by Paula Daly
‘What happened?’
The older one answers. ‘The door was forced. They didn’t just break the lock but damaged all the casing as well . . . it all needs refitting.’
‘Do we know by whom?’ I ask.
They shrug, exchanging wry smiles. ‘Dunno. But the chap upstairs is a bit agitated.’
I climb the first flight of stairs, apprehensive as I hear shouting from above. I hear my neighbour claim he doesn’t have the money. That he really doesn’t have the money. The layout of the building is such that on reaching the top of the stairs I must pass by his door – along the landing – before climbing the next flight of stairs up to my bedsit in the attic.
There are splinters of wood scattered on the carpet outside his room. I look to my left and see that the door to his flat has been forced open, like the front door. It hangs at a thirty-degree angle where the top hinge is missing. Seems as if whoever wants that money is serious. I hurry upstairs. Bolt the door shut once I’m inside.
I stand with my back to the sink unit and listen.
Within seconds there is the sound of movement on the stairs, the boards creaking under the weight of someone.
There’s a knock.
I don’t answer.
‘I know you’re in there,’ he says. His voice is quiet. Purposely soft, so no one will hear. ‘I just want to speak to you,’ he says.
Silently, I turn around and slide open the cutlery drawer behind me. I deposit a small paring knife inside my pocket – it’s the one I use to slice apples and carrots, to peel potatoes – then I walk across the room and inch open the door, keeping one steel-toecapped boot against it.
He doesn’t bother with hello, getting straight to his point.
‘You leave early each day, right?’
I nod.
‘What time?’ he asks.
‘Seven fifteen.’
‘You left at seven fifteen this morning?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you see anyone near my room?’
‘No.’
He pauses. Swallows. He has blood in his hair.
‘Okay,’ he says, and turns to make his way back down.
‘Can I ask a question?’
‘Depends what it is,’ he replies.
‘I can see there’s been trouble here today . . . the damage to the property, your head . . . is it safe to stay here?’
‘I don’t think anyone will bother you.’
‘But will they be back?’ I ask.
He doesn’t answer.
That night I sleep in snatches, waking every twenty minutes to listen for sounds on the stairway. Strong winds batter the building in the early hours and a thread of cold air is pulled past my face, drawn as it is to the large gap beneath the door.
When I rise, I open the curtains to see stray leaves circling in the air. A lone wood pigeon tries to swoop from the roof opposite and is instead lifted high on the current.
Last night I packed my rucksack with a few of my belongings. Hardly anything really, as I own hardly anything, but I’ve purposely left my toothbrush, toothpaste, a photograph of my father next to the bed, so as to make it look as though I plan to return. The flat will be searched. Maybe not today, but some time.
I send a text to Alan informing him of a fantasy illness. If it was anyone else I wouldn’t bother, but Alan could very well explode if left to tap, wipe his nose, twist his earring for too long. I tell him I’ll contact him when I’m returning to work.
Creeping past my neighbour’s room, I hear no signs of life, so make my way to the cellar. My phone is set to silent. Once there, I tip the supersized box of Daz upside-down into the plastic washing-up bowl in the Belfast sink, shaking the items I stowed inside free from specks of washing powder. Then I pour the Daz back into its box.
With my heart jackhammering inside my chest, I make my way up the cellar steps and turn off the light. The hallway is in semi-darkness. The air is stale, heavy with a scorched smell from the cast-iron radiators. And there’s something else.
Alcohol.
‘A bit early to be doing laundry, isn’t it?’ he asks. My neighbour is three feet away, but such is the pungency of his breath that it clouds around me like a hideous fog.
‘I wasn’t doing laundry,’ I answer, stalling.
‘No?’
I reach along the wall and flick on the light. Both of us squint in response, and when I sense his eyes have adjusted, I lift my leg, gesture to my trousers. ‘I needed to get these from the dryer,’ I say to him.
He flashes a smile. ‘So, what, you went past my room in just your underwear? Shame I missed that.’
