by Nicole Trope
I know what I’m going to do and I don’t even need to ‘get directions’, because Rose is right here.
Right here where I am.
Chapter Twenty-two
The hospital unit is really just a room with a couple of beds in it. It’s for prisoners who aren’t sick enough to go to hospital but are injured or sick enough to have to be watched. I only have a sprained ankle but they’re a little concerned that I may have hit my head when I fell over. I told Allison that I did no such thing but she isn’t taking any chances.
Earlier today when I got back from the garden for lunch there was a note on my bed telling me to call into Allison’s office. I knew that it must be news from Eric. He told me last night that he would hear today about my appeal, and I felt the same stomach-churning anxiety as I had just before the judge read out the verdict.
On the way to Allison’s office, I tripped over my own feet. I was hurrying and I tripped over my own feet. I feel so silly. It’s very quiet in here, but the nurse, Monica, has just told me that Birdy will be coming in as well. ‘We think she has a bit of food poisoning,’ she said. ‘We just want to get her on a drip overnight so she doesn’t become dehydrated.’ I’m quite glad that she’s coming. I won’t mind the company.
The appeal has been granted.
I would like to share my news with someone, with anyone, really. Because I’m stuck in here I can’t email the girls, but I’m sure they’re as excited as I am. At least, I hope Rosalind will manage to be happy for me. I will never tell her about the picture of Lottie in Simon’s study. I have to believe, I absolutely have to believe that he didn’t touch her. Showing me her picture was a cry for help. He wanted to be stopped. He wanted me to stop him, but I cannot share that with Rosalind, even if she remains angry with me forever. I am her mother, and as her mother I would rather never speak to her again and protect her from this knowledge than tell her what I know. The truth will always be lost.
Eric left a message with Allison saying that he should have me out on bail in the next two or three days, and she was kind enough to let me call him while I sat in her office with a bag of frozen peas on my ankle.
My time here is almost over, for now anyway. Of course I’m worried that a new trial will go the wrong way. There’s always a chance of that, but Eric and Robert will do their best, I’m sure. At the moment I have nothing to do but lie here and think about what it will be like. I hate the idea of being thrown back into the spotlight, but apparently it will be a judge-only trial. Perhaps the press will be kept out of court as well.
I find myself going back and forth over the idea of telling Eric about the pictures. They may not convince a judge entirely as to Simon’s state of mind, but they may help. They would also allow the ugly allegations to rear up from the depths and take hold again and I don’t know if I can put my girls through that. If telling the world about the pictures meant an absolute guarantee that this time I would be found not guilty then I would do it, but it is not necessarily the case.
‘She was trying to prevent him from shooting himself,’ Robert told the jury. ‘They struggled and the gun went off. It was an accident.’
‘Both Mr and Mrs Winslow’s prints were on the gun,’ said Ms Kirk. She was very good at her job. She would begin a sentence and then pause halfway through, leaving the jury hanging. She would wait until they had literally moved forward in their seats before continuing. ‘But,’ she went on when she was sure she had everyone’s attention, ‘only Mrs Winslow’s fingerprint was on the trigger. And, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let us not forget that Simon Winslow’s life was insured for ten million dollars. Rose Winslow had become tired of her husband. He was an inconvenient old man dogged by scandal. She took the gun to him so that she could end his life, and that’s when the struggle happened. He was trying to stop her.’
I lost the jury the first time the prosecutor uttered the words, ‘ten million dollars.’ What would she know about ordinary life? I could see them thinking, and just like that they were gone. My hair was too neat, my suit too expensive, and the millions I would make from his death sealed my fate. Of course they thought I killed him.
‘She never knew about the policy,’ Robert told them again and again in his summation, but by then it was too late.
Would the pictures have made a difference? Will they make a difference in a new trial?
‘Look who’s here,’ says Monica, helpfully breaking me out of my thoughts as she guides Birdy onto the bed next to mine.
‘Oh, Birdy,’ I say, ‘how are you feeling?’
