When he’d turned up in my classroom I’d challenged him. Folded my arms across my chest.
‘What are you doing here?’
He grinned. ‘Oh, so this is you in teacher mode? You look fierce. I like it.’
‘Really, Patrick. I mean it. Why are you here?’
‘We’re fetching Pepper from my apartment. You’re to get some clothes, and then we’re going to Southwold, to Aunty May’s cottage for the weekend.’ It was as if we’d discussed all this the night before. As if it was a plan.
‘Hang on, Patrick! I need to think about this, you haven’t given me any notice. And I still feel rough. We drank far too much last night! Things got . . . out of control.’
‘I’m sorry, my darling. We were both a bit carried away. I got a bit carried away. It was shame. Pride. About my body. The fact it’s not as . . . whole as it was. It was silly, I can see that now. But I’ve given myself a talking-to.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. And I realised what my problem was. It was that I need the sea. I get so stressed when I’m landlocked for any length of time. So I thought, it’s the weekend, what’s stopping us? The air will clear our heads. After you left this morning I thought, bloody hell! What am I thinking? The date we were originally going on, before the accident, remember? It was supposed to be down there, in Southwold! Eating seafood, sailing, shagging our arses off . . . and we never made it! And I thought, we’ll do it now. This weekend.’
I hesitated. He’d put me on the back foot again; I was the one deceiving him about that weekend. I had to broach this carefully.
‘Patrick – you know, you never did tell me where you were intending to stay the night of your accident. Where did you use to stay when you went sailing?’
‘Oh! Here and there. I didn’t know then, of course, that you had your own place. You kept it from me, you little minx! But now I know you’ve got somewhere we can stay, for free, we should take advantage, eh?’
‘Look. What you said about not wanting me to see my friends. I hope you didn’t mean it. Because I can’t promise you that.’
‘Oh, you don’t want to worry about that now, baby. What I meant was, your friends can wait. Because I want you to myself this weekend. We’re going to have the time of our lives together. It will be healing, Ellie, to get out on the waves. Come on, let’s go.’
As he stood up, he stumbled a little, and my heart went out to him. I handed him his crutches and he looked at me with that sheepish grin I loved.
I didn’t need to be afraid.
As he limped across to the door, I followed him, filled with tenderness.
We fetched Pepper from the Wapping apartment. I’d had a text saying Frank, Pepper’s owner, was being kept in for further investigations. The little dog’s enthusiasm when we clipped on his lead infected me, and Patrick waited while I put clothes in a bag, swimming things, towels, some food.
As I drove, the anxiety about being accused of abandoning Timothy played around my head. I had to get it off my chest.
‘What?’ Patrick laughed. ‘You left school before checking one of your kids was safe? You’re bloody lucky social services haven’t come after you.’
I didn’t reply. How could I tell him I’d left early to get to him?
It wasn’t Patrick’s fault I’d let my obsession with him – what I’d done to him, hiding what I’d done to him – override everything. So what would be the point in burdening him with it?
‘I don’t understand people who don’t put children’s safety first,’ he said. ‘Neglect is the worst form of abuse.’
‘Oh I agree! But please, Patrick, don’t imply I’d neglect a child. I feel bad enough already.’
He was frowning. This was something he felt more deeply than I would have imagined.
‘What’s his name? Timothy? Poor kid! I think you know what the right thing to do is. You have to hand in your notice. You have to leave that job.’
‘No, it’s OK. I’ve talked to the head teacher about it and she’s going to deal with it. She was very understanding. I might get a warning but it’ll be OK.’
‘Ellie,’ he said. ‘Ask yourself. Are you fit to teach children when you are so distracted by whatever it is that you neglected one of them?’
‘It’s the first time I ever—’
‘But is it going to be the last? Look what happened. Timothy survived. But if he hadn’t, could you live with yourself? You’re very sweet, Ellie, but you are also very scatty – naturally, you’re artistic, the two traits go hand in hand – and from what I’ve seen, easily distracted. But these are children we’re talking about. Not grown men like me who can look after themselves. Your little lad – you’ve traumatised him, and he’s unable to do a thing about it.’
