Maddie had continued to open her work emails although the urgency to do so was fading. She still received some – all the general ones that went out to everybody in the department – and the occasional one from a colleague, mostly asking if she was okay. She hadn’t checked her emails since Friday.
Two emails of interest. One from Erin, the psychologist, one from Geneva Hopworth. She opened Erin’s. Progress report on Lawrence Reilly, once upon a time, her most despised client. Now of intense interest. Erin said they were cautiously optimistic about the meds. Lawrence said he’d gone an entire evening just watching television. The meant, Maddie knew, an entire evening without his gross and disturbing fantasies. A scrap of hope for the bedevilled man.
Then to Geneva Hopworth’s email.
‘Hi Mrs Brooks!’ the email said. ‘Do you still live in Kingston? I’ve been thinking about what you said about the new murder and the man I accused. Maybe meet at the weekend for a coffee? My treat this time. Best, Geneva.’
It had been sent late on Friday. Maddie cursed the luck. The weekend was well gone, spent with Caroline in Oxfordshire.
She re-read it. ‘The man I accused’, not ‘The man who abused me’ or even ‘The man convicted of…’. Did the girl have some doubts?
‘Hi Geneva,’ Maddie replied. ‘I have been away for the weekend and only received your invitation for coffee just now and, yes, I still live in Surbiton, just south of Kingston. I would love to meet up again. But I do have access to trains and I also have my own transport, so name a place and I will be there.’ She hesitated. Should she suggest after work today? Tomorrow? No, keep it cool. ‘Would next weekend be a suitable substitute?’ Cool but not cold. Nothing to scare her away.
She looked at how Geneva had signed off and typed ‘Best wishes, Madeleine Brooks.’ If this came to pass, she resolved to invite Geneva to call her Madeleine. Just a little more formal than ‘Maddie’ but infinitely better than ‘Mrs Brooks’. She pressed ‘send’.
Putting aside the temptation to continue working on Henry’s case, Maddie set to doing the chores she’d neglected by going away for the weekend. Laundry, putting away a variety of clothes, books, papers and several pairs of shoes and realising she’d need to vacuum. Yet again she found the unmistakable evidence that Jade and/or Wayne ate crisps in front of television.
Next was a clean-up of the kitchen including several meals’ worth of dirty dishes and a burnt frying pan with the remains of who-knows-what thoroughly stuck. She put it to soak with fingers crossed.
Enough! Time for some changes.
Okay. They – Jade and Wayne – needed to take regular responsibility for at least one dinner each every week. Neither could cook and it was about time both learned. And it would remove at least one duty from her own shoulders even if she had to teach and supervise for a while. Yes, meals could be planned each Sunday for the week; she’d do five, Wayne and Jade one each. For a start anyway.
She’d do the shopping so the ingredients were all there. No excuses.
She ran up to the computer and produced a form with Week of … as the header for the first column filled in with days of the week, and Maddie, Wayne and Jade along the top of their own columns with empty blocks to fill in with what each planned. It felt assertive and, yes, therapeutic to do it. She printed the form off and placed it prominently on the kitchen bench. Things were going to be different around here. Starting now.
Maddie checked her emails again straight after lunch. Yes! Geneva. She held her breath as she opened it.
‘Hi Mrs Brooks! I live in Kingston (with my parents still ) but I’d rather we didn’t meet where my mum could see me. She thinks I’ve completely erased that whole episode from my memory. I wish! So I’d rather meet elsewhere. How about the Centre Court shopping mall in Wimbledon? There’s a café on the upper level in the mall right by the station. Say 9:30 Saturday? (Way too early for any of my mum’s friends to be having their elevenses!!!) Best, Geneva.’
Maddie knew the coffee shops in the mall by Wimbledon station. She sent a quick reply agreeing to the time and day and specifying the café. Send.
Perfect.
But when she went outside to wrestle with the worst of the weeds growing around the terrace, she plunged into despair. Wayne. Was he really thinking of having an affair? The woman must be young, given that haircut and the hair dye. An older woman wouldn’t care. And had he lost a bit of weight off his incipient beer belly?
She tugged at the weeds with renewed vigour. Once she had a decent pile, she sat back on her heels. Putting the world to rights. A basic part of her existence. Whether it was figuring out what happened to young Geneva or tidying her garden, or, dammit, putting everyone on a schedule, that’s what kept her going.
She had to think through how she was going to handle the Wayne problem. Find out more, for sure. Visit him at his studio? They had an unspoken agreement – he didn’t show up at the Probation Offices and she didn’t drop into his studio. Somehow, such an agreement had evolved over years. Decades. And, now she was thinking about it, she’d had no hand in deciding this should be so.
Who would know what he was up to? She realised she had virtually no relationships with any of his friends or fellow musicians. Wayne socialised during the day. She was aware of that mainly because of the many times a café entry on their credit card bill appeared. Yet, he was always home for dinner. He watched television in the evenings, sometimes with her, sometimes with Jade, but mostly alone while she and Jade did their own things. Jade doing homework and now studying for her exams or texting her friends in her room; Maddie in her home office, lately working, but before that, doing her emails – always several from daughter Olivia – and reading while curled up in her superbly comfy chair in her office with its excellent reading lamp.
She wrestled with a tall weed about to seed. She stood, pulling with all her weight. The weed gave way, snapping off at its base. Maddie cursed. Its roots were intact. She sat down to tackle smaller weeds, those she knew she could handle. But somehow the thought of those viable roots solidly sitting out of sight was disconcerting.
She’d sworn she would never again be in a situation where she lost control. And this instance was too close to home. Far too close.
She was fifteen when her mother had discovered her father was having an affair. Maddie had arrived back home after school to find her mother crying in the sitting room and her father shouting as he packed a bag in their bedroom.
Maddie desperately wanted to interfere, to stop them but didn’t know what to do. She knew her mother would hate Maddie seeing her like that. And her father was shouting. Best keep away. She felt her mother’s eyes on her back the entire time she dashed up the stairs; she safely arrived at her bedroom without her father seeing her.
She’d flopped on her bed, her fingers in her ears. In spite of that, she could hear her father. "Damnable woman! You can’t just let well enough alone, can you? You have to make a big production out of it. But I’ll be damned if I can’t have a little happiness in my life.” And so on.
After her father left, she crept downstairs and made her mother a cup of tea. But when she brought it into the living room, her mother was clutching a tumbler full of scotch.
“You have the tea, dear,” her mother had managed to say. “I need something stronger.”
Her mother had spiralled down into a depression fuelled by lashings of alcohol leaving Maddie to cope on her own, do most of the housework and cooking and be the only support her mother wanted. She saw her father only rarely after that. He appeared at her wedding, she well remembered, and got maudlin with the drink served. By then he’d remarried, only a year or two later to be involved in another messy divorce.
Maddie didn’t care. But she swore she’d never be in a situation where she had no control ever again. And, mostly, that’s how she’d lived her life for the next thirty-odd years.
Suddenly Maddie was overwhelmed her own marriage was in jeopardy. Tears, for the first time, filled her eyes. No one was around. No need to pretend. She let them flow. Sitting back on her heels, unseeing eyes fixed on her pile of weeds, gardening gloves on, all alone.