‘The doctors examined me. Did he tell you that? They examined me, heard my story, and they let me go. The professionals believed me. They didn’t believe him.’
She stepped towards me, offering her bag – her evidence. Granted a second chance, I met her in the middle of the room, taking hold of the cracked leather. It required an act of willpower for my mum to let go. I was surprised by how heavy the bag was. As I placed the satchel on the dining table my dad rang again, his image appearing on the screen. Mum saw his face:
‘You can answer the phone. Or open the bag.’
Ignoring the phone, I placed one hand on the top of the satchel, pressing down in order to release the buckle, the leather creaking as I lifted the flap and looked inside.
MY MUM REACHED INTO THE SATCHEL, pulling out a small compact mirror, showing me my reflection as if it were the first article of her evidence. I looked tired, but my mum offered a different observation.
You’re afraid of me, I can tell. I know your face better than my own, and if that sounds like a silly-sentimental exaggeration, consider how many times I’ve wiped away your tears or watched you smile. Daniel, in all those years you’ve never looked at me like this—
See for yourself!
But I mustn’t become upset. It’s not your fault. I’ve been framed, not as a criminal but as a psychotic. Your instincts are to side with your father. There’s no point denying it, we must be honest with each other. On several occasions I’ve caught you staring at me nervously. My enemies declare that I’m a danger to myself and to others, even a danger to you, my son. That’s how unscrupulous they are, vandalising the most precious relationship in my life, prepared to do anything in order to stop me.
Let me quickly remind you that the allegation of being mentally incapable is a tried and tested method of silencing women dating back hundreds of years, a weapon to discredit us when we fought against abuses and stood up to authority. That said, I accept that my appearance is alarming. My arms are wasted away, my clothes are tatty, my nails chipped, and my breath bad. I’ve spent my life striving to be presentable, and today you looked me up and down at the airport and you thought—
‘She’s sick!’
Wrong. I’m thinking more clearly than ever before.
At times you might find my voice unusual. You might decide that I don’t sound like myself. But you can’t expect me to speak with everyday ease when there are such serious consequences if I fail to convince you. Nor can you expect me to skip ahead to the most shocking incidents and tell you in a few quick words what is going on. If I outline in brief you’ll be overwhelmed. You’ll shake your head and roll your eyes. A summary won’t do. You’ll hear words like ‘murder’ and ‘conspiracy’ and you won’t accept them. Instead, I must lay down the details one by one. You must see how the pieces fit together. Without the complete picture you’ll consider me mad. You will. You’ll escort me to some Victorian-built asylum in some forgotten corner of London and inform the doctors that I’m sick in the head. As though I were the criminal, as though I were the person who’d done awful wrongs, they’ll imprison me until I’m so desperate to be released, so numb on their drugs I’ll agree that everything I’m about to tell you is a lie. Bearing in mind the power you hold over me I should be afraid of you. And look at me, Daniel, look at me! I am afraid.
• • •
IT WAS LESS LIKE NORMAL SPEECH, more like words unleashed. Sentences dammed up in my mum’s mind came tumbling out, fast but never uncontrolled. She was right: she didn’t sound like herself – her voice was elevated, as strange as it was impressive. At times she sounded judicial, at other times intimate. She hadn’t spoken in this way at the airport or during the train ride home. It was unlike anything I’d heard from her before, in terms of energy and breathless quantity. It was a performance more than a conversation. Was my mum really afraid of me? Her hands certainly trembled as she placed the mirror down on the table, not back in the satchel, signalling that she’d proceed through the contents one by one. If I hadn’t been afraid before I was afraid now. On some level I must have been hoping that a simple resolution could be found in this room, between the two of us, without involving doctors or detectives – a quiet end, a soft landing and a gentle return to our lives as they had been. However, my mum’s energies were so agitated that she was either very ill or something truly terrible had taken place in Sweden to provoke them.
A vast amount depends on you believing me, more than is fair to place on your shoulders. I’ll admit that with so much at stake it’s tempting to exploit our relationship and play on your emotions. However, I’ll resist, because my case needs to stand on its own, supported by facts, not propped up by your devotion to me. For that reason you shouldn’t think of me as your mother but as Tilde, the accuser—
Don’t be upset! Be objective. That’s your only duty today.
