The Keeper

by Jessica Moor

  ‘Right.’ Val heaved herself up, narrowly avoiding another assault from the squashed tennis ball, and began to stride back towards the house. ‘I’ll be having a word, then,’ she said, to no one in particular.

  Yeah. Take it out on a cop who’s still barely more than a kid himself.

  Sonia realized that her arms and legs were still crossed and let herself slacken. With the distraction of Val gone, the shard of panic lodged deep inside her was making its presence felt with a series of scrapes and scratches in her every movement.

  Her court case was next Wednesday.

  Family court. Custody. Access to the children. Arrangements.

  All the hard, pragmatic words that had turned to ghosts in order to haunt her over the past few years.

  Everything she’d feared. Now it was happening.

  She looked back towards her boys, feasting on every little aspect of their movements like an animal storing up fat for winter. She tried not to imagine herself sitting in the same spot a week from now, when the empty pots might just be empty pots, and the tennis ball might lie undisturbed in the sparse, churned grass.

  22.

  There was a sharp knock at the door, a man’s knock. The detectives must be back. Peony had toddled away, but Lynne clutched reflexively at the space where her daughter ought to be.

  The door opened. It was the older detective. Kinder, Lynne thought. Maybe he reminded her of one of her uncles, though, probably, everyone had an uncle who looked a bit like him.

  ‘Hello, Lynne.’ He smiled at her, the kind of smile she had seen before on Katie’s face. The I-don’t-see-you-as-just-a-victim smile. ‘Not sure if we’ve met before, but I’m DS Whitworth. I’m still trying to clear up a few things about the night Katie died.’

  Lynne kept forgetting that Katie was dead. It was as if there wasn’t enough room in her brain to permanently store that information. The detective sat down on the sofa.

  ‘Would you be happy to have a quick chat with me?’

  Lynne dragged the corners of her mouth into what she knew must look like a parody of a smile. Nodded. Stood up.

  ‘We can stay in here,’ the detective said. ‘As long as you’re not worried about your little girl being present?’

  It hardly mattered where Peony was; Lynne was worried about her little girl being anywhere. Sometimes she wished she could usher her into the absolute safety of non-existence.

  That was the post-natal depression talking. Even now, Lynne was waiting for the afterbirth.

  Besides, Peony wouldn’t understand. Her language level wasn’t very high. That was Lynne’s fault – she hadn’t talked to her enough at the right stages of development.

  ‘Could you tell me a bit about what happened on the evening of the ninth of February?’ The detective leaned back into the faded paisley sofa cushions. ‘Anything you can remember.’

  It sounded like an invitation rather than a threat. Lynne imagined him in a police drama. Imagined him lying to her, misleading her. Entrapment, that was the word. His kind face swam before her and she saw him crouched across the chintzy couch like a great spider.

  Lynne selected at random a fact that she knew beyond all doubt to be true. That was a technique she’d learned from pacifying Frank – find a centre, a base of reality that she knew to be undeniable, and then cling to it for all she was worth.

  The pool of things she knew for sure had dried up over the course of their marriage.

  ‘She left early that night.’

  The detective nodded.

  ‘When did you last see Katie, Lynne?’

  Lynne tried to remember, but it was like swimming backwards through wet cement.

  She could remember so little from that day. The only image she recalled clearly was from the house meeting – dropping a few crumbs of biscuit on the floor and ducking under the table to see Katie’s foot rammed into a fossilized angle, determinedly keeping herself stable.

  She remembered that from her days in the City. The way the terror always seemed to sit in the small muscles of the jaw, the ankles, the balls of a fist.

  * * *

  • • •

  Peony had given her terrible grief that day.

  ‘I want my daddy.’

  She had said it with calm malice. Hateful little creature.

  Lynne knew that children tried to test their parents and she shouldn’t be worried. It was just a button that Peony pushed to get a reaction.

  But she looked so like Frank. She couldn’t look at her daughter for too long without seeing the thing that had ripped her in half and then pinned her tattered pieces to the ground so she would never be able to move again.

  Frank had put her back together. He always did.

  * * *

  • • •

  Lynne realized she hadn’t replied to the detective.

  ‘I’m not sure exactly. Afternoon, early afternoon. She said she’d be back in the morning and she’d see me then.’

  ‘Did she?’

  The way the detective leapt on the information reminded Lynne of a cat.

  ‘What exactly did she say? Did you get the impression she was really expecting to see you?’

  ‘It was through a door,’ Lynne replied. Frank did this kind of thing all the time, drilling into detail. ‘I’m not sure. I think she said that.’

  ‘Lynne.’

  The detective looked deep at her.

  ‘It’s really important that you try to remember this.’

  It was. Very important.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lynne said. ‘It was through the door. Maybe she only said, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” because that’s what people say.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said I’d see her tomorrow. Maybe I said it first. Maybe it was the kind of thing that you just always say. I don’t know if she meant anything by it.’

  ‘I can see that you’re scared.’

