A Song of Isolation

by Michael Malone

  ‘You’re suffocating him,’ was Peter’s almost daily accusation. She’d simply tut and turn away, determined to protect her son. She’d lost one child; she’d do everything in her power to make sure she didn’t lose another.

  Dave eventually strained at the maternal leash. His satisfaction with the situation changed to teenage frustration and his chant became ‘Stop mothering me, Mother’ before he’d run outside to play football or go skateboarding with his mates. And then she’d wait by the window, arms crossed, jaw tight – delighting in his ability to make friends with other children while her heart was sparking with fear at the possibility of harm.

  The first time he’d been in her care and out of her sight brought her first panic attack: chest pains and difficulty breathing and she was sure she was suffering from heart failure. It was only when Dave reappeared with a massive smile on his face – he’d climbed a tree apparently – that her breathing eased.

  Throughout her life since, the attacks had been an almost weekly occurrence. Peter had pushed her in the direction of the doctors and when faced with her intractability even went so far as to threaten to throw her over his shoulder and carry her there. She convinced him she’d been on her own, selling him a story that the doctor said her fainting episodes were the symptom of delayed grief and they would surely pass in their own time. Which they didn’t. They were as much a part of her life as Dave was, and she didn’t want to lose them. If that was her only tangible link to Sarah she would gladly pay that price. Self-aware enough to know that this was flawed thinking, nonetheless she persisted with it, and each time the tingling started in her fingertips and the heavy clouds of dread gathered, a small part of her mind welcomed it like an old and trusted friend.

  Norma took a deep breath and felt a chill at the tightness in her chest and her thundering heart. An attack was gathering there and then. She tightened her jaw against it. Not now. Not now. Not now.

  Please let her see her son to safety first.

  Chapter 11

  After the decision, Joseph Bain drew Amelie, Norma and Peter into an anteroom.

  ‘Please, sit,’ he said to them. ‘You must have questions.’ Barely noticing her surroundings, Amelie edged round a large oak table that covered over most of the floor space and found a seat before the weakness in her thighs robbed her of the ability to stand.

  ‘Questions?’ Peter drew up to his full five feet six and thrust his face into Bain’s. ‘You’re right we have bloody questions. What the hell just happened in there? I thought this was all a formality?’

  ‘Peter, please sit,’ said Norma. ‘The man is trying to help us.’ Her quiet authority cut through Peter’s anger and he slumped red-faced into a chair.

  Amelie sat staring into nothing, hand over her mouth, trying to come to terms with the magistrate’s findings.

  ‘He’s being held in custody on remand?’ demanded Peter. ‘For what? Removing a little girl from his workspace in case she got hurt? The world’s gone fucking…’

  ‘That kind of language doesn’t suit you, Peter,’ said Norma, but the admonishment felt to Amelie like it came from Norma falling into habit in her time of stress, rather than a need for propriety.

  ‘Oh, by all means pick on my use of language while our son goes to prison.’ Peter wasn’t in the mood to be aware of nuance.

  Amelie roused herself from the murk and tangle of her thoughts. ‘Guys, Dave needs us to stick together right now.’ Without waiting for a reaction from either of them she turned to the lawyer. ‘What exactly does that mean and how long is it likely to last?’

  ‘The average term of custody on remand is about ten weeks or so,’ replied Bain with an apologetic cast to his face.

  ‘Ten weeks?’ the three of them asked at the same time.

  ‘That’s the average, so it could be longer? And why didn’t the Fiscal go for bail?’ Peter asked.

  Bain was clearly biting back his instant reply. Peter had badgered him about this as they walked along the long corridor straight after the hearing.

  ‘Because the girl lives right next door and because the Fiscal was swayed by the family’s argument of possible grooming.’