‘I’ll be better soon,’ says Birdy.
Chapter Twenty-three
I keep my eyes closed and breathe in and out slowly the way Henrietta taught me. I hear Monica’s footsteps and feel her hand on my wrist. I listen as she goes over to Rose’s bed, and then she slips quietly out of the room. We are alone again. I am very, very quiet. I sit up and touch the needle going into my hand. It hurts to pull it out but I don’t care. I push myself up on my elbows and look at Rose in her bed.
Rose isn’t pretending to be asleep. She really is asleep. It isn’t that dark inside the room because Monica leaves a light on all the time so that she can see to check on her patients. I slide my legs quietly out from under my covers and stand up. Now I am right next to Rose.
I watch Rose and I am quiet and then I lean forward.
My fingers go around her throat. At first I don’t even touch her, I just form a cage with my hands and I watch her breathe. She is a quiet sleeper. The only way you know she’s not dead is by the small rise and fall of her chest.
I can’t look away. Her life is right there, in my hands. I am right next to her and she doesn’t even know I’m there.
I stand there for five minutes or five hours. I have no idea how long. I think about the way Rose used to cut the toasted cheese into triangles and put a straw in a glass of Coke for me and how she used to talk to me. I think about her telling me that I could come over whenever I wanted to and then I hear her voice, almost as if she is really speaking to me. ‘Go and help Mr Winslow down at the finch cage, quickly before he finishes feeding them. Off you go.’ And off I went.
It won’t take very long. She’s such a little woman. She has lines around her mouth and a small face. I could strangle her with just one hand. Up and down goes her chest. Her warm minty breath fills my nose.
I wait until I feel my legs begin to cramp. Now, I think, and I take a deep breath, and that’s when she wakes up.
‘What?’ she says, struggling to sit up.
‘Don’t move,’ I say, and my hands touch her throat.
‘God no, who . . . Birdy?’
‘No, not Birdy, not Birdy,’ I say, and I take one hand off her throat to switch on the lamp next to her bed. The other hand holds her down by her neck. There isn’t enough light for her to see me clearly even though I can see her. She needs to see me clearly. When the lamp is on I can see that she is scared. I can see in her eyes that she is very scared. It feels good to see that. She is scared, scared and trapped. She cannot get away no matter how small and no matter how light she is.
‘Please, Birdy, what’s wrong? Tell me what you want.’
Both hands go back to her throat and I begin to squeeze. I don’t like the way her throat feels, all ridges and swallowing. But I like that she is finding it hard to breathe.
‘Birdy,’ she chokes, ‘please . . . please, Birdy.’
‘Not Birdy,’ I whisper fiercely. ‘Not Birdy. See me, Rose. See me.’ I squeeze harder and I hear a gurgle in her throat. I can feel it begin to crush. I let go a little. She can’t die, not yet. She has to see me first.
‘See me, Rose,’ I whisper again as she takes in gulps of air. I start to squeeze again and she looks at me, really looks at me for the first time. Oh,’ she gurgles, ‘oh God. Felicity,’ and then her eyes roll back a little. ‘Felicity, I’m . . . I’m sor . . .’ she gurgles, and then she is quiet.
I snatch back my hands. ‘Rose,’ I say.
‘Rose, what were you going to say? Tell me, Rose.’ I lean over her and give her a little shake and then I give her a big shake. Her head bounces against her pillow. Her body is loose and her chest does not rise and fall.
‘Rose!’ I scream. I scream again with all the bubbling anger and fear I have inside me. I scream loud enough to wake the dead.
And then lights go on everywhere and Monica is there and she’s shouting and I’m screaming for Rose, who has finally seen me.
Chapter Twenty-four
They didn’t want to let me see her, but I insisted, and then Eric got involved and he talked to Robert and of course Robert can talk his way into anywhere. A maximum-security psychiatric facility presents no problem.
