The Lie of the Land

by Amanda Craig

  She has already called her husband, and he is coming home as soon as possible.

  ‘I knew he shouldn’t have got rid of his helicopter,’ she mutters to herself.

  ‘I’m sure nobody will blame you for employing her,’ Sally says soothingly.

  ‘Won’t they? It’ll be all over Twitter, and Gore hates that kind of thing.’

  Sally wondered how it was possible, for a man who had lived so much of his life in the public eye, for this to be the case; though really, Tore is not nearly as much of a public figure as you might think.

  *

  Di doesn’t want to be left alone, so Sally, at her request, stays on. She’s bone-tired, but until the business of the baby has been sorted there’s not much she can do officially, and Peter can get his own tea. She’s sent him a text; right now, she’s more concerned about feeding Baggage.

  ‘I’ve tried calling Lottie, but there’s no answer from her phone. Maybe she can take Tiger and Dexter for the night,’ Di says fretfully. ‘God, why does this kind of thing keep happening to us here?’

  There is the sound of tyres on gravel, and two powerful Mitsubishis with dark windows sweep up outside. Tore, Sally thinks, and it is. He’s brought his lawyer, and a PA, and as soon as he arrives the household seems to snap into focus. The lawyer has prepared a statement for them both to approve. Apparently there is a crowd of reporters and photographers waiting for them at the end of the drive, and the police have already intercepted one who climbed over the wall to try and sneak some pictures with a long lens.

  ‘There’s some new story about Janet, sweetie,’ Tore says. ‘I heard it on the police radio when we were coming.’

  Di looks blank.

  Tore sighs. ‘Janet’s gone nuts. She’s tried to kill your friend Lottie’s son, and her husband. With a knife.’

  Di went sheet-white.

  ‘Why did you let this woman into our lives? Why did you?’

  ‘Because I was asked. I couldn’t say no.’

  Sally says, ‘Were you being blackmailed?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tore answers. ‘In a way, you could say that I was.’

  38

  The Ash Tree

  Afterwards, she thinks of stories in which people (usually young women) are woken by a kiss. One moment her son was dying, the next he is able to breathe.

  The inhaler has worked its magic. There is no other word for it, even though it takes several puffs before Xan can draw enough of the drug into his lungs. Then, it’s like dying in reverse: on the other side of the door, he uncurls from his foetal position. A few minutes later, he shifts away from the door. A gap opens. McSquirter is first out of the room, wearing an expression of outrage and a tail like a bottle-brush. Then Lottie squeezes through, and with a big effort, hauls Xan to one side so that the door can be opened wide. She can’t drag him out altogether, however, and Quentin doesn’t dare leave Janet: that has to wait until the emergency services arrive, with a great clatter of sirens and blue lights.

  They each tell their story, and the blood still seeping through Quentin’s makeshift dressings would be convincing enough were not Janet so clearly disturbed. After a brief struggle, the police caution her, restrain her and drive her away, together with the knife, the lamp, Quentin’s T-shirt and numerous photographs.

  Quentin refuses to come to the hospital. His wounds, though they look nasty, are less bad than feared.

  ‘You never know with knives,’ says one paramedic, after checking carefully, stitching and dressing the most visible cuts.

  ‘I’ll be fine. What matters is our son.’

  The ambulance carries a nebuliser, and oxygen; once Xan gets a shot of antihistamines his breathing calms.

  ‘You’re going to be right as rain, my lovely,’ says one of the paramedics. The warm burr of their voices is as comforting as any blanket. ‘We’ll take you in to Exeter Hospital just to keep an eye on you tonight.’

  ‘Thanks. But you need to take Dawn, too.’

  The paramedics look at the yellow skin, the puffy face, the vacant gaze, and see what all but Xan had missed.

  ‘Yes, I think you might need looking at too.’

  ‘I can’t – I can’t leave—’

  ‘Who can’t you leave? Your mum? I think the police want to have a few words with her first,’ says a paramedic.

  ‘I can’t leave my baby,’ Dawn says.

