by Julie Corbin
‘What do you want, Kirsty?’
‘I want you to call off the police and I want you to meet me tomorrow.’
‘Okay. I’ll try.’
‘You need to do more than try,’ she shouts.
‘I realise that. What I mean is, I’ll definitely meet you. But as far as calling off the police is concerned, I can try but I can’t make—’
‘Any promises?’ She laughs. ‘Well, we both know what your promises are worth.’
‘Please, will you let Lauren go home?’
‘Where are we meeting tomorrow?’
‘You choose.’
‘How about the café at Holy Corner? Ten o’clock. And don’t tell the police.’
I tell her I won’t and then say again, ‘Please will you let Lauren go home?’
‘I’ve not been stopping her.’
She tells me that they’re in the park close to my house and that she’ll leave Lauren there. I come out of the toilet and run back along the corridor to tell everyone the news. O’Reilly has a police officer stationed at my house and he calls him at once. Within minutes he reports that he’s in the park, has found Lauren and that she’s safe and sound.
‘See, Mum!’ Robbie says. ‘I knew it would all be okay!’
I can’t smile because my face is too swollen, but relief floods through me like water through a burst dam and I tip to one side, my legs caught in the flow. ‘Let’s get you home,’ O’Reilly says, catching hold of my elbow to stop me from slamming up against the wall.
Grateful for his steadying hand, I let him lead me outside, and as I don’t feel up to driving, I go in his car with him. We’re just leaving the hospital grounds when he says, ‘Did you really bash your cheek on the table?’
‘Yes,’ I say, unwilling to elaborate on my argument with Phil.
He gives me a quick, sideways glance before saying, ‘What else did Kirsty say to you?’
‘That she knows the police are looking for her.’
‘We’ve been trying to find her all day but she hasn’t been going to any of her usual places.’
‘And she also said that I should persuade the police to leave her alone because she hasn’t done anything wrong.’
He pulls up outside my front door and turns to look at me. ‘And do you believe she hasn’t done anything wrong?’
‘No. I think she’s definitely gone too far.’
‘Good.’ He climbs out of the car and opens the door for me. ‘No more bleeding heart?’
‘No more bleeding heart,’ I say. ‘Wait a second.’ I hold his shirtsleeve to keep him on the pavement where no one can overhear us. ‘I said I’d meet her at ten o’clock tomorrow, in the café at Holy Corner. She told me she has something else up her sleeve.’
‘Okay.’ He smiles. ‘Well done. We’ll pick her up and charge her with, at the very least, reckless endangerment and breaking and entering.’
We go indoors and Lauren’s eyes widen with shock when she sees my cut and swollen face. She’s about to run towards me when her expression shuts down and she hovers beside Phil instead. ‘You should never have left the hospital without telling me,’ Phil is saying to her. ‘We were all very worried.’
‘I needed to speak to Emily,’ Lauren answers, throwing herself at the sofa and pulling Benson up beside her.
‘You know her name’s not really Emily, don’t you, Lauren?’ O’Reilly says, sitting down opposite her. ‘You understand that she’s been lying to you.’
‘She’s not the only person who’s been lying,’ Lauren says, spearing a glance my way.
‘Why don’t you tell me how you met up with each other?’ O’Reilly says, and Lauren sighs as if it’s all a bore, then informs him that she was the one who got in touch first because she wanted to find out if what I’d told her was true.
‘So Kirsty didn’t force you to go with her?’
‘No, I wanted to go,’ Lauren tells him. ‘We bought ice creams and then we took Benson to the park.’
‘And what did you talk about?’
‘Just about life, and how my mum killed her mum, and how her dad doesn’t recognise her any more.’ She thinks for a second then sends another piercing glare in my direction. ‘You think waffles make everything better but they don’t.’
‘And did Kirsty ask you to do anything?’ O’Reilly says to her.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well . . . did she ask you to give her something from your house . . . or maybe she told you something that you have to keep secret from your parents?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I don’t tell lies. Not like some people.’
