The Rumor, page 5
I can’t get Sally McGowan’s ten-year-old face out of my mind. Those startlingly defiant eyes. If anyone should have been sent to prison it was Kenny McGowan and, arguably, the mother, Jean. Although it’s pretty clear now, from a twenty-first-century perspective, that she was also being abused. We’ve come a long way since the 1960s, thank God.
Or have we? I’ve been trawling through Twitter and the comments sections of various online articles lately, looking at the sort of things people are still saying about Sally and other, more recent child killers. The hatred and venom are staggering. The lust for revenge like something out of the Middle Ages. And all from people who aren’t even the victims’ families, who don’t even know them.
What was it Cathy said? That she’d prefer it if someone like that was mobbed by vigilantes rather than protected. Is that what would happen in Flinstead if this rumor got any traction and someone tracked Sally down? Would Cathy and Debbie and the rest of them be standing on the sidewalk outside her house, hurling abuse, or worse? Would our quiet little town be forever known as the place where Sally McGowan was discovered? And how would I feel if that happened, knowing I was instrumental in passing it on?
I take one last peek at Alfie before turning in. He looks so adorable, I can’t resist planting the softest of kisses on his cheek. It’s shocking to think that when Sally McGowan killed that boy, she was barely four years older than Alfie is now. I tiptoe out of his room, taking care to leave the door ajar the way he likes, so that he can see the landing light if he wakes up.
As I snuggle down in my own bed I remember the batteries I bought earlier, still sitting in that paper bag along with the incense sticks. I took the dead ones out of the alarm this morning and there’s no way I’ll get any sleep if I don’t put the new ones in.
Halfway downstairs, I realize I’ve forgotten something else, too. I didn’t tell Michael what Alfie said to Mom, about no one sitting next to him at lunchtime. Tears fill my eyes as I picture him at an empty table, swinging his little legs under his chair and pretending he doesn’t care. The sooner I make friends with the other mothers, the better.
9
WHATEVER MOM SAID TO ALFIE yesterday, she must have reassured him, because there’s no sign of a tummyache this morning. He does seem quieter than usual, though.
“Shall we go to the beach after school and get ice cream?” I say. His little face lights up. “Maybe some of your friends at school could come with us.”
Alfie looks doubtful. “Maybe,” he says.
I widen my eyes to stop them from filling with tears. If only I could make his troubles disappear. Kiss it all better like a scrape on the knee. I sweep him into my arms and hug him tight, blow raspberries on his neck to make him giggle.
“Come on, finish your cornflakes and let’s get going. We don’t want to be late.”
It’s the first time we’ve left the house this early, but I want to have a quick word with Miss Williams. Normally, we set off at exactly seven minutes to eight. That gives us just enough time to get to the school and join the line outside the classroom before the bell rings.
I’ve been selfish, I realize that now. Timing it so that there’s less time standing around with the other mothers. If I’d thought about it earlier, I could have gone to one of their coffee mornings and maybe Alfie would have a few more friends by now.
Cathy and Debbie barely glance at me as I arrive. It’s hardly surprising. They tried extending the hand of friendship a few weeks ago and I turned it down. After my comment about vigilantism the other day, they’re hardly likely to try again. Nobody ever warns you about this sort of thing before you have children. Nobody tells you it pays to make friends with the other mothers, even if you have nothing in common. I’m going to have to swallow my pride and appeal to their better natures. Tell them Alfie’s having trouble settling in and that I’d appreciate their help.
When I’ve spoken to Miss Williams and she’s reassured me that she’ll keep an eye on the friendship situation, and I’ve said goodbye to Alfie and watched him file in with the others, I go over to where Cathy and Debbie are standing. They’re still talking about the Sally McGowan rumor.
“Hi there.”
Debbie gives me a quick, tight smile. Cathy starts tapping away on her phone.
