Bad Mothers United (37 page)

‘Tell him to get stuffed!’ Roz had said as I left her, livid on my behalf. ‘Jerking you around. It’s like you said, either he wants to be with you or
he doesn’t. Bastard.’

‘No. Something’s wrong.’

The way Daniel and I had left things had been pretty clear: no more contact, ever. Which meant this wasn’t any kind of reconciliation, or social call. Some emergency must be driving
him.

Immediately I tried ringing Mum but only got the answering machine. Next I phoned nursery, who told me Will had eaten all his fish fingers, built a train track, and his grandma was running
slightly late but was on her way. So nothing amiss there. Last I rang Dad’s ward expecting God knows what, but the nurse insisted everything was grand. So whatever bombshell Daniel was
about to deliver, my family was safe. That was something. My mind churned with possibilities. Maybe it was to do with Amelia. Maybe he wanted to let me know officially they were going out now. If
that was his news, he was going to get a beer in the face.

His text had asked me to meet him in the Crown. When I got there, the drinks were already on the table.

‘What’s this?’ I asked, picking up the tumbler and tilting it critically.

‘Whisky.’

‘Why? I hate whisky.’

‘Because you might need it.’

He’d had his hair cut shorter and was clearly using some product on it because it looked a lot better. I wondered whose influence that was. Loads of times I’d asked him to sort his
hair out.

I took a swig of the whisky and grimaced. ‘OK, whatever it is, tell me – quick. And you’d better not be playing games.’

‘It’s your Jessie Pilkington.’

That I hadn’t been expecting. ‘What? What about her?’

‘I wanted to set your mind at rest. I can pretty much guarantee you won’t be hearing from her again.’

What the fuck had he done? Paid her off? Taken out a contract on her?

‘How?’

‘This.’

He took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and pushed it across the table to me. I took it gingerly and opened it out. It was a badly photocopied newspaper clipping, the font tiny and
old-fashioned. I tried to scan it for meaning but the words blurred and shifted.

‘What, though? Really, just tell me.’

‘Read it, Charlotte.’

So I did. I made myself focus, and through the roaring that quickly started up in my ears, I managed to gather it was a 1971 report about a six-year-old girl who’d died at the hands of
her stepfather after months of neglect. He’d gone to prison, and so had the girl’s mother for letting it happen, although her sentence wasn’t as long because the judge said the
mother had been both intimidated and disorientated by her partner’s violence. Further down the article there were details of the bruising and injuries found on the girl’s body, and
comments from neighbours about seeing her sometimes foraging in bins. It was utterly heartbreaking. But what made it far, far worse than a tragic tale from long ago was that I knew this mother:
I’d met her, spoken to her, I’d been in her flat and drunk her sodding tea. It was Jen, it was Jessie.

I picked up the glass of whisky, drained it, then read the report through again. This time, as the details sank in, it seemed much more horrible. Emma, the girl had been called. In the grainy
black and white photo she wore a gingham school dress and a cardigan. Her hair looked as if it might have been brown.

‘Where did you get this, Daniel?’ I whispered.

He tried to run his hand through his sticky fringe, and failed. ‘I’m sorry, perhaps it wasn’t my place, but I felt something wasn’t right about what you told me. About
Jessie’s behaviour, I mean. So I did a little digging online and turned up a mention of a Jessie Pilkington in connection with this girl’s death. So then I paid a visit to the
Newspaper Library at Colindale and searched through their archive. And the full story was there. I did check out four or five versions but all the main facts I think are in this article. I
couldn’t find anything else. I don’t know if there was any more.’

His eyes were anxious as I clutched my empty glass.

‘Did I do right in telling you, Charlotte?’

At first I was too choked up to answer. God, her own
daughter
. How could it have happened? In the middle of a
city
. Why didn’t the neighbours do anything? Call the
police, Social Services? And what kind of a bitch stays with a man who beats her kid? Shit, I’d
slaughter
anyone who hurt Will. Rip their fucking head off. ‘Jesus, Daniel . .
. I was in her
flat
. She’s
Mum’s mum
. God, oh God. Why did I need to hear about this? Why did you have to drop it into my head?’

