Jess
The first person to greet me when I got to Drew’s parents’ house was Flossie, the Cocker Spaniel that Drew and I had taken on after her owner was detained. I would’ve loved to have her with me at Cory’s but her enthusiasm for humans was a little too much, possibly overwhelming for small children. If she were a kitchen appliance, she would be a microwave full of popcorn, spinning about on the point of bursting. As I was only a short-term lodger, Ron had offered to take her on for us until I moved back to the flat. He was assuming that Drew and I would just pick things up where we’d left them. That was an unwelcome reminder that I’d have to work out what to do about Flossie on a more permanent basis.
‘Hey, girl.’ I knelt down beside her and enjoyed a vigorous round of yips, licks and demands to be stroked. ‘You have no dignity, you know that?’
Dignity-smignity, or at least that was what I thought she said with her full-on body shiver.
‘Yeah, dignity is overrated.’
Initial fireworks over, I went into the house. I could see from the hallway that Glenda was finishing up preparations for the meal while Ron served drinks to Amy in the living room. I looped my bag over the bannister and left my jacket on top.
‘We’re in here!’ called Ron.
Glenda appeared in the doorway and beckoned me over. She was a woman I once cast in my mind’s strange fairground as the fortune teller, scarves, kohl eyeliner and blood-red nail varnish, but in actual fact she was a very grounded individual. Perhaps she was more Russian peasant woman of the Tolstoy kind, surviving the winter on cabbage and still having a smile to share with the neighbours as the invaders died in the snow outside. I was thinking she wanted a quiet word but she merely handed me a tray of hors d’oeuvres. It might’ve been a subtle message that she still thought of me as family whatever else might be happening.
‘Wow, you’re really pushing the boat out.’ I popped one in my mouth. Maybe that was the wrong image to employ, considering my week. ‘Pâté?’
‘Mushroom. Amy’s vegetarian and allergic to nuts.’ She nudged the little triangles of toast into order so my scavenging wasn’t so noticeable. ‘Thank you, love.’
‘For what?’
‘For coming. She could really do with a friend.’
‘I thought I was being a messenger-cum-detective?’
‘That too.’ She nudged me towards the front room.
I had the odd sensation of having a part in some Mike Leigh play about suburban couples – Jessica’s Party. The decor in the living room was a little dated. Glenda still believed in chintz.
‘Here’s my girl!’ said Ron. He was below average height and neat, like what I imagined the Fat Controller’s slimmer brother might look like. ‘I see Glenda’s roped you in to work already?’
‘Hello, Ron.’ I put the tray down on the coffee table and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Missed you.’
‘And I’ve missed you too, love.’ He kept his arm around me, a gentle corral. ‘Amy, as you’ve probably guessed, this is Jessica, our Drew’s partner.’
I now turned my attention to the woman sitting nervously at one end of the sofa. Her strung-out looks and plain grey dress made an odd contrast with the riot of flowers on the upholstery. Her dark hair was lanky and tucked behind her ears. Dark shadows ringed her eyes – how Neil Gaiman’s Coraline would look grown up. I’d seen that face before – on myself when my own life reached a particularly low point.
I held out my hand. ‘Hi, Amy. Cory sends her love.’
She didn’t shake, just waved from the security of her retreat. ‘Hi.’
I obliged by making my outstretched hand into an awkward wave. ‘Great to meet you.’ Hardly that, but this was difficult for us both, like two new kids at school told they were going to be the best of friends. ‘How do you know Glenda and Ron?’
She frowned as if I was trying to trip her up. ‘I live across the road.’
‘Oh yes. Glenda did tell me that.’ I needed to find some easier ground for us to share or we were never going to get anywhere with helping her. ‘You’ve got a little boy, Pawel?’
‘He’s perfectly safe – I’ve got a babysitter.’
Whoa, I wasn’t accusing her of neglect but she’d gone right there. ‘I’m sure he is. Probably running the sitter ragged and avoiding going to bed if he’s like any normal boy of his age.’
She took this as an insult. ‘He’s a good boy. He’ll go to bed when told. Nine-thirty.’
‘Then you’re very lucky. I was a horror – never did anything my babysitters told me.’ I had been so used to jumping to every order from my father, I’d always acted up with the sitters who to me just weren’t that scary.
