The Wrong Mother

by Sophie Hannah

  Today, in answer to my question about the autumn half-term, she said, ‘I’ve been meaning to ring you, but I’ve not had a minute. ’ She was trying to sound casual, but her squirming gave the game away.

  ‘There isn’t a problem, is there?’ I asked.

  ‘Well… there’s a bit of a snag, yeah. The thing is, a neighbour of mine’s having to go into hospital that week, and… well, I feel awful about cancelling on you, but I’ve kind of said I’ll have her twins for the week.’

  Twins. Whose mother would be paying Pam double what I’d be paying for Zoe. Was she seriously ill? I wanted to ask. A single parent? I needed to know that Pam was letting me down for a good reason.

  ‘I thought we had a firm arrangement,’ I said. ‘You told me you’d put it in the diary.’

  ‘I know. I’m really sorry, but, like I say, this lady’s going into hospital. I can try and find you someone else, perhaps. Tell you what, why don’t I ask my mum? I bet she’d do it.’

  I um-ed and ah-ed. A large part of me was tempted to say, ‘Yes, please!’, the part that yearned to overlook all inconvenient details for the sake of being able to think of the matter as resolved. Sometimes-no, often-I feel as if my brain and life will shatter into tiny pieces if I am given one more thing to sort out. As it is, I start each day with a list of between thirty and forty things I need to do. As I blast my way through the hours between six in the morning and ten at night, the list goes round and round in my head, each item beginning with a verb that exhausts me: ring, invoice, fax, order, book, arrange, buy, make, prepare, send…

  It would have been a great relief to be able to say, ‘Thanks, Pam, your mum’ll do nicely.’ But I’ve met Pam’s mother. She’s short and very fat and a smoker, and moves slowly and with difficulty. In the end I said no thanks, I’d find someone else myself. I couldn’t resist adding, nosily, that I hoped Pam’s neighbour would make a speedy recovery.

  ‘Oh, she’s not ill,’ said Pam, as if I ought to have known. ‘She’s going in for a boob job. She’ll be in and out in a couple of days, but the thing is, her husband’s away that week and so’s her sister, so she’s got no help, and you can’t lift anything heavy after a boob job, so she won’t be able to lift the twins. They’re only six months old.’

  ‘A boob job? Are you serious?’

  Pam nodded.

  ‘When did she ask you?’ I must be missing something, I thought.

  ‘A couple of weeks ago. I’d say I’d have Zoe as well, only I’m not allowed more than three at a time, and I’ve already got another child booked in for that week.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, keeping my voice level. ‘I rang you to organise this months ago. You said you’d put it in the diary. When your neighbour asked you, why didn’t you just say no, that you’re already booked up?’

  Pam’s mouth twitched. She doesn’t like to be challenged. ‘Look, I thought I’d be okay with four, just for the week, but my mum said-and she’s right-that it’s not worth breaking the rules. Childminders aren’t allowed more than three at a time. I don’t want to get into any trouble.’

  ‘I know, but… sorry if this sounds petty, but why are you apologising to me instead of to your neighbour, or the parent of this other child?’

  ‘I thought you’d take it better than either of the other mums. You’re more approachable.’

  Great, I thought: punished for good behaviour. ‘Would it make any difference if I said I’d pay double? If I paid whatever the twins’ mum was going to pay you, just to look after Zoe? I will, if that’ll make a difference.’ I shouldn’t bloody well have to, this is outrageous, a voice in my head was shouting. I smiled my most encouraging smile. ‘Pam, I’m desperate. I need someone to look after Zoe that week, and she knows you and really likes you. I don’t think she’d be happy going to someone she doesn’t know so well…’

  All the warmth was draining from Pam’s face as I spoke. Watching her eyes, I felt as if I was transforming into something disgusting in front of her, as if my skin was turning to green slime. ‘I’m not trying to rip you off,’ she said. ‘I don’t want more money out of you. What do you think this is, some kind of scam?’

  ‘No, of course not. I just… look, I’m sorry, Pam, I don’t want to whinge, but I’m a bit upset about this. I can’t believe you can’t see it from my point of view. I’ve got a really important conference that I have to go to. I’ve spent months setting it up. I can’t not go, and Nick needs to work too-he’s used up all his holiday this year. And you’re letting me down for the sake of some woman who wants bigger boobs? Can’t she get her silicon implants another time?’ At no point did I raise my voice.

