The Child Who

16

It had, she said, gone something like this.

Stephanie was seated when Karen arrived, facing the door and curiously still. Blake, behind her, seemed powered by the both of them: not muttering when Karen walked in but giving the impression he was merely drawing breath. He was pacing, or seemed to have been, because it took him a second or two after Karen entered to rein in his momentum. He came to a halt beside the armchair, partially obscuring his wife and soundlessly broadcasting his hostility. He checked his watch, as though Karen being ten minutes late were the cause of his disquiet. She should have been on time, of course. She had not intended to leave her office that morning but something had come up and it had taken longer than she had expected to deal with and the traffic, on the way back, had been…

Anyway. The point was Blake was hostile from the start, just as Leo had predicted he would be.

Karen apologised. Blake took her hand when she offered it, though for half a second she was certain he would not. Daniel’s mother did not stand but smiled up at Karen. She seemed calm. Chemically so, Karen would have said. It was a glaze she recognised. One, sometimes, she prescribed.

Blake was not calm. He acted, once Karen was in the room, in a manner to imply he was perfectly in control but his agitation simmered below his skin.

‘So you’re the shrink,’ he said, restating in his own terms Karen’s introduction.

‘A shrink,’ Karen said and reinforced her smile. ‘Leo. Leonard. Mr Curtice…’ she was unsure, it struck her then, how they would know him ‘… asked me to help out. With Daniel. With the case.’

‘Like you’re not getting paid,’ Blake responded. ‘Like “helping out” isn’t billed by the hour.’

Still Karen smiled. ‘Would you like coffee? Tea? Water or something?’

‘Let’s just get on with this.’ Blake sat on the join between the cushions on the sofa and aimed his knees at ten and two. ‘Shall we?’

Karen waited for Blake’s wife to decide for herself, then settled, when Stephanie shook her head, on the armchair beside her.

‘I was hoping,’ Karen said, impartially alternating eye contact, ‘for a little background. I invited you here because I thought, by talking to you, I might glean some insight into—’

But she need not have bothered with the rehearsals.

‘I have a living to earn,’ Blake interrupted. ‘Steph here has soaps to watch. What is it you want us to tell you?’

‘Well,’ Karen said, ‘I’m not sure exactly. Which is why I thought it important that we should talk. The three of us.’ She endeavoured, with a look, to include Stephanie.

‘Talk. Always bloody talk. That’s all any of you lot seem to do.’

‘Us lot, Mr Blake? Who do you mean exactly?’

Blake flicked a hand. ‘Curtice. Social services. The do-gooders from that charity that keeps bugging us, behaving like we’re the bloody victims. And doctors. Don’t get me started on doctors. God knows we’ve seen enough of them over the years to know they’re all full of piss and air.’

Karen said nothing. She watched.

‘This isn’t easy, you know.’ Blake’s tone was a challenge. ‘The waiting. The moving out, the moving in. The so-called bloody protection. And Steph here – she’s completely messed up about Daniel.’

Blake did not look at his wife but Karen did.

‘I’m upset,’ Stephanie said. ‘That’s all Vince means. It’s Danny, obviously, but it’s other things too.’

‘She means her mates. Former mates, rather. Mates who don’t call any more, don’t answer when she calls them.’

‘And you, Mr Blake? Are you upset?’

‘Course I am. But he’s not my son, is he? It’s different, isn’t it? I don’t feel so constantly bloody guilty all the time. That’s Steph’s trouble. She’s acting like she’s the one who killed that girl, like it’s her fault Daniel—’

‘Vince. Don’t.’

Blake gave Karen a look: you see what I mean? He patted himself down and located his packet of cigarettes.

‘I’d like, if I may,’ said Karen after a pause, ‘to discuss Daniel’s home life. His childhood. I’d like to establish a little background.’

‘What’s the point?’ said Blake. ‘He’s not mad, he’s not retarded – that’s what you told Curtice. He’s just screwed up. Right? So he pleads guilty. What choice does he have? How is talking about his childhood gonna change anything?’

‘You want to help him, Mr Blake, don’t you? You want Daniel to understand why he did what he did?’

‘He has to be guilty first. That’s what I read. No one can help him till he tells them he’s guilty.’ Blake turned aside, his voice dwindling into a mutter. ‘Which, the way I see it, he already has.’ He turned back to face Karen. He held up his cigarettes. ‘You’re gonna tell me I can’t smoke in here, aren’t you?’

Karen winced. ‘Sorry.’

Blake gave a sniff. He tucked the packet of cigarettes back into his shirt pocket.

‘We want to help.’

Karen turned to face Stephanie.