  The detective laid a hand on hers. His right, her left, covering her wedding ring. She didn’t jump, because you must never jump, or that would show you were guilty. He met her eyes and she felt herself harvested, plundered. A familiar feeling. Frank had protected her from that. Some of that.

  ‘I’m not scared,’ Lynne said, sounding like Peony when she put her to bed in the dark. She took a deep breath and set the mechanics of a smile into motion. She turned her head to look at her daughter, who was looking out of the window, waving.

  Lynne’s body turned to ice.

  ‘There’s a man outside,’ she said.

  Her throat was so tight she was amazed she managed to get the words out.

  There was a shape. A presence. A man like a streak, cutting the world in half. Smiling at her daughter, as if he had the right.

  Dark hair. Dark eyes.

  Sent by Frank?

  Sonia’s David?

  Angie’s Charlie?

  The detective frowned and stood up, jerking back the net curtains without fear and leaning forward to peer out.

  Then he laughed.

  ‘Don’t you worry, love.’

  He was waving, too, now.

  ‘That’s my trainee. That’s Brookes. He’s a good lad. Don’t you worry.’

  The young man raised a hand. Waved. Of course. Young. Too young for any of them.

  His face was inquisitive, yes, but open.

  Not all men were like that. She was seeing ghosts.

  You stupid bitch.

  Without warning, Peony abandoned the neon plastic shape she had been playing with and threw herself into Lynne’s lap with all the urgency of love.

  ‘Your little girl’s got a lot of energy,’ the detective said, settling back down in his chair. ‘They’re lovely at that age. Tiring, though.’

  Too much energy for a girl, Lynne thought.

  That wa
sn’t sexist, that was just a fact. Little boys were wired differently; they needed different things. Peony couldn’t sit still – at her nursery, they had said she might have a learning disability. She didn’t sit and focus on things but tore around with the boys, screeching at the top of her voice.

  It made Frank laugh.

  There’s nothing wrong with her, darling, apart from your overactive imagination.

  ‘But that does remind me,’ the detective said. ‘One of the other ladies mentioned that you might have seen something a bit out of place. Someone hanging about?’

  He was looking at her, encouraging her. Encouraging her to say something she might even believe. What was the right thing to say?

  Lynne’s chest closed up and she shook her head.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I thought I . . . but it was probably nothing. Just my overactive imagination.’

  The detective nodded.

  * * *

  • • •

  ‘Sometimes I don’t like my daughter,’ she had said to Katie, one of the last times they spoke. Katie hadn’t blinked. She’d just nodded.

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘No.’ Lynne had said it wrong. ‘Sometimes I hate my daughter.’

  ‘Lynne . . .’ Katie had looked a little helpless. ‘What you’re saying isn’t as unusual as you might think. A lot of mothers in your position have difficult relationships with their children. He made you feel that way.’

  ‘Nobody can make you feel anything,’ one of the therapists had said. ‘You feel something because, on some level, that’s what you’ve chosen to feel.’

  Lynne had chosen to hate her daughter.

  Lynne could see Katie discreetly eyeing the shelves behind the desk where they kept all the pamphlets. Was there one for ‘So you hate your own child?’

  ‘I think it might be a good idea if I referred you for counselling,’ Katie had said, jotting down a note on the pad on the desk. ‘I think you need support to deal with what’s happening. I promise you, Lynne, you won’t always feel this way.’

  * * *

  • • •

  This behaviour is out of control. I think you need to see someone.

  For my sake. For the baby’s. For yours.

  Lynne had done it all. Cognitive behavioural therapy. Psychodynamic psychotherapy. Meditation. Exploring all the ways she was longing to self-destruct, the reasons why she needed to shift the blame on to other people. Pills were offered at every turn.

  The first therapist had been the smallest, neatest man she had ever seen, folded up in his chair, his black suit like a dust covering. He had been very kind and very soft, and he had told her that she had drunk that glass of wine because she resented the baby inside her. The baby would mean she would have to be less selfish in the future. Yes, he used the word ‘selfish’, but he wanted to be clear that there was no judgement in that.

  Lynne had gone home and cried and told Frank that she wasn’t paying someone to call her a bad mother.

  ‘But, darling,’ he had replied mildly, ‘you’re not. I’m paying someone to call you a bad mother.’

  Ritualized honesty was one of his little ways.

  * * *

  • • •

  ‘You’re a really good mum. I know you want what’s best for Peony.’

  That was the thing. Lynne knew she wasn’t a really good mum. But she’d certainly settle for being good enough.

  Then Katie had stood up. ‘I think it’s best if we have a check-in with each other every day for a little while, so we can talk about how you’re feeling and how we can support you. Do you think that would be a good idea?’

  Lynne had nodded. Then she had said softly, so softly that she wouldn’t let the weakness seep out, ‘I miss Frank.’

  Katie had nodded.

  ‘That’s normal, Lynne.’

  As if that was a useful thing to say.

  * * *

  • • •

  Frank had fucked their au pair on their bed. Left the bed unmade and the used condom lying in their otherwise empty waste bin in plain sight.

