Tattletale

by Sarah J. Naughton

  You were very late back from the pub that night, and I lay awake, terrified that this time you would actually strike me for behaving like a whore with another man.

  But you did not.

  You came into the bedroom and undressed and showered, then you made love to me, silently, in the darkness. I was glad because I had made you jealous.

  Your key in the lock makes me jump. I did not hear your footsteps on the stairs.

  I wipe my face with a tea towel and run my fingers through my hair. It is short now, because you said it is more becoming for a married woman. I slip on my shoes too, because you say it is slovenly to go about barefoot, and I am smiling when you come into the room.

  You do not know that I know.

  ‘Si je?’ I say.

  ‘Mira.’ You smile back at me, but the smile only reaches your lips. Your eyes are so sad and you drop your work bag onto the floor as if it was heavy as a dead body.

  ‘How was your day?’ I say.

  You shrug. ‘We are delivering cement.’

  ‘Oh.’ I smile, blinking, wondering how it can be so difficult to talk to a fellow human being. It is as though we are from different species. But the way you look back at me, I think perhaps you feel the same. You take out your phone.

  ‘Look at these. They are cement silos. They store the powdered cement. We have to climb all the way up there.’

  You point to a tiny ladder, as narrow as a zipper, running all the way up an enormous cylinder.

  ‘You must be careful,’ I say. ‘If you fell you would break your neck.’

  ‘Better that than falling into the silo. Then we would drown in cement powder and no one would ever know.’

  ‘Don’t say that. It’s horrible.’

  You are quiet then, frowning, lost in thought. Have I upset you again?

  ‘I have made us gjelle,’ I say brightly.

  After a moment you raise your head. ‘I can smell it. It smells good.’

  ‘The baby makes it smell bad!’ I say, and try to laugh.

  Then, as if he is listening, he starts to kick.

  ‘He is kicking, look.’

  I know you would not want to see my bare belly so I press my dress against the bump and a tiny lump appears. The heel of the baby’s foot.

  I fear you might be disgusted, but now your smile goes to your eyes. You come over and cup your hand around it, and then it pushes out even further.

  ‘He knows his father’s touch,’ I say.

  For some reason tears start to my eyes, and then I see they are in your eyes also.

  You stand with your hand on the baby’s foot and we both know that you are only touching me to get to him.

  ‘Does he hurt you?’ you say.

  ‘A little. Sometimes.’ Your smile fades and I am sorry.

  That night you do not go to the pub, but go to bed straight after dinner and cry yourself to sleep. When I thought you were happy with another woman it was bad, but this is worse. Loran, what are we to do?

  28. Mags

  Tabitha is short and overweight, but close up she has the face of a supermodel, with smooth, glowing skin and tranquil black eyes.

  We sit down at the table, streaked blue by the street light through the stained glass. I’ve made her tea and myself a strong coffee. Even though the heating is up to maximum I feel cold and stiff, like an old woman, and I hunch over the steaming mug, trying to inhale some of the heat.

  She sips her tea and then puts the mug down deliberately. ‘Have you spoken to her yet?’

  ‘I’ve tried, but she’s not answering her door or phone.’ I don’t add that I’d been fully intending to break in if she hadn’t had the locks changed. That must have been what she was busy doing when I was at the hospital.

  ‘She’ll be scared.’

  ‘With good reason.’

  ‘She didn’t push Abe, if that’s what you think,’ she says. ‘She was obsessed with your brother, but it was an infantilised thing. A pre-teen sort of crush. Had he shown the remotest interest in her sexually, she’d have been terrified. That’s why she fixated on him. I think she knew underneath that he was gay and that she was perfectly safe from any adult involvement.’

  ‘What makes you so sure she didn’t do it?’ I say. ‘Seems to me British social workers have a habit of giving their clients far too much benefit of the doubt.’

  She looks down at her mug, then back up at me.

