The Lie of You: I Will Have What Is Mine

by Lythell, Jane

  I waited until my heart had settled. Then I went down the stairs carrying Billy. Wayne had left a piece of folded paper on the mat. I read his rather childish handwriting.

  Just checking you arrived safely and everything OK after big storm. Call me if you need anything. Best Regards, Wayne’

  All my life men have paid unwanted attention to me. Arvo Talvela said I should look on it as a sort of tribute. I do not see it that way. I do not want these unknown men to intrude into my life.

  During breakfast I listened to the news. There was no mention of Billy. The police will be involved by now and she will be demented. She will have named and accused me of course. They will have spoken to the caretaker at my flat and probably to Philip Parr and to Robert too. One thing I do regret is the pain this will cause my father when they track him down. He will be so shocked, and so worried about me.

  I have to be careful yet I would like to get out of the house for a few hours at least. I cannot tolerate another day cooped up inside with the incessant crying. I tied a scarf around my hair, put Billy in the buggy and locked the cottage up. It was another calm, clear day. As I pushed Billy along the path he stopped crying and kicked his legs up and down.

  We reached Deal. I pushed him along the paved path that runs parallel with the beach. How I would like to be able to run over those pebbles and sit at the water’s edge as I did as a child. We got to the lifeboat station. There were seagulls circling the water’s edge and their raucous cries filled the air. A profound and mournful weariness was creeping over me.

  I will never forget the last time I saw Tanya alive. It was the holidays and we had gone to grandfather’s house in the country, as we always did. These holidays were very adult affairs. I was the only child in the house. There were lengthy family dinners with talk about books and music. My mother would go on long walks with her two dogs. Sometimes I went with her. She made it clear that she preferred to go on her own. She said she could walk further and faster without me. I had packed my new pink satin ballet shoes, which were my pride and joy. I practised my dances in Grandfather’s large sitting room.

  My father liked to go fishing and would always ask me if I wanted to go with him. He said he liked to have me along. I sat by his side on the riverbank while he cast his fishing line and it plopped into the water, making concentric circles that moved outwards. He would hunch forward, as if entranced by the sight of the water’s surface, and I would play with my glazed pottery mouse. They were peaceful afternoons.

  On this particular day I was skipping through the hall. Aunt Tanya had been moved into a ground-floor room that looked out over the garden. I had already been in the house a week and had not seen her once. Usually I spent some time with Tanya. She was patient with me and would teach me songs or read to me. This time I was told she was too ill to have visitors to her room. It was lunchtime and the door to her room was open. I looked in as I reached it. Tanya was in her wheelchair. She was thinner than the last time I had seen her. A nurse was bending over her. The nurse held Tanya’s head back against the headrest of the chair with one hand and with the other she was feeding Tanya with a spoon, like a baby is fed. Tanya looked over the nurse’s shoulder and our eyes met. She did not acknowledge me or smile at me, as she usually did. She just looked at me and her eyes were the saddest eyes I ever saw. Then the nurse became aware of my presence in the hall and she closed the door. I could never be like Tanya. I could never be their gentle suffering angel.

  It has been such a long lonely journey since I first heard I was ill. I have spoken to no one about my illness since Arvo died. The time has come to tell Markus. He needs to know that I am dying. And he needs to know about our baby. I must see Markus so that I can die in peace.

  I pushed the buggy towards the parade of shops until I found a phone box that worked.

  Kathy

  OCTOBER

  I lay in bed, waiting for Nick to call. He said he’d ring and let me know when the appeal was being broadcast. Markus had gone out and I can’t understand how he can function normally when my Billy may be dead already. The pain was overwhelming. I could see no point in getting out of bed to get washed and dressed yet bed was a place of torment too.

  My breasts were so painful, swollen and hard with the milk Billy would have drunk over the last two days. I ran a hot bath and squeezed the bath sponge over my breasts again and again then squeezed at them till the milk came out, and it eased the physical pain a bit.

  After my bath I sat at the kitchen table draped in towels with no energy to dry or dress myself. It was a very old table. I traced the lines on the wood. My aunt Jennie had it for years and so many dramas had been played out around that table. I’ve seen a few since I’ve lived here. I remembered the morning we confirmed my pregnancy and Markus and I sat at this table, stunned at the news and, in my case, filled with a tremulous happiness.

  And I thought that what was happening now was the most profound drama of all, because if anything happened to Billy I would never be the same person again. Would I even be able to go on living? I’m not the same person I was just two days ago. I thought that I was suffering then because things were so tense and unhappy between Markus and me. That was nothing, nothing at all; how could I have made such a fuss about that? I could have got over him not telling me about his relationship with Heja.

  I should have known that Heja would not be satisfied with just making me wretched. She wants to destroy me. There must be something else behind this monstrous hatred of hers. It is abnormal and it must come from some deep disturbance. It can’t just be because Markus left her. Could something else have happened to her; could she have had a miscarriage?

