The Churchill Gardens estate was seen as a beacon for new-age London, once upon a time, full of hopes and dreams for a capital still recovering from the Blitz. Its thirty-two blocks, some of them Grade II listed, stand within walking distance of both Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament, yet remain the homes of relatively ordinary people going about their daily lives, with the eye-wateringly expensive houses of Pimlico and Belgravia within shouting distance. The whole area is a fascinating mixture of classes, backgrounds and lifestyles.
Within this mixture lives my father. And his second wife, Amanda.
I decide to get off at Sloane Square station and use the short walk past Chelsea Barracks – now gleaming penthouses and multimillion-pound apartments – to gather my thoughts and decide how to play this. It is quite likely my father will try to guilt me into an apology. I haven’t seen him since The Poison Stream was published, and if it hadn’t been for his persistent attempts to get in contact, I wouldn’t be here at all. His text message threatening to turn up at my flat was the final straw. The thought of my little haven of a flat being stained with his presence is too much for me to stomach. Which was why I agreed to come to his neck of the woods. All the way on the District line to Zone 1. Even though there are only about fifteen miles between us, it’s enough for us to live perfectly separate lives.
I’ve been hoping Amanda would be out, but the ‘we’ll be in and waiting’ at the end of his last email put paid to that. It doesn’t really matter much. She’s no match for me any more. In truth, I don’t think she ever really was. I just need to make sure I hold my nerve.
I’m dying for a cigarette. Discovering my handbag empty, and regretting not picking up the new pack on the kitchen countertop before I left, I take a detour to stop off at a small Sainsbury’s Local. I purchase a pack of Lambert & Butler King Size and pause outside to light up.
‘Need any help, love? Want a light?’ It’s a young man, watching me struggling to light my cigarette. I hate it when male strangers call me ‘Love’ but right now I’m so desperate for a smoke, he could have shouted anything and I’d have let him light me up. I look him up and down – he’s got a builder’s outfit on, with the logo of a construction company on it. ‘Having a nice day, love?’ he asks. The question startles me. The fact he’s spoken to me at all feels oddly inappropriate.
‘None of your business,’ I reply, and turn to leave.
He stops leaning up against the window of the shop and starts to walk with me.
‘Are you following me?’ I say, baffled by his behaviour.
‘Nah, I work there,’ he says, pointing at an expanse of space cordoned off by a dark green wall, bestowed with the logo for the property development site. The sense of smugness about it makes me gag.
‘How much would I have to spend to buy one of those flats? The ones you’re building?’ I ask him, out of interest.
He laughs. ‘Millions, I think. Millions and millions. I heard prices start at five. For the cheap ones.’
‘Christ,’ I say, shaking my head. I leave the young man behind me as I walk off. At the junction at the end of the road, I think of the day Dad, Mum and I came to London to see the tourist landmarks. I can still vaguely remember it, although the memories are weak and poorly defined. The terrorist attack that took place on that day, where I’m standing right now, took the lives of two people and injured many soldiers approaching the then-functioning soldiers’ barracks. It didn’t have as big an effect on me as some may have expected – too many things happened later in my childhood – but I’ve come to appreciate, as I’ve got older, how it may have had a bigger impact on my mother. What should have been a nice day out with the family turned into panic, filled with sirens and running and screaming. A horrible situation to experience for anyone, especially someone of a naturally nervous disposition. She was always the type of person who feared the worst, whose sense of ‘badness’ and ‘evil’ was always hyper-reactive. That day may well have served as stark, terrifying proof for her that the world can be a wicked place, where people really do do terrible things.
I choose to continue my walk by going through this last stretch of Belgravia and over the bridge across the railway tracks into Pimlico. Within minutes I’m heading onto Lupus Street and I see the towers of flats rising up, dwarfing the posh townhouses that surround them. He’s in there, somewhere, I think to myself. In there with her. They’ve been living here in Pimlico for about ten years now, with me only visiting on one occasion, about five years ago, when I gave in to my dad’s pleas and agreed to meet up with him for a cup of tea on the anniversary of Mum’s death. Mercifully, I hadn’t been present on the night she’d taken her own life, but Dad had. She’d been sent home from whatever facility she was in because they’d run out of space. She hadn’t been deemed well, just the ‘least unwell’ person there, and so she needed to go home and await reassessment. She hanged herself with the rope from her dressing gown, a piece of material so old and flimsy it apparently broke as she swayed and writhed and choked. But the damage had been done.
