Who Are You? (19 page)

‘That’s better.’ He’s looking at her, but there’s something weird about his eyes. Like he’s looking
at
her, but at the same time looking straight through her. They’ve gone sort of blank. ‘Juliet – you know I love you, don’t you? You know that I love Ben and you more than anything in the world, and that I would do anything to protect you both, to look after you?’

She doesn’t answer but just thinks: like beating the shit out of me and treating me like an animal … worse than an animal. Like something dead. Yeah, like a slab of meat. That’s how I felt. Ever felt like that …? is what she really wants to say.

Eventually she says, ‘You need help, Alex.’

‘Juliet … Juliet … shhh … it’s quite simple. If you just can learn to do what I tell you then everything will be fine. But if you ever talk to your friends about us again I will kill you. Now get a good night’s sleep and tomorrow we’ll get you looking presentable and ready to face Mum and Ben. OK?’

She doesn’t know what he means. She hasn’t talked to anyone, apart from her online friends, and she’s been too careful with her passwords, and deleting her browsing history. He couldn’t possibly have had access to that. She’s exhausted; bruised and battered both physically and emotionally. She leans back against the pillows and shuts her eyes. She hears his footsteps retreating, and the sound of the bedroom door closing. He will kill her, eventually – of that she has no doubt.

*    *    *    *    *

Alex sits on Ben’s bed and starts to read Ben’s new favourite: Ben goes to the zoo and helps the zookeeper feed all the animals. It involves both Alex and Ben having to make lots of animal noises. Ben curls his little body around Alex and tucks his fists under his chin. Alex sees that he’s struggling to keep his eyes open. He’s got a crescent of thick, chestnut-coloured eyelashes weighing down his eyelids, and his skin is downy and plumped with the remnants of babyhood. Alex feels such a fierce desire to protect his only son and he simply cannot understand why Juliet can think for a single moment that he would allow her to deprive him of Ben. No. It will not happen. What Juliet has to realize is that he will always be one step ahead of her. He knows the way her mind works; he knows her strengths and her weaknesses. He knows that if he wants to he can get her back on smack with a click of his fingers and a few days of making her feel low enough. All that is required is for the temptation to be put in front of her and her own weakness of character will do the rest. The thing about Juliet is that when she touches rock-bottom she self-destructs. Eating disorders, drug addiction, fucking up her education, maybe even marrying him … there’s a distinct pattern to Juliet’s behaviour over the years and Alex isn’t sure that being mother to Ben is enough to alter it. He could be wrong; and if he is, well he’s got a plan B, just in case.

Alex is halfway through the story and Ben shifts onto his back and draws his knees up to his tummy. ‘Daddy, want Mummy. Got a tummy ache.’

‘Mummy’s not well, Ben. She’s in bed.’

‘Want Mummy. Tummy hurts. Da-deeee …’ Ben’s voice increases in volume and shrillness. ‘Pleeeeeeese, Da-deeeeeee.’

‘Ben, shhh. I’m here. What would you like? A glass of water? Shall I rub your tummy?’ Alex pulls back the duvet and places his hand on Ben’s abdomen and starts to rub lightly.

‘Get off, Daddy. It hurts. Want Mummy.’ Alex places the back of his hand on Ben’s forehead. It’s warm, but not overly so.

‘Ben, it’s OK. You’ve probably had too many crisps and Cokes. Too much excitement. Would you like me to get Granny?’

‘Noooo. Granny smells.’

‘No she doesn’t.’

‘She does, Daddy. She smells like you do after you’ve drunk that brown wizzy stuff. Want Mummy. Please …’ Ben starts to cry.

‘Ben, you can’t have Mummy. What did I tell you? She’s not well. Understand?’

He throws his head back onto the pillow and sobs convulsively as if his heart is about to break. ‘Ben, for goodness sake. There’s nothing wrong with you. Just
stop
it now. Do you want Daddy to smack you?’

‘Noooo,’ Ben cries shrilly. ‘Don’t, Daddy. You’re not to smack me. You’re naughty to smack.’ Ben lifts his hand out from under the duvet and smacks Alex. Alex catches hold of his wrist and squeezes a fraction too hard. ‘Owwww,’ Ben shrieks. ‘You hurt me, Daddy.’

The door pushes open and Alex looks up to see Juliet standing in the opening. ‘Alex? What’s going on? What’s wrong with Ben?’

‘Mummy … Daddy said he’s going to smack me. Don’t want Daddy – I want you, Mummy.’

