Chapter 21
Tilly hadn’t even noticed I’d been gone. She and Isobel were now lining up the diamond beads in size order – more or less. Tilly’s idea of bigger and smaller was somewhat random.
David and Mum were sitting sideways on their chairs, facing each other but not speaking. David looked tired, I noticed, and Mum was twisting her collar again. When they saw me come back, with Ross alongside, they exchanged a look and then David stood up.
‘I’m sorry, Libby,’ he said and it sounded genuine. ‘Truly. I just didn’t know what else to do. I wanted to see Tilly – she’s my daughter, and I was so worried about you both, and I realise that that is just what a possessive and coercive man would say, but it’s how I feel.’
‘How did you find me?’ I was pleased to hear that my voice wasn’t shaking and the words were even.
‘Your car broke down and you took it to a garage, remember?’ It sounded almost pleading, as though David was desperate for my agreement.
‘The mechanics noticed all the stuff and worked out you were living in the car. They didn’t think that was great, not with a baby, so they called social services, who found you a place in the hostel.
The police informed me about the car – I’m still on the registration document,’ he added, apologetically.
‘So I knew where you were. I hired a local detective agency to scope out your movements and they found out that you come here regularly. After that, it was just a question of waiting for the call that you were here, and then…’ He opened both hands.
The cyclist. That cyclist who had always seemed to be riding through the woods. Who had stopped to make a phone call.
‘You were… You said terrible things?’ I phrased it as a question, no longer knowing whether what I remembered was true or one of those dream memories. Everything felt similarly tattered around the edges and hazed with cracks, I couldn’t be sure what had been real.
‘I wasn’t always the best partner.’ David looked at his feet. ‘If it hadn’t been for Tils we would have gone our separate ways, but I wanted to be in her life. I still want to be in her life, Libby. She’s my daughter.’
I looked over at Tilly, now counting randomly out loud. She’d spent the first year of her life living in a car. Running, always running, terrified of being found…
That memory startled me with its clarity and then the guilt flowed in along with everything I’d ever read about small children being brought up by mothers with poor mental health.
What had I done to her? My thoughts of her in her ballerina bedroom with the circus wallpaper and her own pony had always been tinged with the smugness of knowing that all that would have come with control.
The suspicion that David would have put conditions on everything for his daughter, that he would have hovered over everything she did to make sure it all met with his expectations.
Just like he’d done with me – or, rather, like I had thought he had done with me.
While really I had torn her away from a privileged childhood because of my own delusions. The guilt was like acid in my blood now.
‘Lib, darling.’ Mum got up now and stood uncertainly in front of me. She looked as though she wanted to hug me but didn’t quite dare. ‘I know this has all been a bit of a shock to you…’
‘A bit of a shock?’ I was incredulous. ‘Mum, I’ve spent the last two years thinking I was escaping from a madman, not wearing the wrong size of bra! What this is goes way beyond “a bit of a shock”.’
But I’d stopped feeling quite so paralysed now, as though reality was beginning to creep in around the edges. I’d been ill. And nobody had told me.
Her lip wobbled. Around my hand I felt Ross tighten his fingers. ‘We should have told you,’ she said, looking down at the floor now. ‘Right at the beginning, when you were first expecting, we should have told you.’
‘It might have been a good idea, yes.’ I still sounded sharp.
‘It wouldn’t have helped.’ David was now down on his knees near Tilly.
Not quite playing with her, not quite helping her but close enough to watch her.
‘I saw you when it took hold, Libby. I couldn’t talk to you at all.
You behaved as though you were terrified of me, and you’d snatch Tilly up out of her cot if I so much as came into the room.
Whatever I said, you wouldn’t have believed me. ’
The terror. The fear that I might fall asleep and wake up to an empty house. Or worse, that I might never wake up at all, and Tilly would be left alone. The feeling that David was watching me, stalking me, that I wouldn’t be safe as long as he could find me…
‘Do they know what causes it? The psychosis, I mean?’ I asked Mum.
She shook her head quickly. ‘Not really. It’s often linked to bipolar or schizophrenia, but those didn’t apply in my case, or yours either.
But…’ Now she did touch me, a hand on my cheek.
‘I know what it was like. I mean, I don’t remember well, not now, but I remember the dreadful fear that I would harm you and then afterwards the guilt that I’d left you.