‘That’s good,’ O’Reilly says. ‘But you do know that you can’t trust Kirsty?’
‘She’s only behaving like this because of what happened to her mother.’
‘But she’s been threatening members of your family, Lauren,’ he says. ‘You need to stay away from her.’
‘Okay.’ She looks down at her feet. ‘I want to go back with Dad.’ Her eyes swing around to Robbie. ‘Are you coming too?’
‘No.’ He shakes his head at her, clearly annoyed. ‘This is where we live. You need to stop being such a child.’
‘I am a child. And I’m going to pack.’ She flounces out of the room, shoulders back, feet stamping, but it’s more posture than real defiance because her eyes are full of tears. Robbie follows her and I’m left with O’Reilly, Phil and Erika. My face is pulsing with pain and I want nothing more than to lie down and lose myself to sleep.
‘I’ll be off, then,’ O’Reilly says, and I see him to the door. ‘I’ll come here for eight o’clock tomorrow and we’ll talk about how the meeting with Kirsty will pan out.’
‘Okay.’
‘And in the meantime we’ll continue looking for Kirsty but I expect she’ll be hard to find, so lock all your doors and remember to ring me if you’re at all suspicious.’
‘I will. Thank you.’
When he’s on the front step he turns back towards me and reaches for the side of my face, gently laying the back of his hand against my sore cheek. ‘He hit you, didn’t he?’ he says quietly.
I nod.
‘Has he ever done it before?’
‘No.’
‘Were there any witnesses?’
‘Only Erika.’
‘You should let me file a report, charge him with assault.’
I make an aborted attempt at a laugh, stopping immediately because it hurts too much. ‘There’s enough animosity between us as it is.’
‘You think it’s okay for people to hit each other?’
‘Of course not.’ I remember the years of abuse meted out by my mother. ‘My mother was handy with her fists. It’s probably why I’m so soft with my own children. I can barely even bring myself to shout at them, never mind hit them.’
He moves a step closer. ‘You going to be all right?’
‘Yes.’ His eyes are kind and it makes me want to cry again, so I fold my arms across my chest and look down at the step. ‘I think so.’
‘I’ll be back first thing in the morning.’ He rubs his hand down my upper arm and walks off along the path. ‘Remember, I’m always on the end of the phone.’
I wait until he’s driven off and then I go back into the hallway. Lauren has filled two huge blue Ikea bags: one with clothes, the other with soft toys and schoolbooks. She walks straight past me, dragging one and balancing the other on her shoulder. She has Phil’s keys and she opens his car, then levers the bags up on to the edge of the boot and tips them in.
‘Did you get my solicitor’s letter this morning?’ Phil says.
‘Yes, and it changes nothing,’ I say. ‘I know Lauren is angry with me at the moment but she’ll come round.’
‘You need to stop being stubborn about this.’
‘I’m not being stubborn. I have no intention of becoming a part-time parent. We drew up an agreement. We presented our affidavits to the court and they were accep
ted. That’s the end of it.’
‘Not as far as I’m concerned. My circumstances are changing and so must our arrangement.’
‘Well, you should have thought of that sooner.’
‘I will be pursuing it, Olivia. Erika and I are committed to greater involvement with the children.’
‘You go for it, Phil. No judge will give you the time of day.’ I tilt my head so that he has a perfect view of my bruised cheek. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get some ice for my face.’
I go into the kitchen and close the door behind me. Robbie is already in here, spooning dog food into Benson’s dish. ‘I’ve poured you a glass of wine, Mum,’ he says, pointing to a full glass of red on the breakfast bar. ‘And I’ve put two pizzas in the oven.’
