It was a beautiful afternoon in London. Sunlight spilled through the glass in the huge domed ceiling of St Pancras station as we stepped down from the train onto the shiny platform. As we walked through the doors from the arrivals area into the station, a male voice called, “Helena!” and I looked up to see a handsome, tanned young man in jeans and a white T-shirt, who was standing half way up the staircase in front of us, literally standing out from the crowd that was waiting on the concourse below. He ran down the steps and Helena also ran to meet him at the bottom. I tailed behind and watched a little awkwardly as he put both arms round my daughter and held her close, his shoulder-length fair hair falling against her neck, before extending a hand to me.
“Good to meet you, Mrs Taylor,” he said.
“Lizzie,” I told him, taking his hand. His grip was strong and warm. “Please. Don’t make me feel older than I already am!”
Sky looked me up and down with real consideration and made a “pfff” sound, before tucking his hair behind his ears. “You don’t look old at all. You certainly don’t look old enough to be Helena’s mum. And you’ve got great legs,” he added.
I automatically glanced down at my legs and up again at Sky, who was grinning like a schoolboy. He didn’t look like a schoolboy, though. He was very definitely a man. He looked much older than eighteen – older than Helena – and he was unmistakeably Martin’s son. He had Martin’s colouring – Helena’s colouring – and I recognised his features: the roman nose, the laughing hazel eyes, and the slight stubble that covered his chin. But he also reminded me of Larsen. He had the same boyish charm, the same strong masculine features and the same long hair that softened his masculinity a little and gave him the appearance of someone you could trust. I could see immediately why Helena was so passionate about him. And I could also see immediately that everything had changed, where my relationship with my daughter was concerned.
“You don’t look like Catherine at all,” I commented, a little stupidly.
“I told you, Mum,” said Helena. “He looks like me.”
Sky shook his head. “No, Helena. You look like me.”
Helena whacked him playfully across the back. “I’m the oldest, remember?”
Sky put his arm round her and started to tickle her in the ribs. “Yeah, but I’m the strongest. Remember?”
I stood next to my suitcase, not knowing where to look, as my daughter wriggled and squealed in the middle of St Pancras Station, in the arms of this handsome man that I’d never laid eyes on before. A man in a bowler hat was playing “The Entertainer” on an old piano behind us. One or two people glanced over at Helena and Sky and smiled as they passed or stopped to look at the arrivals board, and I wasn’t sure whether to be alarmed or proud.
“Shall we go, then?” I asked, after what seemed like a long time. Sky released Helena, who gave him a small shove, and they both walked over towards me. Sky picked up my case.
“No really, it’s fine,” I said, “I can carry it.”
“I insist,” Sky said, and strode off in the direction of the Piccadilly Line. Helena ran after him and caught him up quickly, while I tagged along behind.
*
Catherine was waving out of the upstairs window as we walked up the steps to the front door. Her flat was part of a large converted mansion house in a suburban street just minutes from the heart of Bounds Green, just off the North Circular Road. Bounds Green, by contrast, was very ethnic, with lovely smells emanating from Greek and Turkish food shops, which lined the pavements on the walk up from the tube. Her living room was small, but bright and airy, with high ceilings and tall sash bay windows, which stretched almost from floor to ceiling, letting in lots of light. A black cat was sleeping on the window seat. Catherine hugged me and waved me onto the sofa, which was piled with brightly coloured cushions.
Sky opened the door to the hallway and disappeared with my suitcase. He reappeared a moment later. “It’s in my room,” he said, to me. “We’re going to get something to eat. See you in a bit.” Then he and Helena disappeared out of the front door again.
Catherine sank down beside me. She looked at me and grinned and I could see her false tooth, which was a very slightly milkier colour than the rest of her teeth. I thought back to the time that she’d arrived on my doorstep with that tooth missing, and a purple bruise spreading across her cheek behind her sunglasses. She leaned forward and touched my hair. “It’s still beautiful,” she said. “You always had such lovely red hair.”
