No Escape (8 page)

‘Strangers?’ Lizzie echoed softly.

‘Prostitutes.’ He saw the devastation in her face. ‘Lizzie, it was just as repugnant to me.’

‘I doubt that very much.’ Her voice shook.

‘How could you imagine otherwise?’

‘I don’t want to imagine it at all.’

Christopher reached across to try and take her hand, but she snatched it away, staring at him as if she’d never really seen him before.

‘I’ve tried so hard,’ he said, ‘ever since I first met you, done everything in my power to help make your life as happy and fulfilled as possible.’ He shrugged, as
if what he was telling her was normal, commonplace. ‘I suppose I’ve just begun thinking that maybe you might be willing to try and do the same for me.’

‘How?’ Suddenly Lizzie sounded almost shrill. ‘By fulfilling these
needs
of yours? By taking the place of these other poor bloody women, these
strangers
?’

‘I made a mistake,’ Christopher said, bleakly. ‘A terrible mistake.’

‘And that’s supposed to stop me leaving you?’

‘
Leaving
me?’ He was horrified. ‘You can’t leave me, Lizzie.’

‘I can’t stay with you. I can’t live with a man so out of control he can assault me when the
need
strikes him. If it weren’t so appalling, I think I’d
laugh.’

‘Please don’t laugh at me, Lizzie.’ Christopher was on his feet again, beseeching her. ‘Or rather,
do
laugh at me, do whatever you feel like. Just don’t talk
about leaving me.’

‘Why would I stay? How
can
I stay?’

‘To help your husband,’ he said. ‘The father of your children.’

He had sat down again, had told her that he loved them all utterly and completely, that they were everything to him. He said that he couldn’t face life without her, and when she told him,
in disgust, that he was being pathetic, he admitted that he supposed he was exactly that, that he was both ridiculous and very weak.

‘That’s a hard thing for a man like myself to admit, Lizzie.’

She didn’t speak.

‘I’ve had these needs,’ Christopher had gone on, ‘for more years than I can remember. I’ve tried stopping, believe me, but that never lasts for long.’
He’d paused. ‘It’s a form of addiction.’

‘Is that a diagnosis?’ Lizzie asked wryly.

‘It is.’

‘You’ve seen someone about it?’ She was very cool.

‘Once,’ he answered. ‘A long time ago.’

‘Why only once?’

‘It was too humiliating for me.’

‘I see.’

‘No, you don’t,’ he said. ‘How could you? All the years of guilt and shame, trying to find ways to hide it, hide
from
it so that I could carry on with the rest of
my life – the worthwhile part. I told myself, when it all got too much, that at least on balance the good I was doing might outweigh my weakness.’

‘And did you believe that?’

‘Yes, I did,’ he replied. ‘I do believe that, on the whole, Lizzie, I am – if not a good man – not a bad one either.’ He paused. ‘I think I’m a
good father – at least I hope I am.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course you are.’

She had realized later that she had still been in a state of shock at that point, that, as she’d sat there listening to him that morning, a part of her had been horribly fascinated by the
self-abasement of a man who’d always seemed so controlled and dignified.

‘I need you, Lizzie,’ he told her. ‘I need you so badly. If I still have you, I can go on with my work, caring for my patients, helping the charity.’

‘And if I leave you, all that stops? Is that what you’d have me believe?’

‘If you leave me,’ Christopher answered quietly, ‘then yes, I do think all the rest might have to stop.’ He paused. ‘I honestly don’t think I could go on
without you. Believe me or don’t, but it’s the truth.’

She had said nothing for a long time.

‘If I stay,’ she said at last, ‘will you agree to be treated?’

‘Anything.’

‘I don’t want
anything
,’ Lizzie had said quite violently. ‘I want your word that you will seek treatment – now, right away – and that you will never,
ever abuse me or any
other
woman in any way again. Because otherwise, I shall most certainly leave you and take our sons, and nothing you say or do will stop me.’

She stopped, and he waited for a moment.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Is that all?’ he asked.

‘Yes. That’s all.’

‘You have my word,’ he said.

She stood up at last, her legs weak, looked down at him. ‘I’m doing this for Edward and Jack,’ she said. ‘Giving you this chance. Because you’re right about that,
at least. You are – have been – a good father.’

