People LIke Her(73)

Let me explain all this carefully. You deserve that, at least, I suppose.

The propofol was to knock you out so that I could get you upstairs (albeit with one long rest on the landing and a lot of huffing and puffing), get you into bed, get you hooked up on the drip. The drip is to deliver the midazolam. That was the stuff that was the hardest to get hold of. The stuff I had to smuggle out bit by bit, one partly used discarded vial at a time, the stuff I have been stockpiling in the fridge for some time now because I need it to make this whole thing work. It is no wonder they have to keep a close eye on it in hospitals. It is strong stuff, midazolam, a powerful muscle relaxant and antianxiety medi cation. That’s why we give it to people before they have operations. Not just to knock them out, but to suppress their natural instinct to panic, to struggle, to flee.

In an ideal world—if this were all happening on TV, or in a movie—I would just have set you up and left you there, on the bed. Unfortunately, in the real world, for all the reasons I have already explained, that’s not the way things work. I don’t want to kill you, after all. And you can’t just sedate someone that heavily and leave them unsupervised for that long. For this to work, for this to turn out the way I am intending, I am going to have to be here to keep an eye on you. Not all the time, naturally. I am not sure I could stand it, being in the same room the whole time, given what’s going to happen over the next few days. I’ll be downstairs, mostly, or outside, pottering around in the garden. It’s only about once every six hours I’ll need to pop back and check your blood pressure, make sure your breathing is okay, that your airways are not in danger of occlusion. At intervals I will want to measure the level of CO2 in your blood. Every so often I’ll need to dose you up again, adjust your drip. Oh, don’t worry, Emmy. I am—or at least I was—a professional. You’ll be very well looked after. I have some oxygen right here in case you need it. I am just about to fix you up to the finger probe, and then we’re all set.

Did I mention you’ll be in my daughter’s room? Did I mention you are in my daughter’s bed?

Were you awake, were you chemically capable of panic or even serious concern about your future, I know the question you would be asking. Don’t worry, I would say. Bear will be right with you.

Now that you are all set up I am just going to go down and get him out of the Moses basket and bring him up. Don’t be afraid. I am not going to do anything to hurt the baby. I am going to bring him up, and I am going to put him here right next to you. He’ll be right next to you on the bed the whole time. It’s a big bed. It’s all set up for cosleeping. He’s not going to go anywhere. I won’t be doing anything to the baby at all.

I reckon a couple of days will be long enough. Three, tops. I hope you understand, Emmy, that I am going to be taking no pleasure in any of this. No doubt there are going to be some moments of doubt, some struggles with my conscience. There will be times, I am sure, when the impulse to stop all this becomes almost overwhelming, when I am seconds away from going upstairs and telling you it is all over, when I am gripping the arms of my chair to keep myself in it. I have brought earplugs, some CDs and cassettes. Things I used to listen to when Grace was a child, mostly. ABBA, the Beatles.

It will be the dehydration that does it. An adult human, a healthy adult human, can go for up to three weeks without food—but they’ll only last three or four days without water. A child? They’re unlikely to survive half that.

And all the time you’ll be lying right there next to him.

I reckon I’ll give it four days. Just to be on the safe side. Then I’ll give you one last dose of the midazolam, a half dose, a twelve-hour one, and unplug everything and fold up these sheets of paper and write your name on the outside and leave them on the table downstairs and I’ll go.

It should be morning when your eyes open. It’s always lovely, the light in that room as the sun comes up.

Understand this, Emmy Jackson. I am not evil. I am not mad. I don’t want to witness your child’s suffering, or cause him unnecessary pain. I don’t want to be there when he dies; I don’t even know if I am going to be able to bring myself to look at him. I am not an unfeeling person. I can imagine, all too easily, all too painfully, what it will feel like to be you at that moment, to wake up groggily, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling, and realize you are in an unfamiliar bed, and wonder with a start where the baby is, and reach for him.

I have no desire to witness what will happen next, to observe the moment your heart breaks, the moment you realize that every happy memory you have of your child will now be almost unbearably painful, forever marked by loss. The moment you begin to piece together what he went through in those last few hours, those last few days. The moment when you begin to howl and you don’t know if it will ever stop.

I can remember all those feelings. I can remember seeing my daughter go through each of them in turn.

Sometimes, because I believe people should face the consequences of their actions, I have forced myself to picture what will happen next.

To imagine you groggy, distraught, stumbling downstairs, tripping over the edge of the carpet.

To imagine you clutching something to your chest. Something wrapped in a blanket but oh-so-cold; something you can’t imagine ever letting go of.

I remember Jack telling me how long the ambulance crew took to persuade Grace that she would have to loosen her grip on Ailsa, just for a minute. I can remember Jack telling me how worried Grace was that she would be cold, would feel cold. Kept asking him to fetch blankets, screamed at him when he just stood there. I can remember him telling me about how Grace was babbling to Ailsa even as she finally handed her over, was telling Ailsa not to worry, that Mummy was here, that everything was okay.