They All Fall Down

by Tammy Cohen

  ‘No. Not a friend. Look, can I come in? I can see you need to get those in some water.’

  The woman studied Corinne. But where Corinne might have expected suspicion or even hostility, following her denial of friendship with her daughter, Patricia Garitson displayed neither.

  ‘I’d just really like to talk to you and your husband about Steffie,’ she went on.

  Corinne wasn’t prepared to spill her family secrets on the doorstep. And if Jeremy Garitson was inside, she would rather speak to them both at once. Somewhere in the back of her mind lay the hope that by enlisting Steffie’s parents’ support she could ensure the girl stayed away from her daughter, and her daughter’s husband, for good.

  Patricia Garitson stared at her for a moment longer and then smiled again. ‘Follow me.’

  She turned and moved off down a hallway, the impressive proportions of which were accentuated by tasteful neutral paintwork and original ceiling mouldings. Up ahead, Corinne could see a large, white-framed family photograph, clearly taken in an upmarket photography studio. Steffie was a teenager in the picture, wearing an old-fashioned choker around her slender neck, but even from a distance she was still instantly recognizable with those black curls. Corinne took a sharp intake of breath at the sight of her. All the Garitsons – a younger-looking Patricia, Steffie, a man Corinne assumed was Jeremy, and a young boy with dark hair and pale eyes – were dressed in white, as if they were members of the same band coordinating their clothes for a photoshoot. Though they were smiling, there was something staged about the picture, a certain stiffness. It was only as she got closer that Corinne realized that what she’d at first taken to be a choker was actually a faint silver line, but she didn’t have time for closer inspection.

  She followed her hostess past a formal living room on the right, done out in tones of ivory with two cream sofas facing each other on either side of a glass coffee table. How did people manage to maintain that kind of decor? she wondered. In her house, there’d be red-wine stains on the sofas and muddy footprints all over those white, deep-pile rugs.

  The second door led into an expansive modern kitchen with banks of gleaming white cupboards unbroken by handles, and a white table with white leather chairs tucked neatly under it. There were four white moulded plastic-and-chrome stools lined up along the breakfast bar on the far side of the vast island. And on the stool on the far left was a man with a neatly trimmed white goatee that matched the decor and steel-framed glasses, jabbing at the keys on his phone with intense concentration.

  ‘A friend of Steffie’s?’ he said, looking up. ‘How novel!’

  So Corinne was forced to repeat her denial of being Steffie’s friend, although she modified her voice from the strident tone she’d used earlier with his wife.

  The man jumped down from his stool, revealing himself to be shorter than he’d first appeared, and shook Corinne’s hand, his eyes looking her up and down appreciatively. His grip was surprisingly firm and Corinne hoped she wasn’t blushing.

  ‘I’m Patricia,’ said Steffie’s mother, tossing the roses down on to the kitchen surface. A petal came loose and fluttered down, forming a red blot on the gleaming white floor. ‘And this is my husband, Jeremy.’

  Finally, Jeremy Garitson let go of her hand, though his eyes still lingered on her. Corinne’s palm burned where he’d clasped it so tightly.

  ‘Has Steffie been up to mischief?’ asked Patricia, turning her attention to the roses.

  Corinne was thrown. They seemed so unperturbed by her surprise visit. They hadn’t looked once at each other. Not a raised eyebrow when she came in or a ‘who is this strange woman?’ glance.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that your daughter – that is, I assume she’s your daughter …’

  Corinne looked from one to the other, seeking some kind of confirmation. None was forthcoming.

  ‘She became involved with my son-in-law. That is to say, they had an affair. I’m afraid this distressed my daughter, Hannah, to the extent that she had a breakdown and is now undergoing psychiatric treatment.’

  ‘Oh dear, I’m terribly sorry to hear that,’ said Jeremy Garitson, almost before Corinne had finished speaking. ‘Steffie is a very passionate person. She tends to follow her heart. Not always advisably.’

  He shrugged in a ‘what can you do?’ gesture, and Corinne bit down on her lip.