‘Thank you.’ Christopher reached out and caught her hand, held it, his own fingers cold. ‘You won’t regret it.’

‘I hope not.’ Lizzie had paused. ‘Now please let go of me.’

He let her hand go. ‘I thought—’

‘I don’t want you touching me,’ she said. ‘Not when we’re alone. Not till I know I can trust you again. Which may never happen, Christopher.’

A little of the gratitude had left his eyes then, pushed out by an unmistakable tinge of resentment. ‘I didn’t know you had such a hard side, Lizzie.’

‘Then apparently,’ she had said, ‘neither of us has ever known the other as well as we thought we did.’

When Lizzie had realized, soon after, that she was pregnant again, she had done her best to try to contemplate termination, but had found it simply impossible.

Another brother, or a sister, for Edward and Jack.

Joy had kicked in, ousting dismay.

And so the marriage had gone on, Lizzie still wary of Christopher, grieving for the end of her trust in him but relieved that he at least seemed, judging by his restraint with her, to be doing
as she had asked. She asked him from time to time if he was still receiving treatment, and, when he said that he was being counselled, asked no more, for she had no wish to know more, and she
supposed it might be healthier for what was left of their marriage if she could leave him at least a vestige of self-respect.

And she had her boys and her unborn child to focus on.

Sophie had come into their world the following spring. A dainty, sweet-tempered daughter, golden-haired with dark-blue eyes, born into the outward ideal that was the Wade family. Christopher had
been ecstatic, had continued – Lizzie had never had the slightest doubt that this side of him was utterly genuine – to be a loving, giving, well-balanced father.

That September, six months after Sophie’s birth, having obtained a prescription from Dr Hilda Kapur, their GP in Marlow, for the Pill, Lizzie had let Christopher make love to her again. It
was very tentative and almost sad, in view of what they had shared in her ignorant, more innocent past, but Christopher seemed so glad of the breakthrough, so grateful and filled with optimism that
Lizzie decided that forgiveness
had
been the right thing, for all their sakes, that happiness, albeit of a diluted kind, might once again be in reach.

And then, five months later, the Wade family’s world fell apart.

The promise of self-control Tony Patston had made to Joanne after Irina’s first birthday had proven empty. On the contrary, he’d begun drinking more, his growing
alcohol dependence equating, so far as he was concerned, with what he had begun to see as the source of all his troubles: the little cuckoo in his semi-detached nest. Without drink, Tony felt
increasingly tetchy, unable to cope with his money problems and with the cuckoo’s incessant squawking; with a few pints sunk, he felt better, more capable of magnanimity, but
in
capable
of stopping at those few, and soon after that the better feelings drained away and the reddening mists of anger began to overwhelm him.

He hit the child regularly. ‘Just a smack’, he maintained. ‘Not with a belt, like my dad used on me.’

Small mercy so far as Irina and her mother were concerned. The sound and sight of his slaps against Irina’s skin made Joanne’s stomach clench with rage, made her want to lash out at
him, screaming out her feelings, but on the two occasions she had done that, Tony had turned back to the child and actually punched her.

‘Your punishment,’ he told his wife as Irina wailed.

‘You bastard,’ Joanne wept. ‘You filthy
bastard
.’

He’d raised his right hand. ‘Want me to give her another one?’

‘
No
!’ she’d screamed. ‘If you need to hit someone, for God’s sake hit
me
!’

Tony had dropped his hand. ‘I don’t want to hit you,’ he had said.

Joanne had longed to report him, or at least tell someone, either her mum or Nicki next door, but she knew she couldn’t, knew as well as Tony that she would never,
could
never, do
that, because then the truth would come out and they would take her little girl away.

Maybe, she wondered sometimes, that might be better for Irina.

No, she answered herself each time, it would not, because Irina loved her, because she was her mother.

Not her real mother.

Real enough, she told the voice in her head, fiercely. Real enough to love her, passionately, desperately.

Enough for both parents.

It was not enough. Far too much of Irina’s development between the ages of one and three had been influenced by tension, fear and pain. Joanne knew it, shared it, but
felt ever more helpless and inadequate as she observed Irina reverting, in one way, to how she had been when she’d first come to them.

Soon after her second birthday, she had stopped crying.

