When She Was Bad (23 page)

‘But obviously we need to be sure,’ I said as he went through his now familiar routine of checking the tape recorder was working and straightening the blinds. ‘I mean, the last thing we want is to decide she’s OK because that’s what we want to believe, and then a year down the line or two years or even five years, something happens and it all comes back to the surface, but she hasn’t got the support network around to help her deal with it.’

‘I hear what you’re saying, Anne.’ Ed had now sat down in a chair next to me, and was stroking his chin. There was a patch of hair he’d missed while shaving and I found myself riveted to it. ‘And absolutely we won’t recommend on Laurie’s case until we’re satisfied about the appropriate course of action. But I have to say that so far I’ve been impressed at how resilient she seems. And seeing the house and talking to her mom actually made me believe there might be cause for some kind of cautious hope. She grew up believing she was loved – that counts for a lot.’

‘And the fact that her little brother was kept chained up in the basement?’

‘With luck that will just start to seem like one of those weird images that flash into your mind and which is just too bizarre to be a true memory so you put it down to a movie you’ve seen. She’s only four years old. How much of what happened to you before you were four can you remember, Anne?’

I tried to think back. There was an image of being swung between two adult hands.
Higher. Higher
. Another of sitting on a chair gazing awestruck at my own bleeding knee while my mom knelt on the floor in front of me gently swabbing it with a tissue.

‘Yes, but I think something that traumatic would stick with me.’

‘But that’s just it, Anne. It wasn’t traumatic to Laurie. It was normal. She didn’t know anything else.’

‘And the bite mark? Her involvement in the punishment programme?’

Ed held up his hands.

‘That’s exactly what I think we need to explore in today’s session. I’m hoping Jana will be able to guide us in terms of how far we can push her.’

In my imagination I have Ed turning pink when he said the name of Laurie’s foster mother, but I think that might just be time’s embellishment.

We’d arranged that Kristen, Ed Kowalsky’s research student, should meet Laurie and Jana at the front door and take Laurie off straight away for another soda while Jana came up in the lift to find us and update us on what had been happening.

When the knock came, Ed practically flew from his seat, but if Jana was surprised by the door swinging open even before her knuckles had left the surface, she didn’t show it. When she entered the room, she brought her peculiarly calm aura with her, along with her faded denim jacket and jeans and a light floral scent.

‘I don’t know if you guys knew that Laurie started at a preschool last week? Just a coupla days a week. I’m happy to say that’s going really good. The teachers are really happy with the way she interacts with the other kids. There was just this one incident . . .’

I wondered if Jana could sense how Ed and I were leaning in towards her, not wanting to miss anything.

‘Well. It was nothing really. The teacher said she wouldn’t even have mentioned it if I hadn’t asked her to report back on every little thing. It was at recess and one of the boys pushed another boy off the swing set, and he hurt himself and was crying and Laurie picked up this plastic thing – I think it was a plastic rake or something, you know so they can pretend to do the gardening? – and she gave the little boy a bit of a whack before the teacher got there and stopped it all.’

‘The aggressor, you mean? The boy who’d pushed the other one?’ I wanted to get the facts completely straight.

‘No, that was the odd thing. It was the one who’d been hurt. The teacher took her and the other boy aside and explained why it was wrong, and apparently she was very contrite and even gave the boy she’d hit a big hug. Like I say, it wasn’t a big deal.’

Jana’s hair was long and loose today and she shook it back in an unconscious gesture like you’d shake out a sheet before pegging it out to dry. A brown hair elastic was looped loosely around one narrow wrist and she slipped it off and tied her hair back in one fluid, practised movement. It made me aware of my own hair, coarse and yellow, tucked behind my ears, the ends of it brushing my shoulders. What is it about women that we allow ourselves to be so defined by the things we are not? By the qualities we lack?

‘Do you remember, Jana,’ Ed said, ‘that we talked before about how Laurie was during these episodes which, as you rightly say, are hardly unusual in a child of her age? Do you remember you said she was almost dissociated from her normal self? Have you noticed any more of that behaviour?’

Jana cocked her head to one side in thought. The smooth slope of her cheekbone shimmered in a slanting shaft of late summer sun.