‘I can believe that,’ said Ron, trying to prolong the jokey tone. ‘Drew was the same but devious about it. He’d say he was going to bed but you’d find him hours later, pillows under the covers to make it look like he was asleep, and he’d be round the corner in his den playing games well after lights out. Jessica, what would you like to drink? Gin and tonic?’
Is that where we were now? Drew making a pillow-heap to stand in for himself in our relationship while he moved on?
‘Sounds perfect.’ I sat at the other end of the sofa from Amy so that she didn’t feel I was cross-examining her. ‘It’s been one of those weeks.’
‘Oh yes, the boat incident. Drew told us.’ Ron handed me the drink. ‘Our Jessica stumbled over a body in Oxford on Sunday night. Poor man.’
‘That was you?’ Amy unfurled a little from her defensive huddle. ‘How distressing.’
‘Yeah, it was grim.’
‘We were talking about it at the shoot – the man came from the college we’re using. Do you think we’re in danger?’
‘I don’t think you need worry – hardly something that will become a habit – you know, bodies turning up. No matter what TV dramas suggest, Oxford is a peaceful place. I think I was just unlucky.’ I took another triangle. ‘You should try these – they’re lovely.’
‘Vegetarian,’ she said, as if stating her nationality.
‘These are fine for you – mushroom.’
Ron took one. I could tell from his grimace that he was missing the savour of liver or duck but he chewed manfully. ‘Not bad.’
Amy reluctantly took one and nibbled a corner, just to be polite.
‘Do you want to tell me about your situation now or after dinner?’ I asked.
‘Could we get it over with now?’ she asked with a look at Ron.
He got the hint. ‘I’ll see if Glenda needs any help.’
Once we had the room to ourselves, Amy didn’t immediately begin to speak. Her fingers were knotted in her lap and she was squeezing very tight. In fact, she felt like a wound spring about to leap from its compression if I wasn’t careful. How to smooth the way, reduce the tension a little?
‘OK, shall I go over what I’ve got so far and you can fill in or correct any details?’ I waited for her nod. I summarised what I’d learned, including Glenda’s information about Angelica’s father and what I’d learned about her shared workplace with Roman. ‘Did you meet through work?’
‘Actually, no. I got him the job. He was looking for work when we first met.’
I remembered now that Glenda had mentioned a support group for people who had lost their partners. Roman seemed to have got quite a lot out of his relationship with Amy – a home, a job, a son, and now he was trying to run away with all of that and more.
‘Anything you’d like to add?’
Amy twisted her fingers so hard I could see the red marks she was leaving. ‘You need to understand that Roman is a monster. Oh, he’s charming when you first meet him. He makes you believe his version of events so that you no longer know if up is up or maybe it is down like he says? I didn’t realise this was what he was doing to us all until it was too late. Once he left, it was like a fog lifting. I’d been trapped inside his mirror-world for the eight years we’ve been together.’
‘When did he go?’
‘Four weeks ago, just as the school term ended.’
‘He took Angelica with him?’
She gave a jerky nod. ‘They said they were going rock climbing together in the Lake District. I think they did actually go. I didn’t hear anything – usually they’d send photos or messages but I noticed that Angelica had left the family WhatsApp group – she does that when she wants to punish me. I only started to panic when they didn’t come back.’
‘They contacted you then?’
‘Roman did. Eventually.’
‘And did he say why?’
‘Oh yes.’ Her laugh was hollow. ‘Apparently, while they were away, Angelica finally told him of the years of abuse I had subjected her to. In his story, I’d been inventing illnesses for her, treating her like an invalid, playing mind games until she began to believe she actually was ill.’
‘Munchausen’s syndrome,’ I supplied.
‘There’s a name for it?’
‘Yes. It’s a well-known claim of illness either on the part of the person or by proxy for their child to gain attention.’
‘So he might’ve read about it and got the idea?’
I shrugged. ‘That’s possible.’
‘But Angelica was ill on and off during her childhood. Roman knows this. Cory can tell you how I struggled. Angelica was premature and that caused issues for some years – granted that was before Roman came along, while John was still alive, but I made no secret of it. I told him how much easier a baby Pawel was by comparison. Then she had a difficult time when her father died – sleeplessness, bedwetting, mood swings and withdrawal, all to be expected with grief when a child can’t process what they’re feeling. And at the age Pawel is now—’ She broke off. ‘It does sound quite a list.’
‘Go on. I’m listening.’