Fifteen years on, the anniversary meetup with my father hadn’t gone well. Even without Amanda present, we’d still managed to start fighting; I screamed all the words I’d saved up since our previous row.
I ring the buzzer at the entrance, stepping round a group of boys nearby. They’ve got bikes, but they’ve left them on the pavement in a big metallic pile, blocking the walkway, while they crouch on the floor hacking apart an old football with what looks like a kitchen knife. One of them is smoking and a strong scent of cannabis finds its way over to me. I ring the buzzer again, unnerved by the sight of them, and finally the door buzzes and I can get in.
They’re on the fourth floor, and the lift looks a little dodgy, so I walk up the narrow flights of stairs, which wouldn’t look out of place in an old hospital. I feel my legs protest at the harsh incline as I pass each floor, the lingering smell of the drugs still strong.
I locate the correct door after a few false starts and knock loudly. It’s opened instantly. And there he is. Standing before me. It’s rather extraordinary how much a man can age in five years.
‘Hello Dad.’
He takes a quick intake of breath, looks at me, hard, then says, ‘Hello, Kitty.’
I can’t breathe. I take a step back, away from him, then step forward again. He’s walking away now, down into the flat, but I can’t bring myself to step inside. After finding the journey from the underground station relatively easy, I’m rather amazed how quickly my own resolve and sense of determination can crumble.
He’s out of sight now. He must have gone into the kitchen or living room. I force myself to inhale and breathe calmly, then step inside.
There’s certainly no scent of illegal drugs in this place. I can smell something cooking – maybe bread, something baked and inviting – along with freshly made coffee. It’s warm and comforting – the opposite of how I currently feel. They’ve made a home here. Him and her. They may have weed-addled youths on bikes with knives outside their door, and the building itself is hardly a looker, but it’s surprisingly nice inside. Nicer than they have any right to.
‘We’re through here,’ I hear Dad call, so I follow the sound of his voice and then see him, standing in a lounge complete with armchairs, faux fireplace, large television – and her. Amanda, sitting on the large two-seater sofa. She’s already staring directly at me the moment I walk in and greets me with a simple, ‘Hello, Katherine.’
I stare at her for a bit, taking her in. She, too, has aged in the last five years, but not as much as my dad. And it looks like she’s making a bit more of an effort, too – she obviously has had her hair dyed, for one thing, and it looks impressively natural. And the bright red lipstick is still there, although her mouth isn’t forming a wide smile today. It’s pursed and tense, geared for a fight.
Because I can smell coffee, and I see Amanda is already drinking from a mug, I automatically presume Dad’s prepared some for my arrival; but he sits down without offering. ‘I wondered if you would come,’ he says, sitting straight-backed next to Amanda, who is sipping at her drink.
‘I said I would.’ I swing my arms a little, not sure what to do with them, and eventually he nods at the seat opposite and says, ‘Go on, sit.’
Annoyed with myself that I waited for permission, I look away from them both and my gaze falls on the coffee table between us, its surface bare. Except for one thing. I glance up at Dad and see that his gaze has also settled on the book in the centre of the coffee table.
‘Please could you tell me why you did this?’
The copy he has still looks quite new, although a few tell-tale lines in the spine tell me it’s been read. Every time I see it in physical form, I feel a wash of disorientation. Seeing my dreams, my nightmares, my memories, crafted into something so definite – so physical – always makes me feel a bit shaky. It was probably the fusion of catharsis and hate that did it. Working through my issues by putting them onto the page, only to shoot them through with a strong dose of anger and resentment. When I’d first seen the finished book out in the wild – in a Waitrose in Upminster – I’d sat down on the floor and started to cry. It caused a bit of a stir; the store supervisors were unsure what to do with the sobbing woman by the small books bay. I’d heard an announcement amidst the fuss about ‘cleanup needed in aisle four’ and wondered if they were referring to me. Did I need to be cleaned up, like a smashed bottle of merlot? Swept into a dustpan and sent out with the rubbish? It had taken me a while to get myself together and be helped slowly to the in-store café for a complimentary hot chocolate. I’m still not sure if they believed my sobs of ‘it’s my book … my book’, or if they just thought I was insane.
