Little Face (43 page)

He isn't ready to talk about Little Face. I'm not sure I am either.

`The business with the school: when did you think of that?'

`When I was pregnant. I didn't exactly know, not at first. I had a
sense of it. I felt it. Haven't you ever felt the presence of danger?'

But Simon is determined to tell the story his way. `You were happy
to be under Vivienne's wing until you got pregnant. Then her attitude
to you changed.' He looks up, acknowledging for the first time that we
are partners in this dialogue. `Didn't it?' he says.

Something inside me wilts. His manner is so matter-of-fact. It suggests that whatever I might have suffered is pretty much irrelevant. Yes,
Vivienne's behaviour towards me changed. Suddenly she was no longer
my fierce, benevolent protector. I had something she wanted more, far
more, than she had ever wanted me. I was just the carrier. She started
to monitor what I ate. She stopped me going out. I wasn't allowed in
pubs, or to drink a glass of wine with a meal.

`I saw that she was determined to control every aspect of Florence's
life. I guessed that it must have been the same for Laura. Until then, I'd
always believed David, that Laura was an unreasonable dictator who
wouldn't let anyone near Felix.' I shake my head. `I was stupid and
naive. Vivienne wanted to own Felix, and Laura wouldn't stand for it.
Once I'd worked that out, I couldn't believe that Laura dying had nothing to do with it. And my pregnancy ... When you're pregnant, all your perceptions are sharper, more extreme. Sometimes irrational. At
first I wondered if perhaps I was magnifying the feeling I had that Florence and I were in danger, but ... my instinct, it was so strong. It
wouldn't go away.'

Simon frowns. I get the impression that subtleties make him impatient, unless they are his own.

`Vivienne made a mistake,' I tell him. `When she put Florence's name
down for Stanley Sidgwick, when I was five months pregnant. She
never should have told me about the long waiting list. She must have
thought I was too stupid to wonder about Felix. Not that she'd ever
have imagined I'd have turned against her. I was her devoted disciple.'

'Vivienne's proud of what she did,' says Simon. `She's trying to turn
her guilt to her advantage. She seems determined to use her situation
as some sort of platform, championing grandparents' rights.'

`She's not sane. Isn't she, technically, a psychopath?' A woman like
Vivienne Fancourt is beyond my psychological training and experience.
That Florence and I inhabit the world alongside her is a truth I find difficult to absorb.

`She'll probably get lots of media attention.'

He is trying to get at me. When he talks about Vivienne's hypothetical future publicity, he sounds almost boastful. I want to ask him
if he is certain that Vivienne will stay in prison until she dies, but I am
afraid he would use such an enquiry as another opportunity to hurt
me. `You're annoyed with me. For wasting police time.'

`Annoyed?' He laughs without a trace of warmth. `No. I'm annoyed
when I get stuck in a traffic jam. I'm annoyed when I spill coffee on a
clean shirt.'

`How could I have told you, Simon? I couldn't risk it. What if
you'd alerted her to the fact that I was suspicious? I'd have ended up
like Laura.' I shiver, remembering Waterfront, the water sealing shut
above my head, pressing down on me.

I was desperate to tell Simon, from the second I met him. By then I'd
given up on the idea that I would ever be able to tell my own husband. How I wished I could talk honestly to David, after Briony had phoned
the school. But he would never have listened. In his eyes, Vivienne
could do no wrong. He thought she was supportive while I was pregnant. He kept saying how grateful we both should be, and all the time
I was feeling more and more used, more and more incarcerated.

Poor David. I know how shattered he must be. I feel sorry for the
person he might have been, had things turned out differently, for the
potential he once had, the six-year-old boy abandoned by his father,
who had to love his mother, whoever she was, because she was the only
parent he had. David needed to believe in his version of Vivienne, and
I can't really blame him for that.

I must try not to think about him. I want to have a boiling hot bath,
to wash his taint off me, but I know that the damage he has done cannot be so easily erased. I don't even care that he's ruined any faith I had
in the idea of permanent love between a husband and a wife. I have no
desire to marry again. The tragedy is that David has destroyed my faith
in myself. It turns out that I was stupid to love him, stupid to marry
him. In the past week, I have had my nose rubbed in that stupidity so
often that part of me believes I deserved what I got.

