The Son-in-Law (27 page)

‘Why would she hate you?’

Joseph flung out his arms. ‘Come
on
.’

‘She doesn’t understand?’

‘What is there to understand, from her point of view—a woman with her history?’ Joseph smiled grimly. ‘The word
understand
implies that there might be some excuse for killing a defenceless human being, and how can there ever be an excuse? No, no, I am
way
beyond forgiveness.’

‘But you’re her brother.’

‘That just makes it worse.’

They’d arrived on the bank of the ford, and halted for a moment. The river whispered as it slid secretly under the ice.

‘When the snow melts, this will be a torrent,’ said Rosie. She seemed to glide across the ford, stepping on the thickest stretches of the concrete bar that spanned it. Joseph was halfway across when his foot cracked through the ice with a dull splash.

‘Blast,’ he muttered, as freezing water engulfed his ankle. ‘Wet sock. Gotta go and change. Coffee? My place?’

They stopped at the camp kitchen to collect Rosie’s milk before trudging down the slope towards Joseph’s caravan.

‘Your sister’s wrong,’ said Rosie suddenly.

He sensed compassion, and flicked it away. ‘Maybe after ten years of being Abigail’s farm labourer I’ll get back my citizenship of the human race. But I doubt it. Look, it doesn’t matter. I’m alive, I’m seeing my children. That’s enough for now. Come on in.’

He held the door of the caravan. Rosie stamped snow off her boots before stooping to untie the laces. She had a natural grace, he thought, despite the bulkiness of her clothes. He wondered about the man she’d left behind: the man who had offered her everything. Perhaps he was pining after her. Perhaps he was searching for her, stalking jealously as Jared once had.

It wasn’t much warmer inside the caravan than out, though Joseph had left a radiator turned low. Jessy got up, arched her back with a groan and tottered down the steps.

‘Yellow patches,’ sighed Joseph, lifting his kettle onto the gas ring. ‘All around my little palace. Lucozade-coloured snow, thanks to that old girl.’

Jessy was soon back, slipping on each step and forcing the door open with her head. She seemed to be muttering
Jeepers! It’s
cold out there!
as she bustled back to the radiator, leaving a trail of wet paw marks. Rosie patted the dog’s soft face while her eyes strayed to a faded book that lay on one of the squabs. The cover was cinnamon and gold.

‘Aha!’ she cried, reaching for it with a smile of recognition. ‘
The Prophet
.’

There was no way to stop her. He watched her open the book and read the flyleaf with its flamboyant handwriting. He watched her smile falter.

He turned away, stooping to squint out of the window. ‘That patch of blue is more than a sailor’s pants now. Look—it’s a whole mainsail.’

‘I feel like a peeping Tom.’

‘Hardly.’

He heard her close the book and put it down. ‘What was she like?’

What was she like?
Joseph tugged off his beanie, running a hand through his hair. ‘She was like a whirlpool.’

‘Why a whirlpool?’

‘Because she was an irresistible force. Impelling. Dizzying.’ His movements automatic, Joseph made coffee in a plunger. ‘One of the psychotherapists had this mantra:
I am not my condition
.
I am not my condition
. Zoe was meant to remember it whenever things got wild. But the fact is that bipolar
was
a part of Zoe. It was an element of her beauty. It was also her personal demon and torturer. Both. It took her to places nobody could follow.’

‘All the time?’

‘No. No, she was stable for months, years . . . When I first met her she was so well that she could hold down two jobs, acting and waitressing. Acting was in her blood. Her father’s a theatre director, the sort who can look forward to an obituary in
The Times
.’

‘Mm. Gus’s mother saw him on telly when you were sentenced. Apparently the parents were very dignified outside court.’

‘Really? I didn’t know that.’ Joseph carried two mugs of coffee to the table, and Rosie joined him there. ‘The problem is that acting is quite dangerous for someone like Zoe. She’d think herself into the characters, leave reality up on the surface and sink into their emotions. If she was playing a tragic role, she’d come off the stage in floods of tears. It wasn’t good for her grip on reality.’

‘No, I can imagine it wasn’t.’

‘Eccentricities and ups and downs were a part of the deal. At first, I was happy to ride on her rollercoaster. She showed me a way of thinking that was infinitely more exciting than my own family’s.’

‘Really?’

