by Mel McGrath
‘About leaving…’ Sal went on. Her tone suggested she was about to advise me to do it. ‘I just wonder, well, I mean, you haven’t exactly been yourself and what with your history and now this thing with the institute… I’m just trying to be realistic.’
I felt my chest tighten. ‘Whose side are you on, exactly, Sal?’ There was a pause and when Sal spoke again she sounded flustered. ‘Oh, I just mean, you’re not working now so you could, I don’t know, take some time out, sit on a beach for a while.’
‘And leave my kid with two people I don’t trust?’
She sighed. ‘All I’m saying is, maybe Tom’s got a point.’
After the call ended I sat on the bed rubbing my forehead with my hands. I felt as if I was travelling down a rocky path into the dark. A memory surfaced. Guatemala, before Freya came along. Tom had wanted to climb an active volcano. I didn’t, really, but I went along with it because Tom was always so persuasive. The volcano turned out to be harder and higher than we’d anticipated; we ascended into cloud forest then beyond the treeline onto rock and scree. Tom insisted on going all the way to the top. He kept saying we were Couple Number One. Invincible us. We’d gone up without a guide and I began to worry that we wouldn’t have time to get down before the light failed. But on we went. Arriving at the summit at last, we were greeted by a smouldering crater and an awful stink of sulphur.
On the way down, with the sun setting, I tried not to get spooked by the loose stones and the encroaching darkness. Pretty soon, though, I fell behind. Up ahead, I could just see Tom. I called out, but he didn’t turn so I shouted and this time he did turn and, in response to my frantic gestures, gave a single wave, turned back and carried on.
By the time I reached the path leading off the volcano, I was broken. It was dark, the kind of dark that makes all but the bravest soul quake, and I’d fallen and hurt my ankle and I was disorientated and afraid. I’d lost sight of Tom what seemed like hours ago and was beginning to feel hopeless when, through what was dark, jungly overgrowth, I spotted a light. Thank God. A family was sitting around a table under a kerosene lamp eating and drinking and there was Tom holding court in his terrible Spanish. He smiled and saluted me with his glass.
‘I knew you’d feel such a failure if I came to rescue you.’
He was sort of right. But that was also completely beside the point.
I went upstairs to reassure Freya about the rioting and found her deep inside a book.
‘Is it going to be OK? Out there, I mean.’
‘Yes, of course. The trouble won’t come up this far, but even if it does, we’ll be safe inside the house.’
‘Will we? Be safe, I mean.’
My breath caught in my chest. ‘Is this about Ruby?’
Freya looked uncomfortably away and shook her head. ‘No, it’s about you and Dad.’
I didn’t say goodnight to Ruby. I was angry with her for what she was doing to Freya and with myself for not being able to stop it. Best avoid her. When I went back downstairs the light was still on in Tom’s study but I felt too rattled to talk to him. Instead I sat in the living room with the rest of the Riesling, zoning in and out of the chaotic scenes in the news. The spring had finally sprung. Violence was sweeping across the city. In Brixton, police cars had been set on fire and barricades set up in the streets from where youths were throwing missiles into lines of riot police. In parts of Hackney and Islington, banks and big-name retail outlets were having their windows smashed and their contents looted and set alight. It seemed that, even with the arrival of reinforcements from other forces, the police were hopelessly outnumbered.
I reached for the remote and the screen dissolved into static. Nothing about this was likely to end well. I stood to go to the kitchen for another bottle of wine and, as I did, my eye fell on the table in the bay window and the portrait of Lilly Winter. I went over and picked it up. For a while, I just stared at it as Lilly Winter stared back at me, familiarising myself with the set of the jawline, the shape of the eyes and the angle of the nose. The woman in the picture was a version of myself, the one who hadn’t escaped the Pemberton Estate, and I thought of her lying in bed, as drunk as I was now, slipping into death as softly as into a warm bath.
