The Mother's Mistake: A totally gripping psychological thriller

by Ruth Heald

  I take the paper to the till with my shopping, rushing to escape.

  Outside I find a bench, take deep breaths and open the paper again. On the inside pages, I see my husband’s smiling face. I want rip that smile into shreds.

  My daughter’s name jumps out at me, in bold print.

  I stare at it for a moment, reading and rereading each letter in turn.

  Lily.

  ‘What drove him to it?’ the headline shouts indignantly.

  Pictures of my husband litter the article. There are none of me or Lily.

  I see other words in bold. Rape accusations. Exposed by this newspaper.

  They knew. After years of cover ups, somehow the press had found out.

  Did he know they were going to write this? Is that why he killed himself and drowned our daughter?

  I scan the article for more details.

  There’s a self-congratulatory paragraph near the beginning of the text. The newspaper had conducted a long-running investigation and had finally succeeded in exposing him.

  I reread the section, trying to make sense of it.

  They published the exposé on the day he took Lily.

  He must have seen the paper when he got to work. He wouldn’t have been able to cope with being found out. He’d have had to act.

  And he did. He came home, beat me up and murdered our daughter.

  All because of the exposé.

  I feel a well of anger bubbling inside me. Why didn’t they think before they published the article?

  Despite myself, I keep reading.

  There are quotes pulled out in italics. All of them of attributed to me.

  I don’t understand. I haven’t said those things to anyone.

  Except I did tell someone. I told the woman on the helpline.

  Claire.

  Then I notice the byline under the article’s headline.

  ‘Investigated by Claire Hughes.’

  It’s her.

  I feel sick. It can’t be true.

  Claire was never my friend. She was never my confidante.

  The whole time, she was a journalist.

  She was just after a story.

  Forty-Two

  I drop the phone, the landlord still talking on the other end.

  I’m shaking as the images come back to me. The river. The reeds. The lifeless child.

  Blood drains from my face as I remember the horror of those moments.

  It was all my fault.

  When I’d started the investigation into Stephanie’s husband, I’d never imagined it would end the way it did.

  I never imagined that Stephanie’s daughter would die.

  I just wanted the story. That was all. I wanted my byline on the front page. I wanted the journalism prize.

  I ended up getting all those things. But the cost was unimaginable.

  If I could send back the prizes, if I could turn back time and change what I did, I would. But I can’t.

  I’ll never be free of that image of the small girl being dragged from the water. It haunts me when I’m awake and it fills my nightmares.

  But I deserve all of it. I deserve my fear of water. I deserve my nightmares. I deserved my breakdown. Because I’m not the one who had to pay the true cost. Stephanie paid the ultimate price for my mistakes. She was the one who lost her daughter.

  And now she’s taken mine. An eye for an eye. A daughter for a daughter. It all makes sense.

  I remember Olivia’s buggy careering into the pond. Stephanie. She must have wanted me to know how it felt, to see my daughter drowning.

  I’ve been running away so fast and for so long that I had convinced myself the past would never catch me up. But it has. Now I will have to pay for my mistakes too.

  Stephanie will see to that.

  * * *

  The baby’s sudden screams echo around the corridors of the block of flats.

  My baby. Olivia.

  I must get inside. Stephanie wants revenge. She wants me to pay the price she paid – my daughter. Fear is a fist around my heart and I can hardly breathe as I shoulder barge the door, repeating it again and again until my upper body aches. It’s useless.

  I run outside the block of flats and try the kitchen window. I remember Stephanie complaining that it didn’t close properly. I can see where the plastic frame doesn’t quite meet the edge of the window. There’s a small gap and I manage to slip my fingers between the window and the frame. I pull with all my might. It doesn’t loosen.

  I need something that I can use to wrench open the window. Something strong enough. I root around in my bag, pulling my phone out and angling it into the gap. Then I push the other end of it as hard as I can, to jimmy it open.

  The screen of my phone cracks.

  Then the catch gives and the window shoots out towards me.