Throughout you’ll be asking how Chris, a kind, gentle man, an excellent father to you, how can he be at the centre of such serious allegations? Consider this. There’s a weakness in his character that other people can manipulate. He prefers compromise to conflict. He surrenders easily. He’s susceptible to forceful opinions. And he has urges like everyone else. I believe he was led astray, manipulated in particular by one man – a villain.
• • •
MY DAD WAS A MAN WHO could name every plant and flower, a man who never raised his voice, a man who loved wandering among forests – allegations of wrongdoing didn’t hang easily off him. My mum sensed my hesitation and responded to it with impressive sensitivity:
You mistrust that word?
Villain.
You think it sounds unreal?
Villains are real. They walk among us. You can find them on any street, in any community, in any home – on any farm.
What is a villain? They’re people who will stop at nothing in the pursuit of their desires. I know of no other word to describe the man I have in mind.
In this satchel is some of the evidence I’ve collected over the summer. There was more but this was all I could smuggle out of Sweden in such a rush. It makes sense to address each article of evidence in chronological order, starting with this—
• • •
FROM THE FRONT POCKET of the satchel my mum lifted a black leather-bound Filofax, the kind that was popular twenty years ago. It contained papers, photographs and clippings.
Originally intended as a place to jot down my thoughts, this has turned out to be the most important purchase I’ve ever made. Flicking through, you can see I took more and more notes as the months went by. Check the pages in April, when I first arrived at the farm. They contain only the occasional scribble. Compare that to July, three months later, writing squeezed into every line. This book was a way of figuring out what was going on around me. It became my companion, a partner in my investigation. No matter what others say, here are the facts written down at the time events took place, or at most a few hours after. If it were possible to analyse the aging of the ink then forensic science would support my claim.
Every now and then I’m going to pause and refer to these notes in order to prevent any mistakes. No artistic licence is allowed. If I’m unable to remember a particular detail and it isn’t written down I won’t attempt to fill in the blanks. You need to believe that every word I say is true. Even a harmless descriptive flourish is unacceptable. For example, I will not state that there were birds singing in the treetops unless I can be sure of it. If you suspect I’m embellishing rather than presenting the bare bones of what actually happened my credibility will suffer.
Finally let me add that I’d do anything for the troubles of these past months to exist solely in my mind. My God, that explanation would be easy. The horror of an asylum and the humiliation of being branded a fantasist would be a small price to pay if it meant that the crimes I’m about to describe never really took place.
• • •
SO FAR WE’D BEEN STANDING with the satchel resting on the table. My mum gestured fo
r me to sit down, indicating that her account would take some time. I obeyed, taking a position opposite her, the satchel between us as though it were the stakes in a poker game. She studied her journal, focused on finding the relevant entry. Briefly I was taken back to the many occasions when she’d read to me at bedtime, saddened by the contrast between the tranquillity of those childhood memories and the anxiety I was now feeling. It might seem that I lacked curiosity or courage, but my impulse was to implore her not to read.
Last time you saw me was on the day of our leaving party. 15 April. We hugged goodbye beside that old white van packed with all our worldly possessions. It was one of those days when everyone was in high spirits, laughing so much – a happy day, truly happy, honestly among the happiest in my life. Yet even that happiness is now the subject of dispute. Looking back, Chris claims I was chasing a perfect life in Sweden and a gap opened in my mind between expectation and reality, a gap that expanded as the months progressed, and out of my disappointment was born the belief that there was, in place of paradise, a hell of depravity and human disgrace. It’s a seductive argument. And it’s a lie, a clever lie, because underneath the laughter I understood better than anyone the difficulties ahead.
Here’s what you don’t know, Daniel. We’re broke. Our family has no money. None. You knew there were difficulties during the recession. It was far worse than we let on. Our business was in ruins. It was necessary to deceive you because Chris and I were embarrassed and didn’t want offers of money. Let me be honest – today is a day for honesty and nothing else – I was ashamed. I’m still ashamed.
