MAGGIE
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS EARLIER
I want to scream but when I open my mouth, nothing comes out. Not even air. I move my hand to turn on the light switch but I’m shaking so violently that it takes several attempts.
When the light shines upon Alistair’s body sprawled across the floor, it’s worse than I imagined. The right-hand side of his skull is concave and has a small piece missing. The hole is filling with blood and trickling over the side and into his hair. I look around and blood is everywhere. I pinch myself; I must be dreaming.This isn’t happening. Oh, but it is. His eyes are saucer-wide and inert. He is most definitely dead. There are streaks across the wallpaper, spots on the Artex ceiling, and it’s seeping into the carpet and creating a red circle around his head. Next to him is a golf club with a metal head that Nina used to hit him with.
Finally my voice returns. ‘Nina!’ I yell. ‘What have you done?’
I don’t know what to do. I should run downstairs and call 999 but something stops me. It’s my daughter. The steel of the club briefly reflected street light into her eyes with the second blow, revealing a deadened rage of the like I have never witnessed before in Nina or anyone else. What dreadful thing must have happened to instigate it? I steady myself against the wall as I move towards her room, my legs threatening to fold beneath me.
Now my baby is sitting on the edge of her bed, catatonic. Her eyes are wide open but almost lifeless and her cheeks, forehead and pyjama top are splattered with blood. I choke back my grief and just about manage to say her name aloud. She is non-responsive. ‘Nina,’ I repeat, but still she remains mute.
My daughter is not evil; she is not cruel. I have never encountered a bad bone in her body. So why would she want to hurt her father? A wicked thought springs to mind. It’s the worst explanation. No, it can’t be that; I don’t even know how I could think such a thing. I want to believe that I’m tired and confused and my imagination is running away with itself. Alistair and Nina are so close, but he would never do anything he shouldn’t. I know my husband inside out and I wouldn’t have married him if I’d had even an inkling he was ... he was a ... I can’t even think the word. I’m wrong, I have it very, very, wrong. I try and cast it aside but it lingers ... it’s growing ... I have given it life and now it’s expanding.
‘My baby, my poor, poor baby,’ I sob. ‘What has he done to you?’
She offers no response.
I give in to gravity and fall to my knees, wrapping my arms around her, feeling her rigid limbs against me and her almost imperceptible breaths on my neck. I never want to let her go, but I know that I need to put this right. I need to think. What do I do first? I have to wipe the blood and her father’s evil from her skin.
I help her to her feet but it’s as if she is running on autopilot. To reach the bathroom, we are forced to step over Alistair’s body. I don’t want her to see him again, but she has retreated so far into herself that there’s little chance she is registering anything.
I guide her into the bath, strip off her bloody pyjamas and wash her with warm water from the shower hose and use an orangey shower gel to take the metallic smell of blood away. She allows me to clean her without comment or conflict. I avert my eyes from her body and pray that Alistair hasn’t damaged her permanently. I sit on the edge of the bath as I dry her, help her into fresh bedclothes and guide her back into her bedroom. I lay her down under the duvet and remain by her side until eventually her eyes flicker and she falls asleep.
It’s only when I close her door behind me that I ask myself whether I should have already called for help. I know it’s what I’m supposed to do, but I’m terrified as to the further psychological damage it could do to my already fragile child. I cannot watch as a police car takes her away for questioning or an ambulance carts her off to a psychiatric unit. Besides, in my haste to make her clean again, I have washed away the evidence. But perhaps that was my intention?
I have made such a mess of this already. I lean against the door and slide to the floor, my hands covering my mouth so neither the living nor the dead can hear my sobs. I have never felt guilt like this before. Nina might be thirteen but she is still my little girl. I should have known; there must have been warning signs that I didn’t want to acknowledge. I have let her down as badly as her father has. What if I have lost her forever? Or what happens when she wakes up and remembers what she or Alistair has done? I don’t know how I’m going to deal with either. All I know for certain is that I cannot allow this one night to shape the rest of her life. I have to make this better.
