The Golden Child Read online

  Charlotte took a position on the other side of the bed, her eyes intent on her friend. She picked up Sophie’s other hand gently. When Andi finished her report, Charlotte met her eyes, gave a small smile. ‘Is there something I can do?’

  Andi smiled back, pleased beyond measure by this unexpectedly natural gesture of friendship. She understood how hard it must be for a child to know what to do, what to offer in such a situation – she would have been overwhelmed at that age, unwilling to make a fool of herself, frightened to do the wrong thing, painfully self-conscious. She was glad that Sophie had such a friend.

  ‘You can read to her if you like. The nurses say that can help.’ Andi pointed to a book on the bedside table that she had been reading aloud. It was one of Sophie’s favourites, Charlotte’s Web, though Andi had just recalled the terrible sadness of the ending and decided that she would not read much further. That she would bring in something more cheerful, something funny.

  ‘You can just talk to her, if you’d prefer. Tell her what’s going on, if it doesn’t feel too weird?’

  Charlotte smiled. ‘I’d rather read to her, I think.’

  ‘That would be just beautiful.’

  The two women sat in the plastic chairs, Beth cuddling Gus once the feed was over, and talked. Or at least Andi talked. The words gushed out as if from an unstopped bottle, her voice low to ensure that Charlotte (and Sophie, should she be somehow listening) wouldn’t hear. She told Beth everything – glad to be able to open up, to tell the truth: about her despair, her guilt, about how she had not known there was anything wrong, how she’d always assumed Sophie’s talent was some sort of talisman, her anxiety about Gus, her disconnection from him, her worry about the damage she was doing.

  Beth was, as Andi had known she would be, calm and reassuring. ‘You have to stop blaming yourself, Andi. It’s not – it’s not something anyone could really have known.’ Beth kept her voice low too, her face turned carefully away from her daughter, although Charlotte was too busy reading from Charlotte’s Web to bother with the women’s conversation.

  ‘The thing I don’t understand is not just why, but why right now? What was going on in her life that was so hard? And then why didn’t she say something? We don’t think there was any particular stress – I mean, she’s got eisteddfods coming up after the holidays, and exams. But Madame Abramova says she was ready months ago. She’s always ready. And the situation at home – maybe it wasn’t perfect, maybe things were harder with Gus, and maybe she wasn’t getting the attention she was used to, but nothing had happened. It doesn’t make any sense. But there must have been warning signs, looking back. Things that I, that we, missed.’

  ‘There always are, looking back. That’s the thing. But you say she never gave any sign of distress. You’re right – it doesn’t make sense that it was about the piano, if she’s always enjoyed the pressure before now. Surely she would have said something. Told you she didn’t want to do it anymore. If it was the piano, then it must have come on very suddenly. Too suddenly for you to do anything. And I think, if it was to do with Gus, if she felt so miserable about it all, you’d have known.’

  ‘But I didn’t, did I? And now there’s Gus, too – Christ knows what this is doing to him. He’s in the crèche most of the day.’

  Beth reached over and took her hand, squeezed. ‘Oh, Andi, honey. He really won’t remember any of this – at this stage all he needs is to be warm, to be fed, to be cuddled. Which reminds me: if you’d like me to help with him, you can bring him over anytime. We’d love to have Gus, wouldn’t we, Charlotte?’

  Charlotte didn’t respond for a moment, and both women turned to her. The girl clearly hadn’t heard the question. She had stopped reading and had Sophie’s hand clutched in hers, was in the process of slowly lifting it. She pulled it right up until she was holding Sophie’s arm a few inches above the sheets, when Beth repeated her question. ‘We’d love to look after Gus. Wouldn’t we, darling?’

  Charlotte let down Sophie’s hand quickly before she turned to them, her face slightly pink.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ She looked oddly uncomfortable. ‘That’d be great. I love babies.’ Her voice was a little overeager, breathless – she sounded suddenly like the young girl that she was.