  ‘It must be very worrying for you,’ added his wife, studying Corinne more closely. She was standing under one of the downlighters, and its reflection flashed in her left eye.

  Corinne had expected shock. Perhaps disbelief. Yet still the Garitsons didn’t look at one another. Just at Corinne, who found herself growing increasingly uncomfortable under their scrutiny. Her mouth was as dry as dust and she made a noise in the back of her throat, as if to clear it.

  ‘The thing is,’ said Jeremy amiably, sitting himself back down on the stool and inviting Corinne to sit, ‘Stephanie is an adult and she makes her own choices.’

  He smiled, and she noticed how much longer his canines were than the teeth at the front.

  ‘Selfish though those choices may be, there’s not a lot we can do,’ added his wife.

  ‘Not selfish. High-spirited, maybe.’ Jeremy Garitson was still smiling, but his voice was hard.

  ‘I just thought you could … She was pregnant, you know,’ Corinne blurted out.

  She hadn’t planned on saying this, knowing it to be a breach of confidentiality too far. But she needed to get through to this couple, to make them see exactly how much was at stake here.

  ‘We’re well aware of that,’ said Mr Garitson. Now he’d stopped smiling it was like someone had snapped off a fluorescent light. His deep-set eyes were little pockets of grey.

  Corinne felt herself faltering.

  ‘I just thought it would be in all our best interests, especially Steffie’s, if—’

  ‘Most things Stephanie does are in Stephanie’s best interests.’

  Patricia Garitson’s voice never varied from the pleasant, almost sing-song tone she’d used from the start, and Corinne found herself wrong-footed. She couldn’t remember ever hearing a mother talk about her child in such a curiously dispassionate way.

  ‘Look, maybe it’s better if I talk to Steffie in person. Can you give me her email address or phone number?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ said Jeremy Garitson. ‘Whatever Steffie has or hasn’t done, I’m sure you understand she’s still our daughter and we love her.’

  There was a loud snap as Patricia twisted her dark hair up high on her head with an elastic band she’d slipped from her wrist.

  ‘Well, perhaps you could just pass on the message then – ask her to stay away from my son-in-law.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Jeremy, and smiled in that way that signifies an audience is over. ‘Though I can’t guarantee anything. My daughter has a mind of her own.’

  There was something very like admiration in the way he said it.

  Corinne headed for the hallway but, as she reached the kitchen door, Patricia Garitson called out to her. Turning around, she saw that the other woman was standing in the middle of the kitchen, still with the scissors in one hand and a rose, hanging by its stem, in the other, her head cocked slightly to one side.

  ‘Look, you seem like a nice person. As a mother myself, I understand your need to protect your child. Steffie has issues, and that’s why I should let you know – let Hannah know – that she’s in London and—’

  ‘Pat.’ Jeremy Garitson’s voice carried an unmistakeable note of warning.

  Patricia Garitson pressed her lips together briefly. ‘Anyway, we’ll be sure to pass on your message,’ she said. There was a flash of steel as the scissors snipped off the tip of the flower’s stalk.

  Hurrying down the path, hearing the door clang shut behind her, Corinne struggled to make sense of the Garitsons. That beautiful house, the attractive, friendly couple.

  And yet.

 
Her eyes blurred with tears. The trip to Tunbridge Wells had been fuelled by her own sense of powerlessness. She’d hoped she might recruit Steffie’s family to help keep her away from Danny. But she got the feeling she’d only made things worse.

  Standing by her car, fumbling in her bag for the keys, Corinne heard footsteps behind her. She waited for them to go past, stiffening when they appeared to stop. There was the soft sound of someone breathing close to her neck.

  She swung around, her heart thudding.

  Standing just inches away was a heavy-set young man. His skin was pasty and puffy with a yellowish tinge, as if it had been a long time since he’d seen the sun. With a shock, she recognized him as the older version of the young boy in the framed photograph in the Garitsons’ hallway.

  ‘I’m Jacob Garitson, Steffie’s brother.’

  He was softly spoken, and Corinne had to lean so far forwards to catch what he was saying she could feel his breath on her face.

