Close My Eyes (46 page)

As I answer the operator’s questions Lorcan comes back into the room and puts his arms around me. I finish the call and let him hold me for a second. I want to close my eyes and shut out
the sight of Morgan’s body . . . the desperation in Art’s expression . . . the terror of the little boy hiding from us upstairs . . . but I know that none of it will go away.

And that it’s my job to face it all.

And then I pull away and go in search of my son.

A day passes. Then another. Before I can believe it, a week has gone by. A month. Two. Six. And my whole life has been turned upside down.

Art was as good as his word. He tied Jared up, then came back to the house, just before the police arrived. We were all interviewed separately, of course, but I learned later that Art confessed
everything immediately. He told the police the whole story – how he’d taken our baby and why – and how he’d witnessed Morgan kill Bernard O’Donnell. Dr Rodriguez
managed to slip into the shadows and has so far escaped detection. I’m sure he’s living in luxury in some distant backwater – but I hope he spends the rest of his life looking
over his shoulder.

Jared admitted his involvement as soon as he discovered Morgan was dead. I didn’t see him, except in court, but it was clear he was too devastated by her death to try and cover his tracks.
He pleaded guilty to the murders of Lucy O’Donnell and, years before, of Gary Bloode, the anaesthetist. He confessed he had mugged me and kidnapped Lorcan. The only thing he refused to admit
was that Morgan had ordered him to kill me and Lorcan in the event of her death.

For a long time Morgan’s final words, “He’ll get you both”, haunted me, permeating my dreams and jolting me from sleep with a pounding heart. But, six months on, no
hitman has emerged from the shadows, and Jared himself is safely locked up for at least the next ten years.

Art was arrested and charged with murder, later reduced to voluntary manslaughter. The statements Lorcan and I gave supported Art’s own account of what happened, so his sentence is less
than it might have been. But he’s still in jail. He’s become a different person since he went inside – it’s not just the stoic resignation. He seems shrunken inside his
prison clothes, a smaller man without his sharp suits and his iPhone, a permanent air of shame about him.

In spite of my anger, I can’t help but feel sorry for him. After all, Art has lost virtually everything . . . not just his freedom, but his marriage, his home, his business and his
reputation. Loxley Benson has been bought out by the board and Kyle is continuing to keep the company going, but I’m not sure it will survive. News of Ed’s existence and Art and
Morgan’s incestuous liaison were never formally reported in the press. For Ed’s sake, I didn’t want Art prosecuted for taking him away from me, which meant many of the details
were kept out of court. Nevertheless, the information has leaked and this, coupled with Art’s manslaughter conviction, has lost Loxley Benson half its clients already.

Kyle visits Art every week – and Tris and Perry have both been to see him a couple of times, but most of the board have turned their backs completely. I guess it’s hard to blame
them. Art’s taken it badly. I mean, I know he deserves his punishment – and a lot of the time I’m still furious with him. But it’s hard to stay angry with a man whose
destruction is so total and whose remorse so all-consuming. And Art is devastated. The only times I ever see him smile are when I take Ed to the prison for a visit.

Ed himself has been my biggest worry – and my greatest help – in getting through the past six months. As I write, he’s playing with a stick in the back garden, pretend-shooting
at the flowers. I worry that he spends too much time playing guns. Of course, he didn’t see the shooting itself. But he heard it, and he saw Morgan afterwards and he knows that she –
his mother for nearly eight years – is dead. The child psychologist says his obsession with guns is probably just a normal developmental phase. We haven’t told Ed that it was his father
who shot Morgan. There’s no need for him to know that now, but I worry that, as he gets older, it will be impossible to protect him from the information. Many of the details, including plenty
of inaccurate ones – are on the Internet. And all the official newspaper stories name Art as Morgan’s killer, with headlines like: ‘
Trials
Guru on Trial for
Manslaughter’. Ed’s had so much to deal with already. Not just losing Morgan and having to visit his father in jail, but being taken into care while the DNA test that backed up my story
came through.

Social services allowed me to take him home after a few days. He didn’t speak for a week and there are still times when he curls up under the duvet and refuses to come out. I worry that
it’s not just how Morgan died that will damage him, but that he’s inherited my own dad’s obsessive, depressive nature as well. The child psychologist is hopeful. Ed’s been
seeing her for a few months now. She recommends he should start school again as soon as possible. It will be a new school, though, just as this is a new home for him. I thought long and hard about
it, but having weighed up the pros and cons of letting him stay in Shepton Longchamp or start a completely new life here, it had to be here.

One of the first things Ed did was ask what to call me. The psychologist explained to him – with me alongside – that I was his birth mummy, but Ed hasn’t so far used those
words. Which is fine. I don’t want to push him.

