Cat Step, page 19
‘Then that poor schoolboy died. That’s what stopped it. He took some of those pills and mixed them with drink and he died. He was only thirteen. It all came out soon after.’
‘What schoolboy?’ I said.
‘One of the children. He’d bought the pills off Michael McDermott and Robbie Watt. The police were at our door several times. They even searched our garden in case they’d hidden anything there. Yes, the boy died.’
Eve shouted again. ‘Alice, stop talking. I swear to God I will batter you Liz if you don’t shut up. You are abusing this woman. She’s not in her right mind and she’s saying things she oughtn’t. June McDermott is my friend. She’s a private person. She is a private person.’
‘She has no right to be a private person when it concerns my partner. Keep talking Alice.’ I wouldn’t stop.
But Alice began to cry. ‘He had measles as a boy but that was all. And he was healthy for decades. Decades. We didn’t know he was so ill until it was too late to operate.’
Senga and Agnes leaned into her, offering her napkins and tea.
‘Young Robbie Watt died of a heart attack didn’t he? Some said he got what he deserved.’ Alice let herself be consoled by Agnes and Senga, Charlie shook his head and I had to turn my back on her.
Eve tried to drag one of the ballet barre chairs back to the table. I stood next to her and put my hands on the chair.
‘See! I told you not to go there,’ she said.
‘You tell me what you know.’
‘Haven’t you heard it all?’
‘I want to know everything about Robbie. What the fuck was he doing with Michael McDermott?’
‘No need for swearing,’ John said. He stood between us.
‘He was groomed!’ Eve said. ‘That’s what you call it now. That’s what they said happened to Robbie. He was groomed by Michael. He got him doing all his dirty work. June was saying only the other day that she believes Robbie was innocent.’
She acted caught. I saw her look at John. And yes, she was caught, because that pretence at the ballet barre about not knowing anything, keeping quiet and dancing hard, was blatant deceit.
‘Why didn’t anybody tell me?’
‘I think June would have, eventually,’ Charlie said.
‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘What happened to Robbie and Michael? They got caught.’
John spoke now. ‘Well, the whole village knew before the police did – officially anyway. The boy who died, his uncle dealt with it the way some men deal with things and I think the whole village and the whole police force turned a blind eye. He gave Michael McDermott an old fashioned doing. And as is the way with another type of man, Michael went straight to his mammy with his bloodied face and didn’t want his mammy to patch him up, he wanted her to pay for it. There’s a certain type of man that hits a woman and June’s son, to her shame, is one of those.’
‘Which is why she won’t talk about it,’ Eve said.
John spoke again. ‘Robbie was there and got between Michael and his mother and ended up getting a beating. He didn’t need to follow him into June’s house because he’d have had the measure of Michael by then. He’d have known what to expect. There must be madness in you to hit your mother.’
‘Unforgiveable,’ Eve said. ‘She was right to abandon him.’
‘What happened to Robbie?’
‘The police arrested the two of them. It went to court. Michael got the jail. Robbie was let off. He pleaded coercion. Grooming. Blackmail, whatever. He laid it all on Michael.’
‘He never told me,’ I said.
‘Do you wonder why not?’ Eve said.
Then there were footsteps. Ruth stood in the doorway, alarmed. ‘I heard shouting,’ she said. ‘Eve? Is everything all right? Why is Alice crying?’
I saw them sitting around the table, watched Ruth kneel beside Alice, and felt that hot grip in my stomach again. There was a rushing sound in my ears and I could hear every beat my heart made. Petits battements. My heart made a sound, honestly, and it hurt as it beat, as if it had swelled too large, dangerously large. I stood still, amazed yet terrified by the physical thumps and jumps inside me. Then I found it hard to breathe, hard even to slip a feather of breath into my lungs and I wanted to escape but was afraid to move because I thought, at any moment, I would fall. My heart thudded viciously on. I sat on the floor, waiting for it to pass, but it didn’t stop and my breathing was hard and the noise in my ears sent my head underwater. I leaned my head between my knees and shouted out that I was ill, that my heart was breaking down, and asked someone to help me, help me. I think it was Eve who called the ambulance. Ruth made me lie on my side and found a cushion for my head. My heart was still racing, battement, battement. I remember seeing the clean leather ballet shoes of my dancers.
Ruth accompanied me to hospital in the back of the ambulance. I was tired after the great crashes in my chest and I was frightened. My arms had a heaviness to them, the fire in my stomach still hurt. Nurses put pads on my chest, took blood and monitored me. It was Ruth who remembered Emily and stopped me from racing out of the hospital to get her.
‘Can you ask anyone to pick her up for you? One of the mums?’
I could only think of Paul. She found Paul’s number in my phone and called him, nodding her head as she listened and telling me afterwards that he would collect Emily and take her back to his mum’s house and feed her if necessary.
‘She likes fish fingers,’ I said. ‘I’ll need to call the nursery.’
‘I’m sure they’ve got fish fingers. We can call them now.’
I lay on my back and looked at the ceiling tiles.
