Wronged Sons, The (37 page)

Weeks passed and I’d spend hours watching him and identifying traces of the father I’d killed in his smiles and frowns. He was the spitting image of Dougie, even down to his few strands of auburn hair. I pitied the cuckoo in my nest.

He’d never experience a male role model who’d love him unconditionally; or a mother who’d be completely honest with him about his origins. So soon into his life, he was weighed down like an anchor by his conception.

However, my steely facade had begun to melt a little as I witnessed you giving birth. In your vulnerability I saw pieces of the woman I’d loved; who’d already blessed me with three cherished children of my own.

And for the first time in months, I allowed myself to wonder if we could get through this. But while Billy was in our lives - a constant reminder of your transgression - I couldn’t forgive you, I couldn’t heal, and we could never move forward.

His fragile existence meant nothing would ever be the same again.

***

Today, 8pm

He struggled to draw breath.

His bleak, lethargic pupils fluttered to life like a loose fitting light bulb, then collapsed back into the murkiness of his irises.

On the surface he continued to offer little reaction to what she’d told him, but inside, he was fractured. Her disclosures had forced all one hundred billion neurons scattered about his ailing brain to shoot their electrical impulses in unison, rendering him disabled.

When he finally flickered back to life, his eyes bored deeply into hers, observing her from all angles with microscopic detail. He desperately chased a lie in the face of a cracked but unbroken woman. He was certain she’d told him the truth about Dougie.

What he’d too readily believed he’d heard behind the bedroom door had created a chain of events that changed and ended lives. He considered whether deep down, he’d been waiting their entire lives together to catch her out and that had been just the excuse he was looking for.

But she’d just demolished the framework of twenty-five years worth of assumptions. He could no longer blame the cause of his actions on her. It was Dougie’s fault. It was Kenneth’s fault. It was Doreen’s fault. It wasn’t his, it wasn’t his, he kept telling himself.

So much distress and sorrow could have been avoided if only he’d turned the door handle another forty degrees. He could have protected her like a husband was supposed to protect his wife.

His wife had been a victim of the unresolved issues between two best friends and the parents who’d shaped them. And it broke the charred remnants of his heart when she explained how she’d sacrificed a justice she’d deserved for
his
sake. She’d even been willing to love a baby sired by hate just so she wouldn’t upset him. He couldn’t understand how someone could be that selfless.

“I… I…” he began to whisper but couldn’t finish.

She looked away; through the panes of glass in the bay window, all the way down the path and beyond the gate; through the golden fields and towards a slowly setting sun. She remembered a time when words from this man mattered. Because now they meant nothing.

Finally the question that harangued her for so long had been answered. A thousand times she’d asked herself what she’d done to make him cast her aside and now she knew.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

If the roles had been reversed, she’d have opened that door. She’d never have doubted him until she’d seen it with her own eyes. She also knew she’d have been a better person had she forgiven Dougie. And she had tried, so very, very hard. But it had been impossible and now she knew he was dead, she felt gratitude, even if had only happened as a result of his misplaced pride.

But that gratitude was short-lived. She could never forget Caroline’s murder, the life of abandon he’d lived and the family he’d replicated. They’d all been dreadful things to hear. And nothing shocked her more than his depth of dislike towards a child he’d quietly rejected as his own.

“How could you have hated something so innocent?” she asked, determined to gain an insight into his thinking. “You treated Billy like you treated your other children. I saw you with him; I watched you love him.”

“I didn’t,” he replied. “It was a lie because I knew he wasn’t mine. I’m so, so sorry for what happened to you, but you have to remember, I thought you were having an affair. I was crushed.”

“Why didn’t you open the door? Why didn’t you open the bloody door?”

“I was scared of what I’d find.”

“You mean you thought you’d find Doreen. How dare you, Simon. How bloody dare you. That’s what you always believed, wasn’t it? That I’d turn out to be like her, because you think all women are like that. You even compared Sofia to Doreen. Your own daughter! You only see in people what you see in yourself – damaged goods.”