“It’s auburn,” I said. “At least, that’s what it says on the packet.”
We both laughed. “Mine’s ‘darkest brown’, said Catherine. “And I’ve probably put on a bit more weight since I last saw you.” She nodded down at her tummy, which was hidden under a white chenille blouse and a dark blue gypsy skirt.
“Nonsense.” I shook my head. “You look just the same. You look lovely. It’s so good to see you.” I wiped a tear from the corner of my eye and leaned forward to hug her again. She clung to me and rested her chin against my shoulder.
“It’s been too long,” she said.
“So. Where’s that teapot, then?” I asked. “And I believe I was promised some biscuits.”
Catherine stood up. “Follow me. The kitchen’s this way. But start talking, lady. You first. I want to know everything. And I want to know now.”
I smiled. “Okay.”
As Catherine made tea and put an assortment of biscuits onto a plate, I told her about my decision to leave England, about my arrival in France, about Helena being born and about the first months of her life, when we had lived in the rue du Faubourg St Denis, before moving out to the countryside a year or so later.
“What happened to Tim?” she asked. “Wasn’t he your boyfriend at the time?”
“He wasn’t really my boyfriend. He’s married now. To a lawyer. They’ve got twin girls. He lives in Shoreditch. Works at the Homerton. I think he’s very happy, from what Zara says. They’re still in touch and I’ve spoken to him on the phone or via email a few times, too. It all worked out how it should for him and I’m pleased. I could have taken the easy option, but I’m glad I didn’t.”
“The easy option? What was that?”
“When he found out I was pregnant with Helena, he offered to help me with her. To bring her up and be her dad.”
Catherine looked up. “There’s no chance that he actually could have been her dad?”
“I wish he had been,” I said. “Things would certainly have been easier. But, no.”
“No.” Catherine repeated. She lifted the lid of the teapot and gave it a stir. “They look so alike, don’t they? Sky and Helena?”
“Yeah. His genes even dominated ours. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised.”
“He dominated everything,” Catherine poured the tea and handed me my mug. She was silent as she picked up the tray with the teapot and biscuits and carried it into the living room. I wasn’t sure if she minded me referring so casually to what had happened all those years ago, or of how she really felt about it, deep down. Was she upset with me still? Or was she just upset with Martin, and what he’d done.
“So, what happened?” I asked as she set down the tray. “With you and him? Did you marry him?”
“No.” She shook her head. “That never happened, thank God.” She took a deep breath. “It was all great at first. After what happened. With you.” She glanced up and then carried on, hastily. ”We managed to sort that out, and move on. And then I found out I was pregnant with Sky and he seemed really pleased, the whole time I was expecting. He was really sweet to me. He’d come shopping with me and buy things for the baby. He’d fuss over me – rub my feet and stuff, cook for us, things like that. He’d talk about our future as if it was something he wanted. But after Sky was born, that’s when he started to change. It was as though he didn’t want the competition. As if Sky was taking up too much of my time...”
“They do,” I said. “Babies. It’s all consuming, especially in the first few months.”
Catherine nodded. “But he couldn’t deal with that. It was like he was really jealous. It was crazy, when I think about it, the way he acted. You’d think I was rejecting him for another man, the way he behaved. If he was talking to me, or asking me something, and Sky started to cry or wanted feeding and I walked away, he’d go mad. He said that I pandered too much to him, that I should make him wait...”
I gasped. “When he was still just a baby?”
“Yes. He even asked me to stop breastfeeding. He said it made him feel excluded. And I did, because I thought that maybe if he could feed the baby too, he would bond with him more, feel more like he was caring for him, the same as me – although there’s all the other stuff you need to do, like changing and winding, and everything, which he could have done if he’d wanted to – which he should have been doing. But, of course, he didn’t want anything to do with the nappies, and he didn’t have the patience for the winding and stuff. He liked feeding him, it’s true. At first, he would be the one to do that, all the time. But not at night, of course. He hated it when Sky cried in the night. And if he did get woken, he usually wanted... well, you know. Sex. Which was the last thing on my mind, to be honest. I was so exhausted. I just wanted to sleep, every spare minute I could get.”
