Guilty (5 page)

Caroline found a Bible verse: “Children are a gift from the Lord”. She had it printed on a poster, framed in the hallway with a picture of Sadie beaming from it.

“We’ll have to have her christened,” she exclaimed one night to Simon.

Caroline found the energy to play non-stop with her baby – dressing her in all the little designer outfits she had money to buy. She’d never been the best dressmaker but she personalised the outfits she bought by sewing on appliquéd motifs; a lovely white silk embossed fairy onto her pink cord dress, big pink bows on the matching pram shoes.

They decided to go to church to thank God for their precious gift, to score some brownie points as they wanted the christening there. Caroline insisted that Sadie should be wheeled there in her buggy with the accompanying sun canopy, it looked such a treat. Simon tried to get her to take it off in the church itself but Caroline wanted to keep it on as it looked so smart. Sadie’s outfit was toned to match the buggy and canopy.

She indulged in coffee morning after coffee morning as friends and acquaintances called round with their tiny offspring.

On the advice of her health worker she joined the village baby and toddler group. She was the happiest she had ever been, the most fulfilled, as she slipped into mummy mode. Conversations about nappies, tantrums, the best foods for a toddler, news of the latest soft play area to open or children’s farm to be developed, enthralled her.

She wanted to shout her happiness and contentment from the rooftops and she had the best relationship ever with Simon, who had taken to parenting like a duck to water. Sadie was such a happy baby, always smiling.

Nirvana, paradise, heaven, whatever, Simon and Caroline had found it. Sadie was the gift beyond imagination. Everybody loved darling Sadie with her brown curls, little snub nose, rosebud mouth and chubby cheeks.

If only life could have been frozen in a time warp then, been immortalised for ever more. Perfection had been achieved. Nobody had happier family times, captured for all eternity on snapshot after snapshot. Caroline’s bookcase was already overflowing with all the photo albums.

*

Caroline stirred in her bracken bed. The feelings of euphoria had resurrected in her brain and she was back in fantasy land. Everything was perfect and happy. She tried to get up, to walk through to Sadie’s nursery, to pick up the snug bundle, to sniff the glorious warm smell of baby talc but something was stopping her. She felt anxious. She needed to get to Sadie before she began to cry for her. Why couldn’t she get up and go to her sweet baby?

She heard Simon calling her name. It confused her terribly. Why wasn’t he lying next to her? His voice had a note of concern. Was Sadie ill? Had he been through to the nursery to check on her?

Caroline nodded off again.

*

It was morning. Sadie was clearly awake in her cot. “Mamma, Mamma!” Caroline was through to the nursery in a shot. “Darling, did you call me?” Caroline thought she would burst with happiness: Sadie’s first words, and they were her name. She scooped her little cherub up, nuzzling the silky down on her crown with her nose, drinking in the delectable smell of baby shampoo, loved by mothers the world over.

“Mummy’s going to tidy up so Sadie can look at her farmyard book,” Caroline gently popped the precious baby back in her cot and put the opened book next to her. She left the door wide open so they could hear each other as she pottered about. On top of the world, Caroline sang “Wheels on the bus” and “There’s a worm at the bottom of the garden” at full volume. She emptied the bedroom and bathroom bins, made their bed, sorted the washing into relevant piles, wiped over the bathroom. She could hear Sadie gurgling contentedly to herself. She felt proud that her little one could entertain herself so well, looking at a picture book. After about half an hour she decided to take her down for breakfast.

“Come on, treasure,” she chirped, as she popped back into the nursery but then she stopped in her tracks. A surge of disappointment oozed through her veins. The red, material spine of the cardboard book lay strewn over the light carpet. The corners of the book, half chewed, were spat out in little piles on the top of the duvet. What Caroline didn’t realise was that most mothers would have expected this from such a young child left alone with a book but Caroline in her earnestness to raise the perfect child interpreted it as the cites of a thug. She did not recognise her own prejudices against these unknown genes.

“You naughty, naughty girl,” she scolded.

Sadie was shocked to silence for a couple of seconds by the outraged tones she had never heard before from Mummy. Then she howled and howled.