  ‘What baby?’ Xan and Lottie ask. But at this point, the police radio crackles. There’s an exchange, and then one of the policewomen comes over and says,

  ‘Are you Dawn Pigeon? We need you to answer some questions.’

  ‘Not until she’s been to hospital,’ said the paramedic. ‘She’s ill, can’t you see? Don’t worry, love, your baby will be looked after.’

  ‘How are you, sir?’

  ‘Bloody sore,’ Quentin says. Lottie looks at him, and sees with alarm that his eye, overlooked in the emergency, has swollen to a slit, and is an alarming shade of black and purple.

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘It hurts much more than any of the stabbings.’

  ‘Yes, it would. Anything that’s close to your brain does.’

  ‘Am I going to lose my sight?’ he asks, trying not to whimper. ‘I keep seeing black shapes floating across my vision.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ said the paramedic, after shining a torch into it and doing what seemed like very rudimentary tests. ‘It’s a black eye, not a detached retina. It’ll pass. You can always come to A&E if you want.’

  ‘No,’ Quentin says. ‘Our daughters are in the car. I can’t leave them, and I can’t leave my wife alone in this house.’

  Lottie looks at him with surprise, and gratitude.

  ‘Will the police be coming back?’

  ‘Yes, I should think so. They’ll need to take a statement tomorrow.’

  ‘Good. There’s something else I want them to see.’

  Quentin doesn’t mention the head. It has stayed in the compost bin long enough; another few days won’t matter. He wonders whether he should mention having discovered it months ago, but thinks it’s probably best not. He can always disturb the ground again, and make it seem very recent, just to avoid tedious remonstrations and possible legal complications.

  ‘Thanks,’ Lottie says, quietly.

  So Xan and Dawn leave together, and although Lottie offers to come with him she is now more anxious about Quentin, and of course their daughters. Somehow, Stella and Rosie have managed to stay asleep in the car, ignorant of all the noise and disturbance around them – and for this, Lottie will forever be grateful.

  For a long time after the police and ambulance left, they stand there, and the immense silence of the landscape closes over them like water flowing into a breach. In silence, they hold each other.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes. Are you? Your poor eye …’

  ‘I think we need a drink,’ says Quentin.

  ‘I think we should get the girls out of the car and into bed. They mustn’t see all this – the blood.’

  ‘No.’

  Quentin lifts Stella, groaning slightly, and Lottie takes Rosie, silently blessing the profound sleep of childhood. They are carried up into their beds and tucked under their duvets without stirring.

  ‘Look at them, two Sleeping Beauties,’ says Quentin.

  Lottie shudders. ‘Don’t. I’ll never be able to read that story without thinking of Dawn.’

  They have no appetite, but force themselves to eat and drink. He makes scrambled eggs and toast, and they drink a little wine. It’s an effort even to raise their glasses.

  ‘I’d like to wash the stairwell,’ Lottie says after a while. The walls are spattered with brownish blood and grey streaks of fingerprint powder.

  ‘Later. They won’t notice, or if they do they’ll think it’s paint.’

  ‘We can paint it. Yes.’

  There is no question that they will share a bed this time, though they both fall instantly asleep. Quentin is woken afte
r a few hours by the pain of his eye, which means he can’t lie on one side; but he can lie on the same side as Lottie. My wife, he thinks. Their bodies curve into each other, and he sleeps again, at peace. When he wakes the next morning, she’s up and dressed.

  ‘I need to fetch Xan,’ she says. ‘You’ll look after the girls, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What’s wrong with your eye, Daddy?’

  ‘I walked into a door,’ he says, smiling at the bitter old joke.

  ‘Was the door Mummy?’

  ‘No. And we’ve given Janet the sack. She turned out to be – not a good person.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ Stella remarks.

  It all seems so crazy, like a dream, but perhaps violence always does. For a few minutes, his life had become a bad film. Now it’s more or less back to normal.

  They are pestered by newspapers, but it’s different for a journalist. Quentin is able to write his own account of it all and more importantly, an interview with Tore. For this, he negotiates such a high fee that he begins to think that it might really be worth asking whether the rock star would consider him writing an authorised biography.

