Burnt Paper Sky (25 page)

In the early hours of the morning I woke to find myself drenched in sweat again, consumed by that scooped-out feeling of loss that was brutal and all-consuming and was no longer tempered by having people close to me.

I began to consider the thought that Ben might not come home.

I began to consider the reality that I might have to exist in, should that happen.

It would be intolerable.

My obsessive, jumpy thoughts drove me downstairs, and out of the back door into the night. The wind was still sharp and it sent me running across the garden to my studio, and in that short distance made its way coldly between the folds of my nightwear so that by the time I let myself in I was shivering so violently that I felt like a shaken bag of bones.

I didn’t dare turn on the lights, in case of being seen through the glass doors, top-lit in all my falling-apart glory. My neighbours, like my friends, felt like adversaries now, potential spies. Instead I just turned on my computer, and sat in its frigid blue glow. Then, compulsively, slowly, knowing I shouldn’t, feeling unable to stop, I began to look online.

I found myself castigated further. In the absence of news about the case, editorial pieces had emerged, primarily in the broadsheets. And if I’d ever hoped before reading them that they might provide a more balanced view of our family’s situation, then I was wrong, delusional. They were as brutally judgemental as the red tops.

Almost without exception they discussed the case, and my performance at the press conference, in the context of my single motherhood, and they used it as a stick to beat me with, or a label with which to stigmatise me.

Those editorial pieces asked a lot of questions about me, and about Ben’s case. You can imagine that, can’t you? Perhaps you read them. They questioned my morals and they cast doubt on my fitness to raise a child. They condemned me roundly for my slack parenting in letting Ben run ahead in the woods. They blamed me, made a social pariah of me. Single mother, failed mother, person of dubious social status, target.

Here’s what they didn’t ask: they showed no curiosity whatsoever about whether I’d considered the decision to let Ben run ahead, or any of the factors I might have taken into account; they didn’t examine the sense of loss I had to overcome when John left me, or my efforts at rebuilding, or my longing to be a good mother in his absence; they didn’t ask how much I loved Ben.

Nowhere did any journalist mention the hardship of single parenthood, the evenings spent alone, the pressures of making difficult decisions without support, the painful absence of a partner who might have been there if life had turned out differently.

These were people, I thought, with a growing sense of desperation, who would have put me in a workhouse a hundred years ago, and a few centuries before that strapped me into a scold’s bridle, or built a tall bonfire just for me to sit atop, and lit it with flaming torches, which underscored with flickering light their hard-bitten features, their lack of mercy or compassion.

And nowhere, in any of the hundreds of words written, did any of them lay a scrap of blame at John’s door. In contrast, he was the object of sympathy, protected by his gender and his profession: paediatric general surgeon, his new wife a deserved salve for his pain, not a cause of the breakdown of our marriage. One of them even featured a photograph of John and Katrina looking like a perfect unit, irreproachable in their togetherness.

I was their target because I was socially unacceptable, and so they did everything they legally could: they publicly lanced me with words which were written, examined and edited, each process carefully honing them in a calculated effort to push people’s buttons once they were published, to froth up public opinion around them so that my situation could titillate others, could thrill and bolster the minds of the smug and judgemental.
Schadenfreude
. Conservatism. Better the worst happens to somebody else, because, quite frankly, they must have done something to deserve it.

And they felt entitled to do that, these so called ‘thinkers’, as they sat comfortably behind their desks with their reference books and their own unexamined moral compass, because I was nothing to them. Ben and I were simply the commodity that would sell their papers, nothing more. And these were the very papers that I used to read, that I used to carry down the road from the shop and bring into my home.

It was cowardly, yellow journalism, and I knew that. The problem was, knowing it wasn’t enough to stop every single word from chipping away any final scraps of self-respect or dignity that I might have had left. I was only human, after all.

And I suppose I’m interested now to know whether it troubles you to read these things, to know that the rug you’re standing on so securely can be whipped out from under your feet rapidly and completely? Or do you feel safer than that? Do you assume that your foundations are more secure than mine, and that my situation is too extreme to ever befall you? Have you noted the moments when I made mistakes that you might have avoided? Do you imagine that you would have behaved with a more perfect maternal dignity in my situation, that you would be unimpeachable? Perhaps you wouldn’t have been stupid enough to lose your husband in the first place.

Be careful what you assume, is what I’d say to that. Be very careful. I should know. I was married to a doctor once.

I’m also interested to know how uncomfortable you feel now. Whether you’re regretting our agreement. Remember the roles we allocated each other? Me: Ancient Mariner and Narrator. You: Wedding Guest and Patient Listener. Do you wish you could shuffle away yet? Refill your glass perhaps? Now that my grip is loosening whose side are you on? Mine, or theirs? How long will you stay with the underdog, given that she’s so beaten now, so unattractive? Displaying here and there signs of mental instability.

If I were to make a final bid to keep your attention I suppose I would say that if it troubles you to hear these things from me, to witness my descent, then perhaps you can take heart from the fact that it pains me very, very deeply to confess them.

