Picture of Innocence

by T J Stimson

  The girls are filled with morbid curiosity. They want to know what it felt like to kill someone. At first she doesn’t want to talk about it, but then she realises this is her currency now, her infamy, this is what she has to trade for friendship and cigarettes. These girls are here because of family and personality conflicts, not because they’ve committed any serious crimes. She’s in a league of her own.

  She lies in her narrow bed and stares up at the ceiling the first night, listening to the grunts and murmurs of the other girls. Until now she hasn’t really thought about Julia, she’s blocked what happened from her mind. She knows she should feel remorse and guilt, that’s what any normal person would feel, but she doesn’t feel anything. Something inside her is dead or broken, the part of her that feels sorry for people, the part that should tell her not to do something bad. She doesn’t want to be this way. She wants to be normal. She wants the girls to like her, she wants to have friends. She realises that if she wants to fit in, she has to learn to compensate, to train herself to behave as if she hears the warning voice that other people hear. It’s not her fault that a part of her is broken, but she can use her wits to work around it. She’s smart; Frank always said she was a quick study. She’ll be like those people with no arms who learn to paint with their feet.

  Six weeks after her arrival, she’s called into the Governor’s office and curtly told she’s being transferred the next morning. The Governor doesn’t explain where she’s going, he doesn’t tell her anything else, only that it’s a permanent juvenile detention facility where she’ll be staying until she’s grown-up and can be moved to an adult prison.

  She doesn’t sleep a wink that night. She’s well aware her new place isn’t going to be a cushy number like the remand home. She’ll be in amongst teenagers who’ve been in the system their whole lives, toughened and brutalised by years of fighting for survival. She’s no pushover, she’s survived Mae and Jimmy and all the rest, but she’s eleven years old, fresh meat. Easy prey.

  But Font Hill isn’t what she expected at all. It doesn’t even look like a prison; she’s reminded of a large country hotel Frank took her to once, on one of his lorry deliveries. There are locked doors and rules, of course, but there’s also a large garden, and proper classrooms. There’s a well-equipped art room and even a pottery kiln. In the garden, there’s a greenhouse and allotments which they’re expected to tend, and a shed for pets. Lydia is surprised they’re allowed to keep pets; you’d have thought it’d be tempting fate, she thinks, putting a lot of defenceless animals in with a bunch of hardened criminals.

  But of course they’re not hardened criminals at all. They have certainly committed serious crimes – one or two have even killed someone, like her – but they’re also children, even if, as usual, she’s the youngest by quite a few years. She’s also the only girl.

  She loves Font Hill. She loves the gardens and the classrooms and the straightforwardness of boys: when they disagree, they punch each other, and then it’s over and done with. There’s none of the slyness of girls, the subtle exclusions and betrayals. What you see is what you get with boys. They treat her like she’s one of them, and for the first time in her life, she makes some real friends.

  And she loves Mr Tallack, the Governor at Font Hill, though he doesn’t like anyone to call him that. He says it smacks too much of prison and cabbage (she laughs when he says that, everywhere else they’ve sent her does smell of cabbage) and he insists this isn’t a prison, it’s a reform school in the truest sense of the word. He tells her Font Hill is a ‘tightly run ship’ and there’s no preferential treatment. By that, he says, he means they’re all equal, staff and children; they all eat together, the same food, and they work together. He promises that if she keeps her head down and does her best, she’ll be allowed to leave one day. Not just to go to another prison, but to be set free.

  Free. It’s the first time anyone has offered that hope to her, even her solicitor didn’t tell her that, and she is suddenly filled with determination. She will do whatever it takes to win back her freedom. She didn’t think she wanted it, she’d told herself she didn’t mind being locked up, it was better than what had gone before, but the prospect of walking out of here, of being able to go and live with Davy, to be free, makes her realise she wants it more than anything.

  If she can’t fix the broken piece inside her, she will find a way to make them think she has.

  Chapter 27

  Tuesday 6.00 p.m.