I had the sudden urge to perform one of my rituals, to look behind me three times to keep Timothy and me and Patrick safe, but I didn’t want to risk another accident by taking my eyes off the road. So I drove on, towards May’s cottage, with the uncomfortable unfinished feeling I was always left with if I didn’t obey my compulsions and with the increasing suspicion that Patrick might be right. Had I put the safety of a child at risk?
Should I leave my job?
‘Children can’t tell you when they are being neglected. They don’t know,’ he went on. ‘They only know when they are being actively abused, and even then they don’t always know. They’ve got nothing to compare it with, no perspective. I should know, I’m one of them.’
‘What do you mean?’
We had turned off the motorway and were driving through the Suffolk fields now. The late afternoon sun was still high in the sky and creamy cow parsley grew tall in the hedgerows and the horse chestnuts were laden with white candles. It was beautiful, but it didn’t feel it. It felt like driving into a frothy white web to a place where the harder I fought to get back, the more entangled I would become.
‘When you’ve been brought up in care, as I was, you have no say in who they foist you on to,’ Patrick was saying. ‘I had a succession of foster carers. Some better than others.’
I looked at him quickly. ‘Did you?’
Had he told me this? He’d said he’d been brought up in care. But he hadn’t mentioned foster carers. And my own Aunty May had been a foster carer in Southwold. But he couldn’t have lived with her – the link was too weird – too much of a coincidence.
‘I told you.’
‘No, I don’t think you did tell me you were fostered. You only said you’d been brought up in care. I assumed you meant a kids’ home . . .’ Actually I had no idea what he’d meant.
‘My mum couldn’t look after me. I dunno. She was a junkie or something so I was taken into care, and then I was passed from one family to the next.’
‘But, Patrick! This is odd! My aunt, the one whose house we’re going to, she was a foster carer. Did she ever take you in? No, it sounds mad!’
‘No, it doesn’t sound in the least bit mad. May’s blue clapboard house by the sea. As I told you, everyone wanted to live there.’
I looked at him, trying to work out whether the threads that were tying us together were more intricate than I’d ever realised. It seemed impossible. But then Southwold was a small town. There was only one road into it. Only one road out.
‘And did you? Live there, I mean?’
‘No. I didn’t. And then I heard what she was really like! Your aunt was the most famous foster parent in the area. Or perhaps infamous is more accurate.’
‘What do you mean?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s probably just malicious gossip, Ellie. From small-minded small-town folk.’
‘I need to know! Why was she infamous, and what happened that drove her mad?’
‘Hey, calm down, babes.’
He took my hand and squeezed it and I pulled mine away. We were turning into the road into Southwold, where Patrick’s accident had happened.
Was he going to say anything as we reached the spot?
It was warm. I was weari
ng a summer dress and sandals. The seat against my bare legs was sticky. My hands on the wheels felt sweaty. We passed one of those macabre collections of flowers that people place where someone has died. Most of them were wilting, and there were some cards with scrawled messages of condolence and love.
This benign-looking country lane must be a black spot for accidents. I shivered.
‘Christ!’ Patrick said, sitting forward. ‘This is where I was run over! It’s coming back to me! This section where the road winds and bends. Ellie, look. Flowers. Someone else must have been hit on this road as well.’
I clutched the steering wheel. My palms were dripping now.
He was bound to remember, now we were passing the place. We were in the very car that had bashed into him!
Why hadn’t I ever confessed?
But every time I’d tried, the words had slithered away and then it had seemed too late, too complicated to explain why I hadn’t said straight away.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, my voice weak. ‘There isn’t another route we can go, it’s the only way into Southwold.’