‘At Pawel’s age, she developed asthma, so you can see we were in and out of hospitals and clinics, but I promise you I never, ever invented a symptom or encouraged her to believe herself ill when she wasn’t. Then she got to secondary school and I thought we’d come through all of that and that she was feeling so much stronger in herself these last few years. I relaxed too soon because then she got an eating disorder and we were back at the doctor’s again.’ She paused and shook her head. ‘And Roman had the gall to tell me this was all me and never Angelica. But he was right here!’
I looked across the road to the house opposite. A little boy was jumping on a trampoline in the front garden. ‘Is that Pawel?’
She got up, went to the window and smiled for the first time as the boy did a somersault. ‘Yes. Little monkey, isn’t he?’
‘And how does he get on with his father?’
Amy shrugged. ‘They’re fine together – kick a ball about, go cycling.’ She frowned, realising something for the first time. ‘I suppose all their activities are action-based and outdoorsy. Roman subscribes to the old-fashioned view that emotions and soft stuff are my area and his job is to teach Pawel to be a man.’
‘But you’ve cut off contact?’
She raised her hands in a helpless gesture. ‘What else can I do? The man has already taken my daughter and no one has lifted a finger to help me get her back; I can imagine if he gets Pawel, he’ll never let him go.’
It sounded a pretty poisonous Mexican stand-off they’d got themselves into. ‘And how would you describe Angelica’s relationship with Roman?’
‘Now or before?’ She straightened a family photo on the windowsill – Drew, his sister and his parents all wearing ridiculous Christmas jumpers.
‘Before?’
‘If you’d asked me two months ago, I’d’ve said that they were fine – friendly. They liked doing activities together but that was as far as it went – nothing that worried me.’
‘And now?’
‘I really don’t know. I can’t understand it. My relationship with Angelica had its ups and downs like any teenager, but she would talk to me. She’d say which boys she thought cute, or what she was planning to wear at her friends’ parties. And then overnight, I became the wicked witch from whom she had to be saved. All I can think of is that Roman was slowly turning her against me and I didn’t see it.’
‘Was there a trigger?’
‘I don’t know.’ But she did – I could tell from the tone. I waited her out. ‘I think it might’ve been the last visit to the GP. I was worried Angelica was losing weight again – heading for anorexia. She really didn’t want to go but I made her. She sat in the clinic like I was holding her at gunpoint. Our GP was talking about referring her to a specialist. The next weekend Angelica went climbing and that was it.’
I wondered why Roman didn’t back the mother up for taking the sensible step to get help for an eating disorder – why he swung so quickly around to the nuclear option of keeping Angelica away and why had the girl gone along with it? He had to have been angling for this outcome for a while – chipping away at the foundations so that this final doctor’s visit made the tower topple.
There was no delicate way of putting this. ‘Do you think there is anything between them – anything sexual?’
Amy buried her face in her hands. ‘Oh God, I hope not but I have to ask myself that, don’t I? Why else would she not see me – her mother? What have I done to deserve this? I’ve tried to be the best mum that I can be – tried so hard after John died when I just wanted to die myself.’ Her anguish rattled around the room like a trapped bird – let me out of this, let me out.
‘I’m really sorry, Amy. It must be difficult.’
She sniffed and wiped her eyes on her forearm. ‘But the worst is that Roman is trying to get Pawel from me.’
There was a car drawing up outside. Amy turned to the window and watched on tenterhooks until she verified that it was just one of the neighbours. Pawel was still bouncing, obviously happy as he tried an ambitious back somersault. He saw his mum watching and waved. She waved back.
‘You think Roman might try and snatch him?’
A teenager came out – the babysitter – and took Pawel in for dinner. I couldn’t help sharing Amy’s relief that he was no longer exposed to the street but inside four walls. We both slumped a little.
‘Think? I know he would if he could. But he’s trying the legal route at the moment. He’s started court proceedings. I’ll have to grant him access, I know that. Pawel needs his father – I don’t want it to be this way. But I’m worried he’ll work on Pawel and persuade the social services that his story about Angelica is true and that Pawel isn’t safe with me. I’m worried – worried sick – that I’m going to lose both of my children.’ She wrapped her arms around herself. ‘Do you know what that feels like?’
‘I can’t claim I do. I don’t have kids.’
‘It feels like I’m dying. You’ve got to help me.’