Catherine Steadman - Something in the Water - A Novel

Am I putting his child at risk? It’s the first time I’ve really thought about it that way. Fuck, maybe I am. I was sure I was doing this for all of us, but now I wonder. Maybe it is all just for me? That thought sucks the air straight out of me. I stand and stare at him. Empty. I feel my eyes fill. His face softens.

What he sees are tears of repentance, tears of remorse. But that’s not what these are. These are tears of confusion. My hot tears of confusion because I can’t tell anymore why I’m doing any of this.

I suppose I’m on the wrong side of the table this time.

Sitting across from Charlotte McInroy, in her lovely family kitchen, I wonder what I am now. Less than a month ago I was just an average person, a civilian, someone with no angle. I belonged on the good side of the table, and on the other side were the bad people. Whether they were innately bad or just bad because of the choices they made was a subject of theoretical debate. But either way, they were different from me, different to the core. I was a normal person. Now it’s Lottie on the good side of the table.

But was I ever a normal person? Because I really haven’t changed that much inside, have I? I think the same way. I act the same way. I want what I want. I have only acted in line with the way I have always lived my life. Was that all wrong? Am I all wrong? I have broken a lot of laws, not serious ones, I hope, but ones that mean I should definitely be in prison. Eddie got seven years just for money laundering; the thought makes me shudder.

Lottie is soft and bright and as smart as you’d expect Eddie Bishop’s daughter to be.

We do look similar.

She is the associate specialist emergency medicine doctor at Lewisham’s ER. She works long days but she’s happy to fit me in. I’m not sure I’d be quite so magnanimous in her place, but she wants to help. She’s a good person. She wants to do things the right way. Not like her dad.

I wonder suddenly in what inventive ways Mark and I will mess up our kids. If Mark will even want kids with me when I finally tell him. My hand falls down over my stomach and I leave it there, an extra barrier of skin, flesh, and bone to protect my unborn child from the outside world.

I spoke to Alexa yesterday evening after her IUI appointment. She may well be pregnant by now. She’ll have a test in two weeks’ time and we should find out. I know I shouldn’t have, but I told her about my baby. I somehow got caught up in her excitement and that’s when I told her my secret. I had to share it with someone. I’m eight weeks pregnant now. She told me I have to go and see a doctor, take folic acid, not eat soft cheese.

I have been taking folic acid since we got back from Geneva. It’s hidden at the back of the bathroom cupboard. But she’s right, I should go to the doctor. It’s important, Alexa insists. I tell her I’m too busy right now. Stuff has come up. I want to tell her what has come up too, but of course, I don’t. I can’t.

The rift between Mark and me is growing. I’ve been pushing him. I don’t want the diamonds to break our marriage.

“Are we a team?” he’d whispered to me in bed last night.

And I’d nodded, of course, but he shook his head. “Then I say we dump the diamonds.” His voice was tight. “We still have time to back out of this deal. The police might already be watching us, Erin. Who knows, you might be right, the plane people might already be watching us too. And now you want an East End crime syndicate to get involved with us as well. You’re being willfully stupid, Erin. You’re putting us both in danger. Keep your side of the deal with Eddie, sure, do his favor, but tell him you don’t need his help with the diamonds anymore.”

He’s right about one thing. Someone’s definitely watching us, I’m certain of it now. There have been two more silent phone messages this week already, and it’s not Eddie. Whether it’s something to do with the plane people or SO15, I don’t know. But someone is watching. Someone is sending a message.

It’s too late to back out of my deal with Eddie now, you can’t pull out of these kind of contracts, it doesn’t work that way, and Mark will thank me later, I know he will. So here I am. Fulfilling my end of the bargain. And this will work.

Eddie’s daughter sips her tea thoughtfully as I set up the tripod and camera.

In the shot Lottie is side-lit by the French windows that lead into her wet, autumnal garden. A clean diffused light. Stark, but delicate as filigree.

