‘She was violent, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you were frightened of her, weren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Samantha?’
‘Mmm?’ I’m falling asleep. Everything is losing shape, softening. I struggle to sit upright.
‘You were saying you were frightened of your daughter.’
‘Yes. Yes, I was. I kept Mace in a drawer by the bed. Some nights she’d sneak into my room and wake me up by pulling my hair. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I was nervous all the time. You don’t know what it’s like to live like that. Not knowing what mood she would be in. Not knowing if she was hiding somewhere to jump out at me. It used to make her laugh, my fear. That’s not right, is it?’
Mimi shakes her head. Now I can definitely hear footsteps walking round the front of the house. I can hear keys jingling, the click of the front door. Fear rises in my chest. I can’t think straight. Everything is falling away from me.
‘Samantha, keep talking. It’ll keep you awake.’
‘I couldn’t admit it to anyone. Imagine that. No one’s going to take me seriously. “She’s fifteen, for God’s sake, just ground her,” they’d say, but how can you explain what it’s like? I couldn’t ground Edie. I may as well have tried to hold back a tide.’
Mimi brushes imaginary crumbs from her lap. There is a soft knocking at the door. She says ‘Come in’ without taking her eyes from me. The rooms tilts suddenly. It’s a nauseating, violent movement, like the heaving of a ship on rough water. I close my eyes, steady myself. I need to get to the hospital. I should tell her, I think your son has done something to my brain.
Instead, I hear myself still talking. ‘I was pleased when she started dating, going out more. It meant I didn’t have to see so much of her. She was distracted. I could start getting my own life in order again.’
‘You were relieved?’ Mimi says.
‘Yes.’ I sigh, and I feel it, even now, here in this room where I’m bound to a chair while a dent in my skull seeps blood and my ears ring like Alpine bells. I remember the relief I felt, as short-lived and bright as a firework.
A movement in the corner of my eye. I turn my head carefully. In the doorway stands a short man with dark hair and eyes, clean-shaven, polite-looking. His gaze skims me before he turns to his mother.
‘Do you know Alex? Alex, this is Samantha Hudson. We’re just talking about what she did to her daughter.’
I open my mouth to protest – I didn’t do anything! – but nothing comes out. My throat is shrinking, becoming a blowpipe. You want to know what happened to Edie, don’t you? that voice in my head asks. After all this time, maybe you should keep going. Maybe there are things about yourself you don’t know.
Alex nods, unsmiling. I can see he is nervous. His hands are in constant motion, tugging at his clothes, his hair, his lips.
‘We’re talking about forgiveness,’ Mimi says, pointedly. ‘How important it is to forgive yourself when you’ve done wrong. Mahatma Gandhi himself said, “Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong”, after all. Do you think you’re strong enough to forgive yourself, Samantha?’
‘Forgive myself for what?’
‘For killing her.’
I can feel myself drop like a stone into the pool of silence. I open my mouth and hear someone laughing, wetly. It sounds almost like a sob. It’s me.
‘I didn’t kill my daughter.’
‘Samantha—’ Mimi says.
‘What? I didn’t kill her! I loved her!’
‘No one here is suggesting you didn’t love her.’ Mimi sweeps her hand around the room as if it were full of people. ‘But until you forgive yourself, you’ll always be like this.’
‘Like what?’ I croak.
‘Desperate and hollow. Always looking for someone else to blame. Edward, William, that poor man Liverly. Driven out of his home.’ She leans forward in the bed, skeletal and spidery, her skin rustling like paper. ‘Forgiveness is going to set you free.’
Alex’s face is set like a stone, something torn from granite and rock. He is watching his mother with a faint smile. I have to get out of here. I don’t want the truth. I don’t want forgiveness. Let me be blind and ignorant, always.
I turn to Alex. ‘Alex. Alex, I’m hurt. Please. I need to get to the hospital.’
‘She doesn’t want to see it, Alex,’ Mimi says, sighing. She picks up the television remote again. ‘There’s none so blind, I suppose.’
‘Alex, please untie me.’
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t even look at me. He’s looking across the room to the French windows.
‘Bird’s back, Mum, look.’
‘I see him. “The little red robin goes bob-bob-bobbin’ along.” Off he goes! He loves those seeds, doesn’t he?’
Alex nods. His face is so still but his hands, in and out of his pockets, smoothing the front of his jumper, they are in almost perpetual motion.
‘I didn’t kill her,’ I say quietly. ‘She just never came home.’
‘She was in trouble, wasn’t she?’ Mimi says, and it takes me a moment to understand the euphemism.
‘She was pregnant, yes.’
‘Dear God. You must have been in pieces.’
‘I didn’t know. I only found out a few days ago.’
She looks at me carefully. My throat is so dry my voice is cracking. The condensation on the glass jug is beautiful; sparkling, slow-moving crystals rolling down its fattened sides. I lick my lips. I am so thirsty. My head pounds.
‘You think you know your children,’ I say, trying to hold her gaze with my own slippery one. ‘You grow their bones inside you, you think you know who they are, but you don’t. Not really. Not ever. They keep their secrets close because it would cost you too much to look at them.’
Mimi’s eyes slide towards the door, to where Alex is standing. He has jammed his jittery hands into his pockets.
‘Alex,’ she says, and although she is smiling I hear the frost on that word, the way it sounds so brittle it might crack. ‘What do you think?’
‘About what?’
‘Secrets,’ she says, and tilts her head to one side. ‘Forgiveness. The things we keep to ourselves.’
‘I don’t know th—’
‘It’s funny,’ Mimi says, turning back towards me. I am not looking at her. I am only looking at that water. I have to have a drink. My tongue is as cracked and swollen as a blister. ‘When I think of my two boys it was always William I thought I’d have trouble with. When he started courting your Edie, I didn’t know what to make of it. What did he see in this girl, all lipstick and ripped tights and snarling? It was a match made in hell. Then, after his father died, I thought he would go off the rails entirely. I could imagine him winding up in one of those detention centres, doing community service in the parks in Brighton. I was so afraid for him and I watched him so closely I almost missed what was happening right under my nose. Didn’t I, Alex?’
He stares at her, his jaw tense. A sweat has sprung out on his brow and beneath the armpits of his grey T-shirt. A small gold chain, wire-thin, hangs around his neck. He looks at his mother with such acute discomfort I wish I could turn my back.