Caroline thought she must discipline the child in some way or else she would learn to walk all over her, metaphorically of course, at this stage! She slammed the door shut after removing all the incriminating evidence so there was nothing for the baby to choke on. She went downstairs to make her point. The screams died down after about ten minutes. When Caroline believed a lesson would have been learnt she went back up. She was beginning to panic due to the absolute silence and opened the door to find the tiny Sadie hunched on all fours in her cot, bottom in the air, cheek in a puddle of tears, fast asleep. Her heart melted. She hugged the babe as if there were no tomorrow. How could anybody remain cross with such an angel? This was to be the first of many, many moments when Sadie was able to wrap her mother around her little finger. Caroline loved this bairn so much that she could never really be truly angry with her, whatever she did. These hug-betters always came flooding from Caroline, even if there was not a spot of remorse from Sadie.

Soon it was Sadie’s first birthday. They decided to throw a party for her.

Caroline adored making the teddy bear birthday cake, the jellies, the minute triangular sandwiches with the crusts all cut off. She felt a buffet would be best, her novice mother status shining through again when, in hindsight, it became obvious that buffets and baby toddlers don’t mix. Red jelly was trampled into the pale cream carpet which had seemed such a good idea throughout a childfree house.

As soon as they had all left, Caroline cleared the presents up. There must have been an offer on at one of the local hypermarkets on dolls’ buggies – there were five of the things! She got the hoover out and soon discovered it was an impossible task with a toddler, clearly petrified by this monster machine.

*

“She’s here.”

Somebody was poking her with a stick or something. Footsteps came running, crunching dry leaves and twigs. Breathless, Simon joined Steve and they both took an arm to try to raise her. Caroline didn’t want to get out of bed. How dare they? In her confusion she struck out. They had not expected strength but it was a good sign – she was obviously quite alive.

The two men were trying to assess if they needed to call for an ambulance. Simon noticed the way Steve tenderly wiped the mud from her face with the sleeve of his corduroy jacket.

By the torchlight she recognised Simon. She rapidly tumbled back through the years to the present time. It was so sad to let her baby slip away with this rude awakening. She felt bereft but then there was something about the smell of Steve’s aftershave that wafted over her. A glimmer of hope twinkled at her for a long enough moment to steer her back to the path of survival.

4.

Sadie felt like somebody who was dying. Her life flashed in front of her.

She thought of her cousin, Josh, and all the problems he had coped with, always in the shadow of her dramas. She knew they thought she didn’t care two hoots about him and her behaviour towards him had probably confirmed that, but he was a good lad.

She lay there when rationality returned periodically to her and tried to imagine life through his eyes. She took a deep breath and willed his voice into existence; for the first time ever she considered what hell Josh had been faced with. The pictures began to come to her and Josh’s voice began its story on her command.

*

“It began without me really noticing it. Anxious feelings that something awful would happen to my mum. I found tapping five times when I was fearful took the tightening in my chest away. Trouble is, I then had to do it more, especially when I was about to go to bed. Not once but fifteen times and then the next night, just to be sure, just a little bit more. How could I tell anybody? But then she somehow sussed me out.

Humming as she dashed, she just couldn’t get the latest Leona Lewis track out of her mind. She scurried around the Vanilla White bathroom, giving everything a quick wipe over. Thankfully Mum’s sister-in-law, Auntie Caroline, wasn’t the most house-proud person herself so Mum didn’t feel too frantic in the last-minute tidy up before the remaining family of four descended for their annual, two-night New Year sojourn. I wished my fourteen-year-old cousin, Sadie, was here for two nights only! It was still a lot of work, making all the beds, buying in all the food, preparing all the meals and Mum still never fully understood why it was always us who were the hosts.

Auntie Caroline, her husband Uncle Simon, and my three cousins lived in a lovely house themselves but Auntie Caroline always pleaded they were too exhausted by the Sadie situation, so they didn’t have to reciprocate! Still, the rest of them were easy guests on the whole and my two young cousins, Bri and Oliver, would be quite easily entertained with a late Christmas gift of a couple of annuals each.

Mum’s eye was caught by the three-quarters empty hand wash, standing on the Sorrento washbasin. Her mouth literally fell open, her humming immediately ceasing as she did a double take! She had just opened it new that morning, about an hour ago to be precise.

