The Perfect Mother (20 page)

‘I like the room,’ I say as he comes in.

‘I didn’t do it myself,’ he says. ‘It was like this when I bought it. But it seemed just right for me. I like to travel light—I’m not very domestic really.’

I point to the photograph. ‘You’ve done some interesting things.’

‘I used to be into all this gung-ho stuff,’ he says. ‘But not since Jamie came to live with me. It wasn’t possible any more. Though to be honest, I didn’t want to anyway.’

‘I think that having children can make you more afraid.’

‘Yes,’ he says.

We stand there for a moment, not knowing what to do.

‘Why don’t you sit down?’ he says.

I sit on the sofa. He looks down at me with eyes that are grey and steady, and my body feels big and ungainly, and I don’t know why I’ve come.

‘I’ll get you a drink,’ he says. ‘Would you like that?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

He goes to the kitchen, comes back with two glasses, and a bottle of wine from the fridge, with a sweat of cold on it.

‘It’s rather rough,’ he says as he hands me my glass, his fingers brushing mine. ‘If I’d known you were coming, I’d have got something better.’

I drink gratefully. ‘It’s good,’ I tell him.

He’s standing there looking down at me with his glass in his hand. I sense his awkwardness. He’s very direct, but he isn’t smooth like Richard. He’s no good at glossing over the gaps in conversations; he isn’t the kind of man who’d open doors for you or slickly end up at your elbow on the outside of the pavement. The silence stretches on, and I’m desperate to break it.

‘It’s a weird feeling. That you know so much about me.’ And immediately I wish I hadn’t said that: it’s too close, too confessional. Heat washes over my skin.

His eyes don’t leave me.

‘Well, I don’t, of course,’ he says. ‘I saw a photo of you, that was all. When I was doing a piece on The Poplars, during the inquiry.’

‘But that was years ago.’

‘Yes.’ He’s very serious, his steady gaze on me. ‘It was one of my first pieces. It got to me, the whole story, the way you were silenced.’

‘I still don’t see how you could recognise me.’

‘There were these photos: you and some of the other kids in this big empty room—it looked so bleak somehow—and one that was just you, smiling for England,’ he says.

I remember the photo that Lesley took, for the advertisement in the
Evening Standard.

‘I can’t have been more than fourteen,’ I say.

‘No,’ he says, ‘but your smile was just the same.’

I feel myself flush again. I turn away a little.

‘And Aimee?’ I say. ‘You told me you met her?’

He nods. ‘She’s got a little boy. She works in a dry-cleaner’s in Peckham.’

‘And she’s really OK?’

‘I only met her once. She was keen to talk,’ he says.

‘Maybe I should go and see her,’ I say, uncertainly. ‘It’s just so hard to imagine.’

‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Well, that’s up to you—I mean, I can give you her number.’

I sense that he wants to dissuade me. And he’s right, maybe. I think of how it would be if I went to see her now: how everything that joined us once has gone.

‘What did you say about me? Was she angry with me?’

‘Angry? Why would she be?’

‘I thought she might be.’

He shakes his head. ‘She said you were the clever one, she always thought you’d make it.’

I wonder what that means, to make it—and whether it’s true of me.

He turns from me, opens a window onto the back garden. It’s a nondescript garden: a motorbike, a climbing frame, a patch of grass worn down from football games; a prunus with pink extravagant blossom and dark leaves the colour of scorched paper. Warm air comes into the room, with a smell of the changing earth.

‘That isn’t the only reason I came,’ I say. ‘There’s something else—I needed to talk to somebody.’

‘Daisy?’

My heart has started to pound. ‘Something’s happened…’ The words clog up my throat.

‘Catriona, what is it?’ he says. There’s a sudden urgency in his voice, responding perhaps to the fear in mine. ‘What are they saying?’

Suddenly, in this simple bright room, the whole thing seems preposterous; I scarcely believe it myself. I think he’ll shrug it off—or say, like Richard, You’re exaggerating, it’ll all blow over…I take a deep breath.

‘They think it’s my fault—that I’m making her ill.’

‘They’re saying
what
?’

‘That it’s my fault, that it’s this syndrome.’

His face changes. He’s sharp, alert. He stares at me.

‘Münchausen’s?’

I nod.

‘Jesus.’

‘I love her so much. How could I possibly hurt her?’

He makes a brief little gesture, waving my protestation aside.

