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SIXTY-FIVE
‘Bastard,’ I say, turning out of the prison a little too sharply. ‘Bloody, shitting bastard.’
A pair of teens in hoodie tops and low-slung jeans amble past. One leans in to the other, whispers something, and they both laugh. They’re not laughing at me, but I can’t help feeling that they might be.
‘Bastard.’
I say it louder this time, smack the side of the steering wheel. My nose starts to fizz. The pressure builds behind my eyes, a lone tear slinking down my face.
In the rear-view mirror the prison buildings start to shrink and fade.
It’s over, I tell myself. You did it.
I should be jubilant. Finally, I have the answer I’ve waited a lifetime to hear. Matty was responsible for the Shadow murders. I was right to go to the police. He’ll die behind bars, just as he deserves.
And of course, there is a relief knowing that, but it’s not the relief I was looking for.
‘There’s no happy ending,’ Janice told me once. ‘Even if you ever find out for sure whether he’s guilty or innocent, it’ll come at a cost.’
It didn’t stop me hoping though, searching for the truth. But turns out she was right. I know the truth, and yet my chest is still filled with rocks.
‘He’s a liar,’ I say to my mother. ‘How could he say those things about you?’
I didn’t start talking to her straight away, too much resentment had built up over the years for that. I found it hard to forgive her drinking and pill popping, the way she’d retreated into herself after Matty’s conviction. That what mattered to her was who she’d lost not who she still had.
But after she died and with each year that passed, I started to forgive her more. For what she’d done, for what she had me do. Time, rubbing the rough edges smooth. There was so much I’d never asked her, so much left to say. As many unanswered questions as beta blockers mixed with her dinner, I thought, tidying up that day.
It was Janice who suggested I write her a letter.
‘It can be very therapeutic,’ she said. ‘You could try writing yourself one too. All the things you’d like to tell your past self. Child you.’
I said I would, but I never did. Instead, I began to speak to my mother without really meaning to. I found myself whispering her name into my pillow, or when I went out for a walk. Then gradually, I started asking her things, reminiscing.
Do you remember such and such. . . Or, why do you think he did this, that and the other? Before I knew it, I was holding whole conversations with her ghost.
I’m not a nutcase, I wasn’t hearing voices. It was more that I was able to imagine how she’d respond, or perhaps I just let fantasy fill in the blanks.
Janice was right, talking to her was therapeutic. I began to do it more and more so that now rarely a day goes by without us speaking. It’s almost like having her back again.
Although I always picture her with a glass of gin, or looking at old photographs, the woman I talk to isn’t the woman I knew in those later years. Rather, she’s my mother from when we first moved to London. When she and I were all each other had. The version of her that I loved best and miss the most.
That’s why I’m so mad at Matty. He killed those women and, although I’m not kidding myself about my role, he killed my mother too. She never recovered from what he did. It was because of him she knocked back pills and drank to blackout every day, because of him she longed to die.
And now he’s trying to kill the only thing I have left of her, the memory of the woman who brought me to London in search of a better life. Who made us bed picnics and organised scavenger hunts on Parliament Hill. Who taught me the meaning of pathetic fallacy and the importance of putting yourself in another person’s shoes.
‘Bloody, shitting bastard.’
‘Language, Sophie.’
I don’t hear voices, but I can hear her saying it.
‘Did he really think I’d believe those lies?’
‘Who knows? He’s told so many.’
I press down harder on the accelerator. My eyes burn. I swipe at them to clear my blurred vision. I won’t cry, not over him. Not any more.
‘To make out you were the reason he killed all those women. That the two of you were playing some twisted game, that you were more ruthless than he was. Jesus.’
I shake my head, but as I say it, a dark memory pokes up, baring its teeth.
A photo frame. A wooden case.
Amelia’sTreasure Box– Hands Off
