PC Yorke crouched down to his level. ‘So, Noah, what were you doing in the study with your mummy today?’
‘Rosie was screaming like this WAH, WAH, WAH!’ Noah, the showman, said, obviously deciding to play up the comedy for his audience, as he had a habit of doing.
‘And when Rosie was going WAH, WAH, WAH, what was Mummy doing?’
‘We were dancing to Luuuuuther!’ He jumped off the chair and wiggled his bum.
I couldn’t help smiling, and I caught PC Yorke smiling too.
‘And then after you were dancing with Mummy, then what happened?’
‘Mummy was really, really cross, like this,’ he said, and he screwed up his face into his best angry-face grimace. ‘And then she went like this,’ he said, miming stomping out of the room and stroking his tummy, as I would do often, unconsciously connecting to my baby.
‘I think you should be on the stage when you grow-up, eh?’
‘Yeeeeeaaah!’ Noah cried, doing a tah-dah with his arms. I began to cringe slightly. It was little over the top, possibly a reflection of his anxiety.
‘Tell me, did you hear anything apart from Rosie screaming from upstairs?’
‘Only this, WAH, WAH, WAH!’ Noah screeched.
‘All right, Noah. Calm down, please,’ I said.
‘Okay,’ PC Yorke laughed. ‘Did you hear anything else?’
Noah shrugged. ‘Nope.’
‘So, where did Mummy go then after she walked out of here?’
‘Ummm. She went upstairs to Rosie’s bedroom.’
‘And what did you see there?’
‘I was a good boy.’ He became serious.
‘You were a good boy, were you?’
‘Yes, Mummy told me to stay down here and so I was good and I stayed here.’
‘You stayed down here, did you. And did you hear anything while you were down here, being a good boy?’
‘No.’ He shook his head slowly and looked up at me.
‘Good boy,’ PC Yorke replied, standing up again. ‘Okay, well done, Noah, thank you very much for answering all my questions.’
‘Can I watch telly, Mummy?’
‘Go outside for a bit. You can watch some later when Daddy’s home.’
I checked my watch. It was a quarter to three. Three-quarters of an hour late. Of all days. Of all bloody days. I wanted to scream out of a window, across the tree-tops to bring him home, like a bird’s call across a jungle.
PC Yorke tapped furiously into his device and walked out of the study, back down the corridor, towards the bottom of the stairs, and looked up, paused, tapped some more information, and back into the kitchen, where we sat down again. His command of my space was disconcerting. In another context, I imagined that it would be reassuring, say, if we’d been burgled, and he was on our side automatically.
‘So, tell me what happened upstairs, Mrs Bradley.’
Again, the look of sympathy. It put me instantly on edge. Did he know more than I did before he had heard my story?
‘I went straight into her bedroom and saw that Rosie was kneeling in the middle of all this broken glass and there was blood everywhere,’ I said, pressing my fingers to my mouth. I noticed my top lip was sweaty.
‘You saw blood. Where was the blood?’
Tap, tap, tap.
‘On the photographs and on the mount, and on her hands.’
‘What did you do when you saw this?’
‘I lifted her out of the room away from the glass and then I carried her to the bathroom to clean her up. That’s how I got covered in blood, but I hadn’t noticed it on my clothes until Mira saw me,’ I trailed off, trying to fight back the tears.
‘And you found a cut on Rosie?’
‘Yes, on her hand.’
‘How do you think she cut her hand?’
‘I don’t know, when it fell maybe?’
‘Was she hurt anywhere else?’
‘I found several small cuts over her shins and knees where she’d knelt on the glass.’
‘Where was the cut exactly on her hand?’
‘On her palm.’ I showed him on mine, and wished with all of my heart that the laceration had been mine.
‘The left hand, then?’
‘Err. Yes, left.’
‘And your husband? Where is he now?’
‘He’s on a bike ride,’ I answered, conjuring up the cheering image of Peter in his Lycra. ‘He should be home any minute.’
‘Were you aware that Rosie was throwing things out of her window?’
‘No, I wasn’t.’ Embarrassment fired up my cheeks. I was her mother, I should have known. I should know everything about her and I felt that I knew nothing.
I could hear Rosie and PC Connolly’s voices coming closer. My heart pounded.
When they came into the kitchen, I pushed out a smile, which slackened when I realised that PC Connolly was not smiling back. I had an urge to tear them apart.
I wanted Rosie to run towards me.
‘Everything okay?’
‘We had a very good chat, didn’t we Rosie?’ PC Connolly said.
‘Hi Mum,’ she said, barely looking in my direction. ‘Can I go outside with Noah?’
‘Of course.’ And off she ran.
PC Yorke read out a rough outline of what we had discussed, and PC Connolly nodded and drew her forefinger across one eyebrow as if smoothing it. She sat down next to PC Yorke.
‘Could we just go back a bit, Mrs Bradley? So, you say you cleared away the broken glass. Can you tell me where it is now?’
‘It’s all in that bin-bag I took out when you arrived.’
‘And your clothes? We understand they were bloody? With Rosie’s blood or your blood?’
‘Rosie’s. It’s in the washing machine.’
‘I see,’ she said, looking over at PC Yorke.
‘What? Would you need it as evidence or something?’ I laughed.
‘It helps us to build a picture of what happened.’
‘I’ve told you what happened.’
‘Yes. One more thing, Mrs Bradley, do you ever forcefully shut Rosie in her room?’
‘I’m not even going to answer that.’
‘It is important that you do, please.’
‘No, of course I don’t. Of course not. Anyway, there isn’t a lock. You saw her door, didn’t you?’
‘But do you ever try to trap her inside?’
‘How the hell would I do that?’
‘You tell me.’
‘I would never trap her inside her room. Sometimes I tell her to go to her room for time out.’ As I said it, a flash came to me, of me pulling at her door. Her wrist. The welt. The dress. The bag. It would be impossible to explain.
PC Connolly nodded at me.
I repeated it. ‘I would never trap Rosie in her bedroom.’ I wanted to add, Don’t you understand? I love her, and, I would do anything to take back this afternoon, but I knew the words would be lost on them.
‘Have you or anyone else in the family had any history of involvement with children’s social care?’
‘For goodness sake. No, of course not. Look, quite frankly, I’ve had enough of this,’ I said, shooting up from the table. ‘If that nosy old bag next door had a life, you wouldn’t even be here. It was a malicious call and it has absolutely no grounding whatsoever. She doesn’t have her own kids and she doesn’t seem to understand that kids scream when they’re young. If she did have them, she’d get it.’
There was a horrible silence after my rant. I wanted to push the defensive words back down my throat, pull myself together again. But it was too late. If Peter had been here, he would have told me off. He would say I was over-sensitive and too ready to fight back at the smallest criticism. But the police officers’ insinuations weren’t small, they were huge. They cut deep into my fears of what I was truly capable of in those desperate moments with Rosie. Their intrusive probing questions sent lightning strikes of panic through my whole being.
I took the J-cloth from the sink and rubbed a smear of butter from the edge of the table.
There were other questions, seemingly hundreds of them, until my mouth was parched and my head aching. Finally, PC Connolly pulled the plug.
‘Okay, Mrs Bradley. I think we have everything we need for now. What time will your husband be getting home?’
I sighed and pressed my fingertips into my forehead. ‘Any moment now.’
‘Okay, good. Okay, we’ll be in touch over the next couple of days,’ she said, pushing her small arms into her huge coat.
‘About what?’ I said, throwing the cloth in the sink.