by Nicole Trope
‘Give it a rest, Mum. She’s not a charity case. She doesn’t need anybody to help her. She’s got us. What do you like about him, Fliss?’
‘I like his eyes,’ I said.
‘She doesn’t know, Lila. She knows she enjoys spending time with him and he’s kind.’
‘Do you like being with him?’ Lila asked.
‘I do,’ I said. ‘He tells me jokes and he brings me nice chocolates.’
‘What about sex?’
‘Lila, really,’ said Mum.
I shook my head and I felt my cheeks get hot. Sex with Lester wasn’t like sex with Frank. He didn’t say, ‘Can I touch there?’ or ‘Do you like that?’ It was quick and sometimes not nice, but afterwards he would ask me about the fruit shop and about what Isabel was doing at day care and he would hold my hand. I liked that bit.
‘If you’re happy, then I’m happy,’ said Lila.
‘Oh, thank you, Princess Lila,’ said Mum, and I laughed because Lila wasn’t really a princess.
That feels like it happened a very long time ago.
‘Look at the picture me and Suresh drew, Mum,’ says Isabel, and I have to stop thinking about Lester. It’s hard to think about bad things with Isabel around. ‘This is me and Suresh and you and Mina and Aunty Lila and Gran and we all live together on a farm with chickens and ducks but not cows because cows stink.’
‘That’s a lovely picture,’ I say.
Together we tidy up all her things and pack her bag. I’m sad and I want to make the hands of the clock go backwards but I know I can’t do that.
‘Bye, Suresh,’ says Isabel when he leaves to go home with his aunty.
‘I can’t believe all this is nearly over,’ says Mina. Mina’s going home in three weeks and she will be able to see Suresh every day. I’m happy for her but a little bit sad for me even though I’m going home soon as well.
‘One more visit and then I’ll come home,’ I tell Isabel when we hug goodbye.
‘One more, one more, one more,’ sings Isabel.
I hope that I’m telling her the truth. I hope my agenda won’t get in the way. I need to make sure I don’t get caught. That’s why I have to plan it. I want to go home to Isabel but I have to make sure Rose understands what she did. People shouldn’t be allowed to get away with doing the wrong thing.
I go to the finch cage before I go back to my unit. The little bird is lying on the floor, all stiff and dead. I pick it up gently. ‘I’m sorry, little one,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.’
I find a spot at the back of the cage and dig a hole with my hands. The soil is cold and dry so it isn’t easy, but I don’t want to find Jess and sign out a spade. I dig and dig until there’s a hole big enough for the little bird and I put him inside and cover him up.
‘Fly away now,’ I say to him, but I know his body isn’t going anywhere. I don’t know where finches go when they die. Humans go to heaven. I learned that at school from Miss Bradley, who was the religion teacher. Good humans go to heaven and bad humans go to hell. Heaven is up in the sky and hell is down under the ground, deep under the ground. When I walk back to my unit I stamp on the ground really hard, hitting Mr Winslow on the head.
‘Isabel met an enormous bear,’ I say as I stamp and stamp. ‘Isabel, Isabel didn’t care.’
Chapter Sixteen
‘Rob and I are moving in together,’ says Portia. She’s sitting opposite me in the visitors’ room. The visitors’ room looks as though someone was given the brief to ‘make it cheery’. In contrast to the rest of the prison which is painted in the utilitarian colours of grey and green it has sunny yellow walls and a deep blue carpet. There are red and blue and yellow bean bags dotted around the room and a large, worn leather sofa. Wooden tables and chairs complete the look. It is quite jarring on the senses but was obviously styled this way in an attempt to make visiting children feel comfortable. Two of the walls are completely obscured by children’s drawings depicting ‘mummy’ in various poses and locations. Parks and beaches feature more than anything else.
When Portia arrived, I had to hold my hands together tightly to prevent myself from touching her. Prisoners have to remain a certain distance apart from visitors at all times. I have not been touched by another human being for eight weeks now. Everyday contact with my daughters went unnoticed before I was sent here, but now I find myself rubbing my arms a lot, warming myself, soothing myself.