  Men are like that: they don’t see the detail.

  Lynne had seen it, and he had seen her see it.

  Frank had never hit her. But when she confronted him about the au pair he had put his hands around her throat, almost as if he was just showing her that he could. The span of his hands was big, much bigger than her neck.

  There was barely any grip. He couldn’t have clenched them for more than five seconds.

  Lynne hadn’t moved. Hadn’t breathed. If she could have made her own heart stop, then she would have done.

  That was the reality of it. It’s important to establish the facts.

  She could feel herself stretching the facts like chewing gum as she picked up the phone and dialled her mother’s number. She said, ‘Frank strangled me.’

  As soon as she said it, she felt the indignity of her exaggeration. It had been the clench of a moment, falling between one breath and the next.

  * * *

  • • •

  Frank followed her to her mother’s. He stood outside her dining-room window, waving at Peony through the glass before her mother drew the curtains. Then Peony cried and cried and had to be pacified with television.

  It was always Frank at the centre of everything. You saw it even as he stood outside her mother’s house, begging her to come home. Frank played the part of the repentant. He did it so beautifully. He hadn’t shaved, and the suit he was wearing hung with contrasting neatness over a rumpled shirt, open at the neck. He stood in the street and bellowed like a new kind of troubadour. Lynne was wearing a roll-neck jumper. You’d never even know what was underneath it.

  Lynne’s mother was perennially making tea in those days. She didn’t want Lynne and Peony going out. She would stand in the porch, arms folded across her chest and eyes narrowed at Frank’s car.

  ‘He must be missing a hell of a lot of work to hang about like this,’ she’d muttered. That seemed to outrage her almost more than anything else.

  Lynne’s mother had always adored Frank. She had adored the idea of him long before they’d been introduced, and sided with him in any argument Lynne recounted to her.

  It was always that Frank would have his own point of view, that Frank was a reasonable man, that Lynne was dramatic – that was the word she always used to describe what therapists referred to as her anxiety and depression.

  ‘If you paid me fifty pounds an hour to tell you that you had anxiety and depression, then maybe I would,’ her mother said.

  It’s the economy, stupid.

  But now she said, ‘It’s that man outside, Lynne. He’s the problem.’

  It’s the way I frame things that’s the problem. It’s all a question of perspective.

  ‘You’re not safe here, Lynne. Peony’s not safe.’

  ‘Frank would never hurt us,’ Lynne murmured reflexively.

  ‘Frank did hurt you.’

  Her mother had done all the legwork. Called the helpline, got the refuge referral. Even when the woman on the phone risk-assessed Lynne, she’d been listening on the extension. She vaguely remembered editing her answers, even then hoping that they’d fit with the kind of daughter she wanted to be.

  * * *

  • • •

  So here Lynne was now, talking to a detective, a bit part in some sordid plot of death. Poor Katie.

  Lynne did her best to focus. The detective’s jovial look was fading away. He was raking his eyes over her in a way that made her feel manhandled.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, smoothing down her sleeves.

  ‘Did anyone leave the refuge after Katie left that night?’ he asked.

  ‘I think . . .’ Lynne spoke without thinking, just longing for his eyes to let her go. ‘I think I heard Jenny go somewhere.�
�

  The detective’s voice changed sharply. ‘Who’s Jenny, love?’

  ‘She’s . . .’ Lynne didn’t want to say, she’s the whore – a word that surprised her with its ancient vehemence – so she gestured helplessly. ‘She’s . . . one of the residents. She’s in the room next to ours.’

  The detective was clearly trying not to look too interested, but he wasn’t doing a particularly good job of it. Maybe his carefully arranged face would have worked to soothe most normal people, but Lynne was so used to parsing every pixel of Frank’s face for signs of his mood that perhaps she was a tough audience.

  ‘Right . . .’ He tapped his pencil on to his notebook and made a few, seemingly cursory scribblings, before standing up. ‘Well, Lynne . . . that’s great.’ He smiled at her broadly. ‘That’s super. Well done for remembering, Lynne.’

  Lynne twitched into a little smile.

  ‘Bye bye, poppet,’ he said to Peony, before leaving and shutting the door behind him.

  * * *

  • • •

  Lynne sank back into the too-soft sofa. Her body felt flimsy and insubstantial. Peony rushed over again and began to climb over her, and Lynne felt herself half expecting to be crushed by her three-year-old weight.

  She had got Jenny in trouble, that much was obvious. Jenny would surely know it had been her who’d dropped the clue – who else would be so pliant to the detective’s will? Who else would have heard her shadowy steps in the hall the night that Katie died?

  Lynne imagined nights awake, staring at the door, waiting for the strip of light above the carpet to be blocked out by that wraith-like sentry. She imagined Jenny sliding something small and sharp into her – a fingernail filed to a point, perhaps, or a used needle.

  She brushed absent-mindedly at her daughter’s curly hair.

  ‘Mummy,’ Peony said, ramming her little palm into Lynne’s face. ‘Mummy . . .’