But I quickly realise such a move wouldn’t work. There’s still no actual evidence, and I wouldn’t be able to stand up in court and say I’d ever noticed anything untoward between Ian and Daniel, because I never did. Besides, I’m hardly a credible witness, what with all the psychiatric evaluations and so on. I doubt Daniel would want to go through a court case either, having to tell some po-faced judge what he’d told me, all the vile details. He said as much. I remember what I went through after being raped; there was no way I would have been able to endure hours of police questioning and some hatchet-faced lawyer out to prove I’d been begging for it. My rapist’s parting thrust returns full force to mock me: It’ll be your word against mine. A taunt echoed years later with my husband’s cruel violation of my boy.
I wonder what I can do to help Daniel and it seems the answer is nothing. I swore I’d always be there for him and protect him and I have failed miserably.
Ian’s actions will go unpunished, and that’s not fair. There will be no justice for Daniel.
I lie here and sob, wondering why my life has been so cursed. I was so naïve, back at that shabby rented flat in Bromley South; my world seemed finally to be coming right and I thought I was going to get a chance at a happy family life. My naivety continued for twenty-two years, until the top layer was ripped off the day Daniel stormed in shouting I wasn’t his mother.
Now the underlying layer has been torn away too, with the knowledge of my boy’s rape at the hands of the man to whom I entrusted him. So now my psyche is raw, exposed, and I don’t know how I can deal with this.
Perhaps karma does exist. Perhaps I’ve been as bad in past lives and not learned my lesson. How else to explain my miserable childhood, my rape, the deaths of Gran and my baby, all before I reached nineteen? Now I have to suffer Daniel’s hatred, and knowing the man whom I slept beside for so many years is a rapist. Isn’t there a limit to what one person is called upon to bear?
Suicide beckons me again. I want to die and then I won’t endure such pain. I think about ripping the duvet cover up and knotting the lengths together but of course, they’ve already thought of such things in a place like this; there’s nowhere from where to hang an improvised noose. I could refuse to eat but they’d probably shove a feeding tube in me and there wouldn’t be any point.
But there’s no point in living either. Everything I ever valued has either been stripped from me or proved worthless and I can see no sense in existing for another forty or fifty years in a room like this, waiting to die.
I’m wrong, though. Suddenly, from deep within my brain, the answer comes to me.
It's so obvious. There is a reason, an urgent and compelling one, for me to live. Ian Bateman needs to be punished. I can atone for my sins towards Daniel by getting the redress he doesn’t think is possible.
I’ve been lying to myself all this time, saying there’s nothing I can do.
Since Daniel hurled the vile truth of his abuse at me, I’ve known what I must do. I just haven’t been able to admit it to myself. Now I can.
It’s been a couple of days since my husband last visited me. I’m grateful he’s a creature of habit; I can be sure he’ll visit me tomorrow. I lie back and try to sleep. I feel oddly at peace.
The next day, sure enough, I’m told I have a visitor.
Ian is standing before me, asking how I am.
‘You look tired,’ he comments.
He drags a chair across the room and sits down by me. I’m lying on the bed.
He starts talking about something or other and my mind wanders. I stare at him, and he appears so normal, a family man who sets up pensions and plays golf; nobody would look at him and peg him as the rapist of a young boy. You’d expect someone like that to appear twisted, a bit off-kilter. Then I remember the faces of the murderers and rapists I’ve seen on TV and most of them seem as ordinary and boring as the rest of us. You can’t measure a person’s soul by their face. Take me, for example, a petite middle-aged housewife and mother. You wouldn’t look at me and guess I was a kidnapper.
Or that I’d be capable of doing what I’m about to do. The time has come to make amends for my Daniel. My hand reaches under my mattress. My fingers clutch what I find there.
See, I must have known subconsciously what I was going to do yesterday, when Daniel was shouting at me. When I looked at his jacket and thought how maybe I’d pull off his loose button as something to cherish of my beloved boy. And when my fingers strayed towards the jacket.
