The Kindest Thing

by Cath Staincliffe

  She does not look at me, or anyone, but makes her way steadily to the doors. I watch her back, her hair flowing down to her shoulder-blades, honey-coloured against her top. When will I see her again? Will I see her again? My girl. I do not speak, I barely breathe. My cheeks are wet.

  The judge calls an end to the day and we all stand. The jury are solemn, subdued. Media Man rubs at his face and sighs, and Alice is fiddling with her hairband but she’s gazing off into the distance. I wonder if she is thinking about what Sophie has said.

  I force myself to look at Adam, to suck the grief from my face and give him a nod of reassurance. He dips his head and casts down his eyes. He, too, is on the verge of tears. My expression must have changed because Jane, catching my eye, blanches with consternation and turns to Adam, says something. He nods at her enquiry. Who is comforting Sophie? Are Veronica and Michael waiting for her out there?

  The court empties. Jane lifts her hand, a wry farewell as they troop out. The recorder and the barristers are exchanging comments. Bits of business that they need to share before tomorrow. Miss Webber piles her files high, scoops them into her arm, sings a cheery goodbye to Mr Latimer. She is riding high on Sophie’s testimony. The jury loved her. Who wouldn’t want to believe a young girl prepared to bear witness in such raw circumstances? Her youth and courage sound a clarion call to truth.

  Mr Latimer gives me no false hope when he stops beside me on his way out. ‘Early days,’ he says. He sighs. ‘We’ll get our turn, r-remember. Always difficult for the defence at this stage.’

  Ms Gleason comes up after he’s gone. ‘How are you holding up?’

  ‘It was hard.’

  ‘Yes. Try to rest tonight. Is there anything you need?’

  I shake my head. Whatever I need, freedom, absolution, a night down the pub chewing it over with Jane, my home and children, is way out of her provenance.

  On Adam’s third or fourth visit to Styal he was very subdued. He had returned from his trip to the Spanish festival, which I’d insisted he go to, and seemed to have survived it intact. He was working at the club in town. He said it was a bit boring but the people were ‘cool’.

  I worked hard at the conversation, trying to find out if he’d changed his mind about Jane’s place, even if just for a while. ‘It must be lonely, there on your own?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’ He shrugged. Then his face collapsed, his eyes reddened. ‘I miss you – and Dad. I miss him so much.’

  My heart thumped. I lurched across the low table separating us, wrapping my arms about him. ‘I know.’

  The guard called for me to sit down. I glared at him, furious.

  ‘Adam, I’m sorry.’ I moved back a little, my hands cupping his face. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘No – what you did . . . that was right. It was what he wanted. You did the right thing.’

  My breath caught and I waited. His belief in me was so precious and I was afraid that perhaps it was not warranted. ‘He loved you so much,’ I told him. ‘Don’t ever forget that.’

  Adam nodded, rubbed at his face with his hands. I was sorry and scared at what it would mean for him when we went to trial. I took a breath and leaned close again. ‘I’ve been talking to the solicitor,’ I said. ‘We have to argue that I was disturbed when I gave your dad the overdose.’

  ‘But he wanted you to?’ Adam frowned.

  ‘Yes, but if I say that I did it to help him and I knew what I was doing they will find me guilty of murder.’

  ‘That’s mental – that’s totally cracked.’

  ‘I know. But that’s the law. The only chance I’ve got is to plead guilty to manslaughter and argue that I was in such a state by then I can’t be held responsible.’

  He shook his head, bemused.

  ‘The thing is, it means that in court I have to talk about everything that contributed to my state of mind, all the stresses . . .’ I paused, hoping he’d make the leap, but he watched me, waited. ‘Adam, I’m going to have to tell them all about you being ill, the overdose, everything.’

  Embarrassment swept his face and he reddened. ‘It’s cool,’ he said. ‘You did the right thing – that’s all that matters.’ And he shrugged again.

  I made an effort to smile but I wasn’t sure I agreed with him. The consequences of doing the right thing were very wrong: my family scattered, our grief choked off and sullied by the investigation and the trial. Right for Neil, but for the rest of us?

