by Clare Boyd
‘What you looking at you stuck-up bitch? Eh? Wanna cop a feel too, you fucking lesbian whore!’
‘She’s in weekly, that one. Can’t stay off the booze,’ DC Bennett said, looking on sympathetically. ‘Sometimes I think she wants to end up in here.’
I didn’t know how to respond, but as I looked on at the woman, half-fascinated, half-terrified, I recognised her anger. In my restrained and educated way, I had done the same in that interview room. I had lost my cool and destroyed any hope I might have had of getting DC Miles on my side. Everything I had been striving to achieve – the perfect children, the perfect family, the perfect home, the carefully calculated work-life balance – might as well have been smashed to pieces, because in that one vital second under pressure, I couldn’t hold my temper, just like this raving banshee couldn’t right in front of my eyes.
DC Bennett slammed the cell door.
My desire to rant and rave and kick was growing, billowing. It took Herculean effort to hold it down. It growled and boiled in my body until the tension to hold it there was unmanageable, as though the smallest provocation could unleash it. I was almost grateful to be locked away in the cell.
The woman’s wailing echoed through the metal door. I wondered what had prodded at her anger that night, what lay deeper, what had built up over the years to come bursting out in such a fury on the officers that night. The sound of her terrible anger became mine; this anger that I felt now, that I was trying so hard to control, to suffocate, to keep away from a naked flame. I felt the surge of a self-pitying, tearful frustration, like a lifetime of repressed rage, rise up through my body and I slapped the wall with both hands as if I was trying to shove it over. The shockwaves shot up my arm and stung my palms and I did it again, and again, until my hands were hot and red and painful. It wasn’t like me, to have done that. I wondered at the police officers watching me on their screens, imagining them laughing at me, this middle-class woman, with her tailored navy trouser-suit, slapping at the wall, but it made me feel better to let it go, to feel the pent up tension in my body ebb away.
I sat slumped on the floor, impotent, numb. However much I might have pounded on and scraped at these walls, they would remain intact, while my skin would be torn to shreds.
Tucked under my armpits, my hands throbbed. A flash of Rosie’s contorted face mid-tantrum came into my mind. I couldn’t summon the teenage photograph of Kaarina Doubek, whose face had housed all my fears about Rosie’s ill-temper. I saw only my own anger reflected back at me.
In spite of Philippa Letwin’s repeated reassurance that I would be released on bail shortly, I couldn’t help feeling that I would never be set free.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Mira’s eyes snapped open in the dark. The crunch of car tyres pulling up on the cul-de-sac had woken her from a brief, uncomfortable sleep.
She felt damp. The hardness of the slimy, mossy slats radiated through her hip and her shoulder.
She blinked away the drowsiness, trying to place where she was. On seeing the view of the back of the Bradleys’ house, her heart jumped. She was curled up on the floor of the Bradleys’ gazebo at the bottom of their garden. Then she heard the mechanical slide of the gates open and the crunch of footsteps on the Bradleys’ gravel. Frantically, she scrambled up and crawled on her hands and knees back through the hedge.
The light was on in the potting shed.
After Rosie had left, Mira had not gone back to bed. Instead, she had found the hole in the hedge where the Bradley children crawled to retrieve their balls or skitter across to Victoria and Jim and whatshername’s at number two and she had clambered through it to the Bradleys’ garden to check that Rosie was not curled up on the doorstep. Mira wanted to keep a vigilant eye on the house, to be on the look-out for Rosie, making sure Rosie knew she always had someone to turn to, that she would never have to sleep on a doorstep as Mira had done.
She put the light out in the potting shed. The yeasty smell of Rosie’s spilt drink was still present. Mira’s heart melted at the thought of the little girl’s nervy disposition. She wanted to be her guardian angel, just as she had wanted to be for her own baby. The drips of condensation on the window where the kettle had boiled shimmered in the moonlight. The rivulets morphed into steam on a shop window, somewhere in her past. She felt the damp heat of the bustling chippy on a cold winter’s evening. The waft of vinegar and salt filled her head, taking her back.
She had counted out five one-pound notes into her mother’s hand.
‘What d’you want?’
‘Cod and chips and a deep-fried Mars.’
‘You sure that’s a good idea, chubby buttons?’ her mother had said, and she went to poke at Mira’s middle. Mira leapt back, knowing her mother’s fingers would press through the flesh to hit the taut drum of her pregnant stomach.
‘All right, chill out, love, I was only kidding,’ her mother responded, looking hurt more than angry.
‘I’ve got period pains, that’s all,’ Mira said.
They had sat on the bench as they waited for their order. Her mother recommended she take some of her heavy-duty painkillers when they got home. This had been a kindness Mira wasn’t used to. When Deidre wasn’t there, she let her guard down a little. It must have been exhausting for her mother to keep up the stonewalling routine, most probably long after her anger had died away. Mira guessed that her mother had known all along that Craig was the real villain of the piece. But it was almost worse when her mother was nice to her.
Mira moved her hand to a small smooth bald patch on the back of her skull, underneath all her hair where she had twisted and tugged. She enjoyed the snag of pain when a few strands came free into her fingers.