I turn my head to Dad now, who is waiting for an answer to his question. I knew he’d ask it, and I had my line prepared, but it still takes me a few moments to get the words in order. ‘It was an act of self-therapy.’
Amanda lets out a harsh laugh of disbelief. ‘Oh come off it,’ she says.
Dad lays a hand gently on her knee, and she closes her mouth, biting back whatever else she was about to say.
‘It was,’ I say firmly. ‘It was necessary.’
Dad puts his head in his hands. I hadn’t expected him to get emotional this early on, but here it is, happening.
‘Katherine … I don’t know how you expected us to react to this … this … to what you’ve done. But you must surely understand that we’re hurt. And angry.’
I shrug. ‘Well, what’s new about that?’
Amanda shakes her head and half smirks, half grimaces. She’s always hated me. Even when she was nice to me, when we were first introduced at the cottage all those many years ago, I’m sure she was just pretending. And over the years, all need for pretence has gone. I think it was at my mother’s funeral twenty years ago when it all came to a head – when our loathing for each other crystallised into an intensity so combustible, it couldn’t be contained any longer. We’d been by the graveside, watching them lower the coffin in. I didn’t have a clue why we were burying her rather than cremating her. Dad probably had some bonkers rationale for it – I never asked.
It was my fault that the fight had erupted. I couldn’t help myself. As we all turned to walk away, the cold December air torturing our skin, I’d said to them both, ‘Well, at least you got what you wanted.’ Even now I’m older and wiser, the memory of Amanda’s fury still startles me. It was the very definition of the word ‘incensed’. I haven’t seen anything quite like it, before or since. Not even at their wedding, years later – the last time I saw her. I’d made up my mind not to go, then got slightly drunk the night before, staggered onto an early-morning train the next day without bothering to get changed into anything nice, turned up at the chilly old church in Putney just as the last guests were sitting down, and sat in the front row (‘Budge up! Thanks!’). I had proceeded to enthusiastically eat a large sharing bag of Galaxy Counters, rustling the packaging the whole way through the vows, meeting the mortified looks from Dad and Amanda with a blank face.
Dad returns now to his straight-backed position, his hands clasped together in his lap. ‘You mentioned in an Evening Standard magazine article that the book was the story of your own childhood. That the inspiration for it is autobiographical.’ He says ‘inspiration’ like it’s a dirty word.
‘Well, that’s true. It is.’
He raises a fist, slams it down on his lap and winces. It must have hurt. But the look of pain is mingled with something else – pure fury. He’s struggling to hold it in. ‘It’s a lie, Katherine. A lie.’
I don’t say anything. I have a feeling it’s best to let his anger burn out.
‘A wicked, nasty lie,’ says Amanda.
‘I just don’t know what prompted you to do such a thing,’ Dad continues. ‘I mean, there are things in here that are … well … abhorrent.’
‘Things I saw,’ I hiss at him. ‘Things I saw and never forgot. Things a child should never have to see.’
‘Well whose fault is that?’ says Amanda, bitterly. ‘I have to say, some of this garbage was rather enlightening. What a poisonous little busybody you were as a child. According to your own words, you disobeyed our instructions to stay away. Do you think we wanted you to see what you … claim to have seen? Don’t you think we took measures and precautions to avoid unnecessary exposure to anything too disturbing?’
This makes something snap inside me. ‘Well it didn’t fucking work, did it?’ I’m borderline shouting, heat rising in my cheeks. ‘No one took any care of me. Nobody bothered to explain what was happening. It was only natural to be curious about what was going on. Your “measures” and “precautions” amounted to banishing me to my room or telling me to roam an unknown, sprawling forest on my own for hours on end.’
