Picture of Innocence

by T J Stimson

  ‘Didn’t want you … to worry. Thought … just tired.’

  The doctor leaned forward. ‘These memory lapses. Can you tell me a bit more about them? When did they start?’

  ‘About … a year ago.’

  ‘You should have told me,’ Lucas reproved softly.

  ‘How often do they happen?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘Don’t know,’ Maddie said helplessly. ‘Lose track of time. Mucking out horses … next thing in my office, doing … paperwork. Maybe two or three times a week, I don’t know.’ She was tiring with the effort of talking. ‘More often since … Noah died.’

  ‘Do you have any other symptoms?’

  ‘Tired, sometimes. Mouth … is dry. Sometimes … I taste metal.’

  ‘Any odd smells?’

  A shaft of memory briefly lit up the darkness in her head. She closed her eyes, trying to summon it back. ‘Just before the accident. A peaty smell … damp wood. Very strong. Thought it was a … horse blanket in the boot.’

  ‘Have you noticed any bruises or other injuries that might suggest you’ve been unconscious for a period of time?’

  She hesitated. The night she’d dropped Noah, when he’d got stuck between her body and the rocking chair arm, her lip had been badly bleeding, and she’d had no idea why. ‘Once or twice.’

  ‘Mrs Drummond, I think you may have been suffering from what we call absence seizures,’ the doctor said, taking off his glasses. ‘Even though they only last a few seconds, the memory loss can be several hours, even days, in some cases. They more commonly occur in young children, and it’s uncommon, but not unusual, for them to preface tonic-clonic seizures in adults, too.’

  ‘But I’ve never had … a seizure before.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have known. They’re called absence seizures for a reason.’ He smiled. ‘To a casual observer, it would look like you were simply blanking out or daydreaming. These types of seizures usually last no more than a few seconds in most cases. They’re extremely difficult to diagnose – in children, the first sign is often trouble in school, since it appears as if the child isn’t paying attention, and repeated absences can cause them to become confused.’

  ‘Mine last longer than … few seconds,’ Maddie protested, ignoring the searing pain in her ribs. ‘Minutes … hours. Not daydreaming!’

  ‘Memory is a funny thing, Mrs Drummond.’ He put his glasses back on. ‘There’s a part of your brain in the temporal lobe called the hippocampus, which is responsible for receiving new information and storing it. However, it only stores that information for a short time. Then, if it’s important enough to retain – where you parked your car, for example – it ships it to a different section of the brain for long-term storage. If not, it simply deletes it. When you need that information again, the hippocampus helps retrieve it. Think of it as a librarian, if you like.’ He smiled again. ‘But a very highly strung, temperamental one. It’s extremely sensitive to changes in brain activity. Every time you have a seizure, it hardens and shrinks. Information may be stored, but in a disorganised way. It’s as if your librarian has gone on strike. No one is there to find what you need, so it’s effectively lost.’

  Maddie struggled to digest what he was saying. ‘I don’t understand. Why isn’t … my memory working?’

  ‘Each time you have a seizure, the short-term information in your hippocampus gets wiped.’ He gestured towards the monitor beside her bed. ‘Imagine a computer crashing. Whatever was on the page since it was last saved gets lost and your memory reboots to the last saved information you had. So you might be hanging out the washing and then you go inside to make the beds. You’re halfway through changing the sheets and you have an absence seizure, so short you don’t know it’s even happened. No one with you would even notice. But your hippocampus has just been wiped. Everything that you’ve done for the last five or ten minutes, since you were out pegging the washing is lost. You have no memory of what happened in between, because it’s never been permanently stored.’

  ‘Why is she having these seizures?’ Lucas asked. ‘What’s triggered them?’

  The doctor shrugged. ‘They can be triggered by certain health issues, such as extremely low blood sugar or a high fever, but the majority of seizures are caused by epilepsy, which is what I think happened in your wife’s case.’

  ‘Epilepsy?’

  ‘She’ll need to have more tests, when she returns home, just to make sure we haven’t missed anything, but I don’t think you should worry, Mr Drummond. The onset of epilepsy is most common in early childhood or after the age of sixty, but it can occur spontaneously at any age. With the right medication, it’s eminently treatable.’