My patients do this all the time, blame themselves for the suffering
inflicted upon them by others. I tell them it isn't their fault, that no-one
asks or deserves to be a victim. Sometimes I am irked when I see no sign
of their self-confidence springing back to life as a result of my wise,
encouraging words. Now I know that wisdom and insight only go so far.
They can help you to understand why you have contempt for yourself,
but they cannot take that contempt away. I don't know if anything can.

`So. Because you were scared of coming to us, you abducted your
own daughter,' says Simon woodenly. `You knew that if you and Florence went missing, the police would look carefully at your close
family, discover that there was already a connection to a serious crime
and investigate further. Which we did.'

`I took Little Face and ran away,' I say carefully. `Someone else
abducted my daughter.'

He ignores me. I don't know why I am still bothering, at this stage.
Is it habit? Fear of his ridicule?

`You took Florence and ran away, knowing we'd look into Laura's
murder again. Correct?'

`No! I took Little Face and ran away, so that then, by anybody's definition, even your sergeant's, Florence would be recognised as missing.
I wanted you to look for Florence.'

`That's shit and you know it. You probably heard me saying that to
Briony, when you were hiding in the kitchen. Now you're rehashing it,
thinking I'll be stupid enough to believe it because it was my theory.'

He is far from stupid. He's cleverer than I realised.

`Trouble is, it never was my theory. I'd worked out the truth by then,
all of it. I just wanted to make Briony think, about why you might have
run off with a baby who supposedly wasn't yours. Don't you feel guilty for
lying to her, treating her like an idiot? After everything she's done for you?'

Tears well in my eyes. Briony, unlike Simon, understands that I have
to do whatever I feel it takes to protect my daughter.

`You wanted us to know Vivienne had killed Laura,' he continues
compassionlessly. `You left that brochure, with the Post-it note, hoping we'd pick up on it. What was the original plan? You and Florence
run away to Briony's and we look into your disappearance, get suspicious about Laura's death, start to suspect Vivienne? Then we find the
brochure ... If we put Vivienne away for Laura's murder, you and Florence would be safe, wouldn't you? How were we supposed to prove
it, though? Did you think about that?'

I shrug helplessly. `You're the police. You were more likely to find
a way of proving it than I was.'

`Smart move, leaving that note on the school brochure. You're
pretty good at indirect communication, aren't you? At manipulating
people. You worked out that we'd only get the message we were supposed to get from that Post-it note if we already suspected Vivienne.
Otherwise we'd have assumed F stood for Florence and seen it as
irrelevant-just a harmless note to yourself, about the practicalities of getting your daughter into the school. We'd never have known you suspected Vivienne unless we suspected her, unless we were beginning to
realise how dangerous she was-and if we realised that, we'd know not
to let her get a whiff of your suspicions and make you her next target.'

I am thrown by his accuracy. It is as if he has been living inside my
head. And yet he still resents me. `I had to be so careful,' I say. `I hoped
that you'd speak to Darryl Beer again and he'd tell you he didn't do it.
Then, since David and I were in London on the night Laura died, you'd
have to think of Vivienne. So I made sure to be disparaging about Stanley Sidgwick in front of you whenever I could. I hoped that, once I'd
disappeared and you'd found the brochure, you'd wonder why I was
so keen to put Florence's name down for a school I hated.'

`Well, I did think that. Like a trained fucking seal, I thought everything you wanted me to think. . . '

`Simon, don't.. - '

` ... until now.'

My heart stops. `What do you mean?'

`I'm intrigued. Why the change of plan? You and Florence were
going to run away to Briony's, then on from Briony's to somewhere
more secure-it was all arranged, it's all in Briony's statement. So what
changed?'

`Someone took Florence. . . 'I begin.

`Lie, tell the truth, it doesn't matter any more. I know what happened. Florence happened, didn't she? Florence was born, and suddenly, unexpectedly, the plan wasn't enough, was it? You needed a
deeper cover. You didn't feel protected any more by the idea that in due
course you and Florence would run away. What you felt was sheer terror. Vivienne was on her way to the hospital, she was about to meet her
granddaughter for the first time. You couldn't stand the thought of it,
could you? A murderer, touching your daughter, bonding with her.'

