. I stood on the steps in front of the prison and took a deep breath. Too deep. I became giddy. I sat down on the step and put my head in my lap, tears streaming down my face.

  If it was confirmed that Mum was suffering from Munchausen’s by Proxy, she would get hospital treatment and a shorter sentence. She’d cope. She said she’d cope. I wouldn’t have, it was true. And it meant my name was cleared and I could build myself up again. I’d done that before. I could take my time, work hard, and hope that one day Joe would come to me, that he’d buzz the buzzer of my mum’s house in Portobello and touch my cheek. It’d take a while, but it was a plan, one which helped me retrieve my head from my lap and look into the big blue Stirlingshire sky. I was free.

  There was only one person for me to turn to. Mum was in an undisclosed secure medical facility and had made me promise not to visit her – for a while, at least. Joe had returned to Italy after his brief visit, the sale of my flat had long been concluded, and the only other people interested in talking to me were journalists. I walked two miles to the nearest village, my black bin bag and its large white sticky label reading CAMBUSVALE PRISON proclaiming to the world that I was an ex-con.

  Mum wouldn’t be able to see this, or anything beautiful, for years, I thought to myself, as I walked through the green countryside.

  I arrived in the village, made my way to the phone booth on the corner, and dialled Anna’s number. But her phone rang out. Unsure what else to do, I tentatively phoned Joe’s mobile, which was switched off. I tried his home number, which went dead as if disconnected, and his parents’ number, which did the same.

  I sat with my back against the glass of the phone booth and waited twenty minutes, checking the large village clock at the side of the hairdressers’ every three seconds or so, and then I tried Anna again.

  Still the same.

  I thought about waiting forty, perhaps forty-five minutes this time, and set my back to the glass once more, the unusually busy traffic of the small commuter town whizzing by me. I was good at waiting. I’d had nearly three months’ practice, but strangely it didn’t seem to go any faster than inside, not from the floor of a phone booth, anyhow.

  Only twelve minutes had gone by when a red Mini stopped beside me. Cars behind it beeped. There was no parking this time of day. Anna opened the window and said, ‘Get in.’

  I stood up and looked at Anna sitting in the driver’s seat with her short spiky hair and burst, spectacularly, into tears.

  Anna drove me to Portobello first. The spare key, as always, was under a pot plant near the garage. I opened the door and stepped inside. Standing in the hallway, I looked at our ghost house. An empty sofa, a clean kitchen, freshly made beds . . . The phone ringing and me whispering to Mum, ‘It’s the police.’

  I fainted. When I woke, Anna was standing over me with a glass of water.

  ‘You’re coming to mine,’ she said.

  23

  It was getting cool. The night before, Joe had put extra blankets on the bed and brought in wood for the open fire. He’d slept well, with the shutters closed and heavy bedding pressing on his body; there were no mosquitoes, no motorbikes echoing from one side of the valley to the other, no dogs barking as if in response. It wasn’t just the weather. Everything was cooler. He’d forgiven himself for contemplating hurting her for what she’d done. He’d forgiven himself for being so stupid. His family were right – they were always right – he should have stayed well clear. And he’d forgiven her – to save her life. Without his words of kindness, as her mother’s letters and phone calls had pleaded, she would have succeeded in killing herself within weeks, maybe days. He needed to see her and tell her she was forgiven, even though his own mother had also pleaded to ‘let the cunterale fucker kill herself, for God’s sake!’

  His mother, Signora Rossi, enjoyed the use of English swear words. They meant nothing to her. As a handsome young man, her husband had come over to Italy one summer in search of an Italian wife who would please his mother. Signora Rossi had returned to Scotland with him, and lived in Glasgow for eleven years, bearing two boys and working hard in the kitchen of one of the family’s small fish and chip shops. Despite this, she had never learned English – but she enjoyed the sound of the naughty words, and the reaction they often got.

  She didn’t warm to Catriona, so she called her cunterale – not only because she might steal her beloved son away, but because she was typically superior, smiling at the quaint little Italians as they went about their quaint little Italian business – eating, drinking, taking care of family – as if there was anything different or cute about them. They were a normal family like any other, except perhaps that they lived in paradise on earth and ate exceptionally tasty food and lived till they were ninety-seven, on average. Nothing quaint at all, cunterale, sitting on a kitchen chair with a grin that said ‘Oh, you cute little mamma, you! Wait till I tell my friends about the wine you make from your own vines!’

  Signora Rossi didn’t decide to dislike her immediately, though she had to admit she wasn’t keen on the idea of a non-Catholic, non-Italian, non-Italian-speaking woman from a one-parent family. She decided to dislike her before lunch on her second day in Italy when she nudged the girl out of her listlessness and gave her a job.

  ‘Giuseppe,’ she said in Italian, ‘chiedile di prendere una tovaglia.’

  ‘A tablecloth,’ Joe translated. ‘They’re in the storage box at the foot of the bed. Upstairs, second on the left.’

  A few seconds later there was a loud scream from upstairs. The whole family ran, in their cute little Italian way, to find Catriona kneeling at the foot of the bed, horror-stricken at the sight of a coffin.

  ‘Oh! Don’t worry, it’s empty,’ Joe explained.

  His mum didn’t trust her family to buy an oak one, Joe said. And she found this on special offer i
n Florence. Silk lining!

  As the English conversation continued, Signora Rossi nodded, happy that a sensible explanation was being given and that they might be able to take the tablecloth to the kitchen. But when Joe finished, there was a pause. In an attempt to clarify further, Signora Rossi brought out the latest photo of herself. She was pleased with it. She placed it at the head of the coffin to demonstrate that the photo was for her tombstone, and that the coffin was for her. It was a self-assured and attractive shot. Not as bad as Amanda Mignella’s from Poggio who already looked dead! And much better than last year’s, which she showed to Catriona, shaking her head – she’d lost weight these last nine months.

  Catriona held the photos in her hands and looked at the silk-lined oak coffin under the bed and burst out laughing. It was catching. She and Joe laughed until they were driven to the floor with it. Signora Rossi didn’t understand. She stood for a few moments as they writhed and snorted, grabbed a tablecloth from the storage box, yelled, ‘You laugh, you fucker!’ and left the room. From then on, she officially disliked Catriona Marsden.

  Cute Italians, her culo.

  ‘Your mother called me a fucker,’ Anna said, the belly laugh subsiding.

  ‘Her favourite’s cunterale,’ Joe managed through the laughter. ‘Learnt it at the Scottish fish and chip festival in the summer.’

  ‘Cunterale!’ Catriona began sniggering again. Signora Rossi could hear her as she set the table in the kitchen downstairs.

  It was a teensy bit chilly when Joe woke to his usual alarm – his mother yelling ‘Giuseppe! Giuseppe!’ He opened the shutter of his bedroom window and spoke quietly, which was all he had to do considering his mother’s head was peering out of her kitchen window no more than six feet away.