  ‘The bits of time I can’t remember,’ Maddie said suddenly. ‘I wouldn’t do anything … odd … during them? Out of character?’

  She could feel Lucas staring at her.

  ‘It’s unlikely. We’re not talking about some sort of psychotic break, Mrs Drummond. Your brain has just made a small edit, a jump cut, in your memory. To anyone watching, your behaviour would seem absolutely normal. It is normal. You’ve just forgotten a few frames.’

  Not a psychotic break.

  Absolutely normal.

  She wasn’t going mad. She wasn’t having a mental breakdown. Her memory lapses had a logical, organic, physical explanation.

  She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. She might have wrecked the nursery in a moment of crazed grief, but the reason she couldn’t remember it was because her memory had crashed and rebooted, as the doctor put it. She wasn’t losing her mind. She wasn’t schizophrenic or deluded. She hadn’t hurt her baby in some crazy psychotic episode. It wasn’t her fault.

  It wasn’t her fault.

  ‘Mrs Drummond, please,’ the doctor said, alarmed. ‘Now that we know you’re having them, the seizures are extremely treatable. There are a number of medications we can try. Please, try not to worry. We’ve had some excellent results—’

  ‘Dr Walsh, is there any reason my wife can’t go home now?’ Lucas interrupted.

  ‘I’ll need to complete some paperwork, but there’s no reason why not,’ the doctor said. ‘I’ll write you a prescription for some painkillers, and, Mrs Drummond, you’ll need to take it easy for a bit. You’ve had a nasty bump on the head, and your ribs will be painful for a few weeks. But there’s no reason to stay here any longer. I’ll refer you to a specialist for the seizures.’ He patted her arm as he got up. ‘Please don’t worry. You’ll be as right as rain in no time.’

  She waited until they were alone again. ‘We can’t go home,’ she said anxiously. ‘It’s not safe … not with all those … journalists.’

  ‘Your solicitor applied for an emergency court hearing yesterday,’ Lucas said. ‘The judge extended the initial court injunction preventing the press from naming your mother or you so that it includes Emily and Jacob as well. They’re not allowed to mention or otherwise identify any of you in any way. It won’t stop some of the online stuff, but it should contain things, at least.’

  ‘You spoke to my solicitor?’

  He hesitated briefly. ‘Your mother did. We thought you were dying,’ he added, as she stared down at her hands. ‘She’s your mother. I had to let her know.’

  Maddie shifted in the bed, trying to ease the pain in her ribs. It was worse than being kicked in the chest by a pony, which had happened to her more than once. ‘Where are the children?’

  ‘Still with Giles and Lucy.’ He sighed. ‘I’m not going to lie, Maddie. It’s not going to be easy to go back home. A lot of the neighbours spoke to the journalists and heard the rumours. It’ll help that nothing’s appeared in the papers, but there may be some unpleasant days ahead. The police are going to maintain a discreet presence, so there shouldn’t be any more bricks through the window, but it’s not going to stop the gossip. If you don’t want to go back, we don’t have to. We can rent somewhere, until we sort things out—’

  ‘No,’ Maddie said firmly. ‘We haven’t done anythi
ng wrong. I’m not going to hide, like I’m ashamed of who I am.’

  Lucas looked surprised, and then impressed. ‘Good for you. Whatever you want, I’ll support you. Anything you need, just tell me.’

  ‘There is one thing,’ she said.

  Chapter 41

  Thursday 3.00 p.m.

  Maddie opened the door to Finn’s stable, smiling as the horse whinnied with pleasure. ‘I’m glad to see you too, boy,’ she said, stroking his soft nose as he butted it against her shoulder. ‘Hey, be gentle there! I’m a bit fragile at the moment. But you know what that’s like, don’t you, darling?’ He nudged her again, and she winced and laughed at the same time, reaching for the Polos in her Barbour pocket. ‘Cupboard love, that’s all this is. OK, here you are. If only everyone was this easy to please.’

  She glanced round at the sound of another horse clattering into the yard. Bitsy was leading a small grey pony across the cobbles, its stomach rolling like a wide barrel on the waves. Maddie gave Finn the last of the Polos and bolted the door of his stable behind her as she went out to greet the grey with an affectionate pat.

