The room bristles with attention as I appear. Afraid, I do not dare look round yet. I need to place my feet one in front of the other and turn so as to reach the dock. The usher nods that I may sit and I do, letting my gaze fall on the warm, worn wood of the ledges around me. My cheeks are aflame and my pulse thrums heavy in my neck. There are whispers and muttered conversations and the rustle of papers – all the lawyers have great big folders. They march around with them, in one arm, all importance. Well, it is important, the reports and records and documents that speak to liberty or incarceration.
Little by little, I raise my eyes, glancing to my left, across the people seated in the main well of the court. My barrister, Mr Latimer, the one in charge of my defence, is a bullish man with an unfortunately appointed nose and beefy skin. He stammers but he has a technique for overcoming that in public, a sing-song delivery that reminds me a little of the comedian Kenneth Williams stretching out his time on the radio quiz Just A Minute, though Kenneth was way more camp. Beside Mr Latimer is his junior. And beside them my messy solicitor, Ms Gleason, takes her seat. She’s the one who’s held my hand for all these months. Today the hair has been pulled back in a barrette. She smiles across and nods. She is watching me and the others are talking shop.
Beyond them is the prosecution table. I have already been told about their team but the names escape me now. The main prosecutor is a woman and she has a male aide.
My heart squeezes as my eyes light on Adam in the public gallery. My boy. I am so glad he has come. That seems bizarre. What mother wants her child to see her tried for murder? Next to him, Jane. Jane and I are the same height but she’s a bigger build. More padding, she says. She’s on a diet every few months and shifts a few pounds. Then it creeps back on. She can’t stop smoking either. She’s done the lot, everything from patches to acupuncture.
I try to smile but my lips jerk about in some ghastly jig. Adam bows his head suddenly, close to tears, I think. Jane gives a wry smile. She has always been there for me. Have I been as good a friend? Jane is giddy, gregarious. She’s never really left the hubbub of her childhood, competing with her three brothers for a spot in the limelight. The phrase ‘good for a laugh’ comes to mind. Not that she is frivolous or shallow, more that she has a ripe sense of humour. She sees the funny side and points it out. People mistake her comic vision for happiness but Jane has had a hard time of it. Since Mack left her she’s never found the right man. And she’s very lonely. She’s a manager in the NHS, her working life a mire of reports and strategies, evaluation and targets. She and Neil had plenty to moan about together, swapping anecdotes of bureaucratic lunacy and governmental folly.
Sophie isn’t there, or Veronica or Michael. There are other faces – I’m startled to see two of Neil’s colleagues, and people I don’t recognize. The gallery is full. I’m quite a draw. Who are all these strangers? What brings them here?
The team have dressed me in mumsy clothes, Marks & Sparks, a plain light blue blouse, navy skirt, opaque tan tights. The skirt rustles against the tights when I walk. I hate these clothes. I’m a fraud. I’ve never worn things like this in my life. School uniform came closest. But I will do whatever they tell me now. At their mercy. They even brought earrings, small gold studs. My fingers seek out my wedding ring. I twist the familiar smooth metal.
We bought our rings from Lewis’s. It’s hard to remember now why we got married. It certainly wasn’t part of some shared dream of white silk dresses and pageboys and speeches. And we didn’t do it to stock up on toasters and tableware, either. I did wear silk – and taffeta – a gorgeous cherry red cocktail dress that I found in a dress agency in Stockport. Neil wore a black suit and shirt and a bolo string tie. He still had his hair long and looked like an extra, a pioneer in some Wild West movie. We got hitched at the register office and only told our families afterwards. They were hugely disappointed. My mother gave a little ‘Oh!’ of regret on the phone, as though I’d punched her in the stomach, which perhaps I had. And Veronica was furious: the register office ceremony wasn’t a union in the eyes of God. But I was a non-believer, with no intention of converting, and Neil had been lapsed for years. Neil told me they tried to keep it all secret from their Catholic friends.