’ She shook her head again. ‘I wouldn’t have had you go through that for the world,’ she finished, quietly.
My gaze went back to my own daughter, stretched out next to Isobel, dropping beads on to the floor now. David was watching her with an expression of amazed delight.
‘Tilly,’ I said and waited until she looked at me. ‘Tilly, this man is Daddy.’
I saw David’s smile. I was cringing at the tweeness of the statement, but, at two, Tilly wouldn’t have understood anything wordier or less basic.
Tilly, rather anticlimactically, just said, ‘Oh,’ and went back to rolling the diamond beads.
‘She’s never really had to think about who her father might be,’ I said, sounding contrite.
‘She’s never asked about me?’ I saw David’s mouth twist and the contrition doubled.
‘She’s two. We haven’t got much beyond chicks hatching out of eggs yet in the reproduction stakes, and most of her friends don’t have a father at home either, so, for all she knows, immaculate conception is a thing.’
Mum smiled at that and David gave a little acknowledging nod.
Over on the floor, Isobel pulled her notepad towards her and scribbled.
You should all go. You have a lot to talk about and there’s more bad weather on the way. I have to see to Rook.
‘Rook?’ I’d forgotten about the bird. It gave me another small shock when I realised that I’d been in this room with a bird, albeit an injured one, and not panicked, and that I’d actually driven my car with one in it. Maybe my brain could only take one high-stress event at a time?
Isobel nodded towards the sofa. The black bird had half-flapped its way clear of Ross’s jacket bundle and was digging its beak experimentally into what remained of the cushions.
It tilted its head towards me for a second and let out a soft noise, more like a chirp than a caw.
It did not make me warm towards it, but at least I wasn’t running.
‘Yes.’ Ross tugged gently at my fingers, reminding me of Tilly when she wanted to go home. ‘Let’s go and find somewhere where we can sit in the warm and feed Tilly biscuits while you talk. I think there might be some sorting out to do.’
David looked up at Ross now. There was a thoughtful and slightly calculating look on his face for a moment, then that softened and he looked back at Tilly again. ‘You’re right.’ He got up from the floor. ‘We do need to talk, all of us. Tilly, do you like ice cream?’
Tilly was up in a flash. ‘Ice cream!’
I gave David a stern look. ‘Don’t start trying to buy her.’
He shrugged. ‘First thing I thought of. Let’s go and find a café somewhere and thrash out a few details, shall we? Your mum only landed yesterday, once I was certain enough of where you were to call her, and she’s probably jet-lagged to hell.’
Another jolt hit my heart. Not shock this time but shame. I hadn’t even thought. Mum had flown over from Australia. She’d come to find me. They must have been so worried, so scared – and I had caused it.
The duality flooded through me again. David had changed when Tilly was born. No, he hadn’t, I had. He’d stalked me, had me followed, tracked me, controlled me. Only he hadn’t. But I had thought he had. Did that make it real? It had felt real, to me. I had run away and blown up my entire family.
The memories lay there, real and solid-seeming.
I could remember David’s face, creased with hatred and suspicion as he walked out of the house.
I remembered him holding Tilly and telling her he would always look after her.
Those memories were… real. And when I recalled them, they came with the stomach-griping fear that Tilly and I weren’t safe.
That had been real too. He’d given me sleeping tablets – those tablets I’d felt so smug about not swallowing – he’d even admitted that.
But while what I remembered was real, the intent I’d been ascribing to his actions wasn’t real.
My whole body was paralysed with the dichotomy. I knew what I had seen, I knew what I had felt, and the reasons why I had run, and yet… and yet it had all been in my head?
It was all my fault.
Then, into my ear, Ross said, ‘It wasn’t your fault, Libby. You were ill.’
‘But I’ve affected everyone. Tilly’s speech delay, everyone was worried, living in a car and now a hostel…’ I blurted the words, aware that they didn’t make much sense.
Mum’s hand fell away from her collar and she moved to give me an awkward half-hug, as Ross was standing too close for her to properly embrace me. ‘We’ve found you,’ she said. ‘Nothing else matters now. We’ve found you and you’re safe.’
But, as we left Isobel to tend to her injured bird and clear up the results of Tilly’s bead game, I knew that it wouldn’t be that simple.