He reached for my glass. ‘You’ve had a shock. Sit there while I get you another drink. Then I’ll explain why I thought you needed to know.’

He sloped off to the bar and left me. At other tables around the room people chatted and flirted and bitched and laughed their way through their ordinary days. Meanwhile panicked, guilty
voices raged through my head:
You wanted this woman to meet your mum! – Why didn’t you try checking her out before you went? – Would Emma have been your aunt? – How
can any mother stand by like that? – What in God’s name possessed you to go turning over stones when all the family you ever needed was around you? Idiot! Idiot!

Daniel set my drink down with an awkward clunk. His jaw was tense and his face grim.

‘OK, Charlotte?’

‘What do you think? Oh, Jesus. How am I ever going to move past this? It’s going to be in my head forever, spoiling everything I look at. Will’s little face . . .’

He took my hand and held it, and I let him. ‘No, listen. The point is – and this is why you needed to hear – Jessie won’t be coming after you. She’s got too much
to lose.’

‘How do you work that one out?’

‘Well, why do you think she moved to London, changed her name? She’ll have been trying to escape her past ever since she got out of prison. Probably the authorities even advised
her to do that. But say you were to go to the papers or the police, she’d be a target all over again. Have you any idea how child abusers get treated in this country? The public can be
deeply vindictive if they decide someone hasn’t been punished enough. And we’re not just talking a spot of graffiti, or cat-calling in the street. I’ve read about people in her
position who’ve been sent broken glass through the post, nail bombs, had petrol poured through their letterboxes. Women like her attract lynch mobs. Charlotte, you hold the power here. If
she did ever make any sort of approach, try to intrude on your family, all you’d have to do would be to say you were going to the press. If you want, I can write and spell this out to her,
but I’m pretty sure there’s no need.’

He finished and sat back, giving me space to react. Gradually, against the turmoil in my brain, his words began to settle into some kind of sense. Because I had been tormented with the idea of
her pursuing me –
If you don’t give me cash I’ll tell your mother where you’ve been
– I’d been braced for it, screwed up tight with fear. Dreamed
about her landing on our doorstep with some sob-story or threat or outburst.

I said, ‘Then why did she take the risk of sending us cards? Why not keep quiet about where she lived?’

Daniel nodded. ‘It was a risk for her, yes. A big one. But from what you tell me, she was on the ropes. Contacting your mother was a last-ditch attempt to get hold of some cash and stave
off what was becoming a meltdown situation. A situation so dire it made her reckless.’

I thought back to that scene in a London street, Dex begging me to use the cash-point. Menacing, cajoling. I’d been frightened, but Jessie had probably been more frightened than me. I
wondered whether the people who were after her had caught up in the end, and what they’d done. I realised I didn’t care.

‘My mum must
never
know about this. You’ve not mentioned it to anyone else?’

‘How could you even think I would?’

I closed my eyes to see if it made me feel better, but it didn’t.

‘Was I right to tell you, Charlotte?’

‘I needed to know,’ I said dully.

‘Yes, because it means it’s over, it means you can forget about her. Cut her out of your thoughts.’

I opened my eyes again and stared at him. ‘It doesn’t, though! It means the opposite. It means, whether I like it or not, Jessie’s part of what made me. It’s
Jessie’s genes sloshing about in me, in Mum, in Will. Not lovely Nan’s. So where does that leave us?’

‘Exactly where you were. Nothing about your family’s changed here.’

‘But it
has
. What about the DNA of it, the biological inheritance? What gets passed on and what doesn’t? Come on, you’re the scientist. You hear these people who
research their family trees practically boasting about how their ancestor was hanged at Newgate or transported to Australia, like they think it’s quite cool to be related to a criminal
’cause it happened two hundred years ago. What about if it isn’t two hundred years ago? If it’s only thirty? What percentage of “badness” gets handed down each time?
Huh?’

Because one thing I really couldn’t bear was the thought of Will being connected to that woman. Every instinct screamed at me to protect him, keep him separate and safe so he’d
never ever know. My beautiful son who was more precious than my own life. What would become of him, where would he end up? Suddenly I was drowning in the smell of malt and fag smoke and cheap
perfume. Everything around me felt polluted.