“I’m sorry.”

She wasn’t interested in his apology. “I don’t know what’s worse; that you thought I could cheat on you or that you pretended to love your son.”

“That’s the point Catherine, Billy could never, ever have been my son no matter how much I pretended. And if I’d have known how he was conceived, I’d have hated him all the more.”

“You and I created him!” she stressed, increasingly exasperated. “He was your flesh and blood.”

“How can you know that for sure? We were barely intimate when you fell pregnant. He was Dougie’s. I saw Dougie in every inch of him. He looked nothing like his brothers and sister, and especially not me.”

“No, again, you believed what your twisted mind wanted to believe. Take my word for it Simon, you were his father.”

He dug his heels in.

“No. I only wish I could believe it like you want me to, but you can’t promise me that. I understand why you need to think it but…”

She interrupted. “Please don’t make me spell it out for you.”

“You’re going to have to because without a DNA test, I will never accept you’re right.”

She held her breath and closed her eyes before she responded. She was too angry and humiliated to look at him.

“There is no possibility Billy could have been Dougie’s child because he sodomised me.”

And there it was. His last remaining excuse for any of his subsequent actions disintegrated as fast as the ground beneath him.

She struggled to understand what he muttered as he clung tightly to the arms of his chair.

All she could make out were the words ‘God’ and what sounded like ‘forgive me.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Northampton, Twenty-Five Years Earlier

January 3, 5.45pm

My gorgeous Billy giggled in delight as he threw his favourite toy from one end of the bath to the other.

The blue and white plastic boat and its painted smiley face had been passed down from James to Robbie and finally to their brother. And like them, Billy never grew bored of picking it up and hurling it around.

Robbie was at an age where cleanliness was so far removed from Godliness that he’d rather be playing dinosaurs with the devil than take his evening bath. And as James demanded privacy, Billy was the only boy who’d let his mummy share those precious moments with him. And I relished every one of them.

I was shampooing the few tufts of hair spouting from his crown when the phone rang. I’d been expecting a call from my friend Sharon to tell me how her wedding had gone a day earlier. I was so honoured when she’d asked me to make her three bridesmaids’ dresses as it was the biggest project I’d ever taken on. She’d invited us to the reception but we’d been forced to turn it down at the last minute when Jenny got chicken pox and couldn’t baby-sit.

Sharon promised to find the time to ring me that night before she and Dave flew off on their Tenerife honeymoon.

“Simon!” I shouted at the top of my voice when the phone went, “Watch Billy please.”

Once I heard your muffled reply from another room, I dashed across the landing into our bedroom and picked up the receiver. By all accounts everything had gone like clockwork, but more importantly, my dresses hadn’t fallen apart at the seams. I was proud of myself and couldn’t help but smile as I went back to the bathroom to tell you.

“Sharon says everyone loved them,” I began as I reached the door, “It’s a shame we couldn’t…”

Only you weren’t there. But Billy was, lying face down in the bath.

His fine baby hair floated aimlessly behind his head; his body completely void of the life I’d given him. His boat sat at the end of the bath, anchored in the bubbles, still smiling.

I froze until the full horror of what had happened sank in, and then I screamed your name and ran those few feet from the door to my baby. I threw my arms into the water and grabbed at him, picking him up by the waist and placing his body onto the fluffy bathroom mat.

James and Robbie, having heard noises they’d never heard me make before, appeared from nowhere and stared in confusion. Robbie yelled ‘Daddy’ and I heard your heavy feet pounding towards us.

‘Oh God, oh God, oh God,’ I repeated as I picked Billy up again and held him in front of me. His neck flopped forwards.

You pushed me away and instinctively took charge. You lay him on the floor, tilted his head backwards, pinched his button nose and gave him the kiss of life. I knelt by your side, helpless; my arms as wet as my eyes, sobbing as you pushed down heavy on his chest to force his heart to beat again. I felt the crack of a rib under your pressure like it was my own.

