Хилари Боннер - A Deep Deceit

I didn’t see anything at all. He was babbling and talking gibberish as far as I was concerned. And he was stammering badly by then. ‘Of course I do,’ I lied. ‘Just tell me, I have to know, did you kill your daughter?’ I kept on staring at him. Silent. Waiting.

‘Oh yes, I k-killed her, I killed her all right,’ he said eventually. His voice was very soft.

I swallowed hard, fighting to keep control. ‘Tell me what happened.’

He was looking into the middle distance now, unseeing, unaware I thought, even of where he was. ‘My wife never understood, you see. I d-did everything for her. I was so proud when she had our child. I worked hard. She wanted for nothing. But it wasn’t enough. She always had to have other people around and she shouldn’t have n-needed them, that’s how the problems started...’ There were tears in his eyes.

‘What happened, Carl?’ I asked. ‘You must tell me.’

‘She said she was leaving me and taking our daughter with her.’ He sounded so strange, slightly hysterical almost. ‘She said she’d had enough of being shut away with me. That she wanted to live. That she couldn’t bear to be with me any more.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, I c-couldn’t let her go, could I? I couldn’t lose them. They w-were everything to me. Like you. To begin with I thought she was like you, but she wasn’t.’ His eyes opened wide as if he was surprised by what he was saying. ‘I just wanted her to stay, wanted them both to stay...’ He put his head in his hands.

‘So you used drugs, didn’t you, Carl? Drugs to subdue your own family, to keep them with you, just like you tried to do with me.’

He raised his head slightly. He had started to cry. Tears trickled down his face. ‘What do you th-think I am, Suzanne?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know any more, Carl. I really don’t.’

‘If you have stopped believing in me, Suzanne, there is no point in anything any more,’ he said flatly.

‘Carl, you drugged me, the woman you are supposed to love more than anything.’

He reached across the table in an attempt to grasp my hands again. I pulled away from him.

‘I do love you and I didn’t drug you, Suzanne, not really. It was just something to make you sleep.’

That was what he had told me in the dreadful hut. It wasn’t the way I saw it, nor the police. Suddenly my anger overwhelmed me. ‘Is that what you gave them, your wife and five-year-old child, for God’s sake? Just something to make them sleep? I’m sick of your lies, Carl. Even your name is a bloody lie. Tell me, Carl, tell me the truth, damn you, you bastard,’ I virtually screamed at him.

Carl more or less cowered in his chair. I don’t suppose I had ever yelled at him before. I had certainly never sworn at him like that, not in all our years together. Several other prisoners and their visitors turned to look at us. One of the prison officers took a step forward as if considering intervening, but he retreated again.

Carl merely stared at me in shocked silence.

When I spoke again I managed to do so in a more or less normal tone: ‘Just tell me. Did your daughter overdose on drugs you had given her, is that true?’

‘The drugs were for her mother, not her.’ Carl’s voice seemed to come from a long way away.

‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ I snapped at him. ‘You didn’t mean to drug your child, only her mother, is that it? For God’s sake, just tell me, Carl, did your daughter overdose?’

‘Oh yes,’ he moaned, still cowering in his chair. ‘She overdosed...’

‘And she died,’ I said flatly.

‘Yes, she died,’ he repeated. He was sobbing quite loudly by then. ‘I killed her. That’s what you came here to hear, isn’t it. It’s true. It was all my fault. And I’ve never f-forgiven myself, never... I couldn’t let it happen again, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t lose you as well.’

I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach. Somehow I had expected Carl to deny it, to have some kind of an explanation. Even after what he had done to me I could not really believe that he had killed his own child. Now I had to. He had told me so himself. He was still babbling on. It was a kind of torture to listen to him.

He put his head in his hands. ‘I c-couldn’t let them leave me. As long as I kept them close to me they would have been safe, you see. I just wanted to keep everyone s-safe, all of them, like I did you...’

‘Safe from what, Carl?’

Abruptly he stopped crying and stared at me, as if uncomprehending. ‘I guess I’m pretty mixed up, but...’

I’d had enough. I certainly didn’t want any more of his excuses. I had heard all I wanted to hear. ‘No, Carl,’ I told him firmly. ‘I’m not going to listen to any more of this.’ I stood up. ‘I will never forgive you,’ I said. ‘And I never want to see you again as long as I live.’

I turned my back on him and headed for the door. I heard him cry out in anguish but I didn’t look round. I half ran out of the room and the tears were running down my face.

I wasn’t crying for Carl. And at that moment I could already feel my love for him turning to hate. I was crying for my own lost life, for all those years he had stolen from me.

I returned to the cottage. After all, where else did I have to go? I arrived there just before 9 p.m., having caught the 5.22 from Exeter, and treated myself to a taxi home from Penzance.

I was exhausted and very hungry. There had been a buffet car on the train but I had not had any appetite for a while after seeing Carl and by the time I arrived in St Ives my stomach had begun to send serious messages to remind me that it had not received any food all day. I made tea and toast, and scrambled a couple of eggs. After I’d eaten I lay down on the sofa. I didn’t even have the energy to make it into a bed again.

I think sleep could have been my body’s way of providing me with a kind of therapy. Had I been bothering to think about it logically I might have worried about being unable to sleep, but instead the oblivion descended almost as soon as I put my head on the pillows.

Once more I was woken by a hammering on the door.

I peered out of the window. At first I couldn’t see anybody, but then, illuminated by the street light on the corner, I watched the tall, bulky figure of Will step back from the porch and tip his face towards me, peering at the upstairs window. The last thing I felt able to cope with was a visitor, so I ducked away. I didn’t want him to see me. I waited almost a minute before I looked out of the window again. Mercifully Will seemed to have gone.

I looked at my watch. It was almost 10.30, a bit late to come calling, I thought vaguely. Then I slumped on to the sofa again and tried to recapture the oblivion I had achieved before he turned up on the doorstep, but without success at first. At some time during the night I found the energy to turn the sofa into a proper bed and maybe that helped me eventually to fall into a deep sleep.

I was awoken by another loud knocking on the door. But this time it was broad daylight outside. Morning had presumably arrived. I reckoned the caller could reasonably be one of three people – Will again, Mrs Jackson, or Mariette – and it made little difference to me which. I didn’t want to see anybody, not even Mariette – in spite of the undoubted success of our last evening together. I did not even look out of the window but waited quietly for the caller to go away.

After a moment or two I heard Mariette’s voice calling through the letter box. ‘Are you there, Suzanne? It’s me. Are you all right?’

I continued to ignore her. After a bit she went away.

I had no intention of even trying to face the world. I just wanted to stay hidden away in my bed. I buried my head in the pillow and ultimately cried myself to sleep.