  Grooming, thought Amelie. How utterly ridiculous. She heard again the gasp she made in court when this point was made. This could have been going on under their noses for a long time, they argued. The little girl looked on her neighbour fondly. Dave had wormed his way into a position of trust. The implication between their stream of words: This is all kinds of wrong. What grown man spends all that time with a little girl? One who notices her parents pay little attention, Amelie wanted to shout out into that almost sacred space where one had to be invited to speak.

  ‘Are they being extra careful because this is the family of a senior cop?’ she asked.

  Bain made a face, as if to say you might well have a point there, but said, ‘The police will not be able to influence anyone unduly.’

  Peter snorted. ‘My arse. You can bet your well-tailored suit –’ he looked Bain up and down ‘– your wardrobe of well-tailored suits that the police relative of this girl will have been jabbing a finger between the ribs of every lawyer he could find.’

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ said Bain. ‘But we have to deal with what we know. Speculation doesn’t help.’

  Peter exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath in from the moment he’d entered the court building. He sat. Gathered himself, and it looked to Amelie that he did so at some cost.

  ‘What now?’ He looked up from the table and stared at the lawyer.

  ‘I press for a trial date and we prepare as best we can.’

  Everyone in the room fell silent as they tried to process their new reality. Amelie had the image of Dave being led from the court by two policemen, his hands behind his back and his face heavy with disbelief. She leaned forward on to her arms and started to cry.

  After a few moments, she managed to gather her wits, leaned back into her seat and accepted the white cotton handkerchief that Bain was holding out to her. Dave’s mother and father stood apart in awkward silence, as if her obvious upset had robbed them of the ability to act in the same way.

  There was a burst of noise from outside the building, and Amelie’s mind realised that there had been a hum of chatter and movement sounding beyond the large windows since they’d entered the room.

  The lower half of the windows held smoked glass, so she ap­proached them and stood on a chair to peer over the clear glass in the top half of the window. And almost instantly recoiled; stum­bling back off the chair to stand on the floor.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Norma. She held a hand to her heart, frightened by her reaction.

  ‘The press are out in force.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Peter.

  ‘This is big news, sadly,’ said Bain. ‘Child abuse with a celebrity connection and…’ He tailed off as if there was nothing more to add, while all three of them stared at Amelie.

  She was grateful when Peter spoke.

  ‘Alleged child abuse,’ Peter corrected the lawyer.

  ‘Bastards,’ said Amelie. Then she acknowledged she had been lucky to have avoided them so far. In only that brief glimpse she’d seen a sizable press pack: a number of journalists whose usual patch was the entertainment pages, a fair number she’d never seen before and even a couple of TV crews. One of them had a logo for a news channel from the US on their camera.

  Her phone had been switched off in her handbag. She pulled it out and switched it on. Within seconds her screen was alive with alerts. Most of them for texts from Lisa and Bernard. She felt guilty about ignoring Bernard. He’d tried to get a hold of her nu­merous times over the last couple of days; she had no idea why she was so reluctant to talk to him. He was part of that world, a world she’d walked away from, a world that would now be sharpening its collective claws, preparing to tear into her and her reputation.

  That was unfair. B
ernard had only ever been supportive of her. Why would he change now? Still. She couldn’t quite face him yet, so she turned off her phone again and dropped it into her handbag. Then she looked at Bain.

  ‘When do I get a chance to speak to Dave?’

  Chapter 12

  ‘Hey,’ said Amelie. They were in a small room in the prison, with about half a dozen tables, each with a pair of chairs facing each other. At the door stood a couple of guards. One male, one female. Both of them looked like they had a lifestyle evenly balanced between lugging huge weights at the gym and eating all the pies they could get their hands on. They both stared at her as she walked in. Clocked who she was immediately, and from time to time she could feel their eyes on her.

  Amelie had chosen her outfit with care that morning. She wanted to look rich, successful and make the most of her looks. It was vapid, she knew, but she wanted the people around Dave to get a shot of her glamour, and prayed that this would give him some sort of cachet in the world he now found himself in.