My diagnosis? Panic. People think it’s a heart attack, the young doctor told me. It can present as a heart attack. In your case it’s not a heart attack, it’s panic. An attack of panic. Rest, sleep, avoid stress, see your GP. We’ll just wait for the bloods to come back.
Ruth excused herself. I pulled the hospital sheet to my chin and thought of Robbie stealing diazepam from prescription bottles, selling pills for coins to schoolchildren. The cause of a boy’s death. No. Robbie was better than me. He always was. He didn’t do it. No way. The running, the tenderness, the care, the love of life. He didn’t do it. He would have been a better parent to Emily. We should have swapped places. He didn’t do it and he should have been alive.
The young doctor whipped back the curtain and the nurse told me to look after myself. Ruth drove me to Paul’s mother’s house and Paul took me and Emily home. He stayed with me for an hour, helped find Emily’s pyjamas, suggested I put mine on too and the three of us sat on Audrey’s sofa and watched one of Emily’s programmes. My body had that rinsed feeling you get when you’re utterly spent, physically and emotionally, done with everything. I was grateful for Paul’s arm around my shoulder no matter whose partner Georgia said he was.
13.
If Robbie had been alive I’d have confronted him with his secret, fierce and forceful, in a corner of the house while Emily played with a toy or watched television. Ecarté. I’d have thrown open his past and dealt with it immediately. But he wasn’t alive so I couldn’t do that and it made me agitated. I couldn’t even butter bread without getting distracted or nicking my finger with the knife or crying or snapping at Emily. She was excited about her trip to the primary school. I told her to hurry up and get dressed.
‘I might be too shy to say hello to my buddy,’ she said.
‘Nonsense. Be brave, be a big girl, tell me all about it when I pick you up.’
She went into nursery with no fuss, put her outdoor shoes on the cloakroom shelf, hung up her coat and gave me the most beautiful hug. I didn’t deserve that girl.
A technique we used in performance, especially of contemporary dance, was to listen for our fellow dancers’ breaths and take that sound as a cue to move. If we were lying on the floor or standing with our backs to each other it was often our only way of keeping in sync. When I explained the technique to Robbie he acted as if I’d revealed the workings of a magic trick.
I walked home, breathing carefully, like we did at the start of a class, trying not to obsess over the words Alice had said – the death of a boy – no teaching that day, nothing to do but search on the internet for flats and jobs. Sara phoned. Her voice was serious from the start.
‘Where are you, Liz?’
‘Outside my flat.’
I picked up some rubbish blown in from the pavement. I noticed they’d changed our sign from FOR SALE to SOLD @ CLOSING.
‘Something else has come up.’
‘What?’
‘Rather than me launch in, can I ask how you and Emily are? Have you found somewhere to live? How is Emily feeling about school?’
‘She’s meeting her buddy today. I’d rather you launched in.’
I felt in my pocket for my door keys. I heard her take a breath. ‘We’ve had a report from a member of the public about an incident between you and your daughter.’
‘Where? What incident.’
‘In the home.’
‘When?’
‘Within the last month. Can you think what I may be referring to?’
‘No.’
I put my key in the front door, opened it and stood in the hall. There was a smear of dirt on the new paint.
‘Okay,’ Sara said. ‘I’ll tell you what the concern is. We had a phone call related to somebody who did some work in your house.’
‘Paul. He did some plastering. And decorating.’
I felt sick. It was inconceivable that Paul could have harmed Emily. I never left him alone with her. He mostly came when she was in bed. He went to the toilet sometimes, but he was gone for two, three minutes at most. What could you do in two or three minutes? Did he take pictures?
‘What has Emily said? Because I don’t… I think… I don’t know how he could. Paul wouldn’t. We’re seeing each other. But there’s no way…’
Had a neighbour seen him coming into the house? Had Emily said something at nursery? That’s how these things came out wasn’t it? Odd revelations to teachers, inappropriate knowledge. I climbed the stairs.
‘It’s not Paul we’re concerned about. It’s something he witnessed when he was here, in your home.’
Now the fear increased. I tried hard to think what he could have witnessed.
‘We’ve had a report that we’re obliged to follow up.’
‘What report?’
‘We have a report concerning a punishment for Emily involving nakedness. There is also a report that you hit her, although I have to stress that the caller didn’t witness any hitting, it was just a verbal note from something Emily had said.’
‘What did Emily say?’
‘She said “You hit me mummy.”’ Battu. Beaten.
‘She didn’t. I didn’t. And what punishment? What are you talking about?’
‘The child was distressed. And the caller was concerned enough to contact us. We have to follow it up. Given your history.’
The night of the bath, when I dragged her out, ages ago, she was talking about that. Paul wouldn’t have called social services. Surely not. The fight was awful, it was horrific, I was so, so angry but it was done with an hour later. We made up. I’ll never do it again.
‘Can I ask who phoned you? Am I allowed to know that?’
‘Yes. We were telephoned by a Georgia Murray. She’s happy for me to disclose her name.’
‘Georgia Murray.’
‘She is the partner of Paul Bain who is the person who related the concern to her.’
‘I know who she is.’
‘She then passed it on to us.’
