Wronged Sons, The (36 page)

*

Sex and intimacy were the furthest things from my mind, but I was crying out to feel like a normal woman again. I desperately hoped that by making love to you, I could push that night from my mind.

Physically, I was still sore but I forced myself to make you want me because I didn’t want to equate sex with pain for the rest of my life. But even during the act, which is exactly what it was, I knew we were both only going through the motions. If I’d felt it, I’m sure you had too.

But it was the start I needed to repair what someone else had almost ruined.

December 18, 9.25am

I hadn’t guessed I was pregnant even when I missed my period.

I presumed that while I’d been focused on blanking things out, I’d simply neglected my body by missing meals and broken sleeps. I chalked it up as an off-kilter cycle and my body’s delayed reaction to trauma.

But when the second month rolled by with still no sign of its arrival, I nervously made a doctor’s appointment. Three days after my test, Dr Willows rang with the results. I slumped onto the stool by the telephone; the wind knocked out of my sails. I was pregnant and I had no idea what to do.

I was already stretched to breaking point with three under-fives, a workaholic husband and trying to hide the mental scars Dougie had left me with from the people closest to me. And I was mortified at the thought of being left to cope with another little one.

It would’ve been another distraction that stopped us from repairing our relationship. And I didn’t want us to become the couple who, once their children had flown the nest, reluctantly learned all they had in common in their thirty years together were the young adults who’d just left home.

I’d accepted that our sex life had shifted from passionate to sporadic and unfulfilling, but at least we’d made a little effort to be intimate. But unlike our other kids, this one hadn’t been conceived through lovemaking.

I seriously considered an abortion. I imagined organising it while you were at work and the kids were at school. And by the time you all poured through the door at teatime, none of you would’ve been any the wiser.

But
I’d
have known. I loved motherhood and I had no right to stop a second heart beating inside me because mine was broken. Poor timing was an excuse, not a reason, and a pretty weak one at that. So I forced myself to come to terms with it. I had gotten through tougher times.

I didn’t know what the future would bring for us. But I knew there was a future for the baby inside me.

***

Northampton, Twenty-Seven Years Earlier

September 18, 1am

“Why? Why?” I bellowed while my fists took on lives of their own, raining blow after blow upon Dougie’s face and body.

Four days had passed since I’d heard you together, and I’d barely been able to look at you. You’d been uncommonly quiet and withdrawn; ravaged, I hoped, by contrition over what you’d defiled.

I made a backlog of office work my excuse for spending time away from both you and the scene of your crime. But concentration was impossible and I’d sit at my desk, haunted by the noises you’d made behind our bedroom door. And although you’d desecrated my faith in you, the crux of my physical fury was aimed towards Dougie.

I was unsure if I was more enraged by his devious, cowardly betrayal of our friendship or at my own naivety for never having doubted his loyalty. You aside, I’d been closer to him than any of my friends. But he’d made a mockery of all I’d presumed and try as I might to contain it, my anger refused to simmer until I made him feel as weak and vulnerable as I was.

I waited until the early hours of the morning when you were asleep before I walked to his rented house. Both the upstairs and downstairs curtains sealed off unwanted prying eyes, so I ventured to the rear and peered through his kitchen window.

The light was on and an unconscious Dougie was sat inside on a plastic patio chair; his head tilted backwards, surrounded by empty beer cans lying like fallen soldiers. While my life was imploding, he’d been celebrating. My rage piqued.

He only became aware of my presence when I slipped my arm around his neck and jolted him backwards to the floor. Startled, his blurred eyes opened wide but the alcohol in his system made any attempt to reclaim gravity futile. I straddled him and rapidly recast the structure of his face into a tapestry of blood, hair and mucus. My knees pinned his helpless, failing arms to the ground but even fracturing my knuckles as I broke his nose and jaw was not enough to curb my ferocity.

“Why her?” I spat. “Why my wife?”