“Naturally.” I thought back to the those night-time feeds, and the overwhelming tiredness that had come hand-in-hand with the true bliss I’d experienced during the first few months of my daughter’s life. A year earlier, motherhood had not even been remotely on my radar, and yet when she’d arrived, it was as though all my Christmases had come at once. She was nothing short of amazing, and I’d immediately tuned into her so deeply that we were like one. I slept when she slept, I dozed when she dozed and I nursed her with pride whilst sitting in the armchair by the window of my apartment, watching the world go by, my heart swelling with love for this little creature that was so utterly dependent on me for survival. I was devastated for Catherine that what should have been such a joyful experience had been marred by that selfish man, not to mention alarmed for Sky and the unhappy atmosphere that he’d been brought into, that had been his first experience of the world.
“He’d tell me to leave Sky crying,” Catherine continued. “He said that it was good for him, and he had to learn that he couldn’t have everything he wanted the minute he wanted it.”
I clapped my hand to my mouth, tears pricking my eyes. “That’s fine for a toddler, but not for a tiny baby!” I said. “They’re too young to manipulate you. They’re just doing what nature tells them to.”
Catherine nodded. “I know. I didn’t listen to him. I would always pick Sky up. And then he’d just start laying into me, telling me how I was weak and a rubbish mother, going on and on at me. So many nights, I’d have to listen to his rants. I’d lie there with Sky in my arms, but it was Martin that I was willing to just go back to sleep. After a while, he lost interest completely, in Sky, and in me. And if Sky cried in the night he’d tell me to hurry up and shut him up, instead of telling me to make him wait. Once, he pushed a pillow into his face and shouted at me that he was going to throw Sky out of the window if I didn’t stop him crying.”
I sat with my mouth hanging open, lost for words.
“Want another biscuit?” Catherine pushed the plate towards me, and for some reason we both burst out laughing.
I shook my head. “I’ve kind of lost my appetite.”
Catherine leaned back on the sofa. “I knew he was seeing Lindsay, by then, of course. In a way, it was a kind of relief. At least it meant he’d leave me alone. Some nights, he didn’t come back at all, and although I knew he was with her, I’d be glad.”
“Who’s Lindsay?”
“His girlfriend. He was seeing her behind my back. Pretty much the whole time, as it happens. She used to go to the Pools Complex, when he worked there. She’s a dancer.”
A memory formed in my mind of a young slim blonde woman, dressed in a neon pink leotard and Spandex tights, a woman I’d seen going in and out of the dance studio at the pool a few times, when I’d been swimming there. Then I saw Martin, leaning up against the wall next to her, in his shorts and flip-flops, his hand on her arm.
“Is she very petite? Slim, with long blonde hair?”
“Yes. Well, she’s not blonde anymore, I don’t think – more like mousy brown. Not that I’ve seen her for years. But yes, she was very pretty – and tiny too. Why?”
“I may know who she is,” I said. “I remember him chatting to a dancer at the pool one time.”
Catherine shrugged and sipped her tea. “She did me a favour. I knew he didn’t want me anymore. He just didn’t want anyone else to have me either. And I think he decided that with Sky in tow, that wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon.”
“But...” I cast my mind back to our Skype call. “I thought you said that you were pregnant again? And that he... well, made you lose it?”
Catherine nodded. “Yes. That wasn’t the end of things between us. It should have been. I should have just left him then, of course. And for a while, I did. I took Sky to my mum’s and we stayed there for over a year. But then Martin came crawling back on his hands and knees and begged me to go back with him. He’d obviously fallen out with her, although I couldn’t see that at the time. He just said he’d left her, that she didn’t hold a candle to me, that he missed me and missed Sky too, that he wanted to be a proper dad to him. He said he couldn’t stand being apart from us.
