What Lies Between Us(64)

‘It was a long time ago.’

‘You wouldn’t forget something like that.’

‘Two, maybe three days.’

‘How did you look after me and him? How did I not hear him crying?’

‘I was careful.’

‘You mean you knocked me out with drugs.’

To her evident frustration, I don’t answer this, or any of the other questions about those few days or even how I found Dylan his new family. So she changes direction.

‘Did you know the Moxydogrel was going to put me in early menopause? That by nineteen, I wouldn’t be able to have any more children of my own?’

‘Of course not. Nobody knew the side effects before it was too late and it was withdrawn from the market.’

‘But if you hadn’t made me take them, I could have had a family.’

‘I know, and for that I’m sorry, Nina, I am so, so sorry. You have to believe me.’

‘I don’t have to believe anything. Are you sorry for giving Dylan away?’

I hesitate and choose my words carefully. ‘It was the right thing to do at the time.’

‘You even denied me my name on his birth certificate. Why did you use your own?’

‘In case one day he tried to find his mother, so he would find me instead. I thought it would be too stressful for you to deal with.’

‘You mean for you to deal with. And you’d have lied to him like you lied to me. And what about Dad? Why did you kill him?’

I look away. I’m not sorry he is dead, not one bit. But telling her this would not be wise. ‘I’m sorry that things ended up the way they did.’

‘Why did you do it?’

I shake my head but I don’t reply.

‘Why?’ she spits, but I can’t explain. My lips remain sealed and I turn my head to look away from her.

My lack of response is all it takes for Nina to lose control. Without warning she lunges towards me and there’s nothing I can do to stop her.





CHAPTER 55





NINA


TWO YEARS EARLIER


The culmination of everything I have learned about Maggie in the last five weeks is released in one swift action which I can’t contain.

I grab her by the neck, push her back on to the mattress and straddle her. Her arms remain weak so she is easy to pin down. My fingers wrap themselves ever tighter around her throat.

I don’t know who I’ve become but I am no longer myself. It’s as if the real Nina is standing in the corner of the room watching someone resembling me strangling my mother. My hands are tightening and her windpipe is contracting and not allowing any new air to enter her lungs. Her mouth opens and she attempts to speak but her words are hard to make out. One of her legs flails behind me, kicking in all directions, but it falls short of making contact. The other shakes and rattles the chain attached to her ankle. ‘I hate you I hate you I hate you,’ I repeat in a voice that doesn’t sound like my own.

At first I don’t think I have ever felt a rage like this before, until a flash of déjà vu strikes. It’s a blur of fast-moving, dimly lit, black-and-red-tainted images that suggests this isn’t the first time I’ve been overcome by a need to lash out and hurt. However, I can’t pinpoint when or why. As quickly as it appears, it vanishes and I’m back in the present. And I’m aware that if I don’t release my grip on Maggie’s throat soon, it’s unlikely I ever will. I’ll end up killing the woman who gave me life but who went on to take so much of it away from me.

Bit by bit, my fingers slacken until my hands are still around her neck, but I’m no longer putting undue pressure on it. I climb off her but continue to loom over her. She gasps for the air I’ve starved her of while I am drawing my first breaths as a new woman. I take advantage of her frailty, remove a key from my pocket, unlock the padlock, and swiftly replace the chain on her ankle with a much longer one stored under the bed.

Now I’m upright again and, grabbing her arm, I pull her from the bed and to her feet. I have never seen Maggie as weak and petrified as this and I’m surprised at how much satisfaction it brings me. I maintain enough self-awareness to recognise this isn’t how normal people behave, but Maggie is no normal mother and she has given me no choice; she has turned me into this monster. I am an extension of her.

I haul her across the bedroom and on to the landing. This second chain allows me to pull her down the staircase until we reach the dining room. I push past the sideboard and table until we reach the window that offers a view of the back garden. I clamp my hand upon the back of her neck and direct her line of vision towards the flower bed Dad is buried beneath, hidden behind the trees.

‘You let me spend my entire adult life believing Dad abandoned me,’ I yell. ‘You stood over my shoulder watching me write him letters, begging him to come back to us. You wiped away my tears and promised that I’d hear from him. And all the time you knew that he was out there because you killed him.’

‘I had no choice,’ Maggie sobs.

‘Of course you did! I was the one who had no choice because you made those decisions for me. And later, what were you thinking when you watched me sitting by what I thought was my child’s grave? Did you ever feel remorse?’

‘Yes, of course I did. I have spent every day of my life since feeling guilty about everything that’s happened to you.’