‘I know. Phew! It’s OK,’ he said, his voice calming. ‘I can’t avoid it forever. It gave me a bit of a shock though.’ He frowned. ‘And a memory.’
I kept my eyes on the road. I mustn’t panic.
‘That’s right,’ he said slowly, ‘I remember the car that hit me, I think, though as I said, I only saw the back of it. I think I’m beginning to remember more details now. A numberplate, or at least, a couple of the letters.’
I couldn’t speak.
‘No. It’s gone,’ he said.
I took a deep breath. Good! I could let it all fade into the background again and hope it would simply go away. I would never tell him. I was a coward. I knew I was. But what good would it do for him to know now?
A little further on he said, ‘What were we talking about back there?’
‘About my aunt,’ I whispered.
‘Oh yes, I remember now, what I was saying. There was a kid who drowned, who she was supposed to be looking after. Like I say, Ellie, neglect, which can simply take the form of turning your back at the wrong time, is the worst form of abuse.’
‘But—’
‘And the knowledge of what she’d done drove her mad. So she ended up in a psychiatric hospital. She had to come to terms with the fact she wasn’t the wonder foster carer she was supposed to be. It caused her such conflict, she went doolally.’
‘Patrick, please, she was my aunt! I can’t believe she would have hurt a child deliberately. She was lovely. I loved her.’
‘Yes, but they only section someone if they are a danger to themselves or other people.’
The silence hung between us as I drove on.
I tried to process what Patrick had said.
How could my aunt not have been watching a child she had fostered? I didn’t believe it. But why would he tell me this if it wasn’t true? And then doubts crashed in. A black feeling swept over me. The child had drowned while Aunty May was looking after her. And I had caused an accident I hadn’t confessed to. Patrick had pointed out that I’d neglected Timothy. Was there something about my family?
We were coming into Southwold, past the cobbled fronts of the first cottages. Hollyhocks had shot up since I’d last been here, lining the pavements, and as we turned to cross the golf course the light turned soft and golden. I tried to relax, to get some perspective.
‘And what about you, Patrick?’ I said, trying to move the conversation on from the parallels he seemed to want to draw between my aunt and me.
‘What happened to you?’ I asked quietly. ‘You said you had some bad experiences.’
‘Well yes, I did. Not as bad as being left to drown. But there was the one foster parent who forced me to watch obscene films then locked me in her shower room for doing so. And one who wasn’t quite as mad as that but who used to lose her temper with me and beat me.’
‘What? You’re kidding me! That’s terrible abuse.’
He shrugged. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘But it’s awful.’
‘Pretty fucking awful, yes. But you know, adversity is the root of development. Great things are often born out of struggle.’
‘I’m amazed you’ve come through in one piece.’
Though I was beginning to wonder, had he come through in one piece after all?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I couldn’t sleep that night. I got up and crept downstairs, leaving Patrick in a deep sleep in Aunty May’s front bedroom. What Patrick had insinuated about May had disturbed me.
I wanted to find out more about the child who had died. I would rummage through the papers Ben and Caroline hadn’t got round to sorting. I wondered now whether Patrick wanted to besmirch my aunt’s name for some reason. I had to know. Because if she had abused or neglected a child, deliberately or even out of carelessness, then she wasn’t the Aunty May I thought she was. Already my memory of May had had to adjust, when I’d found her diary entries, the grave of the child called Daisy. The photo with me missing. The hair and the teeth. My one constant, my one role model, would no longer be a guiding light in my memory but someone flawed. Not just flawed, damaging. Someone who had neglected the children with whose lives she had been entrusted.
And if Patrick had been thrown into my path, had I been handed, by some odd twist of fate, the responsibility for making amends for a different childhood ruined by another foster carer?
I opened the drawer in the sideboard where Ben and Caroline had left the things they hadn’t had time to go through yet and rifled through. I wanted to find the diary she had torn the page out of.
Daisy, according to the gravestone I’d stumbled upon, had died in 1990.