  I stagger backwards.

  I pull the window out as far as it will go.

  There’s a blind on the other side. My heart pounds as I wonder if Stephanie is standing there, waiting for me.

  Olivia has stopped screaming. What has Stephanie done to her? I feel sick with fear. What if I’m too late?

  I put my hands up on the ledge and push myself up. I climb up through the window, sweeping away the blind.

  It’s dark in the kitchen.

  Something digs into my back. The tap on the sink.

  I scoot further in and knock into something.

  Smash.

  The sound shatters the silence.

  My eyes are still adjusting to the dark. I see plates from the drying rack in pieces on the tiles below.

  I jump down from the sink.

  Is Stephanie hiding somewhere? Waiting for me? Where is Olivia?

  I creep across the dark shadows of the kitchen.

  I can hear my baby’s screams again. But they seem quieter now, further away.

  I remember the sounds in my own house. The noises at night. The creaks on the stairs. The singing through the baby monitor. I hadn’t been imagining it. It was Stephanie all along. She was preparing the ground. Watching me the whole time. Making me think I was going mad. Getting ready to take my daughter.

  I go out of the kitchen and into the hallway.

  There are three doors. The door to the living room is open, revealing a scene of ordinary life. An empty coffee cup. A book. An open newspaper.

  I’m about to try the door to Stephanie’s bedroom when I hear a key in the lock. The front door eases open.

  Today

  I pull up in front of my former home. I remember how excited I was when Chris first showed it to me. It was the house of my dreams. Huge and detached, with a garden for our future children to play in. Shielded from the road by big conifer trees, newly whitewashed walls. It was perfect.

  I haven’t been back since I sold the house to a developer. Today the expansive front lawn is tarmacked over, divided up into spaces, filled with parked cars. Not the Porsche that Chris drove, or my four by four. Older, cheaper cars, parked neatly in the delineated spaces. The conifers have been cut down and you can see the whole house from the road. There’s nowhere to hide.

  I unstrap Olivia from the car seat and pick her up. At the doorway there’s a neat line of buzzers, with printed labels telling me the names of the occupants. Six flats. They must be tiny.

  Olivia whines and I turn to her.

  ‘This was our home,’ I tell her. ‘You, me and Daddy. We used to live here.’

  As I stare at the buzzers, fear rises in me. Flashbacks. Flying punches. Blood on kitchen tiles. The crack of bone.

  I don’t want to go in. But I know I must. I have to face the past.

  My heart beats faster as I reach out for the first buzzer and press it. I wait for a moment, but there’s no answer. I press the next one and the next. They must be at work. Flat 5 answers and I’m so shocked that I hardly know what to say.

  ‘I used to live here,’ I say. ‘I wonder if I could come in and see what it looks like these days? I want to show my
daughter.’

  She pauses as if considering it. ‘Sure,’ she says. ‘Come on up.’

  The flat is on the second floor, in what used to be the loft.

  She opens the door with a smile, looking down at Olivia. ‘Oh, I didn’t realise you had a baby with you. I assumed your daughter was older. I’m Joanna, by the way.’

  ‘My husband and I lived here before she was born. Before it was converted into flats.’

  ‘You lived in the whole house? Wow. It must have been huge.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I reply. I’m staring round the small living room. Chris and I had talked about getting the loft converted, but we never got around to it. Now I can see what it would have looked like. Without the huge trees in front of the house, the room is light and airy.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ she asks.

  ‘No, thank you.’ I’m not sure how much longer I can bear to be in this room, with all its reminders of the family I lost.

  I look up at the rafters. They’ve been painted white like the rest of the flat, giving an illusion of space. I feel sick as I imagine the thud as Chris pushed away the stool he was standing on. In my mind’s eye I see his body hanging there, swaying gently back and forth. I wonder if Joanna knows what went on in this house, in this room.

  Olivia starts to cry. It’s as if she knows.

  ‘This is where we used to live,’ I say, and kiss her forehead. She cries harder.