‘She can sometimes seem like she’s somewhere else, ya know, in a different world – but then kids are like that, aren’t they? It’s good for them to be able to escape into their own heads, don’t you think?’

I frowned, wanting to pin her down.

‘But there’s a difference between daydreaming and entering a fugue state . . .’

‘I don’t think we need to bother Jana with the technical jargon, Anne,’ Ed broke in. His voice carried an edge of something. Warning? ‘After all, she’s not here to diagnose Laurie but just to observe, right?’

‘Sure. No, I totally get that. It’s just I think we need to be absolutely sure what we’re dealing with here, because if Laurie really is dissociating rather than just drifting off like any normal four-year-old might . . .’

‘I do hope you’re not expecting Jana to define normality, Anne?’

This time the warning was obvious.

‘I mean,’ he went on, ‘the greatest philosophers in the world have struggled with that one, so I think maybe we’ll just give Jana a break and allow her to do her job, which is to care for a very vulnerable little girl. I have to say, I think she’s doing brilliantly well.’

Nowadays he probably wouldn’t get away with it. A modern-day Jana, with her college diploma and her natural intelligence, might call him out on his patronizing tone. But those were different times. Men like Ed Kowalsky were still sure of their places in the world. They felt entitled to condescend with impunity, would certainly not have recognized it as that. Anyway, Ed was far from the worst in that regard.

‘Like I say,’ said Jana, her eyes flitting between me and Ed as if picking up on the tension, ‘I haven’t really seen enough evidence of it, and anyhow I’m not the right person to judge. All I can say is, Laurie seems to be super-adjusted, given the circumstances.’

‘And your own kids get on with her?’ Ed asked.

‘Sure.’ Jana nodded. ‘Well, Lisa is kinda separate because she’s older, and Barney has asked a coupla times when Laurie is going home, but that’s probably because he just wants me back to himself.’

‘Any questions about her parents? Her brother?’ I wanted to reassert myself into the situation, to recover ground.

‘Never about the brother. Occasionally she’ll mention her parents in passing, but it’s strange, it doesn’t seem to upset her in any way. She might just be good at hiding things but I get the feeling they’re already starting to fade from her mind.’

Ed picked up his notebook and scribbled furiously.

When Laurie came in, clutching Kristen’s hand, she seemed in high spirits.

‘There’s a machine there and it has all this nice stuff in the window and you put in your money and it makes this really loud noise like this . . .’ She stretched her mouth into a tall oval shape and made noises in the back of her throat. ‘Then it gives it to you in this special place in the bottom. I wanted some candy but the lady,’ she glanced up at Kristen, ‘said I needed to ask you. Can I, Mommy?’

The word seemed to take us all by surprise. I glanced over at Jana and she gave a faint ‘what can you do’ shrug.

‘We’ll see, Laurie. But listen, honey, what did I tell you about calling me Mommy? We talked about it, remember?’

Laurie smiled.

‘Oh yes, I forgot. But can I have some candy? I’ve been really good.’

‘We’ll talk about it later, but first we’re going to have a little chat to Professor Kowalsky and Dr Cater.’

Laurie bounced up and down on the chair Kristen had settled her into. She looked tiny. My heart contracted at the sight of her, taking me by surprise. Ed started by asking her questions about her new preschool. I was impressed by his gentleness. He was asking her about her favourite toys, and what she’d liked to play with in her other house.

‘I had some dolls, but Mommy,’ she glanced over at Jana, ‘I mean the other mommy, wouldn’t let me play with them all the time. Just sometimes when she let them out of their boxes.’

‘We went to see your house,’ I told her. ‘You have a lovely room.’

She nodded solemnly, accepting it as perfectly normal that we should have been to visit the house where she used to live.

‘I like my new room better. I have a box on wheels that comes out from under the bed with all my toys in it. I can push it in and out.’

‘Was there anything about your old house you didn’t like, Laurie?’

The room held its breath. Had Ed jumped in too soon?

Laurie shrugged.

‘I didn’t like the chair in the kitchen that was made of wood and gave me a splinter in my finger.’

‘Anything else? How about the basement? Did you ever go there? Did you like that?’

Bounce, bounce, bounce. Was it my imagination or had the little girl’s movements become more frenetic?

‘I didn’t really like the basement. I didn’t like it.’

‘It?’ queried Ed. ‘You mean the basement?’