I’d had boyfriends before Neil, I’d even had some after, but sooner or later they had irritated me. The reasons varied, the timescale too, but eventually their childishness, the way they held my hand or their taste in music, the smell of their skin or the pattern of their conversation would pall and then rankle – like grit in my shoe, producing a blister, not a pearl. Soon everything about them would be wrong and I’d be planning my farewell speech.
‘You want perfection,’ Jane had said, when I was dumping my first boyfriend at uni. ‘It’s impossible. Give him a bit longer.’ She finished rolling a joint, lit it and sucked hard.
‘No, I feel trapped. When I think of carrying on I feel panicky.’
She’d shaken her head. ‘He’s so sweet.’
‘It’s not enough. I know he’s sweet and pretty good-looking, and he’s not dumb but . . . I can’t change how I feel. I can’t unthink what I’ve been thinking about him.’
‘Unthink?’
I held out my hand for the joint, the first two fingers splayed. ‘Exactly, not possible.’
So when I asked Jane to be a marriage witness for Neil and me, she reminded me of how picky I was. ‘What if you go off him?’
‘We’ve lasted six years.’ I laughed. ‘It’s him going off me I’m worried about.’
‘You love him more than he loves you.’
‘Do I?’
Had that been true? Back then or as time went by? Had the power in the relationship shifted? I wasn’t sure. Rather, I thought, the intensity of feeling we had, the desire for love and the need for independence, ebbed and flowed between us like a subtle tide.
Jane was one of our witnesses and Tony Boyd, Neil’s old school friend, the other. Tony was a lovely man who could consume more illegal drugs then anyone I’ve ever met and still acquit himself decently. He’d got hold of cocaine for our wedding party. It was pretty rare then and more expensive too.
We’d all booked into a hotel in the Derbyshire peaks, and once we’d checked in we took a picnic out into one of the deep valleys, still in our finery. The four of us got stoned and went paddling, drank champagne and rolled about in hysterics. We’ve a handful of photos left from the day – I had my camera with me – but there’s only one with all of us in. We roped in a passing hiker who did the honours. I look so young; we all do. The dress, its strappy top and flared skirt, glows against the green of the grass, the colours acidic.
When friends heard we were married, some were quite shocked. They’d assumed we had rejected the institution, that we’d live together in defiance of hidebound rituals. If Neil hadn’t proposed perhaps we would have. But I liked my new status. I think I needed the conspicuous commitment, though I kept my own name. And bank account.
Jane once asked me whether I thought Adam’s troubles might have been made worse because we’d taken a relaxed approach to drugs, never hiding our own history of experimentation. I gave her question some thought. Had he needed limits that we’d failed to provide? Had he needed different boundaries? But in the end I couldn’t see it. If we’d hidden our views and adopted a rigid just-say-no stance, his dabbling would have been even more covert and we’d only have learned later how the drugs were affecting his mental health.
I look across the courtroom at Adam again and try the smile. A little better, perhaps, though Ms Gleason frowns. I am to be the grieving widow for the duration of my trial, a hollow shell of a woman. They have warned me against sly remarks or clever answers. I must show some humility. It’s not me, at all.
My brother Martin is not here. I didn’t know whether he would come or not. We’ve grown apart – not that we were ever that close. There was a flurry of contact when Mum was sick. Adam was only a month old when she first saw her doctor about her weight loss. She was
dead before he was three. He was a wonderful baby but he never slept and he couldn’t bear to be alone. He’d be up at five every day and happy as Larry if he was carried everywhere. It was exhausting. We had a baby sling, and for the first year we lugged him about in it constantly. I remember hoovering with him strapped to my back. Then we bought a back-pack with a frame. Those years were a blur of broken nights and driving back and forth to my mum’s, Martin and I conferring over who would do the next hospital visit.
