So she’d been surprised and secretly delighted when Duncan had grimaced, and pulled another brochure towards them, and said, ‘But he’ll be absolutely fine staying with Yvonne and Michael for two weeks,’ making out like this had been the plan all along, when Maggie knew fine well that he’d only decided this after seeing her reaction.
‘There must have been problems,’ she insisted now.
‘Nick was a . . . challenging little boy, yes. Very boisterous.’
‘In other words, a fucking nightmare.’
‘No! He could be so sweet, so funny. He just . . . he’s always had problems fitting in with his peers. Playing nicely.’
‘You mean he went for the other kids.’
Duncan closed his eyes, breathed deeply, opened them again. ‘I suppose so. He was banned from the local nursery group for hitting and biting, and didn’t get invited to birthday parties because he was too “disruptive”。 Kathleen wanted to take him to a child psychologist, but I – I thought people were just overreacting to normal, boisterous little boy behaviour.’ He swallowed. ‘I thought he was just frustrated because the other kids were so far behind him, developmentally, and . . . and I didn’t agree to it. I talked Kathleen out of it. I accused her of being too hard on him. Oh Christ, Maggie, this is all my fault.’
Aye, maybe it was. She wasn’t going to say it wasn’t.
‘No point playing the blame game now,’ was the furthest she was prepared to go to make him feel better.
‘When he was twelve, thirteen . . . he used to go wandering up the road, and this couple who lived up there, they used to complain that he was hurting their cat. Squeezing it and making it yelp. Nick said he was just hugging it. But then the cat was found dead. Stabbed in the throat. The guy came round here in tears with the cat’s body, accusing Nick . . . accusing him of having killed it. I sent him off with a flea in his ear.’ He got up and came to where Maggie was standing. ‘And there were other incidents. That scar Andy’s got . . . Nick did that. They were eight years old. Somehow they got into the tool shed and started messing about with an adze. I’m not sure what happened, but Andy came running into the house, blood streaming, and Nick was running after him and he was laughing. “His mouth’s split in two! Look!” he said, as if this was some amazing phenomenon I was going to be fascinated by. He must have been in shock. People sometimes laugh inappropriately when they’re in shock, don’t they?’ Duncan stared at Maggie, like he was begging her to agree that aye, that was probably the explanation.
‘So he was completely unrepentant? In fact, he enjoyed the whole thing?’
Duncan said nothing.
Isla started to grizzle, and Maggie went to her.
‘Can I . . .’ Duncan reached out his arms for Isla, but Maggie couldn’t do it, she couldn’t pretend it was all okay now that Duncan had seen the error of his ways.
‘She almost fucking died!’ she hissed at him. She grabbed Isla up and left the room.
Maggie had been shut in one of the guest rooms with Isla all the next morning when there was a tap on the door, and Yvonne came in.
‘Nick?’ Maggie said at once. ‘Has he been charged?’
‘Not as far as I know. We haven’t heard anything from the police yet.’
They could keep Nick in custody for forty-eight hours before either charging or releasing him.
Yvonne looked down at Isla in her cot. ‘Duncan’s in pieces,’ she said quietly.
‘Oh, boo-hoo.’
A sigh. ‘Look, Maggie, I can totally understand why you’re furious. I’m pretty furious with him myself. But think about it – what sort of parent is going to turn against their own child without pretty strong evidence of their wrongdoing? What would you do if someone tried to tell you Isla was an evil monster?’
Maggie snorted. ‘That would never happen!’
‘Wouldn’t it? She’s Nick’s sister. She might have a genetic propensity –’
‘Of course she fucking doesn’t!’ Maggie was up off the bed, fists clenched.
Yvonne nodded. ‘There you go. That’s how Duncan’s been feeling. And now he’s feeling a hundred, a thousand times worse because he’s had to accept that his son, the son he’s loved for sixteen years, is a monster.’
Maggie felt the fight go out of her. ‘Aye. Aye, right enough.’
They moved Isla back to Maggie and Duncan’s room, where the baby monitor was, and then the two women went downstairs to the drawing room, where Michael and Duncan were seated on either side of the cold hearth. Somehow, this formal room seemed right for what they had to talk about.