Someone to Watch Over Me (13 page)

Suspecting that Molly might be feeling lonely stuck in the house with Max, who was clearly building himself up into a Christmas frenzy, Kate rang Molly and invited her over for wine and mince pies.

‘I hope you don't mind that it's all a bit last minute,' she said, ‘but I thought if you didn't have anything better to do you might like to come round. Give you a break from Max. There will be some other kids for him to play with.'

Molly heard the kindness in Kate's voice and felt quite tearful. It had been a while since she had allowed herself to get close to anyone. Rupert had spent so long instilling in her the idea that they didn't need anyone else in their lives, that she had almost forgotten what it felt like to be relaxed in the company of other people, let alone to trust anyone enough to tell them anything important about herself. She thought she might be able to trust Kate though. She was already halfway there allowing her to look after Max, and there was something sane and grounded about her that attracted Molly. She wasn't someone who would be blown off course and there was a tender toughness about her that inspired confidence. Molly still wasn't sure however that she would ever be able to tell her what had happened between her and Rupert.

She tried not to think about it but despite herself, the memories forced their way in. Although at first Rupert had seemed more relaxed in the new house, he began to get tense about not getting work. He had applied for several jobs but had not managed to get beyond the first interview stage for any of them and in the end this started to affect his mood. He stopped taking photographs and going fishing and spent a lot of time sitting on the sofa, brooding. He became hypersensitive to sound; wincing at the noise Max made running round the house and banging into the furniture, and shouting if Molly turned on any electrical appliances. Worst of all, he started to monitor Molly's movements again, wanting to know who she was with all the time.

The second time Rupert hit her was a Saturday morning, after she had been out swimming with Max. The water at the pool was tepid, the shower drains blocked with lumps of hair and an odour of sulphur hung over the place like a pall, but the big advantage of going there was that it was often empty. Most of the population of the town preferred the flumes and clean tiles and warm showers of the other, more recently refurbished pool. Molly loved Max in his swimming shorts. He looked so bony and clean, like something made specifically to move through water. He could already swim and ducked in and out, emerging with his hair plastered sleekly to his head. He was the shrimp and she was the crab and she held him close in her pincers, enjoying the slipperiness of him against her skin. Sound was muffled and the reflection of the water danced on the ceiling.

That Saturday it had taken her a long time to get Max out of the pool. He had pleaded for another and then another attempt to dive for the ring she had thrown to the bottom. Molly had been aware as she tried to towel him dry in the tiny changing cubicle that they were going to be back home later than she had told Rupert they would be. Max took what seemed to be ages choosing sweets from the machine in the swimming pool lobby. He was a boy who agonised about making even the smallest decisions. ‘Do you think I chose the best thing?' he would often ask after lengthy deliberations over a comic or a toy. ‘Have I made a bad mistake?' he would ask, his blue eyes anxious. She would always try and reassure him, pointing out the obvious defects in the rejected items, but he never seemed sure. When they got back, Max got out of the car and ran into the house and she followed with the swimming bags and the shopping they had got on their way to the pool. Rupert was sitting in the front room waiting for them. She knew he was waiting for them because he was so still.

‘Sorry to have been out for so long,' she said, and she thought her own voice sounded strange and forced, as if she was talking to someone she didn't know very well.

‘The traffic was terrible. It took us at least three-quarters of an hour just to get through town.'

He spoke quietly, almost casually, as if he was asking something that was of little importance.

‘Where've you been?'

‘The swimming pool. We said before we left that's where we were going. We always go to the swimming pool on Saturday morning.'

It was the way that she saw his hands moving on the arm of the chair that made her go over to her son and touch his head.

‘Darling, why don't you go upstairs and start a game? Mummy will come up in a minute.'

Max looked at her almost as if he was going to argue, but went obediently out of the room. She heard his footsteps going up the stairs slowly. She imagined his hand holding on to the rail as he climbed. She saw him pushing his door open and the sun flecked with dust touching his head as he crossed the room. Rupert got up abruptly, as if he had just remembered something important.

‘Give me the bag,' he said and it took her a while to understand that he meant the swimming bag that she was still holding. He took it from her and unzipped it, tipping the contents onto the floor.

