The Good Mother (23 page)

I step forward. Craig can see me too now. We stare at each other. I expect to hate him. But I don’t. I just see a man who has memories. Physically, in his hands, with boxes of Cara’s possessions. But in his mind, too. He will have memories of Cara. Ones that have escaped me and that Paul wasn’t around for.

‘Come in,’ I say.

Paul finds his voice. ‘Craig can’t stay, sweetie, he’s very busy, on his way somewhere else. He’s just dropping stuff off.’ I see Paul glare at Craig.

Craig brushes past Paul and comes into the house. He holds his hands open to me. ‘Susan,’ he says. And he hugs me. And I let him. Because even though, so far as I remember, this man has shown no interest in his daughter for the last – oh what must it be, now we’re back on real time? – seven years, she was of both of us. Somewhere within Craig is a piece of Cara.

And Belle too, of course. But Belle never existed as a person for Craig. Not really. Otherwise how could he have dealt with it all so inhumanely, in a way that I will now never forgive him for?

Yet we still have Cara, in this moment, Craig and I.

Paul clears his throat. He wants to end the hug. Claim me back. Annoying. Selfish. Let me just have this.

But the moment has passed. Whatever Cara-ness was flowing from Craig to me is lost. We move apart.

‘You’ve got Cara’s things?’ I ask.

He nods. ‘Paul was generous enough to give them to me.’ Is that a smirk in Paul’s direction?

‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘You hadn’t seen Cara since you walked out on us, you bastard. Complete, complete bastard.’ My voice rises, wobbles. I take a breath. Focus. This is about Cara. ‘Why did Paul give you her stuff?’

There’s a glance between Paul and Craig. Paul hasn’t regained much of his colour from the shock of seeing me where I wasn’t supposed to be a few moments earlier.

I turn back to Craig. There’s a lazy smile crossing his face.

‘Do you want to tell her or shall I?’ Craig asks Paul.

‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Paul says. ‘Craig just turned up here asking for Cara’s things. His claim seemed better than mine. And you were—well, you know how you were. I wasn’t thinking clearly.’ He’s gone straight from pale to red.

‘She deserves an explanation, Paul,’ says Craig.

Paul is clenching and unclenching his jaw.

What’s going on here? More than just a natural rivalry between two husbands?

Whatever it is, I can’t be bothered with it just now. I’ll decide what I need to know. All I care about is Cara. Park this testosterone fest.

‘Get Cara’s things,’ I instruct Craig. ‘Then come in and sit down.’

With a shrug and a nod of deference, Craig lopes out of the door.

‘I don’t think this is a good idea, Suze,’ Paul whispers to me while Craig is – maybe – out of earshot. I ignore him and settle down on the sofa, fanning out my skirt.

Craig returns with a stack of box-files and carrier bags.

Cara’s world!

He puts them down on the coffee table and sits down next to me.

‘Thanks, Craig. I’ve got this now,’ says Paul. He is hovering behind the sofa.

Craig and I turn round.

‘The “this” you’re talking about is mine and Susan’s daughter, Paul,’ Craig admonishes him. ‘I’d say you should let us get on with this.’

‘I think you forfeited the right to have anything to do with Cara a long time ago,’ Paul somehow manages to say, out of that tight jaw. He has a point. But Craig doesn’t seem to think so because he’s raising his eyebrows. He raises his chin slightly, looks defiantly at Paul.

‘By comparison, Paul, I’d say—’

‘Oh for goodness sake,’ I cut in. ‘Paul, we need to go through this stuff and I’d like Craig to be here. And, Craig, not seeing your daughter for the last seven years – abandoning her, and me – doesn’t count as great parenting. Let’s get on, shall we?’

Craig raises his hands and makes a ‘backing off’ gesture. But his eyes are intense. ‘You heard what the lady said, Paul. Let’s just get on.’

Paul glares at him and doesn’t say anything.

Craig opens up the first box. I think I see sequins. I get a little thrill. Sequins. I remember sequins.

‘Look, these are from her designs, that skirt she made!’

Blank look from Craig. And a blank look from Paul.

‘She made clothes, didn’t she?’

Paul wipes a hand across his face. ‘She did crafts, I guess you could maybe call that design …’ He trails off.

Design. Crafts. I don’t know which is real. But these sequins are real. Cara used to collect them, either way. Kept trying to make me sprinkle them on cakes, even though they’re not edible.

I pull out a small toy sheep from one of the boxes. ‘Remember this?’ I ask Craig.

He wrinkles his brow. No he doesn’t.

