فصل هفدهم

I know what you’re thinking, Mr. Wrexham. None of this is helping my case. And that’s what Mr. Gates thought too.

Because we know where this leads, you and I, don’t we?

To me, slipping out of the house on a rainy summer night, baby monitor in one hand, running across the courtyard and up the stairs to the stable-block flat.

And to a child’s body, lying— But no. I can’t think about that, or I’ll start crying again. And if you lose it in here, you really lose it, I know that now. I never knew there were so many ways to deal with pain so unbearable that it cannot be endured, but in here I have seen them all. The women who cut their skin, and tear out their hair, and smear their cells with blood and shit and piss. The ones who snort and shoot and smoke their way to oblivion. The ones who sleep and sleep and sleep and never get out of bed, not even for meals, until they’re nothing but bones and grayish skin and despair.

But I have to be honest with you, that’s what Mr. Gates didn’t—couldn’t—understand. It was acting a part that got me here in the first place. Rowan the Perfect Nanny with her buttoned-up cardigans, her pasted-on smile, and her perfect CV—she never existed, and you know it. Behind that neat, cheerful facade was someone very different—a woman who smoked and drank and swore, and whose hand itched to slap on more than one occasion. I tried to cover her up—to neatly fold my T-shirts when my instinct was to throw them on the floor, to smile and nod when I wanted to tell the Elincourts to fuck off. And when the police took me in for questioning, Mr. Gates wanted me to keep on pretending, keep on hiding the real me. But where did that pretense get me? Here.

I have to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Because to leave out these parts would be less than the whole truth. To tell you only the parts that exonerate me would make me slip back into the old, old trap. Because it was the lies that got me here in the first place. And I have to believe that it’s the truth that will get me out.

I had forgotten what day it was when I awoke. When my alarm went off I listened blearily for the sound of childish voices, and then, when only silence greeted me, I hit snooze and went back to sleep. It recurred ten minutes later, and this time I thought I could hear a noise coming from downstairs. After lying there for another ten minutes, gearing myself up for the day, I swung my legs out of bed and stood uncertainly, dizzy with lack of sleep. Then I went down into the kitchen to find not Maddie and Ellie but Jean McKenzie, scrubbing the dishes and looking disapproving.

“Are the bairns not up yet?” she said as I came into the room, rubbing my eyes and longing for a coffee. I shook my head.

“No, we had a . . .” What should I say? Suddenly I couldn’t bring myself to go into the whole story. “A bit of a disturbed night,” I finished at last. “I thought I’d let them sleep in.” “Well that’s all very well on a weekend, but it’s seven twenty-five and they need to be washed, dressed, and in that car by eight fifteen.” Eight fifteen? I did a mental double take, and then realized. Fuck.

“Oh God, it’s Monday.”

“Aye, and you’ll need to be getting a move on if you’re to make it in time.”

“I’m not going.” Maddie was lying facedown on her bed, with her hands over her ears. I began to feel desperate. It wasn’t so much what I would tell Sandra if I couldn’t get the girls to school, but the fact that I needed this break. I had had barely three hours’ sleep last night. I could cope with a fractious baby. I couldn’t cope with two primary school age–children as well, let alone one as stroppy and recalcitrant as Maddie.

“You’re going, and that’s that.”

“I’m not, and you can’t make me.”

What could I say to that? It was true after all.

“If you get dressed now there’ll still be time for Coco Pops.”

It had come to that then. Basically bribing her with Sandra’s list of forbidden foods at every single obstacle. But it had worked with Ellie, who was, I assumed, downstairs now, more or less dressed (though not washed or brushed) and eating cereal with Jean.

“I don’t want Coco Pops. I don’t like Coco Pops. They’re for babies.”

“Well, that seems about right, given you’re behaving like a baby!” I snapped, and then regretted it when I heard her laugh.

Don’t react, I thought. Don’t give her that hold over you. You have to stay calm, or she’ll know that she’s got the power to get to you.

I thought about counting to ten, then I remembered the painful “one and a half” of a couple of nights before, and hastily revised my plans.

“Maddie, I’m getting very bored here. Unless you want me to take you to school in your nightie, then I suggest you get your uniform on.” She said nothing, and at last I sighed.