  Vomit rose again in Maddie’s throat, and for the second time, she had to pull the car over to the side of the road. She tumbled out of the door and bent double, retching into the long grass. The thought that Lucas might have deliberately hurt Noah for money was literally too horrific to stomach.

  When she’d finally stopped heaving, she leaned against the side of her Land Rover and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She’d spent the last three hours trying to pull herself together enough to drive home from the sanctuary and confront Lucas. But every time she tried to frame the question in her mind, her stomach lurched again.

  She could barely get her head around the notion that Lucas might have hurt Noah by accident. A split second of temper, a momentary loss of control; it was hard to imagine that happening to Lucas, but she could just about accept it was possible. She knew better than most how anyone could be driven to the edge by frustration and exhaustion. But the idea that he might have harmed their baby on purpose, that he could deliberately set out to kill him, to murder him, was simply unthinkable.

  And yet here she was.

  She climbed back into the Land Rover but didn’t start the car again. Instead, she stared unseeingly through the grimy windscreen as dusk gathered. Everything she knew about Lucas told her DS Ballard was wrong. To kill a child, you’d have to be devoid of the most basic sense of humanity. You’d have to be a psychopath, completely lacking in empathy and utterly amoral. That was so far from Lucas, it would be laughable – if it wasn’t all so bloody, bloody awful.

  Because in the midst of all this, in the midst of the police investigation and the financial intrigue and the revelations about how and why Noah had died, at the centre of it all was the fact that she had lost her child.

  Maddie rested her forehead on the steering wheel, consumed anew by the terrible, aching grief that leached the life from her and hollowed out her soul. There was something fundamentally wrong with outliving your own child. It went against every natural law. In moments like this, she didn’t really care why her baby had died. Nothing would bring him back. Somehow, she had to learn to accommodate the enormity of her loss, to live in the spaces around it. Reason told her time would teach her how to survive, but right now it was hard to imagine it ever being possible.

  She jumped as her mobile rang on the passenger seat next to her and glanced at the screen. Lucas. She let it go to voicemail.

  Had she really been sleeping with the enemy for six years? Lying next to a handsome sociopath capable of murdering her child in cold blood? She’d made a point of not prying into Lucas’s past when they’d met, allowing him to share pieces of his history with her over the years as he was ready. It wasn’t that she didn’t care; it just hadn’t seemed relevant.

  She remembered joking to her mother, when she’d first met Lucas, that at least she didn’t have to worry about vetting him. ‘They don’t let just anyone serve on a jury,’ she’d laughed. ‘Lucas Drummond is one of the good ones, Mum.’

  This afternoon, DS Ballard had made her feel like a naive fool. She’d been unable to answer some of the most basic questions about the man with whom she shared her life: where he’d been born and gone to school, what jobs he’d held before they met, even if he’d ever been married before. But it had never occurred to her until this week that these things mattered. She’d known – she’d thought she’d known – that Lucas was good and honourable and had integrity stamped through him like a stick of rock. She’d known he rubbed her feet when she had a cold and stood up for her whe
n she left the table at a restaurant and laughed when she told him how Finn had filched a carrot from her pocket. I know my husband, she’d wanted to shout at DS Ballard. I know the things that matter!

  But she didn’t really know him, did she? At least, not the way she’d thought she had. He’d lied to her about the loan, which drove a coach and horses through her previous assumptions about the kind of man he was. And what possible reason could he have for taking out life insurance on their children? Who did that? All that talk yesterday about PTSD, when Lucas seemed so solicitous and concerned – was it really all an act?

  Her blood chilled as another horrifying thought occurred to her. If he had something to do with what had happened to Noah, was it also possible he was responsible for her memory blackouts?

