She was sworn in and took her seat on the stand. Close to the judge’s right hand, far from Finn, the accused. Another design feature cementing might and right.
His barrister, Jack Ferguson, stood. ‘Mrs Brennan, tell me what happened the day your son died.’
Bridget shuddered and began. ‘He was on the kitchen floor reading his favourite book and I left him to go to the bathroom.’
Finn squeezed his eyes shut. Just a short retelling, that’s all. A confirmation of what he’d said. He willed her to keep it simple.
‘I was away from Toby for perhaps five minutes,’ Bridget was saying. ‘In that time he left the kitchen and somehow entered the pool area.’
‘What happened when you realised he was missing?’
‘I went outside to look and saw the pool gate was shut, so I didn’t think he could be in the pool area. I couldn’t see him in the garden. I was calling him. I ran upstairs and looked in his bedroom. Then I ran along the hall and looked in our bedroom. You can see the pool from our window. That’s when I saw he’d fallen in. He was face-down in the water. Not moving.’
‘What did you do?’
The room was silent. Finn had to open his eyes. Bridget was crying. She looked across at him and swallowed.
‘I knew I had to get him out, and had to get Finn. I ran downstairs and outside into the pool area. I started screaming for Finn. He was working in his studio. I knew it would be hard for him to hear me. I ran into the water to get Toby, and I kept yelling for Finn and eventually he heard me and came out. We got Toby out of the water and put him on the ground, and I told Finn to read out the instructions for resuscitation.’
‘Had you ever done rescue breathing before?’
Bridget nodded. ‘I trained in first aid when I had my first child. Fifteen years ago. I’d done it in the training. Never on a person.’
Finn sank back into the day. Peering at the sign, his hands on either side of the dancing words, the dreadful pictures he’d never noticed before, trying to read ahead. Bridget’s screams for help echoed around him, sounds stretching and distorting like he was hearing underwater. Parrots squawking in a tree above his head, their racket piercing. This was beyond them, beyond any printed instruction. He was running to phone the ambulance in curious slow motion, nightmare steps, his legs refusing to work properly. Stabbing at the zeros with his thick fingers, somehow making himself understood. The voice on the line telling him to go back outside giving further instructions for him to relay to Bridget.
Kneeling. Bridget gasping and breathing into Toby, breathing for both of them, for all of them. Toby’s small hand, limp, outflung.
The tinny voice in his ear: You need to stop rescue breathing and begin chest compressions. Put the heel of your hand on his breastbone. You’re going to do thirty quick compressions, counting aloud.
Dropping the phone. Taking Bridget’s shoulder and pulling her back. Toby’s blue lips. Placing his hand on Toby’s chest. Its chill.
‘What else happened before the ambulance arrived?’
Finn remembered it then, the impression that agony must have driven from his mind. His palm flat on Toby’s chest, he felt Toby hurtle out of his small body in a rush. The full force of him punched into Finn, and he felt, for an instant, that he could hold his son, stop him from leaving.
Before the thought was finished Toby was gone, leaving a turmoil of emotion. Confusion. Fear. And, weirdly, joy. A rush of excitement, as their boy leaped into the universe – unconstrained, free.
And then the first paramedic trying to wrench the gate open, and the look on his young face and the way he tried to hide it and the little groan of despair that escaped him and how Finn leaped for Owl Sentry’s lever and the paramedic ran to Toby and the second paramedic followed and Finn pulled Bridget out of the way and held her as she keened and wailed and he knew it was too late and too late and too late.
‘How do you think Toby got into the pool area?’
Bridget took so long to answer that Finn opened his eyes again, just as Ferguson prompted: ‘Mrs Brennan?’
‘I don’t think we’ll ever know. The gate was closed when I got to the pool. Perhaps the device malfunctioned earlier when I had a swim and didn’t shut properly. Perhaps Toby found some way to set off the device himself. He was a child you couldn’t hold back. When he wanted to go somewhere or do something, he found a way to do it. My husband blames himself. But we don’t know what happened, or even if the gate was open. All I know for certain is that I walked out of the room and left Toby unsupervised.’
Finn blinked. Looked at Jarrah, who dropped his head. Looked at Bridget. For the first time she was really looking back at him.