‘We bought it for Belle,’ I remind him. ‘But we gave it to Cara.’

If hearing the name shocks him, he doesn’t show it. ‘Of course,’ he says. That’s it. He cares as much now about Belle as he did then. Bastard.

He hands me the next item from the box. It’s a recorder, one of those brown things. Ugly. ‘Where’s her flute?’ I ask.

There are tears in Paul’s eyes.

Oh. I get it. Cara, the virtuoso recorder player. Hadn’t yet graduated to a flute. Fine. Another element of ‘Cara’ I have to bury. It’s OK. I can take it. I have this recorder. Perhaps it’s not so ugly.

‘She had that with her when I saw her,’ Craig says.

I hear a sharp intake of breath from Paul.

I don’t know why.

But then it dawns on me.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. When did you see Cara?’

Because so far as I know, the last time he saw Cara, she was one year old.

Chapter 60

Suze

Craig places the lid over the box again and turns to me. Slowly. Casually.

‘Craig,’ Paul says. His voice is low, tense.

‘Craig?’ I ask. Like so much else, I just don’t understand.

‘I’ve been a better father than you think, Susan.’

‘Craig,’ Paul says again. ‘We had a deal.’ His voice is so low and quiet, perhaps he thinks I can’t hear him talking about deals concerning my daughter.

‘I think Susan should know,’ Craig says. His tone is casual, light. ‘I was seeing Cara once a week.’

I stare at him. ‘What? Rubbish!’

He’s messing with me now. Right? He must be. There’s no way I would have forgotten that. Or let him see Cara without supervision. You can’t just turn up after years of absence and expect unfettered access to a mother’s daughter.

‘Rubbish, Craig. I might be piecing things together, but I know that’s not true.’

Craig turns to Paul. ‘Paul, you going to verify that for our Susan? Can’t have her thinking I’m a liar now.’

Paul doesn’t say anything at first, just pushes out his lower jaw and gnaws on his lip like he’s trying to resist the urge to spit at Craig. Then untightening his jaw just enough so he can speak, says, ‘It’s true.’

‘What?’ I’m standing now. Craig was seeing Cara? With Paul’s knowledge? ‘Why didn’t you tell me? How did this happen?’

Craig smirks. ‘Paul does like his little secrets, doesn’t he?’

Paul turns to me. ‘I’m sorry. It was just twice, a fortnight before she died. He appealed to my better nature. I knew you’d be upset, but … he found me at the client I was working at, because like a smug idiot I’d posted it on LinkedIn. And he was so persistent, and he made such a good case, about not keeping Cara from her father. Threatened to come and find you if I didn’t let him. I’m sorry. I know it was wrong and I’m sorry.’

I can’t believe it. How could Paul break my trust like that? OK, so this is a guy who can imprison his own wife. But that was for good motives, wasn’t it? What about this? This was a betrayal. This was Paul looking at Craig and me and Cara and deciding to make himself moral arbiter. Taking a view on who was right and who was wrong – and found me wanting. After everything he knew about Craig. And how hard I’d tried to keep him out of our lives, out of Cara’s life, after he left – moving house, cutting all communication, hoping he would never decide to come looking.

I shake my head. I can’t process this now. I just want to see Cara’s things. I reach out towards the box with the sequins. I have it in my hands when Craig speaks again. He leans forward conspiratorially.

‘Do you know what Paul likes as much as a good secret, Susan? He likes a good drink.’

‘Shut up, Belvoir!’ Paul shouts. ‘Shut up or I swear I’ll kill you!’

‘Sometimes he likes a good drink, or maybe two, before driving. Before driving your daughter.’

Craig’s face vanishes as Paul moves in with a punch. I drop the box-file and sequins fall to the floor, scattering the carpet with reds and greens and blues.

And inside me there is an explosion. An explosion of hate. Because I remember now. I remember the way Paul tasted when I kissed him after I arrived at the hospital. I remember he’d been drinking when he drove Cara to her death.

Chapter 61

Paul

‘I wasn’t over the limit!’ I shout before Suze can say anything else. I need to get in there quick. I can’t have this happening all over again. ‘I wasn’t over the limit. The police breathalysed me. I’d had one drink. You know this!’

She’s shaking her head. Not the rational shaking you do when you disagree with someone. Shaking it enough to make her brain ricochet. Shaking it to free herself of my existence, of any existence.

‘You were drinking. You were driving my Cara and you were drinking,’ she tells me.

Craig is climbing up from the floor. I consider punching him again but it’s too late. And I think he’d win.