  She’d read a story only a few weeks ago about a woman who’d woken up on the Eurostar to Paris with absolutely no idea how she’d got there. It turned out her boyfriend had put the date-rape drug, Rohypnol, in her drink. Her symptoms were identical to Maddie’s. It’d certainly be easy enough for Lucas to drug her: he could just add it to the cup of tea he brought her every morning. Maybe he was deliberately trying to drive her mad. It sounded ridiculous, fantastical, even, but she was already trapped in an alternate reality where the inconceivable was all too real.

  She was spinning in dark circles. She turned the key in the ignition, suddenly anxious to be home. She needed to look Lucas in the eye and see the truth there.

  Dusk had fallen and it was raining by the time Maddie got home. Emily had left her pink bicycle slewed in the driveway on its side, blocking the garage, and the banal normality of it nearly undid her. Everything all looked so ordinary. It was hard to believe that in a matter of just two weeks, her entire world had been turned upside down as carelessly as if a child had upended a box of toys.

  Almost on autopilot, she picked up Emily’s bike and wheeled it around the side of the house to the shed. The chain had come off and was tangling in the pedals; she stopped and worked it free, getting oil all over her hands. Propping the bike against the side of the shed, she heaved open the door and rummaged around Lucas’s workbench for a rag to wipe off the oil. She pulled out an old T-shirt shoved in the toolbox at the back, and then paused, surprised, as she saw the logo on the chest pocket. She’d only bought this T-shirt for Lucas at Christmas. She knew he’d liked it, so she was puzzled he’d thrown it out so soon.

  She shook it out. It was stuck together with what looked like dried blood. Her heart started pounding. This was way too much blood for a small gardening scratch. She couldn’t remember Lucas injuring himself recently, certainly not this badly. So whose blood was it? And why had her husband hidden the shirt at the back of the shed?

  She peered at the T-shirt more closely and realised with relief it was paint. Just paint! She wasn’t living some suburban horror story. There was a perfectly normal, ordinary explanation, as there would be for everything else …

  Paint. Red paint.

  The same colour that had been used to vandalise the nursery walls.

  She dropped the T-shirt as if it burned. That day they’d gone to the police station: Lucas had had paint under his fingernails. She remembered because it had been so unusual for him. He didn’t paint. He wasn’t an artist or a handyman. He couldn’t even put up a shelf. If she hadn’t been so distracted by everything else that was happening, she’d have been curious how he’d ended up with paint on his hands.

  Lucas had vandalised the nursery. How else had he got red paint on his T-shirt and beneath his nails? He’d vandalised it, and he’d wanted her to believe she’d done it.

  What possible reason could he have for trying to manipulate her into questioning her own sanity? It didn’t make any sense. Nothing made any sense. If he was so desperate to get his hands on her money, there were easier ways, surely? Maybe he was the one losing his mind. Maybe Noah’s death had disturbed him far more than she’d realised. For both Lucas and Candace, Noah’s loss must have reawakened the trauma of their parents’ terrible deaths. Perhaps Lucas was the one suffering from PTSD and projecting it on to her.

  She snatched up the T-shirt and shoved it back into the toolbox. Lucas didn’t seem mad. He was distraught over their son’s death, of course, but otherwise, he had been his usual rational, normal self. No nightmares or mood swings, nothing to suggest he was anything other than her grieving, devoted husband. Unless he had suddenly developed some kind of split personality disorder, she had no idea or explanation for what was going on.

  She left the shed and stopped as she passed the kitchen window, gazing from the dark at her family sitting in the pool of light, the symbolism of the moment not lost on her. Emily was at the table, poring over a thick textbook. Beside her, Lucas jiggled Jacob on his lap as he leaned over and pointed to the page in front of her, evidently explaining something. It looked like a portrait of the perfect family: Engaged Dad At Home With His Bright-Eyed Children. No doubt the cynical DS Ballard would say he was blending in and remind her that psychopaths could be charming and manipulative, just look at Ted Bundy; but Maddie only saw a decent, loving father doing his best to hold his family together in almost unbearable circumstances.

  Lucas glanced up suddenly and saw her standing outside the window. He smiled, and despite everything, she automatically found herself smiling back.

