nobody expects you to dress in the latest fashions. And, to be honest, I was a bit on the big side then, anyway. I put a lot of weight on when I got to my teens. I think I was stress eating. I hated myself for it, but Mum just kept putting more food in front of me.’
‘It’s her way, I think.’
‘Right. I wouldn’t have got away with it much longer, though. I would have had to go down with some illness or other, even though I was due to leave school about then. But the baby came early. Very early, actually.’
‘Your mother must have known about the baby, Lauren.’
‘Oh, yes. She knows everything, or she thinks she does.’
‘And when the time came?’
‘We had to dispose of it. That’s what Dad told me. He said — ’
She looked up from the grave, no longer able to get out the words.
‘He said it was born wrong and it had to die,’ suggested Cooper.
‘How did you know that?’
‘I got it from your brother. I think Alex must have heard it somehow.’
‘Oh, Alex knew was what happening. He was the only person I could tell. Me and Alex, we were really close at one time. It’s funny to think that, I suppose. We’re so different.’
‘He was only eleven, Lauren.’
‘I know. I’m not sure he understood everything.’
‘Did it occur to you what it might do to him?’
‘I’m really sorry.’
‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s not your fault.’
Two women entered the churchyard with fresh flowers to place on a grave. Cooper and Lauren moved on to stay out of earshot. They walked down past the front of the church hall and came to a path along the side of the Henmore Brook.
‘You could have got the morning-after pill,’ said Cooper. ‘Didn’t they do that at your school? Or you could have gone to a clinic. To your GP.’
She shook her head. ‘I was terrified people would talk, or they would ask me who the baby’s father was. You don’t know what it’s like in a place like this.’
‘Surely if it was just some boy at your school — ’
‘A boy?’ Lauren looked at him and laughed bitterly. ‘You don’t know everything then, do you? You’re not quite as smart as I thought you were.’
Cooper stopped walking. Down here, there was no sound, except for the trickle of the brook, a few birds calling in the yew trees in the churchyard.
Lauren strode on a bit further, then she stopped too. Instead of turning towards him, she stayed with her back to him, her head down, hair falling over her face, the purple streak incongruous against the trees. She seemed to be staring at her boots, as if the pattern of the laces and steel hooks had some significance.
Cooper had a sudden realization of the full horror in that phrase her father had used. It was born wrong and it bad to die. There could only be one meaning. Why had he been so stupid? Lauren was right. He really wasn’t all that smart.
The girl looked up at him now, to see if he understood.
‘It didn’t feel like a baby, you know?’ she said. ‘Just some dirty little secret that I had to keep quiet about and hide from the world.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘He came into my room one night. I was really upset about something, you know? But I can’t remember what it was now. Isn’t that stupid? It was something so trivial that I can’t even tell you what it was all about. It seemed so important to me at the time, but now it’s just…a big nothing in my memory. Meaningless, because of what came after.’
‘And your father forced himself on you?’
‘He was trying to comfort me. I think he meant well. At first, anyway. Mum was away that night. Not that she would have been any better. She’s no use in situations like that. She doesn’t like things being out of control. It would have ruined her routine.’
Cooper shook his head in despair. ‘I can’t understand how he would do something like that.’
‘Well, he’d been drinking on the way home from work. Things had started going badly at the store. It must have been about the time the new supermarket moved into town, and he thought it was all over. He told Mum he thought he was going to have to lay off all his staff, and go on the dole himself, for the first time in his life.’
‘It doesn’t excuse — ’
‘Anyway, he was really stressed, you know?’ she said. ‘He didn’t usually drink, so it affected him badly when he did. I don’t think Dad knew what he was doing that night. Honestly, I don’t think he did.’
She must have seen the doubt in his eyes. Cooper suspected she was about to start putting the blame on herself again. That wouldn’t do anyone any good.
‘I’ve always felt guilty about it,’ she said. ‘Guilty about everything.’
‘You shouldn’t. What your father did was very wrong. It was rape.’
‘But was it?’
‘Yes, of course it was. You were under age.’
‘Well, it’s got to be partly my fault. I suppose I was lucky it wasn’t worse.’
‘You mustn’t talk like that.’
Lauren’s black eye make-up was running now, streaking her pale cheeks.
‘I did something bad to Alex, though,’ she said. ‘Didn’t I?’
Cooper thought she had, but he couldn’t explain to her quite what. He didn’t really know what had been going on in her brother’s mind.
‘I suppose you told Alex where the baby was buried?’ he said.
‘I took him there, and showed him the place.’
‘What? Oh, Lauren.’
She wiped a sleeve across her face, only making the streaks worse.
‘I had to. It was like a memorial service, just me and him. It was the only way my baby’s death would ever be remembered.’
‘Well, Alex remembers it all right,’ said Cooper grimly.
‘How did he react?’
‘He was a bit strange, you know? He went right down on to the river bed, stood on the exact spot where the water disappeared through the ground. I think he had to do that, to make it real. He was very quiet afterwards. But then, he always was a bit withdrawn.’
‘Was the baby born alive, Lauren?’ asked Cooper.
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes, it does.’
She shrugged hopelessly. ‘Not to me.’
They walked slowly back towards the church, Cooper allowing Lauren to walk a little way ahead. Following her black coat, he felt like a mourner in procession to the grave. When they got back to the gate, she spoke to him again, more composed and reflective now.
‘Some people say Dad looks a bit like Dracula,’ she said.
Cooper nodded. ‘I’ve heard that.’
‘Well, it’s true, in a way. He sucked the blood out of me.’
For a moment, Cooper paused and looked back across the graves, beyond the churchyard and the Henmore Brook.
It was so difficult to understand what went on in families. How had the Nields reconciled themselves to a situation like this? What compromises had they made with each other, what rationalizations had gone on in their minds? As time passed, did they convince themselves that nothing was wrong, that they could all just go on as normal? And all for the sake of keeping the family together.
It was a twisted kind of loyalty, a sense of allegiance that shut out the rest of the world, and rejected concepts of conventional behaviour. Whatever went on in your own home was the reality you had to live. No one