‘Of course we want to help. We just don’t see how we can. That’s part of the problem. That’s the reason we’re finding this so hard.’

Karen nodded. ‘I understand. I really do. We all want what’s best for Daniel and the information you give me should help us establish exactly what that might be.’

‘Why are you asking?’ said Blake. ‘That’s what I want to know. What did Daniel tell you? I mean, if he’s trying to sell you some sob story, blame everything that’s happened on Steph…’

‘Not at all. That’s not at all why I invited you here. When I met with Daniel he was scared, above all. He was confused. He seemed to struggle with his family history and I thought maybe you could help me fill in some of the blanks.’ Karen hesitated, then added, ‘The truth is, I would not, in normal circumstances, be meeting with you both. But Leo and I go back a while and… well… I was hoping, I will admit, to be involved with Daniel’s rehabilitation. Depending on the outcome of the case, of course.’

Blake snorted. ‘So you’re looking for a gig. That’s what this is about. You’re looking for freaks to dissect, to write about in some study.’

‘I want to help, Mr Blake. Vincent. May I call you Vincent? I’m genuinely only interested in doing what I can to help your stepson.’

Again Blake sniffed. He made a face that implied it did not matter now what Karen said: he had her number.

It was Stephanie who broke the silence. ‘How can we help? What is it that you want to know?’

Karen regarded each of them in turn. She spoke to Blake. ‘What you said before, about Daniel blaming your wife. What did you mean by that?’

‘What? Nothing. It’s what kids do, isn’t it? It’s what everyone does, all the bloody time. It’s Mummy’s fault. It’s Daddy’s. It’s anyone’s fault but my own.’ Blake looked at his wife looking blankly back at him. ‘Back me up, Steph, for Christ’s sake. You of all people know exactly what I’m talking about.’

Stephanie’s jaw tightened.

‘You think he blames you for something?’ Karen, this time, addressed Stephanie. It was Blake, nevertheless, who answered.

‘I just said. Didn’t I? It’s what kids do. It’s what everyone does. I didn’t mean anything by it.’ He began muttering again, something about something being exactly the type of thing he was talking about.

Karen watched him for a moment. She sighed. ‘You can smoke, Vincent. It’s fine. I’ll open a window.’ She offered Blake a smile.

His eyes narrowed. He wrapped his arms across his chest and reclined on the sofa. Karen looked to her lap.

‘Can I?’

Karen raised her head. Stephanie pointed to her handbag.

‘Of course,’ said Karen. ‘Go ahead.’ She stood and moved to the window and struggled with the sash until it was ajar. She checked around her, then crossed to her desk and tipped some pens from a mug. She set the empty mug on the arm of Stephanie’s chair, and one of the pens and a notepad beside her own seat. Stephanie exhaled towards the window but the draught nudged the smoke back the way it came.

‘You were asking about Daniel’s childhood,’ said Stephanie once Karen was seated. ‘About his home life.’

Blake was glaring at his wife, at the cigarette dangling from her hand.

‘That’s right,’ Karen said. ‘I wondered…’ She coughed. Stephanie moved her hand, her cigarette, across her body. ‘I wondered about the kind of things he might have been exposed to,’ Karen continued. ‘This isn’t about blame, you understand. I’m not here to judge anyone. But, well…’ She swallowed. ‘Violence, for instance. Physical harm. Vincent is your second husband, Stephanie. May I ask why your first marriage ended?’

‘It ended cos Frank walked out on her. That’s why it ended. Steph would still be clinging to that loser if he hadn’t shaken her off.’

Karen waited for Stephanie to answer.

‘He didn’t hit me, if that’s what you mean.’ Stephanie focused on her cigarette, tapping it repeatedly over the makeshift ashtray even though the ash had already fallen.

‘And Daniel? What was his relationship like with Daniel?’

Stephanie shrugged. She ground out her cigarette awkwardly against the inside of the mug and started fishing right away for another. ‘Normal,’ she said. ‘I suppose. Not like television normal, like kicking a ball to each other in the park, but normal in the neighbourhood we lived in.’

‘Did he ever hit Daniel? Or…’

‘No. I mean, not really. He’d give him a tap now and then, I suppose. Mostly when he deserved it. He was a drinker so sometimes he hit him harder than he meant to but he never hurt him. Not properly. He was always quite a gentle man, actually.’

‘He’s doing time for assault,’ said Blake. ‘That’s how gentle he can be.’

Karen considered the scar on Blake’s face; the boxer’s bend to his nose.

‘That’s different.’ Stephanie looked to Karen. ‘Isn’t it? That was business. That’s not what the doctor’s talking about.’