  I feel a tug of resentment towards her. Lily was such a good baby. A placid baby. Olivia is different. She’s just like her mother.

  Forty-Three

  A man fills the doorway of Stephanie’s flat, his features indistinguishable in the dark.

  ‘Stephanie?’ he asks, as he flicks the light on. He blinks in surprise when he sees me.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asks.

  ‘I – I know Stephanie.’

  Before I can say any more, a woman with a baby appears in the doorway behind him. For a second I think it’s Olivia and my heart leaps. But then I see her blue eyes and freckles and my heart sinks back down. It’s Lizzie.

  ‘Have you seen my baby?’ I ask the woman desperately, trying to step around the man, who blocks my path.

  ‘I haven’t seen any other babies here,’ the woman says. ‘And I live next door, so I’d have heard them even if I didn’t see them.’

  I look at the woman and feel a spark of recognition. I’ve seen her before. I saw her on the bus that time, with Lizzie. I’d assumed she was Dan’s partner.

  ‘Is Stephanie here?’ I ask. ‘Are you babysitting for her?’

  ‘She’s not here. And she babysits for me sometimes. I don’t babysit for her. She doesn’t have any children.’

  ‘What?’ That doesn’t make sense. I stare at the baby. ‘But Lizzie?’

  ‘Lizzie’s mine.’

  Shock hits me and I struggle to process what’s happening. Lizzie isn’t Stephanie’s baby. Stephanie’s been lying to me from the moment she introduced herself. She doesn’t have a child.

  ‘Where’s Stephanie?’ I ask the woman urgently. ‘Where’s she taken my daughter?’

  The man reaches out and grabs my shoulders. ‘You need to calm down,’ he says. ‘And tell me what you’re doing in my flat.’

  ‘Your flat?’ My mind is still spinning. ‘Oh, we spoke on the phone. You’re––’

  ‘I’m the landlord,’ he says, his face up close to mine. ‘How did you get in?’

  The woman with the baby chips in. ‘I heard noises. Smashing.’

  I don’t have time for this conversation. I wrack my brains to work out where Stephanie might be. Could she still be in the flat?

  I wriggle free from the landlord’s grip and push open the door to Stephanie’s bedroom. It’s empty.

  I try the door to the other room. The room I’d always assumed was Lizzie’s.

  The door shoots open, revealing a baby’s nursery. For a moment I think I must be mistaken. Stephanie does have a baby.

  But there’s something wrong.

  Everything is too neat and tidy, too sparse. There’s a cot, but no nappies. There is no changing mat, no baby bottles. No toys. There’s no chest of drawers for baby clothes. Just two outfits and Lizzie’s red coat, neatly folded on a table.

  The motif on the wall. A child’s name painted in sunny letters. But it doesn’t say Lizzie. It says Lily.

  The name of Stephanie’s daughter. The daughter who drowned. The child whose death I caused.

  In the cot is Olivia’s toy bunny.

  The realisation slams into me.

  Stephanie wants Olivia to replace Lily.

  I took Lily from her and she will take Olivia from me.

  ‘I need to go,’ I say again, trying to push by the landlord.

  ‘You can’t. I’m calling the police.’

  Panic rises in me. I have to find my daughter.

  ‘I can explain,’ I say, my face flushing. ‘Just let me go.’ I feel hot tears running down my cheeks.

  ‘You need to stay here until the police come. You broke into my property.’

  ‘I can explain to the police later,’ I say. ‘Or on the phone. They’re already with my husband. Our daughter’s missing.’

  The landlord glares at me. ‘I don’t need a sob story,’ he says. I see him jabbing 999 into his phone.

  I take out my own phone to call Matt. The screen is cracked from jimmying open the window, and for a moment I panic. But luckily it still responds to my touch and I’m relieved to hear it connecting. As it rings and rings, I see the landlord with his mobile phone to his ear, hear him asking for the police.

  I wish Matt would hurry up and pick up.