I pretend to go bashful. ‘You’re not normally awake at this hour, so I thought I was pretty safe.’
‘I’m awake today.’
‘So I see. I’ll have to be more careful in future.’
‘Don’t be too careful,’ he whispers and moves towards me.
For one appalling moment I think he may kiss me and I make a fast decision to let him. But he doesn’t. He strokes my jaw with his index finger. His skin is coarse and jagged there and I shiver beneath his touch.
He laughs.
‘I’m back off to bed,’ he says. ‘See you tonight.’
‘Looking forward to it,’ I reply, and have to stop myself from sprinting from the house under his gaze.
Conscious that he may be watching from his first-floor window, I head off in my usual direction. Once out of sight, though, I linger. I lean against the wall of a guest house – closed until Valentine’s Day weekend, the sign says – and fiddle with my phone, looking mildly vexed as though my lift is running late. The wind pushes me against the stonework of the building, making my eyes water and the inside of my ears ache.
Ten minutes later, I’ve circled back and I’m removing his stolen car keys from my rucksack and climbing into his car. The Kia.
Ten minutes after that, I’m discreetly parallel parked between a car and a minibus, just a hundred yards from Elizabeth’s school entrance.
Now all I have to do is to wait.
‘Elizabeth? Are you Elizabeth Farley?’
‘Yes,’ she replies uneasily, as if she might be in trouble.
‘Can I talk to you?’
‘About what?’
Throngs of children are passing the car. Elizabeth stands away from the driver’s window, cautious, and the kids jostle and tut as she blocks their way.
‘How about you get in the car?’ I suggest.
She thinks for a moment and it’s only now that I see the features she acquired from both myself and her father begin to emerge. Before, her frown of concentration and everything that made Elizabeth distinctive – the bright, inquisitive eyes, a sense that you were looking into the face of an old soul – were concealed beneath the mask of an obese child. And the prejudices are right here. You cannot see past a fat person, not even when it’s your own daughter. I’m filled with a mixture of overwhelming love and fear, the urge to bundle her into the car, kidnap her and get her on a strict regime of healthy food and exercise.
Is that wrong?
Probably. But there it is.
‘Who are you?’ she asks.
I don’t answer immediately. I want to blurt out Your mother! But I keep a lid on it for now, saying, ‘I’m Catherine Rhodes.’
She shows nothing. No emotion to indicate how she feels upon hearing my name, and I’m left wide open. Nothing to hide behind. Her response is telling me all that I feared. She has no idea who Catherine Rhodes is.
‘Do you know who I am, Elizabeth?’ I ask tentatively. ‘Have you heard my name before?’
She nods, but her face is still devoid of emotion.
‘Elizabeth?’ I prompt.
And she starts to cry.
‘You came,’ she says eventually.
‘Yes,’ I reply, and hold out my hand to her. ‘As soon as I possibly could.’
We head towards the motorway. I have no destination in mind, but Elizabeth asked me to drive
, so that’s what I’m doing. I hadn’t actually expected her to get into the car – I was prepared for her to hear my name and keep on walking. But she didn’t, she asked me to take her away from school. I have the impression that she’s been hoping for someone to pull up outside and take her away for as long as she’s attended the place.
‘What if I’m not who I say I am?’ I ask, as we head towards the dual carriageway.
‘Who else would want to talk to me?’ she counters. ‘And besides,’ she says, smiling for the first time, ‘you knew my name.’
‘That still doesn’t mean I am who I say I am.’ I shoot her a look, as though to say she should be more careful.
‘I’m glad she didn’t change it, by the way,’ I add. ‘Your name, I mean. I’m glad your mum decided to keep it as it is.’
‘She wanted to change it,’ she replies. ‘She wanted to rename me Georgia, but my dad wouldn’t allow her. He said it was disrespectful to you.’
‘Which name do you prefer?’
‘I’m not mad for either,’ she says.
We reach the M6 and I cast a glance at Elizabeth. ‘Do I keep on driving?’ I ask.