‘I don’t believe this,’ he says.

‘I’ve seen the letter.’

‘Jesus,’ he says again.

He’s silent for a moment. He pulls up a dining chair, sits down in front of me, his eyes never leaving me.

‘Catriona, this is a criminal allegation,’ he says. His voice has changed; he’s so quiet, serious. ‘When a doctor says this, he isn’t talking medicine any more, he’s talking crime. You need a lawyer. Now.’

This shakes me.

‘How can I possibly get a lawyer?’

‘I could find you someone,’ he says.

‘But Richard would never agree. Richard thinks we should just go along with what they’re saying—not make a fuss. That we shouldn’t rock the boat, that they all know what they’re doing. He’d be appalled if I suggested seeing a lawyer.’

‘Go on your own, then,’ he says.

‘How can I? I’m totally dependent. I’ve no money of my own, no training. I’ve got three GCSEs—I mean, I have nothing that’s just mine…’

My voice is small. I feel a kind of shame at this recital of my deficiencies—that I am so dependent, like a child.

‘At the very least,’ he says, ‘you must get another
doctor.’ He’s talking fast and his urgency frightens me. ‘You have an absolute right to a second opinion. If they really believe this, they could take Daisy away. They don’t have to be certain.’

‘I don’t know anyone to go to.’ I think how feeble he must think me—that to everything he suggests I say that I can’t do it. ‘I’ve asked my GP—she couldn’t suggest anyone.’

‘That’s crap,’ he says. ‘Listen. There’s a woman I know who’s on the Health Authority—a local councillor, Thelma. She knows lots of medics. I’ll get you a name.’

‘But how can I do that, if Richard doesn’t want to?’

‘You’ve got to make him see.’

I shake my head a little, thinking of Richard. There’s silence between us for a moment. The lazy easy sounds of spring evenings float in through the window—children calling in the wide back gardens, the leisurely clatter of horses being ridden down the road.

‘Why doesn’t he understand?’ I’m talking half to myself now. ‘Why does he seem to believe what these doctors are saying?’

‘How should I know?’ He’s looking out at the garden, looking away from me. ‘I’m possibly the very last person you should talk to about Richard.’

It’s because of the warmth behind his words, perhaps, but tears of self-pity start to well up in me. I swallow them down.

‘I feel so helpless,’ I tell him.

‘Yes. I know. But you’re not.’

He comes and sits beside me on the sofa. He puts out a hand and briefly touches my wrist. I look at his hand on
mine. I see how worn his fingernails are, and the tracery of blue veins inside his wrists. ‘I think you’re also strong.’

I shake my head. ‘I don’t feel it.’

‘Aimee told me a lot,’ he says. ‘About what you all went through. If you can come through that, you can come through anything.’

We’re too close. I don’t look at him.

‘I don’t think it works like that,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t think awful things make you stronger.’

‘But you’ve made it through,’ he says. ‘When I look at you, I see this poised woman with this perfect house, this perfect lifestyle—but someone who knows about the other side too. Someone who’s survived…Catriona, you’ve got to fight this.’

‘But how can I? How can I if Richard won’t? Because everything I do will be held against me. They’re watching me now—just watching to see if I put a foot wrong, if I give them any little clue. I know they’re watching me. And Dr McGuire—I feel he hates me. I can’t fight him.’

‘I don’t think you have a choice,’ he says.

‘But the way he looks at me—it’s like I appall him somehow…’

‘No,’ he says. He gets up abruptly. ‘It’s nothing to do with that.’

He’s looking out of the window, his back to me.

‘There was a case up at the hospital,’ he says. ‘Several years ago now. Dr McGuire was involved. Nice couple, Mum had been a nurse, stable ordinary family. I heard
about it—Thelma had a contact on the paediatric ward. First kid died of a cot death. Terrible thing, everyone was very sympathetic, big funeral, lots of white flowers. Mum had another baby. Second kid died, just like the first. Tragic coincidence. A year or two later, Mum had a third child—had a monitor to check on the baby’s breathing, loved him to bits, everyone was very happy for her. But the baby wasn’t thriving and the GP was worried, made a fuss—and, rather against Dr McGuire’s wishes, mother and baby were admitted to a covert surveillance unit in Birmingham. They got her on video, trying to suffocate the baby.’ He’s staring into the garden. ‘They’re pretty bloody wary up there now,’ he says.

