The Lies We Told(41)

‘Hannah,’ Doug said, calmly. ‘Stop this. Stop right now. We know that you pushed Toby.’

Her eyes darted to me and then back to her father. She folded her arms. ‘No I didn’t!’

‘Yes, Hannah,’ he said. ‘You did, and I know you’ve hurt him before.’

She looked like the child she was at that moment. Thwarted. She stood, barely four feet tall in her Winnie the Pooh slippers, her hands balled into fists. She screamed, suddenly, running to him and pounding at his belly. ‘Stop it, Hannah,’ he said, holding her at arm’s length, his face red. ‘Stop it right now. I want you to tell me why you’ve done this. Why did you want to hurt Toby? Hurt us? We’re your mummy and daddy and we love you.’

‘Well I don’t love you. I hate you! I’m going to tell everyone what you did! I know what you did and I’m going to tell on you! I’m going to tell the police!’

Doug flinched at her words and I saw the triumph that flashed across Hannah’s face. I stepped towards her. ‘Good,’ I said, as calmly as I could. She stopped and stared at me in astonishment. ‘You do that. You tell the police what you know, and your father and I will be put in prison – and you will go into care. Do you know what that means?’

She hesitated, watching me intently, the look in her eyes so familiar; so eerily old beyond her years: assessing, calculating.

‘It’s where children go when they don’t have a mummy or daddy to look after them any more,’ I continued. ‘You will be sent to a children’s home, with lots of other children, where you’ll have to do what you’re told. You won’t have any of your things, none of the nice food you like to eat. It’ll be like school, all day every day, with grown-ups making sure you follow all their rules. Do you want that, Hannah? Really?’

‘I don’t care,’ she said, but I could hear the uncertainty in her voice. ‘I hate you. I hate you and Daddy and Toby. I don’t want to live here anyway!’

‘If that’s what you want, then go ahead,’ I said quietly. ‘Go ahead, Hannah, tell whoever you want.’

There was complete silence for a moment, my eyes met Doug’s across the room. And then, all at once, I saw the fight go out of her. She sat down at the table and sullenly filled her bowl with Shreddies. We had called her bluff, and, for now, at least, it seemed to have worked.

And so began an uneasy truce; a watchful, distrustful co-existence, during which we stuck to our promise, never leaving Hannah alone with her brother for a moment, using a constant, exhausting cycle of punishment and reward to get her to go to school and keep her behaviour under control. And there was peace for a time. For five years, in fact, until she was thirteen.

At the age of eleven she went to the nearest secondary school, the same one all the kids from the village went to, and though she had no friends, neither were there any more incidents of bullying or violence. She had no hobbies, no connection with the world beyond her love of television, something that I would worry about incessantly – I still loved her, you see, back then. So when she showed an interest in computers we were pleased, saving up to buy her a PC for her bedroom. I thought it could do no harm; when she spent more and more time alone in her room, I told myself that it was a good thing she’d found something she liked doing.

We never gave up trying, I want to make that clear: we never stopped trying to reach her, to make her feel loved and wanted. But the truth was she didn’t want our love. And when you’re met with hostility or indifference over and over it becomes almost impossible to keep on trying. My priority was my son, to make sure Hannah never had a chance to harm him again. Her spending her free time in her bedroom made that easier, I’ll admit.

I’ll always wonder I suppose if she was secretly planning what she went on to do. I like to think not; I like to think that she was happy, in her own way, or at least content during that time. But, truthfully, I think I’ve always known that my daughter is only ever really happy when she’s hurting others. If I’m honest I think, back then, she was just biding her time.

Our one joy during those years was Toby. Our funny, sunny little boy. As a pre-schooler, despite what she’d done, he would follow Hannah around like a baby duckling, his face lighting up whenever he saw her. But her active, clear dislike of him eventually took its toll and by the time he was five and she was eleven, he barely acknowledged her.

We rarely went out as a family; instead, either Doug or I would take Toby by ourselves, but despite everything, he grew up to be a happy, kind and loving little boy. We were extremely close, he and I. He told me he loved me every day, made me presents while he was at school. I loved him so much.

I remember him saying once, ‘Hannah hates me. She hates you and she hates Daddy.’ By then my heart had started to become less sensitive. ‘Well, Hannah is Hannah,’ I said. I didn’t try to hide it or deny it any more. ‘Her eyes are funny,’ he said. ‘They scare me.’ There was nothing I could say to that. He was right: there was a quality there, an absence I suppose you’d call it, that you didn’t want to dwell on for too long.

There was one incident that has always stuck with me. When she was twelve, a new neighbour popped round to introduce herself. She came in and I made us both a cup of tea. I remember feeling so pleased, because the rest of the villagers ignored us, more or less. When she left, I said goodbye to her at the door and turned to find Hannah standing on the stairs, watching us. She saw me notice her and made her way to the kitchen to get herself a glass of milk. I thought nothing of it at the time, but later that day while I was in my room I heard the sound of her voice.