False Hope Read online

  I say home. It wasn’t any kind of home for you by then, was it? You were soooo outta there. God, I was so bloody wretched about you leaving me there. Sorry. I know I’m going off topic, but did I ever tell you about the day you left for uni? Do you remember it? Our sainted father turning up, smelling of Gauloises and that fucking bitch’s perfume, and Mum refusing to come out of the kitchen while the three of us loaded his van up with all your stuff, and then me standing on the doorstep, all on my own, waving you off? Once you’d gone I went straight up to your bedroom and slammed the door shut. And just lay on your bed, crying and crying for, like, an hour. And Mum never came to check on me. Not even once. And I was twelve, for God’s sake. Can you imagine that?

  Oh, I know what she’d say. She’d say she was leaving me to cry it out. Or giving me some space, or some other of her usual bullshit. Heaven forbid that she should actually have to comfort me. But you know what? I’ve been thinking about stuff like this a lot lately – sorry, I know, major digression – and I think I know why now. I think it was because she finally understood. That the reason I was crying was because you’d left me with her.

  Sorry. Seriously, I need to stop rambling on, don’t I? Because I need to get this done before Daisy gets back with Dill. Which will be in . . . shit. Okay, okay, so the first thing you need to know, sis, is that the thing I hope for above anything – and I really mean anything, despite what he’s put me through – is that what he’s done will never need to come to light. If it has to it has to, then fair enough, no choice. Absolutely no contest. And if it does come to it, then I hope – no, I know – that you’ll forgive me when you realise just how many lies I’ve had to tell you. First of which – might as well be honest with you up front here – is that Aidan hasn’t ever laid a hand on me. Ever. And he hasn’t just upped and walked out on me, either, despite what I’m going to tell you when I speak to you tomorrow. He’s gone because I gave him no choice. Because I made it clear to him that if he didn’t go – and go for good, I mean, as in having no further part in Dill’s life whatsoever – that I would have no choice but to tell you.

  He’s promised. He gets it. He hates it but he gets it. God, apart from anything else, he knows he couldn’t give Dill half the life you can. He’s not stupid. Well, he’s stupid in lots of ways, but not when it comes to this. It’s going to be tough on him – for starters, his mother is going to freak. But he’s promised, and, at least for now, I do genuinely believe him. Because much as he cares for Dill – and he genuinely does, in his way, Grace, I promise you – he knows he’s not up to the job of raising him, not without me. He can barely organise his own life, let alone anyone else’s. He can barely change a nappy, let alone dress him or anything. Yeah, he says he loves him, and I honestly think he does, but fatherhood is a whole other headache. Bless him – I think he genuinely thinks his time will only come when Dill’s old enough to kick a football. Till then . . . well, you know. He is never there for bedtimes, or mealtimes, or night feeds, or – well, need I go on? No. Ha – there you go. A bit of truth you will be able to get your head around!

  And you won’t be remotely surprised to know I don’t entirely trust him. The womanising, the cheating, all sadly true. Her name’s Candii, by the way – spelt with two bloody ‘ii’s – I mean, says it all, really, doesn’t it? Ha – she’s got a shock coming when he buggers off up north, that’s for sure. A small but significant consolation! Bitch.

  Shit. Where’s the day gone? I have to pause this for a bit in a minute and get some stuff done before Daisy gets here. But, look, the point is that I have to do this for insurance. You’ve got to know that Dill finding out about any of this, ever, is the last thing I want for him, the last thing he should ever have to know about. So I’m counting on you, if you do end up listening to this – which I hope you don’t – to know what to do with it. To work out how to play things. To use it in the least damaging way. But I’m hoping the threat of your knowing will be enough. Confession time, by the way. I have laid it on thick. Laid you on thick. Laid Matt on thick too. Because he has to believe you’d go after him. I’ve had to, and I’m sorry, because you really don’t deserve it. But I’ve had to. Because when I die Dillon has to go to you.

  But not for the reasons I think you suppose. Not for the reasons I’ve spent the last couple of months making damned bloody sure you supposed.

