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TWENTY-ONE
‘What does it make us?’
I’m on Parliament Hill, talking to my mother while Buster snoofles about among the fallen leaves. When I was a child, I used to think autumn leaves were the souls trees shed at the end of each year, that spring was a sort of resurrection. Back in Newton, I was brought up on the Bible, Sunday School and grace before meals. Not surprising I suppose that my imagination got a little warped.
Look at them waving their bones, my mother used to say.
It did nothing to dispel the image of them as dead beings. Nor did the gnarly branch that tap-tapped at my window every night. I used to bury my head under the duvet, imagine it calling to me—
Let me in. . .
That was before Matty came along. With him around, I was less afraid of the night. When he told me to trust him, that he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me, I believed him.
‘Shows she needs a father,’ Nanna G told my mother. ‘It’s about time that young man of yours put a ring on your finger, Amelia-Rose. Made an honest woman out of you.’
‘I don’t need a man to make me honest, Mom.’
‘See now, that’s why you’re not married. Sass is very unbecoming.’
Society and its infernal preoccupation with appearance. Without it, things would have been much less easy for Matty.
‘What does it make us?’ my mother asks again.
‘Stupid,’ I tell her. ‘That’s what.’
For allowing ourselves be taken in by him. For deluding ourselves. For ignoring what was right under our noses.
‘If he really did those things. . .’
As always a weight settles on my shoulders. ‘If’, the most loaded word in the English language.
What if Matty is innocent?
What if they got the wrong guy?
What if I made the biggest mistake of my life?
If, if, if. . .
‘They blame us, you know?’ my mother says. ‘The families.’
Such resignation in her voice, so much pain. Part of her for so long, I can’t remember what she sounded like without it.
‘It’s understandable,’ I say. ‘Wouldn’t you blame us too?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I would. I do.’
I think of the victims. Of the children who’ve grown up without mummies to tuck them in at night or Band-Aid up skinned knees. Of the fathers who never got to walk their daughters down the aisle. Of the mothers who never give up hope that one day their little girls will show up at the door.
They hold us responsible. I see it in their eyes when they’re interviewed on TV. The way their expressions change whenever our names are brought up. The tightening around their mouths, the muscles moving in their jaws.
My mouth tightens when I think of them too. My throat, my abdominals.
Plenty of other killers have lived apparently normal lives; going to church, doing the school run, sitting by the pool on family holidays. Duping the women who loved them.
It doesn’t make it easier though. If anything, it makes me feel worse for being tricked too.
‘He did those things,’ I tell my mother now, trying to convince myself as much as her. ‘It’s on him, not us.’