“I was pretty torn. Everything was good at my mum’s. We were settled. Sky was going to a local nursery for a couple of mornings. I’d got myself a PA job at a small ad agency in Saffron Walden and they were really good about me taking time off when I needed, and so I was even getting a bit of acting work here and there. I often look back now, and wonder why I listened to him. Although I doubt if he’d have given up, not until he’d got his way.”
“Probably not,” I agreed.
“I think I just had this hope that he would be a good dad to Sky. I wanted him to want him, you know? Deep down, I couldn’t bear the rejection. Of Sky, not of me. I don’t think I ever really understood or accepted that a man could just not want to know his own son. I wanted to give him a chance to do that – and to give Sky the chance to have a dad. Especially as I’d just lost mine.”
“Your dad died?”
Catherine nodded. “Yes. You remember he had that stroke? On your birthday that time?”
I nodded. How could I forget? If her dad hadn’t had a stroke that day, Catherine would never have left me alone with Martin and a bowl of 100 per cent proof rum and vodka punch. Not that I blamed Catherine’s father, I silently emphasised, to make it clear to her dad, who might now be reading my thoughts from his almighty perch in the afterlife.
“Well, he got a chest infection the following winter and then it turned into pneumonia. He died not long after Sky was born.”
I took her hand. “I’m so sorry, Cath. You had all that to deal with too?”
She nodded. “I suppose I was missing him. I was desperate for male hugs and attention. You know? Like you were, after you lost your dad.”
I nodded, touched that she remembered stuff like that about me, stuff that we’d talked about such a long time ago.
“And it made it seem all the more important that Sky had a dad.”
“I can understand that,” I said. “I did worry about that with Helena, that history was repeating itself, with absent fathers being the common theme. I’d missed my dad so much. Growing up without him had left such a hole in my life. And here I was, raising her without one, too.”
Catherine nodded. “Well, you did the right thing, I can tell you. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if you’d told him at the time. The two of us both...” she trailed off. She was silent for a moment and I was going to say something about it, about what it would have been like if I had told Martin about Helena, about my decision not to. But I could see that, even though she’d referred to that date more than once, Catherine was still not entirely comfortable with the subject of Helena’s conception.
Catherine sensed what I was about to say and quickly carried on. “So we moved back to Cambridge, in with him again. And then for quite a long time, it was all okay. He was good to Sky. He’d buy him toys and presents quite often, and take him to the park. He’d take him to nursery and pick him up, too, when I had to work. He’d left his job at the Complex, for some reason that wasn’t entirely clear, but I didn’t press him about it. Why rock the boat, right, when things were going so well? So, for a while he was at home when he wasn’t coaching, and he would look after Sky while I went to work. But it was always as though he was doing me a favour. When he told me about their day, it always felt like he was saying, ‘Look. Look at me and how well I’ve looked after your son’. He never seemed to have bonded with Sky; he never laughed at the funny things he did or said. He never got just how cute and funny and, well, how...”
“Unique,” I said.
“Yes, that’s it. How unique he was. I’d take Sky to play with his little friends and I’d notice how, when they said something cute, their mum and dad would look at each other and smile, and I couldn’t help but think to myself that Martin never did that. He was never proud of him in any way. He didn’t love him the way that a dad should love his child. It was always as though Sky was mine and not his.
“At first, I buried it. Ignored it. Like I said, why rock the boat? It was hard to put my finger on; I didn’t know what to say. He was looking after him while I was at work, after all. I thought to myself that some dads would object to that, being at home with the kid while his partner worked. I know my dad would have done. But as soon as I was home, he’d let me do everything for Sky. He would just hand him over and show no interest in him. It just felt like he was the babysitter, rather than his dad.