Picking up the bottle of wine, I went to the kitchen and poured the remainder down the drain and, needing the cool of the night, wandered out into the garden. Through the branches of the ideas tree a crescent moon was hanging huge and full in the sky. The air was full of the slur of sirens and the thrum of helicopters, but I was no longer afraid. I sat under the ideas tree and tried to find a place in my head that wasn’t already ablaze. I’d allowed myself to be manipulated, first by James White and then by my husband. I’d been guilty of bad errors of judgement both at work and at home. I’d stepped across boundaries and failed to trust my daughter. What I’d done to Ruby was unethical, futile and quite possibly illegal. It would take more than scans of the girl’s brain to persuade Tom to get his daughter into treatment. He’d be more likely to dig in his heels just to prove a point. Ruby Winter had become a pawn in a game between the two of us. We’d both raised the stakes. And now there was no choice but to play it to the bitter end.
I went back inside and climbed the stairs. The window on the landing gave out onto a view of Holland Hill, the park just visible between the rooftops, London’s sprawl beyond it and, in the distance, the flickering lights of Canary Wharf. From here a corona of yellow lights blazed on the horizon and I could hear the blare of fire engines. Somewhere on the other side of the park, orange lights danced then paled into smoke. Above it all, a blank sky in which the tiny trails of aeroplanes and satellites scattered. A sudden movement drew my gaze away from the window and Pudge the cat came tiptoeing towards me. I bent down and ruffled his ears. The wine bloomed hot on my skin. I felt exhausted and wired.
Remembering a foil of Zopiclone left over from a previous bout of insomnia, I went to the bathroom and, ignoring the warning not to mix the pills with alcohol, took them anyway, then stripped off and got into the shower in the en suite, suddenly needing to wash all the bad thoughts from my head. As I turned the taps, there was a loud belch. No water. I tried again and got the same result. The boiler in Lilly Winter’s flat flashed before my mind. Faulty plumbing, an engineer who didn’t do his job, a woman dead. I made a mental note to call out a plumber in the morning, then, padding across the hallway to the family bathroom and without turning on the light so as not to wake Freya, I hung up my nightclothes and stepped into the shower there. The window at the back let in enough city light to just about see and it was calming this way. I stood under the flow of water waiting for the pills to do their job and still my mind. A few minutes later, I brushed myself down with the back of my hand, drew back the shower curtain and stepped out into the deep gloom. As my eyes accustomed themselves, I noticed a shadow at the entrance to the room.
And then the shadow moved. Instinctively, I covered myself with my hands and peered hard.
‘Freya?’
Nothing.
‘Is that you, Ruby?’
The outline of the hair gave her away.
‘You startled me.’
Ruby Winter did not move. Her eyes were tiny glass baubles. Once again she looked unreal somehow, more like a malevolent sprite than a girl. I pulled the towel from the rack and wrapped it tightly around my body. I thought about the sleeping pills I’d taken and how the GABA receptors in my brain would soon be making clear thought almost impossible. I didn’t want to be in the dark anymore. Reaching out, I pulled the cord beside the mirror. A thin blue light spread across the room.
My pulse rattled in my forehead and in a faraway voice I heard myself say, ‘What do you want?’
Ruby Winter’s eyes narrowed and I felt the tug of her gaze.
‘I know what you’ve done, Ruby. I know about all the things that went missing from my drawers; I know about the iPad and the hamster and the vandalism at the cemetery.’ I felt a surge of excitement, as if something was
finally being revealed and, when no reply came, I went on, almost breathless now. ‘I know you pushed Freya under the water at the lido. I know that’s what you did. It’s why she was practising holding her breath, wasn’t it? Because you hurt her.’
Ruby shook her head. She was looking at me through narrowed, assessing eyes,
‘Why are you lying to me?’
‘Freya needs to improve her swimming because one day someone might hold her down then she might drown.’
I felt something in me slacken, as if I was on the edge of some terrible danger but unable to see beyond the first moment.
‘I don’t want you around my daughter anymore,’ I said. ‘I don’t want you around Freya.’
Ruby smiled. ‘That’s not up to you, is it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I decide who I want around, not you.’
‘Ruby, this isn’t a joke.’ I felt a rush of something, a dark energy careening towards the centre and emptying everything in its path.
‘I want Freya here with me.’
‘Ruby, you’re a child. You don’t get to decide who you do or don’t want around.’