I did know, deep down, because instead of pulling off the button, I reached towards the pen tucked in his inside pocket, and I drew it out and hid it under the mattress. Now my fingers are curled around the barrel, and I prise off the top. I press the point against my palm and I savour the pain as it digs in. It’s one of those cheap ballpoints, the ones with the thin ends that write all scratchily.
That’s good. That’s really good.
I stand up and the pen is in my right hand, and Ian doesn’t take much notice of me, lost as he is in some golfing story. I’m a small woman, but as he’s sitting down, I’m higher than he is and the difference gives me the advantage. I put my hand on the back of his neck, in what seems like an innocent caress, tightening my grip, to hold his head in place. He looks up at me then and my arm rises into the air and comes down again with as much force as I can muster, and the pen is no longer in my hand, but sticking out of his left eye.
And there’s blood, and screaming, and the door flies open, and I’m being restrained and all I can stare at is the pen, skewering the eye of my son’s rapist and I hope to God what I’ve done will be sufficient redress for Daniel. I’d hoped to kill my bastard of a husband, but I might not have hit hard enough and the pen might not be enough of a weapon. Perhaps he’ll just lose his eye. I hope he dies, but I can’t do anything to influence that, more’s the pity.
My rapist husband, face bloodied, moaning in a way that doesn’t sound human, turns to stare at me with his remaining eye. It’s the look of a man acknowledging his own guilt. I don’t doubt he realises why I’ve done this. That I found out what he did to my boy and how justice, hand in hand with redress for Daniel, is calling him to account for his crimes.
An eye for an eye, they say, except this time it’s an eye for a rape, or rather a number of them. Is that a fair exchange? Perhaps. I have no idea. All I can do is hope it will be sufficient for Daniel. He’ll hear about what I’ve done, he’ll know why I did it, and perhaps that will be enough to soften his hatred of me a little. All I’ve wanted since he found out I wasn’t his biological mother was for him to understand, to feel some compassion for the eighteen-year-old girl unable to deal with the death of her baby. For him not to hate me. If I can tell myself that my boy thinks of me with some empathy and that he doesn’t despise me, then I can bear to stay alive.
Redress tastes sweet. Have I done the right thing for you, Daniel?
34
UNDERSTANDING
Annie put the last of Daniel’s paintings back against the stack of canvasses.
‘You’re good, Daniel. Better than good – this is amazing work. You have a real gift.’
Thank God. Annie wasn’t someone to bullshit him. She knew her stuff when it came to paintings, her flat full of art books and prints, and he’d never doubted she’d give her opinion to him straight. He let out the breath he’d been holding, savouring the unfamiliar praise. Tonight was the first time he’d dared to show her anything he’d painted, despite the fact they’d been seeing each other regularly for several weeks now. Eventually she’d insisted he show her some of his work and, being Annie, wouldn’t take no for an answer.
He sensed something healing inside him because of her words. In a few seconds, she’d managed to erase his stepfather’s contemptuous dismissal of his art, kicking out derision and replacing scorn with approval. A real gift, she’d said. He’d never be able to convey what those few words of hers meant to him.
‘I’m painting pretty much all my spare time these days. When I’m not seeing you or my family.’
‘You thought any more about pursuing your art? Going to college?’
He had. He’d discussed the idea with his parents, too. ‘Reckon I will. Probably next year.’
‘You should.’ She picked up the last painting again. ‘Your style’s changed. I like these later ones better. More life. More colour.’
She was right. No surprise there, he thought. His paintings were a metaphor for his whole being. His abduction and subsequent abuse had painted his life in dark, sombre hues; now warm reds and yellows had replaced the bleakness. All bound up with the reunion with his family and the solace he’d found in Annie.