  It is dusk as they take me from the back door of the court building to the prison van. The air is cold and damp and from somewhere there is the smell of fat and onions, fast-food. One of the trams gives a melancholy hoot and I catch a glimpse of figures hurrying along the street at the end. People making their way home for tea, carrying shopping or laptops, looking forward to a hot soak, a TV dinner or the ritual of bedtime stories.

  Neil hated weather like this. Before we had Adam, at weekends the dull drizzle, the mottled sky would see us cocooned. Wearing woolly socks and jumpers in bed, reading the papers and snacking, getting high and making love, our hands grubby with newsprint, faintly sticky with marmalade. He couldn’t bear a dreary Sunday; he said it reminded him too much of the aching boredom of his childhood days, the weekly ritual of no breakfast before mass, the tedium of the service, the long dull afternoons when the whole world seemed shut, the visits to his grandparent Drapers’ graves. He said that wasn’t every week but it felt like it.

  Once the children came along we had two strategies to redeem those miserable days. One was to cocoon them too, to make a feature of being trapped inside, building dens from big cardboard boxes or making a tent with the clothes horse and sheets, passing them in picnics to share. Whitewashing one wall in their playroom and bringing out chalks for hours of scribbling and drawing. Or ‘making mess’, setting out the kitchen with Play Doh and food colouring, water and sieves at the sink, glue and paper and glitter. All four of us mucking about with the curtains drawn and the lights on. The other technique was to cock a snook at the gloom and go out in it. But far out – to the hills, sealed in waterproofs and wellies, where even the dimmest day was enlivened by the sights and smells of nature, and puddle-jumping or mud-dancing was de rigueur. The promise of chips and cocoa when we got home. Clothes steaming on the radiators, smelling of fresh air and grass and earth.

  It was weather like that when we buried Neil. Fitting. They let me out to attend the funeral. It was October, four months after he had died, and six months till my trial. Everything had been delayed because of the post-mortems. Prison guards escorted me; I was handcuffed lest I do a runner at the graveside. I hadn’t had much input into the arrangements. No doubt Neil’s parents had thought bumping him off was more than enough of a contribution from me. I’d provided the body, they’d see to the rest. Thank goodness they included Adam in the process: he reported back to me with youthful disdain. The notice in the paper asked for donations to the Motor Neurone Disease Association rather than flowers. I remembered from burying my mother that there are so many decisions to make when someone dies: which coffin, what service, who will read, lilies or a wreath, where to go afterwards, which clothes to dress them in.

  ‘His suit.’ Adam snorted. ‘He hated suits.’

  ‘He didn’t, actually.’

  Adam stared at me.

  ‘He made fun of people who acted like suits but he quite liked that last one, the charcoal, soft wool. He looked good in it.’ Neil had bought it in the sales. His old suit was showing its age. There were times at work when he wanted to look smart and a suit in the wardrobe was always there if you had to attend a funeral. His own would be the first funeral he’d worn it to.

  Adam was a little taken aback, his memory of Neil compromised by mine.

  ‘I hope you held out against a tie,’ I said. ‘Ties he really did hate.’

  ‘Yeah. No tie.’

  Another visit and Adam was bubbling with resentment. ‘They’re going to do a mass,’ he blurted out. ‘At St Theresa’s.’

&n
bsp; I resisted the prick of anger. Neil had specified nothing in his will about the arrangements. He’d had clear desires about the manner of his leaving but not about what came after.

  I played peacemaker. ‘The service is for the people left behind more than anything. Grandma and Grandpa – it’ll mean so much to them.’

  ‘It’s hypocritical,’ Adam said. ‘Don’t you mind?’

  ‘No, not really.’ Choose your battles. Allowing Neil’s parents the comfort of a mass, the support of their congregation, in the same place where they had christened him seemed the decent thing to do. And, after all, what choice did I have? I could hardly mastermind a coup from my prison cell, snatch the coffin and sneak everyone off to some atheistic woodland burial.

  ‘When I come home,’ I said to Adam, the words dangerous, preposterous in my mouth, ‘we can have our own ceremony if we want to, to celebrate Dad.’

  ‘Do you want cremating?’