‘I’m pleased, Portia, really pleased. He’s a nice man. I hope you’ll be happy.’
‘I am happy,’ she says, and she pushes up the sleeve of her leather jacket to show me a small tattoo of a snake on her wrist. ‘It’s identical to his, but his goes all the way up to his shoulder.’
‘What a giddy schoolgirl thing to do,’ I want to say, but I can only bask in the reflected joy radiating off her beautiful face. ‘Do you think he’s the one, then?’ I ask instead.
‘I do, Mum, I really do. We’re . . . we’re trying for a baby.’
‘Oh, Portia,’ I say, and then I have to stand up and get myself a tissue from the box on the coffee table.
‘Don’t cry, Mum. It’s a good thing.’
‘Of course it’s a good thing, my darling. It’s a wonderful thing. I thought it wasn’t something you wanted, that’s all.’
‘I didn’t before Rob,’ says Portia, and then she shrugs her shoulders as if that explains it.
‘I hope that it happens for you, and I hope to be there when your child is born. I really, really hope to be there.’
‘Eric says any day now.’
‘I know, but he’s said that a few times. I just wish they would tell us yes or no. I’m so tired of waiting for an answer.’
‘We’ll be granted an appeal, and if we aren’t we’ll keep fighting until we get one.’
‘I know, I know. How’s Rosalind?’
‘She’s good. She’s fine. Jack’s been offered a partnership in his firm, they’re both excited about that. Jack’s working really hard to make sure he keeps on top of the extra work and they’ve been having dinners with all the partners to celebrate so I’ve been helping her a little bit with the kids. I’m taking Lottie to ballet every week, just . . . just until you get back.’
Portia’s tone is indulgent and patient. Something has shifted in her, in the way she sees her sister, in the way she deals with her. I can see it. Jack making partner in his accounting firm has long been a goal but Portia always used to roll her eyes when Rosalind talked about it. ‘How much more money can you possibly need?’ she asked Rosalind. Now she sounds almost proud of Jack and very happy for Rosalind. The change in perspective is welcome but also a little disconcerting. I have always wanted them to get on better, but I can’t help feeling that Portia is stepping in for her younger sister where I have failed.
‘It’s lovely that you’re helping her,’ I say, not quite managing to conceal a tinge of bitterness in my voice.
‘Oh, Mum,’ says Portia, and she shakes her head.
‘I miss . . . I’m missing everything,’ I say. ‘I feel like I haven’t spoken to her properly for weeks.’
‘I know that you two aren’t emailing much, but it’ll be better once you’re out.’
‘I am emailing her, every chance I get, but she rarely replies, and if she does she just talks about what the children are doing. I felt like she was on my side all through the trial, but now I’m not so sure. I think she believes that I meant for it to happen, that I deliberately . . . that I did it deliberately.’
‘She misses him. You know how close they were. She doesn’t think your actions were deliberate. It’s just that the verdict hit her very hard.’
‘Harder than it did me? She has no right, Portia. She told me she believed me about what happened. She cannot now be questioning what I told her just because the jury didn’t believe me. It’s wrong.’ Even as I speak it occurs to me that what I want from both my children is unfailing loyalty. I need them to accept my version of the truth without question. T
heir certainty is a stepping stone towards my own. Rosalind’s unspoken blame makes me question myself even more than I already have done. In this I realise I am not so very different from Simon, who also wanted to be believed by those closest to him despite what everyone else was saying.
‘I don’t think she’s doing that. I think it’s all just sunk in now. The months after his death were absolute chaos. Things have quietened down now and that’s given us both the time to think about what happened. She misses Dad so much, and I know that Sam is giving them a bit of trouble. He wants to go over and over what happened. I think he’s just trying to put it all into perspective, but Roz is finding it a bit much. You know her—she looks like she’s keeping it all together, but underneath she’s a bit of a mess.’