“I’m sorry,” he choked, “Stop, please stop…” but I didn’t allow him to continue. Another blow thrust his front teeth to the back of his throat like pins in a bowling alley.

I dragged him to his feet by his stained shirt collars and held him against the wall. His head hit a clock and it fell, spraying glass across the lino.

“I don’t know why,” he gasped, his breath reeking of booze and blood. “I didn’t plan to…”

“Shut up!” I snarled. “You’ve destroyed us, Dougie. You and me; her and me; all of us. Everything…”

My voice weakened then faded into nothing. Hearing myself verbalise what he had done to me suddenly made the sheer enormity of it all too real. I let him drop to the floor and he curled up into a sobbing, bloody ball. I gawped at him like he was a strange, injured creature in the last throws of life. I questioned how I could have been so foolish as to have loved something that worthless.

I needed to get out of his house and stop breathing the same polluted air as him. So I headed towards the back door, his wheezing growing quieter with every footstep.

I could have left him there to reek in his stink but deep inside me, I knew it wouldn’t have been enough. So I stopped in my tracks and turned to face him.

His swelling, blackened eyes were reduced to slits so he was only aware of my shadow when it hovered over him. Even when he watched me take the bread-knife from the sink, he didn’t try to protect himself.

I slowly pulled back my arm and plunged the blade into his stomach once, twice then a third time. It took surprisingly little effort. His face remained expressionless but the physical trauma forced his body bolt upright. There he remained conscious, but still.

I stood back to share his final moments. His eyes briefly dilated as his last few shallow breaths merged with the sound of gasses escaping through his wounds. He didn’t try to clutch them or fight for his life. He simply waited five long minutes before it drained from his carcass and his neck lapsed limply to one side.

We both knew what I had done was right.

*

I reacted to the events of the night with clarity.

Beth’s family had removed almost every stick of furniture from their house when she sold it, so he had little to furnish his new hovel with. I searched each room for something suitable to put his body into. But all he possessed were empty take-away containers, beer cans and free newspapers. It was a pathetic legacy.

I wiped his blood from the floor with dirty towels and newspapers. Then I bundled his body into the boot of his car. I drove through the village, passing our house, before I turned off the headlights and navigated the lane by the woods using my memory.

I grabbed the spade and torch I’d taken from Dougie’s garage and headed deep into the copse. The ground was frosty and hardened so it took sweat and determination to dig. But after an hour, his makeshift grave lay ready for him. My arms, weakened and jarred by fury and determination, made dragging his bulky frame to the hole arduous, but I persisted until I rolled him into the earth.

I threw the stained towels and papers in and without giving him a second glance, I shifted the soil back into the hole, trampled the ground to an even level and scattered fallen leaves to disguise my movements. I used an old blue towrope that lay on the ground to mark his grave.

I left his car in a notorious area of town with the keys in the ignition then caught two night-buses home. I made my way to the bridge where I’d take the kids pretend fishing and washed his filth from my hands in the water below. And with my adrenaline spent, my physical pain began to manifest itself as sharps bolts of lightening. They ran from my broken knuckles and up into my shoulders and made my chest tight. The letters I’d type to Roger and Steven could wait until morning.

With my fists locked tight, I could barely extend a hand to brush the tracks of my tears from my cheeks and chin.

October 27, 3.50pm

I longed to hear you confess and beg for my forgiveness. Because only then might you understand how far from my old self I’d shifted since I’d heard you two together.

You had asphyxiated the ‘me’ you thought you knew. Now you only lived with an impression of Simon Nicholson; a man so anesthetised and glacial, the fluids inside him ran cold.

I was so detached from everything that happened before that week, I’d wiped Dougie from my history. Even having my best friend’s blood on my hands had failed to humanise me. My actions were justified, I knew that; I had the strength to do what my father should have done to the many lovers Doreen had humiliated us with.

