Liz Nugent - Lying in Wait

I tried to call him, but he would not take my calls at work and hung up when I called the cottage. A week after he had left, he came to the house with a hired van and began to remove furniture without speaking to me or looking at me. He trooped through the house seven or eight times and refused to acknowledge my cries and pleas. I contemplated another overdose. Helen had confiscated my medication and was doling it out to me as if I were a child. She also found the phentermine.

‘Why are you taking these?’ she said.

I lied that Malcolm had prescribed them.

‘Idiot,’ she said, and flushed them down the toilet.

Helen was always insightful. I still had one of Malcolm’s prescription pads and could get any drugs I wanted, but I decided to wait, and the longer I waited, the more my anger towards Laurence increased.

But when after six weeks he telephoned and said he was coming to Avalon to talk to me, I heaved a huge sigh of relief that my son was finally coming home. I filled the prescription for him.

I was shocked by his appearance, and I think he was shocked by mine. For every pound in weight I had lost, he had gained three. He was closer to the obese boy I had been able to control. This pleased me. Because it could not have been attractive to her.

I had sent Helen home and prepared his favourite meal. I had dressed carefully and washed my hair for him and laid the table in the dining room. I chattered about the weather and programmes on television while I piled his plate high.

He was reluctant to talk in the beginning, but I soon coaxed him into conversation.

‘Darling, it’s so good to see you. I’m so glad you came back.’

‘I’m just visiting.’

‘Of course, and how is Granny’s cottage? Draughty, I imagine, with those big windows?’

‘It’s fine.’

‘But aren’t you lonely there?’

‘No.’

‘Do you have friends coming to see you there? Because if you liked, you could have your friends visit here. I would stay in my room—’

‘Just one friend, my girlfriend.’

‘Oh, you have a new girlfriend? How sweet.’ I feigned ignorance. I did not want to talk about her. I changed the subject. ‘Darling, about Annie…’

He passed his hand over his eyes. ‘I don’t want to talk—’

‘But we must, otherwise you will spend your whole life thinking that your father and I are monsters, and we aren’t. It was an accident, just like Diana—’

‘Mum, please…’

‘Annie Doyle was hired by your father to do a job.’

His curiosity got the better of him. ‘What job?’

‘You know how desperate I was to have a baby, a little brother or sister for you? You remember, don’t you?’

He said nothing but he watched me, watched my mouth as I spoke.

‘Your father, I… we hired Annie… to get pregnant.’

‘What?’

‘It was my idea. Your father was to get her pregnant and she was to give us the baby.’

‘But… that’s ridiculous! Dad would—’

‘She was to provide a service, darling. I didn’t know she was a prostitute. Your father didn’t know either. He was never a kerb crawler, my Andrew. He had to be so discreet. He caught her picking his pocket one day, but he felt sorry for her. He could have had her arrested, but instead he helped her. And then later he asked her to help us. She was handsomely paid for her services, and after only three or four attempts she told him she was pregnant.’

‘This is crazy! It’s illegal for a start, and… oh my God, poor Dad.’

‘I know, poor Andrew didn’t want anything to do with it, but I was desperate, I begged him, and even though he tried to persuade me it was a terrible idea, I convinced him. I needed that baby. You were growing up. What was I going to do without you?’

‘Mum, do you have any idea how insane you sound?’

I struggled to remain calm. ‘Don’t. Don’t you say that. I always wanted to fill this house with children, with life. It isn’t insane to want to be a mother. I had no mother growing up, I needed someone of my own. I had no sister because she was dead.’

‘But, Mum—’

I didn’t want any interruption. ‘And I had so much love within me to give. Every miscarriage ate away at my soul. You will never know what that was like for me, time after time, the life being torn out of me. I need family.’

Laurence sat perfectly still. ‘So what happened to Annie?’

‘She lied to us. She demanded more and more money. She refused to get a doctor’s note to confirm her pregnancy, and I began to doubt that she was pregnant at all. And then, on… that… last night, I told your father I wanted to see her. He had… dealt with her, made the arrangements… impregnated her, or so he thought. I had kept away, but I was worried. We had so little money and he was paying her month after month. I needed proof that she was pregnant, so when she was supposed to be about five months gone, Andrew got into a row with her because she had figured out who he was and she admitted that she wasn’t pregnant at all. She tried to blackmail him. She said she was going to the papers. He lost his temper.’

‘And?’

‘He lost his temper. It wasn’t his fault. He was under so much pressure financially, and she had stolen from us. She was a common thief, Laurence. She had used us and defrauded us and your dad… lost his temper.’

Laurence pushed his empty plate away and rose from the table. I needed Laurence to see that the girl was the victim of her own misfortune. I had to bend the truth a little.

‘He killed her.’

‘Yes, but he didn’t mean to. It was an accident. She pulled a knife on him. She was a nasty guttersnipe. It was self-defence. He strangled her. He was dreadfully upset. He really didn’t intend to kill her.’

‘Oh God. I was right all along. He murdered her, but you are as much to blame.’

‘Me?’

‘I can’t believe you forced Dad into such an outrageous plan. No wonder he died so soon after. The stress of it all killed him.’

Tears welled up in my eyes. I needed Laurence to understand.

‘I miss him every day. That girl, she was so evil. She tried to stab him! She pushed him to the limit.’

‘ You pushed him to the limit. And yet you’ve been able to carry on as if nothing has happened, just like after Diana… drowned.’

‘Life throws hurdles at us, darling. We must get over them.’

‘Annie was a hurdle? Diana was a hurdle?’ Laurence’s voice was breaking.

‘Please don’t be dramatic about this. What is done is done, and we are both implicated.’

I could feel his anger. ‘You involved me. You knew what had happened, and you involved me. I poured cement over her grave!’

‘Yes, but we have to just forget about it all now, get back to normal.’

‘You have no idea what normal is.’

‘I’ll do anything you want, I can change.’

‘You can’t.’

‘But I will—’

‘Mum, I am never, ever coming back to live with you. Ever.’

‘I see.’

I was perfectly calm, set a smile on my face.

‘I can’t live in a graveyard.’

I used the only thing I had. ‘Darling, I can make you slim again – look how you have ballooned since you left this house.’

I knew that I had thrown him with this statement. He sighed heavily and pinched the top of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I had you on phentermine. It’s a drug prescribed for lethargy and depression, but the side effect is weight loss.’ I explained how I’d got the drug, how I had crushed it into his meals. I went to the kitchen and took the bottle of tablets out from behind the vanilla essence and showed him. ‘Here, you can keep them. They work really well. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to feel self-conscious about it. I wanted you to think you’d lost the weight by yourself.’