Her Perfect Family(88)

Amanda waited for him. Continued the affair on and off for more than a decade. She genuinely believed that, one day, he would get divorced and they would have a family of their own. But she suffered insomnia and stress and became dependent on sleeping tablets. When her doctor tried to reduce her dose, she went to dealers. And so the drugs spiral began.

When Sam eventually divorced, it wasn’t Amanda he turned to. Instead, he broke it off with her and within two years married the much younger Lily. Amanda never got over it.

And then when Molly caught her using cocaine at work, Amanda saw it as the end. The loss of not just her job, but everything.

I’d not understood the link with Gemma until the inquest. Seems when Amanda found out about Gemma’s pregnancy – Sam the father – she simply became fixated. And deluded. Her last chance for purpose. Happiness. She came up with this fantasy where Amanda would get her final chance to be a mother and Gemma could carry on with her life.

The coroner was told Amanda paid one of her dealers to deliver the dolls. To confuse the inquiry; to frighten the Hartleys and Matthew’s family too. She got the gun from the same dealer. It matched the bullet used on Gemma. Sam too.

Amanda’s diary claimed she never meant to kill Gemma; she actually planned to kill herself at that first graduation. A huge and bloody gesture in front of everyone from the stone balcony above the audience, supposedly to bring shame on the university for getting rid of her so cruelly. She wanted it public. A letter in her pocket pointing everyone to her diaries. My truth.

But when she saw Gemma, so lovely and so young in her robe down below – her whole life ahead of her – carrying the baby Amanda was now too old to have, she was in the moment overwhelmed with jealousy and rage. And made a different choice.

And Sam? Amanda’s diary said she was going to Sam to press him to use his rights as the father. To persuade Gemma when she recovered to let Amanda have the baby after all.

What was so difficult is that Amanda seemed to genuinely see all this as reasonable. Possible.

The coroner nailed it in his summing up. ‘Clearly we all know that she would never have been allowed to parent that child. This was the sad and deluded thinking of someone who’d lost all sense of the real world. We cannot know how that confrontation with Sam Blake went. Only how it so tragically ended.’

The verdict, as expected – suicide. And that was it. Over. Done. Everyone stood up as the coroner left the room but I didn’t. Couldn’t. I remember sitting there and feeling completely numb; that it just wasn’t enough. No full stop.

I started muttering and Matthew had to take me into the corridor to find a glass of water, to calm me down.

But where’s the justice, Matthew? Where’s the justice for Gemma?

I promise that I do try not to dwell. The problem is it’s a bit like a haunting and sometimes when the scenes all swirl in my head – just like the light through those windows in this church – I spiral; find myself muttering out loud all over again. Like some crazy woman.

‘It’s OK, Rachel. It’s really over now.’ Matthew is leaning in and I open my eyes.

‘Sorry. Was I muttering?’ I blush. Don’t want to be this new Rachel.

‘Not muttering but miles away.’

‘Sorry. Sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’ He’s whispering. ‘Look. It’s very hard to cross paths with someone like Amanda. Someone that broken. The trick is to stop trying to make sense of it, Rachel. You have to try to let it go.’

‘You sound like my counsellor.’

He laughs. I smile. Matthew was the one to recommend therapy after it worked so well for his daughter.

I take in his expression. I glance to Amelie who is on tiptoe, lighting her candle, and then back to this good man. This good father. This man who could so easily have been lost too.

‘Thank you, Matthew.’ The words sound so inadequate but he is smiling and so I finally let go of his arm, start my breathing exercises again. And make my excuses.

I hurry away to the ladies to find Gemma babbling to Sophie as she hurls the soiled nappy into the lidded, stainless-steel bin. ‘Now isn’t that better, young lady? You comfy now? Ready for your big entrance?’

Sophie tries to grab her mother’s necklace as Gemma lifts her into her arms from the changing station.

‘Give her to me while you wash your hands.’

‘Thanks, Mum.’

I take Sophie and move over to a chair in the corner so that I can pop her dress back on, juggling her arms through the layers of silk and leaning back as she tries to grab my glasses. ‘There. Don’t you look pretty?’

I stand and look at Gemma through the mirror. My brave and beautiful girl. She dries her hands and as she turns to me, I lean forward to plant a kiss on her forehead.

For a moment she freezes. Frowning. She looks back at me through the mirror and then turns to me directly, puzzled, as if trying to figure something out.

‘Do that again.’

‘What?’

‘Kiss me on the forehead.’

I’m thrown but happily plant a second.

‘That’s it.’

‘What?’

She looks aside and then directly at me once more. ‘That’s why I came back.’

‘What do you mean?’

And now she’s smiling, more animated, as if she’s just worked out the punchline to a joke. ‘You know I don’t remember much from the coma. Hardly anything actually, but I do remember something now. I remember feeling you do that.’ Speaking more quickly now.