When, finally, the darkness outside my studio began to dissolve that morning, I pulled my chair away from the computer, tore my horrified eyes from the screen. With ice-cold fingers I pulled my dressing gown around me and I watched the grainy night contours of my garden morph slowly into a strangely lit morning where the rising sun tinted the pendulous clouds so that they were not entirely black, but coloured instead with bruised fleshy tones, burnished in places. It was the kind of light that nobody would mistake for hope.

Back in the kitchen, it felt as though I was meeting my possessions after an absence. I boiled the kettle, and realised that I hadn’t done that myself for days, because Nicky had done everything. Almost out of curiosity I opened the fridge, having no idea what was in it, and found cooked meals, in labelled containers, prepared by Nicky before she left, and half a pint of fresh milk.

At the kitchen table, warming slowly as the heating in the house cranked up around me with its familiar clicks and clonks, I began to look at Ben’s schoolbooks.

There were five of them. There wasn’t a great deal of work in each one as it was so early in the school year, but I started to work through them: maths, literacy, spellings, a history project and a news book.

The first page of the news book made me smile.

Ben had drawn a picture of a huge bed, which filled the entire page. In it was a small stick figure. Underneath it he had written,
I spent the hole weekend in bed
. There was a comment beside it in red ink:
Are you sure that’s all you did, Ben? I expect you did something else. The drawing of the bed is nice
.

It even made me smile, because it was nonsense, and I thought simply: this is the world I want to be in, the imaginative, funny world that’s my son.

I knew then, with perfect clarity, that if Ben didn’t survive this, then nor could I.

Five of us turned up: me, and four men in full gear. Black clothing, bullet-proofed jackets, caps that hide your eyes, and shoes with soles that were thick enough to do damage. All my men were armed. All of us wore earpieces, to keep in radio contact. I was leading.

It was 0500 hours. It was dark. Early morning hush was settled over the neighbourhood like a blanket.

We parked quietly around the corner, killing the car engine quickly, and when we got out we didn’t talk, communicating with gestures only. Three of us stayed at the end of the driveway, in the shadows and out of sight, and we waited there silently while I sent two around the side of the property.

We didn’t want anybody slipping out of the back.

Streetlights revealed that the bungalow was in bad condition, in contrast to the neighbouring properties, which were immaculate, their front gardens displaying neatly trimmed lawns, and tended borders, containing closely clipped shrubs like shiny suburban trophies.

The flowerbeds in our bungalow’s garden were overgrown, and the lawn was muddy and unkempt, but the metal gate at the side of the house had shiny black paint on it and its latch didn’t squeak when my two DCs opened it and sidled through it.

My guess was that its decline was recent.

There was a single garage to the side of the bungalow; its door was shut but in good nick, and the driveway had been expensively relaid at some point recently. There was no crunchy gravel to give us away. There was also no vehicle in the driveway, no curtains drawn at the front and no lights on in the house, and I hoped to God the place wasn’t empty.

On my signal, two of the men approached the front door and stood either side of it, tucked in, so that they weren’t visible through the frosted glass in the door, not until they were ready to be.

There was a security light above them, but it didn’t come on. They had a battering ram with them, a black metal cylinder, so that they could break down the door if necessary.

They didn’t look at me. They were focused on the door, waiting to hear my voice in their earpieces. ‘Go,’ I whispered into my radio. I knew the command would transmit loud and clear, and they didn’t hesitate. They rang the bell, hammered on the door, shouted through the letter flap: ‘Police, let us in. Police!’

The noise ripped through the pre-dawn stillness.

By the time a light came on in the hallway of the bungalow the other properties around us were lit up like Christmas trees and we were about to bash the door in.

A woman opened it, just an inch or two at first, suspicious eyes peering through. She looked as though she’d been asleep. She wore tracksuit bottoms, plastic clogs and a nurse’s tabard. My men pushed past her. I followed.

‘Where is he?’ I said.

She pointed towards the end of the hall opposite. One of my men was already down there; the other had gone into the front rooms. I ran down the hall, but even before I’d travelled those few paces I knew it had gone wrong when my man said, ‘In here, boss,’ and his voice sagged. He stood in the doorway just ahead of me and his body language had relaxed, adrenalin gone. There was no threat.

As I pushed past him, he said, ‘He’s not going anywhere.’

In the middle of the room was a hospital bed. In the bed lay a man, his eyes wide balls of fear. He was underneath a white sheet that he’d pulled up to his neck with fingers that scrunched the material tight. A hospital band was visible on his wrist. The only clue to his relative youth was his brown hair. His face hung from his bones and his skin was grey apart from high red spots on his cheekbones, from fever, or morphine. He was hooked up to a pump. An oxygen mask was attached to his face, the elastic digging into his cheeks, and a bag of dark orange urine hung from the side of the bed.

Beside the bed was an armchair, and a table, with books on it, along with a laptop computer, a remote control for the TV that sat on the chest of drawers in a corner, and a cardboard tray for collecting vomit. Beside the door was a wheelchair.

The nurse was beside me now. ‘He’s dying,’ she said. She had tribal scars on her face, two rough, raised lines on each cheek, and eyes that told me that she’d seen death before.

I turned to my man. ‘Search the garage,’ I said, but I already knew that there’d be no sign of Ben Finch.