Whatever You Love

by Louise Doughty

  Now, I force myself to think, the moment is now. This is the moment that I know: the nephew, that is what he loves. It must be unusual for a man like him to get involved in education issues – that is considered women’s work in nearly every culture after all – perhaps he went along because the head teacher of Betty’s school was a man and he thought he should try to deal with him, man to man, not realising that schools’ admissions is not within the head teacher’s gift. It was more than that, though, I think. Even mediated by the help of an interpreter and the officer taking the notes, Mr A’s affection for his nephew comes through. The nephew, this beloved nephew, the centre of all their lives, was the boy I saw in A & E that night as Toni and her colleague marched me through on the way to identify my daughter’s body. As I strode past that child, wondering cursorily why he was there, I was unaware that his kicking at a traffic cone had lead directly to my daughter being taken away from me. I wonder at what point on Fulton Road the girls were as the boy kicked at that cone – halfway down, perhaps? I wonder at what point one of them said, ‘Quick, look, I’ve got some money, let’s go to the shop, quickly.’ Maybe the other one said, ‘We’ll be late.’

  It is him, the nephew, that is what he loves. Two hundred pounds and points on his licence. Willow was thrown clear. My daughter went straight up in the air. I hear you’ve gone quite mad.

  *

  I do not have long, I feel that in my bones. When the local paper reports that Mr A will only be prosecuted for failing to stop at the scene of an accident, those white spotty youths will be up that caravan park as soon as they have sunk a few pints of strong cider. I rise from the table.

  *

  Later, much later, after my arrest and all that followed, I will think of this moment. I will think of it over and over again. Did I know what I was going to do next? Was there premeditation? Was there any conscious thought process at work as I rose from my kitchen chair? I don’t remember one. What I remember is a strange blank as I went to the knife block that sat next to the kitchen sink. Aunt Lorraine bought us the new knife set as a wedding present and there were jokes in the speeches about them. Everyone bought us kitchenware – we had the best-stocked kitchen on the south coast. Two weeks after I found out I was pregnant with Betty, when I came home after the six-week scan, I put the knife block with its expensive steel knives and their dimpled steel handles in a high cupboard. My embryo could hardly crawl from the womb to play with them but already, hormonal protectiveness was making me feel queasy at the sight of them. I do not remember when the knife block and its contents were reinstated in their place on the counter-top but there must have come a point where I became complacent, when I didn’t believe in danger any more – when I thought I was doing my job rather well.

  Smug, I think to myself, as I walk calmly to the sink. That was what happened. You got smug.

  There is a very long, very sharp knife, which I think must be for slicing meat, but it is too long to fit into my handbag and, anyway, would be unwieldy. The smallest, the one for slicing vegetables, is the easiest to hold but the blade is no more than ten or twelve centimetres. I don’t think it’s big enough. There is a serrated one, which is, so David once informed me authoritatively, a tomato knife. I choose the next one up, a smooth blade, easy enough to grasp, and it will fit in my handbag if I put it in at a diagonal. Back in the days when I still cooked, I used it to cut up frozen chicken fillets so that they would defrost more quickly.

  That was what I was thinking about as I wrapped it in a tea towel: frozen chicken fillets. Perhaps part of my brain was still refusing to believe that Betty was gone. Perhaps the knife was to go and save her. Perhaps it was to protect myself, what was left of myself, because I was going to go near him, Mr A, enter his orbit. I cannot believe that I consciously thought myself capable of killing someone.

  16

  My first visit to the camp is unproductive. Topping the rise brings me into view of the rear side – most of the trailers face the other way, towards the mud track that cars can come down. I wonder what happened when the local youths arrived with bricks and stones. My guess is that they did it under cover of darkness; they wouldn’t have got near otherwise.

  The only way to get near the camp without being observed was on foot. Approaching in a car meant leaving the tarmac road and driving along a muddy track in plain view of the dozen mobile homes parked in haphazard positions on the boggy estuary flats. If you turned off before that, though, and parked in the car park before the clifftop path, it was possible to approach the camp from a different angle, walking obliquely away from it, as if toward the cliffs. There was a small rise that hid you from sight of the camp for most of the path, until you reached the highest point, where the ground slopes upwards, the point where David pretended to nearly throw me off. The camp couldn’t see you until that point, and you couldn’t see the camp. Even when it came into view, at the peak of the slope, my guess was that most who walked in that area chose not to notice it. Most people choose not to notice camps, after all – most drive past them on motorways or on flyovers, and process the caravans or trailers merely as vehicles. Most of us have set ideas about what homes are. Chloe and David’s immaculate bungalow wasn’t that much different from a trailer in shape, although much larger, of course, but for them, I am sure, the trailers would scarcely register. Chloe would have gone for a walk up on those cliffs and not even realised there were people down there on the estuary flats, even as she topped the rise and turned right to the clifftop path.

  The estuary land was privately owned and there was an ongoing battle with the local council about the owner not having planning permission for permanent dwellings. The battle – as far as I understood it – revolved around how permanent the dwellings and dwellers were. The Upton Centre had been helping the residents fight the case for not being moved on, on the basis of healthcare, schooling for their children. It had been dragging on for years.

  I do not know what I am planning but I know I will be able to watch the camp unobserved if I carry on past the sloping part of the clifftop path until the small brick shelter beyond it. The brick shelter is open and has a bench, but it faces the sea, so I can only crouch down by the side of it – I can see the camp in the distance but if anyone looked this way I doubt they would be able to see me, just a small shape by the side of the shelter. On my first visit, I am there for two hours but the only people I see are a couple of men who leave a trailer and get into one of the cars and drive off down the track. I wait a long time, getting so cold and stiff I can hardly stand up afterwards. Next time, I think, I will come better prepared.

  The following day is a Saturday and I visit twice, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, dressed more warmly this time. I am hoping that as it is the weekend, there will be more movement, but the industrial estate must stay open for shifts because by the time I get there, the camp seems largely deserted. Two young women go from trailer to trailer at one point, and at another, a group of children emerge from one and run off in the direction of the fields, but they are dressed in coats and hats and in a tight knot, their backs to me as they run off, so I can’t be sure whether the nephew is among them. There are more walkers out and about at the weekends, and even though it is rainy and grey and not that many people pass, I don’t like to stay for too long. On my second visit, I leave frustrated and deflated. I go home and drink a whole bottle of wine. Halfway through it, I send David a text saying Sorry haven’t rung to speak to Rees v tired will call tomorrow. He doesn’t reply.

  *

  It is my third visit, early Sunday morning, and the weather is still grey and damp. Out to sea, the waves mirror the sky, heavy and heaving; the tide is high, the clouds low, the rest of the world crushed between. I have bought a Thermos flask of coffee with me and one of Rees’s plastic water bottles, into which I have poured a little whisky – the water bottle has dinosaurs on the side. Today I am determined to watch the camp for as long as it takes. Events will overtake me if I do not do somet
hing today.

  The whisky is encouraging. I have had only a half piece of toast for breakfast, and two cups of tea, but the whisky is gone before I even unscrew the lid of the Thermos. Intermittently, my mobile phone makes a soft purring noise in my handbag, just audible above the wind. I ignore it.

  I am there long enough to get stiff and cold despite the coffee and whisky – I guess it is around an hour. There is definitely a sense of more people around, down in the camp below. Some men come and go, in cars. The two young women come out and hang washing from a line between two trailers. Then, finally, I see them. I am sure it is them, the group who came to the crematorium, or some of them at least. They are leaving the camp and walking at a diagonal up towards the cliffs. If they carry on in a straight line, they will join the path several hundred yards ahead of where I am crouched beside the shelter. Perfect. I stand swiftly and go into the shelter, so that they will not see me as they mount the rise. As long as I stand just tucked inside the shelter’s edge, but peering round, I will be able to see them as they join the path. I may have neglected to bring binoculars but I have taken the precaution of wearing a hat with a brim, pulled down low. I lean against the edge of the shelter watching, the cold wind in my face.

  They must be walking slowly. I don’t see them for a while and begin to fear that while I have been in the shelter, they might have changed their minds and headed back to the camp. Perhaps I have been spotted. Perhaps, in view of all that has gone on recently, they are being extra cautious. Then, finally, the group appears on the path. I watch for a moment, making sure they are several hundred yards ahead of me, with their backs to me, before I slip from the shelter and follow.

  The oldest woman, short and plump, is in the lead. I can tell she is the oldest by the way she walks, a stiffness in her gait. A young woman and one of the middle-aged women are just behind. The fourth woman in the group – young by her way of walking – is further back and holding hands with the boy. The boy. I watch the boy as they walk – around eight years old, I think, short for his age but sturdy, with a rolling step that is already, somehow, adult. I stare at the boy as I walk – slowly; the group is slow and I don’t want to risk catching up with them until I am sure. The middle-aged woman is tall and dressed in a brown coat and, even from behind, I am fairly certain she is the woman I saw both at the crematorium and the warehouse. She has an air of authority. The younger woman looks familiar from the back too but I don’t think she was the one sorting zips – maybe she was with the group in the A & E department that night. It is the boy I am really interested in. So that is him, I think. It must be. That is the nephew, the precious nephew whose education Mr A was so concerned for, whose head injury made him panic and rush to hospital and leave the scene of a fatal accident. Fury and hatred swell in me, huge as a mountain. All children fall over in the street at some time or other. What was he panicking about? The nephew is alive, isn’t he? There he is, healthy as anything, short for his age and sturdy, fully recovered from the bump on his head – his uncle dared to panic over that, a graze? While they were waiting in A & E for someone to give them a dressing, my Betty was lying on a bed having her face washed with a sponge and her hair combed by a nurse who was saying to her, Let’s make you look nice for Mummy, you poor little love.