Robert and Portia are walking around with silly ‘parent-to-be’ grins on their faces. Rosalind is finding them both insufferable, but I’m completely delighted that Portia didn’t miss her chance to have a child. I’m quite happy to listen to her endless lectures on proper nutrition during pregnancy. I don’t believe I will mention the occasional glass of wine I drank and the few cigarettes I smoked when I was pregnant with her.
I’m buzzed in through three different doors and my purse is taken away before they allow me in to see Felicity.
‘She’s been moved to a minimum-security part of the building now,’ said Robert when he told me where I would be going. I don’t want to think about what the other areas of this place are like. She’s been in the facility for nearly six months now. I can’t imagine how terrible those first few weeks must have been after the relaxed environment of the Farm.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about her in the last few months. Her face is almost constantly on my mind. Those around me do not understand why I don’t feel even a trace of anger towards her. She lashed out and nearly killed me, but I don’t think a grown woman tried to hurt me. I think the person who put her hands around my neck was only seven or eight years old and in terrible pain.
‘I don’t understand how you can feel that way,’ said Rosalind.
‘I don’t understand how to feel any other way,’ I replied.
She’s lying on a single bed in a small room. She’s facing the wall. At first I think they must have made a mistake, because the slight woman barely denting the mattress below her cannot be Birdy. ‘This is Felicity Adams?’ I say to the nurse who led me to the room, and she nods impatiently.
It’s possible that I would have recognised her when we first met at the Farm if she hadn’t been covered in her layers.
‘Please keep the door open,’ says the nurse.
‘I will,’ I say.
‘She’s still medicated, but we’re weaning her off slowly. Please don’t upset her.’
I turn around to face the nurse, taking in her unlined face and her obvious youth. ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ I say in my raspy, slightly threatening voice. ‘I’m just here to visit for a little while.’
The nurse nods and backs out of the room as though afraid that I might attack her on her way out.
‘Bir- . . . Felicity,’ I say quietly. There is no movement from the bed. I step a little closer, feeling anxious and wary.
‘Felicity,’ I say again.
She still does not move and I think that she may be asleep. I want to go over to touch her on the shoulder but I know that would be unwise. I have no idea how she would react. I stroke my throat absentmindedly—something I have taken to doing lately.
‘Your voice may never be the same,’ said the doctor at the hospital.
‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Rosalind for me. ‘She’s alive.’
Rosalind and Portia sat next to my bed in the hospital until I begged them to go home. ‘I’ll be fine,’ I croaked. I needed some space and time to think about what had happened, about why it happened.
Just as I am about to leave, Felicity turns over and looks at me. Her eyes widen.
‘Why are you here?’ she says.
‘Oh, I was just about to go. I thought you were asleep.’
Her brown eyes are dull and flat. I stroke my neck as I see the face of the child I knew, the desperately sad little face.
‘I just wanted to visit,’ I say.
‘Why?’
‘Do you mind if I sit down?’
Felicity shrugs. I drag a chair from its position against the wall and pull it closer to the bed.
‘Your voice sounds funny,’ she says.
‘Yes, it will for some time. Maybe forever. But I can speak and I can breathe. I wanted you to see that I’m all right.’
‘Well, I’ve seen. You can go now.’
‘I also wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.’
‘You’re sorry?’ she says, as though she doesn’t understand the word.
‘Yes, I am.’ And then I say the words I have been rehearsing in my head for the last few months. I say the words that I would like to say to every little girl Simon put his hands on. Eric has advised me against doing this—not wanting me to leave myself open to being sued—but he was not there that night. He did not see the broken child who put her hands around my throat. I cannot go back, I cannot undo the damage but I am hoping that if she knows that I am sorry it may help her recover and move on with her life.
‘I should have protected you from him,’ I say. I didn’t know what he was doing, but even so I should never have let him take you off to the aviary all the time. I should have known something wasn’t right. You tried to tell me that you didn’t want to go. You wanted to stay with me and I didn’t let you. I should have done better.’
‘You didn’t hear me,’ she says and she sits up on the bed and leans towards me as if to make sure that I understand where I went wrong. ‘You didn’t hear me,’ she says again.