It took me most of the night, going through her things until I found it. A small red pocket diary with tiny sections for each day.
I opened it. I flicked through, squinting to make sense of her untidy scrawl. Something caught my attention and made me stop and read on.
The little boy stayed with me for just three nights before I knew I wasn’t the parent for him. Sweet though he can be, his troubles run deep and unfortunately Daisy has developed a kind of dislike/fear of him so violent she cries every time I leave them together. I’m afraid he’s attacked her once or twice when my back was turned. Yesterday she wailed as if she’d been hurt when I went out of the room for a few minutes and though I asked the boy what happened he clammed up and Daisy was too distraught to explain.
I’ve told Social Services I think they need to find another home for the boy. It breaks my heart to send him away. But Daisy was petrified of him, and I have begun to suspect I can’t leave the two of them alone for a minute.
I heard the floorboard above creak, snapped the tiny diary shut. I would tuck it away in a pocket and read the rest later.
For now I crawled back up the cold stairs and under the covers next to Patrick.
Instead of snuggling up to him as I would have done, I left a gap between us, afraid of disturbing him, frightened that if he questioned me about what I’d been doing he might react the way he’d done when he’d found me looking at the pictures of his childhood. I had to tread carefully with him, be on my guard so as not to upset him.
I lay next to him, and listened to him breathe, and tried not to make a sound, and I didn’t sleep until the sun was beginning to rise again, over the sea.
I was leaning on the kitchen windowsill staring out at the dunes lit up by a bright sun against a perfect blue sky when I heard the clatter of Patrick’s crutches as he came down the stairs and approached me across the hall.
‘It’s a beautiful day,’ he said, ‘and I need to get on the water.’
‘The thing is’ he said, ‘as you know, I can only do it with assistance. You’re coming too.’
My heart plummeted. He was going to find out I’d hardly ever sailed.
‘Patrick, I’m not much of a sailor, I—’
‘But we were coming down her
e to sail the weekend of my accident,’ he said, frowning. ‘You told me you sailed. I’m sure I remember you saying.’
‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘I’m out of practice, though.’
He had his back to me, his elbow resting on the crook of his crutch, trying to spread a piece of toast with butter with one hand. I moved over to help him.
‘Let me?’
He turned, smiled, the dimples I’d adored at first appearing in his cheeks, and in spite of my reservations I felt a pulse of desire for him, and wished the enormous deception that lay between us could just go away.
He handed me the knife. Kissed me briefly on the cheek. I buttered his toast, fetched him coffee and jam and he sat and ate hungrily.
‘I’d love to come sailing with you,’ I said. ‘But not yet. You can’t sail with one leg!’
‘How do you think the long legacy of peg-legged pirates coped on the high seas?’
He slurped his coffee.
‘Wait till you’re better. Until you’re more used to the prosthetic.’
‘Ha-ha! I’m never going to be better though, am I?’
‘You will be.’ I sat down next to him, clutching my coffee cup.
‘What we’ll do,’ he said, ignoring me, ‘is we’ll take the Enterprise, OK? It’s smallish. Not the yacht, not yet, but you could manage the Enterprise single-handed if anything were to happen to me, couldn’t you?’
‘I’m not sure. I feel a bit queasy this morning, Patrick. I’d prefer to stay here.’ He ignored this.
‘We’ll just have a sail round the bay, go down to Dunwich maybe for a pub lunch, and come back in time for dinner.’
Dunwich! That was where he’d said Stef was going when her boat went out of control. The mouthful of coffee I’d taken refused to go down. I really did feel sick now.
‘We’ll be fine, Els,’ Patrick was saying. ‘The air will do you good. You can take over if my leg proves a problem. Remember’ – he grinned his irresistible grin at me, dimples again, eyes sparkling – ‘no obstacle is insurmountable when you put your mind to it. We regard every problem as a challenge.’
‘I suppose this weather’s safe for sailing?’
A Trick of the Mind Page 19