‘Josh,’ she angrily screeched, her brown curls tossing as she turned on her heels. The disinfectant spray from one hand, the jiff cloth from the other, were both hurled down on the grey stone floor as she grabbed the brass handle and marched to my bedroom.

She offered me no dignity but insolently barged into my room.

‘Josh!’ her tone still high pitched, wrathful. Ready to grab me, more than likely shake me, the wind was somehow taken out of her sails as she was met by the pristine made bed, not a crease in sight. The Austrian blind was pulled up exactly straight – she needed no spirit level to tell her just how straight – it had clearly been positioned with intense care.

‘Josh,’ her volume was decreasing as she noted the scene. What had she expected? Exactly this. My fossil collection was lined up in size order on the window sill. Three empty disinfectant sprays had been lined up in the bin. Four boxes of unopened tissues were piled up – one tissue each time I picked something up, and then it would be carefully discarded in the meticulously placed white bin liner hanging from the door handle.

‘Josh,’ much calmer now, more a call of despair than anger. She passed Sadie’s room. Mum and Aunt Caroline had hit upon the idea that Sadie should move in with us for a bit to try and ‘help’ them all. She even attended my school for a few months now. ‘Where’s Josh?’ anxiety now rising in her voice.

Smirking at the thought of me, her freak of a cousin, Sadie mocked, ‘Probably off with his mates!’

Mum stopped in her tracks and her anger took fresh breath, this time directed at her niece. ‘Why do you always have to be so mean?’

In mock astonishment, Sadie raised both hands in the air. ‘What are you on about, Auntie? What did I say wrong this time?’

Mum couldn’t even be bothered to reply because it was an argument she would lose. In an ordinary world, Sadie was right – her comment would be completely acceptable, but in this deluded world I did not do friends or socialising, I did ‘I’m a hermit’.

Sadie smiled to herself as Mum retreated. She was so relieved to be spared yet another Josh debate. ‘Why’s he like this?’ Mum would ask, time and time again.

Sadie liked to claim normality. She liked to portray to others that her world was normal; her few friends were normal and so far she had done a jolly good job in disguising me, her abnormal cousin, from them. She’d managed to control their visits to our home when she knew I would be out with Mum at one of my many medical appointments. She avoided me like the plague at school and in fact most of her so-called friends didn’t really know who I was. Sadie ignored me all around the house. She never interacted with the weirdo. The second I entered the room, Sadie left, and during the meals when Mum insisted we ate together as a family, Sadie lowered her eyes and never looked at me. Whenever she could get away with it she wore her earphones. Mum had only just begun to notice Sadie’s total rejection of me and it was on her agenda to right things.

‘We’ll have to plan some family days out,’ she nagged Dad. ‘Can’t you take them both to a football match soon?’

‘Sadie acts too old for her age. She likes to think she’s older than Josh,’ Dad moaned back. ‘She’s not into family days out any more. Anyway she’s into rugby and Josh doesn’t give a damn about sport.’

Mum felt the anxiety rising in her chest as she continued her search for me. The hand wash wasn’t top of her agenda any more; the anger had subsided, replaced by worry. I had been quite depressed recently. I’d been prescribed Prozac to subdue my nervous system. I’d only been eating biscuits and nothing else. My therapist had managed to get me to confide that eating anything else would mean a member of my family would die. How could an intelligent young man not see these were irrational thoughts?

‘Josh,’ she upped her pace as she pushed open doors, quickly glancing into each room. Dad’s bulk was hunched over his computer. His bald crown didn’t rise as she demanded if he’d seen me. He was much more dismissive of my peculiarities.

‘He’ll grow out of them,’ he’d insist. ‘It’s you, you fuss over Josh much too much.’ That was the answer to every problem in Dad’s life – Mum was always to blame.

‘Josh is missing,’ she insisted. ‘Mark, are you listening to me? He’s gone. His room is empty.’

Slowly he swivelled round. He glared at her, his ruddy complexion exaggerating the cross expression revealed in his green eyes.