“Eventually, I mentioned it to him, asked him if he felt he’d bonded with Sky. He said he didn’t know. And then he said, ‘probably not.’ And then he said, what did I expect after I’d taken Sky away from him for a year? He blamed me! When I tried to point out that he was the one who had gone off with Lindsay, he said that I’d driven him away. It was as though everything had been my fault. He’d forgotten about all the apologies and the gifts and the effort he’d put into trying to get me back again, after I’d moved to my mum’s. It was as though he’d re-written history and everything that had happened between us. And it was now all down to me and my selfishness. Or Sky’s ‘whinging’ when he was a baby, and how I’d made him that way: a spoiled brat. That’s what he said.
“It went on like that for a while. For a few years, actually.” She sighed and shook her head. “With him being mostly okay, and wanting me, but just not really being that ‘into’ Sky. It really hurt. And as Sky got bigger, he started to pick on him. Everything he said or did.” She looked up. “Nothing he did was right. He’d come in from the garden and his shoes were muddy, he’d get shouted at. At the age of three or four! Or he’d drop clothes on the floor...
“Helena still does that,” I smiled.
“I know. So does Sky,” she confessed. “But he was only little. He’d get a real rollicking. It was so wrong.” She put her head in her hands. I patted her shoulder and she looked up again. “I feel so guilty. He was like your stepdad. Exactly like him. A bastard.”
I nodded. “I know how Sky must have felt. It’s as if you are just no good as a person. Like you are taking up space in the house. You’re literally a waste of space.”
“That’s how it felt,” Catherine said. “As if he just didn’t want Sky around. As if he wished he hadn’t been born. I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t know how to stand up to him. As always, he made out that I was the problem, that I was spoiling Sky, making him into a ‘wuss’. That’s what he said. But there was no proper parenting from him. It wasn’t even as if he tried to teach him anything or show me the right way to discipline a child. I knew that shouting like that wasn’t the way. And I knew that wasn’t how my dad had been with me, either.
“And then I found out I was pregnant again. I worried that he wouldn’t want it, and I started thinking, for the first time, about how I was going to leave. I started planning it, taking bits and pieces to my mum’s. Toys of Sky’s mainly, and some of my clothes. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about the baby. But then, one day, I did.”
“Was he angry?” I asked.
“No. Not at first. He didn’t say much. And he even seemed to feel quite sorry for me. It was a difficult pregnancy, you see.”
“Were you sick? I was like that with Helena,” I said. “I could barely get out of bed for weeks.”
“Not sick, no. I was spotting. Bleeding. A lot. Every time it happened I’d be terrified I was losing the baby. He seemed to realise how scared I was, and I suppose it made him feel good, and in control. He’d make me lie down and he’d do and say all the right things. I suppose it wasn’t a secure pregnancy. I didn’t feel sick at all, so maybe the hormones weren’t that strong. I don’t know. Maybe I would have lost it anyway. But it seemed to be going okay. Until...”
“Until what? What did he do?”
“I was around twelve weeks gone and I hadn’t had any bleeding for ages. Not for a few weeks, in fact. I honestly think that, while he thought I was going to lose the baby, he made an effort to be nice to me. He was just waiting for the miscarriage to happen. And he truly felt sorry for me, because he could see how much I wanted the baby. But then when I seemed to be blooming and things were getting better, the bleeding had stopped and I got back to myself again, he obviously felt less in control of the situation. He pretended to be happy about the baby, but I could see that the mask had slipped. One day, we were out at a restaurant. I say a restaurant; it was just Pizza Hut or something. Sky was being fussy about his food, saying he wanted icecream and refusing to eat his chicken nuggets. Then he threw one on the floor. Martin got mad and slapped him round the head. I was so shocked. I stood up and grabbed Sky and I yelled at Martin to leave him alone. We left the restaurant without paying – Martin had to go back and sort it out later – and he said nothing all the way home. But later on, he started laying into me about it, telling me how I’d humiliated him in public...”
“Even though what he did was against the law!”
