Simon Lelic - The Child Who

It was Stephanie who broke the silence. ‘How can we help? What is it that you want to know?’

Karen regarded each of them in turn. She spoke to Blake. ‘What you said before, about Daniel blaming your wife. What did you mean by that?’

‘What? Nothing. It’s what kids do, isn’t it? It’s what everyone does, all the bloody time. It’s Mummy’s fault. It’s Daddy’s. It’s anyone’s fault but my own.’ Blake looked at his wife looking blankly back at him. ‘Back me up, Steph, for Christ’s sake. You of all people know exactly what I’m talking about.’

Stephanie’s jaw tightened.

‘You think he blames you for something?’ Karen, this time, addressed Stephanie. It was Blake, nevertheless, who answered.

‘I just said. Didn’t I? It’s what kids do. It’s what everyone does. I didn’t mean anything by it.’ He began muttering again, something about something being exactly the type of thing he was talking about.

Karen watched him for a moment. She sighed. ‘You can smoke, Vincent. It’s fine. I’ll open a window.’ She offered Blake a smile.

His eyes narrowed. He wrapped his arms across his chest and reclined on the sofa. Karen looked to her lap.

‘Can I?’

Karen raised her head. Stephanie pointed to her handbag.

‘Of course,’ said Karen. ‘Go ahead.’ She stood and moved to the window and struggled with the sash until it was ajar. She checked around her, then crossed to her desk and tipped some pens from a mug. She set the empty mug on the arm of Stephanie’s chair, and one of the pens and a notepad beside her own seat. Stephanie exhaled towards the window but the draught nudged the smoke back the way it came.

‘You were asking about Daniel’s childhood,’ said Stephanie once Karen was seated. ‘About his home life.’

Blake was glaring at his wife, at the cigarette dangling from her hand.

‘That’s right,’ Karen said. ‘I wondered…’ She coughed. Stephanie moved her hand, her cigarette, across her body. ‘I wondered about the kind of things he might have been exposed to,’ Karen continued. ‘This isn’t about blame, you understand. I’m not here to judge anyone. But, well…’ She swallowed. ‘Violence, for instance. Physical harm. Vincent is your second husband, Stephanie. May I ask why your first marriage ended?’

‘It ended cos Frank walked out on her. That’s why it ended. Steph would still be clinging to that loser if he hadn’t shaken her off.’

Karen waited for Stephanie to answer.

‘He didn’t hit me, if that’s what you mean.’ Stephanie focused on her cigarette, tapping it repeatedly over the makeshift ashtray even though the ash had already fallen.

‘And Daniel? What was his relationship like with Daniel?’

Stephanie shrugged. She ground out her cigarette awkwardly against the inside of the mug and started fishing right away for another. ‘Normal,’ she said. ‘I suppose. Not like television normal, like kicking a ball to each other in the park, but normal in the neighbourhood we lived in.’

‘Did he ever hit Daniel? Or…’

‘No. I mean, not really. He’d give him a tap now and then, I suppose. Mostly when he deserved it. He was a drinker so sometimes he hit him harder than he meant to but he never hurt him. Not properly. He was always quite a gentle man, actually.’

‘He’s doing time for assault,’ said Blake. ‘That’s how gentle he can be.’

Karen considered the scar on Blake’s face; the boxer’s bend to his nose.

‘That’s different.’ Stephanie looked to Karen. ‘Isn’t it? That was business. That’s not what the doctor’s talking about.’

Karen made as though taking down a note. When she looked up Stephanie had a flame to her second cigarette, her eyes drawn together and trained, it looked like, on the tip of her nose.

‘Is it possible,’ Karen said, ‘that Frank ever touched Daniel? Ever interfered with him in any way?’

Stephanie expelled the smoke in her lungs. ‘None. Never. I would have known.’

‘But you said he drank. Might his behaviour have been different when he was intoxicated?’

‘I don’t see why. And anyway I still would have known. Besides, he hated that kind of thing. It made him furious. Really properly furious.’

This time Karen did make a note. ‘What about, I don’t know. Uncles. Male friends. Older boys. Anyone else.’ She did not look at Blake directly but she was watching for his reaction.

Blake did not move. His wife shook her head.

Karen tapped her pen against her notepad. ‘When Frank left,’ she said, ‘Daniel was, what? Eight?’

Stephanie thought, nodded.

‘How did he react?’

‘Who? Danny?’ Stephanie made a show of trying to recall. ‘He – Frank, I mean – he wasn’t around much by that time anyway.’ She pulled on her cigarette and her frown deepened. She held in the smoke for so long that Karen felt sure it was not coming out again. ‘Danny wasn’t happy about it, obviously. But I wouldn’t say he was specially unhappy either. He just… I don’t know. Went on being Daniel.’

‘Was Daniel generally happy, would you say? As a child. When he was younger.’

‘That’s what I mean,’ said Stephanie. ‘He wasn’t ever, like, joyous. Is that a word?’ She glanced at Karen and Karen nodded. ‘Danny wasn’t ever that kind of boy. It isn’t his nature.’

‘ To be happy?’

‘ To be… I don’t know. Laughing all the time. Things like that. It isn’t Daniel.’

Stephanie finished her second cigarette. She adjusted herself in her seat, transferred her handbag from her lap to the floor. There was the rattle, as she moved it, of pills in a jar. Or mints in a tin, of course. Vitamins, paracetamol – it might have been anything.

‘What about you, Stephanie?’ Karen said. Blake, before, had been fiddling with his packet of Rothmans. The box ceased dancing all of a sudden in his grip. ‘How did you cope when Frank left you?’

‘Me? I…’ Stephanie looked down.

‘She coped just fine. Didn’t you, Steph?’ There was malice in Blake’s tone; anger in the look Stephanie, in response, cast towards her husband.

‘I coped,’ she said.

Karen waited for Stephanie to say more. ‘You coped,’ she said after a pause. ‘May I ask what you mean by that?’

‘She means she coped,’ Blake said. ‘What could be clearer?’

Karen left another silence but neither of Daniel’s parents sought to fill it. ‘What about motherhood? More generally, I mean. Did you enjoy it? How did you cope, would you say, with being a mother?’

Stephanie glanced towards her husband. ‘I don’t know. Okay, I suppose. It was hard but everyone finds it hard. Don’t they?’

Karen let the question go unanswered. ‘Hard in what way, Stephanie? Can you explain?’

Stephanie hesitated and Blake leant forwards, forcing himself into Karen’s sight line. ‘This is about Daniel. Isn’t it? I thought this was supposed to be about the boy.’

‘Absolutely,’ Karen said. ‘It’s just background, that’s all. It’s just to help us try to understand—’

‘What’s to understand! What bloody difference does it make whether Steph “enjoyed motherhood”?’ He said this last as though the concept were patently something to mock.

‘Well, actually, Vincent, it does make quite a significant—’

‘Steph didn’t kill anyone. Frank, her ex: he liked a scrap but he never killed anyone either.’

Karen inclined her head. ‘No. That’s true. But—’

‘So what’s with all the questions about them? You wanna help Daniel, that’s what you said. Sounds to me like all you’re interested in doing is digging up the family dirt.’ An idea seemed to strike him. His eyes tightened. ‘Like for the papers or something.’ He smiled. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? You’re digging up dirt to give the papers.’ He allowed Karen an instant to respond but all she could manage was a shake of her head. ‘I’m right,’ Blake said, his smile spreading. ‘Aren’t I?’