  ‘Your brother suffered her attentions with very good grace. She was happy with the status quo and his gentle discouragement did her no harm. There was no reason for her to challenge things. Even if she wanted to hurt him – and these letters contain no suggestion of that – she’s far too physically and mentally fragile. She could never have managed it.’

  I experience a strong sense of déjà vu. ‘She could have caught him off guard. There’s evidence of a struggle. And who knows what she’s capable of when she lies all the time.’

  Tabitha sighs unhappily. ‘I accept Jody is strongly self-delusional. She constructs these fantasies because the truth of her past is so unbearable. Her father was never in the forces, if that’s what she told you. He didn’t die in a plane crash and her mother didn’t kill herself.’

  I hold her gaze. Nothing she can say will surprise me.

  ‘She died of a drugs overdose a year or two after Jody was taken into care.’

  So what? Plenty of care home kids go on to lead fully productive lives and don’t become pathological liars/stalkers, so if she’s trying to make me pity Jody she’s going to be disappointed.

  ‘It wasn’t because of the drugs,’ the woman goes on. ‘Why she was taken into care.’

  I sigh. ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Her father was part of a paedophile ring. Jody and her stepbrother were traded back and forth between men on a farm in Surrey.’

  Sickened, I look away. Then I look back and my lip curls. ‘Sure this isn’t one of her tall tales?’

  ‘Five of them are serving life sentences in Woodhill Prison. Jody has severe internal injuries consistent with sustained abuse as a very young child.’

  In the silence that follows I can hear the swings creaking in the playground below.

  Abe and I used to play in the local playground next to our house. We had to be back in time for tea or my mother would shout across the little park to us: ‘Daddy’s waiting to say grace!’

  It was humiliating when that happened and the kids mercilessly ribbed us for it, so most days we made sure we were back in good time. But one day when Abe called me, I ignored him and carried on playing in the sandpit.

  He climbed in and yanked at my sleeve. ‘C’mon Mary.’

  ‘Git tae fuck!’ I shouted and pushed him so hard he fell back and banged his head on the wooden wall.

  The playground fell silent.

  Then all around me I heard the little thunks of spades and buckets being dropped into the sand. Abe was crying but no one went to comfort him. I knew why. I could feel the presence behind me, huge and dreadful as a monster from a nightmare.

  ‘MARY MACKENZIE.’

  My father’s voice was like a sonic boom echoing across the mountains behind the estate. Slowly the other children got up.

  ‘I don’t think she heard Mrs Mack calling,’ one of them said shrilly. I never did find out who had tried to defend me, but Christ, they were brave.

  He ignored them. His shadow turned the yellow sand grey.

  ‘Up.’

  I carried on playing, grimly pouring sand from a plastic watering can to make a little hill that never got any higher.

  ‘Up.’ His voice was getting quieter and quieter.

  The last dregs of sand poured out. The watering can was empty. I stared at it until the bright colours smeared together. It was so quiet you could hear the hairdryers growling in the salon down the road.

  ‘Git tae fuck,’ I said quietly.

  He yanked me up so forcefully my humerus fractured with an audible crack. I screamed, and carried on scream
ing as he dragged me by my broken arm across the cold concrete, through our side gate and up the steps to our kitchen. Only when I started vomiting did they call the ambulance.

  The doctor at Inverness Hospital had used my father’s roofing firm and wasn’t inclined to question his account of how my arm ‘twisted awkwardly when I pulled her up’. It didn’t sound so bad, and it wasn’t a lie. The other children told their parents what I’d said and they all thought I deserved it. At church the following Sunday he received understanding pats on the back while I, the cross he had to bear, sat in the back pew with my arm in plaster, fiercely ignoring the shaken heads and pursed lips. For a time after that I thought about cutting his throat when he slept, but later I discovered boys and decided there were plenty of better ways to get my revenge.

  The bastard ruined my childhood, but compared to Jody’s he was Ned Flanders.

