What She Knew (43 page)

“It’s not your fault,” I said, but he lowered his eyes and I could see that it was a question that they would be asking themselves for a very long time.

“Can I ask, do you have any idea why Joanna might have done this?” I said.

They exchanged a glance then, and Mrs. May gave a small shrug of her shoulders.

Mr. May said, “Joanna’s infertile. That’s the only sense I can make of it. She just discovered her infertility last spring after she tried to get pregnant using artificial insemination. We didn’t approve. We thought she should be in a stable relationship before she had a baby, but she was insistent, as usual, and so we gave her the money anyway, for the inseminations, and then for the fertility tests, because you try to help your children. You feel responsible for their happiness. I don’t think she would have told us if she hadn’t needed us to pay for it. She doesn’t confide in us. In fact she only contacts us if she wants something. Anyway, it upset her a great deal, the infertility. She wasn’t used to not getting what she wanted. My guess is that she took this boy because she wanted a child. But let me tell you this: don’t expect her to explain why she did it. She never admitted to anything as a child, and I doubt she will now.”

He stood up again, painfully, and made his way to the mantelpiece. He took down a photograph of Joanna May and gazed at it for a moment before showing it to his wife. In the photograph Joanna May was on a beach. She couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old. In her swimsuit she sat beside a body-shaped mound of sand from which the head of a smaller child protruded. She wielded a spade triumphantly and the child was smiling too.

“I’ll move this I think, Mary,” said Mr. May.

“Yes, dear.” Her eyes slid to her lap as he left the room, fingers picking at the fabric of her skirt.

Together, we waited silently for him to return, but before he did, the sound of breaking glass made Mrs. May flinch.

RACHEL

I approached my son’s bedside with a lifetime of love to give him, and with the humility of somebody who’s been brought to her knees in every way imaginable.

I came to him with a surfeit of relief and emotion that should have made for a perfect Hollywood moment, with full orchestral accompaniment and box of Kleenex required. The works.

But it wasn’t like that.

When I entered the room, I saw that he had his back to me, and he lay curled up under layers of blankets, motionless and small, the outline of his body making an angular shape.

I saw the back of his head, his sandy hair unkempt, without luster. One of his arms lay on top of the blanket. A garish hospital gown covered some of it, but his forearm protruded, bare until the wrist, where a thick bandage was wrapped around it, securing a cannula, which was attached to a tube, down which a transparent liquid crawled, dripping into his vein.

Closer. An oxygen mask was on the pillow beside his head, hissing. I could see the side of his face now, his profile. His lips were chapped and paper-thin eyelids covered eyes that were twitching beneath. His eyelashes were long and beautiful as ever, though they did little to mask the deep dark patches under his eyes and the gray pallor of his skin.

“Ben,” I whispered. I touched the skin on his temples with the side of my hand; it was the softest skin you could ever touch. I pushed a strand or two of his hair back from his forehead.

He didn’t respond. He was sleeping the sleep of the dead.

Behind me, the doctor said, “He may take a few minutes to wake up properly.” He was standing awkwardly by the door, keeping his distance. I knew he was there because they were frightened of what my reunion with Ben could do to him.

“Ben,” I said. “It’s me, Mummy.”

I sat down on the side of his bed. I wanted him to wake up, I wanted him to come to me, to pitch into my arms as if he’d been falling from a great height and had finally landed in a place of safety.

His eyelids flickered open, then shut again.

“Love,” I said. “It’s Mummy. I’m here. Ben.”

Another flicker and then I had them: bright blue eyes. They didn’t move in the usual way though. They looked past me at first, and it was only when I said his name again that they slid toward me, locked on to mine.

He blinked.

My head sank down onto his, my breath on his face, his head motionless beneath me. I kissed him, and my tears slid from my cheeks onto his. I felt his lips move, and I pulled back so I could see him better, hear him. “What did you say, Ben? What did you say?”

Eyes slid shut again, a twitch of movement in his arm. And I thought, where is my child, the one who could never stay still, whose every movement was brimming with life?