Karen made as though taking down a note. When she looked up Stephanie had a flame to her second cigarette, her eyes drawn together and trained, it looked like, on the tip of her nose.

‘Is it possible,’ Karen said, ‘that Frank ever touched Daniel? Ever interfered with him in any way?’

Stephanie expelled the smoke in her lungs. ‘None. Never. I would have known.’

‘But you said he drank. Might his behaviour have been different when he was intoxicated?’

‘I don’t see why. And anyway I still would have known. Besides, he hated that kind of thing. It made him furious. Really properly furious.’

This time Karen did make a note. ‘What about, I don’t know. Uncles. Male friends. Older boys. Anyone else.’ She did not look at Blake directly but she was watching for his reaction.

Blake did not move. His wife shook her head.

Karen tapped her pen against her notepad. ‘When Frank left,’ she said, ‘Daniel was, what? Eight?’

Stephanie thought, nodded.

‘How did he react?’

‘Who? Danny?’ Stephanie made a show of trying to recall. ‘He – Frank, I mean – he wasn’t around much by that time anyway.’ She pulled on her cigarette and her frown deepened. She held in the smoke for so long that Karen felt sure it was not coming out again. ‘Danny wasn’t happy about it, obviously. But I wouldn’t say he was specially unhappy either. He just… I don’t know. Went on being Daniel.’

‘Was Daniel generally happy, would you say? As a child. When he was younger.’

‘That’s what I mean,’ said Stephanie. ‘He wasn’t ever, like, joyous. Is that a word?’ She glanced at Karen and Karen nodded. ‘Danny wasn’t ever that kind of boy. It isn’t his nature.’

‘ To be happy?’

‘ To be… I don’t know. Laughing all the time. Things like that. It isn’t Daniel.’

Stephanie finished her second cigarette. She adjusted herself in her seat, transferred her handbag from her lap to the floor. There was the rattle, as she moved it, of pills in a jar. Or mints in a tin, of course. Vitamins, paracetamol – it might have been anything.

‘What about you, Stephanie?’ Karen said. Blake, before, had been fiddling with his packet of Rothmans. The box ceased dancing all of a sudden in his grip. ‘How did you cope when Frank left you?’

‘Me? I…’ Stephanie looked down.

‘She coped just fine. Didn’t you, Steph?’ There was malice in Blake’s tone; anger in the look Stephanie, in response, cast towards her husband.

‘I coped,’ she said.

Karen waited for Stephanie to say more. ‘You coped,’ she said after a pause. ‘May I ask what you mean by that?’

‘She means she coped,’ Blake said. ‘What could be clearer?’

Karen left another silence but neither of Daniel’s parents sought to fill it. ‘What about motherhood? More generally, I mean. Did you enjoy it? How did you cope, would you say, with being a mother?’

Stephanie glanced towards her husband. ‘I don’t know. Okay, I suppose. It was hard but everyone finds it hard. Don’t they?’

Karen let the question go unanswered. ‘Hard in what way, Stephanie? Can you explain?’

Stephanie hesitated and Blake leant forwards, forcing himself into Karen’s sight line. ‘This is about Daniel. Isn’t it? I thought this was supposed to be about the boy.’

‘Absolutely,’ Karen said. ‘It’s just background, that’s all. It’s just to help us try to understand—’

‘What’s to understand! What bloody difference does it make whether Steph “enjoyed motherhood”?’ He said this last as though the concept were patently something to mock.

‘Well, actually, Vincent, it does make quite a significant—’

‘Steph didn’t kill anyone. Frank, her ex: he liked a scrap but he never killed anyone either.’

Karen inclined her head. ‘No. That’s true. But—’

‘So what’s with all the questions about them? You wanna help Daniel, that’s what you said. Sounds to me like all you’re interested in doing is digging up the family dirt.’ An idea seemed to strike him. His eyes tightened. ‘Like for the papers or something.’ He smiled. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? You’re digging up dirt to give the papers.’ He allowed Karen an instant to respond but all she could manage was a shake of her head. ‘I’m right,’ Blake said, his smile spreading. ‘Aren’t I?’

Stephanie shuffled forwards, pressing her knees against the coffee table and reaching half-heartedly across it. ‘Vince. Please. I’m sure that’s not what this is about.’

Blake stood. ‘This is over. We’ve said all we’re going to.’

Karen rose to face him. ‘Mr Blake. Vincent. I promise you. This entire conversation is completely confidential. There is simply no way I would—’

‘Let’s go, Steph.’

Stephanie looked up at Karen.

‘Stephanie!’ Blake was halfway across the room. ‘I said, let’s go!’

His wife looked down. She started gathering her things.

