When She Was Bad (19 page)

‘How about Laurie? How did she react to him?’

‘She was only a baby herself. She just seemed to accept everything as it was. She didn’t know any different.’

‘You must have taken him for check-ups after you were discharged from hospital,’ I said.

‘Sure. One or two. But then Pete got offered another job. Out of state. With one of the client’s companies, here in La Luz City. I didn’t want to move. I had friends in Missouri – other moms, you know. But Pete, he didn’t listen. He still thought I’d slept with half the state. Wanted a new start, so we moved here, to the house on Franklin Street. Total clean break. I hoped at least the move might stop him acting so crazy, but it just made him worse.

‘He said the baby would have to sleep in the basement. Said it would be too shameful for new neighbours to see it. Insisted they’d know it was deformed.’

‘And you just let it happen, without raising any objections?’ I tried to keep my voice level, but it rose up at the end.

‘You’ve got to realize the kind of person Pete is. He’s real clever, real powerful. He gets into your head, you know. He takes over your thoughts. Right from the beginning he was telling me there was something wrong with the baby. Then he started saying we needed to keep it away from Laurie, you know, so she wouldn’t be affected by it. Polluted by it.’

‘Surely one of the neighbours must have noticed you moving in with the baby?’ Ed asked. ‘I mean, you must have had baby stuff. A stroller, for example.’

Noelle stared at him dully. ‘What did it need a stroller for? It never went out.’

‘Well, a crib then?’

‘We arrived in the evening, after dark. Pete made sure of that. So no one saw us going into the house. Like I said, Laurie was still pretty much a baby herself so if anyone saw us taking baby stuff into the house they’d assume it was for her. And if they heard it crying, they’d think that was her too. Anyway, Pete’s very good with his hands and it wasn’t long before he had that basement soundproofed, and he built that special room in there.’

‘Room? You mean the cage?’ I asked.

Noelle ignored me.

‘It was quite comfortable down there. Kind of cosy, you know?’

‘I still don’t get why you didn’t just leave it with the welfare services in Missouri?’ asked Ed, not even realizing he’d fallen into Noelle’s way of referring to her son. ‘You clearly hadn’t bonded with it. Why not get rid of the baby? Start again afresh.’

Noelle stared at him as if he’d said something outrageous.

‘It was my baby. There was no question that it – he – wouldn’t come with me. That’s what being a mother is. You don’t get to pick and choose. You deal with what you’re given.’

She was something all right.

‘And after you moved in, you never registered David with any health agency?’

‘No authorities. Pete said it was better for us and for Laurie that no one knew about it, on account of it being so deformed.’

‘Deformed?’ asked Ed, scribbling furiously in his notebook.

‘Deformed physically and mentally. It wasn’t normal at all.’

‘If a child doesn’t get any mental or emotional stimulation and is kept physically bound, it won’t develop normally. Surely you must see that?’

I’d spoken without thinking and Ed put his hand on my arm.

‘Let’s not forget, Anne, we’re here to find out information to help us help Laurie, not to make judgements.’

I felt my cheeks flame.

‘When did Peter start physically assaulting the boy?’ Ed asked.

‘Assault? That’s not what it was. You have to understand this wasn’t a normal child. You couldn’t deal with it like you would a normal child. It didn’t understand that sort of dialogue. It responded only to physical stimuli. Food . . . pain . . . it was that way from the time it first opened its eyes.’

‘So Laurie grew up knowing only that there was this sub-human
thing
in the basement?’

‘Pete thought it was important that she was exposed to it very early – so she wouldn’t be fazed by it. So as soon as she could walk, he’d take her down there to feed it. And he taught her how to discipline it if it got out of hand. It’s like those kids who grow up in houses where the parents speak different languages and turn out bilingual. If they’re exposed to something at an early enough age, they absorb it naturally and it becomes just something normal. No big deal.’

‘So he thought there was less chance of her talking to other people about it if it was just something run of the mill.’

Noelle nodded at Ed, as if she was pleased to be understood. Like we were agreeing with her or something.

‘So from early on, she was feeding and disciplining her brother. Did she enjoy that?’

Noelle frowned.

