Mindsight. Chris Curran

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СКАЧАТЬ am sorry, Clare. I didn’t know about the table tennis, or the tea for that matter,’ she said when she came on. ‘I try to keep track of dates, but he’s getting worse and worse at letting me know.’

      ‘It’s fine. I can’t expect him to put everything on hold for me.’

      ‘Why don’t you come over anyway and have lunch with me? Or I could check what he’s got on Monday and Tuesday and we can arrange something then.’

      I promised to ring her the next day and said some kind of goodbye. Then I sat holding the silent phone, rocking back and forth as I bit the inside of my mouth, hoping the physical pain might somehow help. I had no idea what I’d expected, but at least I’d hoped to see him soon. Hoped he would want to see me.

      What bothered me was the way he seemed so remote. And the way he’d laughed with Alice. So different from our few stumbling words.

      Of course, it was bound to be awkward at first, and I should have planned what to say more carefully – I promised myself I would do that next time. And I couldn’t put the blame on Alice or anyone else. It was my own fault, all of it. How stupid I’d been to ban him from visiting me.

      Some of the women in prison were honest and admitted they’d never wanted kids in the first place and the one good thing about doing time was that it freed them from those clinging bundles of dependency. Most were like me, lying to themselves. I told myself it was better if he got on with his own life and forgot about me. But the truth was that seeing my child would have been unbearable because it would have reminded me of all the ways I’d hurt him.

      I decided to write to Ruby. She’d told me not to, told me to put prison and everything to do with it behind me, but I knew she would be happy to hear from me. And she was the only person I could tell everything.

      But when I’d finished pouring it all out onto the page, I realised I couldn’t send a letter like this. The screws would read it before Ruby and I imagined that big bitch Maureen having a good laugh at my pathetic ramblings. I tore the paper into tiny pieces and scattered them on the table, pressing my fists against my temples as I muttered curses to myself, to the bastard screws, and even to the crumpled sea for lying there so grey and sluggish.

      Unbelievable as it seemed, I wanted nothing more at that moment than to be back in prison, with Mike to tell me to put the past behind me, and Ruby to cheer me on when I began to hope I might have some kind of future outside.

      It had been terrible in the early days. I was sure I was innocent and could only grieve for the family I had lost and obsess over the agony of separation from Tommy. The one thing that kept me going then was believing my appeal must succeed and I would soon be back with him. But even before the appeal failed I realised I had to be guilty, and for a long time after that I could hardly imagine how to carry on living. Didn’t want to go on.

      I was never sure when things changed, but one day I found myself talking to Ruby, and later to Alice and Lorna, about seeing Tommy again and trying to be a mother to him once more. I had been so determined to make it work that I remembered a few days when I had felt so hopeful it was almost like happiness. If I could hear Ruby’s voice again, maybe I could recapture that sense of hope.

      In the end, I wrote her a short note, saying I just wanted to make sure she still had my address and phone number. I would buy a phone card and slip that into the envelope hoping she would understand it as a plea to call me.

      But almost as if I’d actually spoken to her, I could hear what she would say. It was no good dwelling on how badly I’d dealt with things in the past. I had to give Tom what he needed now and that meant taking his questions seriously, and trying to find some answers, no matter how difficult it was for me. It would mean probing into things people would rather forget. And, above all, trying to force my own stubborn brain to reveal what it was hiding. It would hurt, I knew that, it might even turn Tom against me, but it was the very least I owed him.

      I would have to start with Emily and Matt. And the place where it happened. I hadn’t seen Matt since that night. But Emily was there through most of the trial, spoke up as a witness for my defence, although she didn’t know much, and then sat and watched, smiling and nodding encouragement at me. Later, she came to see me regularly in prison until I refused her visits.

      ‘I don’t know how you bear it,’ was what she’d said, oh so kindly, the last time she came. And I looked up to see myself, tiny and far away, reflected in her eyes – a specimen behind glass. It was the word bear that did it, and I knew she didn’t mean, how did I endure the loss, or stand the grief, but how did I bear the burden of my guilt. That was when I told her I didn’t want to see her again; that was in the days before I knew I was guilty.

      After the way I’d treated her, I could hardly blame her if she didn’t want to see me. And even if she did, how would she and Matt feel when I started asking questions about that night? I thought how dreadful every wedding anniversary must be for her and how the strands of my guilt entangled all the people I loved.

      God knows how I could raise it with either of them, but they were the only ones who knew everyone at the wedding and I needed to ask if they had any idea of who might have given me the pills. If I could find that out, maybe I could also discover why I’d wanted them.

      The sessions with Mike in prison had shown me how easily it could happen. There were others, like me, who claimed to have been clean for months, or years, but always there was a trigger to send them back to the vodka, the speed or the smack. Ruby’s man came home from wherever he’d been, beat her and gave her heroin to cheer her up. Jo had her kids taken away, and Lillian’s husband left her. They all agreed, though, that torturing yourself over the whys and wherefores was a waste of time.

      I’d accepted it then. It seemed to make sense. But I knew now there was no way I could even think about rebuilding my life before I found out why I’d destroyed it.

      And I had to show Tom I was taking his theories seriously. Lorna could help me with how Dad had handled the drug scandal, and if there had been any unpleasantness. Matt had worked for the company too, as a chemist, and it was just possible he could shed light on the way the labs worked; might even have known the doctor who wrote the report that caused all the trouble.

      My mind was buzzing with so many thoughts I could feel a headache brewing and nothing seemed to make sense anymore. I needed to get out of the flat, to walk until I was tired enough to stop thinking for a while. Long walks were one of the things I missed most when I was inside, and another reason I’d chosen Hastings was because I knew there would be hills to tire me, sea views to soothe me, and long stretches of countryside to exhaust me. It was too late to go far, so a fast tramp up the nearest hill would have to do.

      The clouds had lifted again to make a beautiful evening, the sun still high in the sky, the sea calm, and I clamped down on my thoughts and concentrated on putting one foot in front of another. Turning towards the town, I found a convenience store open and bought a phone card, slipped it in with the note for Ruby, and posted it. Then I headed sharp uphill between the jumbled old cottages, along one of the steep cobbled alleyways the locals call twittens.

      Before I’d gone far, the alley turned into a flight of almost vertical steps and I was grateful for the handrail, but, all the same, by the time I reached the top my calves were aching and my chest was tight. The climb had left me hot and sticky, but up here a cool breeze blew across the wide stretch of grass, and I was glad to find an empty bench.

      To my right was the ruin of William the Conqueror’s castle. Ahead, beyond the grassy cliff-edge, the sea was dotted, even at this hour, with small, dark boats. Coloured lights twinkled over the little funfair and amusement arcades, and СКАЧАТЬ