  ‘She doesn’t want bigger boobs! She’s having a breast reduction, actually, not that you’d care! Because she’s got chronic backache and it’s ruining her life and her children’s lives, because she can’t get out of her bed some days, she’s in that much agony!’

  I started to backtrack and make apologetic noises-of course, if I’d misunderstood, if it was a genuine medical problem-but Pam wasn’t listening. She called me a snobby bitch and said she’d always known I was trouble. And then she started screaming at me to get the fuck out of her face, to leave her alone, that she had never liked me, that she wanted nothing to do with me, never wanted to see me again as long as she lived. Or my family.

  I cannot imagine ever yelling at anyone the way Pam yelled at me, not unless they’d harmed my children or set fire to my house. I say this to Esther and she says, ‘Or pushed you under a bus.’ She giggles.

  ‘She didn’t push me.’ I sigh, pulling my hair away from my neck so that my skin is touching the cool rim of the bath. The water isn’t as warm as I normally have it because it’s so humid tonight and even the idea of hot water on my wounds is painful. ‘If she’d pushed me, she wouldn’t have come over and tried to help, would she?’

  ‘Why not?’ says Esther. ‘People often do things like that.’

  ‘Like what? Which people?’ I stir the cloudy water with my toes, annoyed that there isn’t more foam; I should have emptied the bottle. The bathroom is another thing that irritates me about our flat. It’s too narrow. If you sit on the loo and lean forward, you can touch the cupboard door with the tip of your nose.

  ‘I don’t know which people,’ Esther says impatiently. ‘I just know I’ve heard of that kind of thing before: the guilty party helps his victim in order to look innocent.’ In the background, I hear her microwave beeping. I wonder what she’s heating up tonight-a ready meal or leftover takeaway. A fleeting pang of envy for Esther’s single, hassle-free life makes me close my eyes. She lives alone in a spacious purpose-built flat at the top of a curvaceous, design-award-winning tower block in Rawndesley, with a large balcony that overlooks both the river and the city. Two whole walls of her lounge are made of glass, and-the thing I find hardest to bear-she has no stairs.

  ‘Anyway, I doubt she was trying to kill you. She probably saw you walking ahead of her, saw a bus coming along, and was so angry that she couldn’t resist. That’d explain why she was all smiles once you’d been hurt-she realised she’d turned her revenge fantasy into reality and regretted it.’

  Esther is an enthusiastic imaginer of scenarios. She is wasted at Rawndesley University; she ought to be a film director. Over the years she has been certain that her boss the Imbecile is: gay, a Jehovah’s Witness, in love with her, a Scientologist, a Freemason, bulimic and a member of the BNP. Usually I find her flights of fancy entertaining, but tonight I want seriousness and sense. I’m exhausted. I’m worried about summoning the energy to climb out of this bath.

  ‘Rawndesley was heaving today,’ I say. ‘Someone could easily have knocked into me by mistake.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Esther grudgingly admits.

  ‘Oh, God. I can’t believe I called Pam an ugly gremlin. I might even have called her evil. I think I did. I’ll have to ring her and apologise.’

  ‘Don’t bother. She’ll never forgive you, not in a million years
.’ Esther chuckles. ‘Did you really call her that? I’m having trouble imagining it. You’re so prim and proper.’

  ‘Am I?’ I say wearily. There are things about me that Esther doesn’t know. Well, one thing. She once warned me not to tell her anything that really needs to stay secret: ‘If it’s a good story, I won’t be able to resist telling everyone.’ I had the impression she was using the word ‘everyone’ in its fullest sense.

  ‘So you don’t think I need to… tell the police or anything?’

  Esther squawks with laughter. ‘Yeah, right. What are they going to do, appeal for witnesses? I can see the headline now: “The Notorious Bus-pushing Incident of 2007”.’

  ‘I haven’t even told Nick.’