She held the smile long after all traces of it had vanished from her eyes. ‘Oh no?’
‘No.’
Her hands went to her hips and she cocked her head. ‘Well, I didn’t want Lilly Winter around and look what happened to her.’
I went to speak but the words stuck in my throat. I thought about the damp towels on the floor in Ruby Winter’s bedroom, the batteries scattered on the floor, the open windows in her bedroom. And I thought about the window in Lilly Winter’s bedroom which was always kept open except on the night she died. I thought about the look Ruby had given me when I had asked her about the heating engineer and the word used by the girl with the acrylic nails came back to me. Facety.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said.
The girl blinked at me, an expression of absolute malevolence on her face. Something in my head burst outwards as though I had been vapourised. I felt my legs come unstuck from under me. Without thinking, I rushed forwards, drawn by some inescapable force, my arms grabbing for the girl in the doorway. As my fingers curled around her pyjamas, she ducked and turned and my hand scrabbled momentarily in the air until it landed in a fog of hair. Ruby wheeled forwards, her hands snapping up to her head in an attempt to beat me off, and started swinging wildly from side to side. I took hold and pulled. With my hands clasped around the girl’s shoulders, I began to shake her. It was madness. I knew it. But I couldn’t stop. I wanted to go on and on until there was nothing of her left. Then a shocking, strangled scream arced across the room. For an instant the sound hung in the air.
What have I done?
A door swung open and Freya appeared, her face still busy with sleep. She looked at me, then at Ruby Winter. There was a sharp catch of breath followed by a terrible keening. Shocked, I let go of Ruby and stood back. A light went on in the hallway, followed by the sound of thundering footsteps, and for a moment we three froze. Freya and I were both in the doorway to the bathroom now; I had my hands on Freya’s arm, trying to still her. A little further back, head bowed, rubbing at the spot where I had pulled her hair, stood Ruby. A pulse tap-danced crazily across my mind. I had no idea what I was doing but I knew what I had done. It was so out of character, so beyond my own frame of reference, it was as if someone else had been sitting in my driving seat.
Tom rushed up. I shrank back and, as I did, I felt Freya disengage herself from me and move away. I had no feelings of self-pity. I was violent and terrible, someone my own daughter no longer wanted to acknowledge.
Glaring at me, Tom said, ‘What the fuck?’ I watched him slacken and collect himself. He was smart enough to know that if he lost it now, neither of us would win.
I raised my palms in a gesture of surrender, stricken by my own failure. I’d lost, I’d been routed. I was down and out.
‘Go to your rooms, girls,’ he said. The two girls went, immediately and without comment. Tom waited until they were out of sight then said, ‘In my study!’
I quickly pulled my pyjamas and robe back on whilst Tom glowered at me, then made my way to his study. He followed after me. I sat on the pulled-out sofa bed. Despite the heat, I was cold and my hands were shaking. Tom stood with his back against the study door. The cords in his neck looked taut enough to snap and his lower arms were sheeny, the muscles flexed. Around the groin area of his boxers I noticed a dark patch of sweat and, not for the first time, I felt a little afraid of him.
‘God, I know how bad that looked. It was unforgivable. I had no right…’ I was thinking wildly now, seeing where this was going and prepared to do anything to divert it. ‘It was just, Ruby, well, she said – she hinted – that she’d had something to do with her mother’s death. She said she didn’t want Lilly around. She seemed to suggest the heating engineer had something to do with it. She said she could do the same to Freya.’
I knew precisely how saying this would make me sound. Eleven-year-old girls didn’t plot the deaths of their mothers. They didn’t threaten to kill their half-sisters. Except that I knew better. Because I worked every day with kids who did. All the time. Kids like Ayesha, Joshua and Adam.
Tom’s expression was wintery and without softness as he stepped closer. He sucked his teeth and, slowly shaking his head, he said, ‘I don’t think you even know what you’re saying. First, these ridiculous stories and now you physically attack an eleven-year-old child.’ His jaw flexed, the electric impulses of his thoughts leaving trails across his face. I knew that whatever I did or said now would be like trying to ascend an escalator that was descending faster than you could climb it.