  The visit didn’t last much longer. Andi thanked them both for the offer to mind Gus, but declined, and when a troop of doctors appeared in the room, ready to conduct various tests, write reports, Beth and Charlotte said their goodbyes. Both women shed tears, and the hug that Andi gave Charlotte surprised them all with its fierceness. ‘You take care of yourself,’ she said. ‘You think you’re such big girls, but you’re still our babies. You just don’t know how precious you are.’

  It wasn’t till much later, when she’d heard from the McLachlan woman about the bullying, that the odd little moment at the bedside came back to her. After their conversation Andi had showered and lain down on her bed, bone tired, her mind a quagmire, hoping for a few minutes of sweet unconsciousness. It was then that the peculiarity of Charlotte’s behaviour had struck her: the furtive manipulation of her unconscious daughter’s arm. She remembered the cold calculation of Charlotte’s expression as she lifted Sophie’s hand above the bedding – she could have been a scientist conducting an experiment – and then the look of embarrassment when she realised she’d been observed.

  Andi still has no idea what the girl was doing, but now she feels her blood chill. That she was so taken in, that she left her daughter vulnerable even for a moment to whatever evil – there can be no other word for it – lurks in that child, horrifies her.

  When she finally makes the call, Andi doesn’t need her notes. The words pour out, as hot as molten lava, and just as dangerous, dissolving everything in their path.

  CHARLOTTE

  CHARLOTTE HEARS THE TAIL END OF THE CONVERSATION AS she’s smuggling breakfast back to her room. She’s woken relatively early – it’s just past eight o’clock – and she has crept downstairs trying to make sure her mother doesn’t hear her, or realise she’s awake. She wants to take the cereal back to her room, to eat it in the relative comfort of her bed, while she watches the final episode of Sherlock again.

  Her mother, she knows, is majorly peed off about all the time she spends in front of a screen, even though it’s the holidays. She keeps going on about how unhealthy it is, telling her that she needs to get out, that it’s making her irritable, tired, unfit, that she isn’t connecting with her family. That she should try and be more like Lucy, who at least reads actual books sometimes, goes for the occasional walk, or spends time doing crafty things, bakes. Which is probably all true, but right now, on the days when they don’t have to go to their grandmother’s, all Charlotte wants to do is chill, do nothing, not even think. It’s the holidays, after all.

  She needn’t have worried about being caught. Her mother is unlikely to hear her, she’s in the study, on the phone, and is talking loudly, almost angrily. Charlotte pours the milk over her cereal, then pads back down the hall, pleased that she’s been able to escape so easily. She heads up the stairs, but pauses midway when she hears her own name. She strains to hear more, but it’s impossible to make anything out other than stray words and syllables. But even from here she can tell from the sound of her mother’s voice, the strangled quality of her conversation, that something bad has happened. She tiptoes back down the stairs almost reluctantly, makes her way as quietly as she can along the dark hallway, stops just before she reaches the open study door.

  ‘Andi . . .’ Her mother has lowered her voice now, but it has developed a tremor that Charlotte recognises, though she has heard it only on very rare occasions, a tremor that comes just before tears. ‘Andi, I don’t understand where this is coming from. I know how dreadful you must be feeling. Okay – no of course I can’t really know, but I can imagine . . . Oh, it sounds dreadful – but Andi, I think we should talk about this rationally. Not jump to conclusions.’ She’s speaking slowly and carefully, and her voice is blocky and
stiff, as if she has a headache. ‘As I said, I really have to talk to Charlotte and find out what she says. We owe her that, at the very least. You have to understand. Yes, I heard, but only late last night. And they are just rumours, remember. Of course I will talk to her, but I think it must be . . . No, of course I had no idea then that she had anything to do with it – I only knew what you’d told me, that you thought it was connected to her music . . . the pressure. I didn’t know anything . . . Another incident? Who told you that?’ Her voice rises in anger or distress. ‘Please don’t say that, Andi. It’s Charlotte, it’s my daughter you’re talking about. She’s only twelve. She’s just . . . she’s just a little girl.’

  When she hears the phone disconnect, Charlotte turns and runs as fast as she can towards the stairwell. She is neither fast enough nor quiet enough.