  There are, of course, things he leaves out of his account to the police.

  ‘I saw Fa, you know,’ he tells his mother when she comes to see him. ‘After he died. I saw him on the beach, and he told me to see Xan. I know it sounds mad.’

  Naomi shrugs.

  ‘He did say he’d come back and haunt you. Though so far, he’s left me in peace.’

  ‘I’ll be as bonkers as you are if I stay here,’ Quentin says. ‘Believe my car is protected by witchcraft, the lot.’

  ‘Would that be such a bad thing?’

  ‘Yes. I have a hard enough time as it is.’

  ‘My dear, this isn’t about you,’ Naomi says.

  ‘Without selfishness, I’ll have a life of misery and boredom.’

  ‘Really? Have you ever tried it?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Quent, you have to listen to me.’ She sounds as gentle as if she were waking him up on a school day, and as stern. ‘Lottie is the best wife you could possibly have.’

  ‘Yes, I know – I know. I don’t need telling.’

  ‘You do need telling. You still think this is about you – about what makes you happy. It isn’t.’

  ‘But you put up with Fa,’ he says.

  ‘You can’t go on blaming your parents for your faults, you know. You’re at the very last moment in which you can change.’

  ‘Even if I can change, she’ll never believe it.’

  ‘She might if you ask.’

  Sally has become something of a local heroine. Dawn’s concealed pregnancy has also been in the news, mostly because of her proximity to Gore Tore, but her graver issues have not been made public. It is thought unlikely she will be prosecuted.

  ‘She must have had extraordinary determination to survive as she did, let alone look after her child and make that call to the Emergency Services,’ Josh Viner said, privately. ‘Hypothyroidism is very nasty if it isn’t treated. That tiny gland in the neck regulates everything. How fast your heart beats and how well your brain works, how many calories you burn, even whether you feel happy or depressed. Medically speaking, she was hardly functioning. Her mother was giving her about a half of what she needed, but as she became larger she’d have needed a higher dose.’

  ‘It seems such an extreme thing to do,’ Anne said. ‘To deprive your child of medication she needed from birth.’

  ‘It is. But just think how many parents medicate their children for ADHD – well, you can see the temptation.’

  ‘But what mother would do that?’

  ‘Even without her extreme jealousy of her daughter, and her relationship with Dawn’s abuser, I suspect that for Janet, Dawn was always a kind of doll: someone to use and manipulate. Only the doll became a young woman, talented enough to draw attention to herself. She was loved by her father, Oliver Randall. He would do anything to be with his daughter, but was powerless because Janet wouldn’t register him as Dawn’s father. Without his name on the birth certificate, he had no recourse. He thought, like many men, that he could somehow walk away from the relationship but still see his child. So Janet had her first revenge.

  ‘Dawn had the correct dose pretty much from birth, as long as she was in London. That’s why she seemed normal, because the brain does most of its growing in the first two years of life. But Janet never registered herself or Dawn with any GP here. She bought thyroxine over the Internet – it’s not expensive – and she must always have kept it in mind as a way of controlling her child.’

  Anne shivered. ‘What a monster! I dread to think what Janet would have done to her, or the baby, in the end.’

  ‘I don’t think she would have survived the winter,’ Sally said. ‘Dawn did what she could. She knew enough to breastfeed her daughter, but being more and more ill herself … and then there was Rod. I’ve no doubt he raped her. God knows what he’d have done to his child.’

  Dawn’s baby has gone into care, which is either the worst thing that could happen, or the best. Sally can only hope that, if adopted, she goes to parents who want her as much as she herself had done. In starving her daughter of thyroxine, it’s possible that Janet also starved her granddaughter of the chance to develop normally.

  One particular satisfaction is that Rod Ball will be prosecuted for rape, and sex with an under-age girl. Dawn has been quite clear that it had begun when she was fifteen, and the more her intelligence returns the more horrifying her ordeal is understood to be.