‘Infinitely! If you met my father, for instance . . . He’s like a zombie compared to Zoe. Before we knew it, Scarlet was on the way. That’s when things got out of hand. It wasn’t fun anymore, it was crazy. Zoe started spending, throwing impromptu parties for total strangers, talking at a thousand miles an hour. Then down she’d crash—couldn’t even get out of bed, didn’t want to live. I was faced with carnage: the friends she’d insulted, the credit card bills, the reorganisation of the house—every cupboard, every shelf emptied, everything piled on the floor. People said it was her nesting instinct, and I wanted to believe them. I didn’t know how pregnant women were meant to behave.’ He stared into his mug, remembering. ‘Scarlet’s birth was shattering, in so many ways. When I first held that brand new human being . . . my baby girl . . . my world completely changed. I hadn’t imagined love on such a scale was even possible.’

‘You’re blessed,’ said Rosie gently.

‘Yes, I am. I am. But Zoe got worse—mania and depression, cycling wildly. I didn’t use those terms then because I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I found her in the garden one night, wearing a party dress. She was on another planet. It was surreal because she reminded me of herself, acting Ophelia—you know that scene when she’s gone mad?’

‘Mm. Vaguely.’

‘I’m sure Shakespeare had seen a woman in the throes of psychosis. Zoe . . .’ He swallowed. ‘She was on her way to drown Scarlet and herself in the pond on Tooting Bec Common.’

Rosie recoiled. ‘No! What did you do?’

‘I got her back inside and called an ambulance. They knew how to manage her and I didn’t, I just didn’t, I . . .’ He bit his knuckles as he fought for control. ‘She was admitted to a psychiatric unit—not for the first time, I discovered.’

‘She‘d been in before?’

‘Yep. Sectioned in Yorkshire—which was a closely guarded secret to which I wasn’t privy. This time, though, the shrinks came up with a diagnosis. The thing is . . . The thing is, the thing is . . . she was still the love of my life. So we vowed we’d get through it together. And we did. We moved up here. We had Theo, and it was fine—she didn’t breastfeed, and got plenty of rest. I gave up playing football, turned down promotions, brought work home.’

‘You were a teacher, right?’

‘Right. For a long time, the drugs more or less worked. It wasn’t always easy, but lots of marriages aren’t. Zoe was an amazing mother when she was well; an amazing lover and friend, too. Loving, fun, inspiring. I thought we’d manage to walk the tightrope.’

‘Did she mind taking medication?’

‘She said she missed the golden trumpets when she was on her way up, but it was worth it to avoid the depression. We did okay. Really, we did. Years passed, years with lots of joy and some bloody awful rows—especially when she wanted to go back to London and I refused.’

‘You didn’t want to move back?’

‘We needed my income, and I had a decent job; anyway, the stress of life down there would have been too much for her. Everything exploded when . . .’ Joseph took a sip of coffee, and grimaced. ‘This is gnat’s pee. Sorry.’

‘I’ll make some more.’ Rosie slid out from behind the table. ‘What happened?’

‘Um . . . Ben happened. I’m sure that was the trigger. From then on we were in Wonderland. She wanted a birthday party for Theo, said it would be fit for a prince. And it was. Zoe knew how to throw a party. She hired a hall and decorated it to look like an underwater palace. Fifty children.’

‘Fifty!’

‘With a clown and a birthday cake so massive that one of your father’s lap dancers could have burst out of it. The kids had a ball.’

‘The kids had a ball, and you had the bill?’

‘Too right. Then she bought ten litres of bright orange emulsion and painted half the house before she lost interest. She threw out all her clothes, bought a whole new wardrobe for herself and Scarlet. I had to use the children’s savings to pay for that spree. I managed to cancel the holidays she booked—three of them, in the Bahamas. Next, the brand-new BMW arrived, the one she’d bought on hire purchase, the one we could never afford. I begged her to get help. She said, Why? She was fine, she’d never felt better. Those words made my blood run cold. If Zoe had never felt better, we’d never been in more trouble.’

Rosie placed a fresh mug of coffee in front of him. Steam spiralled up in the thin light. He felt her hand rest lightly on his. It was a fleeting moment of comfort. Then she was slipping behind the table again.