“I know. I could have had him arrested. And there were witnesses. Although, I don’t think anyone else saw him hit Sky, to be honest. But the whole restaurant turned and looked when I screamed at Martin. He didn’t do or say anything back. He just wanted to get out of there with the minimum fuss. But I knew he was angry. I’d showed him up, he said. And then later, he went crazy. He grabbed me by the hair and punched me in the stomach. Hard.”
“In front of Sky?”
Catherine nodded. “Yes. In front of Sky. He witnessed the whole argument. He was hysterical. But Martin didn’t care. The next day the bleeding started again, and this time I had really bad period pains. Only, they weren’t period pains, of course; they were contractions. The pain got so bad that I had to go into hospital. They put me on a morphine drip, but I lost the baby. Well, gave birth to it. The pain was exactly the same as it was when I had Sky.
“They said there was nothing they could do. There isn’t anything you can do, in fact. If you’re going to lose a baby, it will just happen. They told me all the statistics, of course, about how it’s way more common than people realise, and that one in three pregnancies ends in miscarriage. I thought to myself, ‘Well, one in three pregnancies doesn’t end with a punch to the stomach. Add that to your statistics.’ But I didn’t bother telling them what he’d done. I was too upset, and I knew that they wouldn’t be able to prove it was what caused it.”
“So what did Martin do then?”
“He was mortified. Remember how he was when he gave me that black eye?” I nodded. “He went right back to being the model partner. Doing everything round the house. Looking after Sky. The shouting stopped, and he made a real effort. But it was too late by then. That was the turning point for me. My ‘aha’ moment. My epiphany. The moment he killed my baby, he was dead to me and he knew it. It didn’t matter how nice he was; we both knew that it was only a matter of time before we would separate. Of course, I didn’t have the energy to do anything for a while. It took all the strength I had just to look after Sky and get through each day. I’d wait ‘til Sky was at nursery and Martin was at work and I’d just go to bed and cry.”
I put my hand on Catherine’s and held it tight. I was crying openly by now, as was she. She squeezed my hand back and wiped at her eyes with her sleeve. “That went on for a few months. Martin started off by trying to help. When we spoke, he referred to it as ‘my miscarriage’, as though it was just something that happened to me, and nothing to do with him. But he tried to make things up to me and didn’t pressure me, or start a fight, when I gave him the cold shoulder, he just kept out of my way. He gradually drifted away and left me to it. I knew he was seeing Lindsay again. I waited for him to be the one to say it, that he wanted to be with her, and not me. I knew his pride wouldn’t let me leave him again. It was as if we both knew what needed to happen. So I stayed for almost a year, before he asked me to move out.”
“You went back to your mum’s?”
“Yes. Most of my stuff was already there by then. I’d been staying there most weekends – when Martin was away with the team – and not going back home for a week at a time. My mum’s house just became home. She helped with Sky, loved having him around and I don’t think Sky really noticed that we were suddenly there all the time, that we’d stopped going home. To Martin’s.”
“Did he see his dad at all?”
“Initially. For a few years, in fact. We went through the motions of contact. But I’d never let him have Sky on his own. I always insisted that Lindsay or his mum had to be there. Martin didn’t bother arguing with me, because he didn’t care that much. Anyway, he was living with Lindsay by then. He continued to see Sky on and off until he was around twelve or thirteen. Martin was okay with him, and Sky wanted to see him. Sky adored him, in fact. Martin taught Sky to swim and I do remember they spent a lot of time in the pool together for a while. But it was a fad. When Sky got to around level seven or eight and said he didn’t want to take it further, to compete, Martin lost interest. He was always breaking his promises to him, about picking him up and taking him to things. He’d say that he’d take him to a football match, or a hockey game or the cinema, and Sky would get all excited. But then he just wouldn’t show up. Sky would get so upset.”
“I’m surprised Sky wanted to see him anyway,” I said. “What about all the bad stuff? The way Martin treated him? And you?”