  ‘I heard you downstairs. Heard who you are. What you want.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have come. It was stupid of me.’

  ‘You don’t know what she’s like. She hurts people.’

  Corinne felt a trickle of fear running down her back. ‘Do you know where she is? Please, it’s important. I just need to know she’s not about to come back into my daughter’s life. Hannah is so fragile still.’

  Corinne put her hand on the boy’s arm but instantly knew she’d made a mistake when he jumped backwards as if she’d burned him.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—’

  She was interrupted by the appearance of Patricia Garitson, materializing as if from nowhere at her son’s shoulder.

  ‘I think we should let the lady get home now, Jakey,’ she said gently, putting her arm around him.

  Jacob visibly slumped against her.

  ‘He hasn’t been well,’ she told Corinne, and Corinne felt a sudden wave of sympathy for this woman, trying, just as she was, to keep her child safe.

  But as she drove away, watching the Garitson house, with its single glass eye, recede in the distance, it was Jacob Garitson’s soft voice that reverberated in her ear. She hurts people.

  Corinne turned up the car heater to full but still she couldn’t get warm.

  Steffie Garitson was in London. And she was dangerous.

  And Corinne would kill anyone who tried to hurt Hannah again.

  22

  Hannah

  No one is completely sure how the rabbit got into my room. There was a temporary orderly on duty in the afternoon yesterday and there’s a suggestion she might know something about it. Maybe it arrived by courier or was hand-delivered, and she brought it up to my room thinking it to be something sentimental with its missing ears. But the agency say she’s working somewhere else now, and no one has followed it up.

  In risk-management terms, cuddly toys don’t come high up on the priority list.

  ‘Is there a chance you might have put it there yourself, Hannah?’ Dr Roberts asks me at our one-to-one this morning.

  ‘Me? Why would I do that? Are you suggesting I’m deluded?’

  He doesn’t answer. Just gazes at me. And then I look around at where I am and who I’m with and realize that’s exactly what he is saying. We’re all deluded in here.

  ‘What you have to remember, Hannah, is that you were able to compartmentalize yourself before, weren’t you? The part of you that was lying about the doctor’s appointments and the scans? You were able to detach that part off from the rest of you, to the extent that, even while all that intellectual subterfuge was going on, all those lies you made up to deceive the people around you, your body steadfastly believed itself to be pregnant.’

  ‘And you think that means I’m capable of having a cuddly toy brought in, hacking off its ears for my own amusement, then laying it on my bed to freak myself out with it?’

  He doesn’t answer and I wonder if he’s thinking that it sounds a lot more reasonable than inventing a baby that doesn’t exist.

  Afterwards, in art therapy, I can’t concentrate. I keep wondering if it’s possible that I could hide something like that from myself.

  ‘Are you worried about something, Hannah?’

  Laura is leaning against the table, where I’m painting an abstract impression of a bowl of fruit. ‘Ignore the banananess and lemonness of them, just concentrate on the colour and the texture and the light and shade,’ she’d told us. ‘You don’t want someone to think, That’s a good likeness of a peach, you want them to be able to taste it just by looking at it. To imagine biting through the flesh and that burst of juice in the mouth. You want to capture the essence, not the lines.’

  I mix up a grape colour on my palette to avoid looking into her kind eyes because I know, if I do that, I’ll be lost. I don’t want to cry. Laura reaches out, nudges my chin gently so I have to look at her.

  ‘Is it Charlie still?’

  ‘No.’

  But as soon as she’s said it I realize that it is still Charlie. If Charlie was still here, I wouldn’t have gone to pieces in Group when Odelle said ‘phantom pregnancy’, or lost the plot over a stupid toy. ‘I miss her,’ I say, painting a purply-red swirl on my paper.

  ‘I know. We all miss her. She was the lifeblood of this place.’

  All of a sudden, I have an urge to confide in someone.

  ‘Charlie knew something about something,’ I say incoherently. ‘About someone. She was researching something on the internet. It was—’

  A scream makes me drop my paintbrush so that a splodge of paint spreads out across the paper.