His breathing faltered audibly and I heard the doctor step forward, but it settled again and the doctor contented himself with moving the oxygen mask closer to Ben’s mouth.

I felt terrible, terrible sadness building in me, a feeling so powerful that it hurt, and it made my hands shake. I looked at the doctor, his eyes powerfully kind and his words steady: “Give him some time.”

And he was right, because Ben stirred, and his eyes met mine again, and even though they seemed to slip out of focus, his lips moved and this time a word was audible on his outtake of air. “Mummy.” And tears began to roll slowly, silently down his cheeks.

I took him in my arms, even though the doctor stepped forward as if to stop me, then thought better of it. I scooped Ben up, onto my lap, and I held his limp, small body close to mine and in return I thought I felt some strength in his arms, and then it was a firmer squeeze and he clung to me. He did that weakly, and wordlessly, but we stayed like that for so long that eventually the doctor had to pry him gently away.

After the medical staff had laid him back down, they tidied him up, adjusted his cannula, and checked that he was properly connected to his machines. When they stepped away, Ben’s eyes met mine with more consciousness in them than they’d had before.

And I smiled, because that was what I wanted from him most of all, a smile. It was the last thing I’d seen on his face before he left me in the woods, and I wanted to see it again. But my smile wasn’t answered, because his eyes moved away again, and the lids slid down over the tears that still fell, and he turned his head away from me.

And here’s the thing: I wasn’t sure whether that was because he was exhausted and dangerously unwell, or because there were things deep inside his eyes that he didn’t want me to see.

It was a beautiful reunion for me. It was. The feel of Ben’s arms around me was everything I’d dreamed of, every second he’d been away. But the other bits, his desperate physical condition, the sorrow that was deeply, soundlessly buried within him, and the way he dodged my gaze, I won’t deny it—this is supposed to be a truthful account after all—they were profoundly frightening.

Did you want catharsis? So did I. But there was none. I’m sorry.

EPILOGUE

CHRISTMAS 2013—ONE YEAR,

FIVE WEEKS AFTER

WEB PAGE
—www.twentyfour7news.co.uk/bristol—3:15 PM GMT Dec 11, 2013

JOANNA MAY GUILTY OF BENEDICT FINCH ABDUCTION

by Danny Deal

Joanna May pleaded guilty to the abduction of 8-year-old Benedict Finch in front of Mr. Justice Evans at Bristol Crown Court today.

The 27-year-old abducted Benedict Finch after becoming obsessed with having him for herself, it can now be revealed, after she discovered she was infertile.

May was arrested and charged with the abduction after Benedict was discovered abandoned in Leigh Woods. She had been keeping him in the basement of her flat in Mortimer Crescent, Clifton, for nine days during October 2012.

May had displayed symptoms of fantasist behavior in the past and shown an “unhealthy” interest in a friend’s baby.

This information can now be reported after the judge, Mr. Justice Evans, lifted an order banning publication.

May stared ahead and showed no sign of emotion during her time in court.

The judge told May she had committed “a heinous and dreadful act that harmed in extreme ways the emotional and physical welfare of a vulnerable young child” and that the abduction had left Benedict’s family suffering “eight days of torturous uncertainty” and “unforgivable harassment and vilification by the media.”

Julian Paget, QC prosecuting, described May as “calculating, manipulative, arrogant, and extremely dangerous.”

Members of Benedict Finch’s family were in court to hear the verdict but showed little emotion and declined to comment.

Sentencing will take place next week.

286 comments and 7 people are discussing this article

Simon Flynn

This is a truly chilling case. Let’s hope she gets the sentence she deserves. My thoughts are with Benedict Finch’s family.

Jean Moller

She is a vile piece of scum. Hahahahahaha Joanna May, everyone inside prison will know what you did and there will be degradation heaped on you. I hope you’re never released. Pain to you.

Anthony Smith

Exodus 22:18: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

Samantha Singh

Hopefully this will be able to bring some closure for her family. Thinking of them and poor little Benedict.

