Picture of Innocence

by T J Stimson

  Except she wasn’t certain of anything anymore.

  Lucas was already in the Emergency Room when she arrived and Jacob had been taken to triage.

  ‘Can we go through?’ Maddie asked anxiously.

  ‘We’re to wait,’ Lucas said. ‘Someone will be through in a minute.’

  ‘Is he all right? Are they pumping his stomach? What did they tell you?’

  Lucas looked grey with anxiety and exhaustion. ‘You know as much as I do.’

  ‘I don’t like it here,’ Emily said suddenly. ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘I know, sweetheart,’ Maddie said distractedly.

  ‘What on earth happened?’ Lucas asked her quietly. ‘How did he get hold of a bottle of Calpol, for God’s sake?’

  She heard accusation in his tone. ‘I put the top on, I know I did.’

  ‘I never said you didn’t. But you must have left the bottle in his reach. You were the only one there.’

  His voice was cool. He’d apologised for lying to her and she’d accepted it and apologised herself for her wild accusations, but there was a tension between them, a wary mistrust that neither of them seemed capable of dispelling. They’d barely spoken since the row on Saturday, and this morning he’d left for work before she’d woken up.

  The strained silence was broken by the arrival of the doctor. He was tall and very thin, with a pronounced Adam’s apple. ‘Mr and Mrs Drummond? We’ve run some preliminary tests on your son, but we need to take a blood test to determine his levels of paracetamol,’ he said. ‘We can’t do that until at least four hours after ingestion. I gather it’s been less than two, so we’ve got a bit of a wait on our hands.’

  ‘You’re not going to do anything?’ Maddie exclaimed. ‘Don’t you need to pump his stomach or something?’

  ‘It doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid. I realise how worried you must be, but we will monitor Jacob carefully. Can either of you tell me how much Calpol was left in the bottle the last time you remember seeing it?’

  Maddie looked wretched. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It wasn’t much, Mummy,’ Emily said suddenly. ‘Not even half.’

  ‘Let’s hope you’re right,’ the doctor said, smiling down at her. ‘As I say, all we can do is wait.’

  ‘Can we see him now?’ Lucas asked.

  The doctor glanced over at Jessica and the social worker, who were talking to the nurse by the admissions desk. ‘If you’ll just excuse me for a minute, I’ll be right back.’

  They watched him confer with the two women. After a few moments, he returned and gave them a brief nod.

  ‘You’re welcome to sit with him while we wait it out, as long as you don’t mind Ms Avery and Mrs Towner joining you. Or you can take your daughter and Jacob to the playroom to help pass the time if you prefer. We don’t need to monitor him if he stays awake. As long as you don’t leave the floor, that’d be fine.’

  Maddie tried to block the hideous sense of déjà vu as they followed the doctor across the lobby and through the double doors to the triage centre. History wasn’t going to repeat itself. Jacob wasn’t going to die. It couldn’t happen, not again.

  As soon as they reached his cubicle, she scooped him out of his hospital cot before anyone could stop her and he buried his face in her shoulder, clinging on to her like a limpet.

  ‘What do you think I’m going to do to him?’ she demanded, as the stout older woman pulled out a plastic chair and sat down facing her, her hands resting on her spread knees like a prison warden. ‘Smother him with a pillow the moment your back’s turned?’

  ‘They’re just trying to help,’ Lucas said wearily.

  ‘Mummy,’ Emily said anxiously.

  Maddie forced a smile, stroking Jacob’s back as she swayed from side to side. ‘It’s all right, darling. Everything’s going to be fine.’

  ‘Look, why don’t I take him for a bit,’ Lucas said, reaching for his son. ‘You and Emily can go and get a cup of tea, or something. Come on,’ he urged, as she hesitated. ‘It’s not good for Emily to stay here. It’s making her nervous.’

  Maddie reluctantly handed Jacob to his father. Emily scurried alongside her as she stormed down the corridor and back into the hospital lobby, fuelled by anger and frustration. She couldn’t afford to let self-doubt creep in or she’d be lost. Maybe her memory was hopeless, but she was sure she’d never leave an open bottle of medicine in a child’s room.