“He didn’t remember any of it.” Catherine shrugged. “Still doesn’t, as a matter of fact. He still thinks his dad is an okay kind of guy, and I suppose, in a way, that’s a blessing that he doesn’t remember all that stuff, the violence and everything. The sad thing is that, underneath the front he puts up, Sky thinks it’s him that’s the problem, that he’s just not good enough as a person to keep Martin’s interest. He’s tried to get Martin to love him. He’s tried very hard over the years, but Martin just doesn’t want to know.”
I sat up slightly. “But I thought you said Sky had no time for him – or any interest in him? Because of what happened?”
“Did I?”
“Yes.” I started to feel anxious. “I thought Sky hated him. You said, when we were on the phone, that he didn’t want to know him?”
“No. I was talking about Martin. I meant that Martin’s got no time for Sky. He was like a robot around him. There were never any genuine feelings there.”
“But what if Martin suddenly decided he wanted to meet up? Sky would see him?”
Catherine looked thoughtful for a moment. “Probably,” she said. “But it’s not likely to happen.” She stroked my arm. “Don’t worry, Lizzie. Sky’s over him, I’m sure of it. I think deep down he maybe still wishes that Martin would be the kind of dad that he deserves, but it was his decision to stop going there. He said there was no point, that Martin would only be interested in him if he became an Olympic swimmer or something. And to be honest, Sky wasn’t that good.”
But Helena is, I thought.
Catherine turned to me. “I can see how worried you are, Lizzie. But I really don’t think you need to be. Martin wasn’t interested in Sky and – don’t take this the wrong way – I don’t think he’ll be interested in Helena either. He doesn’t like kids.”
“Yes, but they’re not kids anymore,” I said. “They’re young adults. Interesting people, who are achieving things that he can be proud of, that he may want to take credit for.”
Catherine looked thoughtful again for a moment. “Well, Sky’s eighteen, and Martin’s made no attempt to get involved with his life,” she said. “If he was going to do so, he’d have done it by now.”
“Are you quite sure he hasn’t?” I asked, thinking about the text messages I’d read on Helena’s phone, in which Sky was asking about my relationship with Martin, as if he were some normal man that I’d been dating.
“Yes.” Catherine smiled. “Me and Sky tell each other everything.” She gave me a quick sideways glance. I knew she was thinking ‘unlike Helena and you’, and I couldn’t argue with that, not anymore. Catherine continued, “There’d be no reason for him to keep something like that from me. I’ve never stopped him seeing Martin. And I don’t think you have anything to worry about either, really Lizzie. Martin’s a psycho when you’re living with him. I pity Lindsay. I don’t know how she puts up with his moods and his crazy behaviour. But it was me Martin had the problem with, not Sky. He’s a control freak where women are concerned. But he’s got no reason to hurt Sky – or Helena for that matter.”
“He bullied Sky when he was a kid,” I pointed out. “He hit him. You said you wouldn’t let him see Sky alone.”
“When he was little,” Catherine insisted. “When he needed protecting.”
“So you don’t think he needs protecting any longer?”
Catherine shrugged. “No. You’ve got to let them go. Live their own lives. Right?”
I leaned forward and put my head in my hands. Why was I starting to feel like the one who was a control freak? An overprotective and irrational mother – is that what I was? If Catherine thought Martin was no threat after what she’d been through, then had I got him pegged wrong too? After all, she was right that being abusive within a relationship was one thing; it didn’t necessarily mean that he’d harm his daughter. I was aware that my experience of Martin was all based on what had happened a long time ago, and that to a large degree I was reliant on Catherine for the updated version of him.
Then I thought about the way that he’d smiled at me the last time I had seen him, as he’d driven off with Catherine safely strapped into the car seat next to him, secure in the knowledge that he’d given her every good reason to hate me. He’d thrown a hand-grenade at our friendship and had then got us to dance like puppets, while he’d sat back, laughing, and pulling the strings.
“What about his mind games?” I asked. “The way that he likes to win?”
