The Good Mother (25 page)

A friendship bracelet at wrist height and then the outfit is complete. I sit back on my heels and look at it. A wave of nausea fills me. The outfit isn’t comforting. It’s heart-breaking. It mocks me. It is all empty. Empty of Cara, empty of life. I scrunch the clothes up and throw them across the room, then immediately run to pick them up again. I’m sorry, Cara. I love you. I didn’t want to hurt you. Let me just hug you, your clothes, one moment longer.

Is this normal? Is it normal grief? Am I sick? I don’t know. How do I judge? Is the fact of my asking this enough to show ‘normality’? What would I tell myself to do, rationally? Leave the room? Visit her grave? Talk to people?

But what would I say to them? ‘Do you have my daughter?’ ‘Can you bring her back?’ ‘Do you remember that cute way she stuck her tongue through the gap in her milk teeth when she smiled?’ ‘Wasn’t that a lovely day she and I spent in the kitchen the day before she died?’ ‘Why didn’t I collect her from school myself?’ ‘Why did I remarry?’ ‘How do I fill this emptiness?’ ‘Help me, help me, please.’ They are hardly conversations to have over cupcakes.

Lie on the floor and breathe. Just breathe. A moment of stillness. A moment of love. Because she was lovely, my Cara. How delighted I am that she even existed. How blessed. My beautiful daughter. Daughters. Try to take that feeling out into the world. The world? Really? Am I ready? Stand up, climb to the window, look out at what I can see of the world.

There she is, the little girl. Skipping away. Skip, skip, skip. Pretty pigtails flying.

I stare, drinking her in. Now I know she is roughly the same age as Cara was, she has more relevance. So much more relevance.

Yes, perhaps I am ready for the world again. Or at least, what I choose the world to be. Because it must be on my terms, this new world. Just like my little interim world was. Paul owes it me to let me face the world as I choose, after all that has happened. Because it won’t be the same world I left, without Cara in it. And now it has this revised version of Paul. I must decide what to do about Paul.

Perhaps I should travel? Is that what people do? Try to escape their grief by going halfway round the world? Or do they stay, sipping tea in quiet rooms? Hiding under duvets? That’s what I’d rather. But that’s weak. Craig said that. So is going out strong? Do I need to be strong for Cara? Will travel ease the pain? I imagine sitting opposite Paul in the living room. Drinking tea. Making small talk. Hating him. Longing for my little girl. That doesn’t seem very positive. You have to do one positive thing every day. That’s what they told me, back then. To stop the depression setting in. And having the medicine doesn’t count as a positive thing. I must do something else. Something positive. What, then, shall that be? I give a last look at the girl outside the window.

And I have an idea. An idea about how to make a positive new world. One little skipping step at a time.

Chapter 63

Paul

‘I’m going out,’ a voice from behind me announces.

I jump a little. I’ve been alone for four days. In limbo. No, hell. The hell of not knowing whether Suze will forgive me. For the drinking. For the driving. For the captivity. For reminding her to hate herself. Whether I’ve lost her. Whether we’ll ever get back what I was trying to save. Suze has kept herself in the captivity suite, her ‘new’ room and Cara’s room. Sometimes I think I hear her potter around at night, going to the kitchen. She must be eating, mustn’t she? And sleeping a bit?

Taking her medication?

I turn round. Suze does indeed look like she’s set on going out. She has on a coat, shoes, make-up even. It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her she scrubs up well, but that would underplay the significance of the moment. Plus it’s not totally true. She is beautiful to me, of course. But even through my prism of love and with my IT-geek dress sense, I know – because I’ve heard her say it enough times – that navy shoes don’t go with black tights. And that there’s a limit to what concealer can hide. Slight bags and wrinkles from general wear and tear, not the deep purple and blackness brought by trauma and illness. By me.

So instead, I smile at her. ‘Shall I come with you?’ I ask.

She shakes her head. ‘I could do with a bit of time by myself. If that’s OK.’

Oh. More ‘me-time’. I nod, although I’m not sure she’s really seeking my agreement. And I’m not sure I really agree. Perhaps I should insist on going with her? Or just follow at a safe distance behind her?