She waves her hand as if I’m talking nonsense. ‘It was a different time,’ she says, rolling her eyes in exasperation, like she’s dealing with an insufferably stupid child. ‘Back then kids went off to play and just came back for tea. It was simple, it was normal, it was just what kids did.’
I gape at her. ‘Around neighbourhoods they knew. Not in a strange, intimidating forest. I think you’d have to go back to caveman times to find a community who’d think that was acceptable.’
Dad’s got his face in his hands again. ‘Kitty, please—’
‘And can you stop calling me that. I’ve told you before. I’m not a child any more.’
He ignores this and carries on. ‘We did what we thought was best for your mother. She was unwell. She needed help.’
I lean forward now, keen for him not to miss a single word. ‘She needed proper psychiatric help. Not amateurs playing dress up, hosting fake, dangerous “exorcisms”.’
Amanda stands up suddenly at this and goes over to the window. The late-afternoon light is fading now into that grey dusk November usually brings at around 4.30. I can see the glistening dance of lights along the Thames, and the impressive, domineering presence of Battersea Power Station on the other side of the river.
‘We were psychologists,’ Amanda said. ‘The whole thing would have formed an integral basis of our thesis if … if things hadn’t got out of control.’
‘Out of control?’ I look at her in consternation, although she’s still got her back to me. ‘It was unethical. Abusive. Criminal.’
She whips around now to face me. ‘Criminal? Are you sure you want to go down that road? You’d know all about criminal, wouldn’t you? And we helped you, we supported you, we stood by you to make sure the truth wouldn’t ever come out. We had you and your mother’s best interests at heart.’
‘You and that buffoon you worked with allowed him,’ I point at my father, who is avoiding my gaze, ‘to rape her while she was tied to a chair in a state of psychosis.’
I see the tears falling down Dad’s face now. ‘It wasn’t like … it wasn’t like how you wrote it.’
‘Nothing in that book happened how she wrote it!’ Amanda shouts.
‘She was tied to a chair and you … you …’ I struggle to finish the sentence.
Dad wipes away his tears and sighs. ‘She wanted to have sex. She’d been trying to get me to do it for days and Dennis – Father Tobias – he seemed to think going along with it might help. She was never tied to a chair. She could have got up at any time she pleased, but she didn’t, did she? She loved it. Laughing all the way through. But I really am sorry you had to witness it, Katherine. If we’d known, it would have explained so much of what happened.’
‘You had a chance to do things properly. You weren’t stupid. You knew you could have sought help through legitimate means.’
‘Do you know what her GP said to us when we tried to get her help? He said he thought that her work at the local travel agents’ three times a week had sent her into a permanent state of stress, typical of career women who tried to juggle families and jobs, and that she should probably just stay at home. He blamed the rise of feminism for the alleged increasing rates of women having breakdowns and he said the female mind just couldn’t cope with it. Then he gave her some pills which she flatly refused to take and that was that.’
I have my hands balled into fists listening to this. ‘You could have pursued other avenues of help. You could have stood your ground, demanded she be seen by psychiatrists.’
‘And have her hauled up in some institution, crawling up the walls. I’ve seen those places. I saw when I was just nineteen what they did to my mother. I wasn’t going to do that to Marjory.’
I let out a sharp laugh. ‘But it did happen to her, didn’t it? All of it. Just later, once you two had fucked her up more than she was already. I remember what it was like after we got back home. She started to forget who we were. She’d withdrawn so far within herself after what you’d done, she forgot her own world, her own existence.’
As I say this, I have a vivid flashback to the final day at home before Dad sought proper psychiatric intervention. It was probably just over a year, maybe two, since our time in the forest. I’d come home from school to find the windows of the lounge smashed, dripping with blood from where she’d crawled out of them. The police had found her near the Dartford Crossing, hammering on car bonnets, trying to climb up to shout at the terrified passengers within. That was when Dad gave in. He’d collapsed on the floor by the stairs and sobbed. And so began my mum’s stint on psychiatric wards, only to be sent home some years later, not better, not cured. Just with suicide in mind.
‘I was just trying to care for her,’ Dad says to me now. ‘I just wanted to do what was best.’
