Guilty (7 page)

7.

Bri was sat at his desk, head in his hands. The door flung open and his boss, Richard, stood there, fingers raking through his blond hair, the long fringe casually flung back as he confidently made his points.

“Had a hard night, Bri?” he demanded a reply with his stern look.

“No, Dick. Just mentally assessing a case. Working through a few pros and cons before putting things into action.”

“Do you need some advice, Bri?” His boss expected one hundred per cent input from seven in the morning till nine or ten each night. Bri was finding it hard, very difficult in his present state of mind, but Richard didn’t relate to the words: sympathy, empathy or understanding.

“No, sir, I am completely on top of the situation,” Bri lied through his back teeth.

“Just debating, as I said, a couple of minor points.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Richard shot Bri a warning look. Richard was an expert at messaging people with his steel-grey eyes. No words were needed to convey this message.

“I’ve got my eye on you. You’re slipping. Watch it or you’ll be out.”

Richard stormed out with a false smile plastered all over his creepy, plastic face. The office girls swore he had been having Botox!

Bri immediately pressed his search button to continue his desperate research. He couldn’t care two hoots at present about Richard and his threatening looks.

He googled “Appeal against conviction”. His heart was beating rapidly as he read, “You’ve got to move quickly to get permission to appeal.”

He continued reading. Where could he get an NC-Notice and grounds form from? Apparently it had to be completed and returned to the crown court within 28 days. He’d have to let onto Caroline as he’d need the contact details of the solicitor.

This NC form would then be sent to the criminal appeal office in the Strand in London. It was obviously something he couldn’t do in secret. He knew too little to complete any of the details.

Frustration!

He still treasured so many memories of life growing up with Sadie. He wanted to be her hero one more time.

There were just two years between him and Sadie. Caroline had told the story with so much pride on many occasions. Sadie had given her and Simon all they had wanted in life, they had been blissfully happy, so content, so relaxed. The three of them had been the most perfect family. Caroline and Simon never even thought about babies any more. They had Sadie, they were a complete unit.

Caroline had been taken sick at work several mornings and still it hadn’t clicked, so she claimed. It was her work colleagues who suggested the obvious – could she be pregnant? Eighteen months later Oliver had caught them equally unawares.

Simon was over the moon; miracles did happen after all! As the doctor said, you only needed one sperm.

A family of five. Bri and Oliver had always secretly known the special place Sadie held in Caroline’s heart.

Caroline had been true to the promises the well-meaning but interfering friends, like Jo, had made her keep. She had always told Sadie that she had grown from another man’s seed but Simon was her daddy now. The boys knew this mantra too but none of them had a problem with it. As small children always do, they had accepted it without question. It was the little things the boys noticed, though. Sadie seemed to get some sort of special treatment. It was hard to nail it. Caroline did treat them all equally, she did love them all the same but somehow she seemed to have an extra special bond with Sadie. As they grew into teenagers they wondered if it was a girl thing. It didn’t really bother them as they never doubted Caroline’s unconditional love for them but it was an enigma.

Guilt. Caroline felt guilt. Others didn’t know why, they could not rationalize a reason but Caroline knew why and she continually found herself trying to compensate in every little act all through Sadie’s life.

Bri closed his eyes again, his bottom lip quivering and the years slipped away.

He saw the bent bar of the gate, Sadie’s seven-year-old weight forcing it to bow as she stood on it, peering over the neighbour’s fence. Her tear-stained face was watching the village children enjoying their childhood while even at such a tender age she had been banished.

The neighbouring mother just happened to work at the village shop. When Caroline confronted her about Sadie being sent home from her garden the woman had replied that she didn’t like the way Sadie played. She had heard enough about her antics from the gossips at the school gates, destroying other children’s craft models, pinching her classmates, her general aggressive demeanour when playing with the other kids.

None of it had showed at home where Sadie behaved quite lovingly. Caroline had tried her best to import friends for Sadie! Bri cringed as he recalled the numerous attempts. There had been the extra-large family from the church Caroline had started attending in a neighbouring town. They were large in more ways than one – five children all well oversize! They had arrived for lunch in the garden; a couple of the children were Sadie’s age, a year above or below. Caroline had been desperate for Sadie to socialise. It was a boiling hot day and they had neither bathing gear with them nor any towels. Caroline had filled the huge paddling pool. She was determined that Sadie should do the things that normal childhood offered its children so Caroline somehow found sufficient pairs of shorts in all the range of sizes for them to fulfil the role of playmates. Caroline hoped the squeals of delight would filter across the fence to the neighbour’s.

Meanwhile the doorbell would go or the phone would ring. Could Bri come over to play? Could Bri come to the party? Sleepovers, cinema trips. An endless round of invitations for this perfectly behaved boy, this socially acceptable boy who was in constant demand.

There were so many differences between the behaviour of Sadie and her two brothers. Oliver and Bri would play for hours with their toys. Imaginative battles, cars going up and down the car park ramps. Sadie hadn’t got a clue, not an imaginative bone in her body! Barbies lay untouched until randomly she decided to hack their hair off or chop the lovely outfits Caroline had painstakingly sewn, into shreds. Everything she did was so destructive. It always had been.

Their grandparents had bought them all a helium balloon at a local fête. Each child proudly toddled home clinging onto their balloon. Bri had stumbled and let go of the blue curly string. Immediately his Fireman Sam balloon snatched the opportunity to escape, up, up and away. Bri’s screams followed it, high-pitched death squeals. Sadie’s little fist had immediately released her pink tendril and she had pleasantly smiled as Barbie followed suit. She didn’t blink an eyelid, just accepted her lot. Bri’s eye twitched as he recalled the moment, at the acknowledgement that such a tiny scene reflected their differences throughout life. Sadie was prepared to let all her dreams and ambitions slip away, unperturbed, no effort made whatsoever to reclaim them, whereas Bri would fight tooth and nail to achieve his aims. Years of study had resulted in excellent qualifications but then he wondered, did Sadie actually ever have any ambitions or desires?

