Authors: Michael Robotham
‘I’m sorry for lying.’
‘That’s OK. I guess there are good lies and bad lies.’
Emma has always been the worrier in the family. Depending upon what news headline she overhears she will fixate on global warming or planes disappearing or terrorist attacks. She was a late child, longed for and then arriving just when we’d almost given up hope of having a second.
‘Is Mummy going to die?’ she asks, giving me a clinical stare.
‘No.’
‘Is that one of your good lies?’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘So what about this operation?’
‘She’s going to need lots of help for a while. We’ll all have to pitch in and do the chores.’
‘OK, but I can’t go in the garden shed.’
‘Why not?’
‘Spiders.’
I leave her tidying up her clothes and rearranging her stuffed toys.
Charlie’s bedroom door is open. She’s sitting on her bed, knees up, typing on her laptop, texting on her phone and watching TV – multitasking in the modern age. She mutes the TV when I knock. I glance at the flickering screen and see images from Syria, Iraq or Ukraine. They seem to be recycling the news these days, repeating wars like old episodes of
The Simpsons
.
‘So what really happened at the hospital?’ she asks.
‘Mum told you.’
‘I want to hear it from you.’
I sit on the edge of the bed and look at her feet. Her toenails are painted black and look diseased but I won’t comment because I know nothing about fashion trends or make-up.
‘She goes into hospital on Friday evening and they’ll operate first thing Saturday.’
‘They’re going to take the cancer out.’
‘That’s the plan.’
Charlie raises her chin and gives me her serious look. ‘Has Mummy been crying?’
‘She’s sad about leaving you and Emma.’
‘But it’s only for a few days, right?’
‘Right.’
Her gaze wavers and she fiddles with a loose thread on the hem of her track pants. ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing,’ she whispers.
‘Doing?’
‘What’s my job? What do I say?’
‘You don’t have to
do
or say anything.’
‘This is serious shit.’
‘I know.’
For a moment we’re becalmed. In the wastepaper basket beside the bed I notice a broken china figurine of a horse rider who no longer sits astride her horse. I wonder if it was broken by accident or out of frustration. When I ask Charlie, she changes the subject. ‘Why do you think Mummy asked you to come back?’
‘I guess she wants me here.’
‘Why?’
‘To look after things, Emma, you…’
‘I don’t need looking after.’
‘I know.’
‘What about afterwards – when she’s well again?’
‘I’m trying not to think too far ahead.’
‘It must be hard.’
‘What?’
‘Marrying someone who decides they don’t need you any more, but then they decide they do. I don’t think I’ll ever understand.’
‘You’ll fall in love one day.’
Charlie dismisses the notion. Hair falls across her face. ‘I can’t imagine getting married – telling someone I belong to them and they belong to me.’ Unexpectedly, she changes direction. ‘Are you taking Mummy out to dinner?’
‘Yes. Tomorrow.’
‘That’s good. You have to woo her. Try to be romantic.’
‘I think we’re past the wooing stage.’
Charlie gets cross. ‘Do you
want
to be alone forever? Do you? Huh? Mummy must still love you. It’s not like she’s found anyone else. Not lately.’
‘Lately?’
‘You know what I mean. And it’s not like you’re dating.’
‘How would you know?’
‘I’ve seen your wardrobe. This is your chance to win her back.’
My daughter is giving me dating advice – can it get any worse?
‘Maybe we shouldn’t be having this conversation,’ I say.
Charlie sits up straighter. ‘I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing it for Emma and me. Someone has to sort out this family.’
I laugh but Charlie doesn’t get cross. Instead she leans against me and I put my chin on the top of her head.
‘Can I come with you tomorrow?’ she asks.
‘I’m working.’
‘I thought maybe I could help you. I could be your driver. I could run errands.’
‘It’s a murder investigation.’
‘I know, but I’m going to university in October. You don’t have to shield me from things.’
Yes, I do
, I want to say, but hold my tongue.
‘You should be hanging out with your friends.’
‘They’re busy,’ she replies.
‘Weren’t you and Bridget planning a trip to Paris?’
‘She found a boyfriend.’
‘You could find a boyfriend.’
‘Good idea – I’ll order one online from ASOS.’
‘What about Nina or Jade?’
‘They’re working.’
‘Matilda?’
‘Away.’
Charlie sits up and brushes hair from her face, so she can fix me with both eyes. ‘This is really important to me.’
‘Why?’
‘We haven’t spent enough time together, you know. You’ve been in London and I’ve been at school.’
Is she trying to guilt me into this?
‘We’re spending time together now.’
She pauses as though marshalling her arguments, biting her bottom lip and leaving pale teeth marks in the pinkness. ‘You wanted to know what I’m going to study at university.’ Another hesitation. ‘I’ve accepted an offer to study experimental psychology at Oxford.’
‘You want to be a psychologist?’
She nods.
‘Why?’
‘It interests me. I want to get a doctorate and then study forensic psychology.’
My first reaction is to say no. I want to argue. I want to stop her. She’s making a mistake. Forensic psychology is brutal. It’s about delving into the worst of human behaviour – sociopaths, psychopaths, rapists, paedophiles, abused children, victims of violence … it takes a toll. It diminishes.
‘Do you understand what a forensic psychologist does?’
‘Yes.’
‘When you say you’re “interested”…?’
‘I want to understand why people do things – the good and bad. It’s like you and Great-Aunt Gracie.’
She’s referring to my maternal grandmother’s youngest sister, who died at the age of eighty, having not set foot outside her house in nearly sixty years. A classic agoraphobic, she burned to death in a house fire rather than risk going outside. Gracie is the reason I became a psychologist.
Charlie is still talking. ‘I also want to understand why someone would hurt another human being … would kidnap them … hold them in the dark. Why they would fantasise about doing horrible things.’
My heart flips over. When Charlie was twelve she was abducted and kept chained to a radiator with masking tape wrapped around her head. Blind, trapped, breathing through a hosepipe, she spent two days in that hell before I could find her. That was six years ago – a third of a lifetime for Charlie and I had always hoped, no prayed, that these events had been locked away in a safe place where they couldn’t hurt her. I wanted Gideon Tyler to become like a fairytale villain from a bedtime story – the big bad wolf or the wicked witch – but Charlie must have gone over and over those events, trying to decide whether she was to blame, wondering if there was something written on her skin, some sign or mark that had singled her out. Nothing traumatic is ever truly forgotten.
Beware the Jabberwock … the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
I should have seen this coming. Picked up the signals. Spent more time with Charlie. Instead I failed her. What sort of psychologist doesn’t recognise post-traumatic stress in his own daughter?’
‘Let’s talk about this tomorrow,’ I say softly.
Charlie’s eyes cloud and she reacts as though I’ve shoved her in the chest.
‘Please don’t get upset,’ I say. ‘I don’t want you delving into terrible crimes. I don’t want you
thinking
about them. You’re eighteen. The world shouldn’t be a dark and dangerous place for you.’
‘The world is what it is,’ she says.
‘You’re right, but I’m frightened by what I do. I rage against it. My guts churn. I have nightmares. You’ve made a mistake, Charlie. Reconsider. Choose something else. Please.’
Her arms are braced and shaking from the strain. She tilts her head and sways infinitesimally from side to side. ‘Am I allowed to speak?’
I nod.
‘So you’re telling me that I can’t study psychology?’
Her tone is one of indignation, without any ranting, stamping theatrics.
‘I don’t think you appreciate or understand—’
‘Oh, I understand,’ she says. ‘You think I’m some silly teenager who can’t make a decision without Daddy. Or maybe you think I’m not strong enough because I’m a girl.’
‘That’s got nothing—’
‘You had your turn,’ she says, cutting me off. ‘How dare you tell me what I can or cannot do! You haven’t been here for the past six years. In case you haven’t realised – I grew up. I can do what I damn well please.’
‘Maybe when you’re older—’
‘Oh, good, play that card! How’s that going for you – being so old and wise? From where I’m sitting, I see someone who lives alone in a shitty flat and is still in love with a woman who booted him out six years ago and who only wants him back because she’s terrified.’ Charlie’s whole body is trembling. ‘So I have a frightened mother and a frightened father. What sort of children will they produce, I wonder. You’re the psychologist – you tell me.’
She pauses, but I’m not sure if I’m supposed to answer.
‘Well, I refuse to be scared,’ says Charlie, her voice so thick with fluid I know she’s about to cry. ‘I haven’t forgotten what happened to me – I think of it every day – and that doesn’t bother me.
You’re
the one with the problem – not me.’
I feel paralysed with dismay, not daring to move for fear of bringing more of Charlie’s distress crashing down around my unwilling ears. When did fatherhood take on such an ugly, distorted shape?
‘Get out of my room,’ she whispers, unable to look at me.
I close the door behind me, breathless at how far I’ve fallen in my daughter’s eyes.
There is a passage in the Bible – Ecclesiastes 3:1–15 – about there being a time for everything. ‘A time to be born, a time to die, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to kill, a time to heal…’
Everybody knows that passage, even if it’s just from the Byrds song, which protested against the Vietnam War. The real passage was never about peace. People do that all the time – hijack slogans and twist history.
Life is a matter of timing. A good joke is a matter of timing. Pregnancy is a matter of timing. Take right now. Across the street, a waitress is setting tables at a restaurant. Pale-skinned and green-eyed, she has peroxided hair, dark brows and a shiny forehead. A different evening, another hour, a minute earlier or later, and I might not have noticed her. But now I have. Timing is everything.
The name on her blouse says Kamila and she’s from Warsaw, via Munich. She’s married, but she’s sleeping with her foreign language teacher – the man who taught her English at a college in Bristol. He has a wife and three children, but it hasn’t stopped him giving his students private tuition.
I wait to be seated and watch as she moves between customers, pushing a strand of hair from her forehead and tucking it behind her ear.
‘Table for one?’ she asks, her accent still thick, her mouth not eager to smile, her face not quite finished, as though God had decided to down tools for the evening and forgotten to come back and complete the task.
‘Can I get you something to drink?’ she asks, after showing me to a table.
I open my mouth but nothing comes out. She waits, eyebrows raised.
‘Water,’ I say.
‘OK, that narrows it down. Still or sparkling?’
‘Tap is fine.’
‘That wasn’t so hard now, was it?’
She’s making fun of me. I silently seethe.
Kamila looks different from when I saw her last. Her hair is longer and she’s wearing less make-up. She doesn’t remember me, but that’s understandable. We were never formally introduced. I didn’t shake her hand or make small talk. I could see she was nervous – most of them are when they’re fucking someone in secret.
That was five months ago. I don’t know if Kamila is still sleeping with her language teacher. It doesn’t matter to me if it was a one-night stand or a weekly date. She made her bed and she can die in it.
When I finish the meal, I go to the register. Handing over twenty pounds, I scoop coins from my pocket and begin counting them out on my palm. She waits, making me feel like a pensioner paying with coppers at a supermarket checkout. I give her the coins and watch her re-count them. My cheeks are glowing.
‘Have a nice evening,’ she says glibly.
Fuck, no!
I want to scream.
I’ve decided to have a shitty evening. I want to wipe that smirk off your face. I want to teach you a lesson.
That word ‘want’ seems to goad me. I want so much. My share. More. I want to punish those who lie and cheat. My wants have become needs and then necessities and finally a matter of life or death, as my vision clouds and my heart races and I must put my forearm around someone’s throat and begin to squeeze.
Kamila reminds me of a girl I used to know at school. Rachel Belinsky was three years below me and only thirteen, but looked much older. She was up for it, you know, hot to trot. We were behind the grandstand at the Creek during a football game between Bristol Manor Farm and Bishop Sutton. Rachel offered to blow me for a tenner. She unzipped my fly and opened her mouth, but I kept thinking of my mum and Mr Shearer and the accident. Nothing happened. Rachel laughed at me. Next thing I had my hands around her neck and she blacked out. I spent the next two weeks waiting for the police to knock on my door, but nobody came. Either she didn’t complain or nobody believed her or she was too busy spending my tenner. After a month I began to relax. I’d been stupid. It wouldn’t happen again.
Standing in a doorway across the road, I wait in the shadows until Kamila finishes her shift. I see her collecting her money, questioning her share of tips, saying goodbye to the others. She pulls on a cardigan and walks to the bus stop.