Joseph looked out of the window. ‘You forget. You forget what’s normal. Like Marie did . . . She no longer knew that normal men don’t break their girlfriend’s jaws. Life for me and the kids felt like being trapped in a washing machine, with Zoe controlling the spin speed. We just had to hold on tight and grit our teeth as it spun faster and faster. And Zoe . . .’ Joseph squinted at the pain of memory. ‘Sang. Zoe laughed. And the more she sang and laughed the more desperate she became—she was terrified, my poor girl. She did everything to excess. Booze. Rage. Sex. Sex with me, the old flame she bumped into, the hitchhiker she picked up on the A19.’

‘But you didn’t leave her?’

‘No, I didn’t leave her. You start to behave like the White Rabbit when you live in Wonderland. Of course I called her mental health team and they did what they could, but I didn’t want her sectioned even if they’d have done it. Zoe decided she loathed my job, I wasn’t appreciated and I must get another one. She kept ringing people up and making appointments for me to go for interviews. It was disastrous. I ended up before the management at my school, demanding to know what the hell I was playing at. So Zoe called the headmaster to tell him I despised him.’

‘Ouch. Did he understand?’

‘He tried.’

Joseph was coming to the end of his story, to the awful end. He wanted to tell it—needed to tell it, dreaded telling it. Jessy rolled, stretched, sighed. Melting snow wept from the roof.

‘I used to do exam marking,’ he said. ‘A levels. We needed every penny we could get. The courier would bring them and there were deadlines. One day . . .’ He took several long breaths. ‘The second I walked in the door I knew there’d be trouble. Zoe was already halfway through a bottle of wine, excited because they’d had a bonfire—talking nineteen to the dozen—dancing around the sitting room, cheeks flushed, eyes glazed. My heart just sank. I went into my workroom to drop my bag and saw that the latest pile of exam scripts had gone from my table. It was . . . Christ. I knew. I just knew.’

Rosie was staring at him, mesmerised.

‘I sprinted into the garden.’ Joseph shook his head, denying the moment. ‘She’d burned the lot. I found charred paper ground into the ash, bits fluttering away, and I felt my
own
sanity tearing. I barged back inside, yelling. I called her a bitch. I called her . . . God knows what else I called her. I said I’d have her sectioned. I screamed about those poor teenagers who’d sweated over their exams. I said I’d have to resign, I’d be lucky if I wasn’t sued, how the hell would we pay for her fucking craziness? And she stood there and laughed, as though it was all hilarious. Ben was wriggling on her hip, wanting to get down, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was a total stranger, she wasn’t Zoe. I can’t describe how that made me feel. I can’t . . . Christ.’

‘You don’t have to go on,’ said Rosie. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’

He held up a hand, asking for time. ‘I lost my . . . like,
really
, lost control. I hit her, and I was shouting and then she was shouting. I couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t hear my poor kids screaming and crying. I hit her again, even harder—why did I do that?
Why?
What the hell did I think I was doing? Jesus . . .’

He stopped with a gasp, ducking his head low. Rosie reached across the table and took his hands.

He had to tell it all. He had to pass it on, somehow. He gulped, forcing out the words. ‘I heard it as she went down. This sickening crack. Next thing she’s lying there on the rug. Her eyes are wide open and she’s glaring right at me but there’s this blankness where she used to be. And there’s blood coming from her ear. And I’m crying out, I’m crying out for her to be all right, I’m on my knees beside her and I’m begging her, Jesus Zoe Jesus come back, come back, but she never did, not even for a few seconds—though she’s haunted me every . . . single . . . bloody . . . night from that day to this, staring at me like I’m . . . like she can’t believe I’d do such a thing. And I can’t believe it either because she was my life.’

Ben had fallen when she fell. He sat in his nappy and tiny T-shirt, wailing. Joseph ignored him. He must save Zoe. He yelled to Scarlet to phone for an ambulance. He tried CPR—how many pumps was it, at what speed? He tilted back Zoe’s head, tried to breathe his life into hers. After all, her eyes were open. Perhaps if he filled her lungs with air, she’d breathe for herself. She had to. She had to.

But Zoe never breathed again.

A shaft of sunlight found its way through the clouds, throwing cold brilliance onto the scratched table. Joseph dropped his head onto his arms, and felt the steady pressure of Rosie’s fingers on his. But she wasn’t real.

Zoe was real. Zoe was staring at him from the mat, and his life was over.

Twenty-four

Hannah

Freddie and I sat side by side in Jane’s office, staring aghast at Lester Hardy’s latest ramblings. Apparently he’d visited Scott’s caravan and thought it a perfectly safe place for our grandchildren to visit. The final paragraphs made my hair stand on end.