‘No. I wouldn’t say she enjoyed it. It’s like it was a household chore – you know, that she had to do, like scraping her plate into the trash or emptying out the kitty litter tray, if we had a cat. She put up with it.’

‘But she must have asked you why he was down there?’

‘Not really. She just accepted that it was bad. And that’s why it was down there and she wasn’t. She had a really good life, you know. We gave her everything, we took her everywhere. Pete doted on that girl. She knew we were good people, so she accepted what we told her without question, especially Pete. She’d have done anything he told her to.’

She paused. Then out of the blue: ‘How is she? How’s my baby?’

I started. It was the first time Noelle had shown any curiosity about her daughter. I stared at her, trying to work out if her concern was genuine or put on for our benefit, as if she had just remembered how a normal mother would act.

‘She needs me, you know.’ Noelle’s hitherto emotionless voice now rose to a high, almost squeaky pitch. ‘It’s wrong to separate young children from their parents. You will tell them that, won’t you? When you make your recommendations? You will explain that a child needs its mom?’

25
Paula

Sarah, pregnant
again
? Oh, she couldn’t be, she just couldn’t. Not when she’d only been back at work less than a year.

Paula vividly remembered what a nightmare it had been trying to cover for her while she’d been gone having Joe. The original replacement had left after only four months and then there’d been a succession of temporary placements each more useless than the last, meaning they’d all had to shoulder a lot more than their normal workload until finally Sarah returned, having taken her full year’s maternity entitlement. And two years before that, she’d had another year off to have Sam. Paula didn’t begrudge any woman having a family. But the thought of going through all that disruption again set her nerves crawling. And just when they were trying to prove that the department didn’t need shaking up. Paula had always liked Sarah, always considered them to be friends – so why hadn’t she come to her first instead of blurting it out so publicly?

‘Rachel, I take it you didn’t know about this?’ As they gathered around the base of the climbing tower on the first day of the team-bonding weekend, Mark Hamilton turned to face his most recent employee.

Rachel shook her head. Her face was flushed red, and Paula could tell from the twitching muscle at the side of her mouth that she must be biting down on her back teeth. This bombshell was not going to make her look good in front of her boss. In spite of Paula’s own frustration at the news, she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of satisfaction when she observed Rachel’s discomfort. It was the first time she’d seen her boss this nonplussed. It made her seem more human.

Sarah was still crying, slow tears that slid down her cheeks and left drip marks on her T-shirt. Charlie stiffly put his arm around her, but Paula could tell from his stunned expression that he too was learning this news for the first time, and that it wasn’t exactly a welcome surprise.

‘Well. Nothing like a bit of drama to blow off the cobwebs,’ said Will, grinning round at everyone as if the force of his niceness might be enough to get them all back on an even keel. ‘Sarah will just have to shout encouragement from ground level. Shall we start?’

But the atmosphere of that first race where they’d all been rooting for each other – well, until Sarah and Charlie had spoiled things – had completely evaporated. Paula felt its loss keenly. There had been a moment when she and Mark Hamilton had been the only ones left unpaired and he’d turned to her and given her a mock bow, and just for a minute the tension that was as much a part of her as the rheumatism in her left thumb, or the mole on her shoulder that she checked religiously in the mirror every night in case it had changed shape during the day, had lifted and she’d felt pounds – no, stones – lighter. Not that she thought Mark Hamilton fancied her or anything. The few times they’d met in the office, his eyes had slid right over the top of her, even while his smile was still aimed in her general direction. But still in that moment she’d felt acknowledged, and that was enough.

Now, though, the mood was sombre as they queued to be fitted into their harnesses. Paula, being the most reluctant, was at the back. She noticed that Rachel’s face was stretched tight as if she was clenching every single muscle simultaneously.

‘I’d love to take a year-long holiday every couple of years,’ muttered Ewan, out of earshot of his bosses.

Paula rolled her eyes. Ewan would find out soon enough that babies were about as far away from a holiday as it was possible to get. But for now she was too ruffled herself by Sarah’s news to set him straight.

‘Well, I think it’s really lovely,’ said Chloe, whose arrival in the office had coincided with the end of Sarah’s last maternity leave so she’d hardly been affected. ‘Honestly, I don’t think it’s very feminist of you all to be so mean about it. It’s a woman’s right to have children and just because it’s not very convenient for the rest of us doesn’t mean we can all act so snotty about it.’