Back in the car, the vinegar from the fish and chips stung the ulcer in Mira’s mouth and the indigestion pushed up her throat. She had had enough. The months of hiding her bump had sapped all of her energy, but no amount of putting off telling her mother was slowing down the changes in her body. Soon, it would be impossible to hide it.
There had never been a moment of doubt that she would keep the baby, but everything she had read about in the pregnancy books in the library were as different from her own experience as she could imagine. She hadn’t had a scan or a doctor’s appointment or even a chat about baby names. She had conspicuously bought tampons every month, which she threw away, bought two baggy navy jumpers from the charity shop to wear to school, eaten for three instead of two to hide the bump under fat, rolled her socks down to conceal her swollen ankles, turned down all invites to the parties her friends were going to.
All the way home from the fish and chip shop, blood had roared in her ears, drowning out the car radio. She was never going to feel ready, but she couldn’t hold it in any longer.
They parked up outside the house.
‘Mum, wait a seccy.’
‘Yes?’ Her mother replied irritably, her hand poised on the car door handle.
‘I’ve got something to tell you.’ The words were more like a wretch.
‘If you’re going to tell me that you failed your Geography mock, I know. The teacher called me.’
Momentarily side-tracked, Mira said, ‘What? Mr Dilcot called you? What did he say?’
‘He said your marks were crap and he didn’t understand why. He said you’d fail your O levels if you carried on like this.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything to me?’
‘I didn’t want to upset you, you know, after everything you’ve been through with Craig and everything,’ she explained, looking away. ‘Come on, these’ll get cold.’
Mira was touched. She wanted her mother’s show of affection to last. This could have been the perfect diversion, to back out of her decision to tell her. Or, this could be the perfect time to tell her, while she was in a good mood.
‘Mum, you know how I’ve got really overweight and everything?’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you ever wonder why?’
‘I guess you’re d
epressed about that shit-bag dumping you.’
‘Nope.’
Her mother’s hand fell from the handle and she turned to face the passenger seat where Mira sat, the veil of denial had dropped clean off her eyeballs as they ogled Mira’s stomach.
‘You’re not.’
‘I’m twenty-six weeks.’
‘Christ!’ Her mother glared at her for a second, speechless, and then leapt out of the car and slammed her door. ‘No, no, no, no, no, NO.’
Mira stayed put inside the car. ‘Yes,’ Mira mumbled to herself.
Her mother charged round the front of the bonnet to her side and motioned at her to wind down the window.
‘I’m not having a baby in my house, get it?’
‘But where else would I go?’
‘I don’t want to be a bloody grandma!’ she yelled, stamping to the front door.
Mira noticed how her mother’s hands trembled as she struggled to put the key in the lock. It was the first time Mira had considered how much stress this would put on her mother and she felt she had been heartless to tell her about her pregnancy.
Too scared to go in the house, Mira rolled up the window and ate her fish and chips and Mars Bar in the car. The hot food had steamed up the glass, where she had finger-traced a stick figure with a big round belly, within which she drew a heart. It had made her smile. Mira was warmed by the food and the little life radiating from her womb. But the heat became scalding.
Her hand jerked back from the potting shed window. The steam from the kettle that she must have clicked on by mistake burnt her wrist. She cradled it. Tears fell onto the back of her hand. She yearned for Barry and ran across the garden into the house.
Before she returned to bed, she found the brown envelope in the dining room and picked out the photograph of the baby-blue rabbit. Tearing it away from the rest of the picture, she curled her fingers around it and climbed the stairs. With it tucked in her palm, she snuggled into Barry, drawing heat from his body until she felt a little less empty inside.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The curtains in the children’s rooms were open and their beds empty. It was as though the soul of our home had left with them. The silence scared me.
I went straight upstairs to the bathroom for a shower. The smell of urine hung off my clothes. The sweat – that now reeked of that recent fear – was cold and wet in the lining of my suit jacket as I shrugged it off. In the mirror, before the steam from the water obscured my face, I saw my ghostly, unkempt appearance. My thick eyebrows would usually enhance my eyes, bringing out the blue, but instead they hooded them, and my lips were cracked where they would usually be plump. If I had forced a smile like Audrey Hepburn’s, they would bleed.
Just as I opened the shower door, I heard something outside the bathroom and I grabbed a towel to cover myself. Blood rushed through my head, my heart was in my mouth.
‘Hello?’ I called out, unable to hide the trepidation in my voice.
‘Gemma?’
I dropped my head in my hands and cried out with relief. ‘Peter! Oh my God!’
When he opened the bathroom door, it was as though it was the first time I had ever laid eyes on him, as though I fell in love with him all over again. There he was, his face scrunched from sleep and his body musty in his boxers as I held him to me.
‘You’re here!’
‘Of course I’m here.’
‘I didn’t think you’d see my text. I thought it was too late.’
‘I couldn’t sleep until I heard from you.’
I laughed and I saw tears well up in his eyes as he watched me laugh.
‘Can you believe this is happening?’