“Call an ambulance,” you kept repeating, but I remained deadlocked and torn between hope and despair. James must have heard your pleas. I heard your warm breath blowing hard into our son’s mouth; your palms sliding across his wet body; the crack of a second rib and the brush of his spine against the mat with your every push.

I reached out to grab Billy’s still warm hand and begged God to give him the strength to move his fingers and clasp one around mine. But God had neglected my son when Billy needed him, just like I had.

You wouldn’t give up, even when the paramedics arrived and tried to take over. They had to pull you to one side, but there was nothing they could do that you hadn’t tried already.

Eventually they looked at us with empathy and shook their heads apologetically.

Despair made my body fall to the floor and I clawed at my chest to take the weight off my heart. I reached for the mat, desperate to grasp something after losing so much. I tried to pull myself closer to my baby but my body was stuck to the floor. You scooped my head onto your thigh as I screamed so hard my eyes and throat burned.

“It’s my fault, I’m sorry,” I wailed, “It’s my fault…”

“No, don’t blame yourself,” you replied as you stroked my hair. But we both knew it was.

“I thought you were here with him, I shouted for you,” I continued.

“I was outside.”

I begged the paramedics not to take Billy away from us, but you quietly explained it was time to let him go. I tenderly dried his body, and put him in his Mister Men pyjamas before they carried his body downstairs. I couldn’t bring myself to watch as he left our home for the last time.

Instead, I lay with my cheek pressed to the cold lino, holding on to his toy boat and wishing it could sail me back ten minutes in time before I allowed my baby to die.

March 7, 11.45pm

My bedroom was a tortured sanctuary. I wanted to seal off the door and windows and turn it into a coffin, like the one my little boy lay in, deep underground.

Days passed before I could even stand up unaided by you. Each time I tried it alone, the ground swayed beneath me and I’d go back to my bed dizzy and defeated. The phone rang so often that you unplugged it from the wall socket so it didn’t disturb me.

I’d hear the muffled voices of friends stopping by with food parcels and offers of support, or to take the children out of our mausoleum to play with their friends. I was glad when they were out of the house because it meant they were safer than when they were with me.

I couldn’t stop them from quietly opening my bedroom door, crawling under the quilt and curling their warm bodies around mine. I’d wrap my arms around them and hold them tight before I realised what I was doing, then I’d reject their love and send them away. They were too young to understand why their mummy didn’t want to be with them. It was for their own good; I didn’t deserve them.

You became both mum and dad and told them that although I was very sad, I still loved them and I’d come out of my room when I was ready. But until then, they had to be patient.

I always felt worse when I woke up than when I tried getting to sleep. Because for the first few seconds of consciousness, I’d forget what had happened. Then it would all come flooding back to me and the grieving process would start again from scratch.

When I tried to focus on anything else, I’d recall the moment I found Billy’s body and it hijacked all other thoughts. Some nights I was convinced I could hear him crying and on motherly instinct, I’d jump out of bed and be by the door before realising I was hallucinating.

My body and mind operated separately. My head knew I’d lost him, but my breasts punished me further by continuing to produce milk.

I missed Billy’s babyness and longed for the cherished droop of his head on my shoulder as he slept. I missed wiping the sleep caught in his eyelashes. I missed using my teeth to keep his finger and toenails short. I missed how he’d made me feel like a woman again after what Dougie had done to me.

No matter how much you tried to reassure me it was just a terrible, terrible accident, deep in your heart you must have hated me. How could you not? I did.

April 12, 11.45pm

Your support never ended, but no amount of reassurance was enough. I even took my self-loathing out on you, blaming you for not being in the bathroom where I’d expected you to be.

But you never took the anger you must have felt out on me. Not ever. You dealt with your grief in your own, stoic way. And you were always there for me when I needed to roar or bawl. You were the perfect husband.