Neil and I were both shattered, ill-tempered with each other, bickering about the chores – all the new ones that came with parenthood. I didn’t cut him any slack; he would do everything bar breastfeeding or die trying. I knew other couples where the advent of a baby seemed instantly to dissolve any intentions of domestic parity, to rob them of political intelligence and plunge them back into the stereotypical gender divisions of the fifties. The man was working harder than ever, all the overtime going, quickly losing faith in his skills as a parent; the woman did all the housework, the shopping, cooking, cleaning, the baby. She was up night after night, simmering with resentment and careful not to disturb him because he was tired and he had to go to work the next day. As if child care wasn’t twice as demanding.
No, Neil and I worked at it. Some days I’d wait at the front door for him coming in from school, ready to thrust Adam into his arms so I could set off to see my mum – or even so I could just get out into the garden and have ten minutes’ peace. I went back to work part time after six months and we took turns dropping Adam at the child-minder. It was shaky for a while, the parent thing, but we made it work. Not rocket science, just a little social engineering. Oh, I know I can be a smug bitch but, hell, I didn’t drop my beliefs when I dropped the placenta. I’m proud of what we did. I’m proud that Sophie and Adam can look at us and know we were both fully involved in their care, their schooling; we both wiped and fed, changed and scolded. We both did the fun stuff too, and there was plenty of that: Play Doh and puddle-jumping, castles made of cardboard, bedtime stories. Huge pleasure. Having children gave me glimpses of my father, rare flashbacks to his whistling, letting me sip the whisky from his glass (it smelt like wee and tasted horrible), him playing the piano in a honky-tonk style and me plonking the black notes, him watching me master my pogo-stick one Christmas morning.
Sophie was born in the shadow of my mother’s death and the clamour of Adam’s toddlerhood. Either she was born self-contained or she immediately adopted that as a strategy in the face of the competition. As long as she was fed and her nappy was clean, she would watch everything around her with steady interest.
There were times when I felt ripples of guilt that she got so little attention and I would engineer it so Neil could take Adam off somewhere, leaving Sophie and me to ourselves. I would lie down on the floor with her and sing and play. She’d give a gummy smile and gurgle or make little shrieks as she flailed her fists about, but I got the sense that she was just playing along. That it didn’t matter to her whether I was giving her my undivided attention or not. That she’d have been exactly the same with a babysitter or Grandma Veronica.
When I tried to explain this to Neil, he gave me an indulgent smile. ‘She’s a baby! She’s just a different character from Adam, thank God. You’re used to him, the way he has us running round in circles. She’s the second child.’
‘Like me. But they’re usually more difficult. What if she turns out to be some wilting feeble, Barbie doll, all inept and fluffy?’ I speculated.
‘By way of rebellion, you mean? I think that’s pretty unlikely,’ Neil said.
And he was right. She’s a little solemn but she’s bright and articulate and ferociously independent. As soon as she could dress herself she chose her own clothes. As a four-year-old on holiday she always picked a seat away from us on the coach or bus, quite happy savouring the view.
She made friends at playgroup and nursery but not with the passionate attachment that Adam brought to his alliances. She did well academically and was reading by the time she reached Reception. She seemed to soak it all up effortlessly, while Adam became mute and mutinous if we tried to get him near a book. We had countless meetings with his teachers about his lack of progress.
My girl thrived and I was buoyed by her success and always felt the lifting of my heart, that lightening sensation, when I clapped eyes on her, but I knew she loved her father more than me. Or perhaps her love for him was less complicated. I understand. I made the same differentiation in my feelings for my own parents. My love for my father was visceral, unsullied, simple, direct. But the emotions my mother called up in me were contrary, critical, double-edged. I hated her at times but never my father. Did Sophie learn these patterns from me, or discover them for herself? If Adam had been any different would it have changed the dynamics? Sophie thinks I love Adam best. I don’t. I just love him differently. Is it because he’s a boy? Or because he’s Adam?
None of that differentiation was going to happen when I had children. Boy or girl, they would be treated equally. No gender-based toys or colour-coded outfits, no breastfeeding a boy for longer or over-protecting a girl when she headed for the climbing frame. Any girls I had would be tomboys like me, any boys sensitive and caring. Of course, there’s another side to the equation that I hadn’t factored in – Adam and Sophie as individuals with personalities and predilections fully formed.