  ‘I understand you’re angry, Mags.’ I bristle at her use of my first name. ‘You feel humiliated and betrayed because you believed her. Don’t be. She’s very convincing. Of course she is. Even she believes everything she says, on some level at least.’

  ‘So, what does she say when you pull her up on it?’

  ‘We don’t engage with her on those subjects. We let her tell herself the stories she needs to to keep herself strong.’

  ‘You let her delude herself?’

  ‘It’s harmless. The whole thing about reliving your past to come to terms with it has actually started to be discredited. Everyone deals with trauma in a different way. Some people in Jody’s position experience a complete fracturing of their personalities as they try to block out what happened to them. They become drug- or drink-dependent. Jody was a self-harmer for a while. But now she manages to keep her head above water with anti-anxiety medicine and a few harmless delusions – like the delusion that your brother was in love with her.’

  ‘But they’re not harmless, are they?’ I get up and walk to the window. ‘What about when she cried rape against those boys – her foster brother and his friend? That could have seriously affected their futures, and probably did do some real damage. Enough people still think there’s no smoke without fire.’

  When she says nothing I turn around. Tabitha is looking at me.

  ‘Don’t tell me you actually believe her.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  I laugh. ‘Oh, get real. She’s a fantasist! I feel sorry for her, I really do, but she’s clearly mentally ill.’

  Tabitha’s expression hardens. ‘Abuse often leads to mental illness, but does that mean we should never believe a victim? Of course not – although abusers have used it as a defence for years. You must have read reports of the more high-profile cases in the press, bringing up the troubled lives and suicide attempts of abuse victims. It’s done deliberately to trigger doubt in our minds: they’re unstable, their story’s a fabrication. Poor politician, or TV presenter, or whatever, their lives turned upside down by these twisted liars.’

  She pauses to take a breath. ‘That’s the line those boys’ lawyer pulled. It’s called discrediting the witness and it should have been made illegal years ago.’

  ‘It’s not discrediting if it’s true.’

  ‘She was covered in bruises. Her vagina was torn.’

  ‘Self-inflicted.’

  Tabitha shrugs. ‘That’s what the judge said. Anyway.’

  She gets up and the dark velvet skirt falls from her wide hips like a theatre curtain. I never thought a fat woman could be so beautiful. She is wearing a wedding band and a diamond solitaire engagement ring. I bet her children adore her.

  ‘You know what I’ve often thought,’ she says softly. Her eyes are nearly black, with just the merest prick of light at their centre. ‘If I were a rapist I’d choose someone just like Jody. A self-harmer. A fantasist. Someone no judge in his right mind would believe.’ She picks up her tapestry bag and slings it over her shoulder. ‘Easy meat.’

  After she’s gone, I open my first bottle of wine.

  Sunday 13 November

  29. Mags

  I wake at midday with a pounding headache and a churning stomach that only eases after I’ve made myself sick in the toilet, the sounds of which presumably echo through my neighbours’ pipework.

  Every half hour throughout the day I knock on Jody’s door, but either she’s too scared to answer or she’s managed to slip out without my noticing. Even though I know it’s pointless, that she will just spin me some new line, I have to speak to her. I know she knows more about what happened to Abe than she’s letting on, and I can’t believe the police are letting her get away with flat-out lying to them.

  By three I’m going stir crazy, so I decide to head to the Food and Wine to stock up on booze for later.

  Letting myself out of the main door onto the deserted waste ground I’m suddenly convinced that Tabitha has already spirited her out of my clutches and I go around the side of the building and look up at her window. It reflects the darkening sky. I wouldn’t even know if she was up there looking down at me.

  I realise I’m not alone. The junkie from Flat Seven is standing behind the bins, smoking. She’s wearing a short black lace dress and patent leather high heels. Heavy make-up masks the worst ravages of her face and I suspect whoever she’s waiting for won’t care that the wasted arms protruding from the lace sleeves are track-marked.