‘And were you caring for her and thinking of her best interests when you went off shagging other women?’
He shifted in his seat, his mouth clenched. ‘There weren’t other women.’
‘Just her then?’ I don’t bother diluting the nastiness in my voice, the hatred that’s starting to rise to the surface.
I see Dad glance over at Amanda, who is still looking out of the window with her arms folded.
‘Amanda came to me at a time in my life when I didn’t know if I could carry on. She offered me tenderness and comfort. She understood that I loved your mother, but over time she and I found our own love too.’
‘She used you. That’s all she was doing. Used you to get near her … her specimen. Her case study.’
Amanda whips around. ‘If that were true, if all those vile lies were true, why would I still be here now? Why would I have stuck through everything with your family – all your dramatics when you were young, every disaster that’s come our way? I’ve stayed and I’ve been grateful to be married to a man as kind and understanding as your father.’
‘Maybe,’ I say, anger shaking my voice, ‘it was always your plan to send her off to some asylum once you’d had your fun and games, and claim her husband as your prize.’
Amanda gapes at me, her face pure, white-hot fury.
I get up before she can speak again, feeling a sudden need to leave. Back out on the street away from both of them. ‘I can’t do this,’ I mutter, gathering up my bag from where I’d dropped it on the carpet.
‘Not so fast,’ Amanda says. ‘We haven’t even got started on the real reason we agreed to meet. What we actually need to talk about here.’
I stand still where I am, half turned, ready to walk out the room. I know what she means.
‘You painted us as murderers, Katherine.’ Dad says it quietly, sadly, a galaxy of pain threaded through the words. ‘And you’ve been telling everyone that it’s true.’
I can feel my tears starting now. ‘I haven’t. I’ve made it clear the book is first and foremost fiction. And nobody knows who you all are, anyway. We have different surnames now. We don’t live together. And it’s not like you have high and mighty reputations that can be damaged as a result of it.’
‘It matters to us,’ Dad says. ‘Just … tell us why?’
I sniff loudly, trying to find a tissue in my pocket. ‘It felt … just.’
‘Just?’ Amanda’s face has gone white, her eyes wide. ‘It’s the opposite of just. After everything we did for you. Making sure you could live a normal life; paying for your education away from the whole mess you created; making sure nobody ever found out the truth of what happened out there; protecting you from every difficult question—’
‘I saw the look on your face that day,’ I cut in. ‘I knew you were planning something. I knew you were going to do something to her.’
‘You spiteful, hypocritical little bitch,’ Amanda hisses at me.
Dad gets up and stands in front of Amanda, as if she might run at me. ‘Enough.’ He looks at me, hard and unblinking, his eyes still wet with tears. ‘Katherine, we beg you: do another interview with some magazine, or post something online saying you made the whole thing up. It will be better for everyone. I don’t think you realise the danger you’re in. People might make the connection between what you wrote and …’
He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t need to. ‘The ending I wrote,’ I say, trying to keep my voice slow and calm, ‘is representative of what you put me through. I know it isn’t entirely accurate. But it gets across the magnitude of the experience. And,’ I wrestle with how to say this, but there’s no good way to put it, ‘it worked better. Narratively speaking. It felt like a good climax to the story.’
‘A good climax?’ Amanda shrieks. ‘Is that what you call it? It’s nothing but vicious lies. Lies from a girl who’s never got over her own mother’s suicide and can never forgive herself she wasn’t there to save her.’
‘How could I have been?’ I shout at her, crying properly now. ‘When you’d packed me off to that awful school, barely able to speak, barely able to comprehend everything that had happened during those weeks!’
It’s too much. I’ve had it. I can’t handle any more. I pull my bag and coat close to me and walk out of the lounge and back down towards the front door, wishing I’d never come. I should have just let Dad turn up at my flat and try to hammer down the door. I could have just hidden under my duvet and pretended he didn’t exist.
Back outside on the pavement, the remnants of the dissected football remain – bits of material and fluff drifting along in the cold winter wind. Somewhere out on the main road there are blue lights flashing, and as I walk towards them, I see there’s police tape across the other side of the road, near a primary school. I cross over to see what’s going on and a police officer walks into view. ‘I’m sorry, I’m going to have to stop you – there’s been an incident. Are you a resident around here? Do you need access to one of the flats?’