  It suddenly occurred to me that Robert might know something. I helped him once so perhaps he might help me now. I rang his practice immediately and a woman said he was with a patient and would be out in twenty minutes. I said it was urgent that I speak to him as soon as possible and I gave her my name and number. She said she’d get him to call me as soon as he was free. I got dressed and I waited. My phone rang and it was Robert, and I asked if I could come and see him straight away. He said he was so sorry, he had a patient waiting for him and he couldn’t cancel. He would be free in an hour and a quarter. He was very precise about that, pedantic almost, and he gave me the address. His practice is at Belsize Park.

  Robert’s consulting rooms were in a white stucco, double-fronted house. There were a number of practices there with a shared waiting room on the first floor. The receptionist told me to go straight in and buzzed open a door on the left. I looked into his room and saw the couch, where all his patients must lie down. He led me into the room, closing the door behind us.

  ‘Can I get you some water or tea?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘Have the police been in touch?’

  ‘Yes, a detective called Nick Austin. Please, sit down, Kathy.’

  I perched on the edge of a chair.

  ‘Heja has taken my son Billy,’ I said.

  ‘He didn’t quite say that...’

  ‘She has. And I know she’ll hurt him.’

  The unshed tears were pushing up my throat and behind my nose. Then they started from my eyes as if they had a life of their own. I rubbed hard at my eyes.

  ‘Don’t push the tears back in. Let them come out,’ he said.

  I let the tears out and it was a relief to sit there and sob. He handed me a box of Kleenex.

  ‘I don’t think she will harm Billy. I really don’t...’

  ‘How can you say that when she’s taken my baby?’

  ‘Why do you think she took Billy?’

  ‘Because of Markus.’

  ‘Markus...’

  ‘Because I’m with him now; because we have a son; because of Markus! I know you recognized him when you came to my office.’

  ‘Yes I did recognize him. I met Markus, just the once, at Heja’s flat.’

  ‘When was this?’

  �
�In July. I guessed they had been lovers once.’

  Another stab of pain; Markus told me he had seen her when I was in Lisbon, and that was in June.

  ‘They were together for nine years. Markus left her suddenly, about seven years ago.’

  ‘I picked up there was something powerful between them.’

  I discovered that the pain of jealousy, however sharp, was as nothing compared to the pain of losing Billy.

  ‘Markus told her he wouldn’t see her again. She resigned and told me she’s going back to Finland. She didn’t go. She stayed here all the time because she wanted to take Billy and destroy me. And you don’t think she’ll hurt him!’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘And I’m sure you’ve lost your professional detachment!’ I said it angrily. How could he still believe in her? My angry comment stung him, I could tell.

  ‘I came here because I hoped you’d try to help me. She didn’t love you, you know. She’s only ever loved Markus!’

  ‘That is possible,’ he replied calmly.

  ‘Then help me; please help me. Tell me what’s going on in her head.’

  He stood up then and walked up and down his room and it was as if he had moved into analyst mode.

  ‘I’m sure Heja has been through some kind of trauma. And I’m certain she was in analysis for a long time, though she flatly denied it. She also has a difficult relationship with her mother. I was struck by how she called her mother by her first name. And her mother is cold towards her too.’

  ‘She is very cold.’

  ‘She is a profoundly reserved person. Whatever trouble she has had, she keeps it locked within herself. Can I ask you a question, Kathy?’

  I nodded and he sat down now, opposite me.

  ‘How long have you been with Markus?’

  ‘Just over two years...’

  ‘So Billy came along quickly.’

  ‘Yes, we’d only been together six months when I got pregnant.’

  ‘That is fast; a new relationship and a baby. You are rather different people, aren’t you? You seem a very open and direct person, Kathy.’

  ‘And Markus isn’t? I know, but Billy is everything to us.’

  ‘Of course he is. Perhaps it has been difficult for you both though?’

  I was starting to feel uncomfortable now.

  ‘Yes,’ I said shortly. ‘It’s not been easy.’

  He looked at me silently, waiting for more.

  ‘It’s not been easy. We both want it to work, though, and it was OK, it was good, until she came into our lives.’

  ‘You said just now that Heja has only ever loved Markus.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you also believe that Markus only ever loved Heja?’

  I looked down at my hands in my lap and at my scrunched wet Kleenex and I felt vulnerable and shaky. I hadn’t expected this, that he would make me feel so exposed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said finally.

  ‘Well, I think that Heja is very possessive in her attachments,’ he said.

  ‘Intensely possessive; Markus said that she never let go.’

  ‘She will think Markus still belongs to her. She hoped she could get back with him. Then she finds he has a son he adores. She thinks if she takes his son he will come to her. So the last thing she would do is hurt Billy.’

  I sat and thought about what he’d said and it sounded almost reasonable. Then I remembered that we were dealing with Heja and she did not behave like other people did. And I remembered Markus’s fears about provoking her, and he was the person who knew her best of all.

  ‘It’s deranged, what she’s done. Markus is beside himself. He can’t forgive her for this.’

