The number of times I’ve had to run to Ruby’s room, in case karma is waiting for me in the corner of my younger child’s bedroom, and she’s somehow suffocated or stopped breathing.
‘If it helps, I’ve never come to terms with it,’ I tell him. ‘No matter how much therapy I’ve had, courses I’ve been on, groups I’ve joined, it never goes away.’
Charlie rests his forehead on his hands. John does another fart and Jeremy, without comment, gets up to let him out into the garden.
‘The smothering is why I came tonight,’ Charlie says, when his father returns.
Silence.
Then: ‘You didn’t do it,’ he says. ‘Mum made it up.’
After a second, I close my eyes. Of course Charlie wouldn’t want to believe that of me.
‘I’m afraid she didn’t make it up,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry, Charlie – I don’t want to believe it either, but it happened. I remember it. Every awful moment.’
He doesn’t respond.
‘I replay it in my head every day, and it’s a living hell. But it’s real, it happened, and I can’t allow you to tell yourself it didn’t.’
He watches me, almost sadly, and then shakes his head. ‘No. Mum made it up. It’s all here, in her diaries.’
I glance down at the diaries, the cracked spines, dog-eared corners. The top one bears a drink ring and tight, circular pen doodles. Charlie pulls out the third book down, and flicks through to a page near the end. It falls open naturally, as if it has been read many times. He hands it to me.
‘This is going to be hard,’ is all he says. He looks at Jeremy, who has sunk back into the sofa, lost in thought.
When I don’t take the diary, Charlie puts it on my lap.
I pick it up.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
DIARY OF JANICE ROTHSCHILD
Six months ago
Eighteen years exactly since we formally adopted Charlie.
Guilt no easier. Fear no easier. Periods lying awake at night getting longer. Averaging 3.5 hours’ sleep. Feel almost hallucinatory I’m so tired.
Problem is, I don’t think sleep’s going to come. BC what keeps me awake at night is the effort of trying to convince myself that Emily really was trying to suffocate Charlie.
I was certain once. When I walked into her room and saw the pillow over C’s face, I was certain. They questioned me; still certain. Drove home, certain. Told J – certain. Didn’t cross my mind I could have got it wrong.
When did the certainty begin to falter? Was there a moment when I began to question what I saw? If there was, I don’t remember it. All I know is that I stuck to my script and didn’t allow myself to think any further.
Until a few months ago. Her TV series was repeated; I was just flicking through the channels and there she was, marching along a cliff path, banging on about Cornish choughs.
Felt absolute dread, looking at her face on the screen. A turning point. I just stopped pretending. To myself, I mean. I just stopped lying.
She wasn’t going to smother him. She was too well by then – she was playing peekaboo. I heard her saying it as I came up the corridor. I started to smile because I knew it was her and Charlie.
But then there she was with a pillow over his face, and I panicked. Was awful. Deeply traumatic; I had nightmares about it for months after.
If I’d stayed there for a second longer, tho, she’d have whipped that pillow away and said, PEEKABOO!
And then Charlie wouldn’t have been my baby.