I sit there, thinking about all this. I don’t know what to say.

‘I don’t know if that helps at all,’ he says then.

‘Yes. Maybe.’

We’re silent for a moment. I feel his eyes on me.

From the front room I hear the music at the end of
Neighbours.

‘I’ve got to go,’ I tell him.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘But I’d like you to come again. You could show me some of your drawings. I’d like that.’

‘Yes. I will.’

I get up. Our eyes are just on a level.

‘You don’t believe it,’ I say. ‘That it
is
my fault. Everyone else seems to suspect me, but you don’t.’

‘For goodness’ sake,’ he says.

I go into the hall. He follows me. We’re standing there and neither of us has opened the door.

I turn towards him. I’m going to say thanks for the drink and for listening to me. We’re looking at each other: we can’t look away.

‘Catriona.’ The way he says it, it’s as if he touches me, like warm fingertips sliding across my skin. ‘I’ve wanted so much to see you. There are things I’ve wanted to say to you. That I probably shouldn’t anyway, but I wanted to. And now I can’t,’ he says.

My skin is hot.

‘That’s the very last thing you need,’ he says, ‘the stuff I was going to say.’

I shake my head a little.

He looks at me like a question, and reaches out and puts his arms around me. He holds me lightly for a moment, carefully, as though I am fragile. I rest my head on his shoulder. Then I turn and go without looking at him.

CHAPTER 24

N
icky rings, wanting to know how Daisy is and whether I’m going to the
Sound of Music
karaoke. She asks what we thought of Helmut Wolf’s diet. I confess, rather ashamed, that we’ve tried but we’ve had to give up. She says, Well, maybe it wasn’t right for Daisy; she has someone else to recommend, a cranial osteopath with amazing healing hands. I feel a surge of hope—as I always do when someone is suggested. I write his name in my address book.

Every night I wake and lie there for hours, hearing Richard’s breathing and the bark of the fox, my worries
growing in the night, feeding on darkness and sleeplessness. I make endless lists in my mind, conjure up new and intricate theories, things to try. I wonder whether Daisy is allergic to household chemicals: I buy ecological washing-up liquid and clean the kitchen with bicarbonate of soda. In the dentist’s waiting room I read a magazine article about housedust mites and how our bedding is full of their toxic excrement: I send off for a dustmiteproof cover for Daisy’s duvet and mattress. I order a weekly delivery of organic vegetables. They have lots of leaves and the carrots still have their feathering of green, and they come in a string bag and leave rich trails of soil. When I cut into the carrots they give out a sweet scent that fills me with a warm earth-motherly feeling, as though I am a country housewife presiding over an Aga and hens and hollyhocks. Richard and Sinead and I all enjoy the vegetables. Daisy eats just the potatoes.

I worry too about Sinead, worry that she is neglected: she’s more closed up, more silent, chewing the sides of her fingernails. I try to make time for her. Her school will be doing
The Tempest
for their summer production, and she so longs to be Ariel; we choose a speech together, for the audition. And in Art they’re doing city streets, and she wants to photograph a car that someone has abandoned round the corner, and a hole that’s been dug in the pavement where pipes are exposed.

‘Come with me, Cat,’ she says. ‘It’s embarrassing.’

The car is a grey Mondeo. Someone has put a brick through the back window, and the windscreen is cracked
all over, as though it is crusted with frost. Sinead takes lots of photographs.

When we go to the hole in the pavement, a woman comes out of her house.

‘Excuse me, but are you complaining about the hole?’

She’s very clean, with crisp grey curls.

‘No, sorry,’ I tell her. ‘It’s for a school art project.’

‘Oh.’ She looks dejected. ‘I complained about it, you know, I rang the council, but they said, “It’s not our hole.” EDF dug it and they smelt gas, so they rang the gas people, and the gas men made a little camp and sat in it drinking tea…It’s dangerous—the mothers can’t get past it with their buggies.’

Sinead is assiduously photographing, ignoring the woman.

‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘we’re just looking for an interesting picture.’

‘You think it’s artistic? I’m disappointed in you.’ She waves, goes back to her house.

When the photographs are developed, Richard shows Sinead how to manipulate them on the computer, playing around with the colours. He’s very patient with her, and the results are lovely. The lines in the cracked glass are like a spider’s ordered threads or a patterning of veins. We all admire these patterns. Sinead glows, a little surprised, as though this rarely happens, to have so much attention.