‘Bloody hell,’ Tony said, after three or so evenings of peace. ‘This is great.’

‘Yes,’ Joanne had said quietly.

‘About fucking time,’ he’d added.

Joanne had said nothing after that, because the silence was making her feel sick, because she realized what had created it. Like an animal submitting to a whip, Irina, feisty little girl that
she had been, had finally learned that it was better, infinitely less painful, not to cry.

‘Good, strong character,’ Joanne remembered Dr Mellor saying.

She’d wondered, shuddering, what the paediatrician might say now.

The peace hadn’t lasted. Irina’s new introversion and lack of responsiveness had begun to irk Tony almost as much as the crying had.

‘All I asked for was a loving child,’ he had told Joanne.

‘She is loving,’ Joanne had said, fearfully.

‘With you, not me.’

‘Maybe if you—’ She stopped.

‘What? Maybe if I
what
, Joanne?’

‘Nothing,’ she’d said, quietly. ‘I know you try.’

‘Bloody right, I try,’ Tony had said. ‘I sweat blood for her, and what do I get for it – an ungrateful kid who hates my guts.’

‘She doesn’t hate you,’ Joanne had protested. ‘You wanted her quiet, so that’s what she’s given you.’

And Tony, as usual, had gone to the pub.

Jack’s tendency to stumble had been sufficiently apparent, when he was only two, for Lizzie to have mentioned it to Dr Anna Mellor during his annual check-up, but the
paediatrician – married to Peter Szell, a cardiologist and a close friend of Christopher’s – had been reassuring, had pointed out, after her examination, that falling was
perfectly usual in new walkers.

Lizzie had put it, if not completely out of her mind, at least to the back.

‘He’s so gorgeous,’ grandmother Angela had said,
everyone
had said, for Jack, with his beautiful grey eyes and golden hair and happy disposition, was decidedly
gorgeous.

Edward adored his little brother, but teased him frequently as they grew.

‘You’re so slow,’ he complained when they played together.

‘He’s only little,’ Christopher had reminded him. ‘You have to be patient.’

‘I am,’ Edward had said, ‘but he’s so clumsy.’

‘Can’t all be natural athletes like you, Ed.’

‘What’s an athlete, Dad?’

‘People who run races and do high-jump, that sort of thing.’

‘Jack can’t jump,’ Edward had said.

‘Of course he can,’ Christopher had said.

When Sophie had come along, three-year-old Jack had revelled in his opportunity to be a big brother, cuddling his baby sister every chance he was given, liking to watch her being bathed and
changed, taking pleasure in stroking her soft cheeks.

A gentle boy.

A boisterous, inquisitive, even-tempered, loving boy.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever known a more easy-going child,’ Gilly said.

‘I know,’ Lizzie agreed. ‘We’re so lucky.’

And then, in the space of a few hours, on a February morning three months after Jack had turned four, everything changed forever, when Christine Connor, the head of Jack’s nursery school,
asked Lizzie, just dropping her son off, if she might have a private word.

‘I’m a bit worried about Jack,’ she said.

‘Why?’

Lizzie spoke the word lightly, like the woman she had, till that second, gone on pretending to be, the blessed, untroubled wife and mother of three. But in her mind, in her already recoiling
body and clenching heart, all the lightness had already gone.

‘I think,’ Mrs Connor said, ‘he may have a problem.’

‘What sort of a problem?’

Don’t listen
,
Lizzie
.

‘For one thing,’ the other woman said, ‘I don’t think he can jump.’

‘I doubt he’ll ever be a gymnast,’ Lizzie said.

‘No, Mrs Wade,’ Christine Connor said. ‘I mean I don’t believe that Jack
can
jump. At all. I’ve been watching him. It’s as if, when he tries, his feet
stay glued to the ground.’ She paused. ‘Haven’t you noticed?’

No. No. Go on hiding.

‘Yes,’ Lizzie said quietly. ‘I have.’

‘Something else too,’ the teacher went on.

Lizzie felt,
thought
perhaps that she felt the way a prisoner in the dock might have felt in hanging days, waiting for the judge to pass sentence. She wanted to tell Christine Connor to
stop, not to say another word, to stop watching Jack, because he was Lizzie’s child, not hers, and he was
fine.