‘Are you perfect, or what?’ I say, taking a bag of peas from the freezer and moulding them against my cheek. ‘Boy, do I feel glad that today’s almost over.’ I drink back a few mouthfuls of wine and lean against the work surface to wait until the coast is clear. I don’t want to set eyes on Phil for some time, if I can help it. I’ve had enough of him for one lifetime. And after the way Erika helped me this afternoon, I feel she’s too good for him. She has to be shocked by the way he slapped me. O’Reilly’s right – I should have him charged, or at the very least visit a doctor and have the incident recorded in case I need to use it against him in the future. Except that he’s the children’s father and the circumstances were extreme. I’d much rather we could keep a respectful distance and move forward with a semblance of harmony than be forever fighting in court.
When I hear Phil’s car pulling away, I go through to the living room and sit down on a soft seat, putting the television on to distract me from the blank wall. Robbie stays in the kitchen to ‘organise our meal’. I know he’s trying to make up for Lauren’s rejection of me and it warms my heart to see that he cares so much.
I keep the television volume low and think about what O’Reilly said about me and my bleeding heart. Up till now I’ve done my best to give credence to Kirsty’s grievance against me, but what happened today was a step too far. I’m wondering what else she’s planning and try to remember her exact words from the phone call – ‘I have something else up my sleeve and I was about to set it off when Lauren texted me.’
I wonder whether the police will arrest Kirsty on her way into the café. Or perhaps O’Reilly is going to make me wear a wire. Does that really happen, or is it the stuff of television? I have a voice-recording facility on my mobile phone. It would have been useful if I’d recorded the first conversation I had with her, but at that stage I still saw her as the more harmless Emily. However, after today’s phone call, she’s lost my sympathy. It’s as if she has no sense of boundaries. Sure, she might have mitigating circumstances, and as a doctor I can see that she’s more in need of skilled counselling than she is of prison, but I’m not her doctor, I’m the mother of two children and I’m the object of her revenge. Life can’t go on like this. Enough is enough.
I wake around six, early, because the skin on my face feels tight and each beat of my pulse sends an ache through my eye socket, down into my cheekbone and around my jaw line. I come down into the kitchen and swallow two painkillers then look out through the window. The birds are singing a vigorous morning chorus in between darting from tree to feeder and back again. The sky is a rich blue and I open the back door to go outside with Benson and breathe in the fresh morning air. It’s still quite nippy but the sun is already lifting its face above the horizon, promising us a beautiful day, the sort that shows Edinburgh off in all her glory, especially if you have the energy to climb to a high point and admire the view.
‘What happened to your face?’
For a split second I freeze, and then I turn around slowly in the direction of the voice. It’s Kirsty. She’s wearing jeans, a dark blue hoodie and flat shoes, and she’s carrying her canvas bag.
‘I spent the night in your garden hut.’ She shivers and rubs her hands together. ‘It was bloody cold! But beggars can’t be choosers and all that.’ She picks Benson up and hugs him into her chest. ‘It helps that Benson likes me.’ She tickles his tummy and he licks her face in appreciation. ‘It crossed my mind that you wouldn’t be able to resist telling that nice DI about your meeting with me with today. Am I right or am I right?’
It’s still two hours before O’Reilly arrives. My neighbours on either side have families of similar ages to mine. If I was to scream loudly, and their windows were open to the rear, they would surely hear me. Or I could run into the house. I’m closer to the back door than Kirsty is. I could slam the door behind me and call the police. But in both cases she’ll get away and that’ll mean she’ll simply pop up somewhere else when really we need her in custody. I don’t trust myself to wrestle her to the ground. She’s small, but I have no experience of physically subduing someone and I expect she’s the sort of girl who would scratch, bite and kick out at me – probably targeting my already sore face.
All these thoughts go through my head in a constant stream of data, and Kirsty second-guesses me. ‘Before you think about screaming or alerting a neighbour, I think you should know that I’ve done something which will impact very badly on you. But in this case what’s done can be undone, so it’s worth your while cooperating with me.’ She puts Benson back down on to the ground. ‘Are you going to invite me in?’
My options limited, I walk back towards the house and she follows me inside.
