What Lies Between Us(86)

Now the only sound comes in the form of his desperate wheezes and his clothes brushing against the carpet. I turn to my daughter. ‘Nina!’ I shout, but I can’t get any more words out before she hits me too with the cuff. She wields it clumsily and it strikes my shoulder first, but I dodge it before it can cause too much damage. But it’s second time lucky when it hits the side of my head, full on. My ears ring like church bells and the room becomes murky and threatens to darken further. I fight to remain conscious. I’m aware of Nina crouching over me but I can’t focus on what she’s doing. Stay awake, I tell myself. Stay awake and help Dylan. He is now on his front, legs stretched behind him, using his elbows and hands to crawl slowly away from both of us.

As my sight returns, my head is already pounding but somehow, I clamber to my feet. But when I try to approach Dylan, I am too unsteady and fall into the wall. He is in a much worse state than I am and yet somehow he has found the strength to begin pulling himself down the staircase, step by step. Once he has managed the first four, he loses his balance. He slides down the rest, hitting his head against the newel post before coming to land at an awkward angle at the base. I catch a glimpse of his face and his eyes are wide open but he is no longer blinking.

‘Dylan!’ I move towards him but only get so far before I tumble face down to the floor. A searing pain shoots up my leg from where I must have torn something inside. After hitting me with the cuff for the third time, Nina reattaches it to my ankle.

‘Look at what you’ve done,’ I bellow, and turn to glare at her. She is motionless, watching us in satisfaction like a gamesmaster who knows her opponents have no chance of winning but is allowing them to go through the motions.

And now it’s my turn to lose control. I grab Nina’s leg and start punching it and biting it and clawing at it like a wild animal, until she wrestles free and kicks me full in the face. There’s a sharp cracking sound and it feels as if the front of my head will explode. She’s broken my nose, I’m sure of it. I taste blood in my mouth and it trickles down my throat, choking me.

‘You have killed your son!’ I continue, then my head starts spinning again, my hearing becomes distorted and my vision blurs. I want to pull myself to my feet and launch at her again but I can barely make her out as she clamps my head with her hands and drags me to the top of the first-floor staircase. I think she’s about to push me down it, but instead she continues to drag me along the landing until we reach the second-floor staircase in my section of the house. Then she slams the partition door shut and locks it.

‘Nina,’ I scream. ‘Nina! Let me out of here!’

I’m still flat on my back and can’t see what I’m doing, but I feel around the wall and scratch at the egg boxes, bending my fingernails backwards as I try to tear them off. I pound at them with my fists, knowing that I can be heard from the hole I’ve made, but no longer caring.

My need for freedom has come at a horrendous expense. Nina has killed Dylan, as I always feared she would. And in begging for his help, I am responsible too. This is just as much my fault as it is hers.

Nina can no longer control herself. When she murdered her father, he deserved it. But Dylan didn’t; he was innocent. And so was Sally Ann Mitchell.





CHAPTER 72





MAGGIE


TWENTY-THREE YEARS EARLIER


Elsie is puzzled at the sight of the swaddled newborn on the sofa in the basement. She looks at him and then at me. ‘Who’s this?’ she asks. ‘And why are you down here?’

I just about manage to release the words ‘My grandson’ before the tears fall. And then I blurt out the whole sorry mess. My guilt erupts like a volcano. And too much of it has built up inside me to spare her anything. From Nina’s first pregnancy to her abusive father, and why I’d told Nina that her baby was born dead: it all comes out in the wash. I’m circling the edge of a nervous breakdown and I need help.

By the time I have finished, Elsie has picked Dylan up and is cradling him. I look at them both, paralysed by fear of what I’ve just done and what is to come. I’m ready for Elsie to read me the riot act and tell me what I know already: I’m out of my depth and I should contact the police. But sometimes, people have a way of surprising you.

‘If it were my Barbara, I think I might’ve done the same thing,’ she says. ‘When your baby is born, you make a promise that you’re going to put them first and do what is necessary to give them the best life possible. Rightly or wrongly, that’s what you’ve done for Nina. And now you’ve got to do the same for your grandson.’

‘I have to get him away from here.’

‘I know, and we will.’

‘We?’

‘Yes, I’ll help you.’

‘How?’

‘I might have a way. I know a family who could help.’



Three days after Dylan’s birth and I’m in Alistair’s car.

Nina assumes he took it with him when she thought he’d left us, but I move it from street to street each week about half a mile from the house. It’s far enough away for her not to spot it.

After stalling it for a second time at traffic lights, I keep my foot on the brake and rev the accelerator. I become aware of the scent of Alistair’s Feu Orange air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror. It has long since dried up, yet the smell lingers in the fabric of the seats. I don’t want to inhale anything that reminds me of him, so rip it from its chain and toss it behind me.