  Finally the ringing stops and there is the fuzz of background noise.

  ‘Matt?’

  Silence.

  I don’t wait for him to speak.

  ‘Matt, I’m at Emma’s. She’s got Olivia. I know she has. And she’s not Emma at all. She’s Stephanie. You remember Stephanie?’

  My speech is garbled and rushed.

  There’s laughter on the other end of the phone. A woman’s laugh.

  Stephanie.

  I remember back at the cottage: Matt threatening to call the police, me sweeping the phone out of his hand, Stephanie picking it up from the floor. She put it into her pocket. She still has it.

  ‘Stephanie,’ I say.

  ‘Claire.’ Her voice is icy, with none of the warmth she had for me when she was pretending to be Emma.

  ‘You’ve got my daughter.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I need her back. Please. I’m so sorry for what happened to your daughter, for what I did. I truly am.’ I feel the guilt rising in me and swallow it down. This is all my fault. ‘But don’t punish Olivia for my mistakes. She’s not to blame.’

  ‘You’ve never deserved her, Claire. You know that as well as I do. You don’t even love her.’

  I think of all the times I confided in ‘Emma’ about how down I felt. How I wasn’t sure if I loved Olivia. How I wasn’t coping. I’d thought she was my friend. That I could trust her.

  ‘Stephanie, please. Where are you?’

  ‘Where do you think I am? I’m back at the place where it all began.’

  ‘The river?’

  ‘Yes, the river.’

  Across the room the landlord is pacing back and forth. It’s clear the police won’t be here for a while.

  He turns to me. ‘Is that Stephanie on the phone?’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Stephanie asks.

  ‘Your landlord. He won’t let me leave.’

  ‘Hand him your phone. I’ll tell him it’s a misunderstanding. I want to talk to you properly. Face to face. Come to the river.’

  Today

  It’s a short walk from our house to the river. My husband took this walk three years ago with our daughter, before he drowned her. I imagine her, aged four, so pleased that for once in her life her father was giving her some attention.

  It was the height of summer, early mo
rning. A beautiful day. I was in my daughter’s bedroom, lying next to my packed suitcase, slipping in and out of consciousness.

  I like to think she knew nothing of what was to come. She can’t have done. I imagine her smiling and laughing as she realised she was going to the river with her daddy. I like to imagine the sun warming her face, her giggling. I want her to have been happy in her last few moments.

  There were no witnesses to the drowning. Later, people with good intentions told me that it might have been a mistake, that he might have been playing with her in the river and lost his grip. After she drowned, the guilt made him hang himself. But I know better. He wasn’t the type to feel guilt or remorse.

  He knew he was ruined when he read the newspaper that exposed him. Everything he had built up over his career would be taken away. And he thought I was the one who’d gone to the press. I was quoted in the article. He left me lying on the kitchen floor with one intention only; to make me hurt more than I knew was possible. He killed our daughter as revenge. He wanted to destroy my life like I had destroyed his. He didn’t hang himself because he felt guilty. He did it to protect himself, so he wouldn’t have to face the consequences.

  Olivia is grizzling as I carry her down the path. She’s a difficult child, not at all like Lily.

  At the riverbank, I sit down and stare at the water, Olivia in my arms. It’s so calm and peaceful, but I know there’s a strong current in the middle. I know it can drag you under if you let it. Drown you.

  Olivia keeps whining and I think she must be cold. I want to put her on my breast to comfort her, but I can’t. I have no milk.

  I wish she would be quiet, so I can sit and think about Lily. Her smile, her giggle, her loveable little face and the way her eyes were the exact same shade of blue as mine. I imagine her here now. She’d be seven. She’d love the water, love to feel it splashing over her.

  I imagine my life with her now. It would have been so different. Everything would have been perfect. But Claire took that away from us.

  Olivia fidgets and wriggles.

  I look at her. I want to start again. I want to feel the same love for her I felt for Lily. But when I look at her I feel nothing. Nothing at all.