‘I need to use the toilet and you’re going to have to come with me,’ she says. ‘Because I don’t trust you not to call the police.’
She heads straight for the downstairs loo and I go with her. I’m wearing my dressing gown and I put my hands in my pockets, hoping to find my mobile phone, but there’s nothing in there except clumps of old tissues and a couple of dog biscuits. My mobile must still be lying on my bedside cabinet. I didn’t bring it down with me first thing, like I normally do, because I was so keen to take the painkillers. Shit. So much for my bright idea that I could record the conversation. Perhaps I can delay her long enough so that O’Reilly gets here before she leaves or perhaps Robbie will wake up and come downstairs. We’d certainly both be able to detain her. I consider shouting up to him, but he isn’t easy to wake and I don’t want to make matters worse. If she really has done something that will damage me then the sooner I know about it the better.
She leaves the bathroom door open as she pees. ‘You’ll have seen a lot of this sort of thing being a doctor,’ she says, wiping herself with toilet paper. ‘I expect nothing embarrasses you.’ She pulls her trousers up and pushes the flush. ‘I’ll wash my hands. It’s not the cleanest of huts.’ She washes and dries her hands and has a quick check of her face in the mirror. She’s far paler than when I last saw her and there are dark circles under her eyes.
‘So.’ She turns to look at me. ‘Could I have a cup of tea?’
I make tea and toast. I do it because it uses up time and I’m banking on Robbie or O’Reilly appearing. She sits opposite me at the breakfast bar and eats four slices of toast with peanut butter and raspberry jam and she drinks two mugs of tea. She does all the talking – I have yet to speak because I don’t want to encourage her. I don’t trust her. I don’t like her. I don’t want her in my house. But for now, I’m playing along. She tells me about parts she’s had in the theatre, what it feels like to wear another person’s clothes, kiss someone she doesn’t fancy, cry tears for injuries that have happened to the character, not to her. ‘It’s all about immersion and imagination,’ she tells me, chewing noisily. ‘Inhabiting the character from the inside out.’
When she’s finished eating and talking, she exhales a deep breath and says, ‘That was good.’ Then she hops off the stool, grabs her bag and I follow her through to the living room where she flops down on a seat. ‘Shame about the wall, but then the wallpaper wasn’t great, was it?’ Her eyes are restless, flitting from lamp to television to wall and back to me. ‘Lauren told me she c
hose a new pattern.’ Her eyes keep moving: window, television, fireplace, me. ‘You’re not saying much,’ she says.
I shrug.
‘I should just stop with the silly nonsense and be a good girl, is that it?’ she says tartly, her upbeat mood cracking at last.
‘I’m sorry, Kirsty,’ I say. ‘But it seems like everything’s a performance for you and I just can’t join in.’
‘Is that what you see when you look at me? A patchwork person, who lives a made-up life?’
‘Not only that. I also see an articulate, highly intelligent young woman who is using her energies in all the wrong ways. I think you should be spending time with your father because I’m sure the doctor on the ward has told you that he might not be long for this world and death is absolute. There will be no second chances for the time you missed.’
She stares up at the ceiling and sighs.
‘I understand you’re angry about your mother’s death, but you’re ignoring the facts of her cancer.’
‘I stole some of your prescriptions,’ she says loudly.
‘Pardon?’
‘When I came to your house that night, I stole three of your prescription sheets.’
‘Why?’
She delves into her canvas bag and pulls out a green prescription sheet, which she passes across to me. Nowadays, most of our prescriptions are printed out in surgery, but we still carry a pad for home visits and this script looks as if it’s been written by me. It’s not difficult to work out how she got hold of my pad. I always leave my doctor’s case by the front door and when she came here last Friday evening, knowing full well we were at the award ceremony and that she had plenty of time to snoop around, she must have been delighted to come across my doctor’s case. The script has Tess Williamson’s name and address handwritten at the top and the prescription is for a dozen, 10-ml vials of morphine for injection. Most definitely not something I would have prescribed for Tess.
