Deception aka Sanctum

Margie doesn’t know Trisha or she wouldn’t have been so friendly to her. She sat on the old shit’s knee and tried to pull her cheeks off. Trisha gave her a bath and put her to bed without a story.

“I am the child’s great-aunt and Susan Louise has no one else,” she explained later when I asked her why she was here. “As the only surviving member of her family, I should be here.”

“If you’re so keen to lend her support, why didn’t you turn up at court during the trial?” I said, knowing full well she couldn’t have stood the humiliation. Susie would have recognized her and waved, and Trisha couldn’t cope with being publicly associated with an accused person. “Maybe she could have done with a bit more support then, did you think about that?”

“I had commitments”- Trisha was scratching the back of her hand slowly, raising welts on the thin dry skin-“that I simply couldn’t walk away from. I came as soon as I could.”

“Does Susie know you’re here?”

She looked straight at me. “She asked me to come and visit Margery.”

She then deflected attention from herself by demanding a cup of tea, a bath, the use of the guest bedroom (too small), and by quizzing Yeni as to where she’s from. Yeni didn’t really understand, but she was uncomfortable at the accusatory tone, I could see that.

When Yeni went upstairs to her room, I told Trisha that Yeni had been a rock during the whole bloody episode. She stayed with us throughout the trial, I said pointedly. Trisha pursed her lips. She said that was fine then, as if Yeni were an unsuitable friend who would lead me into smoking and the use of slack grammar and tube tops and other modern evils.

I gather that Susie didn’t really send Trisha here. They’ve been writing to each other, and Susie agreed that it would be nice for Margery to see other members of the family. It was Trisha who decided she was needed; whether she was wanted here or not is of no concern to her. She knows I hate her and doesn’t seem to care. I wonder how she now feels about taking Susie aside before our wedding and telling her she thought I was a drinker. I was a student then and it was a friend’s graduation. I wasn’t even that drunk, I’d only had about four pints. How unforgiving can you get?

She drives me insane with her endless pronouncements. She seems never to have mastered the art of interaction, and her conversation, which ca

Mum phoned later and was horrified to hear that Trisha had arrived. She demanded to know what she was doing, had I asked her to come? I said of course not. Mum gave the phone to Dad, he asked all the same questions over again, and then she snatched the receiver back from him and asked them again herself. There’s a serious danger of their coming over, even though I told them that there are no spare beds now.

I want to teach Margie to say “Great-aunt Trisha is a bastard,” but she’d be taken off me by the social workers.

So I’m up here after everyone has gone to their respective beds, smoking in a sulk, making this nice room smell horrible. I’ve opened the skylight, and the November air’s fresh outside. It floats down the chimney-shaped room and nibbles at my fingers and forehead and bare ankles, keeping me awake.

In the past twenty-four hours I’ve been emasculated, violated, snubbed, and invaded. To cap it all off, I’ve got to go and visit Susie tomorrow. I don’t want to go. I want to be back at the nursery surrounded by sympathetic, pitying mums. I want to press my face into their big warm tits and stay there forever.

chapter thirteen

WORSE. AN EVEN WORSE FUCKING DAY THAN YESTER-FUCKING-DAY was. I’m up here, hiding in my own home, so I don’t have to talk to Trisha or tell her about Susie and the visit.

Today started out okay. I got a letter from Susie that didn’t say much but did make me think it would be quite nice to see her. I went to the shops to buy the batteries she asked for and found my picture in one of the papers. Margie has been cut out of the photo, which is good, though you can just see her little hand. I actually look quite attractive. It was windy (you can see the wind-ruffled trees behind me), and my hair was brushed back off my ears. Also I had an overcoat on, which covered my belly. Instead of fat and afraid, I seem angry, defiant- even, at a stretch, a little handsome.

(I’m wondering if we could make anything of the press coverage for the appeal. It feels as though we’ve never been out of the papers. Surely one of them must have broken the rules?)

I put three copies of the paper in my cart, right side down, and walked around the shop in a flush of excitement. I thought the cashier would recognize me, but she didn’t. I’d drawn myself up, ready to explain that I was gathering material for a case I would be presenting to the Press Complaints Commission, but she didn’t even notice my buying three copies because they scan them in upside down. I was a bit disappointed.

The story itself is horrible, all about me struggling on with my pathetic devil-spawn child. There’s no mention of me as an independent person, just Susie’s unemployed husband this and that. They’d never say that about a woman. She’d be a housewife, an attractive housewife maybe, or a stay-at-home mum, but not unemployed.

I half wanted to cut the picture out and take it to Susie, to show her I’m not a complete loser dog, but the story would upset her, and I thought she might have other things on her mind. When I came home from the shops, I took the picture up to the bathroom and used Susie’s hair spray to flatten the hair at the sides of my head. I look cool, whatever Susie says. I know I do.

I keep going back to the picture and looking at it. I may feel like a neurotic fool, but when I look at that picture, I’m a tragic hero. I can see the story from the far distance for the first time, and I come off rather well. I’m tall, not at all bald (a major boon at twenty-nine), and I’ve stuck loyally by her. If I were slightly thi

Trisha’s being here was good for one reason only: she agreed to take Margie out for the day. I’d rather do that than leave her with Yeni. That wouldn’t be fair to either of them.

I turned the car radio on to keep myself from thinking and drove onto the motorway. It’s a long time since I’ve been out of the city. It was windy, and all the high-sided vehicles were leaving the road or stopping on the shoulder. I could feel the car being blown sideways on exposed stretches. When I got all the way out into the flat Leven Valley, the traffic was backed up to a complete standstill, and I was afraid I’d miss visiting time. I was cursing whatever feckless bastard was causing the obstruction when I saw an ambulance weaving against the traffic. It passed, and the cars began to move again. Two hundred yards farther on a large truck lay on its side in a field like a big dead beetle, down a sharp slope from the motorway. It was at such a crazy angle from the road it must have tumbled over several times before coming to rest. The ambulance had been attending here, and I realized that the driver might actually be dead.