“Okay, well, if you want to behave like a baby, I’ll have to treat you like one, and get you dressed the way I do with Petra.” I picked up the clothes and advanced slowly towards the bed, hoping that a bit of warning might induce her to scramble up and get her clothes on, but she just lay there, making herself as limp and heavy as she possibly could so that my back screamed in protest as I began manhandling her into her clothes. She was as floppy as a rag doll, but a hundred times as heavy, and I was breathing hard when at last I stepped back. Her skirt was askew, and her hair was rumpled from where I had dragged the T-shirt over her head, but she was more or less dressed within the meaning of the act.

Finally, figuring that I might as well take advantage of her passivity, I pulled a sock on each foot and then jammed her school shoes on.

“There,” I said, trying to keep the triumph out of my voice. “You’re dressed. Well done, Maddie. Now, I’ll be downstairs eating Coco Pops with Ellie if you want to join us. Otherwise I’ll see you in the car in fifteen minutes.

“I haven’t done my teeth,” she said woodenly, nothing moving apart from her mouth. I gave a laugh.

“I don’t give a”—I stopped myself just in time, and then rephrased—“a monkey’s. But if you’re bothered . . .” I went through to the bathroom in the hallway and put some toothpaste on the tip of the brush, intending to leave it up to her whether she brushed her teeth, but when I came back, holding the brush, she was sitting up on her bed.

“Will you brush for me?” she said, her voice almost normal after the sulky malice of a few minutes ago. I frowned. Wasn’t eight a bit old to be having her teeth brushed? What had the binder said? I couldn’t remember.

“Um . . . okay,” I said at last.

She opened her mouth like an obedient little bird, and I popped the toothbrush in, but I hadn’t been brushing for more than a few seconds when she twisted her head away from the brush and spat full in my face, a gob of minty white phlegm, sliding down my cheek and lips and onto my top.

For a minute I couldn’t speak, couldn’t say anything, and then, before I had time to think what I was doing, my hand shot out to slap her face.

She flinched, and with what felt like a superhuman effort, I stopped myself, my hand inches from her face, feeling my breath fast and ragged in my chest.

Her eyes met mine, and she began to laugh, totally without mirth, a kind of joyless, cackling glee that made me want to shake her.

My whole body was shuddering with adrenaline, and I knew how close I had come to really letting go—slapping the smirk off her knowing little face. If she had been my own child I would have done it, no questions. My rage had been white-hot and absolute.

But I had stopped myself. I had stopped.

Was that what it would look like on the monitor, though, if Sandra had been watching?

I couldn’t trust myself to speak. Instead, I got up, leaving Maddie laughing that joyless, grinding laugh on the bed, and I walked shakily through to the bathroom, still holding the toothbrush, and with hands that trembled I wiped the toothpaste from my face and chest, and rinsed the flecks of spit out of my mouth.

Then I stood over the basin, letting the tap run, one hand on either side of the ceramic rim, feeling my whole body shake with pent-up sobs.

“Rowan?” The call came from downstairs, faint over the sound of running water and my own weeping gasps. It was Jean McKenzie. “Jack Grant’s outside wi’ the car.” “I’m—I’m coming,” I managed back, hoping my voice didn’t betray my tears. Then I splashed water over my face, dried my eyes, and walked back into the bedroom, where Maddie was waiting.

“Okay, Maddie,” I said, keeping my voice as level as I could. “Time for school. Jack’s outside with the car, let’s not keep him waiting.” And to my unending shock, she got up calmly, picked up her schoolbag, and headed for the stairs.

“Can I have a banana in the car?” she said over her shoulder, and I found myself nodding, as if nothing had happened.

“Yes,” I said, hearing my own voice in my ears, flat and emotionless. Then I thought, I have to say something, I can’t let this go. “Maddie, about what just happened—you cannot spit at people like that; it’s disgusting.” “What?” She turned to look at me, her face a picture of injured innocence. “What? I sneezed. I couldn’t help it.” And then she ran down the rest of the flight of stairs and out to the waiting car, as if the bitter struggle of the last twenty minutes had been nothing but a figment of my own imagination.

I found myself wondering who had won in that encounter, as I checked Petra’s car seat and buckled myself in the front beside Jack. And then it struck me what a fucked-up dynamic this really was—that my relationship with this damaged little girl was not about caring and caregiving but about winning and dominance and war.

No. No matter what the outcome of that situation was, I hadn’t won. I had lost the moment I let Maddie make it into a battle.

But I hadn’t hit her. Which meant that, if nothing else, I had triumphed over my own worst instinct.

I hadn’t let the demons win. Not this time.