I shake my head. ‘No, no I’m just … visiting someone. Have visited. I’m going home.’
She nods distractedly and walks over to someone on the other side of the street, where the police tape continues. They’re filming on their mobile phone.
I walk along the sectioned-off area, keeping slightly back, until I see what has caused all the excitement. A body is lying on the ground, with paramedics crouching round it. Another paramedic is running back to the ambulance parked nearby. The body is a girl. She has colourful red waves of hair, and a pale, young face. And there’s blood. Lots of it.
I feel dizzy all of a sudden and, seeing a bench in a patch of public garden space a little walk away, I go over to sit down. It’s freezing and the bench, though dry, feels like a slab of ice. I take my cigarettes out, but after a whole minute of scrabbling about in my bag, I can’t find my lighter. So I just sit there, feeling the cruel wind dry the tears on my face, while more police vans and people in forensics gear arrive with briefcases and gather around the crime scene. The girl looks so young. Probably only eighteen or nineteen.
A life gone. A life wasted.
I grow so cold, sitting on that bench, that I get to the point where I no longer notice my trembling, or the numbing feeling spreading across my skin. Or the police officer coming over to speak to me.
‘Hello, can I speak to you for a moment?’
I look up at her.
‘We’re talking to people who may have witnessed the violent incident over there,’ she nodded back at the crime scene. ‘Did you happen to see what happened?’
‘No, sorry,’ I croak. ‘I came along after … sorry, I can’t quite think about things … very clearly … right now.’
The police officer says nothing to this. But she does sit down next to me.
‘Do you think I committed the murder?’ I ask.
‘No,’ she says. ‘We’ve arrested the person we believe to be responsible. But I’m interested as to why you’re sat here watching a crime scene from a bench on a cold evening like this.’
I sigh. ‘I wrote a book about my childhood and now my parents hate me. Well, parent, singular. My mum’s dead.’
Whatever she was expecting me to say, it wasn’t this. Even though I’m not looking at her, I see out of my peripheral vision that she’s tilted her head a little.
‘You’re not upset because you witnessed what happened across the road?’
I shake my head. ‘No. Just about me. My life. Things that happened. And things that didn’t happen.’
The police officer stands up. Places to go, people to see, it seems. Can’t waste too much of the taxpayer’s money talking to screwed-up writers on benches. ‘It’s very cold. I don’t think you should sit here for much longer. Does anyone live nearby that I can call for you?’
I’m tempted to laugh at this, but manage to contain myself. Nothing about this is very funny, anyway.
‘I’ll be fine. I’m going home now.’ I get up off the bench and make a show of zipping up my coat properly and checking I’ve got my bag and scarf.
‘Well, so long as you’re OK,’ the cop says, then she starts walking away back towards the crime scene.
I take one more look at the activity on the corner of the street. Then I walk away, back through the estate towards Lupus Street and up through Pimlico towards Victoria Station. I just need to get home. Rest. Sleep. Forget.
Just as I’m about to cross the road to the entrance of the London Underground, my phone sounds with a text. It’s from Dad. I glance at the lock-screen preview of the message.
Because you stormed off I didn’t get a chance to tell you that …
I open up the home screen and tap on the message in full. I read every word. And then I’m sick all over the street, right outside the entrance to the musical Wicked, groups of people waiting for ticket returns dodging round me, looks of repulsion on their faces. If only they knew what I’d done. They’d understand my reaction then. In fact, they’d probably be surprised I hadn’t thrown myself under a bus on my way up Wilton Road.
Stumbling over to the boarded-up entrance of a closed-down Argos, I huddle in the doorway and read the message again. Every single word is like a knife to my heart.
Because you stormed off I didn’t get a chance to tell you that Adah’s aunt has been in touch. I don’t know how she tracked us down, but she sent me a letter. She’s read your book. She wants to talk to you. She says her number is 0722124475. She lives in Glasgow now. Please get in touch with her. Try to explain why you did this – for her sake, even if you can’t for us.