But dealing with you was a different matter. I reckoned I’d gain more satisfaction from slowly snuffing out your flame than any physical retribution. I wasn’t sure how I’d do it, but somehow I would eek a confession from you. Then I’d make you hang with uncertainty for weeks until I pretended to make up my mind about our future.

And once you thought you could see a glimmer of hope in my open, forgiving arms, I’d abandon you and make sure my children and all your friends knew exactly what you had done. They would hate you like I did.

But I underestimated you. While I was balking at your naivety in thinking you had gotten away with it, you’d become an expert mistress in blindsiding me.

June 1, 8.20pm

I may have terminated Dougie’s life, but he’d found a way to live on, inside you. Inside all of us.

It hadn’t been enough for him to decimate our marriage while he was alive. Even one mile away from my house and six feet under the ground, he still rubbed salt into my open wounds.

You wore the cloak of a troubled woman the night you put the children to bed early and ushered me into the dining room.

“We need to talk about something,” you began nervously, “and I’m not sure how you’re going to react.”

You dabbed your cheeks with a paper tissue before you spoke.

“I’m pregnant.”

Then you leant over the table and took my hand in your devil’s claw. “I’ll need your help and it’ll mean cutting back on some of your hours at work, but I think another baby could be just what we need.”

It was the last thing I’d expected to hear - another hammer-blow to my fragile ego. I knew then you could never be honest with me. I’d have to rethink my plan to punish you.

“So what do you think?” you asked.

“It’s great news,” I lied and you immediately released the rest of your crocodile tears.

It was obvious that evil seed inside you bore no relation to me. On the few occasions we’d made love, I had to summon up all the powers of my imagination to become aroused. It was soulless, remorseful sex between an adulterer and the wronged and which never resulted in climax for either of us.

Yet you were willing to pass your bastard off as mine once your lover, to the best of your knowledge, had cast you adrift and returned to Scotland.

I recalled your panicked eyes when Robbie asked when Dougie was coming to dinner again. You neither lifted your head nor questioned me when I told him he wouldn’t be. It made me wonder if you knew that I knew. But if you did, you played your cards close to your chest and said nothing. Inside it must have killed you never understanding quite why he’d dumped you. I took some satisfaction in that.

You upped the ante and overcompensated for your wrongdoings by using every calculating trick in the book not to appear the desperate housewife. You’d wait until I arrived home from work late so we could eat together; you forced your way into every aspect of the children’s lives and redecorated our verminous bedroom by yourself.

On occasions when you thought you were alone, I’d see you skulking into the garage. And as I peered through the dirty windows I’d witness you kneeling on a dirty floor, crying. I hoped you’d never stop.

October 26, 7.50pm

As the months passed and the parasite in your belly grew, I resented it as much as the vehicle carrying it. I daydreamed watching you fall down the stairs and miscarrying; or of Dr Willows confirming the baby had died in your womb.

Yet despite everything I despised about you and how ghastly you made me feel, I wasn’t able to confront you or pack up my things and leave.

All I’d ever wanted was a family of my own and I wasn’t ready to leave my children like my mother had. Living with you all, I was miserable. Without you, I would be Doreen. Staying, at least for the time being, was the lesser of two evils.

So I played along with your charade.

March 6, 11.05pm

Seven months later, you lay fast asleep in our bed, exhausted by a labour that ravaged and contorted your body for much of the day and night.

I sat on the tatty green armchair in the bedroom cradling your son in a white shawl you’d knitted especially for his arrival. The midwife packed up her equipment and let herself out. You’d named him William after your grandfather and he was deep in slumber and only an hour old. His skin was still sticky and sweet smelling, and covered in a fine, white, downy fur.

Once he’d been placed into my arms, I tried with all my might to imagine him as one of my own brood. But I wasn’t able to press my lips to his delicate ear and whisper to him like I had the others.

I couldn’t tell that little boy that I’d always be there for him and would never let him down. Because he was not my son and never would be. Even the product of an untruth didn’t deserve a lie; I knew that better than most.