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Ash and Ava will never be best friends with Jenna. But they’ve apologised and sometimes they go for a drink.
I visit my mother once a month. We thought her lawyer would be able to get her a lighter sentence, because she didn’t actually kill Miss Smith, or not irreversibly, and because of the situation with my father. But the brutality on that tape was hard to stomach, and she has never been able to fully see my father for the monster that he is – she couldn’t stand in front of a jury and call herself a victim. She still has eight years left.
I’ve been thinking about visiting her less. I’ve been wondering how such an intelligent woman allowed herself and her children to remain in the home of such a toxic man. Even accepting that she was damaged and depressed, acknowledging her tunnel vision, we all have a responsibility to our children.
That day, Dan had come to London for a series of meetings with Transport for London, to set up an agreement to farm their unused land around train stations. It turned out he’d been wanting to get out of Shorthorn Lodge for some time, thinking it would be good for me and Jenna. He’d got me meetings with three galleries. He hadn’t told me because he knew how tied I was to Shorthorn Lodge; he’d known that if he didn’t have everything lined up just right, I’d find a way to say no.
Since we moved here after I got out of prison, I’ve had a lot of therapy. I think I’ve learned to be comfortable with myself, and to seek reality over fantasy.
I think of my father at Shorthorn Lodge, walking the empty halls, taking calls between dust-sheets even though he’s meant to be retired. He won’t have moved back in there. He’ll have stayed in his conversion with his underfloor heating and triple glazing and absence of the ghosts of his parents.
I wonder if there’s a way to stop my skin from crawling as it does every time his bald head pops into my mind. I think of Georgia, wriggling the fingers that strangled her own father at me, and my own start to itch.
I down the rest of my gin and tonic and squeeze closer to Dan. Jenna begins to play the harmonica, a low, sliding drone, and my heart tugs. As she plays, she sets up a repeating melody on her keyboard and then starts tapping the foot pedal of a drum.
She has let her hair grow long again and a strand falls in her face. She flicks it away as she drops the harmonica and picks up her drumsticks and Nils takes a breath. Beside me, Rose and Dan whoop.
The sadness of her music hurts, but I’ve learned to listen.
I’ve talked to my therapist so many times about the sheer number of people doing the wrong thing that created our situation. She wouldn’t be drawn, but my theory is simple: damaged people make more damaged people and find kindred spirits.
Georgia said something like that to me at the end of my visit. And also this: ‘Some people deserve to die.’
I’m not sure ‘deserve’ is quite right. But I think she might be onto something there, mightn’t she?
111
AFTER
Millionaire MBE Suicide Water Tank Drowning
I wonder how they did it. I wonder how they got David Beaufort-Bradley up those rusting rungs and into the tank; how large sums of money will be moved into the hands of those who did it. But Frances assures me money will reach those hands. And Furo’s. And mine.
I’ll be sixty-two when I get out, and I’m going to have a marvellous time.