‘No, I literally can’t. Rosie won’t talk to me. She’s clammed up completely. The only information I know is what DC Miles told me.’ He was shaking his head, bemused, searching my equally distraught face for answers I couldn’t give.
‘She’s lying.’
‘Of course she’s lying.’
‘Did she really not say anything about it to you?’
‘Totally stonewalled me, and everyone else. In fact, she was mute all evening. She wouldn’t even open her mouth to ask for the most basic things.’
‘Does she understand what she’s done?’
‘She can’t have meant to lie. She must have got her words twisted or got carried away or something.’
‘Maybe’. I thought back to my own interview, and how pushy DC Miles had been, and how confused I had become, but remembered Philippa Letwin’s information about TED: Tell me, Explain to me, Describe to me. The police were not allowed to lead a child. But I was not in the mood to spell this out to Peter. Rosie could wrap Peter around her little finger, she was his princess, the apple of his eye, there was no way Gemma could broach with Peter the idea that this whole nightmare might have been predicated on malice or spite or revenge.
‘When Rosie’s home, we’ll talk to her together.’
‘What if she changes her statement and the police think I’ve forced her to?’
When I thought of talking to Rosie, I couldn’t disassociate her from the police, as though they were in cahoots and I was their shared enemy.
‘Kids must lie to the police all the time, they must be used to it.’
‘I can’t believe she said all those awful things about me,’ I said, feeling the tears push at my tired, dry eyes. For the first time that day, in the face of Peter’s unquestioning loyalty, I became the victim when before I had been the accused. There was acute relief in this, but there was horror in it too: to play the victim, I had to believe that my own daughter had turned against me.
‘Are you okay?’ He stepped closer, took my arms and flipped them over, as though checking them for damage, and ran his hands slowly, gently over our baby inside me, and finally checked behind each ear. I laughed, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Making sure you’re intact.’
‘Can you believe I’ve been locked up in a cell, Peter? And they took my fingerprints and everything.’
‘Oh Gemma.’ He took my hands in his and kissed my palms, which still felt raw. I winced. He stopped kissing them and brought them right up to his face.
‘These look sore. What did they do to you?’
I pulled them back to me and looked at the thread-thin lines of broken skin.
‘Nothing. I tripped.’
‘How did you trip?’
‘I broke my fall up the steps on the way in, that’s all. It’s doesn’t matter. I’m fine. Honestly, I fine.’
If the police had seen the footage of me on CCTV in the cell, they might not have identified the meek victim I was portraying in front of my husband now. It was simpler to be the victim, to ignore the bad decisions that might have brought me here. I didn’t want to confront the fact that the past might finally be catching up with me.
He moved closer to me and kissed my lips and then ran his finger along the cracked skin. ‘Have a shower and come downstairs. I’ll make you some toast and tea.’
I ran my eyes across Peter’s gentle features, wondering if I could tell him about the fear and anger that had overwhelmed me in that cell; contemplating how my true feelings would sound to him. I felt a pain in my heart, like a tear, when I realised it might be dangerous to say too much to this man, my husband, with whom I had been through so much.
Before the recorded interview with DC Miles, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to imagine a scenario when anyone – let alone Peter – would have to choose, when any kind of rift would be great enough to pull us apart, but I was changed. My world was to be divided between those who believed me, and those who doubted me. I would be on the look-out for signs in everyone close to me.
I could never forget that Rosie was his flesh and blood.
Cynicism and distrust had entered this new world of mine, and it sent bolts of loneliness ricocheting through me.
* * *
My body was wrapped up in a snuggly dressing gown and my skin had that after-shower clean f
eeling. The physical smells and sensations of the cell were sloughed off. The toast and the tea were warming me inside.
‘Is there really nothing this Philippa woman can do?’ Peter asked, buttering more toast than we could ever eat.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘So you’re really saying that this social worker woman will have the power to stop you being alone with your own children?’
Peter was lagging behind. My shock had been and gone. After I had been released from the station on bail, Philippa had taken me for a coffee at a coffee shop next door to the police station. She explained what could pan out for us as a family over the next few weeks: safeguarding plans, surprise social worker visits, intrusive questioning, police statements garnered from family and friends, doctors’ examinations, doctors’ reports, medical histories, teachers’ reports, multi-agency meetings, and so on. Our lives were to be exposed to strangers in gruesome detail. Much of it I wasn’t able to take it in. And there was nothing I could do about any of it anyway, unless Rosie changed her story. The CPS hearing, set on 4 December 2017, four weeks away, was a future I couldn’t fathom.
‘Yes, it’s called a safeguarding plan.’
‘I don’t understand how it’s going to work,’ Peter said.
‘Basically, you’ll have to police me.’ My cheeks burned with fresh humiliation.
‘I can’t do that.’
‘You’ll have to. If I am caught alone with them, I’ll be in deeper shit than I already am.’
‘But how will they know?’
‘Social Services make surprise visits apparently, and they’ll ask the kids and we can’t ask the kids to lie.’
The irony of that statement hung in the air between us, but both of us let it go. Plainly we weren’t ready to talk about Rosie again. The logistics of a safeguarding plan was easier somehow. There were clear parameters to work with.