“I was wondering whether Jake and Liam would like to come to the beach with me and Alfie after school today. Maybe get some ice cream while the weather’s still warm enough?”
Cathy glances up from her phone. “Today? Sorry. Jake’s got a judo lesson.”
“And Liam’s going to Harry’s house to play,” Debbie says. “Maybe another day, okay?”
I nod. She said it in that offhand way that basically means no. This is excruciating. It makes me feel like I’m back at school, humiliated by bitchy girls. Back then, I just slunk away, hurt and resentful. But not now. Because this isn’t about me, it’s about Alfie.
“By the way,” I say, already turning to leave the playground. “I think you may have been right about Sally McGowan living in Flinstead.”
“What makes you say that?” Cathy asks.
I turn to face her. Suddenly, I’m a whole lot more interesting than her phone.
“Oh, just something I heard. It’s probably nothing…”
The two women move closer. Sharks circling their prey. And yet their faces are softer than they were a minute ago, more open and friendly. Is this all it takes to penetrate their firewall?
My brain races. Which bit of what Michael told me last night should I share with them? None of it, of course, but this is working so well. They’re all ears. Debbie’s even offering me a stick of chewing gum, which I don’t want but take anyway. Besides, it’s not as if Michael’s going to write an article about McGowan. At least, I hope not.
I lower my voice. “Someone I know, someone who knows about these things, heard that she was relocated to a dry town.”
The two women stare at me, eyebrows knitted. “A what?” Cathy says.
“A dry town. You know, one with no bars.”
Cathy narrows her eyes. “When did the Flinstead Arms open?”
“The late nineties, I think,” Debbie says. “Don’t you remember, Cath? There was a big thing about it in the papers? We were still in middle school.”
It doesn’t sit right with me, all this. I’ve already passed the rumor on to book club. Now I’m stoking the fire all over again. What’s happening to me?
But then I remember Alfie’s little face this morning when I mentioned the word friends, and I know that if this is what it takes to help him make some, I’ll do it.
“Hm,” Cathy says, a thoughtful look on her face. “That’s very interesting. Hey, Joanna, I don’t suppose you want to join our babysitting circle, do you? We’re meeting tomorrow. Nine thirty. My house. Fourteen Flinstead Road. The house with the blue garage?”
“Oh right. Yes. I think I know the one you mean. Thanks, I’d love to—that’s if I can arrange to go into work a little later than usual.”
I’m not sure I really need to belong to a babysitting circle, not with Mom living around the corner. Still, there’s bound to be a time when I have to go out and Mom can’t come over. It’ll be like a safety net. And it’s the perfect way to get to know them all a bit better.
One casual remark. One whispered secret. That’s all it takes to set the wheels in motion and change the course of a life. Once, some poor woman they thought was me was driven out of her home. She lost her job, her reputation, her peace of mind. Ended up throwing herself in front of a high-speed train.
I often think about that woman, that stranger, how our lives are now inextricably bound. And I ask myself, who is to blame for her death? The rumormongers for spreading the lies? Or me, for being the monster in the first place?
The monster. That’s what they called me.
I stare at my reflection in the mirror. No extra heads. No horns. Just an ordinary woman. Not bad-looking, despite the crow’s-feet and the crêpey neck. Despite the lipstick radiating into the fine vertical creases on my top lip. But if I look long enough, really stare into the mirror without blinking, someone else takes my place.
The girl they locked up. The one I’ve spent my whole life trying to erase.
It’s her that’s brought them out again. Circling like vultures. Her that draws them ever closer. She makes bad things happen. She disturbs the air.
10
“SHE MIGHT JUST AS WELL HAVE STUCK A KNIFE IN MY HEART, TOO,” SAYS SYLVIA HARRIS, MOTHER OF ROBBIE HARRIS, TRAGIC VICTIM OF CHILD KILLER SALLY MCGOWAN
By Alex O’Connor
SUNDAY, AUGUST 3, 1975
THE TIMES
Today, six years after the murder of her five-year-old son, Robbie, Sylvia Harris sits in her living room chain-smoking, a shadow of the woman she once was.