Patricia Gumm

For the sake of the family and for Ben we should be thankful that justice has been done. And we should spare a thought too for the other poor children who suffered her as a teacher without knowing the evil in her heart.

Jasleen Harper

Are we going to pay for her to wallow in prison with satellite tv and psychotherapy now? People like her should be put to work cleaning up after shit like them.

Cliff Downs

Jasleen, we shouldn’t use language like that out of respect for Ben and his family.

Simon Flynn

The news is a 24/7 monster. It devours all information and we feed it with our opinions, so we can’t be shy of expressing ourselves even if we don’t like the language other people use. It’s called free speech.

Comments are now closed

RACHEL

A few weeks ago, somebody asked me if I thought Ben and I could have some closure once the trial was over. I was lost for words, truly; because the fact of it is that we might never have “closure.” If only life were that simple. There are some events and uncertainties that you take to the grave, and they threaten to tumble you every single step of the way.

If closure is a search for answers, and an attempt to clear away ambiguity, then let me tell you how far we’ve got.

Here’s what I know for sure:

I know that in the woods that Sunday afternoon, my child willingly walked away with Joanna May, his hand in hers. He looked up into her eyes, he trusted her, and he believed what she told him.

She took him to her car, after making him change into clothes that she provided him with. Skittle followed them. Joanna May hadn’t been prepared for that so she kicked the dog, to make him go away, and, in doing so, she broke his leg. Then she drove Ben away. She avoided routes where CCTV cameras lay in wait for her.

Out of everything that happened to him in that week, Ben talks about her treatment of the dog most of all. His mind circles around it, trying to make sense of her cruelty. What bothers him most is that she made him leave Skittle there, in pain, whimpering on the ground. It was the first sign he had that she wasn’t a stable person.

After that, I know very little for sure, except that it was Ben I met on Furry Football one week later. There is a void, a seven-day hole in his life between the two events.

The evidence tells us a little more. The smashed laptop and bruising consistent with finger marks on Ben’s upper arm indicate that her anger at finding him playing the computer game pitched her into a state of mind dangerous enough that she drove him back to the woods and dragged him through the darkness back to the place where she first took him.

She left him there, dressed only in his underwear and with a black bin bag to shield him from the rain. In doing so, she humiliated and frightened him and the exposure almost killed him.

We know that once she’d returned home after that she booked a flight for late the following morning, and packed a suitcase, and placed her passport in a travel wallet, which she put in her bag.

We also know that Lucas Grantham was her downfall, because the police phoned very early that morning to ask her in for an interview about him. She took a gamble, and went to Kenneth Steele House, not wanting to arouse suspicion, knowing she could still make her plane.

Though she wasn’t to know that we would end up in a car together, and that she would make a little verbal slip, which would lead me to steal her keys.

I imagine her standing on that broad sidewalk outside her home as DI Bennett and I drove away, rifling through her handbag for the keys to the flat, not finding them, and then replaying the moment in the car when her belongings fell to the floor, and most likely putting two and two together, or at least deciding that she couldn’t afford the time to retrieve them or to track down a spare set. As far as the police could tell, she made absolutely no attempt to enter the flat and gather her stuff before I got there, probably because she had her passport in her bag already. We know that she was in a cab to the airport only twenty minutes after DI Bennett and I dropped her off, so she didn’t dither. I like to think it was the moment when the hunter became the hunted, when her breath quickened, and she began to look over her shoulder.

And that is the sum of all I know for sure.

Here’s what I don’t know:

Why she took him, or how she treated him.

Why don’t I know that?

Because Ben won’t speak of it.

Why not?

We don’t know. I guess that aside from the things he’s willing to say, there must be other things he can’t remember, things he’s confused about, or things he might be frightened of talking about.

I think he doesn’t like the way the eyes and attention of everybody around him sharpen when he so much as mentions that room or Miss May. I think that makes him feel uncomfortable, and ashamed. He doesn’t want to be the center of attention; he would rather it all went away.