  ‘God, don’t tell him!’ Esther snorts, as if I’ve suggested telling my window cleaner: someone entirely irrelevant. ‘By the way, that story about the neighbour and the agonizing back-ache? Complete crap. The woman’s got six-month-old twins, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So, she’s been breast-feeding like the clappers and her tits have gone all droopy. She wants to swap them for new, perky ones. The medical gubbins is strictly for emotional blackmail purposes, a way of forcing her husband to part with the cash.’

  I hear Nick yelling my name. I ignore him, but he keeps calling me. Normally he gives up almost immediately. ‘I’d better go,’ I tell Esther. ‘Nick wants me. It sounds urgent.’

  ‘Nick? Urgent?’

  ‘Unlikely but true. Look, I’ll ring you back.’

  ‘No, take me with you,’ Esther orders. ‘You know how nosey I am. I want to hear what’s going on in real time.’

  I make a rude face at the phone, then balance it on the side of the bath as I wrap a towel round myself. Too late, I realise it’s white and might end up with smears of red on it. I know we’re out of Vanish, so that’s two new items for my list: buy more stain-remover, wash blood out of towel.

  I take the phone up to the lounge. Nick is still sitting beside the mounds of shepherd’s pie on the carpet, still watching BBC News 24. ‘Have you seen this?’ he says, pointing at a photograph of a woman and a young girl on the screen. A mother and daughter. Across the bottom of the picture there’s a caption that tells me their names. They are dead; the caption says that too. I try to take it in: the words and the photograph together. The meaning. ‘It’s been all over the news for days,’ said Nick. ‘I keep forgetting to tell you. Not often Spilling makes the national headlines.’

  Through a fuzzy layer of shock, I become aware of several things. The woman looks like me. It’s frightening how similar we look. She has the same thick, long, wavy dark brown hair, so brown it’s almost black. Mine feels like wire-wool when it gets too dry, and I bet hers does too. Did. Her face is long and oval-shaped like mine, her eyes big and brown with dark lashes. Her nose is smaller than mine and her mouth slightly wider, and she’s prettier than I am, but still, the overall effect…

  Nick doesn’t need to explain why he wanted me to see her. He says, ‘They lived about ten minutes from here-I even know the house.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Esther’s voice startles me. I wasn’t aware I had the phone pressed to my ear. I can’t answer her. I am too busy staring at the words on the screen: ‘Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick deaths: police suspect mother killed herself after killing her daughter.’

  Geraldine Bretherick. No, it can’t be her. And yet I know it must be. A daughter called Lucy. Also dead. Oh, God, oh, God. How many Geraldine Brethericks can there be who live in Spilling and have daughters called Lucy? Geraldine Bretherick. I nearly pretended it was my name today after my accident, when I didn’t have the guts to tell the women helping me that I’d rather be left alone.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Nick asks. ‘You look a bit odd.’

  ‘Sally, what’s going on?’ demands the voice at my ear. ‘Did Nick just say you look odd? Why, what do you look like?’

  I force myself to speak, to tell Esther that everything is fine but I have to go-the kids need attention. People who don’t have children never challenge that excuse; they shut up quicker than a squeamish chauvinist at the mention of ‘women’s troubles’. Unless they’re Esther. I cut her off mid-protest and take the battery out of the phone so that she can’t ring back.

  ‘Sally, don’t… Why did you do that? I’m waiting for a call about cycling on Saturday.’

  ‘Ssh!’ I hiss, staring at the television, trying to focus on the voiceover, what it’s saying: that Mark Bretherick, Geraldine’s husband and Lucy’s father, found the bodies on his return from a business trip. That he is not a suspect.

  Nick turns back to the screen. He thinks I’m eager to watch this because it’s the sort of news I ‘like’, because it’s domestic and not political, because the dead woman is a mother who looks as if she might be my twin, and lives near us. And the dead girl… I check the caption again, trying to use as many facts as I can get my hands on to beat down the horrible haze that’s fogging up my brain. Maybe I got it wrong, maybe the shock… but no, it definitely says ‘deaths’. Lucy Bretherick is dead too.

