‘I was over the moon when you told me you were pregnant.’
I bite my lip. James wasn’t delighted when I told him I was pregnant. He accused me of cheating on him and spent three hours screaming at me in the kitchen demanding to know whose baby it was while I curled up in a ball on the floor and sobbed into my knees.
‘It was the most wonderful thing in the world – the fact that you were carrying my beautiful, innocent child – I thought I might burst with pride. Finally I’d be able to love someone without restraint, hurt or fear. I’d love and be loved in return. Forever.’
Charlotte’s breaths are coming unevenly now, the rasping replaced by a high-pitched wheeze. I need to get the mask back on her as soon as possible. Without enough oxygen to her brain … I close my eyes and say a quick prayer for the second time since her accident. I’m not sure anyone was listening the first time.
‘So I returned to the house, full of love, full of happiness, full of hope with an armful of flowers and a beautiful dress and you were nowhere to be found.’ An edge creeps into James’s voice and I tense. ‘I couldn’t work out where you could have gone, especially as I’d made sure to lock the door when I left. I felt lost Suzy, so terribly lost without you there to welcome me home. And then angry – how dare you spoil my surprise by being selfish and creeping out the way you did?’
There’s a space under Charlotte’s bed that I should be able to fit under. If I fall to my stomach maybe I can scrabble under it towards the door. James will leave Charlotte’s side and try to go after me but if I scream, maybe someone will get here before he has chance to do anything.
‘You thought you were so clever didn’t you, sneaking out and leaving me all alone without so much as a kiss on the cheek after everything we’d been through, but I was cleverer Suzy.’
I place a hand on the linoleum and lean towards my right. I have to be quick or James will grab hold of my ankle and yank me backwards.
‘I went into your sewing room and I found a piece of paper on the floor. A piece of paper torn from the Yellow Pages.’ He shakes his head. ‘I knew you were a lot of things, Susan but I never suspected, I never …’ his voice quivers, ‘… imagined you would murder a child.’
I scream as James pounces, his hand over my mouth, an arm locked around my throat.
‘Get up, you baby-killing bitch.’
He hoists me to my feet and shoves me towards Charlotte’s bed. My hip hits the metal bedstead and, as I put out my right hand to steady myself James grabs it and holds it over Charlotte’s mouth and nose.
‘Love her, do you?’ he hisses in my ear. ‘Think she’s beautiful and pure and innocent do you?’
‘Please,’ I mumble against his hand, ‘don’t do this. She hasn’t done anything wrong.’
‘Because she’s not innocent, Suzy-Sue, you know that don’t you? I heard her moaning like a stuck pig when she fucked her boyfriend in my spare room. I saw her fucking him doggy-style like a dirty pro and, when she’s dead, I’m going to make you watch it too.’
‘No.’ I try and twist away from him, to pull my hand from my daughter’s face but James holds me firm. There’s suction on my palm as she tries, and fails, to inhale and a strange snuffling noise fills the air.
‘You took something beautiful and precious from me. You killed my child and now you’re going to kill yours.’
He leans his weight so heavily onto my hand that Charlotte’s nose makes a terrible clicking sound and I know instantly that it’s broken. The heart monitor in the corner of the room bleeps urgently and the red line that used to undulate up and down like a gentle wave oscillates erratically as the colour drains from my daughter’s face and her eyeballs roll wildly under her closed eyelids.
‘Not long now,’ James hisses in my ear as Charlotte’s body jerks and her hands twitch at her sides. He glances at the heart rate monitor and reaches for the off switch. ‘We don’t want to alert the cavalry when she flatlines, do we?’
‘No!’ I wriggle desperately as he drags me away, towards the other side of the room, my left hand flailing desperately as I knock at his head, his hand, his hip. My blows bounce off him but then, as my hand hits the bedside table, two things happen simultaneously – the bed is showered with a stack of National Geographic clippings and my fingers make contact with the hairdressing scissors. I reach high into the air then, using all the strength I can muster I twist to the left and dig them deep into James’s thigh. He howls and falls to the ground, clutching his leg.
‘Help!’ I shout as lean over Charlotte’s body. Her lips are blue and she’s barely breathing. ‘Somebody help me! Please!’
I try to push the bed, to wheel her out of the room but the brakes are on and no amount of kicking will get them unlocked.
‘Somebody please—’ the words are knocked out of me and I’m pinned on top of Charlotte, my head twisted to the right, hands in my hair. I can see James above me, the bloody scissors in his right hand, his eyes black with rage. I close my eyes as he raises the scissors into the air and pray that, even if it’s too late for me, someone will have heard the disturbance and save Charlotte before he can kill her too and then—
‘No!’
The bed shakes violently and I feel weight on my shoulders and back then hear a thud, like bodies falling to the floor and the sound of men grunting and metal scraping across paintwork. I try to stand up, to free Charlotte from the weight of my body, but there’s a searing pain in my right arm and then everything goes black.
Chapter 33
‘Do you recognize this woman?’ The lawyer, Gillian Matthews, hands me a photograph of a slightly overweight young woman with dark hair, hazel eyes and a beautiful smile.
I shake my head and push it across the desk towards Brian. ‘No, should I?’
‘Not unless you were watching the news twenty—’
Brian gasps and we both turn to look at him.