  Because you know Conor? Aidan’s half-brother?

  Aidan killed him.

  Chapter 18

  I paused the recording, and looked out over the white world outside, stunned. It was almost too much to take in. All those tears and recriminations. All those texts from him she’d forwarded. All those phone calls; those endless bitter sob-strewn accounts of his crimes and misdemeanours. His sudden unprovoked violence. His controlling behaviour. He’d done this, he’d done that. He’d smashed her heart into pieces. It was textbook. No wonder I’d lapped it up so readily. Most astounding was that, the very day after recording what I’d just listened to, she had asked me to come down, her voice so desperate and desolate, and almost every single word she’d said to me had been a lie; a piece of acting of Oscar-worthy proportions.

  Bless him, she’d said. Bless him. About Aidan.

  I thought again about the gap that had so effectively separated our respective childhoods. That apparently unbridgeable gulf. Hope just was; in my life, but not of it. A presence often only seen from the corner of my eye. A flame that flickered and occasionally flared.

  And what I’d just heard now confirmed it. Which somehow made it feel even worse. In the year before her terminal diagnosis, I had developed – or so I’d thought – a much stronger, surer sense of her. A hint towards a future, more equitable relationship, that we could, and hopefully would, gently coax into being – a new dawn. Mums, together. A genuine friendship.

  But as I continued to listen to the story she was telling, it hit me hard that I was labouring under a misapprehension. Because the seventeen-year-old Hope – the Hope who perhaps had burned then at her brightest – I had known, I now realised, hardly at all. That girl was not someone I recognised. She was another Hope entirely.

  She was Aidan’s.

  And remained so to her death.

  Fearful of what I’d find now, I pressed play again.

  I had his back from the beginning. Said I’d have his back always. And from the moment I made the promise to him, I had meant it, too. Always. Despite everything. Despite being tested to the limit. Because he loved me.

  And more than that, Grace. Because I loved him.

  I was smart. So much smarter than anyone ever gave me credit for. One of the things I most loved about Aidan from the get-go was the way he kept telling me how smart I was. How clever. How he’d lucked out, how he absolutely didn’t deserve someone like me. How sometimes he had to pinch himself that I wanted to be with him, which, of course, made me love him all the more.

  You have no idea how much I loved him. How my life changed because of him. I was seventeen and it was like I hadn’t lived before. Or that I’d lived in black and white and had suddenly discovered colour. Or lived in the shadows and been thrust into the light. Or had lived without purpose, and had finally found one. I was seventeen. And it really had been that big a deal: I’d found a place of peace. A place of sanctuary. A home.

  We both had. And it turned out he’d needed one even more than I had. And not just an escape from the suffocating attentions of his mother, either. To keep him from drowning beneath the maelstrom that raged inside his own head.

  Up till Aidan, I’d had the usual preconceptions about child abuse. Doesn’t everyone? At least, my thoughts on the term, which felt ridiculously inadequate. Like neglect, another word so beloved of the authorities, eh? – as if parents who’d starved a child to near emaciation were guilty of nothing more than carelessness. Like Mum would so often neglect to clear the ironing pile, or neglect to remember to pay the milkman or the paper boy.

  Or to love me the way she’d loved you. />
  Abuse is the same. I have thought about this a lot. It says everything, yet nothing – don’t you think? Like abuser. That’s another one – a word pretty much guaranteed to make you recoil automatically. But it’s such a bland word. Such a nothing word, such a beige word, when you think about it. When you consider all the horrible ways in which a child can be defiled.

  It gave me clarity, to think that. To get a sense of perspective. To meet Aidan, and, as a consequence, be able to relocate myself a little lower on the league table of horrible childhoods.

  Why me in particular? I used to wonder that often. Why choose me as the recipient of his darkest, saddest secret? Sometimes, looking back, I can see it for what it might have been: a simple case of time and place. The stars aligning at the zenith of our early, rabid passion. The right place, the right time, the right post-coital moment.