Flanked by her teenage daughter, Marie, Sylvia stares at her hands.
“It wasn’t only my little boy Sally killed that day,” Sylvia says. “She might just as well have stuck a knife in my heart, too.”
Sylvia is now 35 and battling an addiction to alcohol; her marriage to Derek Harris is over. Marie lives with her father a few blocks away but visits Sylvia every day after school. With news of McGowan’s temporary transfer to a new juvenile detention center, this week has been particularly hard.
“Maybe if we never heard about her again, we’d be able to get on with our lives,” says Sylvia. “What’s left of them.”
But one senses that this is a family that time will never heal.
Sylvia picks up a framed black-and-white photograph that shows blond-haired Robbie playing on a beach with his bucket and spade.
She squeezes her daughter’s hand. “However long they keep her locked up won’t be long enough. I hope she rots in hell.”
I close my iPad and rub my eyes. The typeface on this scanned image of the original front page is small and blurry. I’ve been doing too much of this lately. Endlessly scrolling through Google for interesting articles about the McGowan case. It’s become a bit of an obsession.
* * *
—
AS I REACH the end of the street, I spot Liz Blackthorne coming out of the co-op. She’s looking straight at me, so I give her a wave and am about to cross the street for a quick word when she turns on her heels and hurries off in the other direction, the tip of her white braid poking out of the bottom of her jacket like a tail. That’s odd. I could have sworn she saw me. Oh well, she must have her mind on other things this morning. I’m the same when I’m busy. Charging around like a horse with blinders, oblivious to everyone and everything around me. Besides, I’m late as it is.
Cathy lives in one of the new houses at the top of Flinstead Road, the opposite end from the ocean. Inside, it’s light and spacious and could have come straight out of the Ikea catalog. There are six of us here, including Karen from book club—I didn’t realize she was chummy with this crowd—and three toddlers. I’m pleased to see Fatima’s friendly face, too. Cathy has just finished making everyone tea and coffee and is now leafing through a fat accordion file.
“I hate it when people don’t fill the chart in properly,” she says.
Debbie makes a mock-worried face. “That’ll be me. Sorry. I thought I’d done it.”
Cathy gives me a pointed look. “This is what happens, Joanna. And then they all start complaining their points aren’t up to date.”
I smile, as if I know what she’s talking about. Charts? Points? What on earth have I gotten myself into? I can just imagine what Tash will say when I call and tell her about it.
Fatima leans in toward me. “Every time you babysit for someone, you get points. The more points you have, the more sits you can request. We take turns to keep track of the file and host the meetings.”
“That’s right,” Cathy says. “I was just going to explain all that. It’s basically a quid pro quo arrangement. You get a point for every half hour you sit. So two points per hour and a point for every quarter of an hour after midnight.”
I nod, as if I’m following all this.
“After-midnight sits have to be negotiated in advance,” Karen says. “And if you’ve got zero points, you can’t request a sitter.”
“Well, you can,” says a tall woman with red hair whose name I’ve already forgotten. “If someone volunteers to help you out and if nobody else has priority over you.”
Karen’s jaw tightens. “But then you’d be minus points,” she says. “And we agreed we’d try not to keep doing that because it all gets out of hand and it’s unfair.”
I have a sudden urge to giggle.
The doorbell rings at just the right moment. “That must be Kay,” Fatima says. “She said she’d be late.”
The woman Cathy shows into the room a minute later looks vaguely familiar. Judi Dench hair and kind, crinkly eyes.
“Kay’s one of my neighbors and honorary mother,” Fatima tells me, patting the seat next to her for Kay to sit down.
Of course. I’ve seen the two of them chatting on their doorsteps—they live up the block from me. Fatima did tell me a while back that her own parents disowned her when she refused an arranged marriage. It’s hard to believe what some people have to endure.