  Turning to leave I tread on something slippery and, fervently hoping it’s not a used condom, glance down. The flowers are incongruous among the fast-food wrappers and nappies. Some are still crisp and pink, the others, now brown and dying, must once have been – I catch my breath – white.

  They’re the flowers from the tumbler on Abe’s bedside table.

  The man who broke in must have thrown them down here on his way out of the building. His reasons for doing this are as mysterious as his reasons for taking them in the first place.

  I go back the way I have come, then head across the waste ground towards Gordon Terrace.

  Passing the playground I experience that familiar, unnerving sensation of being watched and turn, expecting to see the cat, or the junkie gazing balefully from the corner. But the grass is deserted and Lula’s curtains are still.

  I catch movement from the corner of my eye, but am only in time to catch a flicker of shadow disappearing down the other side of the building. Just someone on the way to the car park, perhaps, but in that case why didn’t I hear them come out of the building?

  Could it be Jody waiting for me to leave so she can creep back home?

  I call her name, and my voice sounds lonely and small in the silence.

  A minute passes.

  Should I go after her? Assuming it is her. Assuming it’s anyone.

  No. I turn back and set off quickly for Gordon Terrace, where I’m relieved to see a mother with a double pushchair trundling towards the high road. I fall into step behind her.

  Coming back from the Food and Wine half an hour later with two clanking blue carrier bags, I see a man waiting outside the main door. On the concrete beside him sits a large Amazon box.

  As I come next to him I see the address label.

  M. Ahmeti, Flat 11, St Jerome’s Church

  It must be something for the baby. A flatpacked cot or a baby bath, perhaps. She can’t lug it all the way up the stairs on her own. And I can take the opportunity to thank her for preventing me murdering Jody.

  ‘I’ll take that up for her,’ I say to the delivery man, averting my eyes from the piercings through his cheeks and eyebrow.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he says. ‘She’s on her way.’

  ‘In that case I’ll wait and help her up with it.’

  Opening the front door I see Mira’s shadow through the frosted glass, coming down the last flight of stairs. After a glance at the piles of post – no telltale white corners protrude from the pizza menus – I hold the door open for her.

  She doesn’t catch my eye as she comes out.

  ‘I’ll help you,’ I say loudly and clear
ly. ‘With the parcel. Up the stairs.’

  ‘No, no,’ she mumbles. ‘Is OK. I manage.’

  She moves past me, wafting the baby-scent of talcum powder, and takes the electronic pen the delivery guy is holding out for her. I didn’t plan to – though I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it – but something makes me glance over her shoulder as she signs the screen.

  The man slides the parcel through the doors and then goes. Mira bends to lift it and I take the other end.

  We climb wordlessly. Past the first floor of the cripple and the bitter queen, past the junkie’s flat and the fat man’s, up to our floor. The alcoholic, the fantasist, the poison-pen writer.

  She murmurs words of thanks and insists that she will be fine, but I just smile as she fumbles with her key, and say nothing. Perhaps she knows what’s coming.

  Once she has the door open she kicks the box through, slides through herself, and tries to close it again.

  But I’m too quick for her.

  The door twangs against my foot and I force it open, driving her back. We stand in the darkness of the hallway, both breathing heavily.

  She says nothing. She knows why I’m here.

  ‘You saw something, didn’t you? The night my brother died. That’s why you wrote the notes.’

  I wait for her to deny it, but she doesn’t. There is a rustle as she leans against the wall and takes a shuddering breath.

  ‘I am a bad person,’ she whispers. ‘I think Loran is having affair with her.’

  I sigh, disappointed. I thought she was going to tell me something real. Thought perhaps she might have seen what happened after all. Though Jody has managed to pull the wool over my eyes quite spectacularly, of one thing I am certain: she only had eyes for my brother. Is it possible that Mira, living right next door, could not have known that?

  ‘I don’t think so. Jody was in love with my brother.’

  ‘I know, I know. I just stupid, imagining things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What were you imagining you saw between Loran and Jody?’