The Perfect Mother

by Margaret Leroy

  ‘Thank you,’ says Phil. He turns back to Jane Watson. ‘So, how did your sessions conclude?’

  ‘In our final session, I told them my recommendation.’

  ‘Which was a period of assessment in the Jennifer Norton?’

  ‘Exactly,’ says Jane Watson.

  ‘I’d like to know how Daisy’s parents reacted,’ says Phil. ‘Richard, we haven’t heard from you on this.’

  Richard clears his throat. Again that nervous gesture, smoothing back his hair.

  ‘What Jane was saying made sense to me at the time.’

  His voice is guarded, careful, but I note the past tense and feel a surge of hope—that he has changed his mind, in spite of everything; that he is on my side.

  ‘But you objected, Catriona?’ says Phil.

  ‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘I thought it was all wrong for Daisy. I felt she’d be unhappy among strangers, especially as she’s ill. It isn’t what she needs. What Daisy needs is for someone to find out what’s wrong.’

  Phil turns to the man from the Jennifer Norton Unit. ‘Finally, Paul, can you tell us about your observations of Daisy since she’s been with you?’

  ‘Obviously it’s early days,’ he says. His voice is tentative, full of a studied empathy; I remember such voices from childhood. ‘She seems to display quite a lot of illness behaviour, especially around mealtimes. It’s our policy in the unit to be quite brisk about such things…’

  I feel a flicker of fear, about what they are doing to Daisy.

  ‘We’ve noticed too,’ he says, ‘that she does seem quite distressed, but she’s also rather inhibited and can’t say why she’s upset. And we’re wondering why it’s so hard for her to make her feelings known. How far this is to do with troubled family relationships—just what is going on here.’

  There’s silence for a moment.

  I have Meera’s words in my head. I make myself look round at them, at Dr McGuire, Jane Watson, Dr Carey: at their faces, still, intent, all looking straight at me. I speak into the silence, fighting for Daisy.

  ‘I want you to tell me something.’ My words fall into the stillness like pebbles into water, irrevocable. ‘There’s something I don’t understand, that nobody ever explains. Exactly what do you think I’ve done to Daisy?’

  The surprise in the room is like a tremor of air on my skin. I have said something that was not meant to be said.

  Phil gestures towards Dr McGuire. ‘Graham, perhaps you could answer that for us,’ he says.

  ‘A diagnosis of MSBP covers a number of different categories,’ says Dr McGuire. He speaks to Phil; he never looks at me. ‘For instance, there have been cases where parents have removed feeding tubes or put poison in their children’s food or tried to suffocate their children.’

  ‘But what you’re describing is child abuse,’ says Meera. ‘And surely no one has ever suggested my client is guilty of any of those things?’

  ‘If I could continue…’ Dr McGuire goes on.

  ‘I’d like you to answer Meera’s question,’ says Phil.

  Dr McGuire is tapping a finger on the table. ‘No one is suggesting at this stage that Mrs Lydgate has done anything like that. But there have also been cases where women have fed allergenic children with allergens, or have fabricated symptoms in order to put their children through unnecessary medical procedures.’

  ‘So, can I be quite clear?’ says Meera. ‘Is this what you suspect Catriona of doing?’

  ‘Something along those lines—that or emotional abuse. Those are our concerns,’ he says.

  Phil is frowning. ‘I have to say,’ he says, ‘this all seems rather vague.’

  ‘The fact remains,’ says Dr McGuire, ‘that when I first saw Daisy, Mrs Lydgate’s behaviour greatly concerned me, and I immediately wondered about some form of MSBP or fabricated illness.’

  Something has shifted; I know this. It’s there in the doubtful look on Phil’s face, and in the way Dr McGuire is talking—rapid, over-emphatic.

  ‘I’m aware this may seem a surprising diagnosis. But we know that these things happen; we have to be alert for them. And sometimes all you have is a hunch—a few clues. You have to listen to that. The life of a child may be at stake.’ He speaks with passion; on his forehead there’s a sheen of sweat. ‘I am,’ he says, ‘always and absolutely on the side of the child. This is my duty—not to avoid uncomfortable facts, not to avoid the truth, however shocking or painful. Parents have all the power. Children need someone to be unequivocally on their side. And if there is a suspicion that a parent might be in any way harming a child or impairing a child’s development, then my over-arching priority is to protect that child. That comes before everything.’

  I turn to him. ‘I know this. I know you have to take this into account—that terrible things happen, that there are cruel parents.’ I take a deep breath. ‘I spent three years in a children’s home—how could I not know? But that has absolutely nothing to do with Daisy.’

  He tries to interrupt. But Phil is looking at me; he’s nodding slightly. This gives me strength; my voice is confident and clear.

  ‘Daisy’s ill, and all I have ever wanted is to get her well again. But whatever I try, it’s twisted and held against me. If I even bring a list of her symptoms to the clinic, that’s proof that I’m overprotective, as though it’s my worry about her that’s actually making her ill. But I love my child, and everything I’ve done has been to try and make her well.’

  When I’ve spoken, it’s quiet, and fear floods me: that perhaps I have been too bold and destroyed everything.

  ‘Catriona,’ says Phil then. ‘Perhaps you could tell us why you feel so sure that Daisy’s illness has a physical origin?’

  ‘I learnt in Berlin that my father had similar symptoms,’ I tell him. ‘That’s made me still more certain—that whatever is wrong with her, it’s something that’s inherited.’

  ‘Right,’ says Phil. ‘Well, that definitely sounds like something to pursue. Does anyone want to comment?’

  ‘I’ve one thing to add,’ says Meera. ‘We’ve talked about the need to get a second opinion. I’d like to make clear that Catriona is now in a position to get that opinion.’

  ‘Excellent,’ says Phil. ‘OK. I think it’s time to tie all this up and decide where we go from here.’

  My heart thuds. I try to read his face but his expression is opaque.

  ‘Now, I have to say that in view of the concerns that have been expressed here, we have no choice but to make Daisy the subject of a child protection plan—at least till we’re more certain where we stand.’

  The cold is right inside me.

  ‘But I also want to say,’ he goes on, ‘that from what we have heard today there is no clear evidence to suggest Daisy is in danger in her mother’s care—nothing that could possibly stand up in a court of law. And I don’t think we have any grounds for keeping Daisy in the Jennifer Norton Unit against the express wishes of her mother. Obviously the judge will need to be informed, but unless the hospital is a designated place of safety under the conditions of wardship, which I don’t think it is—’ the solicitor from the Civic Centre nods ‘—I don’t see any problem with discharging her. But I do need to check out with you, Richard, if you’d have any objection?’

  Richard shakes his head.

  ‘Right, then,’ says Phil. ‘We’ll need to do a core assessment, and Lauren will visit weekly while that’s being carried out. You should all get notes within forty-eight hours. And I’d like to reconvene in three weeks, by which time hopefully we’ll have the second opinion. Are there any comments?’

  Meera puts her hand on my wrist. ‘Are you OK with that?’

  I nod.

  She turns to Phil. ‘I think the social work visits are regrettable and unnecessary, but my client will accept them.’

  Dr McGuire frowns. ‘I’d like to put my reservations on record,’ he says. ‘Though of course I have no choice but to go along with the conference decision.’

  Phil turns
to me. ‘How soon do you want to fetch Daisy?’

  ‘Now,’ I say. ‘I want to fetch her now.’

  He says he’ll ring the unit straight away.

  My eyes meet Richard’s and he smiles and a warmth of relief washes through me. And I think how everything is put right now, how it will all be healed: how Daisy is given back to us and she will be diagnosed and treated and we will all live together happily in the house that I love. I think how stupid I’ve been, to be so afraid, to feel it was all so fragile, that it could fall apart. My passion for Fergal shames me. I push it away from me, think how it was just a temporary thing, an aberration, mistaking friendship and transient attraction for something solid and real. It’s my life with Richard I want: the life that plays out in front of me now, in all its vivid precision. I see us at the dining table, enjoying something lavish that I’ve cooked for Sunday lunch, Daisy eating greedily, healthily, all of us laughing at some story of Sinead’s; or in the living room in the evening, just Richard and me together in a companionable silence, with a fire in our grate and our plum-coloured curtains drawn against the dark. All these things are there in the tumbling kaleidoscope of my imaginings, in the time it takes for him to make his way round the table towards me, weaving between the other people, who are gathering up their folders and putting on their jackets and who suddenly don’t matter any more. It’s this that I want, that I have always wanted. For Daisy to be well and all of us living together in our wide rooms full of sunlight and the smells of flowers and spices: a fortunate life, secure within the thickness of our walls.