More than those two factors accounted for the transformation, though; he couldn’t deny the part Laura Bateman had played. A cheap ballpoint pen wielded by his kidnapper had done more to heal his damaged psyche than the secret visits over the years to the sex clubs, places as dark and murky as his paintings had once been. He’d not had the urge to screw the hell out of a man since the attack. No coincidence, that.
Two months had gone by since Daniel had forced Laura Bateman to confront the consequences of kidnapping him. Eight weeks had passed since he’d heard, and understood, what she’d done to put right some of the wrong she’d brought about through her actions. Plenty of time to think about what his stepfather’s skewered eyeball represented for him.
Redress was the answer to that question. He’d yelled at Laura Bateman how he’d never get justice for being raped and abused, but he’d been wrong. The woman he’d screamed his hatred at, who he’d believed had ruined his life, had achieved it for him. When he’d heard about the attack, he’d known immediately why she’d done it. Laura Bateman’s actions had spoken for her, loud and clear. Her forcing that ballpoint pen into his stepfather’s eye two months ago had shone light into what had previously been dark, changing his life for the better.
He’d continued to see Annie during that time. The fact they were now having regular sex had altered things between them, shifted their connection onto a completely new level. Neither of them seemed able to break away from what they had and he didn’t think either of them wanted to, not yet. He found such comfort in the sex and even more in the after-sex, when they’d hold each other, the closeness between them healing some of their wounds. They needed each other right now but it wouldn’t be a forever thing. They had different priorities. He’d move forward with his life, including his art; she’d figure out how to deal with the crap in her past and move on as well. Perhaps they’d maintain some sort of contact, perhaps not. It didn’t really matter. What mattered was what they had here and now.
He hugged her. ‘Thank you. For everything.’ His hand slid over the tempting ass beside him. God, it had been far too long since they’d hit the sack. Time to put that right.
A couple of hours later, Annie was lying in bed next to him, limp and sated, making pillow talk.
‘How’re things going with the family?’
‘Couldn’t be better. Mum spoils me rotten – she says she’s making up for twenty-two years of maternal deprivation – and Dad, well, we drink beer together and he’s a great guy, Annie. He’s the father I always wanted as a child. My grandparents too, they’re wonderful. Everyone’s slotted me back into their lives as if I had never gone. It feels right, Annie. I’m exactly where I should be.’
‘So the story has a happy ending.’
‘Seems that way.’
‘You in contact with Katie at all?’
‘Yeah. We’ve swapped a couple of emails, and, you know, I think it’s getting easier.’
‘Told you it would. You should listen to my words of wisdom more often, young man.’ She punched the side of his arm lightly, and Daniel laughed. He liked her straight talking and her strength and he wondered how he’d ever endured the airheads he’d been with before Katie and Annie. He no longer noticed Annie’s hooked nose; he found the mouth underneath far more interesting. The playboy had grown up at last, it seemed.
‘What about you, Annie?’ His expression turned serious as he tilted her head up to look at her. ‘Is life becoming easier for you?’
She drew in a breath and let it out slowly. ‘Yes. No. Not sure. Yes, mostly. Being with you has helped. I seem to be thinking more about the happy times with Andrew and less about finding him dead on the floor in his own blood. I still get days when all I want to do is crawl under the duvet and shut the whole damn world out and that’s when losing him hurts like hell. Been eight months now, and I miss him and our life together every single day and I ask myself why it happened.’
‘You ever get any answers?’
‘Only clichéd ones, about how that’s life, and crap like that. You always think tragedies happen to someone else. And then one day you’re the one in the news, sobbing into a reporter’s microphone. Guess that’s how your mother must have felt when you were taken.’
‘Yes. She’s said as much. My nanny, too, when I last spoke to her.’
‘You’ve been in touch with her again?’
‘Yeah. We’ve talked on the phone. I’ll go down to Bristol again sometime soon, check up on how she’s doing. She’s promised to come up to London too. Mum has her phone number. I’m hoping one day they’ll talk.’
‘You think that’s likely? You said your mother blamed her for what happened.’