‘You want some science?’ asked Daniel. ‘Really?’

‘Please, Dan.’

‘Right, here goes.’ He spread his long fingers and began to count off his arguments. ‘OK, firstly, let’s look at the anecdotal evidence: have you or your mother ever
given in to serious violent urges? No. And you’ve had your moments of provocation, haven’t you? So secondly, we have to consider the wider research. And after years of investigation
into the subject, across a whole host of countries, all results suggest there is no single gene for aggressive behaviour. It’s possible there might be some combinations of genes that result
in a predisposition to violence, but the chances of those exact combinations recurring in the next generation are minute. It’s like expecting a Nobel Prize-winner to give birth to a Nobel
Prize-winner. Any transmission would really be down to environment, culture, expectation. For instance, what do you know about Jessie’s upbringing? There could be all kinds of abuse there,
fear, violence, factors that would make the best of us turn bad. Add to that the point you made yourself, how pretty much everyone’s got criminal relatives somewhere down the line if you go
hunting for them. We’re all genetically contaminated in that sense. But we don’t have to walk around consciously carrying that burden because we’re free to live our own lives.
Your genetic heritage is always balanced against choice. Even if you’re born harbouring a particular impulse, you always have the opportunity to resist. In this case, the fact you’re
aware you don’t want Will to go in that direction is going to make you encourage him even more strongly to be a decent, upstanding citizen. So in that sense you might even see it as a
positive factor. Although, I appreciate that may be pushing it.’

He nudged the rim of his glasses so they sat higher on his nose, nervously pleased with himself.

I said, ‘I did smack Will that time.’

‘Once. And remember how you felt afterwards?’

‘Awful.’

‘There you go.’

I thought about Will in pain, reminded myself how it felt to watch. Catching his arm on the hot tap during bathtime, how he’d yelled; the awful moment he fell and banged his forehead on
the hearth; the day of his MMR jab. A heavy book tumbling off the shelf onto his bare foot. A wasp sting, a splinter off the back fence, a trapped finger. His pain was always my pain, only ten
times worse. Then I remembered when I was little, Mum sitting up with me through the small hours when I was ill. She used to keep a flannel in the fridge for when I had a temperature. And I
thought of her dabbing my split lip with an ice cube wrapped in a hanky, and calmly clearing up where I’d been sick. It used to nearly kill her to use TCP on my cuts; she’d suck in
her breath and wince as she pressed the cotton wool on. Now I understood why. Motherhood strips us down to the thinnest layer of skin and makes us super-sensitive. It should do, anyway. And then
I thought of Nan bending to button my winter coat and helping me work my small fingers into gloves, her expression of rapture when she first peeped into Will’s crib. My brilliant nan. That
was where my family came from, from that well of decency and love, not from some twisted stranger in another city.

I worked my hand loose from his.

‘Are you OK?’ he said again.

‘I’m not sure. But – I suppose I should say thank you, anyway. It can’t have been easy to bring me that news.’

‘It wasn’t.’

No. What must the discovery have been like for him, scrolling through those old newspaper reports? Then the journey here, waiting in the pub for me, watching my shock register as he talked.
There’d been no need for him to suffer any of it.

‘Do you need another drink, Charlotte?’

‘I’ve had plenty, thanks. In fact, I should probably get some fresh air.’

‘Of course. Do you need me to take you outside?’

‘I’m not sure.’ My legs felt wobbly, as if they’d never carry me anywhere again.

For a minute or so we sat listening to the juke box play ‘Life Is A Rollercoaster’. Apparently the trick was you just had to ride it.

I said, ‘Dad’s coming home in a fortnight. That’s one good thing at least.’

‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

‘Mum’s getting a bed for downstairs. It’s going to be chaos, basically.’

‘She’ll cope, though?’

‘Oh, yeah. Mum always does.’

‘And Will’s OK? Am I allowed to ask?’

‘He’s fine. Learning to pedal his trike.’

‘Splendid.’

‘God, Jessie Pilkington. Will I ever feel normal again, Dan?’

‘You will.’

Somewhere in the background Ronan Keating finished telling us not to fight it, and an old song came on over the speakers: