Falling Off Air (20 page)

I twisted around to deposit Hannah on a safe bit of floor, and as I turned I became aware that there was another person in
the room. Adam's mother, Norma, was standing behind me, her face white, jaw slack with horror at the tableau we presented.
Hannah was dangling by one arm but refusing to be put down, her legs locked around my leg. I was in danger of losing my balance.

“The door was open.” Norma was always a stickler for courtesy.

“Help me,” I said, but she didn't move. Instead she seemed to swell with righteous indignation.

“What on earth is going on?”

“Just help,” I insisted. “William's hurt his hand. Take him from me.”

She stared and went, if possible, whiter, but after a moment she came nearer and held out reluctant arms. I passed William
to her, realizing as I did so that my bathrobe was gaping open, but Norma would not have noticed if I was naked. She was too
busy inspecting the bloody and screaming little boy in her arms. His face had gone red and blotchy with distress and Norma
looked at him as though he were a martian.

With two hands free I gently lifted Hannah under her arms and loosened her legs from mine. She was sobbing as though her heart
had broken, which I suspect it had. I had never shouted at her before. Even when I had her in my arms she refused to look
at me, and even when the tears dried up, her bottom lip still pouted and quivered. I gave her a quick once over, but could
find no cuts. Then I carried her to the bathroom and with one hand grabbed cotton wool and antiseptic spray for William. By
the time I returned to the sitting room, Norma was on my mother's sofa and William had calmed enough for her to be able to
dab at his hand.

“Why are you here?” I was still standing, on the defensive, Hannah in my arms.

“These are my grandchildren,” she said in the precise tone that had always driven me mad. She did not look at me as she spoke.
Cleaning William's hand gave her an excuse not to. She didn't raise her voice, but she was almost spitting.

“You have kept them from me for quite long enough. I had to learn about their existence from a newspaper.”

“I am sorry about Adam,” I said. It had to be said and I wanted to distract her from her grievances against me. It was Adam,
not I, who had kept them from her, but this was not the time to split hairs. The woman looked shattered, a good century older
than she had when I last saw her nearly two years before. She wore all the right things: the Country Casuals coat over the
Jaeger skirt and the Bally boots. I'm guessing of course, but she's a woman who sticks to her brands. What was unusual was
that it was all thrown together, nothing matched, and her white hair, usually so neatly coiffed, was flying in wisps around
her head. Her mouth was working desperately as though she were chewing on something, and there was a tic at the corner of
her eye. Here she was, holding her dead son's son in her arms, and all my animosity was washed away in a flood of pity. What
I only understood afterward was that she was crazy with grief.

“You kill my son, and then you have the effrontery to say you are sorry.” She took a deep breath, and her shoulders rose in
outrage. She stood with William still in her arms. He had stopped crying and was watching his grandmother's face closely.
It was a new face and it was doing interesting things.

“I didn't kill your son,” I said softly.

“Look at you, you slut,” she hissed. “Not even dressed, broken glass on the floor, yelling at your children. You are not capable
of looking after them and you have forfeited whatever rights you ever had to be their parent.”

She turned and started walking toward the door with William still in her arms. For a moment I stood paralyzed. I could not
believe what was happening, that this woman should walk in off the street and seriously attempt to kidnap my child. A red
tidal wave of fury rose inside me.

“What are you doing?” I caught up with her by the door and stood in front of her, blocking her exit. She lunged to the left
and I obstructed her, but the coat stand toppled to the floor missing us by an inch.

“He's in danger, you'll kill
him
next.” She was shaking with anger.

“Give him to me,” I ordered her, but she ignored this and tried to step around me. I managed to block her again, but I was
hampered by Hannah who was clinging to me, whimpering at the anger in our voices.

“Sorry,” I whispered to Hannah, and tried to put her down beside me on the ground, but she would not let go and Norma seized
the opportunity to push past me to open the door. I grabbed her arm, put out a foot to jam the door, and suddenly we were
wrestling, Hannah still clinging to my ankle, William shrieking in distress, holding out his arms for me, his hands clawing
at my bathrobe, pulling it away from my body.

Norma hauled the door open, and we fell, a jumble of flailing limbs. Then, all at once there were people over us, hands lifting
William from my neck, where he had attached himself like a limpet. There was something wet in my eyes, I rubbed it away and
saw blood. A hand seized mine. I pushed myself to my knees and stood, only to be faced by a surprised cameraman who never
expected that the story would fall at his feet.

“Get inside,” Finney muttered and shoved me back through the door as cameras clicked behind us. I looked around in panic for
the children and gathered up one under each arm. Mann, never far behind Finney, was with Norma, who was sitting at the bottom
of the stairs, her head in her hands, shoulders heaving. I carried the children, sobbing and clinging, into the sitting room.
Finney followed me, agitated.

“What the hell happened?” His eyes took it all in, the broken glass on the floor in a pool of juice, the wad of bloody cotton
wool.

I shook my head, robotically patting and stroking, comforting my children. I was shaking with anger and humiliation, and I
could not trust myself to talk.