She gives a small gesture to indicate yes, she wants to continue, so I join the slip road and head north. As soon as we’re on the exposed carriageway the car is buffeted by the wind and I have to hold the wheel firmly to prevent being dragged across the lanes.
‘How are your mum and dad?’ I ask, once I’m comfortable with my position behind an Eddie Stobart doing sixty-five.
‘Dad left when I was eight and—’
‘What?’
‘He left.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ I say, shocked. ‘Do you see him regularly?’
She shakes her head. ‘Mum never wanted me to. He went off with a friend of hers from work, someone she knew, and she said she didn’t want me going around there.’
‘Where does he live?’
‘No idea.’
‘He doesn’t write? He doesn’t call you?’
‘No.’
We drive for a few minutes. I can’t help but feel enraged by this. The only reason I agreed to a closed adoption in the first place was so that Elizabeth would have a family. Denying her access to her adoptive father was never part of the deal.
‘You’re angry, aren’t you?’ Elizabeth notes quietly.
‘I’m not.’
‘You are.’
I turn to her. ‘Tell me, did you get my letters? I wrote to you all the time . . . they would only pass on one letter a year, but did you get it?’
‘No.’
‘Not one?’
‘No.’
‘What did you think?’ I ask. ‘Did you think that I’d abandoned you as well?’
‘You did abandon me.’
Ahead there’s a sign for Tebay Services. ‘I could do with a coffee,’ I murmur, flicking on my indicator as I approach the motorway exit.
I find a parking space right at the front of the building. This service station is a quaint, privately owned affair – the only one of its sort in the UK, the sign claims. There’s no McDonald’s, no Costa. It has fabulous views and a duck pond. I’m hoping for a good coffee and something stodgy – a pastry, perhaps – to soak up the excess acid that’s swilling around my stomach.
‘You want anything?’ I ask Elizabeth as I grab my rucksack.
‘No.’
‘Are you coming in?’
‘I’ll wait here.’
I take a trip to the ladies’ and wash my face in the sink. In the mirror I examine my reflection.
What the hell are you doing, Catherine? You realize you’ve effectively kidnapped her?
I told myself this morning that if I could just talk to her, talk to her before I left Windermere, it would be enough. All I wanted, all I have ever wanted, is for her to be safe and happy. And rather than hang around Windermere until she reaches eighteen, I had been given an unexpected opportunity to leave.
I could go, make a good, decent life for myself elsewhere, and contact her in the proper way later, through Social Services, as the law dictates.
I didn’t actually expect her to want to come with me.
Or did I?
Hadn’t I kind of prepared for this subconsciously? Hadn’t I hoped things would go off at a crazy tangent and she would want to come?
I make my way to the café, grab a tray and push it along the shelf, perusing the homemade soups, stews, pies and cakes. There is no one else queuing, so as I reach the barista I’m under pressure to make my choice fast. ‘A large coffee and a Danish with almonds on the top, please.’
‘Which coffee would you like?’ she asks, pointing to the list behind her.
Now ten years ago this didn’t happen around here. You asked for a large coffee, that’s what you got. And since I haven’t had the money to go frivolously drinking my way through Starbucks’ offerings, I have no idea what I want.
‘Just give me your favourite,’ I tell her and she gives a small shudder of delight. ‘And a hot chocolate as well, please.’
I pull out a fifty-pound note, apologizing, saying, ‘Sorry, I’ve got nothing smaller,’ and turn, pocketing the change. Then I spot Elizabeth over by the window, gazing out at the ducks.
She is too big for the chair, her bulk spilling over the sides. She reads my expression and shifts a little, as though trying to make herself smaller.
I place the tray down between us and without looking at me she says, ‘Tell me about my father. My real father. Because I heard you kind of murdered him.’
I sit, remove the lid from my coffee and blow across the surface of it. Some particles – a mixture of ground cloves and cinnamon, I suspect – land on the table-top between us. Elizabeth brushes them away. ‘It was manslaughter.’
