Page 60 of None of This is True

‘I mean that nearly every night, when I fall asleep, Walter gets out of bed and goes into Erin’s room. And then, when I get up, he’s sitting at the table in the living room acting like nothing happened.’

‘And? I mean – how do you know?’

‘I just do. That man thinks he’s the king, you see. He lets me have my way here and there, like with the dog. Like coming here for dinner. But he does it in the way that a king would do it. A thrown treat.’ She gestures with her arm. ‘You have to run for it. You know. But as far as he’s concerned, everything in that flat is his. It all belongs to him, and so the minute I told him I wasn’t his any more, that he was no longer allowed to touch me, he took the next nearest thing. He took Erin.’

‘Have you ever seen anything? Heard anything?’

Josie shakes her head. ‘I put in my earplugs. I stay in my room until the morning comes.’

‘Fuck! Josie!’ Alix can’t help it. She cannot contain the shock and dismay. She’s meant to be impartial. Her job is not to judge or react, but simply to ask and listen. But this – she’ll edit out her reaction, she knows that – this is too animal and raw to remain circumspect about, especially – and yes, she knows it’s the most awful cliché – but especially as a mother.

‘What was I meant to do?’ Josie snaps. ‘It was so gradual. I didn’t realise at first, what was happening. I just happened to wake up a couple of times and see the empty bed. I’d ask him where he’d been, and he’d say he’d been chatting online with his kids in Canada. And I thought: Why does it have to be in the middle of the night? What’s wrong with the evening? And once I’d worked out what was happening, well, I thought she’d come and tell me. Erin. I kept waiting. But instead, she just went more and more into herself. Stopped eating anything I gave her. She’d always been fussy, but she got fussier and fussier and then started asking for baby food.’

‘Baby food?’

‘Yes. She said, “I want that stuff I used to have when I was little. The stuff you gave me out of a jar. When you used to feed me with a spoon.” I mean, I assumed it was some kind of – what do they call it? – regression, I suppose. She wanted to be a baby again. To be safe.’

‘But, Josie, sorry,’ Alix interjects, sensing that Josie is skimming over vast swathes of important back story. ‘What did Walter say? I mean, you must have said something to him, surely?’

Josie shakes her head and Alix sighs so loudly it makes the audio display on her laptop oscillate wildly. ‘I’m really sorry, Josie. Really, I am. But I need to get this straight. You are telling me that in the aftermath of what happened with Walter and Brooke, your youngest daughter ran away from home and you withdrew conjugal favours from your husband, and that as a result of that, your husband started to visit your older teenage daughter in her bedroom every night, to, you assume, sexually abuse her. Your daughter began to regress to the point of wanting to eat only baby food and stopped leaving her room entirely. And this has been going on for the past five years?’

‘Around about. Yes.’

Josie voice is clipped. Her mouth is pursed.

‘And you have not spoken to either your daughter or your husband about it?’

She nods. ‘That’s correct.’

‘It just … happens?’

‘It just happens.’

‘And your daughter. Erin. Was she restrained in any way? I mean, was she free to leave?’

‘Yes. She was free to leave.’

‘But she didn’t?’

‘No. She didn’t.’

‘And why do you think that is?’

‘He probably got inside her head. He probably made her think it was OK. The way he does. You know?’

Alix leaves a moment of silence. Her listeners will need it at this point. But she needs it too. Then she asks the question that she fears the answer to.

‘Before Friday night, Josie, when you and Walter had your fight, the night Walter beat you, when was the last time you’d seen Erin?’

She shrugs. She sniffs and wriggles slightly in her chair. ‘About six months? Maybe a year? About that.’

‘Not at all? Not once? Not even going to the bathroom?’

‘She waits until I’m not in the house. She doesn’t want to see me.’

‘But how do you know that?’

‘Well, she’d come and see me if she did, wouldn’t she? She knows when I’m there. I feed her. I leave her the food and then she puts the empties outside her room. And don’t think, don’t think for a minute, that I didn’t want to see her, because I wanted to see her more than anything, but when something goes on for that long it, well, you know, it just gets harder and harder, doesn’t it? Harder to turn back and do the right thing. I stopped at her door, every day, twice, three times a day. I stopped. And I touched the door and I made my hand like this.’ She forms it into a fist with knuckles. ‘Like I was going to knock. And I never did, Alix. I just never did. And don’t think I don’t hate myself because I hate myself so much. So much. Hate that it took so long for me to break this. To stop it.’

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