  Other times, I see it differently. As a function of being me. Of him knowing, having kept it to himself for so long, that the time had arrived, because I had arrived.

  But perhaps it didn’t matter either way.

  You know Conor, babe.

  Your brother.

  No, no, no, babe. My half-brother. Well, when I was little, he—

  When I was little, he . . .

  I’m not going to spell it out for you. You don’t need the details. But trust, me, Grace. Abuse is such an insufficient word.

  It sometimes seems, looking back, as if time slowed in that moment when he told me. We’d smoked a joint (I’d be a fool if I didn’t imagine that had played a part) but as soon as he started telling me, it had warped and weaved around us; become fluid, loose, elastic. Metamorphosed.

  It delivered me a gift. A gift I didn’t know what to do with. All I could do, in the moment, was hold him – hold him tight – and tick off all the boxes. The way he’d square up to people. The way he’d cry for no reason. The way he’d work out and work out and work out and work out, as if preparing for a role in a post-apocalyptic world, where there’d be trees to fell, shacks to build, outlaws to vanquish, and any number of damsels and maidens to deflower. The way his appetite for me – all soft skin and curves then, all feminine faux-coy acquiescence – was so urgent, so insatiable, so voracious.

  He called me Babe. I called him Aid. Which felt right and appropriate. Because I knew one thing for definite: I had been given something broken, and only I, with my magical powers, could fix him.

  Daisy – you know Daisy? Who I never told, obviously – she thought he was no more than a common or garden tool.

  Not worth the grief, she’d said. Not worth the effort.

  Hope, she’d said, you are way too much the nurturer, you know that? (As if being a nurturer was a failing, was a dangerous thing.) Which is actually, she’d gone on to say, statistically unusual. As the youngest, you’re more likely to be the demanding one, the diva.

  Ha! I didn’t know if any of that was true or not. I supposed it might be. (I’d asked Aidan about the diva thing. His response had been ‘hell, yes!’) But what I did know was that I’d never ever seen myself in that way. I’d seen myself as the child neither of my parents had wanted. As superfluous, but at the same time, an inescapable duty. Which, after you, Grace – perfect you, Grace – they had both discharged with particularly bad grace.

  It’s a mug’s game, Daisy said to me, trying to fix guys. Trying to change them. Everyone knows that, she said. Keep your guard up, she said. Remember, he has form (by the time I met him, by the way, he’d already notched up a suspended sentence for aggravated assault) and, even more important, he has form. We were all doing catering then, in our spick and span chefs’ whites (did you ever even see me in my chef’s whites? I don’t think you did, did you? Whiter than your ivory tower, that’s for sure), and Daisy knew he had form because they’d come from the same school, where he was, variously, a bad lad, a ‘proper ledg’, and a player. And every ‘popular girl’ (‘popular girls’ having been a thing then – ugh, ugh, ugh) had been determined to be the one to claim and tame him. I mean, look at him, Daisy said. Total babe magnet, that one. So be careful. As if he were a sleeping volcano. (Which, as it turned out, wasn’t really that wide of the mark.)

  I wasn’t ‘popular’ ever. (Point of order – I hadn’t actually at any time aspired to be ‘popular’.) Too emo. Too kooky. Too spiky. Too intense. But where like poles repelled (see? I did know a few clever things, G, even then), unlike poles attracted.

  We just couldn’t help it.

  He just couldn’t help it.

  He had blood underneath his nails. That was the first thing I noticed. From where he’d lifted his brother’s head up from the ground. He’d already guessed he’d smashed his skull because he’d heard it hit the pavement. From all that way up, despite the rain, despite the wind, he had actually heard it hit the pavement. Then, from an instinct born out of his many previous brushes with the law, he’d had the presence of mind to tug down the sleeve of his parka so he left no trace of himself on the cool metal handrail of the outside stairwell, as he descended to see what he had done.

  But he’d made himself check. And got blood under his fingernails. Then ran all the way home to me, through the 2 a.m. silence, and in the twenty-four minutes the journey had taken, gone from fight through to flight through to fight again – he deserved it – to flight again – wasn’t there a night ferry to Cherbourg? – back to fight – he deserved it – through to terror. Intent to kill or not, he would surely go to prison now. Where, if he knew one thing, it was that he would be fresh meat. He would be prey.