  When she left the house, and it was too late to change, a contrary voice muttered in her mind that it might have the oppo­site effect: make people jealous and end up with Dave getting a kicking.

  ‘Hey,’ replied Dave. His forearms were resting on the table, hands clenched, his knuckles almost white against the pink of his skin.

  ‘You doing okay?’ As soon as the question was out of her mouth she wanted to reel it back in, but Dave appeared to accept it with as much grace as he could muster, and with a twitch of his lips; a vague attempt at a smile, as if the signal to do so got lost on its way from his brain.

  ‘Been a lot better,’ he said in a low voice, and Amelie could read the change in him. He was already a smaller, greyer, haunted version of himself.

  ‘They’ll laugh it out of court. You’ll be a free man in a matter of days.’ She injected energy into her voice. A performance worthy of at least a shortlisting for an Emmy.

  Dave coughed. Shifted in his seat. Scratched at the side of his face. ‘Yeah.’

  Amelie read the defeat in his voice, his posture. She leaned across, grabbed at his hand. ‘Everybody knows this is rubbish. Nobody thinks for a second you abused Damaris. Nobody.’

  He looked up from the table. Eyes beseeching. ‘You know I would never harm a child. You believe me, don’t you?’ He looked like a lost and bewildered little boy.

  ‘Jesus.’ She gripped his hand tighter. ‘Of course I do. You’re the kindest, most gentle man I’ve ever met.’ She met his stare and held it. She would not be the one to release first. He had to believe her. Be bolstered by her certainty in him.

  ‘That’s what I’m struggling with most,’ he said, and his eyes fell to the table top. He removed his hand from her grip and scratched at something only he could see on the surface of the table. ‘That people look at me and think there’s truth in this nonsense. Can’t they see I’d never do anything like this?’ He remained leaning forward, back hunched, and crossed his arms.

  ‘Well, if they can’t see it they’re worse than idiots.’

  ‘How’s Mum?’

  Amelie considered how she might answer this. The woman she saw during the hearing and afterwards was close to snapping. This was clearly too much for her to handle, but if she told David the truth he would feel even worse.

  ‘Your father is being a big help to her.’

  ‘He is?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Of course he is. To me he was always like, boys don’t cry. Be strong. Take it on the chin. He never accepted any sign of weak­ness from me. But Mum, he was a big softie with her.’

  Amelie studied Dave as he spoke, read a wealth of story in his eyes. Some good, but mostly what she read was a series of struggles; Dave had spent his life trying to live up to the version of manhood his father expected.

  ‘I don’t want Mum to see me in here. I can’t let her.’

  ‘Dave, honey, you can’t not see your mum. It would kill her.’

  ‘I can’t…’ He looked away, but not before Amelie saw a tear brimming over the lower lid of his right eye. ‘She can’t see me … in this place.’ Then his eyebrows raised as if a thought had entered his mind. ‘Shit. Lee. I was supposed to take him to that new Marvel movie.’ He looked at her. ‘Can you get in touch and cancel?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, part of her mind thinking he’d have to be living in a cave not to have noticed what was going on, the other part amazed that Lee had entered Dave’s head during all of this.

  ‘Dave. About your mum,’ she began to plead.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Dave, please. You can’t do that to her.’

  ‘No,’ he shouted and slammed the palm of his left hand down on the table top. The male guard took a step forward.

  ‘Any trouble over there?’

  Dave ignored him.

  Amelie looked over and gave him her five-star smile. ‘Every­thing’s fine,’ she said and the guard puffed up under her gaze. Shoulders back. Chest out. Until his female colleague shoved an elbow in his ribs and mouthed, Get a grip.

  ‘And while we’re at it, you don’t need to bother coming to visit either,’ Dave said as he leaned back in his seat, crossed his arms and looked off to the right.