I miss them so. And how much harder must it be for them? Losing Neil and then, before they can get their breath back, I’m gone too. Locked up. It was never meant to be like this. I rage at Neil, floating around in the bloody ether. Well out of it. You’re off in your Elysian Fields, mate, but look at us. See where we are? You sacrificed us all. You sorry now?
Chapter Six
It was just before Easter 2007 that Neil first complained of stiffness in his hands and arms. I wasn’t very sympathetic. It’s the sort of reaction I get myself if I’ve been doing something that involves a lot of manual work: cutting tiles or screen-printing, repetitive movement that strains the muscles. I said as much but he replied he hadn’t been doing any physical jerks. Try paracetamol, I told him.
He didn’t go to the doctor until the summer. The GP gave him a course of anti-inflammatory drugs and asked him to come back afterwards. They didn’t help.
After his next appointment, when he came home, I could see straight away that something was wrong. His face was sallow and he’d an artless, vulnerable look in his eyes. Sophie was in the kitchen, sorting out ingredients for her food-technology class – pineapple upside-down cake.
I sent a warning glance to Neil, not that he needed telling, and walked after him into the lounge.
We sat down. He looked at me, gave a little ‘huff and swallowed. ‘They want to do tests.’
My guts clenched. I assumed he was talking about cancer.
‘It could be . . . the weakness, losing control . . .’
I stared at him, the cup he’d smashed, the plates he’d dropped now sinister.
‘. . . it might be motor neurone disease.’
Stephen Hawking on The Simpsons, wheelchair, robotic voice, head lolling to one side.
‘Oh, Neil.’ I wrapped my arm around his shoulders. ‘It’ll be all right,’ I said. ‘Whatever it takes.’
‘There isn’t any cure.’
My heart stopped. ‘But the treatment, there must be something.’ I refrained from mentioning Stephen Hawking – he’d lasted years. Or had he got a different illness?
‘Not really,’ he said quietly.
I kept still. My mind was scrambling, trying to unpick what he was saying.
‘It just has to run its course.’
A deluge of fear, my heart thudding in my chest. This wasn’t happening. No. It wasn’t true. It was a mix-up, that was all, a silly misunderstanding.
‘Oh, Neil. These tests,’ I said tentatively, ‘it might be something else.’ A condition they could treat, a disease they could cure.
‘Yes.’ He took a shaky breath and th
en another. He was crying. I’d only ever seen Neil cry three times in our years together: at the birth of our children and when I’d told him about my affair. The sound of him crying was alien to me, the rhythm unfamiliar. I climbed on to his lap, wrapped my arms tight around him, raised one hand to cradle the back of his head. He put his face in the crook of my neck. His tears soaked warm into my T-shirt. He was going to die. How long? I was screaming inside. How long? Ten years? Five?
People talk of a bolt from the blue, of being thunderstruck, and that was how it felt. As though Zeus had hurled his lightning bolts at us, a sickening crack to the skull, a galvanic shock, paralysis and the sun stopped in the sky.
‘It might be fine,’ I said.
And the lie, the false hope, lay leaden between us.
At the first opportunity I had, when everyone else was out, I went online to find out about the disease. Doctors did not know what caused some people to develop it. It was not a virus and there was only a hereditary link in a very small minority of cases. Each site I logged on to reported the same stark facts: for those people with the most common form of the disease, life expectancy was between two and five years from diagnosis. Neil’s muscles would weaken and waste – he would lose ability in his arms and legs first; then chewing, swallowing and speaking would become difficult. As his chest muscles also weakened he would only be able to sip shallow breaths. Eventually his breath would fail.
On the upside, he was not likely to become incontinent or impotent. He could go down fucking, then. He wouldn’t go senile either. Although the disease affected the motor nerves that connected the brain to the muscles, the brain itself wouldn’t be affected. He’d be fully aware until the end stage. MND is not a painful killer, not like the cancer that riddled my mother and rendered her insensate with pain. MND sounded sly and swift and wilfully random.
The Kindest Thing Page 5