‘No, and I should have heard you.’
‘My mother didn’t hear me either.’
‘I’m sorry about that too, Felicity. We should have kept you safe. It’s the job of all the mothers to protect all the children.’
‘Not my mother,’ says Felicity.
‘I can’t speak for her,’ I say.
‘No, I guess not.’
‘I brought something to show you.’ I fish in my bag for the photograph, pull it out and hand it to her. Birdy takes the photo from me and looks at it and then she runs her fingers over the smile on the child’s face.
‘That’s me,’ she says.
‘Yes. Simon had it in his study. I thought you might want it. I don’t know why.’ I had thought about simply throwing the photo away, but that would have been wrong. I give it back to Felicity because I cannot give her back any other part of her childhood.
‘I look happy.’
‘Yes, yes, you do, but you were sad, I think. He made you sad.’
‘He made lots of girls sad.’
‘He did,’ I say, and the simple acknowledgement almost takes my breath away. I don’t know if I will ever be able to think of what he did without being profoundly and completely shocked. I don’t know if I will ever be able to stop questioning everything he said and did and everything we were together.
‘Is that why you shot him?’
‘I didn’t . . . It’s complicated. I know it’s hard to understand, but I can’t explain it all.’
‘Are you going back to jail?’
‘No, no. The judge overturned my conviction. He said that it was an accident, which means I don’t have to go back to jail.’
Eric and Robert had pushed ahead with the appeal despite my condition. ‘Let’s just get it over with,’ Eric said to me when he came to visit me at home.
‘She needs time to recover,’ said Rosalind.
‘No,’ I whispered. ‘No, it needs to be over.’
‘I’m so sorry, Rose,’ said Eric. ‘I can’t bear to think of you being in that place. I’m so sorry that Robert and I failed you. We will not fail you again.’
‘It wasn’t you,’ I whispered to Eric. ‘You did your best.’
Eric stood up to leave and I got off the bed to show him out. Lot
tie and Sam were downstairs watching television. ‘Stop that!’ I heard Lottie shout at her brother. ‘Don’t you dare touch me!’ Lottie’s indignation made me smile. She is terribly sure of her rights. Her voice has not been silenced by anyone.
‘I can’t keep those two from trying to kill each other,’ muttered Rosalind, and she went downstairs to separate her warring children.
‘Eric, before you go,’ I said, and he turned back to me. ‘I have something to show you.’
‘You do?’ he said.
I nodded my head, affirming my decision to myself. ‘Yes, I do.’
Before Eric took the photos away to be placed into evidence, Rosalind and Portia shuffled through them for almost an hour, studying each face, communing with each child. I didn’t show them all of the pictures. The picture of Lottie was in my bedside drawer. I wanted to throw it away but I couldn’t bring myself to let go of it. She looks so happy. She is just a little girl enjoying an afternoon with her grandfather.
The overturning of my conviction and revelation of Simon’s collection of photographs made international headlines. The circus came back to town but I coped better this time. I had nearly lost my life. Aggressive journalists felt like the least of my worries. Rosalind is still struggling with the truth. Her father was her hero and it’s terrible to lose your hero. Now she’s doing what I’ve been doing for such a long time—questioning, rethinking and wondering about her father. She has not wanted to leave my side since the night Felicity put her hands around my throat.
Felicity stares at me as I stroke my throat, soothing the dryness there. ‘I didn’t really want to hurt you,’ she says quietly.
‘I didn’t want to hurt you,’ I say.
‘It wasn’t you. It was him, and he’s gone now.’
There isn’t much for me to say after that.
‘You need to get better so that you can go home to Isabel.’
‘I’m getting better,’ she says. ‘I’m getting better so I can go home to Isabel and Lila.’
‘I hope you’ll be with them again soon,’ I say, but she doesn’t reply. She just nods and smiles as I’m sure images of her young daughter dance before her eyes. I leave her sitting up quietly on her bed. When I am at the door she says, ‘Why did he do it?’