‘Daddy’s not going to smack you.
Are
you Alex?’ Juliet walks gingerly over to Ben’s bed and sits down. She winces as the bed makes contact with her bruised body. She doesn’t look at Alex but takes hold of Ben’s hand. ‘It’s OK, Ben. Mummy’s here. Now what’s the matter? Aren’t you feeling well?’

‘Too much junk food and over-excitement.’

‘And whose fault is that, I wonder?’ Juliet feels Ben’s forehead.

‘He’s fine. He hasn’t got a temperature.’

‘And you’d know?’

Alex sighs heavily and squeezes his hands into fists and then releases his fingers and stretches them out. ‘Mummy, what’s happened to your head?’ Ben asks. He reaches out and puts his little fingers on the newly formed scab. ‘Ouch, Mummy.’

Juliet stares at Alex as she answers. ‘Clumsy Mummy knocked her head on the cupboard door.’

‘Silly Mummy.’

‘You can leave us now.’ Juliet’s voice is low but authoritative. It’s not a request. It should be Juliet who wears the defeat from this battle, but Alex senses it is him. He just feels empty. He knows this feeling. It’s the post-adrenalin come down. He bends over Ben and kisses the top of his head. ‘OK, big man. Sleep well. Don’t forget we’re going to see your cousins in Scotland. We’d better have you feeling OK for that.’

Juliet looks at Alex as if he has completely taken leave of his senses. She turns to Ben: ‘I’m just going to get some medicine for you, darling. You just lie there quietly and I’ll be back in a moment.’ Once outside Ben’s bedroom door she hisses at Alex: ‘You really are something else. You seriously think going to Scotland is an option? After what you’ve done? Look at me, Alex. Look at my face. Is this what you want your sister to see? I’m not going. And neither is Ben.’

‘You’ll do as you’re told.’

‘You can’t break me. No matter what you do to me. You can’t break me, Alex Miller.’

‘We’ll see,’ he says, and then he walks away. She waits until he has gone down the stairs, and listens for the sound of doors opening and closing, of the muffled conversations between mother and son and the general clicks and bangs of people moving around. Then she goes back up the stairs to the bedroom to find something for Ben.

CHAPTER

13

Alex finishes off restacking the dishwasher, sighing at his mother’s inability to arrange everything in its correct place. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if it wasn’t the stuffing after all.’ Geraldine says, placing a cup of coffee in front of Alex. Instant. He can’t drink it. The only reason they keep a jar is for the daily. He pours it down the sink when Geraldine isn’t looking and makes himself an espresso.

‘Sorry?’

‘Well it’s probably a bug if Ben’s gone down with it too. I hope we don’t get it. Be awful not to be able to go to Lucinda’s, but we wouldn’t want to give it to them. Not with such a young baby in the house.’

‘It’ll be fine.’ Alex is surprised that Ben’s gone down with a dose of diarrhoea. When he went to check on him last night, his bed was empty so he went upstairs to find he’d gone to bed with Juliet. And so Alex had spent most of the night in his study and then eventually tried to get some sleep in Ben’s small single bed. This morning he’d taken Juliet a cup of tea and a piece of toast and marmalade, and a boiled egg and soldiers for Ben. Breakfast in bed as a treat for them both. But Ben was sitting on the loo whining and still complaining of bad tummy pains.

‘He’s been ill all night,’ Juliet said. ‘I’m really worried about him. If he doesn’t get any better he’ll have to see a doctor.’ Her voice was still rasping, as if she was going down with a bad sore throat.

‘If he needs to go, I’ll take him,’ Alex said, and placed the breakfast tray on the bed beside Juliet. She ignored it.

‘You’re worried a doctor might wonder how I got this?’ She pointed to the bruise on her cheek and the gash on her head. Alex walked over to her and took a large lock of her hair in his hand. Then he twisted it so that she had to lean her head towards him.

‘I said I’ll take him. Understand?’

‘Yes, Alex.’

Alex once again felt the surge of something almost comfortingly familiar. ‘Eat your toast, you barely had anything yesterday. And I’ve brought Ben an egg. Anything else I can get you?’

‘Ben shouldn’t eat anything and I’m not hungry.’

And so he’d come down to report on the absence of his wife and son at breakfast. ‘Ben’s still feeling ill, and Juliet had a really nasty fall in the bathroom. She slipped on the wet tiles. They’re lethal. I’m thinking of getting them changed. She’s feeling a bit fragile – battered and bruised – but she’s going to join us for lunch.’

‘Oh, goodness me. Poor darling. Is she all right?’

‘She’ll be fine, just a bit knocked about.’