  His question startled me. ‘I couldn’t decide,’ I said, with a shrug, ‘so I’m leaving my body to science.’

  ‘Are you?’ He looked worried.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What if they use it for something you don’t agree with? Like cloning or something?’

  This was the sort of discussion I might have with Sophie. Adam had never been given to ethical debate.

  ‘You don’t get to cherry-pick.’

  He blew out a breath, a noisy sigh, a youngster again, tired by it all.

  ‘So, have they bought you a suit, yet?’ I teased him.

  ‘No,’ he growled.

  ‘What will you wear?’

  ‘I’ve got a shirt, my black trousers.’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ I told him. ‘We’ll just go with the flow.’

  With Neil being an only child, lapsed from his faith, I hadn’t been to many Catholic services; there were no brothers and sisters asking us to their ceremonies. I’d probably been to wedding or two, a christening. What struck me most at Neil’s funeral mass was the theatricality of it all – the vivid language, the dramatic gestures, like the throwing of holy water and the swinging of the incense lamps, the way the pungent reek filled the space.

  We all sat in the front right-hand pew: Michael, Veronica, Sophie, then Adam, me, cuffed to the guard, and Jane. It felt bizarre, the proximity of this burly stranger. Perhaps I should have demurred and sat at the back in purdah, but I wanted to be there with my children even if it did scandalize people. The church was almost full, though I recognized few faces. Some of Neil’s colleagues were there but I think most of those attending were friends of his parents.

  My temperature was all over the place, chilled inside but hot and moist on the surface of my skin. Locking my eyes on the coffin, I imagined Neil inside: long and slim and still in his suit and shirt. He was a manikin. No heart, no pulse. He had gone four months before so why did I find my spine tightening and feel burning behind my eyes?

  Among the prayers and responses, the chants, kneeling and rising, there were hymns, each chosen for their sentimental heart-wrenching qualities; three-hankie numbers. The singing was buoyed up by a group of two women and a man who stood by the altar and led us with robust voices. They helped compensate for the people who fell by the wayside, sniffling and gulping with sorrow, burrowing in hankies. Me among them. It was Adam who set me off, the little huff as his shoulders rose and fell. I put my arm round him and pulled him close and let my tears come, warm rain on my cheeks. Jane reached across in front of the guard and squeezed my arm. I turned to her, saw her smile through the blur. Grateful that she was there, her friendship unwavering, her reliability never doubted.

  Veronica looked older; we’d been quite near each other as we entered the church. Other people moved slowly past her and Michael, Sophie and Adam, offering condolences, murmured phrases, touching an arm, a shoulder, clasping hands, brushing cheeks. I did not know my place, aware that I wasn’t exactly up for a Widow of the Year award and that people had no idea whether to speak to me or not. I was hungry for a gesture from Sophie, a look, a smile, some reprieve from the terrible silence between us, but she concentrated studiously on everyone else. I hadn’t lingered then, just moved ahead into the church, but I had noticed that Veronica’s hair was greyer, thinner, her foundation paler, the lower half of her face around her mouth and jaw wrinkled and saggy. Still an attractive woman for her age. Neil had shared the same fine bone structure and dark hair. I always thought there was a look of Elizabeth Taylor in Veronica; not that striking, of course, but a similar type, a petite version.

  Kneeling, when we bowed our heads in prayer, I slid my eyes to watch Sophie and saw Veronica’s hands, sky-blue beads strung between them. They were shaking uncontrollably. We did not speak to each other at all that day. And Michael avoided me. I was disappointed in him. We had always got along well, though I suppose our contact was buffered by the children. Perhaps I should have expected it – I’d never heard him gainsay Veronica. He was like a satellite, really: she was the centre of the relationship, or that was how it seemed. He was a quiet man. An ambulance driver who had found the job too traumatic and become a warehouse manager instead. He shared Neil’s love of history and the two could talk for hours about the past, about boys’ stuff. Michael was always a kind man but I wondered what he thought about me now, whether he had any more understanding than Veronica about what had driven me to honour Neil’s wishes.