No. If I want normality – which I do, I really, really do – I need to trust her. Trust that she’s well. That she can go out of the house, not do anything stupid and come back in one piece. Without the police. Because I’m aware, what I’ve done, holding her here, may not be strictly legal. Quite apart from what she might think about Cara’s death.

‘Where will you go?’ I ask her.

‘Oh, just to the village and back,’ she says.

Some things don’t change, then. She’s still insisting on calling Crouch End a village. It’s a suburb, I want to tell her. A leafy London suburb. Not a village. But then, her world has been turned upside down enough recently without my contradicting her outlook on geographic locations too.

‘OK,’ I say. Just make sure you take your phone with you.’

She gives me an odd look. Then I realise. Her phone. I still have it, don’t I? Locked away upstairs. You don’t let kidnappees have mobile phones in their cells/ recovery suites so they can phone the police. Nor do you let your ill wife have a phone that lets her endlessly stare at social media apps in case they will magically bring back your daughter. Or at least show some sign that she was alive. Even if I hadn’t kept Suze in confinement, I would have confiscated her smartphone. They aren’t healthy for people like her, all those internet windows perpetually open in our brains. Refresh, refresh, exhaust. And phones are part of my business. So I know what I’m talking about.

‘Actually, I’m not sure where it is, and I think it’s out of charge anyway,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll have a look while you’re out.’ I’m not sure I’ll find it.

Suze shrugs. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be OK.’

‘And you’re sure you don’t want me to come?’

She gives me a faint smile. ‘Sure. Thank you.’

Suze ducks round me. I realise I have been standing between her and the door. I must have shifted unintentionally.

As she undoes the latch, she turns round and gives me a kiss. The very faintest brush on the lips. No tongues. But still. A kiss is a kiss. It’s a definite start. She must have been thinking about me in the four days. Doing some real deep thinking. When she went in, she had just attacked me, tooth and nail. But she’s had time to reflect now. To come to terms with things, and to understand why I did what I did. That I love her. That I loved – love – Cara too.

And then, as I’m still savouring her touch, she is out of the door. I stand watching her until she rounds a corner and is gone.

I consider standing with the door open until she returns. So that I can see as she rounds that corner. So that I know she’s all right.

But no. It’s trust again, isn’t it?

Or maybe I should go and visit Cara’s grave. I haven’t been for a few days, not since I released Suze. I needed Suze to know I was there for her all the time – couldn’t have the daily excursions through the trees to the grave any more. I could go and get some more roses – only the most beautiful flower for Cara. The petals of the ones I left last time must be brown and falling now. I owe her more than that, don’t I? Even though I already did everything. I read to her, I sang to her, I tested her on spelling. I went to school concerts – even if I was a bit late and had to stand at the back – listened to her playing the recorder, clapped louder than almost anybody there. I took the moral high ground and decided she should see her real father. I took myself out of the pub after just one drink. I did up the seat belt as tight as can be.

I just didn’t manage to stop the car spinning into a wall.

Even Cara’s pitiful cry as she must have seen it looming towards her couldn’t stop us. Help me! And then – wham. A horrible echo of that first collision with Suze and Cara’s shopping trolley. Cara’s world stopping for real.

And so then came watching Suze sit by that bedside for those seven long days. Seeing her at first hugging the unresponsive Cara, stroking her hair. Whispering into it that all would be fine, that she’d protect her. Then Suze realising all the hugging and stroking and whispering in the world wasn’t enough to protect Cara. That we had lost her. And then, of course, unrealising that again. Going into her own make-believe world.

But it’s not my fault, about Cara. It’s not my fault. It isn’t, it isn’t, it isn’t. I’m not the child-murderer Suze accused me of being when she saw my self-inflicted blood in the bathroom. The constant lump in my throat is sorrow, not guilt. I have done nothing wrong. I was not over the limit. I was safe. Life isn’t safe. But I am.

I will continue to tell myself that every day. One day I might even believe it.

We have to move on. Suze is my primary responsibility now. It’s Suze who needs me. Suze, with all her weaknesses. Suze, who needs me here when I return. Cara isn’t coming back.

So I come inside and close the door. I sit myself down on the sofa. Even put my feet up for a moment. Then I put them down again. It just feels wrong, overindulgent, to relax quite that much. Even though I can. Because she’s well again now. She’ll come back. I’ll be waiting for her. And we can move on. Or back. Be like we were before.