  My heart is thumping. I am nauseous with it, short of breath even before I quicken my pace. There they wander, the little group, on my cliffs, and it is all coming together, all the things I have thought, always, all the unfairness of everything; my father’s death, my mother’s illness, David and losing him, Betty and Willow, everything that has ever happened to me has combined in me to produce this moment. I begin to run. The back of my neck prickles with sweat and my heart thumps quickly and cleanly inside me. I am approaching them with demonic swiftness, my feet noiseless in the wet grass. They do not hear me above the wind and the waves on the shingle. The boy has fallen behind. The boy. He is no more than a few metres in front of me. The air above is white. To our left, the grassy slope falls away towards the camp. To our right, the slope stops suddenly; air. Down below, the waves break against the concrete blocks and the rocks and the pebbles that surround them. I only realise what I am about to do in the split second before I do it.

  I grab the boy from behind with both hands. My left hand fastens on his upper arm – my right clutches a fistful of his jacket. It is a cheap, padded jacket, its brown fabric synthetic and slippery in my hand. Also in my right hand is the knife, still wrapped in a tea towel. My grasp is clumsy but the left hand around his arm is like a clamp. As I grab him, he half- turns with a weak, astonished cry. Close up, his little-boy’s skin is very pale and I can see downy dark hair on his upper lip. I revise his age upwards. He is tough-looking despite his size but I have the advantage of surprise and it is easy for me to pull him towards me roughly so that he has his back to me and I have my arms wrapped round his shoulders from behind. I wheel him round to face the cliff and we stumble towards it together. He cries out again, louder this time. He calls a name, almost lost on the wind but enough for the women to turn. They do so in unison; there is a chaos of movement as the women scramble towards me, wild-eyed with shock. I have a second only but it is no more than a few strides to the cliff edge. As I reach it, I hold the boy out in front of me but pulled to one side, towards the cliff – the gesture is unmistakable and, still a few metres away from me, the women freeze. There is a moment of breathlessness, a tableau. The oldest, the grandmother, has scarcely moved from her original position but is on her knees in the wet grass, her mouth open in a cry, one hand resting on the ground, the other stretched and lifted. One of the young ones has her by the shoulders. The youngest woman is nearest to me – she could reach me easily but one of the others has shouted at her to halt. The middle-aged woman is halfway between them and staring at me. She speaks to the young one, rapidly, staring at me all the time. The others have terrified, pleading expressions, but her face is hard. She continues to speak to the younger woman, who looks desperate, ready to spring upon me. When the younger does not respond, she snaps. The younger takes a single step backwards. The boy whimpers but does not struggle, although under normal circumstances, I would guess him to be stronger than I am. I think they have told him not to move. They have no idea what I am capable of. It is the only time in my life I have inspired real fear. I am flush with it, giant-sized.

  They all wait, staring hard, the grandmother breathing in great heaves. They stare and, I think, they understand disaster when they see it.

  I shout above the wind. My voice is high and hard. ‘You think you know who I am!’ I bellow. ‘But you don’t! You don’t know anything! Don’t you understand?’ I have no idea where the words are coming from. ‘You think I couldn’t do this!’ I give the boy a small shake and as I do, the knife wrapped in its tea- towel slips from my grasp and both drop. I readjust my grip on the boy. The grandmother lets out a shriek. The younger one beside her drops to her knees and closes her eyes.

  It is stalemate. I am still breathing wildly and the white air above me is whirling. The sound of the waves is deafening. I think we might all stay here forever. I feel as strong as a statue.

  Then, from the grassy slope that stretches away behind the women, I hear a shout. The women turn. Running up from the camp, it is him.

  The hard-faced woman bellows at him. She has her arm outstretched. She is shouting at him to go back. He cannot hear her above the wind and waves and continues running towards us. When he is close enough, she bellows again and he stops. Behind him, others have come out from the trailers and are watching.

  The younger is still facing me. She holds out her arms. ‘Please…’ she says, haltingly, looking at the boy. ‘Please, to me.’ The boy says something, her name perhaps. His voice is terrified. The young one looks at me, tries to smile, then beckons with both hands, as if the boy is reluctant to go to her and she is coaxing him.

  I lift my chin, towards him, the man who killed my daughter, waiting down the slope, arms lift
ed, face a mask of fear and bewilderment.

  The young woman does not understand, but the hard-faced one behind her is watching us. She speaks harshly, explaining, and the younger woman says, ‘Okay, okay. He comes.’ She looks at the boy, ‘To me,’ she nods several times.

  I lift my chin again. The hard-faced one speaks and then begins to walk backwards. They have to help the grandmother, weeping helplessly, down the slope.

  They walk down hurriedly, in a huddle. The boy’s reedy voice calls out for them a couple of times but they do not turn.

  As they approach him, Mr A, they speak briefly, then pass. He raises his hands in the air as he approaches me, as people do in cop movies, to show they are unarmed. When he is a few metres away from me he stops. I flick my head for him to come closer. As he does, the boy wriggles and I tighten my grasp on him. The man lifts a hand and gestures, patting the air, as if saying to both of us, easy, easy…