Jennie Ensor - The Girl in His Eyes

Laura went over to the window and stared out.

‘Has Jane gone to the police?’

‘The police?’ Laura’s question hung in the air for a while before the words began to make sense.

‘For sex with a minor. It’s a serious crime.’

‘No, no, not yet. Not as far as I know.’

‘I guess there’s no evidence that he did anything to Emma. Not after all this time. If they charged him and he denied it, it would just be his word against hers. It might not even go to court.’

‘You think Jane should go to the police?’

‘Of course. What if he does this again, to someone else? He might have already, for all we know.’

Suzanne closed her eyes. Her brain felt like a full rubbish bin, trying to eject any extra items she crammed in.

‘I thought I’d forgotten most of it, you know.’ Laura spoke in a distant voice, as if to herself. ‘But the things he said, the way he looked at me. It’s still there in my head, somewhere. It’s like he’s haunting me.’ Her voice hardened. ‘I’ll never forgive him, you know. For what he did to me, and for what he did to Emma. I hate him.’

Suzanne flinched, went cold. What could she say to her daughter? She couldn’t defend Paul. Emma would be deeply affected by what he had done to her. For years, if not her entire life. And what about Laura? What would become of her? Would she ever recover from the damage he’d inflicted? Paul wasn’t just a man she’d known for a while and had grown to trust, he was her father. He’d knowingly taken away Laura’s innocence, just as he’d taken away her trust and her faith that the world would provide what she needed. He had been prepared to ruin his daughter’s life – for what? She got to her feet.

‘Laura, come here.’ She was slight in her arms, all ribs and shoulder blades. ‘I’m so sorry about what happened to you.’

‘I know.’ It was no more than a murmur.

Suzanne let herself sink into the armchair again.

Laura went away and came back with two small glasses of amber liquid. ‘Get this down you. It’ll do you good.’

She drank the alcohol gratefully.

Thick shadows crowded the room. It would be dark soon. Outside, a crow landed on the roof. Its beak dug into the moss. She thought of Paul, at home, waiting for her.

‘I have to go now, darling,’ she said, reaching for her handbag. ‘It’s getting late.’

‘You can stay here tonight, if you like? If you don’t want to go back home.’

Home . The word sounded wrong, somehow.

‘I’ll go for a walk, I think. I need to sort out some things in my head. Then I’ll go home and speak to your dad.’

The sun was low as Suzanne drove away. She didn’t really know where she was going. She passed a row of shops and several sets of traffic lights then turned onto a dual-carriageway.

He’s betrayed me.

The thought ran on in a loop. Paul had spoilt everything. Their marriage was a lie and she’d never even noticed.

She opened the window to let in some air.

Later, she realised she was driving towards Wimbledon Common. There were spaces to park on the road alongside it, past the pub. She parked and set off on her usual path towards the wooded hill.

A breeze swirled her hair. She stepped across a large puddle; the path was muddy from recent rain. Her feet would get wet in these flimsy shoes and her jacket wasn’t waterproof. But no matter. A large dog bounded past, trailed by a sullen-faced man. She scanned the common. No one else was in sight. Normally she’d never come out here by herself so close to dark. But that didn’t matter now either.

Near the brow of the hill she sat against a tree and looked down at the distant buildings silhouetted against the sky. The sun hid behind wisps of rose-tinged cloud. Damp seeped through her jeans.

I’ll stay here a while, she thought.

She recalled the look on Paul’s face a few hours earlier, when she’d told him she was going to visit Laura. He must have worked out why she was going. He must have known she would discover the truth sooner or later, or had he imagined that he could do those things to Laura and Emma and somehow get away with it? Perhaps he thought he was invincible.

It was quite clear, finally. The pieces of the jigsaw fitted perfectly. Paul had driven Laura away from both of them. He had sacrificed his family and his marriage. He had poisoned everything.

‘Damn you, Paul! I hope you burn in hell!’

The rawness of her cry disappeared into the trees.

An hour later, perhaps two, she realised she was shivering; her bottom, hands and feet were numb from the cold. She looked at her watch but it was too dark to make out the hands. Through patches of scudding cloud, a faint glow that could have been the moon. An aircraft light bleeped through the murky sky.

She started to walk downhill. Though she tried to keep to the path, it kept changing direction and she could scarcely see what lay beneath her feet. Every so often she splashed into invisible puddles and stumbled over sudden spiky clumps.

Eventually, she stopped. The path had gone. There were only vague outlines of bushes and trees. She was lost. She would never find her way out.

‘Come on, Suzanne,’ she said aloud. ‘Don’t be so bloody silly.’

For a moment, the moon shone brightly through a gap in the cloud, turning the landscape a ghostly silver. A breeze tugged at her clothes. She waited, watching the sky until there was another gap in the clouds. The moon reappeared. Now she could see the path, further to the right.

She ran over the grassy mounds, her feet sinking into the sodden earth. When the ground levelled out she could see the row of houses along the road where she’d parked the car.

The living room curtains were closed; behind them, a light was on. He was still up then. Suzanne pressed the doorbell.

Paul came to the door blinking, his reading glasses perched over his head. His hair was dishevelled. He must have fallen asleep in the armchair.

‘Where have you been?’ He looked her over. ‘You’re covered in mud.’

She removed her jacket then sank onto the hall chair and pulled off her soaked shoes.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ His voice surged through the house.

Behind the anger, she heard his fear.

‘I know what you’ve done to Laura. She’s told me all about it. And you don’t have to pretend anymore about Emma. I know what you did to her. You’ve been lying to me all along, you bastard.’ She went into the kitchen and filled a glass with tap water. With trembling hands, she drank.

‘Suze, it’s not like you think.’ In the dim glow of the fluorescent up-lights, Paul’s eyebrows hung heavily over his eyes, which seemed to shrink into the recesses of his face.

‘I didn’t mean to do those things.’ Paul’s Adam’s apple moved. ‘They just happened, I couldn’t help it. I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time, but I was afraid of what you’d do. I was afraid you’d stop loving me.’

She wondered if she’d heard right. Surely, he didn’t mean to offer that as an excuse for what he’d done?

‘You must think I’m an absolute idiot. For months, you abused my daughter behind my back. You kept it carefully hidden from me all this time, then you turned on my friend’s daughter. You groomed her, then you groped her – molested her.’ She gulped some air. ‘How could those things have “just happened”?’ Her words came straight out without hesitation, as if another woman was talking, a woman without fear. Not the tongue-tied woman, who was always trying to make things better, ever ready to forgive.

‘I tried to stop but I couldn’t. Suzanne, listen to me. I tried to stop, I didn’t want to do anything bad. But I couldn’t stop myself.’