Chapter 64

Suze

Fancy asking if I wanted him with me.

Fancy keeping your wife in captivity then be her accompanying jailor as she walks outside the prison gates.

Fancy not understanding what I have to do.

Although, to be fair, I wouldn’t mind someone walking to the road-ward side of me on the pavement right now. Acting as some kind of noise and car filter. The world seems louder than I left it, as if everyone’s activity levels have increased to make up for my own dwindling. For all the noise, though, there’s a kind of fog. I feel like I’m wading through particularly thick icing. Like my feet have to make double the effort they used to just to propel me along. And that I might suddenly get stuck, like a reluctant bride atop a cake.

When I get to the centre of the village, they’re all still there, the shops and the cafés. They shouldn’t be. They should have burnt down. They should have been replaced by funeral parlours. How can they still be flaunting their wares for the child-centric existence? Cafés with signs declaring ‘soft play area inside’; children’s bookshops advertising readings; restaurants boasting kids’ menus, high chairs stacked by the entrance. And then you look to the other side of the road to them, and you see yet more children’s shops – clothes, toys, arts and crafts cafés. The mummy economy, all desperately trying to convince you that motherhood is about entertainment, cultural development and prettifying your offspring. About succeeding in having some coffee while they do something else. Covert me-time disguised as good parenting.

But it isn’t. Parenting’s about keeping them alive. The bottom line fundamental is that your children must live. I want to scream this at the mothers with their pushchairs, half watching little kids on scooters – no helmets, not even any stopping at pavement edges – while they themselves drink another latte and pat themselves on the back for not being helicopter parents. I want to claw back all the play dates and parties and coffee mornings. The shopping for pretty outfits while Cara begged to go home because she was tired. The allowing her to spend just two more minutes or two more pounds in the toy shop. The saying if she was very good she could walk back from her friend’s house without me, if she phoned before she left and didn’t dilly-dally on the way home. All this, giving her a sense that life is just play, that she can exist independently of me, that fun frivolity and froth triumph overall. It isn’t about that. Life is about living. The state of being alive. Being able to breathe.

But, most of all, I want to scream at all these mothers: what is your husband doing? Your partner? Your parents? Your au pair? Can you trust them? Are there rules you have written down? Had tattooed onto their skin, etched into their brains? Do this, don’t do this? Because there is no point, even if you are good and grip your child like you can never let them go, when you are out and have sole responsibility for them, if whoever you share your childcare duties with couldn’t care less. Thinks they are immune. Thinks it is acceptable to let the children play near cliff edges. Thinks it’s OK to keep medicine where children can see it. That it’s OK to leave them unattended in a car just for a few minutes. OK to drive drunk. Or, yeah, after ‘not being over the limit’. Of course.

The black dots appear in front of my eyes again and I prop myself up on a window ledge. Come on, Suze. Positive, yes? This is a positive trip. A move forward. Part of the plan.

The dots start to fade and are then gone. I look up to see what lies behind the windowsill I’ve been leaning on.

Of course.

A toy and clothing store.

The front window so pretty. Bunting and fake grass. A miniature deckchair. Dragon and unicorn buckets and spades, wooden pull-along whales, sunhats bearing Union Jacks. Little green dresses with blue bicycles printed on. Blue trousers with green bikes.

Froth. It should make me angry. I should turn away. But it is beautiful. A celebration of childish play in the great British outdoors.

And necessary, of course, for what must happen next.

My feet carry me into the shop.

Once inside, my hand shoots out before I can think. I’m suddenly holding a little handbag in the shape of a kitten’s face. Then my brain forms the reason: She’ll like this. Even though she’s not here with me, I know. I know what my little girl wants and needs. I know she’d want to fill it with that pretty beaded necklace. And the purse with a peacock on it. And that little crystal mobile phone charm.

Oh. And look at that. Perfect. The skipping rope with Punch and Judy as the handles.

I pay for my purchases and step back over the threshold. The brown paper bags give me a euphoric glee. Everything is OK! And such a sunny day! My step is easier. My stride lighter. My eyes able to take in the families around me without a frown. Another shop, then another. A coffee. A cake. One more shop before I go home.