“She’s also Ketifa’s honorary grandmother.”
Kay smiles. “My daughter and grandchildren live in Australia, you see. Melbourne. No matter how many times we Skype each other, it’s not the same as having them close. That’s why I’m so happy to be part of all this.”
“All right, then,” Cathy says. “Down to business, ladies.”
Later, after Cathy has made a note of everyone who needs a sitter in the next month and checked that all the points are up to date, I hear myself offering to babysit for the woman with red hair, whose name turns out to be Teri Monkton. I’ll have to square it with Mom, of course.
“Thanks so much,” Teri says. “Ruby and Hamish are very well behaved. Although they will try to keep you upstairs reading endless bedtime stories.”
When the business side of things is concluded and we’re making moves to leave, Teri says: “I don’t suppose any of you have heard this rumor that’s going around? The one about Sally McGowan?”
Debbie laughs. “You’re a little late to the party, aren’t you?”
“I’m always the last to hear about these things,” Teri says. “Is there anything in it, do you think?”
“I doubt it,” Fatima says. “Think about it. If you wanted to keep out of sight you’d settle in a city, surely. It’s more anonymous.”
Kay nods. “You’re right.”
Cathy shoots me a look. There’s a gleam in her eyes, just like Maddie’s the other day. “Joanna, tell them what you heard.”
I don’t want to say it again. I especially don’t want Cathy commanding me to say it.
Karen is staring at me from across the room. “Has there been an update, then? Since what you told us at book club?”
Damn. Now I look like the biggest blabbermouth in town. But I’m not going to do it again. It’s bad enough that I repeated it in the first place.
“It was probably nothing. Just one of those silly stories doing the rounds.”
Cathy frowns. “That’s not the impression you gave yesterday,” she says, and proceeds to repeat the story about the dry town.
Teri grimaces. “I hate the thought that I might be walking past her house when I take Ruby and Hamish to school, or that she could be watching them play in the park or on the beach. Have you seen that photo of her staring at the camera? It gives me the creeps.”
“These kinds of rumors always surface from time to time,” I say. “I mean, I’m not saying it isn’t possible. It’s just not that likely.”
Teri makes a face. “I hope you’re right about that.”
* * *
—
I WALK HOME with Fatima and Kay. It feels like we’re escaping from something, but none of us wants to admit it. The cold wind scours my face and dispels some of the awkwardness I felt earlier. There’s a feeling of rain in the air.
“So, Joanna,” Kay says. “Your name is on Cathy’s sacred chart now. I hope you know what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
Fatima nudges her in the ribs. “Come on now, Kay. Don’t scare her off before she’s even started.”
“I’m just wondering how everyone’s going to fit in my living room when it’s my turn to host the meeting. There’s barely room for me and Alfie.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Kay says. “We don’t all have immaculate big houses like Cathy. You could fit my entire ground floor in her living room.”
“I love your house,” Fatima says. “It reminds me of the house I grew up in.”
Kay laughs. “That’s her way of saying it’s old-fashioned.”
We’ve reached my cottage now so we say our goodbyes. As I close my front door, I stand for a moment in the hall, letting the silence wrap itself around me. If it hadn’t been for Mom’s suggestion the other day, there’s no way I’d have joined a babysitting circle. She was right, though. Debbie’s already given me an invitation for Alfie to go to Liam’s birthday party in a couple of weeks.
I open the little envelope to check the date and make a note of it on the kitchen calendar. As soon as I see that it’s for October 31 and spot the pumpkin border, I realize she’s made it a Halloween-themed party, which means all the children will be in costume.
I’m not a great fan of Halloween. It’s just another big retail event designed to drag money out of hard-pressed parents. Money I simply don’t have. Not anymore. Still, I can probably order something inexpensive online, or cut a hole in a sheet and send him as a ghost.