  The girl in the photograph looks nothing like Zoe, and I can’t explain the relief I feel. Lucy has long dark hair like her mother’s, and she’s wearing it in two fat plaits, one with a kink in it, so that it turns halfway down and points back towards her neck. Her two hair bobbles have white discs with smiling faces on them. Her grin reveals a row of straight, white, slightly prominent teeth. Geraldine is also smiling in the photograph, and has her arm draped over Lucy’s shoulder. One, two, three, four smiles-two on the faces and two on the bobbles. I feel sick.

  Geraldine. Lucy. In my head, I’ve been on first-name terms with these people for a little over a year, even though they have never heard of me. Even though we’ve never met.

  The voiceover is talking about other murder-suicide cases. About parents who take their children’s lives and their own. ‘Little girl was only six,’ says Nick. ‘Doesn’t bear thinking about, does it? Mother must have been fucked in the head. Sal, put the battery back in the phone, will you? Can you imagine how that child’s dad must feel?’

  I blink and look away. If I’m not careful, I will start to cry. I can feel the pressure at the back of my eyes, in my nose. If I do, it won’t occur to Nick that I have never before been reduced to tears by a news report. Usually if children are involved I shudder and order him to change channels. It’s easy to put horror to one side if one isn’t personally involved.

  At last the picture disappears. I couldn’t take my eyes off it and I’m pleased it’s gone. I don’t want to see those faces again, knowing what happened. I nearly ask Nick if any of the news reports he’s seen have explained why-why did Geraldine Bretherick do this? Do the police know? But I don’t ask; I can’t cope with any more information at the moment. I’m still reeling, trying to make it part of what I know about the world that Mark Bretherick’s wife and daughter are dead.

  Oh, Mark, I’m so sorry. I want to say these words aloud but of course I can’t.

  When I next focus my attention on the screen, three men and a woman are talking in a studio. One man keeps using the phrase ‘family annihilation’. ‘Who are these people?’ I ask Nick. Their faces are solemn, but I can tell they’re enjoying the discussion.

  ‘The woman’s our MP. The bald guy’s some pompous wanker sociologist who’s helping the police. He’s written a book about people who kill their families-he’s been on telly every night since it happened. The guy with glasses is a shrink.’

  ‘Are… are the police sure? The mother did it?’

  ‘It said before they’re still investigating, but they reckon it’s a murder by the mother followed by suicide.’

  I watch the bald sociologist’s pale lips as he speaks. He is saying that female ‘family annihilators’-he makes quote marks in the air-have been much less common than male ones until now, but that he is certain there will be more in due course, more women who kill their children and themselves. Across his che
st, a caption appears: ‘Professor Keith Harbard, University College London, Author of Homewreckers: Extreme Killing Within the Family’. He is talking more than anyone else; the other speakers try and fail to interrupt his flow. I wonder what he would classify as a moderate killing.

  The woman sitting beside him, my MP, accuses him of scare-mongering, says he has no business making such grim predictions on the basis of no evidence. Does he know how counterintuitive it is for a mother to kill her own offspring? This case, she says, if indeed it does turn out to be murder-suicide, is a freak occurrence, will always be a freak occurrence.

  ‘Mothers do kill their own kids, though.’ Nick joins in the debate. ‘What about that baby that was thrown off a ninth-floor balcony?’

  It’s all I can do to stop myself from screaming at him to shut up. At all of them. None of them knows anything about this. I don’t know anything about it. Except…

  I say nothing. Nick has never been suspicious of me and he must never be. I shiver as I imagine something terrible happening to my own family. Not as terrible as this, what’s on the news, but bad enough: Nick leaving me, taking the kids every other weekend, introducing them to his new wife. No. That can’t happen. I must behave as if my connection with this story is the same as Nick’s: we are both concerned strangers with no personal knowledge of the Brethericks.

  Suddenly the discussion is over, and there is a man on the screen, with an older man and woman on either side of him. All three of them are crying. The man in the middle is speaking into a microphone at a press conference. ‘Are they relatives?’ I ask Nick. Mark would be too upset to talk about the deaths of his wife and daughter. These people must be close friends, perhaps his parents and brother. I know he has a brother. There’s no family resemblance, though. This man has dark brown hair with streaks of grey in it, sallow skin. His eyes are blue, with heavy lids, and his nose is large and long, his lips thin. He is unusual-looking but not unattractive. Perhaps these are Geraldine’s relatives.