Claire S. Duffy - The Stranger - Season 1

As he crossed the shadowy hallway, particularly dark that morning as the bedroom and kitchen doors were closed, Fergus stubbed his toe and had to grit his teeth to stop from shouting and waking Alfie. He fumbled for the light switch by the front door, then stared around the hallway in horror. He shook his head, trying to clear the sleep away, to check he was properly awake.

Crayon scribbles covered the walls, the wooden floor, even the door of the hallway cupboard. Fergus could hear his heartbeat roar in his ears. When did Alfie do this? Fergus’s mind frantically flicked over the morning’s activities: the singing breakfast triumph, the Lego tower they’d built in the living room, Alfie’s 45 minute tantrum in the bathroom for no apparent reason. Fergus was certain they had been together every moment since Alfie decided it was morning sometime around 5am, but clearly, somehow, Alfie had been in this hallway on his own. It must have been while Fergus had been napping. The hallway was gloomy, piled haphazardly with the boxes and suitcases they hadn’t got around to sorting out yet. Boxes full of sharp things, heavy things that could fall on Alfie, could hurt him. He would never let Alfie roam around in here unattended.

Except, obviously, he had. He must be more exhausted than he realised, he thought. He was a useless father. A useless husband. He wasn’t capable of looking after Alfie. Tess’s mother had been right, a leopard never changes its spots. The proof was dancing in front of his eyes. Crazed loops and zigzags of blue and green and red and black that now, on top of everything else, had to be scrubbed clean. He didn’t even want to know what Tess would say if she saw it.

***

The tiny window in the basement laundry room was completely covered by a snowdrift, so not a scrap of weak afternoon daylight made it into the gloomy room. Only one of the lights worked, or at least, after a frustrating search in semi-darkness, Fergus had found a switch that turned on only one flickering fluorescent bar by the door, so he and Alfie had to make do with that. Alfie didn’t seem fussed, he was happily zooming a set of small wooden train carriages along the tiled floor.

Fergus, on the other hand, was attempting to read washing machine instructions he could barely see in a language he didn’t speak. He had started to figure out that once he got his head around the relationship between Swedish spelling and pronunciation, a lot of words were close enough to their English counterparts that it wasn’t impossible to start connecting and guessing and thus pick his way through simple text. The other day he’d spent several seconds pushing a door that wouldn’t budge, only to finally click that it was marked drag which presumably meant ‘pull’ — and so it did. On the other hand there had been a confusing incident with a supermarket worker during which it became increasingly clear that nap in Swedish doesn’t refer to nappies, but dummies.

Either way, this breakthrough contributed nothing towards illuminating the apparently complex requirements of the washing machine which sat silent and dark no matter how many times he pushed what he was sure was the correct combination of buttons.

‘Fucking work, you bastard,’ he roared, thumping the insolent machine with a force that made his fist instantly throb with pain. Alfie looked up in fright and burst into tears.

‘Sorry, sorry —’ muttered Fergus, scooping Alfie up. ‘Daddy didn’t mean to frighten you. He’s just being silly because he can’t work out how to make this machine wash our clothes. Maybe Alfie can help?’ Fergus had no idea when, much less why, he had started referring to them both in the third person.

‘No!’ yelled Alfie, wriggling from Fergus’s arms, but at least his tears stopped. Fergus gave up on the washing machine for a minute, sat down on the cold floor and watched Alfie carefully sort the wooden train carriages by colour. Fergus had found the trains in a basket in the hallway cupboard in the apartment and given then to Alfie by way of apology.

Alfie seemed to have forgotten about his father’s anger that afternoon, but hot prickles of guilt at the memory of Alfie’s heartbroken howls pierced at Fergus and the shuddering sobs that threatened to engulf Alfie’s tiny body rang in his ears. Please Daddy! Not me.

Fergus had kneeled down so he could look him in the eye, just as the toddler behaviour book he had read told him to. Using a firm but calm voice, he explained that drawing on the walls was naughty behaviour and Alfie shouldn’t do it again. Alfie just roared again and again that it wasn’t him.

Fergus had tried reasoning. He tried pointing out the irrefutable proof of the wild scribbles on the hallway walls, the crayons belonging to Alfie scattered on the floor. He argued that Alfie had opportunity and motive, concluded that the case was airtight. When none of that worked, he lost his temper and he shouted and Alfie shrank back, suddenly silent, his eyes wide with shock and fear. Fergus forced himself to walk slowly to the living room and count to ten as Alfie’s disconsolate sobs gradually blew out to shaky breaths and hiccups and Fergus felt like the worst human being ever to grace planet Earth.

Toddlers lie, the mothers of the internet assured Fergus. It’s perfectly normal and nothing to worry about, they insisted, but the image of that little tear streaked face, the wavering voice choked with sobs, p-pl-ease Da-addy, hovered miserably over him. He ruffled Alfie’s hair and kissed the top of his head.

‘Daddy loves you, wee man,’ he murmured.

‘Red train,’ Alfie replied, holding up exactly that.

‘So it is. Who’s a clever boy?’

Satisfied that Alfie had forgiven him even if he’d likely never forgive himself, Fergus got up and returned to the more practical problem of the mystifying washing machine.

He had tried to talk to Tess again last night. She had got home late, as usual, exhausted, as usual, and had eaten the unappetising reheated pasta he had made for his and Alfie’s dinner several hours before, in silence.

Later in the living room, he poured them both a glass of wine and she pulled up the next episode of the American series they were marathoning. Fergus was fairly confident that it was something to do with a family of serial killers, though if the truth be told he couldn’t make head nor tail of it, which was presumably down to the fact that he nodded off around twenty minutes into each episode. As the urgent theme music filled the room and flashes of Philadelphia — or Baltimore or Chicago, for all he knew — zipped by at dizzying speed, Fergus hit pause at a particularly gruesome shot of a woman being carried into the woods by her killer, her neck severed almost in two by the bloody axe now hanging from his tool belt.

‘I’m going to ring social services, or whatever they’re called here, tomorrow,’ he announced.

Tess, who had been half dozing beside him, sat up. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The kid that cries all day. There’s something the matter, it’s not right.’

‘Fergus for fuck’s sake, not this again. I don’t think you should get involved, it’s none of your business. When Alfie was teething he screamed for about six weeks straight, what if someone had reported me?’

‘It wasn’t constant, not like this.’

‘How would you know?’

Fergus flinched and ‘unpaused’ the show.

Despite his resolution to ring first thing this morning, it was now lunchtime and Fergus hadn’t made the call. What if Tess was right and he risked ruining the life of some poor woman who was struggling at the moment, but doing her best?

Or what if he was right and the child needed help?

The door of the laundry room banged open and an elderly lady burst in with alacrity impressive for her apparent age. She was shouting angrily, apparently at Fergus.