  CHAPTER 42

  ‘Happy?’ he says.

  I nod. ‘I’m going to get her.’

  ‘Come and have coffee,’ he says. ‘She won’t be ready straight away. Phil’s got to ring them and everything. And there’s sure to be paperwork to do at the other end.’ He’s talking rather rapidly. ‘There’s a machine in the corridor.’

  He has his hand on my shoulder.

  There’s a drinks machine and a snack machine. He gets coffee for both of us. We watch silently as the liquid spatters into the plastic cups. The coffee is covered with bubbles that taste of water and a little indeterminate bitterness.

  ‘I didn’t have any breakfast.’ I fumble in my bag for a coin.

  ‘I’ve got plenty of change,’ he says.

  He buys me a Twix. I fold the paper down and take a bite. My hands are warm and the chocolate is sticky already.

  He glances at me, then away. He’s smoothing back his hair.

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ he says.

  I stand there, the coffee in one hand, the melting Twix in the other. There’s something about his voice, a tremor he can’t control. This scares me.

  ‘Not now, Richard. Surely it can wait.’ I want to push all this away, not let it happen. ‘Really, I need to go. Daisy needs me.’

  ‘I want to tell you now,’ he says.

  And I know he is going to say what he has to say. I see the shadowed house, the murky water, the windmills turning in a shiver of wind.

  He isn’t looking at me. A nervous, mirthless smile flickers across his face. ‘I mean, there’s no good way of saying this, so I might as well get straight to the point—but I’m moving out,’ he says.

  I stare at him. He thinks I don’t understand.

  ‘I’m telling you I’m leaving you, Catriona.’

  My heart lurches, my mouth dries up. Everything falls apart in front of me, our life together, the children, our house, our garden, our holidays and Christmases and all the hopes I had. I see all these losses passing dizzyingly before me.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he says.

  I shake my head.

  ‘You can’t be surprised,’ he says.

  ‘No, I’m not surprised.’

  But I put out a hand to steady myself. Now it’s actually happening, it takes my breath away, this unravelling of all these intimate entanglements—so rapidly and completely, in a bland corridor, over a plastic cup of bitter coffee.

  ‘I think it’s for the best,’ he says.

  ‘Best for who?’

  He doesn’t reply. His silence enrages me.

  ‘How can you do this? Now? When everything’s so difficult? When all this is happening with Daisy?’

  ‘We can’t carry on,’ he says. ‘You know that.’ Quite cool, as though he’s recovered his composure, now he’s told me. As though this is all fact—like a weather forecast or a tax statement. ‘After the things you’ve done. I mean, how could I ever trust you? We can’t possibly live together any more. I’d have thought that was blindingly obvious.’

  I swallow hard. ‘I know I shouldn’t have taken her—I know that. But I couldn’t bear her going to that place, I felt I didn’t have a choice.’ I’m fighting now, striving to pull us back from the brink. ‘I’m sorry if I frightened you.’

  ‘It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?’ he says.

  I want to touch him—to put my hand on his, remind him that once he loved me, make him understand—but my hands are full with the coffee and Twix and I can’t work out how to do it.

  ‘Please, Richard—if you have to go…Surely it doesn’t have to be now. Can’t we just kind of stay together for a bit—now we’ve got Daisy back?’ My voice is steadier now; it’s all very rational, a business proposition. ‘We can work together on this, we won’t be pulling against each other anymore. We know what we’re doing, I’ve found a doctor who could help her. Don’t go now. We could lead separate lives if you want. But just to keep that safety for the children…’

  He hears me out but he doesn’t respond, except to shake his head.