  ‘What?’ Her heart beat heavy. ‘Don’t do this, Dave. Don’t shut us all out.’ She stared at him and saw a film forming over his eyes. Stern and uncompromising. An invisible shell. Already he was preparing for the worst. He was trying to protect himself by closing off everyone who might care. ‘We’ll fight this. We’ll prove there was no way you did anything to harm this girl,’ Amelie con­tinued.

  This girl. Already she was removing Damaris from any position of sympathy in her heart. Dehumanising her so it would be easy, despite promising herself not to, while knowing the poor soul was as much a victim as Dave was.

  ‘You were going to dump me anyway. We both know that.’ He studied her face, both expecting and dismissing her denial. ‘Might as well save us both a lot of heartache.’

  ‘Dave, please…’ She injected as much honesty as she could muster into her words, tone, posture. Believe me. She sat with the words in her mind and heart. Wore them like a cloak of certainty. ‘Yes, I was going through some stuff. But that was more about me than it was about you. Three years of hiding out, away from the public eye…’

  ‘Well, that’s all changed.’ He looked away from her. ‘You can go and get your old job back now.’

  ‘Stop it,’ Amelie said. ‘Stop it. I care about you and I will not abandon you.’

  ‘You care about me,’ Dave said, and fell back into his defeated slump. He raised an eyebrow, curved his mouth into a loose, weak smile, and Amelie barely recognised the person he now was. ‘Notice how you didn’t say you loved me.’

  Chapter 13

  As Dave walked away from Amelie he felt his heart close down, and his legs heavy as if he was dragging chains. What was he doing? Was he insane? Amelie was one of the best things in his life; why was he shutting himself off from her?

  Get real, a voice said. She’s only with you out of guilt. Your re­lationship wouldn’t have lasted the bank holiday weekend. If you’d still been at home you’d be online looking for a new house right now.

  Dave felt a heavy finger prod his shoulder. ‘Get a move on. We don’t have all day,’ said the female guard.

  ‘Did I hear right?’ the male guard said. ‘Did you just tell Amelie Hart to do one? You must be a frickin’ paedo. I’d give my left nut to shack up with her.’

  ‘Then you’d have an empty sack, Smith,’ said his colleague.

  Smith chuckled before answering, ‘Shut it, Leggatt.’

  Dave paused at a set of bars as they were unlocked from the other side. Stepped through and heard them close. The lock turned with a loud jangle of keys and he was back in E Hall.

  He was in prison. No matter how often he thought those words, he’d ne
ver get used to it. He felt himself shrink and stuffed his hands in his pockets. Then, aware this might signal ‘weakling’ he pulled his shoulders back and pushed his chin forward.

  Perhaps he could fake it. Ignore the fact that every cell in his body was sparking with fearful energy and pretend he was adapt­ing to the situation. He could adopt the posture of someone who was already part of the furniture.

  Except he was nowhere close to that.

  He felt the tip of one of the guard’s boots hit his left heel and became aware that he had slowed down again.

  ‘Keep walking, Robbins,’ said Smith, not bothering to hide his irritation.

  They were almost back at his cell and Dave could hear men in the cells along the corridor stir as they heard movement.

  ‘Hey, I need my medicine,’ one guy shouted. His voice a needy challenge.

  ‘This guy spent the whole night wanking. Can’t you guys do something about it? He’s disgusting.’

  ‘Did my son call yet?’

  The voices were all gruff in their attempt to demonstrate a harsh version of masculinity that Dave hadn’t much encountered in his life. Sure, he’d come across a few macho arseholes now and again, but it had never been so concentrated. It felt like that was the go-to mindset to help guys survive in this place.

  He squirmed at the thought he was about to be back in his narrow cell, dreading the noise of the door closing behind him and the loud clunk of the key in the lock. With a start he remembered what Bain his lawyer had told him about the different treatment that remand prisoners should receive. Technically, he was still an innocent man and therefore should not be treated the same as those who had been judged guilty. One of those benefits was to have reduced time in their cell, and he should therefore take ad­vantage of any educational or arts programmes available to him.