“She's an unfit mother.” I heard Norma's voice from the staircase, still precise even in the midst of hysteria. “I won't let
her kill my grandchildren just as she killed my son. I won't allow it. The court will take my side. They will live with me.
I'll take good care of them …” And here her voice trailed into sobs.

Finney blew out his cheeks.

“Here,” he said. He handed me the packet of cotton wool. “Clean up that cut. D.C. Mann will take her home. We had some more
questions for you but they'll wait.”

When they had gone I cleaned up the glass, then myself, and I sat the children, who were calmer now, in front of the television
to soothe them. I rang my mother and told her what had happened.

“There's no way she could claim custody is there?”

“I doubt it,” she said, but I knew her tone of voice too well. She was worried and she could not give me the cast-iron guarantee
I needed.

W
HAT was I thinking? That Richard Carmichael would open the door to me and say, “Ah, the girl who drove her car over her lover,
come on in, what can I do for you?” I suppose I was still operating in an alternative universe where I was innocent until
proven guilty. It's amazing how one can get so old and still be so naive.

In fact it went more like this. Under cover of early darkness, as press thin out, murder suspect leaves house by back door
and walks around block to approach door of neighbor with whom she has recently had relatively civilized conversation after
death of said neighbor's wife. Murder suspect lifts brass ring, knocks on door. Neighbor takes a while but eventually opens
it and stares at her in disbelief, frown lines between eyes. Murder suspect, already on defensive, starts to speak. Starts
to gabble really.

She wonders whether her neighbor might spare her a few minutes, she's trying to throw some light on the deaths of her former
lover and the neighbor's wife. Neighbor, more lionlike than ever, eyes narrowed, jaw dropping, draws his head back as if to
launch a bite at this irritating creature.

“I don't like to be rude but you have to be kidding,” he says. “If you'll excuse me.”

And neighbor shuts the door on neighbor.

I have read what Paula Carmichael wrote about suicide. It's not a note. It is an entry in her diary, dated for the day of
her death. Now it has been transferred from that diary to the newspaper. Intensely private, it sits uncomfortably next to
an ad for exercise equipment. Underneath it, in a desperate attempt to justify publication, is an article by the newspaper's
resident doctor, advising of the symptoms of depression and suggesting a visit to the doctor if the reader recognizes them
in him or herself. There is, the doctor suggests cheerfully, a solution to everything. But Prozac was surely an inadequate
response to Paula Carmichael's anguish.

If only there was solace in sleep I could carry on, but I wake in the middle of the night brooding before I am even conscious
of being conscious. My joints ache with guilt, my brain scrabbles around looking for meaning. Finding none it becomes crazed.
It starts to hurl itself against the bars. Logical thought, perspective, all these things are now foreign to me. I am stripped
and ugly, I am bloated, heavy with the weight of all that I have not done, all that I should have done. I have no one to show
this ugliness to, no one to lift it from me. Mortality and black shadows approach, I cannot lift a hand to stop them.

I read it every which way for meaning. That Paula Carmichael was not happy is clear, but to be overwhelmed by the approach
of mortality, to be so weakened as to be unable to fight it off is surely not the same as embracing death. To jump off a balcony
is to mobilize your muscles to push off, to launch yourself into space and rush toward your own death. I remain unconvinced
that this diary entry is a suicide note.

After Norma's attempt to kidnap William my mother has abandoned her aloofness. She is back beside me, fighting shoulder to
shoulder. She tries to get Finney to make a public statement to the effect that there is no evidence that I am responsible
for the death of Adam, but we all know he can't prove a negative. I know she will not win this battle and I suspect that any
such statement might backfire on him and me. Finney shakes his head. He can't, he won't do it. I am not surprised. What does
surprise me is that there is an apology in his eyes. He would have liked to help me out. All this is utterly intangible, my
perception of a feeling glimpsed fleetingly in someone else's eyes, but it cheers me nevertheless. I must gather around me
the people who believe in me, the people I can approach for help, or at least trust not to stab me in the back. I write a
list of the people I love. It is short on quantity but long on quality.

My list did not include Erica. She would have been on another list altogether, but later on the Thursday of Norma's visit,
when I was at my lowest, she called. She had spent the previous evening in the pub, she said, “And my friends told me I was
perhaps insensitive, and they asked what are you like, and will you kill someone, and I said I do not know you well, but I
do not think so.” Then, moving right along from that smidgeon of doubt, she asked whether I had made alternative child-care
arrangements. I had not, and it was driving me wild with frustration. As I saw it I had a choice. I could sit back and look
after my children and leave Finney to sort things out—most likely he would get it right eventually—or I could go out there
and try and sort it out for myself, in which case I had to be able to come and go at a moment's notice. I had to follow wherever
this sorry mess led me, and I had above all to know the kids were safe. Norma's attempted abduction of William might have
been halfhearted, but I had no way of knowing what was going through her grief-sickened mind. I had moved back to my own house.
Now the press had my mother's staked out as well, there was no advantage in being house guests any longer.