  ‘It’s not the right time, Richard.’

  I drop the Twix on the window sill, put my hand on his arm. He stiffens and pulls away. I see I’ve marked the sleeve of his suit with chocolate.

  ‘I’ll want Sinead, of course,’ he says. ‘Once we’ve worked everything out. But for the moment she’ll have to stay with you.’ He’s looking into his coffee cup. ‘There isn’t room at Francine’s.’

  ‘Francine’s?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘So…how long exactly?’

  ‘We’ve been close for a while,’ he says, as though this is the most routine thing in the world.

  I hear a voice in my head, quite clearly: my mother’s voice, nicotine-stained, full of self-justification, talking about my father and how he left her. ‘I have to say he could have chosen better when he left…Well, she was there…conveniently to hand…’ I feel a sense of overwhelming weariness.

  He takes a little card from his pocket. It has her address, all ready for this moment, written in purple pen, in writing I don’t recognise. That seems cruel to me, that he didn’t take the time to do it himself, that it’s written in her writing. I take the postcard, vaguely register an address in Twickenham. I put the card in my handbag.

  ‘There’s something I need to know,’ I say. Slowly, struggling with it. ‘Everything was fine till Daisy got ill. Wasn’t it? I just want to know, to get clear about this in my head. It would be hard for anyone, what we’ve been through—hard for any couple to cope with. But we were all right till Daisy got ill. Weren’t we?’

  He doesn’t reply.

  The Jennifer Norton Unit is on an old site that’s now largely disused. I drive round the perimeter road. There are separate blocks like big houses with patches of grass and empty car parks between them. Most of the blocks look Victorian; they are built of brick, now blackened, with cupolas and gables. When they were built, I guess the style of them looked Italianate, elegant—but now it inevitably suggests an asylum. Nothing much seems to happen here. I pass one or two outpatient clinics, and signs to an eye unit and to Adult Psychology. The chapel is boarded up. Some of the windows I pass have children’s tissue-paper pictures still Sellotaped to the glass, but the windows open onto empty rooms.

  I follow the signs to the Jennifer Norton, down a drive between ragged verges. It’s another Victorian b
uilding, drab in spite of the coloured curtains at the upstairs windows, with peeling window frames and neglected ivies in wan pots by the door. To the side there is a play area, enclosed within wire-mesh fencing, with a park bench and some footballs and grass that hasn’t been mown.

  The door is locked. I ring the bell. The door is opened by a young woman with a label on her lapel that says Receptionist. She has very long purple fingernails with a pattern on.

  I say I’ve come for Daisy. I have to sign in, and to give my car registration number. She indicates the chairs in the waiting area. I don’t sit down.

  ‘I want to see her now,’ I say. ‘There’s been a case conference. I can take her home.’

  ‘I’ll get someone,’ she says, a little wearily.

  A charge nurse comes. He says he is Terence. He’s fifty-ish, in a cardigan, smelling of oversweet aftershave.

  ‘I’m Mrs Lydgate. I’ve come for Daisy.’

  ‘Ah. Yes,’ he says. ‘We heard the conference decision.’ He looks me up and down; he doesn’t smile.

  ‘I’ve come to take her home. I want to see her now.’

  ‘I understand,’ he says. ‘I’ll just get everything organised.’

  I sit on one of the chairs. Silence falls over me like a blanket. I think how I hate all waiting rooms, their rubber plants, worn toys, goldfish, out-of-date copies of Prima, their thick muffling heat, the fear I feel in them. Through the open door beside the reception desk I can see a corridor, stairs to the dormitories, a plasterboard partition, a fire door. The silence is briefly broken by a sudden screaming shout from down the corridor, a high girl’s voice, a fusillade of swearing. ‘You fucking bitch, you fucking—’ abruptly cut off as somebody shuts a door. The receptionist studies her fingernails intently. Silence falls again.

  Panic grows in me, a fierce unreasoning panic that Daisy has disappeared. That she is lost or has run away, that they can’t find her. I see her on that afternoon in the New Forest when she was two or three, running and running, my fear that she would be taken from me, that she might vanish in the brightness of the light.