‘Really, I’m not angry, I’m concerned.’ His voice was uncompromising and mechanical and, in that moment, I suddenly realised that I had to get away from him. I had to get away before he tried to have me sectioned. I shot up from the sofa bed, but he’d anticipated me and before I could reach the door he’d slipped through and closed it behind him.
I shouted, pushing at the door with my shoulder, a dark plume rising up in my throat, but it was hopeless. Tom’s combined weight and strength were too much for me. I heard the key turn in the lock.
‘You’ll thank me for this, Caitlin.’ His voice grew fainter as he retreated into the kitchen. Moments later, I heard him mumbling into the phone. ‘Yes, yes. No. I did. Immediately, yes.’
I banged on the door and shouted as loudly as I knew how for Freya.
But Freya didn’t come.
PART TWO
Now
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I know there is a little time. Not much, but some. The psychiatric crisis team will have to wait for a police escort. On a normal day this takes a while. But tonight, at this moment, not far from this house, this study, this locked door, city kids are setting buildings on fire and overturning patrol cars and throwing petrol bombs while, somewhere out there, LeShaun Toley’s family are keeping vigil, wanting answers. The police have a job on their hands trying to keep some semblance of order. One woman who may or may not be having a breakdown is hardly going to be a priority.
Eventually, though, they will come. An escort will be drummed up from somewhere and the crisis team will arrive, they will look at my history and they will listen to Tom and the likelihood is they will ask me for a voluntary section. If I refuse, they will section me themselves. When you have been through what I have been through, been given the diagnosis I’ve been given, you are never safe. In small, subtle, but profound ways your life is no longer your own. A single episode of psychosis, even one with such an obvious, simple cause as an overspill of pregnancy hormones, is enough to mark you. You will never again escape the well-meaning surveillance of family and friends. Is Caitlin OK? Don’t you think she was a bit ‘up and down’? Maybe she needs to go back on the drugs? If someone says you are ill and you say you are not, they will always believe the other person. They will want to ma
ke you ‘well’ again even when you are not ill. They will always, always be on guard for the next time.
If I’m locked up or drugged, who will protect my daughter?
An idea evolves into a plan. To the side of Tom’s study is a small exterior passageway leading into the garden. Estate agents usually call it a side return. A window looks out over it. Years ago, when we first moved in, it was a requirement of our insurance policy that we fit locks to the ground-floor windows. They can only be opened a few inches at the top of the sash but they are held fast by locking bolts which unscrew from the inside. I am wearing pyjamas and a robe with slippers on my feet. I have no phone, no money, and no ID, but if I can unscrew the bolts without Tom hearing, I can open the window and escape into the garden.
What if escaping only confirms my ‘insanity’ and provokes a police search? What am I escaping to? How long will I be able to remain free? If only there was enough time to think all of this through. But there isn’t. There is only time enough to get out.
In the desk drawer is a couple of hundred quid in rolled-up twenties. This will help. Very softly, so as not to alert Tom, I pull back the curtains, unscrew the locking bolt on either side of the frame, pull the sash up then lower myself out of the open window and onto the side return. There is no access to the front from here, but I can sneak through the broken fencing at the back of the garden into the Fricks’ house and from there I will find a way out through the temporary access created by the builders. And so here I am, a woman running away from the house on which she alone pays the mortgage in order to protect her daughter from another of the occupants. Of course they’ll think I’m mad.
The moon lends a little of its borrowed light. Sticking close to the fence, I work my way along the side of the garden towards the ideas tree. From here I can see Tom, pacing up and down the length of the table, talking into the phone. If he looks up and out at this part of the garden right now, it will appear black and still. I will be invisible to him. I am working the loosened fencing now, feeling for the unevenness between the boards with my hands. Swinging the panel aside, I creep through. With a little chirrup, Pudge comes running. I freeze and hold my breath, praying the movement won’t set off the security lights, but the garden continues to be lit only by the pink dust of the London skyline, the now-distant lights of police helicopters and the neon moon. All that remains is to slip under the tarpaulin, around the scaffolding and through the Fricks’ tiny front garden and I’m out onto Dunster Road.
