‘With good cause,’ he says, tapping the gun against the side of the massage table. ‘What about the Christmas when you chose and bought your own present from Nick because you didn’t trust him to get the right thing: Boudoir eau de parfum by Vivienne Westwood. You even wrapped it yourself and wrote “To Sally, love Nick” on it. Do you remember telling me that? Because you were sick of wondering if Nick would remember to wrap it in time for Christmas Day.’
Why did I tell him so much?
‘Can I… please could I have my phone, just for a few minutes? I need to speak to Zoe and Jake.’
I have said the wrong thing. He drops my hand. His eyes harden, his face as close to a portrait of pure evil as anything I’ve ever seen. ‘Zoe and Jake,’ he repeats in a wooden voice. ‘The trouble with you, Sally, is that you never know when the party’s over.’
Police Exhibit Ref: VN8723
Case Ref: VN87
OIC: Sergeant Samuel Kombothekra
GERALDINE BRETHERICK’S DIARY, EXTRACT 7 OF 9 (taken from hard disk of Toshiba laptop computer at Corn Mill House, Castle Park, Spilling, RY29 0LE)
17 May 2006, 5.10 a.m.
A brilliant thing happened tonight-I thought for a while that it might be the key to everything. Well, last night, I suppose you’d have to say, but I haven’t had any sleep. I’m going to end up like that man I saw on that ‘shock-doc’ documentary, who was so sleep-deprived for so long that he ended up with a permanent headache. When he went to the doctor, he was told that by not sleeping enough he’d done irreparable damage to the nerve endings in his brain. The doctor gave him a drug to stop the headache, but that made him shake as if he had Parkinson’s disease. The documentary said only that he was a contract lawyer in the city, not whether he had small children, but I’m certain he did. I think he had three children under five and a wife who also worked full-time.
I took Lucy to the theatre last night. Not to a matinee, not like the awful time we went to see Mungo’s Magic Show and we were surrounded by brats, and Lucy screamed because I wouldn’t let her eat two Cornettos. No, this time I took her in the evening, like an adult. I wondered if she might be more bearable if I treated her more like a grown-up. So I booked two tickets to Oklahoma ! the musical at Spilling Little Theatre. Mark was away at yet another conference. I told Lucy that she and I would be going out together for a special treat evening, but only if she was very good. She was so excited, happier than I’ve ever seen her, and she really did try hard. I told her we would go out for dinner first, and she was even more excited about that. She’d never been to a restaurant in the evening before, and she knew it was something grown-ups did, so of course she wanted to do it.
We went to Orlando ’s on Bowditch Street, and Lucy had spaghetti bolognese. For once she ate everything on her plate. Then we held hands and walked to the theatre, and she sat through the whole performance transfixed, as still as a statue, eyes as wide as plates. Afterwards she said, ‘That was great. Thank you for taking me to the theatre, Mummy.’ She said she loved me and I said I loved her and we held hands again all the way back to the car. I thought it was a turning point. I decided to do grown-up things with her whenever I could, try to treat her more like a twelve-year-old than a five-year-old.
I must have been stupid or desperate or both to think that would work. An hour ago, when I was tossing and turning in bed and wondering what Lucy and I might do together next-a manicure, the National Portrait Gallery, the cinema-I felt someone tugging on my hair. I thought it was an intruder and screamed, but it was Lucy. Normally when she wakes at night, she doesn’t get out of bed; she yells for me and expects me to come running. But there she was, and she wasn’t upset. She was smiling. ‘Mummy, can we go to the theatre again?’ she said.
‘Yes, darling,’ I promised. ‘Very soon. But you’ve got to go back to sleep, Lucy, it’s not morning yet.’
Could I have handled it better? No doubt my mother would say so. If Lucy had asked her, she would probably have leaped out of bed, even at four in the morning, and searched on the Internet for suitable shows, bleary-eyed but insisting she was full of energy. I’ve asked her, often, how she managed not to feel permanently exhausted when I was little. She puts on a smug little smile, waves her hand dismissively and says, ‘Being tired has never killed anyone. You don’t know how lucky you are!’ Then she tells me an anecdote about someone she met in town whose daughter has triplets, no husband and seventeen low-paid manual jobs that she must do simultaneously in order to feed her family. And I envy this down-trodden labourer that my mother has almost definitely invented for the sole purpose of shaming me, because it sounds as if her life has probably always been appalling. Whereas I had a brilliant life before I became a parent: that is why I find it so hard to cope.
‘I want to go to the theatre again now,’ Lucy insisted. ‘I want to go out for dinner again, with just you.’ I repeated that it was night-time, that no theatres or restaurants were open. She began to scream and howl, hitting me with her fists. ‘I want to go NOW, I want to go NOW,’ she wailed. In the end the only way I could shut her up was by threatening her. I said that if she didn’t quiet down and go back to sleep that instant, I would never take her anywhere again. She stopped punching and yelling, but I couldn’t get her to stop crying, no matter how patiently I explained the situation. In the end I had to sit by her bed and stroke her hair while she cried herself to sleep, and I cried too because my stupid special treat had ended up causing her more pain than if I hadn’t bothered.
Still, at least now I know. Whether I’m kind or utterly selfish makes absolutely no difference. Even if I try my hardest, I cannot avoid the misery, inconvenience, frustration and futility that make up nine-tenths of the experience of having a young child. It is simply not worth it. Even from an investment point of view, for the sake of having grown-up children who visit you when you’re senile and lonely, it’s not worth spending the best years of your life entangled in put-your-coat-on-I-don’t-want-to-put-my-coat-on-but-it’s-cold-I-don’t-like-that-coat-I-want- another-coat-you-haven’t-got-another-coat-well-I-want-one-but-we-have-to-go-out-now-get-into-the-car-I-don’t- want-to-sit-in-the-back-seat-I-want-to-sit-in-the-driver’s-seat-well-you-can’t-sit-in-the-driver’s-seat… That, or a version of it, is the conversation I’ve been having ever since Lucy learned to talk. Why can’t she simply say, ‘Yes, Mummy,’ and do as I ask? She hates it when I’m angry, and I’ve told her over and over again that this is the way to make Mummy happy.
I have never hit her. Not because I disapprove of hitting children-I have pinched and flicked Oonagh O’Hara several times without Cordy noticing-but because sometimes I want to hit Lucy so much and I know I would have to stop almost as soon as I started, so what would be the point? It would be like opening a box of delicious chocolates and only being able to eat one.
In an ideal world, parents would be able to give their children a good, satisfying kicking-a really thorough, cathartic battering-then snap their fingers and have the effects of their violence disappear. Also, it would be good if children, while being beaten, didn’t feel pain; then there would be no need for guilt.
Instead they are delicate and vulnerable, which of course is their most effective weapon. They make us want to protect them even as they destroy us.
14
8/10/07
Sellers knocked on the back of the computer Gibbs was using. ‘Come on, we’re late.’
‘Don’t wait for me, or you’ll be even later.’
‘You don’t want to miss this one.’
‘Why? Something happened?’