The Blame Game. C.J. Cooke

K. Haden

       K. Haden

       Haden, Morris & Laurence Law Practice

       4 Martin Place

       London, EN9 1AS

       25th June 2010

       Michael King

       101 Oxford Lane

       Cardiff

       CF10 1FY

       Sir,

       We write again on behalf of our clients regarding the death of Luke Aucoin.

       We request that you contact us immediately to avoid further consequences.

       Sincerely,

       K. Haden

       28th January 2017

      MURDERER

PART ONE

       1

       Helen

      30th August 2017

      I think I might be dead.

      The scene in front of me looks like sea fret creeping over wasteland, closing in like a fist. A smell, too – sewage and sweat. There’s a flickering light, like someone bringing a torch towards the mist, and it grows so bright that I realise it’s my eyelids beginning to creak open, like two slabs of concrete breaking apart. Wake up! I shout in my head. Wake up!

      Painful brightness. I can make out a ceiling with yellow stains and broken plasterboard, and a ceiling fan that spins limply. I try to lift my head. It takes enormous effort just to raise it an inch, as though an anvil is strapped to it. Where am I? My denim shorts and T-shirt are torn and caked in mud. I’m on a bed wearing one sandal. My other foot is twice its normal size, the blue nail polish that Saskia applied to my toes peeking through dried blood. I wiggle my toes, then my fingers.

      I can feel my limbs. Good.

      A nurse is busy replacing something at the foot of the bed. A urine drainage bag. A sharp tug at my side alerts me to the fact that the bag belongs to me.

      ‘Excuse me?’ I say. My voice is hoarse, no more than a croak.

      The foreign chatter elsewhere in the room makes me think that the nurse might not speak English.

      ‘Sorry, but …? Excuse me? Can you tell me why I’m here?’

      Even now, when I’ve no clue where I am or why, I’m apologising. Michael always said I apologise too much. I apologised all the way through both labours for screaming the place down.

      A man arrives and consults with the nurse, both of them giving me worried looks as I try to sit up. He’s a doctor in plain clothes: a black polo shirt and jeans, a stethoscope and lanyard announcing his purpose. To my left is a window with a ripped insect net, and for some reason I want to go to it. I need to find something, or someone. ‘You must be careful,’ the doctor warns me in a thick Belizean accent. ‘Your head is very damaged.’

      I reach a hand to my head and feel the padding of a dressing on my left temple. The skin around my left eye feels swollen and sore to the touch. I remember now. I remember what I was searching for.

      ‘Do you know where my children are?’ I ask him, the realisation that they’re nowhere to be seen making my heartbeat start to gallop.

      The room lists like we’re rolling on high seas. The doctor insists that I lie down but I’m nauseous with fear. Where are Saskia and Reuben? Why aren’t they here?

      ‘This is you?’ The doctor holds a shape in front of me. My passport. I stare at it through tears. My face stares back blankly and my name is there. Helen Rachel Pengilly.

      ‘Yes. Look, I have two children, a son and daughter. Where are they?’

      The doctor gives the nurse another deep look instead of answering me. Please don’t say they’re dead, I beg you. Don’t say it.

      I begin to hyperventilate, my heart clanging like an alarm in my ears. And right as blackness reaches up to claim me, a sharp odour tugs me back into the room. Smelling salts. A cup of water materialises in front of me. The water’s got bits of dirt in it. Someone tells me to drink, and I do, because instinct tells me that perhaps if I obey they’ll tell me Saskia and Reuben are alive. Give me arsenic, a pint of oil. I’ll drink it. Just say they’re OK.

      Another nurse brings a rickety wheelchair. She and the doctor help me off the bed and manoeuvre the drip-stand as I lower, my muscles trembling, on to the roasting hot seat-pad. Then we squeak through the ward towards a narrow, dimly lit corridor.

       2

       Helen

      16th August 2017

      It’s paradise here. Picture a narrow curve of white sand that arcs into the twinkling Caribbean. Six beach huts stood on stilts at a comfortable distance from one another along the strip, each with its own patch of ivory sand and acidic-blue ocean. No one around for about twenty miles, with the exception of the other two groups of people staying in the beach huts. A group of five from Mexico – I can’t tell if they’re family or just friends; their English is minimal and my Spanish is limited to ‘hello and ‘thanks’ – and at the very far end, the McAdam family from Alabama. Michael was suspicious of them at first when the husband asked a lot of questions about us, and I felt that familiar sting of panic, voices arguing in my head. ‘We’ll keep to ourselves,’ Michael announced cheerily as we made our way back to our hut, but I knew what he meant, and for one horrible afternoon I was wrenched back over two decades, into another century and another skin.

      I make coffee and clear away the bowls left on the kitchen table. Saskia and Reuben are playing on the beach outside, their laughter drifting through the warm air. I pull two boxes of pills marked Cilest and Citalopram from my handbag and pop one of each out of the blister packs, knocking them back with a chug of water at the sink. Usually a glimpse of sunlight is enough to turn me into a lobster but my reflection shows I’ve caught my first actual tan in I don’t know how long, a deep bronze that knocks years off my face. Bright golden streaks have started to flash amongst my natural blonde, concealing the grey strands that have started to show. The sadness in my eyes, though – that’s always there.

      We’ve been running for twenty-two years and I’m tired. I want to stop, lay down roots. It’s not in my make-up to live a peripatetic existence but we’ve had eight different addresses in Scotland, England, Wales, and even Northern Ireland. We tried to move to Australia but in the end it was too difficult to get visas. We don’t vote, don’t have social media accounts. Most of the time, we’re as normal as any other family. We’re content. Four years ago we made the huge decision not to rent any more and bought our first home, a pretty cottage in Northumberland. We have a dog and a guinea pig and Saskia and Reuben are thriving at their schools. But every now and then, I’m reminded of Luke. My first love. Especially at moments like this, when I’m happy and I remember I have no right to be.

      Luke is dead because of me.

      I’m putting on my sarong when Saskia comes screaming into the beach hut.

      ‘Mum, you have to come and see,’ she shouts, both hands splayed in front of her like a mime navigating invisible glass. When I don’t move she wraps