  ‘Charlotte!’ Charlotte stops. Turns. There is a trail of splashed milk behind her, and at the end of it stands her mother. She isn’t smiling. ‘Come back here.’ Her voice is like ice.

  ‘We need to talk, Charlotte. We need to talk about Sophie.’

  ANDI

  BIZARRELY, THE IDEA IS INSPIRED BY A CONVERSATION WITH Steve’s father, not that either of them would ever tell him that. During one of their nightly conversations, Steve gives the old man all the details of the day’s progress, or lack of it, and then, uncharacteristically confiding, launches into an appalled account of their recent discovery: that Sophie was not suffering from a generalised sadness, nor broken down by excessive pressure, but was the victim of the most horrid, deliberate and sustained bullying, and that one girl – a girl they’d liked, a girl they’d trusted, a girl from a good family (their friends!), a girl they’d thought was Sophie’s friend – was the main perpetrator. Steve doesn’t tell his father about the website, the cyberbullying – that would be too much, too awful, an obscenity; there is no way the old man could cope with that sort of thing – but even so, Andi is shocked and slightly awed by his tearfully impassioned account of what they now believe to have happened. Throughout it all Steve has remained impassive as each new medical challenge has been revealed (and thankfully overcome), so frigidly distant, that Andi is almost relieved that he has finally cracked.

  Steve speaks to his father from Sophie’s room, and though Andi feigns distraction she is standing close enough to hear every word of the old man’s reply. He is silent for a long moment, then intones in his deep, deliberate minister’s voice: Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

  As always, his father’s declamations leave Steve in a conversational no-man’s-land, and he hangs up soon after. He sits, bent double, utterly motionless, holding his head in his hands. Andi pretends to busy herself by rearranging the mess on Sophie’s bedside cabinet. Eventually Steve speaks, his eyes on Sophie, his voice low and infinitely weary. ‘I don’t know that I want to wait for the Lord’s vengeance, Andi.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Isn’t there something else we can do? Some sort of legal action we can take?’

  ‘But you know the police can’t trace the computer – there’s nothing they can do. It’s a dead-end. If there’s no evidence they can’t even talk to them. You know how it works.’

  ‘But can’t we sue or something?’

  ‘Sue? You mean Beth and Dan? For what?’

  ‘For negligence. If it’s true what that woman told you about Charlotte having done it before – surely they should have been keeping a stricter eye on her. They must have known she could be dangerous to other kids. Surely that’s a type of negligence? Couldn’t we use that to make some sort of case against them? Don’t we just need balance of probability or something, rather than reasonable doubt? Surely we’ve got that.’

  ‘I don’t know if it is possible, Steve. I don’t really know much more than you about that area of law. And I don’t know that it’s something I’d want to do anyway. I don’t want money out of this. I just want our daughter to wake up. I want to go home. I want our lives to get back to normal. If . . . when Sophie recovers, I just want to forget this ever happened.’

  His smile is sad. ‘You know that’s not ever going to happen. Even if she survives, and even if she’s more or less unscathed physically, this isn’t ever going to go away, is it? It’ll be part of her, and part of us, forever.’

  ‘So what would be the point? I don’t understand. No amount of money’s ever going to make any of this better.’

  ‘It’s not money I’m after, Andi. It’s justice. Retribution. And not divine justice, meted out in the fucking afterlife, either. I want justice in the here and now. I want people to know what happened to Sophie. I want that girl – and I want her parents – punished.’

  Punishment. Retribution. Once they seemed like such old-fashioned concepts, almost redundant, replaced by the modern ideas of justice that she is familiar with from work – those noble, if unattainable, ideals of truth, reconciliation, rehabilitation. But now, plunged into this new world where other alien concepts – despair, anger, fear – rule all of her waking and most of her dreaming hours, these ancient concepts are suddenly appealing. And perhaps necessary.

  ‘Actually, maybe it’s a good idea, Steve. I’ll call some people. I’ll look into it.’ She can feel some sort of fog lifting, something clear and sharp and hard replacing it, even as the words leave her mouth. Andi looks down at Sophie, takes her hand and raises it – so still, pale, cool – to her hot cheek.