‘Oh God,’ I say. ‘Everything is such a mess. I can’t believe our lives have come to this. I miss him too. I miss him every minute of every day.’
‘I know you do, and I know it was an accident.’ Portia leans forward and puts her hand over mine. The guard in the corner of the room coughs discreetly, and Portia sits back. My hand is warm where she touched me. ‘I just want you out of here so that you can get on with your life. You deserve to be able to travel and make new friends, maybe even male friends.’
‘Oh, Portia, you’re in love and the world seems filled with endless possibilities. I’m not sure what kind of a life I’ll have when I get out of here.’
‘You never know, you just never know, and there’s no reason to think that it won’t be a good life,’ she says, and then we both study the drawings on the wall for a minute, staring at all the mummies and children playing in the sunshine.
Portia laughs. ‘You won’t believe it but a publishing house contacted me. They want me to write a book.’
‘You said no, I hope?’
‘Of course I said no. I wouldn’t know what to write about anyway. The more I think about him, the less I think I knew him. He wasn’t like anyone else’s father, and I’ve never known another person like him. All my friends at school used to envy me. They thought that our lives were perfect because he was famous and there were always pictures of you two in magazines, but I remember feeling like none of it was really real, like he wasn’t quite real—do you know what I mean?’
I nod my head slightly as I try to process what she’s saying. ‘You’ve never told me this before,’ I say.
‘I know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘Don’t be sorry. It’s how you felt. You can’t help that. I hear what you’re saying. He was an actor, a very good actor. I suppose it was hard for him to turn it off, but I do wonder now if I missed something about him.’ I speak slowly, feeling as though I’m stepping onto a tightrope. I don’t want to say anything that will give away what I know about Simon. I don’t want to find myself in freefall, unable to take back the things I have said, but I desperately want to talk to someone.
‘Rosalind doesn’t feel that way. She really believes he was the perfect father. She still thinks that everything that was said about him was bullshit, even after so many women came forward. She doesn’t think it’s possible that he did any of the things he was accused of.’
‘And you, Portia? What do you think?’
Portia looks down at her wrist and rubs her finger gently over the small tattoo. ‘I don’t know, not really. Before the television interview with that woman I was looking for a reason to dismiss the women’s stories. Even when all that stuff started going around on the internet I still thought it was possible that a lot of it was made up. It was all rumours and speculations. I would read one article that said he was definitely guilty, and then I would read another that questioned if the women could remember exactly what had happened. At work I encourage all the girls I meet to stand up for themselves, to say something and not to let anyone tell them that they’ve remembered it wrong, but with Dad, I don’t know . . . Maybe I just didn’t want to believe it. One of the girls I work with asked me about him the other day.’
‘She did?’
‘She said, “Isn’t your dad the one that felt up all those girls on his show?”’
‘That’s pretty direct.’
‘They don’t mince words. They’ve been through too much.’
‘So what did you say?’ I shift forward in my chair and I realise that I’m holding my breath. I want the answer, not because I care what she told the girl but because I have a feeling that Portia has the answer I’m looking for, the answer to the question I have been too afraid to ask my own daughters, in case I had missed not only what Simon was doing to other children but what he was doing to my own children as well.
‘I told her that yes he was, and I explained that he was dead now, and then she asked me if he’d ever touched me.’
I just nod at her. I don’t trust myself to speak.
‘You never really asked us that, did you? I thought you would. When the stories seemed to appear overnight on the internet I thought you would want to make sure. I was upset about that at first.’
I sit back in my chair and am forced into a memory of a terrible night during the trial. It had been an awful day. I think it was my third day of testimony or maybe my fourth, I can’t really remember. The prosecutor, a sharp-eyed woman named Mary Kirk, had begun the day gently enough—seemingly concerned for how I was doing. ‘I understand this is difficult Mrs Winslow,’ she said. ‘We’re nearly done now.’ But as the day wore on she grew claws. She asked about Simon’s life insurance again and again. The same question kept coming back with different phrasing. She would not give up.