I run around the house grabbing every towel and tea towel we have. With Alistair’s heart no longer pumping blood around his wretched body, he has stopped bleeding out, but there is still a hell of a mess in the hallway. I have to face him but I can barely bring myself to take him in. I see flecks of something white in his hair and I don’t know if it’s bone fragment or brain. I fight the urge to vomit.
I return to the landing and place the towels across the floor. As they soak up the blood, I drag a duvet from the spare room and spread it next to him. I roll Alistair on to it, tuck it snugly around him, then go on rolling. Just doing this much helps; with him hidden away, I could be rolling up a carpet. When he’s done up tight, I set about wrestling packing tape around and under his body like a spider might with a captive insect. Only when I’m sure the duvet is sealed do I attempt to drag him downstairs. He is at least three stone heavier than me and it takes all my strength, interspersed with many breaks, to shift him. My muscles strain and burn as we move, the last thing we’ll ever do together. As his head hits each bump of the staircase, the reality of what is happening right now threatens to derail me.
This is my dead husband.When I went to bed, this was the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with. Now I must get rid of him as if he never existed.
I want to break down again but I can’t give in; I must see this through. I’ll have all the time in the world to think of myself and process this later.
It’s only when I reach the kitchen do I realise I have no idea what to do with a dead body. It’s highly unlikely that I’d be able to carry him far enough into a field or woodland to dump – even if I could get him inside the car. I don’t have the stomach or the apparatus to cut him up and dispose of him piece by piece. Now I understand why so many people try to cover up domestic murders by burying the victim in the garden. Alistair is no victim but at least here, I can prevent him from ever being discovered.
I take the torch from the kitchen drawer and slip it into my dressing gown pocket, then open the back door. I scan the neighbours’ houses for signs of activity before I drag Alistair over the step and up the path. It’s too dark to do anything with him now other than to store him in the shed.
Back in the kitchen, the clock on the oven warns me it’s past 5 a.m., and I’m mentally and physically exhausted. But this hellish night isn’t over yet. I throw all the bloody towels into the washing machine and turn it on to a ninety-degree heat. Then with a bucketful of cleaning products and hot water, I get to work scrubbing the carpet and the walls with all the household products I can find. Every few minutes, I open Nina’s bedroom door to check on her, but she is still fast asleep.
By 8 a.m., I’m on my fourth coffee and sitting at the kitchen table, staring from the window towards the shed at the end of the garden. I’ve decided where in the garden I’m going to bury Alistair. But first, I need to deal with Nina. I don’t know how to help her, though. I am so far out of my depth that I’m drowning. Perhaps I could ask one of the doctors from the surgery for advice? But how do I avoid explaining the cause of her breakdown and what she did to her dad?
‘Why didn’t you wake me up?’ The voice comes from behind me. I scream and drop my empty mug on the tabletop, breaking the handle.
I turn to see Nina, dressed in her school uniform, approaching me.
‘Clumsy,’ she says, and I watch her in disbelief, my jaw slack as my narrowed eyes follow her. She takes two slices of bread from a loaf and slips them into the toaster. ‘Why does everything in the house smell like bleach?’
‘I ... I spilled something,’ I say. ‘I was cleaning up.’
She takes a carton of fresh orange juice from the fridge and pours herself a glass. I’m on tenterhooks, watching, waiting for something, anything unusual, to happen. She glances out of the window and for a second, I think she senses where I’ve left Alistair. But if she does, she gives nothing away. Instead, she tells me about her forthcoming day at school and a science project that’s proving challenging. I nod and shake my head in what I think are the appropriate places. The truth is, I’m not listening to her. I can’t marry the girl who killed her father with the one before me now.
She slathers her toast in raspberry jam and informs me she’s going to eat it upstairs while she gets her books ready for school.
‘You’re going to school?’ I ask in disbelief.