  The new arrival, Katy, is standing up by her table with her hands over her ears.

  ‘She shouldn’t have done that,’ she says, her words coming out ragged and uneven.

  Next to her, Judith is concentrating on her painting, as if unaware of the commotion.

  ‘Judith, did you do something to upset Katy?’

  Laura’s voice is as low and gentle as ever, but there is a catch in her throat and for the first time it occurs to me that the staff, too, have lost someone they liked. They, too, are grieving.

  ‘It was an accident. My paintbrush just flicked some paint across her paper. I put too much on. It’s only the tiniest spot.’

  Laura puts her arm around Katy. Asks Odelle to clear away the spoiled paper and bring a fresh new sheet.

  I look back at my own painting and the streak of purple-red paint in the middle. Laura’s voice echoes in my head.

  Lifeblood.

  23

  Corinne

  The first thing Corinne noticed when she went through the old box of family photographs was how happy they looked. When she thought back objectively to the early days of babies and toddlers, it seemed to her that she and Duncan were in a constant state of sleep-deprived shock, the girls perpetually in the midst of a tantrum or a fight. Yet the photos paint a different picture. Beaming, round baby faces and idyllic scenes – a rumpled, toy-strewn, Sunday-morning double bed with a blur of limbs and laughter, a beach with ice-cream mouths and plastic spades, a blow-up paddling pool in Duncan’s parents’ beautiful garden in Sussex.

  There were no traces of the angst Corinne still remembered so well. The nights of Megan’s colic, when she paced up and down their tiny flat, watching the clock ticking down to the time Hannah would be waking up, full of energy and ready to start the day; the chickenpox weeks cooped up inside with two bored, fretful children, watching life go on as normal through a pane of glass.

  The second thing Corinne noticed was how few photographs she was actually in. While there were endless pictures of the girls, and many of Duncan, either on his own or with one or both daughters draped over him, Corinne herself was largely absent, except as a camera-wielding shadow on the lawn or a blurry reflection in a mirror behind the others.

  Where had she been all that time?

  And why hadn’t Duncan picked up the camera more? She remembered being so swept away by love she’d wanted to ca
pture him on film all the time. But clearly, he hadn’t felt the same. Looking through the piles of photographs, Corinne felt like a ghost in her own family.

  She’d been obsessing about families and the ways they can mess a person up since her visit to the Garitsons in Tunbridge Wells the day before. The parents had been perfectly civil, but she couldn’t help remembering how they didn’t look at each other, and how Jacob Garitson had jumped when Corinne touched him. The strain of having a daughter as disturbed as Steffie must have affected them all.

  Corinne was looking for a family photograph to take into the clinic as a present for Hannah. She’d found a lovely antique silver frame in a charity shop and wanted to give Hannah something that reminded her of a less complicated time, reminded her of who she was.

  Finally, she settled on a photograph of Megan and Hannah aged around five and seven with their arms around each other, huddling under a towel on a blustery-looking beach. Cornwall, she suspected. Though she couldn’t be sure.

  She wrapped the photo frame up in tissue paper but didn’t tape it. She’d learned her lesson after the last present had had to be ripped open by the clinic’s reception staff when she was searched going in. ‘We do it to everyone, just in case there’s anything they can use to harm themselves.’ Corinne had been outraged. ‘But Hannah isn’t suicidal.’ A look, that’s all. But it said everything. How do you know? You thought your daughter was six months pregnant. So what makes you an expert now?

  Corinne was meeting Duncan in the clinic car park for a rare joint visit to Hannah. Dr Roberts had suggested that Hannah might feel more supported if the people closest to her formed a united front with no gaps through which she might fall. Duncan had pronounced this theory ‘bollocks’ when Corinne first mentioned it but, in the end, had agreed with remarkably little argument.

  He was standing by his car when she arrived, frowning at his phone. As always, that jolt of surprise that this man, this near-stranger, should be the father of her children, her husband of nearly three decades. He’d had his hair cut short, the way she’d never liked. He looked older.