you know why they put me in prison?’
He kicked hard at a pile of leaves making them rise into the air. ‘Course I do.’ His voice was curt. ‘They said you took drugs – amphetamines.’
Don’t treat him like a baby. ‘Well, I pleaded not guilty at my trial because I didn’t believe I could have done that.’ His intake of breath told me he was about to speak, but I had to get this out. ‘But you see, I had a lot of time to think in prison, and I came to realise I must have done it – somehow got hold of those pills and taken them. I don’t know why I would have done it, but it means I was guilty.’
‘But maybe you didn’t want to take them. Someone could’ve put stuff in your drink. You know, at the wedding. I’ve been looking up amphetamines on the internet and it says they can be dissolved in liquid.’
I could have smiled if it hadn’t hurt so much. ‘But why would anyone want to do that?’
‘Maybe it was a joke, or someone had it in for you or Dad – or for Granddad. He was important wasn’t he?’
‘Well, he ran a successful company, yes.’
‘’Cos I looked him up, and he’s on Google. He was just the kind of guy people might have a grudge against. There was all that stuff with the arthritis drug too. It was in the papers.’
‘You have been busy.’
His voice was stubborn. ‘I want to help you.’
‘I know and thank you.’
He stopped walking; his crossed arms and lowered head telling me I was doing it all wrong again. I looked up into the dark branches above us, knowing it had to be now, however badly I said it. ‘What you don’t know, Tom, is that before you were born, I was an addict for a while. When I was a teenager I got in with a bad crowd and thought taking drugs was cool. It isn’t, it’s stupid, and I managed to get off them. Then I met your dad and I was so happy I never thought about drugs again. You and Toby and Dad were my life. But maybe something happened the night of the wedding to make me slip back into my old ways. I met addicts in prison who’d been clean for years, but who relapsed when things went wrong in their lives.’
He turned and crashed away, almost at a run.
‘Tom. Wait. Please wait for me.’
A bramble twisted round my foot and leg as I tried to follow him, biting into my calf and making me stumble. I pulled at the wretched thing, cursing under my breath, aware he had stopped and was watching me. When I looked up again he was still there kicking at a tree trunk and staring down at its roots. I went to him, daring to touch his arm. He didn’t push me away.
‘I’m so sorry, Tom. I should have told you this before.’
His grey eyes were misted and he shook his head as he spoke. ‘But why did you want to take drugs?’
What to say? ‘You know I was adopted, don’t you? Well my mum, your grandma, was ill. Not physically, but she had mental problems that made her depressed and unhappy. So she was often angry with me. It wasn’t her fault, but I didn’t understand that and so I ran away from home and met people who were very bad for me. That’s not an excuse, Tom, and it made things worse not better. Which is what always happens with drugs.’
He leaned back against the tree, arms folded, and looking down at the crumbled soil as he stirred it with the toe of his trainer. The whole wood seemed to have gone silent.
‘But, Tom, this doesn’t mean I don’t want to know exactly what happened that night. So will you give me some time to think about your ideas and to try to remember more?’
I almost said I needed to find out who could have supplied me with the stuff at the reception, but it was better if he didn’t start thinking that way.
He nodded and I gestured with my head that we should start back. Then took a chance and put my arm through his. He tensed at my touch. Careful, careful. ‘You can help me, Tom. Just give me time.’
‘OK.’
Then we walked back together through the cool, silent wood while phantoms from the past played and laughed around us.
Back at the flat, as I lay in bed, I couldn’t stop thinking about Tommy. My mind churned, veering from a kind of happiness to the sort of despair that makes you want to beat your head against a wall. And I did slam over and over into the pillow, pummelling it into a solid lump. I got up twice to use the toilet, then for water and finally to make a mug of tea that sat growing cold beside me as I stared up at the ceiling.
Night is the worst time in prison. That’s when you hear the sobs and the groans, the shouts of, ‘Shut up, you bitch, and let me sleep.’ It’s then you relive and regret, not in the therapy groups with a gentle voice saying you can rebuild your life. It’s your own voice that curses you as a pariah; a leper who would be better off dead.
At first I tried to remember what happened that night; to piece together fragments that came to me, sometimes awake, sometimes in dreams. Some things were constant: the dark road, the grey shadows overhead, the flashing light, but were they memories, or just images patched together from what I’d been told? After a while it didn’t matter because I didn’t want to remember. But now maybe I would have to if that were the only way to help Tom. And if I didn’t know why I’d done it, how could I be sure it wouldn’t happen again? How could I trust myself to be a real mother once more?
Apart from those horrible fragments, my memory of the day ended hours before the accident. Emily and I were close in age and we’d always been good friends. In fact, because of the five years between me and Alice, I’d probably been closer to Emily when we were kids.
Her husband, Matt’s, family owned a farm in Cumbria and the wedding was held there. Alice was a junior doctor in Newcastle, but we lived close to Dad in Kent. Most of the guests were planning to stay at a country house hotel and, when I said Steve and I couldn’t possibly afford a place like that, Dad offered to treat us. I agreed, on condition he let me pay him back by doing all the driving.
I remembered the journey to the church along sunny, twisting lanes edged by glassy streams and brilliant fields. Then, like a TV with a faulty signal, the picture stuttered and disappeared to be replaced by flashes and bursts of noise.
As those images played over and over in my head I wanted only to push them away just as I’d always done over the past few years. But I couldn’t let myself do that any more.
I got up and went into the living room where the card from Emily and Matt was still standing beside the laptop. I switched on, found Emily’s email address in the notebook Alice had left for me, and sent a message. I kept it short, just telling Emily how pleased I was to get her card. I wouldn’t blame her if she was still upset with me, but I’d love to see her. I gave her my home and mobile phone numbers, added three kisses, deleted two, and pressed send before I could change my mind.
Something woke me and I lay confused for a moment. Then a loud buzz came from the direction of the living room. I had no idea what it was and sat up in bed, switching on the light. Nearly 2 a.m. That metallic buzz again. Oh, God, it was my door buzzer. I clutched my dressing gown round me. Whoever it was couldn’t get in; they were outside the big main door, not in the hall. In the living room I stood in the darkness, away from the grey rectangles of light from the windows. Another