Blake waited with his hand on the door handle. There was an unlit cigarette jutting from his lips, a lighter sparking in his grip. He tapped his trainer on the floor as he watched his wife, pointedly avoiding Karen’s gaze. Karen started to speak, to make one last attempt to stop them leaving, but Blake was quicker to find his voice.

‘We just want this over,’ he said and he glowered. ‘Understand? All your prodding, your poking about – it’s not gonna help.’

Karen could think of nothing to say.

‘Leave things alone. Leave us alone. All we want is our lives back to normal.’

And then, of course, Karen could have answered. Your lives will never be back to normal, she might have said. This, the way things are – it’s how they’re going to be.

‘And then they left.’

Leo was stirring sugar into his coffee. There were two empty cups in the centre of the table, a steaming one in front of each of them. Leo stopped stirring and allowed his spoon to drip. He settled it noiselessly on the saucer.

‘Leo? Did you… Are you okay?’

He looked up. ‘Sorry? What? Yes, I… Sorry,’ he said again. ‘It was a long weekend. That’s all.’ He sat straighter. ‘So what do you think?’

Karen peered at him before answering. ‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘I found it quite upsetting. Not that these things aren’t always upsetting but… well…’

‘Because of Blake, you mean? He’s like that with everyone. He’s a moron, I told you. Doesn’t give a damn about anyone but himself.’

Karen shook her head. ‘Not because of him. On the scale of obnoxiousness among the people I have to deal with in this job, he barely scrapes a seven. And anyway,’ she said, turning her cup, ‘I’m not sure that’s true.’

‘That he’s a moron?’

‘No. He’s definitely a moron. I mean the bit about him not giving a damn.’

Leo frowned. He started to ask Karen what she meant but she was dangling her arm into the bag at her feet, looking the way she was reaching. She glanced briefly at the tables around them – empty but for two mothers with their babies and an elderly couple crossing forks over a slice of carrot cake – then slid an A4 envelope alongside Leo’s cup of coffee.

‘What’s this?’

‘Just something I found. Something I obtained, rather. Take a look.’

Leo lifted the flap and pulled out the sheets that were inside. ‘What is this?’ He turned from the first page to the last. ‘There was an investigation?’ He turned back again. ‘Why weren’t we told about this?’ He noticed the date and pinned it with his finger. ‘This was after. This was since Daniel’s arrest. Why weren’t we told about this?’

Karen raised a shoulder. ‘I’m guessing they don’t have to tell you.’

Leo read, gobbling the words too quickly for them to properly register. He looked at Karen. ‘How did you…’

‘I have a friend.’

Leo looked again at the report. ‘She took a risk, giving this to you.’

‘We’re close,’ said Karen, ‘he and I.’

Leo raised his head. Karen lowered hers.

‘And anyway,’ she said, ‘it doesn’t help particularly. Not in the way you might expect.’

Leo read aloud: ‘“No evidence of abuse is established.”’ He skimmed. ‘“Daniel’s name will not be entered on the Child Protection Register.”’

‘And here . Look.’

Leo tracked Karen’s fingertip. ‘“No connection has been established between any abuse and the alleged offence.”’ He looked up. ‘In other words…’

‘“It wasn’t our fault. There’s no way they can pin this on us.”’

Leo sniffed. ‘Well. That’s all right then. So long as social services have got their own arses covered, nobody has anything to worry about. Their jobs are safe.’

‘From what my friend told me, the investigation wasn’t exactly comprehensive. But that was the point,’ Karen said. ‘It was an exercise in self-exoneration.’

Leo tossed the report onto the table. ‘They still should have told us. Even if it doesn’t help Daniel’s defence, they are morally obligated to—’

‘Not so fast.’ Karen gathered together the sheets and started flicking. ‘It doesn’t help in the way you might expect. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t help at all. Read here.’

She thrust the pages towards him.

‘But we knew about this,’ said Leo after a moment. Daniel, as a toddler, had a history of visits to the emergency ward: twice following ‘falls’, once after swallowing household bleach, a fourth time after ingesting tricyclic antidepressants. He thought they were sweets, Daniel’s mother had explained at the time; he must have done. ‘They investigated,’ Leo said. ‘It says so right here. “Concerns were raised but were demonstrated to be unfounded.”’

‘Unfounded,’ Karen echoed. ‘Please. A baby has four near-fatal accidents in his first thirty-six months and social services see no cause for concern.’

‘They must have looked into it, though. They must have asked questions.’