‘How can blowing someone apart with a shotgun be manslaughter?’ she asks. ‘It’s a bit difficult to do that accidentally, isn’t it?’
‘It’s not something I’m proud of.’
She nods as though understanding, but her eyes have taken on a cool, remote quality. ‘Mind if I have some of that?’ she asks, gesturing to the Danish.
I hesitate and notice she is watching me carefully. Gauging my reaction to her request for food. ‘I’ll get you something to eat of your own if you like.’
And she smiles. ‘That’s okay. I can tell you don’t really want me to have one.’
‘Course I do. Why wouldn’t I?’
‘It pisses you off that I’m fat.’
‘Yeah, well, it pisses you off that I shot your dad. We’re both pretty pissed off. There you go, now we’re even.’
‘Nice,’ she says with half a smile.
‘Nice what?’
‘Nice way of dealing with your long-lost kid.’
‘Thanks,’ I say, ‘I’ve been practising.’
She breaks the Danish into two and licks the buttery grease from her fingertips. Then she removes the lid from the hot chocolate and dips the pastry in twice before popping it into her mouth.
‘So why did you do it then?’ she asks as she chews.
‘Kill him?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘He was fast with his fists when he’d had a drink.’
She stops eating. ‘That’s it?’
‘Well, it’s a bit more complicated, but that’s about the size of it.’
She gives me a look as if to say, Go on.
‘Julian had built up a good business,’ I begin. ‘He employed around a hundred local people, and was young, dynamic, he’d been voted in as chairman of the council. Everything was going great. But around twelve years ago his business began to fail and he couldn’t handle the shame. He’d always been a drinker, not a very nice drunk, but now he started taking his failure out on me. Slapping me when I spoke my mind, slapping me harder when I asked him not to drink too much.
‘I was embarrassed that I’d made a mistake by marrying him, because I had been warned,’ I say. ‘People had told me he was controlling and aggressive when h
e had had a drink. So I did what a lot of women do under the circumstances – I hid it. I pretended to everyone it wasn’t happening, because I didn’t want to admit that I’d made a mistake.
‘He always kept shotguns in the house,’ I continue, ‘and one day he drove home completely out of it, after a shoot, ploughing his Land Rover straight into your Wendy house in the front garden. Luckily you weren’t inside, but you were close by, and when you started screaming he struck you. He hit you so hard he knocked you straight off your feet.
‘I yelled at him to stop, but he got his gun. I was holding you in my arms by then and he aimed it at the two of us. I begged him to stop. I actually got down on my knees and begged him not to shoot. But he did. He pulled the trigger. He pulled the trigger and when the gun didn’t fire I realized in that second that it was either him or me. If he didn’t kill us now, he was going to at some point.’
I take a sip of coffee and look straight at Elizabeth. ‘The moment he put down the gun to get his spare shells from the car, I reloaded it with two from his jacket pocket in the hallway. And then I shot him.’
Elizabeth swallows. She waits before responding and I can’t read how she’s feeling.
‘I was told,’ she says after a time, frowning, ‘. . . well, actually I wasn’t told, I searched the news reports. And they all said you waved the gun at him, never meaning to actually shoot him.’
‘That was my defence, yes.’
‘But that’s not what happened?’ she asks carefully.
‘No. Like I said, it was either him or me. My barrister used the self-defence angle, but the problem was I watched him die. I didn’t call an ambulance until he’d bled to death because I wanted to be certain he was gone. That’s why I got twelve years.’
She looks down at the table.
‘My mum told me you were nuts,’ she says quietly. ‘She said that you shot him in a rage and took off, leaving me behind because you’d lost your mind and couldn’t cope with the responsibilities of being a mother.’
I shrug. Try not to let the hurt show in my face.
‘Well, now you know the truth,’ I tell her, ‘it’s up to you what you do with it. Up to you what you believe. Just know that what I did, I did because I had no choice.