  WWW.GOLDENCHILD.COM

  THE GOLDEN CHILD’S TEN LESSONS FOR SUCCESS

  LESSON EIGHT: TELLING THE TRUTH. OR NOT.

  You could tell them the truth.

  You could admit that it was you who took Penny F’s Dora the Explorer pencils back in kindergarten, and not poor Jonathan K who got the blame for everything that year.

  You could confess that it was actually you who let Annie B’s brand-new lop-eared bunny out of its hutch and led it to its doggy murderer, back when you were in the third grade.

  You could explain that it was you who wrote those filthy letters that got Jasper O suspended back in grade school.

  You could even tell them how it was you who ‘misplaced’ your mother’s passport two weeks before you were due to fly back to Australia.

  You could. But why would you?

  They’d never believe you, anyway.

  COMMENTS

  @RANDOMREADER says:

  That poor lil bunny. Seen Fatal Attraction, Goldie? Might be right up your alley. lol.

  BETH

  WHEN THE GIRLS WERE STILL IN GRADE SCHOOL, MARGIE, who worried that they were missing out on a religious (and specifically a Catholic) education – the Brookdale Academy was private, but not aligned with any church – sent them over a book of philosophical questions for children. The girls may have been slightly disappointed, but for once Beth approved of her mother-in-law’s gift. The school program had an ethics component, but Beth was interested in providing some explicit parental guidance too. It was all very well to wait for an issue to come up as part of everyday life and then address it – sharing, for instance, had come up naturally when the girls were toddlers – but there were other, more complicated ethical questions that didn’t arise so conveniently. The girls actually had fun with the book, which summarised what noted philosophers thought about each dilemma and gave some of the historical context; it never ceased to amaze Beth how much they enjoyed that sort of thing. The questions ranged from the basic issues of right and wrong – Do two wrongs make a right? – to the more existential: Do you sometimes feel weird when you are with others?

  Then there was Is it ever right to tell a lie? She can remember the specific moment that they arrived at this particular question. The three of them were huddled together on the couch in front of the fire, reading. It was close to Christmas: she can recall the tree being up; the memory has a distinct rosy glow. They talked about why lying was bad, who it hurt and why. ‘But is it still lying,’ Lucy
asked (her sweet, sweet Lucy; she remembers her back then, lisping and cuddly), ‘if you don’t tell the whole truth?’

  Her question led, after a series of digressions, to an even trickier one. It was Charlie who asked, and she was definitely still Charlie then, smaller but essentially the same, her voice clear, her back straight, her determination already evident. ‘What if you know someone has done something wrong and it’s a friend? Do you have to tell on them?’

  They decided eventually that, yes, in most instances you should tell on them, especially when the wrongdoing was hurting someone else.

  ‘But what if it’s someone you really love? Someone in your family? What if it was your mum or dad?’ Lucy sounded genuinely anxious. ‘Or your sister? What if Charlie did something terrible. Would I have to tell? What if she . . . murdered someone?’

  Charlotte glared at her elder sister – as if!

  ‘Well, darlings,’ Beth said, and she can remember the everyday joy of pulling them closer and hugging them both hard, ‘that particular scenario is pretty unlikely. I don’t really think that Charlie, that either of you, would ever do anything so terrible. But yes, Lucy, you probably would have to tell if anything Charlie did hurt anyone else. But don’t worry, I’m pretty sure nothing like that will ever happen.’

  It was unthinkable then: her Charlie hurting anyone deliberately. Her loving, smart, ethically informed daughter. If only it was unthinkable now.

  So when Lucy comes to her, her sister’s iPad held before her like something dangerous, a look on her face of mingled fear and disgust, along with something close to sorrow, Beth knows that there is more bad news in store. Beth understands that Lucy has no choice, that she is only doing what’s right, what she’s been instructed to do by her own mother no less, and this at some cost to herself – but part of her wishes that her daughter could have found some way to keep it to herself. That she could have managed to swallow some of those ethical qualms that were so faithfully, so hopefully, instilled.