  But she wasn’t sure, that was the point. She was so tired; she could have made a mistake. She was beginning to wonder if she should be allowed to look after her children, if she couldn’t keep them safe …

  ‘Mummy,’ Emily said, tugging her hand as they exited the hospital. ‘I need to tell you something.’

  ‘Not now, darling.’

  ‘It’s about Jacob.’

  She stopped. ‘Emily, what is it?’

  ‘Lucas said you must have left the medicine in Jacob’s room, because no one else was there, but that’s not true.’

  Maddie looked confused.

  ‘You weren’t the only one at home,’ Emily burst out in a rush. ‘Aunt Candace was there too.’

  Lydia

  It’s Davy. She sees him as soon as she enters the courtroom, high up in the front row of the public gallery, and she gasps in pleasure and surprise and starts towards him, but of course they hold her back, she’s not allowed to go to him, they usher her instead to a chair in front of a big desk with her back towards her brother.

  She twists round in her seat to gaze up at him. He looks just the same as she remembers. Older and thinner, of course; he was thirteen when she last saw him and he’s twenty now. Stubble shadows his jawline, she can see it from here, and his shoulders are broad and strong, like he’s been working outdoors. She has a thousand questions for him: where have you been? What have you been doing? Why didn’t you come back for me? But she can’t even speak to him.

  Mae is sitting right behind her; stop fidgeting! she hisses, slapping her with the flat of her hand between her shoulder blades and making her turn back towards the front of the room again.

  She wonders for a moment how Davy even knew she was here and then realises that of course he knows, everyone knows who she is and why she’s here. It’s been in all the papers, her photo and everything. The headline writers had a field day with her name, Lydia Slaughter.

  She’d thought at first that Mae was being supportive at the police station because she actually cared, but she should have known better. Mae is revelling in her new-found notoriety as the mother of a child on trial for murder. She’s sold stories about Lydia to anyone who’ll pay, sobbing her crocodile tears and describing how wild and uncontrollable Lydia has always been, how she knew she was wicked from the moment she was born. Today she’s wearing a short, bright red dress, her bleached blonde hair piled high, teetering into court on skyscraper heels as if it’s her own personal catwalk.

  Lydia looks around as she waits for something to happen and notices two rows of people on her left, gazing intently at her. She leans towards her sad-faced solicitor; why do they keep staring like that, she asks, don’t they know it’s rude? That’s the jury, he says, and Lydia looks puzzled, so he explains, they’re the people who’re going to decide what’s going to happen to you, and she asks how, but he just tells her to shush.

  Everything is such a blur, so many faces, all of them turned towards her, all she can see is a swirl of pink smears. She tries to focus on the judge, the man in the big chair in the red robe that everyone keeps telling her is the most important man in the room, but she’s tired and hot and uncomfortable, and everyone keeps staring at her. She twists up again to look at Davy, and he smiles and nods encouragement, and she feels a little better.

  Her solicitor told her she had to pay attention and look like she was taking the trial seriously, but it’s so boring, all this talking, lots of men droning on and on, using long foreign-sounding words she doesn’t understand, and her eyelids flutter and her bottom goes numb from si
tting for so long. She wishes they would hurry up and get on with it, so she can go home again. She never thought she’d say this, but after four months locked in a single room on her own with no one to talk to because they won’t let her mix with the older girls, she actually misses home. Well, Frank, anyway.

  Poor Frank. Unlike Mae, he doesn’t relish his new celebrity. When Lydia spots him at the back of the public gallery, a few rows behind Davy, she almost doesn’t recognise him. He’s aged twenty years overnight. He and Mae split up when it all came out about Jimmy during the police investigation, and she’s touched that he’s even here. She knows he’s hoping to hear something that’ll prove she didn’t do this and she wishes she could give that to him. Frank doesn’t deserve this. She and Mae, they’re no good, rotten apples the pair of them, but Frank’s a decent man.