“What d’you mean?”
I hesitated. Whatever Catherine chose to reveal to me, my gut feeling was that she didn’t want me to talk about Martin in any other context than that of her relationship with him. ‘Martin and I’ had barely existed. Clearly, we’d existed long enough to create Helena. But that was all. I chose my words carefully. “Well. I think he was jealous of our friendship. It was as if he wanted you all to himself. He saw me as a threat.”
Catherine nodded. “I think you’re right. He didn’t like me seeing my mum either. He didn’t like me having any other friends, come to think of it, or anyone else in my life that might one day mean more to me than him.”
“Right.” I leaned forward and took both her hands in mine. “So what did he do? He caused an irreparable rift between us. Deliberately. You said on the phone that you couldn’t believe that you’d let me go, because of him. But I don’t think you had free will. I think he made sure of it, that you would choose him and that you would wind up hating me.”
“How?”
“By raping me,” I said.
Catherine slid her hands out of mine and stood up.
I carried on, regardless. “And, then, by telling you that it had been my fault, that I’d seduced him. That it was all down to me.”
Catherine turned away from me and walked over to the window. “That’s not what happened,” she said quietly.
“It’s not what he told you happened,” I said. “But I was there.”
Catherine picked up the cat and held her to her shoulder. “She needs feeding,” she said from behind the cat. The cat looked surprised, but licked her ear.
“No she doesn’t. She was sleeping. Catherine, put the cat down, and let’s talk about this properly.”
The cat jumped out of her arms and headed for the kitchen. Catherine followed and I got up too, but she turned in the doorway, as if warning me back.
“Do we have to discuss this?” she asked. “The damage is done. I chose to forget it, not to get upset about it. I thought you weren’t going to bring it up.”
I sighed and sat back down on the sofa, leaning my head against the back of it, so that I was looking at the ceiling. I loved these high ceilings. Cornices. I missed cornices, I thought. There were no cornices in my house. Was this Victorian or Georgian? I couldn’t remember the difference. Either way these houses were really stylish and totally defined London for me.
Catherine appeared in the doorway. She said, “He may be violent and a bully, but he’s not a sex offender.”
I sat up straight, like a kid in front of a teacher. “Why are you defending him?”
“He was my partner,” she said. “He’s not a pervert. Don’t you think I’d know?”
“Don’t you?” I asked. “Did he never do anything...”
“No. If I said no, that was it. He never forced himself on me.”
“He didn’t force himself on me, either.” I shook my head. “He was cleverer than that. He waited until I was virtually unconscious and then tried to pretend what he’d done was okay.”
“You can’t have been that drunk.”
“Why are you defending him?” I asked again, and stood up.
“Someone’s got to. He’s not here to do it himself.”
“So you’d rather believe his story? You’d rather believe that I betrayed you and jumped into bed with him. You’d rather believe that about our friendship, than that... that he date raped me?”
“Date raped?”
“That’s what it was. Okay, so we weren’t on a date. But it’s the same thing. He came round to my flat after Giles had got me hopelessly drunk, he kicked Giles and the others out, and then he had sex with me. That’s what happened, Catherine. I didn’t know anything about it. I still don’t! I just woke up in the morning and there he was. I didn’t seduce him; I didn’t do anything to him. He saw an opportunity and he took it. I didn’t have any say!”
There was a loud noise in the hallway. The front door opened and Helena and Sky burst into the room.
“God, I’m stuffed,” said Helena, falling onto the sofa.
Sky switched on the TV. “Helena. Minecraft. Come on.”
Helena jumped up again. “You’ve got an X Box? Cool.”
Catherine and I remained exactly where we were standing and said nothing while Helena and Sky seated themselves on the sofa side by side, headphones on and remotes in their hands, like two pilots flying a plane.
“I need a bath,” said Catherine, politely. “Will you excuse me, Lizzie?”
“Of course,” I said, equally politely, as she nodded and disappeared from the room.