He stubs out his cigarette on the wood of the bench between us. Flicks it on to the ground, a graveyard of butts. Bent into strange positions, necks broken, bodies folded.
He rests his hand on my thigh, moves it a little, further and further up. The word ‘no’ lodges in my throat, won’t launch. Can’t say it, doesn’t work anyway. No meant yes, meant you always got what you wanted. Took it anyway. When his lips touch my neck they don’t feel like they belong to him, they feel like someone else’s. I never wanted to be touched like that. I never wanted you to touch me like that.
‘Get off, get the fuck off me,’ I say, and jump up.
‘Jesus, what’s your fucking problem?’
I walk over to the hut, hammer on the roof, each step I take punctuated with images of being back in our house, in your room.
‘Morgan. Morgan. Let’s go, I want to go now.’
The boy in the hut calls me a freak. A cock block. A bitch. The sound of a zip going up.
‘Chill out, I’ll be there in a minute,’ Morgan replies.
I hurry up the slope away from them, towards the parked cars, a black cat underneath. Eyes closed, peaceful. Lucky if it walks in front of me. It doesn’t. I’m angry, angry with Morgan. Nobody made her, she went into the hut smiling, still is as she walks towards me now. A can of beer in one hand, takes a mouthful, gargles, then spits it out. Dirty.
‘Why were you freaking out?’
‘I want to go home.’
‘Fucking hell, as if you’ve never done anything like that.’
I don’t reply, I don’t know how to explain.
‘Can I come home with you? You could sneak me in on the balcony.’
Yes, is what I should say. She needs looking after, out of harm’s way. She needs to behave better. I could help her do that.
‘So, can I?’
‘Yes.’
You coach me as we walk back to the house, ideas on how to teach Morgan, how to ‘help’ her be clean, but what you’re saying frightens me, it doesn’t feel good to hear. I don’t want to do that to her, she’s all I’ve got, she’s my only friend. I need her. And that’s why I do it, when she kneels down by a row of parked cars to tie her shoelace, I look. Usually I wouldn’t, usually I don’t want to be reminded, but this time I stare in the car window. Your face, the spit of mine, stares back. ACCEPT WHO YOU ARE, ANNIE. ‘I don’t want to,’ I reply.
‘Who are you talking to?’ Morgan asks as she stands up.
I shake my head, she smiles and calls me nuts, says, don’t worry about what happened in the park, they’re dickheads anyway. And I realize, you can say what you want to the lawyers about me, you already have, I’m sure, but Morgan is mine. I get to decide. I tell her I’ve changed my mind, too risky to sneak her in with Saskia around. She’s annoyed, says she’ll have to go home now and be hassled by her little brother and sister. Thanks a lot, Mil, she says, before she walks off.
I want to tell her, she’s welcome. But she wouldn’t understand.
17
The questions are straightforward when Mike asks me them. He’s a psychologist, programmed to support and hold me up, not like defence lawyers though.
He reads them out. What exactly did you see through the peephole on the night Daniel Carrington died? How long did you stand at the peephole for? Are you sure that’s what you saw your mother doing? You’re absolutely sure? What happened after that?
Please tell the court again. And again.
When we finish he tells me I did really well. He places the page of questions down and says he’s sorry I’m having to go through this. That it must feel very exposing, the idea of answering questions in front of a jury and a judge. Yes, it is, I tell him, it’s scary not knowing what might happen on the day. What might be said. But I’ll be okay, I think that going to court, facing you, is my way of helping the children you hurt. My way of taking responsibility. He talks about survivor’s guilt and how it can make a person feel more culpable than they are. Sometimes I think you feel like that, that the deaths of the children were your fault. Am I right, he asks? I’m not sure, I reply, sometimes, yes. You did nothing wrong, he says, and if your mother says anything to the contrary, it’s her attempt to continue abusing you.
A neat explanation, a ribbon in a bow.
We talk about the time you drove us to Manchester during the school holidays. You were careful, so careful, to spread what you did over great distances. The underground network of desperate women who were sufficiently reassured by you to hand over a child. Groomed from afar for years. The camouflage again was me, a daughter of your own. We could have gone on and on like that but then you took Daniel, someone I knew. Too close to home.
‘What would you say now to your younger self that would have comforted you then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You have to try. What would you have liked to hear?’
That I was different from you.
‘That one day it would stop.’
‘You made it stop, you were very brave to go to the police.’
‘I waited too long, too many bad things had happened already.’
‘If you could’ve been heard earlier, what would you have said?’
‘Help me. Leave me alone.’
‘How could you have been helped if you wanted to be left alone?’
‘I don’t know, it’s just how I feel.’
‘Frightened, I think. What about if you’d said, “Help me, take me somewhere safe”?’
I count the books on the shelves. Numbers help. Then I begin to cry, hide my face with the cushion. Mike sits quietly, lets me cry, then says, ‘You do deserve that, Milly, you deserve to be safe and to have a new life.’
I remove the cushion. His face is so open, looks at me. He wants to make it better for me, I can tell, but he doesn’t get it.
‘You don’t get it, Mike. You think you know me but you don’t.’
‘I think I’m getting to know you, I think I know you better than most people. Wouldn’t you agree?’
If that was true, he’d know what to say. He’d know that the best way to help me is to say I can stay. That he’ll look after me. But I’m too scared to ask him. I know once the trial’s finished I’ll have to leave. Start over. And there’s nothing I can do about it.
‘Can we stop, Mike? It’s been over an hour. I’m tired, I want to go to bed.’
He senses shutdown, knows to take his foot off the gas for tonight.
‘Okay, let me grab your night-time meds.’
I stash the pills with the others, open up my laptop to see if there’s anything about you in the news. You’ve been placed into solitary confinement, no details other than an attempted attack by a fellow prisoner following the announcement your trial has been moved forward. Protecting you matters, I imagine, the public pressure to keep you alive.
Make you pay.
18