`What are you saying?' I feel raw and exposed, as if my brain and
heart have been cut open.

`Vivienne-the killer in your family-was on her way to meet your baby. You wanted to run away then, to hide then, prevent that meeting
from ever taking place, that contamination of your child-the loving
attention of a monstrously evil woman.' I begin to cry as he describes
my feelings to me. I wish he were less articulate, less precise. `But you
couldn't hide, could you? You couldn't hide Florence. David was there,
looking forward to showing her off to his mother. You had to stay put,
endure it. So you started to think about other ways to hide. About how
to hide from somebody even when you're right in front of them.'
Simon looks up. `Feel free to take over the story at any point,' he says.

`I don't know what you're talking about.'

`Yes, you do,' he says quietly. `You know, I haven't told Charlie ...
Sergeant Zailer that you and Briony knew about Vivienne. I've said
nothing about your call to Stanley Sidgwick. I've protected you both
from a variety of possible charges. I could lose my job, if anyone ever
finds out.'

`Thank you.' I wipe my eyes. I still cannot work out what Simon
feels about me. A lot of things, probably, but I would feel more comfortable if I could identify a dominant emotion.

`If you want to pretend you've been suffering from post-natal
depression and that's why you went temporarily mad, that's why you
failed to recognise your own daughter and wasted a load of police time
... well, I might even let that pass. I might not tell Sergeant Zaileror even Briony-the truth. I'll carry on protecting you, if you ask me
to.' He sighs heavily. `But in return, I want the truth. I need to hear you
say it. And if that's too much to ask, you can go fuck yourself.'

The walls of Briony's lounge close in on us. Something, right from
the start, has been pushing us together, towards this moment. `What
do you want me to say?'

`I want the full story, the truth. Am I right?'

Towards this moment.

`Yes,' I say. `Everything you've said is true.'

Simon closes his eyes, leans his head back against the chair. `Tell me,'
he says.

`I was scared.' In many ways, this is the only thing that needs to be
said. It's certainly the main thing, the factor that dominated all other
considerations. `I realised, once Florence was born, that if Vivienne
knew I'd taken her and run away, she'd have looked for us. Even if
she'd never found us, I'd have been nervous, always looking over my
shoulder. I suppose I sort of knew all this before Florence was born, but
at that point it didn't occur to me that there might be anything more
I could do to protect us.'

`And then?' Simon prompts. His voice sounds faint, as if he's lost all
energy.

`You put it better than I could have. I needed a deeper cover, and I
had this ... this thought. It seemed so crazy, but . . . ' I shrug. `I hoped
it might be crazy enough to work. If I could make Vivienne believe that
the baby in her house was not her granddaughter, even before she disappeared . . . ' I falter. I've never put any of this into words before. I
feel as if I'm learning a new language, one that can only just describe
the primal, instinctive thoughts and feelings I had after Florence was
born.

`Vivienne trusted me. I was counting on her believing me. Not only
to make things easier.' How can I explain to Simon that, even knowing Vivienne was a murderer, I still needed her support? I was not free
of her, emotionally. I don't even know if I am now. `I hoped she
wouldn't just assume I was mad. She's too scared of losing her grandchildren, after the battle over Felix. However impartial she pretended
to be while she waited for the DNA test, I knew that part of her
believed me. What I was saying had the horrible ring of truth, because
it chimed in with all her worst fears. It's human nature. We find it all
too easy to believe in our most dreaded nightmares come to life. What
I was saying about Florence struck a chord with Vivienne because it
mirrored her own anxieties.'

`If Sergeant Zailer had believed you, there would have been a DNA
test straight away,' says Simon. `What would you have done then?'

`I'd have had to move quicker, stall for as long as I could to give myself a chance to escape. I knew Vivienne'd arrange a DNA test, if the
police didn't. I knew I'd have to take Florence and go to Briony's before
the test. As it turned out, I had nearly a week to prepare. Do you
remember our second meeting at Chompers?'