I saw Susie slump in the chair; her hair slid forward over her shoulder, baring her neck to the ax. I was reminded of the photograph she took of Donna’s neck, the white, white skin and tiny black freckle sitting between taut and slender ligaments.
The two big men on either side almost carried Susie out of the court. She didn’t even look back at me. Everyone in the public gallery was staring at her and muttering about the state she was in. I watched and realized that I wasn’t as involved with her as I had been. As for my indiscretion with Yeni, it wouldn’t be so bad if only I had waited for six months. Susie would have been gone awhile, all her toiletries would be gone from our bathroom, her clothes would be washed and mothballed and packed away in the suitcases in the attic. I could justify it all much better to myself if I’d waited. What I’ve done is unforgivable, a peculiarly unkind and brutal kind of betrayal; I’ve staged a mental retreat from her just as she is broken. I’ll keep looking for grounds for appeal. I owe her that much, but I have retreated from her. I feel nothing approaching the devastation I experienced at the trial. I knew I’d be fine to drive.
Outside the courts, a couple of journalists were gathered at the bottom of the steps. They were smoking, actually, and I wouldn’t have known they were press if one of them hadn’t shouted questions about my wife. He wasn’t even asking questions, really, it was more like he was shouting abuse at me. I got flustered. The press have been intrusive and difficult, but there was always a sense that they knew I was having a hard time through no fault of my own. There was always an underlying sympathy. Now it seemed I was no longer privy to even this small courtesy.
“Hey, Harriot,” he shouted as I walked past. “Where’d you get that fancy coat?”
No one even took a photo of me. Fuckers.
chapter thirty-one
I’VE BEEN TRYING TO PHONE SUSIE ALL MORNING BUT CAN’T GET through. So I sat down and wrote a long encouraging letter, telling her that I was thinking of her (true), that I missed her (not really true at the moment) and wished I was with her during this difficult time (outright lie). I’m going to try to write every day, give her news about Margie and send photos of her. If I were in Susie’s position, I know I’d be thinking about killing myself, and she mustn’t do that. She has to get through the next short while, for Margie’s sake if nothing else. I want to remind Susie that she’d be increasing Margie’s statistical chances of suicide by a factor of four if she kills herself, but I’m afraid that if I mention it I might be putting the idea in her head. I’m not against suicide per se, but I do think you lose the right to consider it once you’ve had kids.
The papers are full of Susie and Donna today. I bought five of them. Loads of people have sold their story. Our old nanny, Saskia, who went off to live with a hospital porter in Toryglen, has told her story exclusively to a local evening paper. It’s funny to see her face again. She looks much older, scowling out from the front page, dark-eyed, with her wiry auburn hair cut short. Inside, she is sitting on a nasty armchair, in front of a horrible gas fire. I always thought she would live somewhere pretty, and I’m sadder about that than the fact that she sold her story. I showed the picture to Yeni, who nodded and smiled and carried on changing Margie. I wonder if she would ever sell her story. And what a story. She might have already sold it, I suppose. Journalists phone here all the time, so it wouldn’t be hard for her to make contact. Alistair Garvie- the man from the Mirror- still leaves at least one message a day. She might even have seduced me just to have a unique spin on her story, but I don’t think so. She’s very detached from everything. She lives in a wee world of her own.
Another paper has a story from someone who worked at Sunnyfields with Susie, a disgraced social worker or something. Yet another interviewed the property agent who let Donna the Kirki house. He says she was nice but owed his firm back council tax (not such an interesting exclusive that one). The papers without interviews are rehashing all the old information. They’ve all managed to get in some of the details about the murders and what was done to those girls, which is hideously prurient. One has a huge teaser banner for Stevie Ray’s story about me, which will be in tomorrow’s edition. The very best I can hope for is that it gets lost in the rest of the coverage. One of the papers mentions the fact that no one has come forward to claim Donna’s body. She had no one apart from Gow. Perhaps that is why she left Leicester without a backward glance and, according to Susie at least, was prepared to kill innocent girls not much younger than herself.
Mrs. Anthrobus came this morning. She hadn’t even noticed the papers and seems to think that Susie is away on a business trip no matter how often I tell her she’s in prison. She may be a daft old goat, but still I changed the sheets on Yeni’s bed myself and washed them before she arrived.
Susie phoned this afternoon, sounding drugged and slow. She asked to speak to Margie, and I tried to warn her about the papers tomorrow, how they were going to say things about me that weren’t true and not to mind them, but she said they were full of lies all the time. Who cares, she said, and I felt that she was speaking more broadly than just the particular.
Is Margie awake, she asked, what’s she doing? I described what Margie was wearing and tried to get her to talk into the receiver, but she wouldn’t. She didn’t react at all when Susie called her. I don’t know if she’s stopped recognizing the voice or the drugs make Susie sound different, but Margie carried on picking up and dropping the snake draft-excluder to watch its eyes boggle about. I picked it and her up and took them out to the quiet hall to settle her down a little, but she was tired and just dribbled onto the receiver, staring through the door into the bright kitchen as she picked at the corduroy on her little trousers.
Susie called to her again, hopefully, desperately. She called to her through a medicated smog, across a thousand miles and a dozen centuries, but Margie didn’t flinch. She was bored with me shaking the snake at her and tried to get down. I couldn’t hold her anymore, and she wriggled off my knee and wandered off into the kitchen.
She was all the way across the kitchen, crouched and picking at something that had spilled and dried on the floor by the stove, but Susie was still calling her name. “Can she hear me, Lachie?”
“Oh yes, she’s sitting up now. Yes, she is. Aren’t you, Margie?” I spoke in that instinctive, weird falsetto that people only ever use with small kids. “Where’s that coming from, hmm? Susie, I wish you could see her. She recognizes the voice but doesn’t know where it’s coming from.”
Susie was pleased and called her again in the same high voice. “Hello, darling, it’s Mummy. I’m your mummy, yes, I am. You remember me, don’t you? I love you, Margie, I love you, my lovely girl.”
“Where’s that coming from, Margie-Pargie, eh?” I said. “That’s right, it’s Mummy, your mummy.” I gave a hollow laugh. “Oh, she’s looking round for you.”