  ‘It is deranged behaviour, and I think that’s because Heja is afraid.’

  ‘She’s afraid? What’s she afraid of?’

  ‘I suspect she may be ill.’

  ‘How ill?’

  ‘Very ill, I think; possibly terminally ill...’

  It was a shocking moment. My terror, which I had thought could not be any greater, exploded.

  ‘You’re saying she’s dying?’

  ‘I think she is very ill.’

  ‘Then don’t you see? She has nothing to lose. Oh, God, she is going to kill Billy!’

  ‘No, Kathy. It doesn’t work like that. Heja is someone who has to be in control of her life. This will be her cry for help.’

  ‘Cry for help! The clock’s ticking on my son’s life and you sit there defending his kidnapper...’

  ‘Kathy...’

  ‘You’re like the rest of them,’ I shrieked, ‘always trying to protect her. Never once seeing her for the monster she is.’

  He just looked at me.

  ‘What is it about her?’

  I slammed out of his room.

  Heja

  OCTOBER

  The phone box worked and a woman put me through to him.

  ‘Thank God you called. You’ve got Billy?’

  ‘I’ve got Billy. He’s safe.’

  ‘What the fuck are you doing, taking my son?’

  ‘Don’t shout at me, Markus.’

  ‘Where’s Billy? Where are you?’

  ‘Stop shouting or I’ll hang up.’

  ‘I’m going out of my mind. Is Billy OK?’

  ‘Billy is fine, just fine. I need you, Markus.’

  ‘Tell me where you are.’

  ‘I need you. I’m dying.’

  ‘What...?’

  ‘I am dying. I have what Tanya had and I will be dead soon and I had to tell you and I’m going now...’

  ‘No! Wait, Heja. Wait! Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How can you be dying?’

  ‘My muscles are wasting away.’

  ‘But you were OK when I saw you.’

  ‘I wasn’t. I’ve got a terminal muscle-wasting disease. It’s in my genes, Markus, the precious Vanheinen genes...’

  ‘How long have you known this?’

  ‘I found out just after you left me.’

  ‘No...’

  ‘Yes... And no one else knows.’

  He was silent for a moment.

  ‘That’s why you came to London?’

  ‘Yes. I needed to see you again before I died, and while I could still move.’

  Then there was silence again and I think he was crying.

  ‘Where are you? I’ll come at once. The police are after you.’

  ‘I know they are. I can’t tell you Markus. You told me you couldn’t see me again...’

  ‘I didn’t mean it. Tell me, Heja. Please...’

  ‘You will just tell the police and—’

  ‘No! I give you my word. I’ll come at once and I’ll help you. Please, Heja, it has only ever been you.’

  ‘You’re just saying that because you want Billy.’

  ‘I want Billy, and you too. I have been so lonely in this marriage. Tell me where you are, Heja. I won’t betray you. You know I won’t. You have my word.’

  I wondered then if Tanya had had a great love in her life. I never knew of anyone. I hope she did. It is the most important thing to have loved someone deeply.

  ‘If you are lying to me, I will kill myself and Billy,’ I said.

  I told him where we were because Markus does not lie. He was the truest man I ever knew. I told him to come to the lifeboat station on Deal seafront and I would meet him there. He said it would take him at least two hours to reach Deal. I drove back to the cottage.

  The world was receding. The world mattered to me once. Markus was right when he said that I cared about my job and my celebrity and that the way I embraced the world of the media had come between us. I talked about this with Arvo Talvela, after Markus had left me and I knew I was ill. I told him that my work had been an issue between us. He asked me if I felt that Markus had resented my success. No, I told him, I didn’t think so because Markus never valued material success in that way. It was more that he made me feel shallow for being
a successful media star. Arvo said that must have felt like a rejection. And it did because I liked my work. Then he asked me what it was I liked about the job and I remember our exchange so well.

  ‘I like feeling at the centre of things. Working in a newsroom, you get to know what is happening before other people do. And, yes, I do like the recognition too. The adulation, as Markus once described it!’

  He said, ‘Like it? Or need it? Perhaps television is like the light in a mother’s eyes.’

  I was puzzled and he repeated the phrase.

  ‘You are drawn to television because it is like the light in a mother’s eyes.’ I thought about that for a few minutes. He knew that my mother’s eyes never lit up when she looked at me.

  Kathy

  OCTOBER

  When I got out on to the street I was dizzy with panic. I saw a taxi and hailed it, knowing that I had to see Nick straight away and tell him what Robert had said. Was he right and could Heja be dying? I told the driver to take me to Marylebone police station. So Markus had been right about the photographs all along and we had to stop them at once. She was mad and she was ill and she had my baby and if she saw her picture and heard her name on television it could tip her over the edge.

  And yet Robert continued to defend her. Cry for help! They are all fascinated by her – Markus, Robert, Philip Parr.

  We arrived at the police station and I called Nick from my mobile, saying I was in Reception and needed to see him at once. His assistant came down and led me up to his office. I was trembling, on the edge of hysteria.