‘Show me your towel,' he said.

‘What do you mean? It's there.'

‘Pick it up.' He kicked the towel towards her and she bent to pick it up. He snatched it from her and ran his hands along the edges of the material.

‘This isn't wet.'

‘I didn't use it very much. I kind of drip dried while I was getting Max dressed,' she said and it felt already as if she was pleading with him.

‘Where've you been?' he said again. She could hear Max moving in the room above them.

‘The pool, darling. The pool. Where else would I have been?'

‘You lying little slut,' he said, as if commenting on the weather. ‘You lying bitch.' He swung his hand back and hit her full in the face. He hit her so hard she could feel the force of the blow in her teeth. She put a hand to her face and found that her nose was bleeding. She staggered and held on to the edge of the table, holding herself upright.

The door opened and Max came in. He looked at her face and ran towards her.

‘Go out now, Max. Just go out and wait for Mummy,' she said, but he stood holding on to her arm.

‘Get out, Max,' said Rupert, moving towards them. ‘Me and your mother are just sorting something out.'

‘No,' said Max. ‘I'm staying here.'

‘Do what you're told!' Rupert screamed the words close to his son's face, causing him to step back. It was this small movement and the quiet whimper of protest that the boy made that seemed to bring Molly to life. She got hold of Max and pulled him out of the room and up the stairs as fast as she could. She closed and locked the bedroom door and the two of them sat on the edge of the bed. She was half sobbing and half trying to breathe. The blood was dripping off her chin and Max wiped her face with a tissue from the box on her bedside table.

‘What did Daddy do?' he asked, his face white and surprised.

It was from a desire to protect Max, rather than Rupert that prompted her to make excuses for her husband. She couldn't bear the thought that Max should understand even a little of the ugliness of what Rupert had done. She thought that if she explained it away she could also wipe what had happened from his mind.

‘It was an accident, Max,' she said. ‘Daddy has not been himself because he is worried about not getting a job. He wants so much to look after us you see.' Her voice wavered. Max looked anxiously at her face and continued to dab at her nose with the tissue.

‘You've got blood in your nose, Mummy,' he said, his mouth white and tight.

‘He didn't mean to hurt me, Maxy. He didn't know I was standing there and he swung his arm round and it caught the side of my face.'

She comforted him and put him to bed and waited with him until he slept. When she went downstairs Rupert had gone out. He came back a week later. She never found out where he had been and although part of her hated him for what he had done, she couldn't imagine life without him. It helped her to think of him as sick and so she carried on perfecting the art of talking quietly; of becoming as close to a shadow as it was possible to be without actually disappearing.

When Max and Molly arrived at Kate's house a group of children were noisily decorating the tree and the grown-ups had taken refuge in the large kitchen. Molly took a glass of wine and Kate introduced her to the others. She was quiet at first and sat listening to the conversation, but soon began to lose her reticence in the face of their friendly chatter. There was a couple who lived in Cambridge who had both been to school with Kate, a woman who was also a childminder who lived on the other side of Parson's Bridge and Kate's sister Ruth who lived in London but who had come for a pre-Christmas visit with Kate's nephew and niece. Dave, Kate's husband, was also there pouring out drinks and warming up mince pies. Molly had another glass of wine and began to relax. Max had very happily joined the tree-decorating party and she could hear him issuing the occasional instruction. He was no doubt telling them to load up the lowest branches with the heaviest decorations.

The time passed very quickly and Molly had begun to feel pleasantly drunk. The couple from Ely left, closely followed by the other guests, including Ruth who wanted to get on the road before dark, but when Molly got up to go, Kate encouraged her to stay.

‘I've just put
Ice Age
on the DVD player and Max is as happy as anything sitting there with my girls eating his body weight in popcorn,' she said. She must also have said something to Dave because after mumbling his excuses, her husband disappeared out to his very well-equipped workshop, where he was putting the finishing touches to the doll's house he was making for their eldest daughter's Christmas present. Kate poured Molly another glass of wine and put cheese and biscuits on a plate in front of her.

‘Thanks,' said Molly, aware that she ought to eat something to absorb some of the alcohol.

‘It's so nice just to sit here in your lovely kitchen.'