  The trial goes on for nine days, every day the same, just talking and talking. Every day, Davy and Frank are in their places in the public gallery, and every day Mae sits behind Lydia, pinching and nipping her on her arms and the skin of her back when no one is looking. Mae puts on a show, her dresses getting shorter and tighter, laying on the crocodile tears every time she turns to face the press box. Whenever the solicitors say something she doesn’t like, which is often, she storms dramatically out of court, only to return just as showily twenty minutes later.

  Lydia tries to sit still and pay attention, like her solicitor told her, but it’s so dull and she doesn’t understand most of it. No one explains what anything means. She listens to the prosecution describe her as a bad seed, the very essence of wickedness, a vile huntress preying on innocence, a monstrosity of nature. That last one actually makes her laugh out loud, a monstrosity of nature: it sounds like something off a science-fiction show on the TV. The jury people look shocked by her outburst and she wants to tell them, I didn’t mean to laugh, but it’s just all so silly, I mean, honestly, a monstrosity of nature?

  They say she lured Julia to her death, that she was jealous of the little girl, of her pretty dresses and toys and gold curls, that she deliberately enticed her to the derelict house so she could murder her in cold blood. Lydia starts at that, no I never! it was an accident! and her solicitor tells her sharply to be quiet.

  They’ll get their chance to explain, her solicitor tells her. But even she can see it’s going to be too late by then. The jury have made up their minds. It doesn’t help that she changed her story so many times. They don’t understand she was just scared, she only lied to the police because she didn’t want to get into trouble. She should have just told them it was an accident from the beginning. Now it looks like she’s only saying that because she was caught out in her own lies.

  When it’s his turn, her solicitor gets up and talks about her troubled childhood, her neglectful mother, a common prostitute (Mae storms out again at that), her absent father, a petty criminal who’d died in a prison brawl while on remand for manslaughter – Lydia hadn’t known that, but she doesn’t much care either way – and an older brother who’d run away and spent most of his teenage years in juvenile detention after being convicted for the arson of a notorious vice den. She twists round in her seat then, staring up at the public gallery, and Davy gives her a tiny shrug, a rueful what-can-you-do? smile, and she smiles back, filled with happiness because he hadn’t abandoned her, he hadn’t just left her to Mae’s tender mercies, after all.

  She knows her solicitor is just trying to help, painting a picture of deprivation and neglect, trying to get the jury’s sympathy: it’s not her fault she grew up this way, it’s not her fault she was born, but it’s making her look like the bad seed the prosecution described, bad blood, and she can see the jury shaking their heads, deciding she’s a wrong ’un, guilty by birth.

  Will they hang me? she whispers to her solicitor, and he looks shocked. We don’t hang people anymore, he says, and certainly not little girls.

  Can I go home, then? she asks.

  He looks at her with pity and doesn’t answer.

  The jury come back the next afternoon with their verdict. Guilty of manslaughter by virtue of diminished responsibility, they say gravely, though she doesn’t understand what that means. Mae screams and sobs for the benefit of the press box, and when Lydia turns to the public gallery, she sees Frank bent over, covering his face with his hands. I’ll see you after, Davy mouths. Chin up, peanut.

  The Taylors are weeping in relief a few feet away. Have they been here every day? She hadn’t even noticed them until now.

  What happens next? she asks her solicitor. Can I go home now?

  The judge leans forward. The sentence of the court upon Lydia Slaughter is a sentence of detention and the detention will be for life.

  What does that mean? she says. No one answers her. No one will even look at her. The court is in an uproar.

  What does that mean?

  Chapter 25

  Monday 11.30 p.m.

  Maddie sat down at her dressing table and dragged a brush through her hair with quick, angry tugs. ‘Candace was the one who left the Calpol in Jacob’s reach, not me. Emily saw her in his room.’

  ‘She was just giving him back his dummy,’ Lucas sighed. ‘She’d never give him medicine without telling us and she certainly didn’t leave an open bottle where Jacob could get it. She’d never be that irresponsible.’

  ‘Oh, so I would?’

