Gilly MacMillan - What She Knew

FM: You’re not responsible.

JC: But I’m responsible for making the wrong decision, for going after Nicky Forbes. That was my call.

FM: As I understand it that was a joint decision with DCI Fraser.

JC: It was me who had the hunger for it. I thought it was her, so I went after her. It was the wrong call. I humiliated myself.

FM: I’m going to give you one more name. You’re doing well.

He flinches as if he knows what I’m going to say.

FM: Benedict Finch.

JC: I should have been there for him. In the woods. At the end. It should have been me.

FM: Why does that matter so much to you?

JC: Because all along it was all about him. It was about his suffering, because we all knew he was. And I missed my chance to prevent that and I missed my chance to be there for him at the end.

FM: Do you think it might have helped, if you were there?

JC: I wanted to be with him, to comfort him.

I am very touched by his words. They are humble, and moving. I have to make an effort not to let this show.

FM: Is that what most keeps you awake at night, DI Clemo?

JC: All of it keeps me awake at night. It obsesses me. It replays over and over again. It won’t let me rest. I made mistakes. I broke that family apart and I let the light go out in that boy’s eyes.

FM: Are you in contact with the family?

JC: I saw them once.

FM: What happened?

He cries again now, but this time it’s just a few tears that slip down his cheeks and dampen the fabric of his shirt when they fall. He doesn’t speak.

FM: Will you believe me if I tell you it is possible to move forward from this? Not to forget, but to move onwards, and make it a manageable part of your life.

JC: I don’t deserve it.

FM: You do deserve it. This doesn’t have to be the end of your career, DI Clemo. This case, and everything that happened around it, represents a very significant time in your life, of course it does, but it doesn’t have to define you, or break you. Don’t do that to yourself. Instead, you can think of it as something you can learn to live with, to get past and even to build on. Benedict and his family will be doing that too. Think for a moment of your life as a path that you’re moving forward on, not a place you’re stuck in. You can deal with this appropriately, and respectfully, and if you do that it will be possible to put it behind you. If you’ll trust me, I can guide you through that process.

Quite honestly, at that moment, I’m not sure if DI Jim Clemo wants to be fixed at all.

FM: Will you, Jim? Trust me?

Time hovers then, waiting, with me, for his response. This is a good man. I want him to heal. Eventually, he exhales slowly and deliberately, but even when he opens his mouth to speak I’m still not sure if this is going to be the beginning or the end of his attempt at recovery.

JC: I’ll try.

We might never have closure, but we do have a future to consider. We must consider it.

As a family, we now spend a lot of time together, trying to provide a network of security around Ben. We want to comfort him, to sustain him. Katrina is a rock, and so is Nicola. She went back to her family after Ben was found and they welcomed her with open arms, as do I. We have slowly begun to relearn each other, to reconfigure our relationship now that there are no lies, now that we both know who we are. It’s made us more forgiving of each other, and that’s a relief.

John is not doing so well. His shock and sadness at what happened live on in his haggard features, and a listlessness that’s characterised him since he recovered from his head injury. They never caught the person who attacked him. John feels guilt, because he still thinks that if he hadn’t left us, none of this would have happened. He’s probably right, but he’s not to blame.

He’s a father again now, and this does make him smile. Katrina had a baby girl, who they named Chloe, a glorious chubby baby, who at six months old showers smiles on everyone, and pumps the air with playful fists and feet.

Chloe is a delight for us all, and especially Ben. When he’s with her he’ll stretch out a hand and let her clutch his finger in her fist. He’ll bring her toys and fool around to make her smile, he’ll plant kisses on her chubby tummy, which makes her shriek with abandoned laughter. It brings us all joy.

Laura, I don’t see. Our friendship didn’t survive. Some things are too big for other people to bear. I mourn the loss of her, but not much, because I give my time to Ben, and to my family.

Ruth and Ben have resumed their closeness. She learned of what happened to him after he was back. We couldn’t avoid telling her and she was mostly lucid enough that we felt she deserved to know. And if when we visit her Ben snuggles closer to her than he used to, then she either doesn’t notice or simply knows better than to comment on it. Her family’s history has been suffused with the necessity to bear sadness.

We brought her out of the home recently, to watch Ben play his violin in a concert, a little school recital.

Alone at the front of the room, facing the audience, Ben straightened his back, and put his violin to his shoulder. He looked remarkably free of nerves, but I was so petrified on his behalf I felt as though I could hardly breathe. Ruth pulled her head up straight – so often it sags down nowadays – and she looked at Ben attentively, as if she was adjudicating his playing at a high-level competition.

He played a little patchily at first, rushed the piece here and there, and I panicked, because it wasn’t very long and I knew he could do it better, but somewhere in the middle of it he hit his stride, and, by the time he reached the complicated final passage, the playing was exceptional and he achieved a tone that was just simply lovely.

The small audience was silent while he played, completely so, because there was an honesty about his performance that captivated. The round of applause he got at the end was more than warm.

But what meant the most to me was Ruth’s reaction. Her cloudy eyes brimmed and her stiff hands wrapped around my own as best she was able and she said, ‘He has such musicality, darling. There were mistakes, he must find discipline, but the musicality, this is a gift.’

And my heart lurched because when I’m able to see through the blackness this is what I hope for. It’s that in spite of his problems, Ben might be learning to live again, and that he might still have that capacity to find things that can drive him onwards: that the beauty of music, or of a painting in Bristol Museum, or of his connection with his baby sister, or of any damn thing he likes, can occasionally eradicate the blackness, and make it a life worth living.

So what is our plan for the future?

We want to eradicate Joanna May from our lives, to eradicate the legacy she tried to leave us when she put Ben through such a terrible ordeal and ripped our family apart.

We have a plan to tackle this.

The plan is that we wait.

We wait to show Ben that we’re there for him, to prove to him that he’s worth it, no matter what’s happened to him, no matter what she’s told him. We wait for him to understand that we love him, all of us, and that he can trust us, each one of us. We wait for him to understand that we did everything we could to find him.

We hope that time will heal him. Time has become a very precious commodity for us.

We’ve waited a year, and in that time I’ve come to think a lot about what happened before Ben was abducted, and I’ve observed the way our family has closed in around him since he’s been back, with vibrant butterfly wings that fold softly over him, while he heals.