  At the crematorium I felt as though I was in a glass cylinder. The service there was swift and I watched, dry-eyed, as Neil’s coffin slid away. The funeral party were going back to the church hall for refreshments. I was going back to prison.

  In the car park outside the crematorium, I said goodbye to Adam. Jane gave me a hug and told me she would see me in the week. I drank in a last glimpse of Sophie climbing into the funeral car. I ached, wanting to hold her, touch her. It drove off. As I made to go, someone touched my arm. It was Tony Boyd, Neil’s old friend, who’d been a witness at our wedding. He’d lived in Portugal for years, had a wife and family there, twin girls. We still exchanged Christmas cards and once every couple of years, when he was visiting his parents, he would call Neil and we’d meet up for a night of reminiscing and catching up. He was one of the people we had phoned in the days after Neil’s death but I’d had no idea he’d be coming to the funeral.

  ‘Deborah,’ he looked me in the eyes, ‘I’m so sorry.’ He hesitated, glanced at my minder, gave a shake of his head and opened his arms. He pulled me close and his generous embrace made me weep. I closed my eyes and savoured the warmth from his body and the breadth of his shoulders and the peppery smell of his cologne.

  I pulled back and surveyed him. He was almost bald, his hair cropped close, his eyebrows grey. He had a paunch too, tight against his shirt. We are so old, I thought. We’ve all got so old.

  ‘I’ve got to fly back tomorrow,’ he said, ‘or I’d have come to see you.’

  ‘That’s fine. Keep in touch.’

  ‘I will. He was a lovely man,’ he said, ‘and he was so happy with you.’

  The compliments meant so much to me that day and for a few moments I was an honestly grieving wife, not a murderess.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I don’t know why I had an affair. I couldn’t explain it back then, either to myself or to Neil. It hasn’t got clearer with hindsight. Was I just bored? Flattered by the attention?

  Adam was seven, Sophie five. My business was expanding. The other man was a client. When we first met, I felt a swell of pleasure at the sight of him. The same reaction that I’d had when I’d first seen Neil. With this man I concealed it. I was happily married, a mother. I wasn’t in the market for an affair. It wasn’t an option. He was married, too. His wife was at that first meeting. Jeremy and Chandi. They were doing a new-build and staying in a rented apartment while the project took shape. It was an exciting design they had planned, no Barratt home. A two-storey dwelling on a brownfield site in a redevelopment zone. There was a canal nearby and Jeremy wanted a
modern, waterside feel. There would be glass-and-steel patio doors along the back overlooking the canal, an open-plan living area, and central stairs to the upper floor. The couple wanted my input into the kitchen design and also a scheme for the colours and soft furnishings in the other areas.

  Disconcerted by my attraction to Jeremy, the way my stomach contracted when I made eye contact with him, the pleasing timbre of his voice, I made a point of focusing on Chandi as we talked. She was a hospital doctor; he worked as a translator of educational books; together they had enough of an income to build their dream home. I went away with a clear idea of their likes and dislikes, their specifications and a copy of the architect’s drawings for the site, promising to return in a fortnight with initial designs.

  At the second meeting there was no sign of Chandi. Had he engineered it like that? When I asked if she didn’t want a chance to comment, he told me she had to be at the hospital during working hours and would give me any feedback via him. Jeremy smiled and offered me tea. His teeth were white, his lips the colour of raspberries. He was shorter than Neil, stockier. I busied myself laying out my portfolio while he made the drinks. Their rental flat was part of a warehouse refurbishment, very eighties with bare brick walls and wooden floors, recessed lights. The ceilings were surprisingly low, and the décor neutral colours, easier to rent out than something distinctive. The couple’s own furnishings were more eclectic, and included a monster of a couch with a geometric Scandinavian print in turquoise, white and orange clambering all over it. But the piece was too large in the space.

  Nervously I talked Jeremy through the plans. Once in my stride I was able to quell the sexual feelings but whenever he asked a question or bent closer to examine a sketch everything shifted and I became clumsy and self-conscious. The encounter was like a badly executed dance: we’d speak at the same moment, or interrupt each other after awkward pauses. Slowly it dawned that it wasn’t just me who was off-kilter.