‘You won’t be saying that when you have to do loads of extra work to make up for us being a person down,’ said Amira.

‘Bet Rachel’s gutted. Just let her try sacking Sarah now,’ said Charlie.

‘Do you think that’s why she did it?’ asked Ewan.

Charlie made a snorting noise. ‘Pregnancy on demand? It doesn’t quite work that way. Even Sarah isn’t that fecund.’

By this time Chloe, Mark and Rachel had started climbing the tower. The others, having been clipped into their harnesses by Will’s child-like assistant Katie, were lined up waiting for their turn.

‘It’s Paula, isn’t it?’ Will was standing so close she could virtually feel the warmth from his wide beam. ‘If you’re a bit nervous, it might be an idea to swap places with Ewan here so that he’s behind you. That way, you’ll feel a bit more supported.’

Ewan obligingly unclipped his safety harness and the belt tying him to the person in front and Will helped Paula to get her own harness on. Only now, standing at the foot of the tower that looked a lot taller from this angle than it had from afar, did she start thinking about what she was about to do. What was she thinking? She was far too old to be doing this. It was irresponsible. How would her family cope if anything happened to her? Ian wouldn’t be able to afford the mortgage. The kids would lose their home.

She tugged on the thick cord that attached her to Ewan, now bringing up the rear. Her palms were slick with sweat and she wished she wasn’t wearing Ian’s bulky sweatshirt but couldn’t take it off without having to undo the whole harness.

‘Gosh, it’s hot, isn’t it?’ she asked Charlie who was now in front of her.

He looked at her as if she’d just said something incomprehensible.

‘Not so much,’ he replied eventually.

‘Just me then,’ she said. And tried to smile.

Now she noticed that Charlie was also looking pale and apprehensive. Poor thing. He was also way out of his comfort zone. It must be hard being a non-alpha man in this sort of environment. At least everyone
expected
her to be rubbish at it.

As if on cue, Will shouted over: ‘Right, next one up. Come on, you guys are doing seriously awesome. Give yourself a cheer.’

There was a resounding silence followed by a thin ‘yay’ from Sarah, standing next to Will, looking cold and miserable in her T-shirt. So it was just Paula then, feeling as if there was a microwave heating her up from the inside out.

Ahead of her, Charlie had started climbing. He took delicate but deliberate steps, setting his dinky feet on the rungs in a rhythm. Paula’s heart pounded as she watched him, knowing she was next. Was it too late to pull out? She pictured herself unclipping the rope that connected her to the others and stepping out of the line. ‘Sorry,’ she’d joke. ‘I wouldn’t make it far on
I’m a Celebrity
, would I?’ She looked across at Sarah who was going to be staying safely on the ground and felt a whoosh of envy.

‘Right, Paula. Let’s see what you’re made of,’ shouted Will. ‘Let’s see you shimmying up that tower.’

Paula put one foot on the first rung of the tower, cursing her imitation Converse shoes that her daughter Amy had giggled about for a good ten minutes when she’d spotted them that morning. Amy had even taken a selfie of herself wearing them to send around her friends, using that application that erased photos almostly instantly so that no one could pass it on. Thinking about Amy and Cam and how they’d kill themselves laughing if they could see her now spurred Paula on to go up another two rungs. It wasn’t so bad as long as you didn’t look up or down.

Below, she heard Sarah shout: ‘Brilliant, Paula. You’re doing really well!’

As she neared the top, she could feel her legs starting to wobble. The rungs were slippery under her hands and she paused and hooked an elbow through so she could hug the ladder with one hand and wipe the palm of the other on her trousers.

Charlie’s face appeared over the top looking slack with relief.

‘Come on, Paula. If I can do it, anyone can. Just one little vault and you’ll be here.’

By now everything was wobbling – arms, legs, even the soles of her feet as they balanced on the metal rungs – and the sweat was pouring down her back inside her sweatshirt. She was conscious of Ewan standing just beneath her. His fingers tapped impatiently on the metal of the rung just below her feet. Paula took a deep breath in, trying to still her rising panic. Just one more rung. She reached up with her right arm, then her right leg and then felt hands reaching out to clasp hers and . . . she was up.