I shook my head. Georgia must have phoned social services out of spite. But Paul had been concerned enough to tell her in the first place. I tried to remember what had happened. Emily was screaming because I’d put her in time out. She threw her own towel away. I didn’t take it from her. It was an inconvenience when Paul came to the door. He saw Emily naked and crying. Yet he’d come back and fucked me. He can’t have thought I was doing anything too bad.
‘I know what you’re talking about now,’ I said.
‘Would you like to tell me about it?’
‘I can see where someone might think… she wouldn’t have been in time out for that long had the doorbell not gone… she threw her towel away… but I absolutely didn’t hit her. I didn’t. I never have. She was awful. She was hitting me and kicking me and scratching me. But I didn’t hit her.’
I wanted to. I did want to hit her and I was probably rough with her, I’ll own that. But I was more likely to have hit myself than her.
‘She was naked and shivering?’ The social worker spoke as if quoting someone’s words.
‘I don’t know if she was shivering. I put her in time out and then the doorbell rang.’
From the living room window I saw a man who could have been Charlie, as old as Charlie, bent over his frame, walking slowly along the pavement, wearing a black coat and a green scarf. It wasn’t Charlie. Sara asked me to describe the hours and minutes before the incident and she asked me to describe my relationship with Paul.
‘I’m going to have to go away and think about this,’ she said. ‘I may have to get some colleagues involved. I’ll certainly have to interview you again. And I would like to speak with Emily. I’ll do this at her nursery. You work with older people don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I would advise you to tell your employers. You work with vulnerable people. Your employer has to protect them too.’
She said she would be in touch. When she’d hung up I was aware of my heart whacking itself against my breastbone and in the silence of Audrey’s flat I heard my breath coming out ragged and loud.
Ruth was eating cereal when I opened the door to her office without knocking. I’ve always preferred to barrel into a situation, to dance on in an audition, to fight for my place in the front row or the call-back group. It’s one of the things Robbie liked about me.
‘Funding!’ she said, put down her spoon and wiped the corners of her mouth. ‘I didn’t get any breakfast.’
‘I need to speak to you.’
‘Good.’ She read from a form. ‘What is your methodology Liz? What is the artistic excellence you bring to your classes and how will they decrease isolation?’
‘It doesn’t matter now.’
‘You’re not quitting are you?’ Her face looked concerned. The phone rang and she told me she had to get it. She dealt with the caller quickly. It was the bottled water company. ‘Just the one tub please. And one empty to take away.’
She ate a mouthful of her cereal.
‘I have to tell you something,’ I said. ‘It’s to do with social services.’
‘Yes?’
‘They’re investigating me. It’s nothing to do with old people. It’s a personal matter. To do with my daughter. It’s not what you’re thinking. I haven’t done anything bad. I haven’t. But they’re investigating me because it’s come off the back of something else that happened when I’d just moved here. I didn’t have to tell you.’
‘Liz, with all due respect, I can’t get a grasp of what you’re saying. Obviously I have to put my manager hat on. I have to think about what you’re saying in relation to the residents.’
‘Please don’t judge me,’ I said.
‘Is it regarding your daughter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it something you’ve done or someone else has done?’
‘Something I’ve done.’
I told her. The way it came out I would have investigated myself. Ruth told me she’d heard a rumour about something in the Co-op car park. ‘I obviously haven’t shared that around,’ she said.
‘Nor have I.’
She looked puzzled and opened her mouth as if to speak and then appeared to stop herself.
I wondered what the social workers were considering. Was it neglect or was it cruelty? I couldn’t get the picture of Emily out of my head, shivering and naked on the stairs.
‘I think I know what’s best for now,’ Ruth said. ‘You must be thinking the same.’
‘The trouble is,’ I said. ‘My classes are my income. I rely on the money. If I stop the classes—’
‘You have to stop the classes.’
She pushed her bowl aside, took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. ‘I wish you hadn’t told me this. What a complete nightmare. I could come in and supervise the class myself, we could get around it that way, but I haven’t got the time.’
‘Is that one way round it?’
‘It is one way. Because you can’t be alone with them anymore. But it’s not ideal time-wise. And also if you’re under investigation for, you know, and I know about it, if anything came out, later on, well it doesn’t look good does it? If I’ve kept you on just because we like you. Look at some of the people in the news recently.’
The phone rang again and she held her hand on the receiver for many rings while she told me she wouldn’t tell any of the residents. She would say I’d gone for personal reasons. I stood up.
‘Wait, I’ll need to escort you out.’
The phone rang on.
‘I’m going to find June.’
‘No, you can’t be in the building unsupervised. She’s not here anyway.’
‘Where’s she gone? I can’t be in the building?’
‘Not anymore. We have procedures that’ll have to kick in now. I don’t know where she’s gone but I saw her leave.’
‘When? How long ago?’
‘It’s not for me to say, Liz.’
‘She’s my friend!’
The phone stopped ringing. Ruth stood up and smoothed her skirt.
‘Come on, pet, let’s get you out of here.’ She promised to be honest and fair and tell social services if they asked that she personally didn’t have any concerns and she stood in the doorway and watched me leave.