‘You always overdramatize, Della. He’s probably popped out to the newsagent or something. He’s sixteen, that’s what sixteen-year-olds do – they pop out without checking with Mummy all the time.’

Sensing her chance to gang upon her aunt, yet again, Sadie sidled out of his room.

‘Yeah, Uncle Mark’s right. Like I said, probably round at a mate’s!’ Sniggering into her hand she kicked the steel paper bin over.

‘Sadie,’ Mum chided.

‘Leave the girl alone, Della. It was an accident,’ Dad commanded.

Mum sighed and turned to leave. Sadie and Dad did this constantly – belittled her – made her feel like a neurotic hen-pecking woman. It was their way of denying the true problem of my OCD. Dad was convinced it was all caused by Mum’s constant stresses in life. She fussed over everything, in his opinion. She was always so neat and tidy, always cleaning. She was a perfectionist and put such pressure on the academic side of our schooling. Sadie was clearly rebelling against her strict regimes, Dad believed. That’s why he never chastised Sadie for the way she spoke to her auntie. She gave us children no breathing space, he convinced himself.

Saddened or maddened that neither of them would take the missing me seriously, she wasn’t sure which, their indifference had calmed her a little, however, and her fears that I might have attempted suicide yet again were slightly allayed.

Down to the lounge, followed by the conservatory but still no me. Into the snug where my Xbox lay, abandoned. Wrong choice of words! Where my Xbox lay carefully positioned, completely in line with the control. All plug sockets switched off!

Not in the house, then. She glanced at the kitchen clock, a stainless-steel face with cutlery branching off for each number. Ten past twelve already. The guests would be arriving anytime now but she was intent on finding me, even if it meant the loss of her perfect hostess reputation.

A quick dash into the adjoining garage, her tormented mind suggesting she might find me hanging from a beam. Sadie and Dad would moan at her if they could read her thoughts. Her heart was beating fast as she was running out of realistic places to find me. Despite Sadie and Dad’s protests, she knew for certain that I wouldn’t have ‘popped out’. The shed offered a last hope, but what on earth would I go in there for? All the family acknowledged the shed was Dad’s territory. Again the evil voice in her head suggested she was about to find a body.

A clue – the shed was unbolted. Bravely, she pushed the door ajar. Cobwebs tickled her face as she stepped inside. Paint, mustiness, rotten grass cuttings left clinging to the rollers of the lawnmower, forged a formidable stench. I clearly wasn’t here either but then she saw the tiny light in the corner of the shed. Pushing the door wider to allow more daylight in she saw it was my mobile. I squatted on the floor, my back to her. Headphones prevented me from hearing her. I was chanting. Feeling she was invading something very personal she crept closer. It was essential to her that she should hear what I was saying. I was chanting the Lord’s Prayer over and over. My mobile in one hand, a string of what looked like rosary beads in the other. I jumped as she placed her hand on my shoulder. Relief swept over her at finding me alive and safe. I turned and looked up at her. The eyes of an old man haunted my boyish features. My cheeks were tear-stained, tension controlled my jaw.

‘Why?’ she whispered.

‘It just helps,’ came my pathetic response.

‘How? What will happen if you don’t?’

‘Bad, bad thoughts will come. This stops them.’

Sadie’s mocking face floated before her. What other sixteen-year-old boy would do this when they could be out with their mates? Sadie was right. I was a weirdo but what could any of them do about it?

‘Your other cousins will be arriving any second now, Josh.’ She would try the angry approach.

‘Get yourself back inside this minute. Put something decent on and then come down and help me set the table.’

My emotions were injured by this abrupt reaction. I just gawped at her. Mum grabbed my hand. ‘Get the hell out of here, you freak, before I call your dad.’

Astonished, I staggered out, blinking madly with the bright sunlight. She shoved me hard between the shoulder blades: ‘Go!’

It broke her heart as she saw my skeletal body limping towards the house, head down, and shoulders drooping. What further mental damage, what backward steps in my treatment had she just instigated? What on earth would Dr Davies, my cognitive behavioural therapist say when she confessed to him how she had reacted?

She had no time to reflect further because a horn sounded from her driveway and the excited squeals of Oliver and Bri fell out of the car doors as they raced to ring the bell.