  The red-haired detective was wrong. She was wrong. Her husband wasn’t a killer, for God’s sake! He wasn’t mad or bad. There would be some logical explanation for the paint, she knew it. She’d lived with him for six years, he’d fathered two boys with her. She knew him. Shame on her for letting herself get sucked into whatever twisted mind games the policewoman was playing. No doubt the woman had been whispering into Lucas’s ear, too, pitting them against each other, telling him his wife was deranged, unhinged, that she couldn’t be trusted with her own children. Well, she wasn’t going to let DS Ballard destroy her marriage with lies and insinuations. Lucas had made mistakes, lying about the loan, but so had she. That didn’t make either of them cold-blooded killers. She’d ask him about the paint, and he’d tell her, and it would all be fine. They had to stick together if they wanted to get through this.

  The back door opened. ‘Maddie?’ Lucas called. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Just putting Emily’s bike away,’ she replied. ‘I’ll be right there.’

  Lucas had a cup of hot tea waiting for her. He helped her out of her wet coat and hung it up by the back door. ‘You look soaked through,’ he said, handing her the steaming mug. ‘Come on, sit by the radiator and get warm. You’ll catch your death otherwise. It might be the end of April, but this is still England, remember.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Maddie said, slightly surprised. He didn’t usually fuss over her like this, but she wasn’t complaining. It would make this conversation easier. ‘Lucas, can I ask you something?’

  ‘Let’s get you sorted, first. Can I get you something to eat? The kids and I have already had dinner, but there’s some lasagne in the oven. It should still be hot.’

  ‘That’d be lovely—’

  ‘Drink your tea. It’ll warm you up.’

  She shot him a look. ‘Is everything all right, Lucas? You seem a bit twitchy. Where have the children gone?’

  ‘They’re fine,’ he said quickly. ‘Emily’s just taken Jacob upstairs to give him his bath.’

  The front doorbell rang and Lucas shot down the hall as if he’d been waiting for it.

  Maddie put her tea down and followed him. ‘Are we expecting someone?’

  He hesitated, then turned back to her. ‘Maddie, you know I love you. I only want the best for you, you understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘I know that,’ she said uneasily. ‘Lucas, what’s going on?’

  The doorbell rang again. Lucas looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead he gave her arm a quick squeeze and opened the front door.

  ‘Dr Calkins,’ Maddie exclaimed, when she saw who was standing there.

&n
bsp; ‘I just thought I’d stop by and see how you were doing. How are you, my dear?’

  ‘Fine.’ She shrugged. ‘Well. You know.’

  ‘Good. That’s good.’

  A cold draught blew through the open door. Maddie didn’t miss the brief glance the two men exchanged as they all stood awkwardly in the hall. Clearly Lucas had asked Calkins to come round, even if neither of them were prepared to admit it. ‘I’m sorry, but why are you here, Doctor?’

  ‘Your husband’s been very worried about you, Maddie. We all have. I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve been going through. You both have my deepest condolences on your loss.’

  Maddie shot Lucas a glance. Was he really worried about her, or was this another ploy to suggest she was unstable and needed medical help? ‘Thank you,’ she said warily.

  ‘I want you to know I’m here to help in any way I can.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said automatically, ‘but I’m doing OK. My mother has been wonderful, and Lucas, too, of course.’

  The doctor nodded. ‘Family are very important at a time like this. But sometimes we need a little bit more help than they can provide. No one wants to see you slip back to where we were a couple of years ago,’ he added kindly. ‘A traumatic event like this could undo all the progress we’ve made. We want to make sure that doesn’t happen.’

  ‘We’re here to help,’ Lucas said.

  Chapter 28

  Tuesday 8.30 p.m.

  Maddie took a wary step back. ‘Why are you really here?’

  ‘No one is going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do, I promise,’ the doctor said.

  ‘What are you talking about? Like what?’

  ‘Please, Maddie. We only want to help.’