  I’d been so deeply asleep when he’d come stumbling into the bedroom that for a moment I thought he was part of a dream. Wild-eyed, wild-haired, a flailing, keening apparition. Wake up! Wake up, babe! Oh fuck, babe! Oh shit!

  So I did try to wake up, but there he still was, his cheeks smeared and wet and his hands in his hair. As if he were literally trying to pull his own head off.

  What’s happened, I asked him. Aid, just tell me, what’s happened?

  He’d made the biggest fucking mistake of his entire life, that was what. He should never have agreed to meet Conor in the first place.

  Conor had been years in the army, and only came home infrequently. And when he did it was like there was evil in the house. With his number-one buzz cut, his vein-rippled biceps, his habit of holding his arms up like Popeye, of mussing his little brother’s hair if he passed him on the stairwell – bloody girl’s hair, he’d taunt. Get it cut, you vain wanker, as if the past were a place he didn’t want reminding of. As if the beautiful little boy in whom he’d taken his pleasure had no business still being around to taunt him.

  He’d kept the hair, built the biceps, built a fearsome reputation. When he was still an inch shy of Conor’s five foot eleven, he laid a guy out, in school, and got a four-week suspension. He carried it around proudly, like the prize he knew it was.

  And then he grew. Another inch, another inch, another two. He had never known his father, but he was grateful to him for that. (He’d never known Conor’s either, but he knew what he was. The father, the mentor, to the son.)

  I need to go to the police.

  You mustn’t go to the police.

  I have to. Babe, I have to.

  But you can’t.

  Seriously, babe, I have to. What the fuck else can I do?

  But they’ll charge you with murder.

  I didn’t murder him! It was an accident!

  I know, I said, soothing, and patting, and smoothing. The hair on his forehead, the hairs on his forearms. The slick of sweat that had beaded at his temples. But they’re not going to see it like that, are they?

  But the truth is the truth.

  That you pushed him down the stairwell.

  Accidentally!

  But how are you going to prove that, without witnesses?

  How are they going to prove otherwise?

  And so it went on.

  And all the while I was fashioning two parallel futures for us. The one i
n which Aidan – my Aidan – was dragged off to prison. And another, in which, if I was smart now, he was not.

  Explain to me again, I said. From the beginning. Let’s think it through again.

  And because he knew I was smart, he put himself in my hands.

  They’d gone to the pub as planned, he’d said, Conor antsy, already flying.

  Bro, he’d said, more than once, we’re okay, you and me, right?

  They drank. Drank prodigiously. Drank with tedious machismo. As if the strength of a man’s character could be measured in units. As if being male, on its own, could never quite be enough.

  Bro, he’d said, more than once, we’re okay, you and me, yeah? And it hit him that Conor wanted to see him because he needed some kind of ‘closure’ – a term the therapists from Youth Offenders often bandied about. As if the wounds he’d inflicted could be stitched up and mended. He was back now. Demobbed. Had a flat, with a mate. Had a job, in security. Had a new civilian life, to pick up. He needed closure so he could go about his business. Bro, he’d slurred, more than once, we are okay, aren’t we?

  Then, later, much later: the pub shut, turfed out. And after they’d ambled aimlessly round Brighton in search of a club, after taking more coke and talking shit about nothing, he said, come back to Craig’s, yeah? We’ll get a Domino’s. Have a smoke.

  And he realised. He got it. He had just the one job.

  To say yeah, bro, we’re fine.

  But he couldn’t say that, ever. Because they were not. Because he burned with the shame, and the memories, and the shame. He’d been so weak. So afraid. So scared to tell his mother. It was like in stories, where you had to do things that took every ounce of courage. But he didn’t have an ounce. He didn’t even have a quarter. At least till one middle of the night, when he saw his mother see them. See Conor. See how they were. What was going on in his bed.