‘I really hope you don't mind my asking; tell me to mind my own business if you want to, but what happened between you and your husband?' asked Kate, sitting back down at the table and loading an oatcake with a slice of brie. The habit of secrecy was so well ingrained that Molly's first impulse was to deflect the question, but her second impulse was to tell Kate the truth.

‘I've never told anyone this before,' she began. ‘I've been so ashamed for so long.' Molly hesitated again, but Kate was looking at her so kindly and anxiously that the last of her reserve disappeared.

‘He hit me. Rupert, my husband did. He hit me many times.'

She looked at Kate to gauge her reaction to the words, but she was still looking steadily at Molly.

‘He hit me when he was tired or angry or when it rained or when I rattled the cutlery too loudly.'

‘I know people always ask this of women who have suffered domestic abuse,' said Kate, ‘but why didn't you leave him? Why didn't you tell someone and find a way of getting away from him? What about the police?'

‘It makes me ashamed to say, but the more he hit me, the harder it seemed to stop what was happening. He always said he would find me if I ever left him. And I believed him.'

‘Bastard,' said Kate. ‘Where's the creep now?'

Now that Molly had started talking about Rupert, it was as if she couldn't stop.

‘He's in America. I let him hurt me for a long time, but it was only when he hurt Max that I finally was brave enough to call the police.'

‘What did he do?' asked Kate.

‘I thought I'd managed to keep the worst of it from Max. Rupert tended to hit me when he was out of the room. He had that much control at least. I'd tell Max things like I'd fallen down or walked into something,' said Molly and Kate saw her hands on the table, clenched tight.

‘Did he believe you?' Kate asked. ‘He's such a sensitive little boy.'

‘I thought he did, but one morning he passed by our bedroom door and he saw Rupert pulling my hair. He had wrapped it around the brass bit of our bed head and was pulling me tight against the metal. I tried not to cry out because I knew Max would hear. Max came running into the room and threw himself at his father and started punching him. It was terrible. He was crying with anger. I'd never seen him like that before. I tried to get him to stop, but he wouldn't. Even with what Rupert had done to me, I didn't think he would hurt Max, but he hit him so hard across the head that he ended up on the floor on the other side of the room.'

‘Oh God,' said Kate, taking hold of one of Molly's tight hands and holding it.

‘I waited for him to go out and I called the police. They came pretty quickly and were really good. They took pictures of what he had done to Max and me and they said there was enough evidence to arrest him, but before they could do anything, he disappeared. The next thing I heard was that he'd gone to America. His mother rang me and told me and she made it sound as if it was my fault.'

Molly started to cry, and Kate got up from the table and put her arms around her.

‘Of course you know that none of this is your fault, don't you?' she said.

Jen invited Carrie and Pam over to her house for Christmas Day. The women decided to walk there rather than drive since Carrie was looking forward to a couple of Jen's lethal cocktails and Pam didn't do driving. There was a bit of a tussle in the hallway when Carrie caught Pam off-loading all the heavy items out of her bag into Carrie's bag, but they set off amicably into a crisp sunny day after Carrie had insisted on a fairer redistribution of presents and wine.

As they walked along, they could see evidence through windows of children high on sugar and excitement and many families were already out with new blades, scooters and bikes. Carrie remembered Charlie's third Christmas. It had been the first Christmas he had been aware that something exciting was going to happen. When she had crept up to his room on Christmas Eve he had been lying fast asleep, his mouth open and his arms stretched out flat, his empty stocking clutched in his hand. In his all-in-one pyjamas he had looked like the frog she had accidentally flattened on the patio when she had rolled out the rubbish bin. He had burst into their bedroom early the next morning, holding his miraculously transformed stocking against his chest, and had then spent a full hour going through every object. Unwrapping each one carefully, laying the tissue paper to one side, and examining each toy, each sweet, with reverence. She could see him clearly, sitting in the safe valley between their legs, chocolate around his mouth, his hair still sleep flattened, his eyes almost black with pleasure. People that seemed to know said that as time passed the grief she felt would incorporate itself into the rest of her life, like thread in a tapestry, but she was still waiting for that to happen. It sometimes seemed as if the pain would never leave her. Sometimes she was terrified in case it did.