‘No. The Thing.’

‘What thing, Laurie?’

‘The Thing that lived in the basement.’ Laurie was looking at Ed like it was too obvious to warrant spelling out.

‘Can you explain what that was, Laurie?’ I asked, trying to match my tone to Ed’s effortlessly patient one.

She shrugged again.

‘I dunno. Can’t remember. It was a Thing that was sometimes bad and made Mommy and Daddy cross, and I didn’t like going down there because it was kinda stinky.’ She held her nose and giggled.

‘Can you describe the Thing, Laurie?’ I asked, trying to keep her on subject.

She wriggled on the chair.

‘I can’t remember. It was dark in there. I think it was a kind of, you know, an animal.’

‘Like a pet?’

I fought a wave of irritation at Jana’s leading question. Why couldn’t she have let Laurie formulate her own conclusion instead of handing one to her on a plate?

‘Yeah, I guess. Can we go get candy now?’

As Jana got up to go, she shot us a sympathetic smile, as if to say ‘I don’t envy you’.

‘Laurie, say goodbye to Professor Kowalsky and Dr Cater,’ she said to the little girl hanging off her arm.

‘Goodbye,’ Laurie sing-songed, turning to us and shooting us a radiant smile.

Long after they’d gone, the memory of that smile stayed with me. And superimposed over the top of it was the image of a perfect, small bite mark in a little boy’s skin.

28
Ewan

He should just go to bed. That’s what he should do. Ewan could feel the alcohol he’d drunk sloshing around in his system. Normally he stuck to beer, and tonight he’d been drinking wine in almost the same quantities until now he felt awash with it, his stomach bloated, his brain splashing about in an unpleasant sea of Sauvignon blanc and the rich peppercorn sauce in which his steak had been drenched. He should get in the hotel lift and go up to the fourth floor and find his room among all those identical doors and lie down on those crisply laundered sheets and sleep this off.

That’s what he should do. But he wouldn’t. And the reason he wouldn’t was
her.

Ewan hadn’t admitted it even to himself, but he’d had high hopes of this weekend. Rachel had been giving out signals – very subtle ones – but he wasn’t an idiot. He knew when women were responding and she had definitely responded. Nothing too obvious. She had her position in the department to think of. But she’d given him a lift here. You wouldn’t do that unless you were just a tiny bit interested. He’d been nervous in case he underperformed in the physical tasks or went blank while they were doing word games or, God forbid, role play. But all of the activities had passed off pretty well.

Yet ever since they’d arrived here, she’d switched off. Suddenly it was as if he was nothing – some bit of lint she’d picked up on the sleeve of her jacket and thought she could just brush off.

The way she’d been flirting with that Will. To be taken in by that airhead in a tracksuit. She’d even been playing up to Mark Hamilton – and after telling him, Ewan, that he should keep away from Chloe as well! The hypocrisy of it took his breath away. He concentrated his thoughts on that to keep out the wave of hurt that ambushed him every time he let down his guard.

‘I’ll have another Scotch,’ he told the barman, who was busy clearing away chairs and glasses.

Turning back, Ewan was discomfited to realize there weren’t as many people left at the table as he’d thought. He could have sworn they’d all been there when he went to the bar, but now there was just Charlie and Amira and Chloe. The place was empty apart from them. His hopes had been raised when Rachel had accompanied them all as far as the bar after dinner, but when Will peeled off, saying he had to be up early the next morning, Rachel had suddenly decided she too needed to turn in. Watching her leave, a little unsteady on her feet, Ewan had felt himself burn with humiliation, feeling that he was being played with. Chloe seemed fed up too. Not surprising, given that the energy she’d been investing in Will all night had just come to nothing. Well, she could join the club. The Mugs Club. Maybe they should have badges made.

‘You’re not still texting, are you?’ he snapped at Charlie as he sat down. ‘Can’t you put that bloody phone down?’

‘Or what? You going to send him to the naughty step?’

That was Chloe, sounding like someone pretending to be more fed up than she actually was. Ewan allowed himself a moment of triumph as it dawned that she hadn’t after all defected from him to Will. She’d been putting on a show to make him jealous. He felt himself softening towards her. She was still such a kid really, hadn’t learned how to be hard and two-faced like the rest of them.