Through the viewfinder lens, she looks relaxed. At home. A contrast to the tense energy of my prison interviews.

I turn the camera on.

“Lottie, I visited your father last week in Pentonville. He spoke about you very fondly. Were you close, when you were growing up?” I’m going to take it slow. Ease her in. After all, I really have no idea how she feels about him.

She takes a soft breath.

She knew there would be questions, but now that they’re here the reality of this interview is finally dawning on her. Big questions require big answers. A steep trudge uphill into the past.

“We were close, Erin. It’s hard to say if we were closer than other families. I don’t have much to compare it to. People sort of kept away from me at school. I get it now. I’ve got kids myself and there’s no way I’d let them be around people like my dad. But at the time, I thought it was me, that I wasn’t quite right. That none of us were, my whole family not quite right. And it definitely made us closer, Dad and I. I was closer to my dad than my mum. Mum was…difficult. Always was. I think that’s why Dad loved her, though. He liked the challenge. Liked the payoff. He used to say high maintenance means high performance. You know, like a car. Anyway, Mum was tricky. Especially with me. But I was Dad’s little angel. He was a good dad. He was. Told me stories. Put me to bed. He was very good to me. So, yes, we were close.”

She watches me expectantly, waiting for the next question.

“Did you know much about his work? His life outside of his time with you?”

Interviewees usually need a while to gather their thoughts, to consider what they want to say. But Lottie knows what she wants to say; she’s just waiting for the chance to say it.

She looks out at the garden for a microsecond, then back to me.

“Nothing, until I was maybe thirteen. I changed schools. They sent me to private school. Dad was doing well. I guess, before, I thought he was a businessman. Everyone looked up to him, everyone trusted his opinion. He seemed to be everyone’s boss. There were always people around the house. Smartly dressed. They had meetings in Dad’s living room. Mum and Dad had separate living rooms. That’s what it was like, you know?” She looks at me, eyebrows raised.

I nod. I get it. It was a rocky marriage.

Her mother remarried while Eddie was in prison. The family split after the trial, each going their separate ways.

“Yeah, so did I know about Dad?” She refocuses. “I remember the night I finally figured it out. As I said, I was about thirteen; I’d just started at the new school. It was the weekend; there were people around, the usual lot and someone new. They’d gone into Dad’s living room together and I’d been in Mum’s watching a film. I came out to get more popcorn from the kitchen. It was a big house, you know. I heard a weird noise like crying, but creepy crying, coming from the hall. I assumed the visitors had all gone already and Dad was watching Saving Private Ryan or something like that on loud, I don’t know. He watched it a lot. He loves Tom Hanks. So I grabbed my popcorn and went into his living room. Dad was there leaning against his desk. Three of his work colleagues were there too. The TV wasn’t on. There was another man on the floor in front of him. The man was on his knees. He was kneeling on this plastic sheeting and there was blood pouring from his mouth. He was sobbing. Everyone else in the room was staring at me, standing there frozen in the doorway, but this guy just kept crying like he couldn’t stop. Dad didn’t look surprised to see me. Just blank. And he still had his overcoat on. That’s always stuck with me. He’d kept it on, like he might leave at any moment. Like he wasn’t staying. At that point Mum happened to come around the corner, she saw that I’d wandered in on something and grabbed me. Took me upstairs. She was gentle about the whole thing—well, for her. Told me the man I’d seen was a bad man, that Daddy was handling everything. Dad came upstairs about ten minutes later. He asked if I was okay. I hugged him so hard. For ages. Like I was trying to somehow squeeze something back into him. Or out of him. But that’s when I knew. That he was the bad man. That good people just don’t do things like that. Even if someone else is bad. They just don’t. After that, I was different with him. Wary, I suppose. I’d like to credit my younger self that he never even noticed the difference in me. I didn’t want him to. You know? I still loved him. I wouldn’t ever want to hurt him.” She stops, her focus snapping back from the past to me.