What Lies Between Us(72)

CHAPTER 62





MAGGIE


TWENTY-FIVE YEARS EARLIER


I want to scream but when I open my mouth, nothing comes out. Not even air. I move my hand to turn on the light switch but I’m shaking so violently that it takes several attempts.

When the light shines upon Alistair’s body sprawled across the floor, it’s worse than I imagined. The right-hand side of his skull is concave and has a small piece missing. The hole is filling with blood and trickling over the side and into his hair. I look around and blood is everywhere. I pinch myself; I must be dreaming. This isn’t happening. Oh, but it is. His eyes are saucer-wide and inert. He is most definitely dead. There are streaks across the wallpaper, spots on the Artex ceiling, and it’s seeping into the carpet and creating a red circle around his head. Next to him is a golf club with a metal head that Nina used to hit him with.

Finally my voice returns. ‘Nina!’ I yell. ‘What have you done?’

I don’t know what to do. I should run downstairs and call 999 but something stops me. It’s my daughter. The steel of the club briefly reflected street light into her eyes with the second blow, revealing a deadened rage of the like I have never witnessed before in Nina or anyone else. What dreadful thing must have happened to instigate it? I steady myself against the wall as I move towards her room, my legs threatening to fold beneath me.

Now my baby is sitting on the edge of her bed, catatonic. Her eyes are wide open but almost lifeless and her cheeks, forehead and pyjama top are splattered with blood. I choke back my grief and just about manage to say her name aloud. She is non-responsive. ‘Nina,’ I repeat, but still she remains mute.

My daughter is not evil; she is not cruel. I have never encountered a bad bone in her body. So why would she want to hurt her father? A wicked thought springs to mind. It’s the worst explanation. No, it can’t be that; I don’t even know how I could think such a thing. I want to believe that I’m tired and confused and my imagination is running away with itself. Alistair and Nina are so close, but he would never do anything he shouldn’t. I know my husband inside out and I wouldn’t have married him if I’d had even an inkling he was . . . he was a . . . I can’t even think the word. I’m wrong, I have it very, very, wrong. I try and cast it aside but it lingers . . . it’s growing . . . I have given it life and now it’s expanding.

‘My baby, my poor, poor baby,’ I sob. ‘What has he done to you?’

She offers no response.

I give in to gravity and fall to my knees, wrapping my arms around her, feeling her rigid limbs against me and her almost imperceptible breaths on my neck. I never want to let her go, but I know that I need to put this right. I need to think. What do I do first? I have to wipe the blood and her father’s evil from her skin.

I help her to her feet but it’s as if she is running on autopilot. To reach the bathroom, we are forced to step over Alistair’s body. I don’t want her to see him again, but she has retreated so far into herself that there’s little chance she is registering anything.

I guide her into the bath, strip off her bloody pyjamas and wash her with warm water from the shower hose and use an orangey shower gel to take the metallic smell of blood away. She allows me to clean her without comment or conflict. I avert my eyes from her body and pray that Alistair hasn’t damaged her permanently. I sit on the edge of the bath as I dry her, help her into fresh bedclothes and guide her back into her bedroom. I lay her down under the duvet and remain by her side until eventually her eyes flicker and she falls asleep.

It’s only when I close her door behind me that I ask myself whether I should have already called for help. I know it’s what I’m supposed to do, but I’m terrified as to the further psychological damage it could do to my already fragile child. I cannot watch as a police car takes her away for questioning or an ambulance carts her off to a psychiatric unit. Besides, in my haste to make her clean again, I have washed away the evidence. But perhaps that was my intention?

I have made such a mess of this already. I lean against the door and slide to the floor, my hands covering my mouth so neither the living nor the dead can hear my sobs. I have never felt guilt like this before. Nina might be thirteen but she is still my little girl. I should have known; there must have been warning signs that I didn’t want to acknowledge. I have let her down as badly as her father has. What if I have lost her forever? Or what happens when she wakes up and remembers what she or Alistair has done? I don’t know how I’m going to deal with either. All I know for certain is that I cannot allow this one night to shape the rest of her life. I have to make this better.

I run around the house grabbing every towel and tea towel we have. With Alistair’s heart no longer pumping blood around his wretched body, he has stopped bleeding out, but there is still a hell of a mess in the hallway. I have to face him but I can barely bring myself to take him in. I see flecks of something white in his hair and I don’t know if it’s bone fragment or brain. I fight the urge to vomit.

I return to the landing and place the towels across the floor. As they soak up the blood, I drag a duvet from the spare room and spread it next to him. I roll Alistair on to it, tuck it snugly around him, then go on rolling. Just doing this much helps; with him hidden away, I could be rolling up a carpet. When he’s done up tight, I set about wrestling packing tape around and under his body like a spider might with a captive insect. Only when I’m sure the duvet is sealed do I attempt to drag him downstairs. He is at least three stone heavier than me and it takes all my strength, interspersed with many breaks, to shift him. My muscles strain and burn as we move, the last thing we’ll ever do together. As his head hits each bump of the staircase, the reality of what is happening right now threatens to derail me.