  ‘Come on, Maddie. That’s not what I said. I just meant she’s not his mother. She wouldn’t give him drugs without asking one of us first.’

  ‘Assuming she was sober,’ Maddie said bitterly.

  ‘That’s a low blow, Maddie, and you know it.’

  She knew nothing of the kind. She was trying very hard to be rational and not leap to conclusions, but even if she pushed her wilder conspiracy theories aside, she was still left with the fact that Candace had been present when both her boys had got hurt. But sniping at Lucas wasn’t going to get them anywhere. They’d been fighting ever since they’d got home from the hospital with Jacob. His blood tests had shown his levels of paracetamol had been elevated, but not dangerously so. The doctor believed he’d probably drunk no more than a quarter of a bottle of the Calpol; he’d advised them not to give their son any more medicine for at least seventy-two hours, but otherwise, there was nothing else they needed to do, medically speaking.

  Since there was no proof it had been anything other than a mistake, and in view of their recent bereavement, the social worker had agreed – reluctantly – to let Jacob go home, but she’d made it clear she considered Maddie on notice. She’d be following up with her supervisor in the morning, she warned, and Maddie could expect further unscheduled home visits. There was no escaping the subtext: whether by accident or design, you are a danger to your children, and we’re going to prove it.

  She put her hairbrush down and swivelled to face Lucas. ‘What was Candace doing sneaking into the house while I was asleep, anyway?’

  ‘She wasn’t sneaking anywhere. Emily let her in. Candace didn’t want to wake you because she was being considerate.’ He pulled off his tie and threw it on the bed. ‘She was dropping off a cheque towards the loan that you keep making such a song and dance about!’

  ‘Because you lied to me about it!’

  ‘Really, Maddie? You really want to get into this now?’

  It didn’t matter where they started, they always seemed to end up here. She was suddenly tired of it all. ‘Lucas, I don’t have the energy to keep fighting with you,’ she said bleakly. ‘Jacob’s going to be fine. That’s all that really matters.’

  ‘I’m as relieved as you are,’ Lucas said tersely. ‘But this should never have happened in the first place.’

  ‘What do you want me to say? I’m a bad mother? It’s my fault this happened? Fine.’ He started to protest, but she angrily cut across him. ‘I shouldn’t have gone to bed, even though I’m so tired I can hardly see straight. I should’ve sat by his cot while he slept and made sure he was still breathing. I should keep all medicines und
er lock and key, to be doled out by you. To be honest, I’m not sure I should ever be left alone with the children.’

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Come on, Maddie. You’re being ridiculous.’

  ‘Am I? I’m beginning to wonder if everyone’s right. Maybe I am a danger to my own children. Perhaps I should be locked away.’

  Lucas exhaled slowly. She could see him reining in his impatience, forcing moderation into his tone, which just annoyed her even more. ‘I know it doesn’t seem like it, but none of this is personal,’ he said. ‘I’m not saying that bloody social worker is right,’ he added, before she could interrupt again. ‘But we still don’t really know what happened to Noah. Maybe the pathologist has got his facts wrong, but what if he’s right? What if someone did hurt him on purpose? They have to consider it might be us. And then Jacob ends up in the hospital with a suspected overdose. What are they supposed to think?’

  ‘Yes, I know all that. I’m not an idiot, Lucas. They don’t know me. I can see how it looks to an outsider.’

  He sat down on the bed. He’d lost more weight, she noticed suddenly. He seemed shrunken within his shirt, deflated. Had it really only been ten days since they’d lost Noah?

  ‘Maddie, I know you love the kids,’ he said heavily. ‘That’s never been in doubt. Losing a child is enough to break most people – how you’ve managed to stay standing, I have no idea. You’ve been amazing.’ His voice unexpectedly softened. ‘Not just during the last few days, either. I know how difficult it was for you after Jacob was born and how hard you had to fight to pull yourself out of the depression. You have the heart of a lion and I love you for it.’

  Her throat was suddenly tight. All she needed was to know that Lucas was on her side, fighting her corner. She could cope with anything, as long as she had that.