‘Do you think I might go upstairs and just see if there’s anything I can do?’ Geraldine asks.

‘No thanks, Mum. They’re both resting. I said I’d give them a couple of hours and check on them after that.’

‘I just feel there should be something I can do to help. Perhaps the ironing …’

‘Sure. That would be great.’ Alex is preoccupied with his own thoughts, as usual. In the past he’s relied on the fact that Juliet’s been too embarrassed to show off her bruises. She’s used concealer make-up and the right clothes. But after yesterday he’s worried that she’ll go public. And if she does, it could ruin him. He’s got to watch her very carefully to make sure he knows what her plans are. The thing about modern technology is that you can connect with the outside world in secret. Passwords, secure IDs and private browsing, search histories and all of that stuff which, if you don’t know what you’re doing, might be vulnerable to interception by someone. And you’ve also got to be really sure of who you’re speaking to. Juliet’s on the computer so much these days and Alex wonders if she really understands just how vulnerable she is. Anybody, really, could find out what she’s talking about if they really wanted. Modern technology. Bloody dangerous.

‘… Alex?’

‘Sorry, Mum. Miles away. What did you say?’

‘Would you like me to turn some of the leftovers into a soup? I don’t suppose Juliet and Ben are hungry at the moment, but they might want something later on. And you and I will want some lunch. There’s the turkey to deal with. Lots of meat left. Do you want to strip it? I could perhaps make a curry? You always used to love a turkey curry after Christmas, remember? Mind you, I do prefer goose, but it’s no good for big numbers. I’m surprised Juliet didn’t get a goose this year as there’s only four of us. We could have had a pheasant. Forman’s do those boned three- or four-bird roasts …’

‘Yes, Mum. Why don’t you make a soup. And a curry …
whatever you think.’

‘I think if I made a curry, we could take it up to Scotland with us, but then they might be sick of it. Do you suppose they will have had turkey? I must remember to ask Lucinda next time I speak to her. Will you be speaking to her, darling? You’ll want to let her know about Juliet and Ben, won’t you?’

Alex finishes his third espresso. His hands are shaking, but then so are his mother’s, so it’s quite funny, really, the passing of the cups. Rattle, rattle … Of course both of them pretend not to notice. Geraldine would probably pass it off as possible Parkinson’s. Not that she’s ever been a hypochondriac. If anything, quite the reverse. No, she’s not physically fragile, but the old whisky bottle hasn’t done her any favours. Nor the gin bottle, or the vodka bottle, or the sherry bottle … His mother has largely shown a preference for spirits, but then she is ‘old school’. As she has often told him in a post-rationalization sort of way, they didn’t really drink wine ‘in their day’ unless it was a very special occasion – and always with food. ‘No,’ Geraldine says, ‘we didn’t have wine. We had a whisky, or a gin and tonic, not like you young who always seem to have a bottle of wine on the go.’

Juliet usually has a bottle of wine on the go. But he doesn’t think she hits the bottle during the day. Not when she’s looking after Ben. She’s an after-he’s-gone-to-bed-treat sort of drinker. Alex is more like his mother. And he supposes that if she really is an alcoholic, in that old school sort of way, then he has the genetic propensity to join her. Yes, he’s drinking heavily. But what the hell? He could be on some bloody awful, mind-numbing antidepressants. And who wouldn’t need a fucking drink with a wife like Juliet? Part of the problem, Alex thinks, is that she got used to having too much control when he was posted away. She had control of the money, she paid the bills, looked after their quarters if anything went wrong. So, yeah, she was a single parent making all the decisions. But that was when he was away. When he came back it was only natural that he should take charge again. And he was the one earning the money, the breadwinner, so why would she have a problem with that? She had an allowance for her clothes and stuff – and Ben’s – and if there was anything special she wanted she only had to ask him. He
liked
to dress her. She was lucky – most women would kill for a man who’d shop with them. It gave him a kick to get her in the changing room with a whole load of stuff that he’d picked out for her and just sit down in a comfortable chair and watch the floor show. He liked to see her in stuff that showed off her figure – tight, stretchy, well cut. She’d always had a great body, and pregnancies hadn’t ruined it, thank God. She was lucky. She didn’t know how lucky. They’d sort this out. He’d buy her something nice to cheer her up, and the Scottish break would do her good. A bit of clever make-up and the usual excuses and all would be fine, especially if his mother would just shut the fuck up and stop getting on his bloody nerves about the frigging turkey. ‘Yeah, Mum. Make a curry. If there’s anything you need you can always pop down to the Indian corner shop, can’t you?’