She was happy to sit in front of the telly and videos for hours on end and would insist on watching the same video over and over again. Her brain seemed to be like a sponge and she would start to speak like Barbie when she had been watching the
Barbie
video and a Somerset accent when she had been taken with PC Plod in her
Noddy
video. Likewise at school she would take on the characters and personalities of whoever she did manage to play with.

She always hero-worshipped the villains in her videos. Where others would want to be Cinderella, she longed to be the evil stepmother or one of the ugly sisters. Caroline forbade her in the end from watching
Spiderman
and similar videos because she imitated the moves and put them into action in the playground. She had no fear and was convinced that as Peter Pan she could jump off a cliff; thankfully Caroline had just caught her in time. They had all wondered from an early age if Sadie had any sense of reality?

She did not seem to learn a lesson. If you smacked her she would smack back; if you confiscated a toy she truly wasn’t bothered. Praising her seemed to give her the all-clear to misbehave again because she had pleased you once.

Caroline had filled Bri in on the expulsion from nursery story in later years when he had queried explanations for his sister’s behaviour. Caroline’s eyes would mist over as she recounted the traumatic day when nursery had invited her in to observe the three-year-old Sadie playing.

The tiny tot moved from group to group causing havoc. In the painting group she screwed up the other children’s paintings, in the doll section she tipped up the prams which they had lovingly placed their babies in! In the story corner she sat on the other children’s legs, poking and pinching them as they yelped.

The teachers gently suggested the playgroup was not meeting Sadie’s needs and perhaps she would be better off at a more structured nursery. Head in the air, trying to hold on to some dignity, Caroline had left with Sadie in her arms, never to return.

Bri screwed up his face in disgust at the memories of the children and parents who had rejected Sadie from such early times. He surprised himself that he could recall all these incidents but the mere fact that he could suggested to him now just how traumatic they must have been to be noticed by a tiny little boy who had so much going for him in his own world.

Friends would be begging to be invited to play or for tea with Bri. In contrast, Sadie would ask Caroline every single night, at the school gates, if one of her classmates could come for tea but they always had dentist or doctor appointments, they were going to somebody else’s house or whatever excuse their mothers could think of! Children would shout out: “Sadie is naughty” as they passed her on the way to school. Bri would stick up for his big sister and try to think of something cool to shout back but they would just retaliate with tales of her misdemeanours from the classroom.

It was such a small village school and Sadie’s sins stuck out like a sore thumb! She was in a goldfish bowl for all to see. Caroline had dreaded the phone ringing with the headmistress complaining yet again. Bri had always felt the tales must be exaggerated because she was never disruptive at home. She didn’t play by herself with toys and needed to be constantly entertained or sat in front of the telly but she didn’t often destroy things. There were tales from school of her deliberately hurting the other children, sometimes with a weapon such as scissors. Bri could see that the other children enjoyed making her the scapegoat and often set her up. They weren’t angels but they were sly, something Sadie certainly wasn’t. She would be caught in full view, often just carrying out the instructions of another naughty child who knew better than to get caught. Bri sighed. Just what had been her problem? Why had she been so different right from day one?

Nobody at school seemed to see the loving sister who worshipped the ground her brothers walked on. She didn’t have a jealous bone in her body. She was so affectionate, always hugging them, letting them choose which television programmes to watch, buying them little surprise gifts with the pocket money her grandparents gave her. If they accidently broke any of her toys or belongings she never got upset, almost to the point where people wondered if she cared for her things. Sadie had never shown any special attachment to any of her belongings. Likewise with friends, each day she would label another child her “best friend” when in reality she might only have played with them the once before they discovered what she was like and moved on. Sadie seemed to be at ease with complete strangers and just didn’t seem to get the relationship game in life. Bri had seen how other so-called naughty children still managed to be popular and have other naughty friends, but not Sadie. Whatever it was which made her different, and nobody could quite pinpoint how she was different, it made her a loner, not by her choice but by theirs. It seemed so weird to Bri that children so young could be so condemning.

A mother had arrived at their door, hammering away angrily. Caroline had barely managed to get the door open before her yelling bombarded their hallway. She dragged a blubbering boy from behind her back and shoved him forward for Caroline to see his red, blistered forearm. The white teeth marks could still be clearly seen.

The thing is, Caroline had nothing to say. She would have taken the exact same actions as the raging woman. The mother had been like a record going on and on and on. She gasped for air and waited for Caroline’s response. She knew “sorry” sounded flippant, dragging Sadie to the door would achieve nothing as she knew Sadie would not appear as the repentant, apologetic child that the mother would expect and even demand. She didn’t want to invite the mother in for more wrath so she just stood there blankly staring, her mouth opening and closing as she rapidly thought through all the issues. This seemed to reignite the woman’s anger. She was obviously thinking: “No wonder your child behaves like this with such an imbecile for a mother.”

She eventually turned to leave, threatening that the police and her solicitor would be in touch! Caroline slammed the door and spun round to find Sadie smiling up at her, a little pink, plastic flower, torn from one of her handbags, in her hand, a peace offering for her mum.

“Why are you crying?” Sadie asked innocently and gently, throwing her arms around her Mum’s waist. “I love you, Mummy,” she squeezed her “Don’t cry, Mummy.”