‘Let’s go,’ she said to Ellie, starting the engine. She needed to get away. The experience in the bank had left her guilty, nervous, feeling like a fugitive. A heavy responsibility suddenly weighed on her shoulders, its load crushing her. She felt her heart race, had to fight for breath.
‘Are you OK?’ asked Ellie.
I have to be, thought Abby. But I need time to think. To fix this.
‘Give me your phone,’ she said to Ellie.
Her sister looked at her quizzically but did as she was bid. Leaving the engine running, Abby got out of the car and strode up the road. She took Ellie’s phone and, with a quick check that no one was watching, dumped it in a bin. Then, with reluctance, she took her own out of her battered old handbag and did the same thing. The money would pinpoint them here anyway. But nothing else. Not for a while. Not while she worked out what to do.
Going back to the car, she got in and drove away.
FIFTEEN
Every now and then Ellie would glimpse the Tyrrhenian Sea from the car window, and every time she did, somewhere she registered it was further away, until she suddenly realized she could no longer see it at all. She made herself sit up and pay some attention for the first time in what felt like hours. She looked out of the window – properly – and saw they had long ago left the town and were deep in the Tuscan hills. The road was quiet and, as they climbed, Ellie could see olive groves and vineyards for miles and, at a distance, the occasional hilltop village, its russet roofs glowing in the late afternoon sun. The horizon was punctuated with the stately height of cypress trees that cast growing shadows across the landscape.
‘Where are we?’ Ellie asked.
‘Heading north,’ said Abby.
Ellie looked over at her sister, with her hands fixed firmly on the wheel, her gaze set ahead. She was leading, as ever, had made all the decisions ever since . . . Ellie shuddered. It had all been so quick, such a blur, that part of her didn’t think it was real.
Then a picture flashed into her mind – her mother’s closed eyes as she lay on the patio. Everything quiet, everything still, and then slowly came the blood. The horror of that deep red trickle would stay in her nightmares forever. Her mother. Her dear, darling mother. The woman she loved so much. The woman who poisoned me as a child.
The agony of grief that had been hurtling through her at an unstoppable speed was suddenly halted. Ellie was speared by confusion and a need to understand.
She tried to think back all those years, tried to remember scenarios, moments, meetings with doctors, anything to ground what Abby had said, to make sense of it, realize it for herself, but all she could recall was her mother’s tenderness.
‘What did she do?’ she started tentatively. ‘When you saw her that time. What did Mum do?’
Abby glanced across. ‘She was pouring liquid paracetamol into your food.’
‘Oh my God.’ Ellie was silent for a moment. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘How old was I?’
‘Six.’ said Abby.
Ellie calculated. ‘And you were nine.’ Still quite young. Maybe Abby made a mistake.
‘Can you tell me exactly what happened?’
‘It was a school day. You were in the living room, lying on the sofa, unwell. You hadn’t been to school that day. Mum was in the kitchen, making dinner. She thought I was outside, playing in the street, but I’d come in for a snack. I was starving. You remember the blue fruit bowl that she used to keep on the counter by the kitchen door?’
Ellie nodded. It had had white flowers painted around the outside.
‘I was getting an apple and I saw her with the medicine bottle. She had her back to me and was measuring it out into the small plastic spoon, then tipping it into a plate of casserole. Then she stirred it in. I remember being puzzled because whenever I’d had medicine, she’d just given it to me straight from the spoon. I must have made a noise because she swung around and I’ll never forget the look on her face. She was panicked, then she became angry, really angry. I asked her what she was doing and she just looked at me with the apple in my hand and told me to put it back – it was dinner time and I shouldn’t just help myself without asking.’
Ellie took all this in. ‘Did she still give me the food?’
‘Yes. Well, I assumed so. Later, when she said goodnight to me in my room, she told me it was a special medicine. Just for you. I said I thought it was the normal one, you know, the one I’d have too if I got a temperature or something, but she said I’d been mistaken. It was something the doctor had prescribed just for you and you wouldn’t like the taste so she put it in your food. And I wasn’t to tell you or you wouldn’t eat your dinner and then you wouldn’t get better.’
‘Did you believe her?’
‘I had to. What else could I have thought? I was a child myself.’
‘But this was years ago. Maybe you didn’t understand – you were young. Maybe it was something the doctors prescribed,’ said Ellie.
Abby shook her head, took a deep breath. ‘I heard something on the radio back in the spring. About mothers harming their children. It reminded me of what I’d seen all that time ago. And I started to think about it. I called Mum, confronted her. She tried to deny it of course. Said you were sick and needed the paracetamol. It was pretty clear she was lying – she got so flustered, and it just didn’t add up. And there was your constant sickness, the diarrhoea, your confusion, your yellowed skin. I kept on at her and so then she tried to play it down. Said it hadn’t happened that often. Sometimes she would give you enough medicine to keep you off school, but she was careful not to make it too much. She said she didn’t want you to have any long-term damage.’
It was almost too much to hear. ‘What?’ Ellie asked, anguished.
‘She was worried about liver damage,’ said Abby. ‘I know, I know, it seems nuts. So Mum would make you ill, then she’d reduce the dose a few days before you saw the doctors so they couldn’t trace it. I checked it out online. Seems if any overdose is staggered over a long period, paracetamol tests are impossible to interpret and they can be normal.’ Abby sighed. ‘Mum insisted I never say anything to you. I thought you had a right to know and she should tell you herself. She rang me a few days before your trip out here, pleaded with me again not to say anything.’
Ellie was silent as she took it all in. A lump was stuck in her throat and it was a while before she could talk.
‘I was ill for another two years. Until I was eight. Is that how long she was giving it to me?’ She was suddenly flooded with memories and didn’t see Abby glance away awkwardly.
‘God, the sickness,’ continued Ellie. ‘That’s what I hated the most. The nausea. I would dread it. And the missing out. I always felt like I’d just be watching everyone else have fun, feeling like the outsider.’ Her voice cracked. ‘The only thing that made it remotely bearable was having Mum. The way she looked after me. I felt like she loved me so much.’
‘She did. You know that you were her favourite.’
Ellie scoffed. ‘Funny way of showing it.’
‘She doted on you. Trust me, I remember. It was always about you.’ Abby paused. ‘I know it’s hard to understand but I think she needed you. Couldn’t stand it when you started school and left her alone.’