‘Suze, listen – if that drinking had affected my driving in any way, I’d be in prison now, wouldn’t I?’

Craig is rubbing his jaw. I’d expect him to be ready to punch me back, the old security guard in him ready for a fight. But no. Words are his weapon this time. He’s opening his mouth to speak.

‘Like before, you mean?’ he says.

I don’t know if Suze has heard. But I need to act as if she has.

‘Balls, Craig! You know that’s rubbish! I never went to prison. I got a caution. That was all.’

‘For drink-driving,’ Craig says. ‘You got a caution for drink-driving and then you did it again and our daughter died.’

Suze has stopped shaking and stands completely still. She is staring at me. ‘What?’ she whispers.

‘It’s time you knew the truth, Susan,’ says Craig. ‘You’d never imagine the lengths Paul went to so you wouldn’t know.’ He spreads his hands out, indicating Cara’s things. ‘Gave me all this, for a start. And I bet he didn’t let you see this particular newspaper article.’

Craig hands Suze an old newspaper, the same vintage I’ve been looking at with her. I can see he’s highlighted a sentence. I don’t need to read it. I know what it says: ‘The police breathalysed the girl’s father and, although he had been drinking, he wasn’t over the limit.’

‘Kind of set me thinking, you know?’ Craig says. Laconically.

I want to kill Craig. I want to find the gun, reunite it with the bullets, wherever Suze has put them, and I want to kill him. How dare he turn up here with his ‘truth’? I wasn’t drunk when I drove Cara. I wasn’t. I sometimes wish I had been, those other times. The first time was the worst. When I had to explain to Cara where we were going. That horrible conversation in the car, my hand on her knee, explaining to her that she wasn’t to me what she thought she was (by blood, anyway – I still loved her just as much). It wasn’t the drink that distracted me on the last visit. I’m sure it wasn’t. I’ve lain awake night after night thinking about whether it was because I’d had a glass of wine. A large glass of wine. Remembering what I saw, how I felt, before I hit that wall. Were my reactions slowed? Was my vision wavering from the straight line at the centre of the road? No. No. If my mind wandered – if – it was the thought of how I was betraying Suze by taking Cara to Craig. Questioning whether I was doing the right thing. Knowing that I wasn’t by Suze. But that I might be by Cara. Plainly, I wasn’t. If it was the right thing, she would still be alive.

And I wasn’t even supposed to be seeing Craig that day.

It was Suze who made me. Indirectly.

Suze is moving her hands up and down her face, pulling in her cheeks so that I can see the red tissue under her eyes.

‘So, Paul – let me get this right,’ Suze demands, her voice cracking. ‘You have a drunk-driving record you didn’t tell me about? Then you drink while driving Cara, which kills her—’

‘I wasn’t over the limit!’ I tell her again.

‘Which kills her,’ she continues, ‘and then you give away all my mementos of her to my shit of an ex-husband, who you’ve been letting Cara see, so that he won’t tell me your disgusting little secret, thus robbing me of my daughter two – no, wait, three – times?’

‘If I might just add,’ Craig says, putting up one hand. ‘He was driving her to see me that day.’

Then Suze flies at me. Nails, hands, teeth – in my face, my hair, my groin. And I’m bent double beneath this flurry of hate. She hits me and hits me and hits me, and I don’t defend myself because I deserve it, do I (even though I wasn’t, I wasn’t over the limit)? All I can do is curl up on the floor as she kicks and sobs and hits and shouts over and over again, ‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!’

I can’t take this. I can’t be the martyr. I have to defend myself.

‘You knew, Suze! You knew I’d been drinking, and you sent me to get her!’

She flinches and pauses in her assault. Is that a memory returning?

‘What?’ she asks me.

‘You knew. You phoned me, and you asked me to collect Cara because you’d had a last-minute booking at the studio. A hen party, their other plans had fallen through, you said. Great for business, you said. And I told you, I’m at a lunch with a potential client, he’s just buying me another drink. Another drink. And you said it would be fine. You knew.’

She is almost spitting at me. She shouts down at me from her elevated height. ‘Don’t you dare blame me! You were the one who was driving! You were the one behind the wheel. And I thought you were just collecting her, not taking her off on some other journey to Craig!’

‘But you lied to me, Suze! You told me you had clients. You didn’t. You didn’t. You confessed it, in the hospital, don’t you remember? You made up the clients. You just wanted some me-time. A soak in the tub. Your hair was still wet at the ends when you arrived, from where you’d been reclining in the soapsuds. You let me go and kill your daughter because you wanted a bath!’