  ‘Is this the new rescue from Arundel?’

  ‘Complete with bloody “adoption basket” for her new owners,’ Bitsy snorted. ‘Pink ribbons for her mane, I ask you! They couldn’t afford to keep her, but they “want her to go to a good home”. Looks like they’re giving a good home to a new Mercedes, from what I could see when they made their fond farewells.’

  ‘Never mind the Mercedes, I’m not surprised they couldn’t afford to keep her. Look at the size of her. They must have been feeding her six times a day.’

  Bitsy looped the reins over the pony’s head and unclipped them. ‘They’ll all be on a bloody crash diet if we don’t get some money coming in soon.’

  Maddie looked stricken. ‘It’s my fault. Izzy said three donors have pulled out since the weekend and others aren’t returning her calls. I thought we’d be OK, since we managed to keep everything out of the papers, but the rumour mill has been working overtime. I’m so sorry. I’ve let you all down.’

  ‘You’ve done no such thing,’ Bitsy retorted. ‘None of this is your fault. Bloody idiots. Spooking at the first sign of trouble. How long have those donors known you? They should have more bloody gumption.’

  Maddie sank onto an upturned feed bucket and leaned back against the stable wall. Her ribs were killing her, despite the painkillers, and she was exhausted. Lucas was right, she should be in bed resting. But she couldn’t just sit at home doing nothing while Bitsy and Izzy were fighting to keep all their heads above water. She needed to keep busy, so that she didn’t spend all her time thinking about Noah. And she missed being at the sanctuary. She missed Finn, she missed being needed and useful. She knew who she was here. It wasn’t just horses the sanctuary rescued.

  ‘At least the reporters never came here,’ she said wearily. ‘The sanctuary hasn’t publicly been linked with Lydia Slaughter. If Izzy can get in front of the right people, we may be able to contain it.’

  Bitsy scowled. ‘Don’t hold your breath. A lie travels halfway round the world before the truth gets its boots on.’

  ‘Well, they’re leaving us alone for now. Whatever my solicitor did, it seems to have worked.’ She winced as she changed position. ‘In fact, a couple of the neighbours have come over to apologise for “jumping to conclusions” and buying into “fake news”. The media isn’t exactly popular these days. Silver lining, I suppose.’

  ‘What about your mother? You spoken to her?’

  ‘No,’ Maddie said shortly. She had huge sympathy for the child who’d been Lydia, though it wasn’t her place to forgive her for what she’d done: that tragic privilege belonged to the parents of the little girl she’d strangled. Maddie understood, too, why Sarah had needed to turn the page on her past and start again. But her mother had owed her the truth. Maddie wasn’t yet ready to forgive her and move on, although she was closer than she had been before her trip to see Frank Brzezina in Manchester. She just needed time, that was all.

  She watched Bitsy settle the new pony into its stall. ‘Do we have enough in the account to cover the next set of feed bills?’ she asked.

  ‘You’d have to check with Izzy.’

  She knew neither Izzy nor Bitsy had taken wages themselves in months. Izzy had a trust fund to fall back on, and Bitsy lived in a small flat above the stables and didn’t need much, but that wasn’t the point. Things at the sanctuary had been hand-to-mouth before this scandal, and she knew things would probably get worse before they got better. She couldn’t let it go under on her watch.

  A car appeared in the lane at the bottom of the hill as Bitsy stamped off to the upper paddock. Maddie watched Candace park at the top of the yard and get out, hovering by the open car door as if any moment she might leap back in and drive off again.

  Maddie struggled to her feet and walked up the hill towards her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Candace exclaimed, taking in her battered appearance. ‘Shouldn’t you be at home in bed or something?’

  ‘It’s mostly just bruises. Looks worse than it is. The Land Rover was way too old for airbags, so the steering wheel broke my ribs. Hurts like you wouldn’t believe, but it could have been a lot worse.’

  ‘Shame,’ Candace said. ‘I know you loved that car.’

  Maddie couldn’t help a small smile. Only Candace would offer condolences over a Land Rover. ‘Those things are built like tanks, but I guess it met its Waterloo. I’ve got a Jeep rental for now, but it’s not the same.’

  They stood for a moment in awkward silence. Maddie resisted the urge to break it.

  ‘So,’ Candace said finally. Her hands were trembling. ‘Lucas said you wanted to talk to me.’

  Maddie met her gaze head on. ‘I think it’s time, don’t you?’

  Candace swallowed and nodded.

  ‘I thought it was better to have a conversation here at the sanctuary,’ Maddie said. ‘Somewhere where we wouldn’t be interrupted.’ She indicated her office. ‘Let’s go in and sit down. I think both of us could use the rest.’

  Inside the dusty Portakabin, she cleared away a teetering stack of paperwork from a chair and Candace sat down, her tall frame swamping the furniture and the room and making it look like she was in a child’s playhouse. Extraordinary how a woman could seem so solid and resilient and yet be as fragile as spun sugar. Maddie surprised herself with a sudden surge of empathy. She should hate Candace for what she’d done to Noah, even if it had been a moment of madness, a flare of anger or impatience in the heat of the moment. And yet somehow she couldn’t. She looked at the ungainly woman before her, the woman who so much resembled her husband in all the wrong ways, and saw her mother – saw Lydia – there. Both Candace and Lydia had had traumatic childhoods, for very different reasons. Lydia had almost ruined her life with one act of senseless wickedness, and yet she’d been given a chance to make amends, and so much good had come from that. Maddie was too tired, too drained by grief, to have room for hate.

  She sat down, their knees almost touching in the confines of the tiny space. ‘Candace,’ she said gently. ‘Why did you take those pills?’

  Her sister-in-law looked away. ‘I wasn’t trying to off myself. I’m not that brave.’ She bit her lip. ‘I just … I just wanted it all to stop.’

  ‘What did you want to stop?’

  For a long moment, Candace said nothing. ‘Feeling,’ she said finally. ‘I wanted to stop feeling, just for a while. You can understand that, can’t you?’

  She understood that.

  Candace twisted the silver ring on her finger. Maddie recognised it as the one Lucas had given her on her twenty-first birthday. ‘I know what you think,’ Candace said miserably. ‘You think I did it out of guilt, because I hurt Noah.’

  Maddie waited. She knew what Candace was going to say, but she needed to hear it from her, to finally put to bed all the doubts and suspicions that had plagued her family since Noah’s death.

 
‘I went upstairs that day to settle him for you because he was crying and you had to deal with Jacob.’ Candace closed her eyes as if replaying the scene in her head. ‘I picked Noah up and cuddled him and then I changed him, but he wouldn’t stop crying. I did everything I always did, everything that usually worked, I winded him and gave him his dummy, but he kept crying. So I put him back in his cot and … and I turned the baby monitor off, so you wouldn’t know. And then … and then I left.’

  ‘You turned the monitor off? Why?’

  ‘You always thought I was so good with him!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve always been useless with babies, but it was different with Noah. I could always get him to sleep.’ Her eyes were suddenly bright. ‘I know it sounds stupid, but I couldn’t bear you to think I’d failed. If I hadn’t wanted you to think I was the bloody baby-whisperer, maybe you’d have heard him that night. Maybe he wouldn’t have died.’

  ‘You turned off the baby monitor?’ Maddie repeated.

  Candace dashed her sleeve across her nose. ‘I left him to cry himself to sleep, with no one to hear him. It’s my fault he died!’

  Maddie stared at her. She’d been so certain Candace would finally tell her the truth. ‘You didn’t do anything else?’ she pressed. ‘You didn’t shake him when you were trying to get him to be quiet, maybe even just … just rock him a little too hard? Please, Candace, I’ll understand if you did. I won’t tell anyone.’ Her voice was raw. ‘I just need to know what happened to my son.’

  ‘I swear to you. On my brother’s life. I would never do anything to hurt Noah!’

  Maddie sat back. There was something in Candace’s voice that made her believe her, the ring of truth that instinct told her was genuine. ‘This is what you wanted to tell me, the night you phoned?’

  Candace started to sob. ‘I haven’t slept since Noah died. I kept thinking the guilt would go away, but it just gets worse. Every time I close my eyes, all I can see is Noah. I promise you, Maddie, I didn’t do anything to hurt him. If I had, I’d tell you. But I left him to die alone and I’ll never forgive myself for that, never!’