  ‘I told my dad about him,’ Dawn said to the police. ‘Mum didn’t know he’d followed us to Devon. It was a big shock for her to find out she hadn’t left him behind. He turned up at the lodge and accused Mum of not looking after me, and said he was going to take me away. It was what we’d both wanted. To be together. But Mum killed him.’

  ‘You knew that?’

  ‘Yes. She told me. Really pleased with herself. She said she’d knocked him out, and cut off his head. I went there later, and saw – I saw him. I couldn’t bury his poor body, so I just buried his head. And I let Bluebell out.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’

  ‘I was afraid she’d do the same to me.’

  With each day that passes, Dawn looks brighter and better. The change isn’t instant – Sally’s brother-in-law says it’s like going ‘from dial-up to broadband’ – but it’s distinct. Her face loses its puffiness, and her speech is no longer halting. She’s staying with Sally’s sister Tess, though Gore Tore has offered her a home in Shipcott Manor. She has told Tess that she feels safer with her.

  ‘I didn’t feel very different, when I was hypo,’ she’s told Xan. ‘Just so tired, and cold, and I thought that was because I was pregnant.’

  ‘Will you go back to school?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I might. But what I’d really like is to study music in London. If I’m well enough.’

  ‘Do you want to give the baby up?’

  ‘I don’t have to decide yet, and even if I do I might not get to keep her. I tried so hard to keep her alive, but I can’t feel—’

  It was, and is, a hideous mess which will take weeks and months, maybe years, to sort out. Janet is in custody, though whether she will go to trial is another matter. Her mind has gone.

  ‘I’ve heard she thinks she’s going to be married to Rod,’ Tess tells Sally.

  ‘Why do women get so obsessed by marriage, still?’

  ‘I don’t know. Security? Prestige? But neither of those apply in his case, you’d think. He’s a small-time crook, as well as a rapist and child-abuser. Maybe it’s the lure of feeling chosen, by someone. Even if it’s the wrong person.’

  ‘You’d think, wouldn’t you, women might have more sense,’ Sally says. ‘Instead of being fools for love.’

  ‘I was the biggest fool of all, marrying a man who hit me.’

  ‘But how were y
ou to know? Anne lucked out with her husband, but how does anyone who gets married know what the other person is really like? How can they, when so few of us even know ourselves?’

  However, there are more private matters on Sally’s mind.

  She spent many hours considering whether to tell Peter that she knows about the secret he has kept from her, and how tempted she had been to steal another woman’s baby. Should she confront him? He had been such a coward, not telling her.

  She knows why he didn’t. He was afraid of losing her, even though she isn’t going anywhere. How can she? She’s too old, and too settled where she is. Yet her disappointment is corrosive. As a couple, they should have faced infertility together and decided together; this way, he had held all the knowledge, keeping her in ignorance and sorrow. Her marriage is not, in short, what she had thought.

  But what would be the good of exposing this? She knows him too well to expect any good would emerge. He’d only become angry and defensive, and their relationship, happy in so many other respects, would be ruined. She doesn’t want to leave her life and home, and she doesn’t want him humiliated and despairing. Even in her disillusion, she loves him, and knows he loves her: it’s just that his love lacks the crucial ingredient of imaginative sympathy. If Sally had to put her finger on the single worst characteristic of everyone who has ever inflicted harm on others, it’s the inability to comprehend that other people feel pain, humiliation and loss just as intensely as you do yourself.

  In the circumstances, her only option is to try for a baby without his knowledge. He might be shocked, but she knows that once he’s presented with a fait accompli, he’ll accept it. His lack of imagination is what will make it easier. Looking online for a human sperm donor is not as simple as it is for a sheep. It isn’t just the expense: when Sally thinks about what kind of man would willingly donate, she hesitates. Obviously, some might do it out of pure altruism, but undoubtedly many must go into it for the money, which in itself suggested something not quite right. There’s also the issue of what you might get from a stranger. Although some sites promised genetic screening for certain diseases, they did not screen for things like mental health or the kind of family the donor came from, did they? She has seen too many children not to suspect that nature has as much influence on personality as nurture, and whoever she might wish to father her child – assuming she’s still fertile – should, ideally, be someone she might have loved.