‘It’s where they looked that’s important. It’s what kind of questions they asked, of whom.’ Karen shook her head. ‘I’m not blaming social services,’ she said, not entirely convincingly. ‘They’re underfunded, understaffed, underappreciated. The point is, something was clearly going on. Maybe we knew the facts before but we didn’t know the context. Daniel’s medical record, tied with his mother’s depression…’

‘Her depression? How do you know she was depressed?’

‘Not was. Is. You don’t need to be a doctor to diagnose that. I’m guessing about when it started but it certainly pre-dates the murder. My hunch would be post-natal. The pills Daniel swallowed could have been anybody’s but most likely they were Mummy’s or Daddy’s.’

‘You think Mummy’s.’

‘I do. Who gave Daniel the pills, though, is another question.’

‘Who gave them to him?’

‘Gave them to him, left them out for him to find – it amounts to the same thing.’

‘But it could have been an accident. Couldn’t it? You don’t think you’re jumping to conclusions?’

‘It could. And yes, I am. But that’s what I’m here for. Isn’t it?’

Leo puffed his cheeks. He stared at the pages, not seeing the words.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s say you’re right. So what? How does what happened to Daniel as a baby have any connection with the crime he’s accused of now?’

‘It doesn’t,’ Karen said. ‘Not if you’re looking for a direct link. Indirectly, though, it explains everything. It sets a pattern. It establishes the nature of Daniel’s relationship with those closest to him and by extension with everyone around him. Depending on who you believe, Leo, it’s what happens to us in our formative years that most influences our behaviour as adults.’

‘Show me the child and I’ll show you the man. Who said that? John Lennon?’

‘Stalin, actually. Also, the Jesuits. But yes, that kind of thing. And it’s doubly true in the case of sexual abuse.’

‘Sexual abuse? Jesus Christ, Karen.’

‘What? You’re surprised?’

‘No. I mean, I wouldn’t have been. But the pills: that’s one thing. You’re saying he was sexually abused too?’

‘I’m saying it’s likely. More than likely. For a start, eighty per cent of abusers have themselves suffered abuse. Daniel was moulded, Leo – he wasn’t manufactured.’

‘But the report.’ Leo lifted the pages, knocking his coffee cup. ‘What did it say. It said…’

‘It said they found no evidence. But it only dug as deep as it needed to, remember – mainly into the past few years. As far as I’m concerned, it skirted the most interesting period of Daniel’s life.’

Leo looked again at the pages, searching for what Karen meant.

‘There’s nothing to see,’ she told him. ‘And that’s why it’s interesting. Apart from when he was a toddler and the two years just passed, there isn’t any detail at all. Except here,’ she said, pointing to a paragraph barely three lines long. ‘There was a sustained phase of truancy, noted but never explained. It coincides with Daniel’s father leaving home, with his mother…’

‘“Coping”. Whatever that means.’

‘Exactly. So in the most traumatic period of his life – not counting the actual physical trauma he seems to have suffered – Daniel barely gets noticed. He was sexually abused, probably. His father hit him, then left him. His mother – his only carer – was clinically depressed. But through all of that Daniel was… well…’

‘He was alone.’

Karen nodded. ‘He was alone.’

The coffee in Leo’s cup had spilled onto the saucer. There were puddles, too, on the wooden tabletop and Leo dabbed at them distractedly with a napkin.

‘Can we use this, do you think?’ He was talking to himself as much as Karen but she answered anyway.

‘You’re the lawyer, Leo. It’s a narrative but there’s very little in the way of evidence.’

Leo frowned and raised his head. ‘Why now, though? Why, if Daniel was so damaged, did it take so long for the damage to show?’

‘A seed has to grow. Throw on enough manure, sprinkle a few hormones – sooner or later you reap what you sow. And probably the signs were there all along. Someone has to be watching for them, however.’

Leo pondered. ‘The abuse,’ he said, not wanting to consider it. ‘You don’t think… I mean, his stepfather. Vincent Blake. You don’t think…’

‘He seems the type, doesn’t he? But Daniel was, what? Ten when Blake came on the scene? I don’t know. There’s no love lost between them, clearly, but…’ Karen tugged her lips sideways. ‘There’s something interesting, though. Don’t you think? About Vincent’s relationship with Stephanie.’

‘Hm?’ Leo was thinking, churning.

‘Vincent and Stephanie. He bullies her and she lets him but… I don’t know. There’s something else at work there too. He’s insecure, clearly. Bitter, too, about something.’

‘I thought all bullies were insecure,’ said Leo idly. ‘I thought that’s why they ended up being bullies.’

‘I suppose.’ Karen looked at Leo and smiled. ‘You should be sitting where I am.’

Leo did not smile back. ‘I’d be glad to,’ he said. ‘ To be honest, I’d take any chair right now that wasn’t my own.’