‘You knew about the insurance, didn’t you, Mrs Winslow?’
‘When you found out about the insurance you realised he was worth more dead than alive?’
‘You knew the insurance would make you comfortable for the rest of your life didn’t you?’
On and on it went until I shouted across the courtroom, ‘No, no, no. I didn’t know, I didn’t know.’
Robert leapt to his feet and the day was declared over. I was completely exhausted.
‘I think I’ll stay with you tonight,’ said Portia on the way home.
‘No, I’ll be fine, really,’ I said.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Portia. ‘You look as if you can barely stand.’ She was right.
Portia made dinner and she opened a bottle of wine, and then because it was a Friday night she opened a second bottle as well. The day drifted away.
In bed I found I could not sleep and so, despite knowing it was a bad idea, I took one of the sleeping pills I had been prescribed.
I dreamed of Simon, an appalling dream. I saw myself in the house, holding a laundry basket, making my way downstairs and I stopped to see if Portia had left anything on the floor of her bedroom. I watched my hand push open the door just a little and then stop. My eye went to the bed where Portia and Simon lay together and I watched him push his hand down her pants. I was there, standing right in front of them but they could not see me. Simon smiled and Portia laughed and I opened my mouth to scream but it was one of those silent dream screams.
I woke as if surfacing from underneath water and struggled out of bed. I stumbled over to Portia’s room and shook her awake.
‘Portia,’ I said, ‘Your father . . . did he . . . your father . . . was he?’ Even in my half-awake state I knew my words were coming out garbled with sleep and wine. I kept shaking her.
‘Mum, stop, please stop,’ she shouted. She pushed me away and stood up and then she wrapped her arms around me. ‘Shhhh,’ she said. ‘I know, he’s gone, I know.’
She led me back to my room and tucked me into bed, making me her child. ‘Your father,’ I tried again.
‘Go back to sleep, Mum,’ she said—she rarely called me mum, only mother. ‘Go back to sleep.’
‘Mother,’ says Portia. ‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘I did,’ I say, ‘and you have every right to be upset about that but I . . .’
‘I know, you couldn’
t. I talked to Rob about it. He has a way of seeing the other side of everything. He said that if Dad had . . . done anything to either of us it would have been more than you could bear, especially since there was nothing you could do about it now.’
‘He’s right about that, but I should have asked. I was so afraid of the answer. I question everything in my life now, and I know that you and Rosalind are doing the same, but at least I’ve been able to hold onto the fact that I was a good mother. I think I was a good mother. If he did something to you girls and you tried to tell me and I didn’t listen or if I missed it, then . . .’
‘Then what?’
‘Then I wasn’t really fit to be your mother, was I? And then what have I done with my life, Portia, what have I done with it?’
‘Oh, Mum, please don’t cry.’
I grab another tissue for myself and blow my nose, taking deep breaths. I bite down on my lip, pulling myself together. Portia does not need to hear all this. She may be an adult, but she is still my child. ‘I’m just being silly,’ I say, ‘don’t worry about me. What did you tell the girl?’
‘I told her the truth.’
‘The truth . . .?’
‘That he never did anything to me or Rosalind.’
‘Never?’
‘Never. In fact, when Roz and I talk about it she remembers him as being physically kind of distant with us. He never brushed our hair or lay on the bed next to us to read stories, and he didn’t tickle us or even hug us much. I suppose that’s why it was so hard for me to believe it at first. He was always so reserved, so English. It didn’t fit with who he was.’
‘None of us wanted to believe it.’
‘Before the interview I would go back and forth about it, but afterwards . . .’
‘Afterwards you stopped coming over. He noticed that, you know. It broke his heart.’
Portia sighs. ‘I can’t keep apologising for that. I couldn’t look at him. I’m surprised you could. I’m surprised Roz is still defending him.’
