‘In that case, the witness is free to leave the stand.’
A wave. Raw. Sadness washes over me as I’m dismissed. I don’t move, I look at the screen. I want to run to you, crawl up inside you back into your womb. Rewrite a history where this time you’d love me normally. Shiny and new. The judge speaks again, June beckons for me to come.
‘You’re free to go, Milly,’ he says.
He’s tired too. His wig, horse-hair, heavy. Hot. He says my name, my new name, out loud.
Against the rules. She’s on it, like a hound on a fox.
‘Her name is Annie.’
All heads pivot towards you. You don’t sound deranged, like the monster they expect. You sound like a mother, one who cares. It takes all my resolve, something more, not to run to you. The courtroom struggles to process the judge’s mistake, murmurs become voices, grow in sound.
‘Silence in court,’ he says.
It takes longer than before for the room to quieten, his power, his credibility less. Not yours though, four words from you is all it takes. Your voice, a nimbus cloud hanging low in the air, threatening hail. A storm.
June takes my arm, I stop to pick up the crystal then she leads me out of the courtroom. I don’t hear a choir any more, no song in my head, your voice instead saying my name. ANNIE.
I’m back in the room painted cream, you follow me there too. Mike and Saskia see my face, and my shirt.
‘Just a nosebleed,’ I say. ‘I’m going to the bathroom to clean up.’
‘Shall I come with you?’ Saskia offers.
‘No, it’s okay, thank you.’
‘We’ll wait for you here,’ Mike adds.
I nod.
The door of the toilet seals with a lock, slides to the right. I reach into my pocket, the Black Tourmaline. Can’t on my ribs, shirt, white. Trousers down. Thigh instead. I have to press hard, the rough edge, not the smooth, scrape it across the skin. I carve out an A. Like coming up on a drug, a whip. The pain takes me there, it takes me to you.
A IS FOR ANNIE.
Yes, I’ll always be Annie to you but to others I’m Milly. Siamese twins inside me, at war.
Good me.
Bad me.
Proud of me, are you? I played the game, I might even have won, Mummy.
When I get back to the family room June says she’ll be following up with the court about how I was treated by the defence. Mike calls them bastards, job or no job, he says. It’s okay, I tell him, it’s over now. Saskia looks relieved. June sees us out to the car park and says things are likely to move quickly, the verdict could be as early as next week.
Sit tight.
Later on at home I go to Mike’s study, he wants to see me before the weekend kicks off, check I’m okay after court. Phoebe’s there when I arrive, she’s still grounded for breaking curfew, the punishment for the party pushed back until after the hockey tour. She’s bargaining with Mike, trying to persuade him to let her go out.
‘Come on, it’s Friday,’ she says, ‘everyone’s going to the cinema.’
‘No,’ he replies, ‘you’re grounded until Monday.’
‘You’re being so stupid, Dad.’
‘I think it was you that did the stupid thing.’
‘And you’ve never made a mistake?’
‘I’m not getting into this again, Phoebe, Monday it is and that’s the last I want to hear about it. Now if you don’t mind, darling, I need to catch up with Milly about something.’
‘Yeah, great. Nice one, Dad. Thanks a lot.’
Another killer stare as she passes.
He closes the door, says, I’m afraid I’m not very popular right now, then smiles, asks me to take a seat.
‘I won’t keep you long, it’s been a long day already and you look exhausted. How are you feeling now it’s over?’
‘I’m not sure, it doesn’t feel real yet.’
‘That’s understandable. I wanted to say how proud I am of you and how sorry I am the defence treated you that way. I feel partly responsible to be honest.’
‘Why? It wasn’t your fault.’
‘No, but perhaps we could have prepared you better than we did. Perhaps we should have been a bit more up front with you.’
‘Up front about what?’
‘June called me one weekend to let me know your mother had been saying a few things about the night Daniel was killed.’
The conversation I overheard when I was in the alcove.
‘We didn’t think we should tell you, the lawyers weren’t supposed to broach it in the way they did.’
‘What sort of things was she saying?’
‘Utter nonsense, the judge quashed her claims immediately. I just wish you hadn’t had to go through what you did today.’
‘I’m all right, honestly. You’ve helped me a lot, Mike.’
‘I hope so, and at least now we can focus on you, on the work that needs to be done to help you heal.’
‘Will you do it with me?’
‘As much of it as I can, yes.’
‘As much of it as you can?’
‘Don’t worry about that today, Milly. All you need to worry about is getting a good night’s sleep, you deserve it.’
Do I?
I fall asleep fast, two nights without does that, it forces your eyes closed, takes you to places you don’t want to go. A little boy at the end of my bed, eyes wide and frightened. I can’t breathe, he says, I can’t breathe.
Up eight. Up another four.
The door on the right.
I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth.
And nothing but the truth.
This, along with the birthday plans you had for me, is the other reason I left when I did.
You were at work, I was alone in the house, not through the peephole but inside the room.
A spare key, I knew where you hid it.
His tiny body curled up on the bed, in the corner.
He stirred as I came in, I closed the door behind me.
Skin pale, a lack of fresh air. Black circles under his eyes, he asked for his mummy. Yes. You’ll see her soon, I told him.
His brown eyes, wet with relief.
I held him close to my body, warmed his blood through.
Your voice in my head, the things you said to his mummy so she would give him to you.
What if your husband comes after you, Susie? What if he hurts your son? Worse even. I have a contact in America who works in adoption.
A loving family awaits, a better life for Daniel.
Tell no one.
I gave him a teddy to hold, one of mine, name sewn in the ear.
Close your eyes, I told him, make a wish. I held him tight through the worst, as the air left his lungs.
As I suffocated him.
You were outside the room when I opened the door, back earlier than expected, your turn to watch through the peephole.
You looked at me in a way I hadn’t seen before.
That’s my girl, you said. Proud.
I never told you, Mummy, that I did it to save him.
Not to please you.
When I said I told the police everything, almost everything.
I meant it.
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