I’m trying to mend bridges with Hen. I still wish that she and Art had told me sooner about him lending her all that money, but in the context of everything I’ve learned since, it
doesn’t seem all that important. Hen’s busy with her new baby now, of course, but most of my other friends have been great, bringing their own kids round to play with Ed – not
that he has really engaged with them yet, he’s always so wrapped up in his own head – then staying on when the children are in bed, and listening to me talk over a bottle of red
wine.

I’ve given up all my teaching commitments so I can be at home for Ed. Charlotte West called a few times, asking if we could meet for private sessions and hinting she’d like to visit
Art in prison, but I ignored the calls and eventually she stopped ringing and texting.

At least money isn’t a problem, thanks to Art. He has signed everything he can over to me and isn’t fighting the divorce, which I’ve already set in motion.

I sit back from the kitchen table and close my laptop. I can see Ed through the window. He’s poking his stick at the ground now, spearing something on the end. His little face is screwed
up with concentration.

Having him with me is a million times more challenging than I could ever have imagined. And yet he makes sense of everything – as if nothing was in its right place when I had lost him. And
now that he is found, I have found myself again too.

The best proof of this, to me, is that I’m writing again. I’m writing about finding Ed – just to get the whole story out of me . . . I feel hopeful that, once I’ve done
this, I’ll be able to write fiction again.

Lorcan thinks I will. We’ve spent a lot of time together recently, though not here – and not with Ed. There’ll be time enough for that in the future. Anyway, Lorcan’s
back in Ireland now. I could have taken Ed and gone too, but that wouldn’t have been fair. Ed needs time to get used to being with me here, just as Lorcan and I need time to find out if we
have a future. We both know that coming together in the white heat of my search for Ed skewed everything. It’s funny . . . though no relationship that starts like ours did should work, I
can’t help but believe ours will.

Ed is still outside. I get up from the table and wander over to the sink to make him a drink. Now, where I once stored Arts and Crafts china, I have a stash of plastic cups and bowls. I’m
still getting my head round it. This is what I wanted, after all.

My son, my child, my holy grail.

I stand by the sink, running the tap, letting it become real.

Today is three years exactly since Mummy died. They don’t know I know this but I do, just like they don’t know I saw it but I did.

I am nearly eleven. Soon I’ll be at secondary school. I saw my dad last night at visiting time. He was happy because he’ll be out of prison soon and I pretended to smile at him
like always but inside I’m still following Mummy’s Special Fighting Plan. I even know where I’ll get the gun. Darren Matthews’s older brother told me. He says he knows a
gang in Archway where you can weapon-up for like a few hundred quid. I’ll steal that off Geniver, no problem. Yeah, Geniver. She wants me to call her ‘Mum’. So do all the social
workers and psychologists, I can tell. But it’s her fault Mummy died. So she’s just Geniver. I don’t care whether she likes it or not.

All I care about is what Mummy told me before she died. Because it all came true. She said the Bad Lady was coming and she did. She said the Bad Lady would say she was my real mum and that
she would have papers and test results and lawyers that would look like they proved it but that, whatever happened, I should never forget Mummy was my real mum because she loved me the
most.

I am just waiting for Dad to get out of prison. No one at school knows he’s there, I don’t even know if the teachers know. It doesn’t matter. When he’s free I will
get him. And I will get her. And Mummy will see. I know she is watching me. Watching me right now. Waiting.

Mummy told me I had to be her brave knight. She said that if anything happened to either of us, then I had to find a way to pay back whoever did it.

That was the first thing. She said I must never forget it.

The second thing was that I must not let her down.

I won’t. I will get the gun soon. I make my promise to Mummy every night before I go to sleep.

I will be your knight.

I will pay them back.

I won’t let you down, Mummy. I won’t let you down.

If books were babies, then
Close My Eyes
would have had many midwives. I’m deeply grateful to early readers Dana Bate – a wonderful author in her own right
– Roger Bate, Philippa Makepeace, Eoin McCarthy and Jodie Marsh, who all helped when the book was at an embryonic stage.

My thanks to Sarah Ballard at United, who kept faith with the story as it developed and to the team at Simon and Schuster UK for their fantastic support all the way.

Thank you also to Zoe Pagnamenta and to everyone at St Martin’s Press in the US for taking on my book with such enthusiasm. I’m especially grateful to Jennifer Weis, who brought a
fresh pair of eyes to the story, offering some excellent advice as it neared completion.

And, finally, a massive thank you to Maxine Hitchcock, for not only having the most brilliant insights but always communicating them in the most encouraging and helpful ways.

Close My Eyes

by Sophie McKenzie

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Close My Eyes
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