• • •
HEARING THE NEWS, I REACTED with a muddle of shame, sadness and shock. Mostly there was disbelief. I simply hadn’t known. I hadn’t even suspected. How was it possible I could be so ignorant of their circumstances? I was about to put the question to my mum, but she sensed that I intended to interrupt and touched the top of my hand to stop me.
Let me finish.
Please.
You can speak in a minute.
I’d always been in charge of the accounts. I’d run a tight ship for thirty years. We’d been okay. The garden centre never made much money. But we didn’t hanker after wealth. We kept our heads above water. We loved our work. If we didn’t holiday abroad for a couple of years, we’d go for day trips to the beach. We always got by. We were light on debt, low on overheads, and good at our jobs. Our customers were loyal. Even when the cheaper out-of-town garden centres opened up we survived.
You were living away from home when the letter landed on our doorstep from an estate agent. They explained the true value of our tiny garden centre. It was incredible. I could never have dreamed of such wealth. We’d spent our life working long hours, growing plants, and earning the slimmest of margins while underneath our feet the land which we’d done nothing to had increased in value so dramatically it was worth more than we’d ever earned through work. For the first time in our lives Chris and I were drunk on the idea of money. We bought you dinners in fancy restaurants. We gloated like fools. Rather than simply sell up, I made the decision to borrow hundreds of thousands against the value of our land. Everyone said it made sense. Why hold on to money? Property was like magic: it could produce wealth without work. Neglecting the garden centre, employing staff to half-heartedly do the tasks we’d always done passionately ourselves, we bought investment flats. On the face of it, Chris and I made the decisions jointly, but you know him – he’s not interested in numbers. He took a back seat. I found the flats. I chose them. Within the space of six months we owned five and we were looking to own ten, a number I’d plucked from the air because it sounded better than nine. We started using phrases like ‘our property portfolio’. I blush to think of it. We spoke of those flats as if we’d actually built them with our bare hands. We marvelled at how their value had increased by seven, eight, nine per cent in a single year. In my defence, it wasn’t outright greed. I was planning for our retirement. Running a garden centre is backbreaking work. We couldn’t do it forever. We weren’t even sure we could manage another year. We didn’t have any money saved up. We didn’t have a pension. This was our way out.
They’re calling me mad now, but five years ago I was mad, or touched with a kind of madness. That’s the only way I can explain it. I lost my mind. I ventured into a business I knew nothing about, abandoning a livelihood that was in our blood and bones. When the recession hit, our bank was on the brink of collapse. The very institution that had convinced us to borrow and invest now looked upon us as if we were an abomination. We were their creation! They wanted their money back even faster than they’d been happy to give it to us. We were forced to sell everything, all five flats, you knew that, but you didn’t appreciate the losses we were making on each. We’d put the deposit down on a new build. Since we couldn’t complete the purchase the money was lost. Completely lost! Our backs were against the wall. We sold our home and the garden centre. We were pretending to everyone, not just to you, that it was part of a grand plan. We brought forward our retirement under the guise that we were sick and tired of the whole enterprise. That was a lie. There was no choice.
With what little money remained we bought the farm in Sweden. That’s why we found somewhere remote and run-down. We presented it to you as the pursuit of the idyllic. True, but we also bought it cheap, for less than the price of a garage in London. Cheap as it was, once the costs of relocating were included, we were left with nine thousand pounds. Quote the figure to any financial adviser and they’d state categorically that it can’t be done, there are two of us, four and a half thousand pounds each, we’re in our sixties – we might live for another three decades. There was nothing to fall back on. We were betting our future on a far-flung farm in the middle of nowhere in a country unknown to me for fifty years.
Not having money in London is crippling. Board a bus and they charge you two pounds. A loaf of market bread can cost four pounds. On our farm we were going to rewrite the rules of modern living, happiness without the need of credit cards and cash. We’d cycle everywhere. Petrol would be saved for emergencies only. There’d be no need for holidays. Why take a holiday when you were living in one of the most beautiful locations in the world? In the summer there was the river to swim in, in the winter snow for skiing – activities that cost nothing. We’d reconnect our lives with nature, growing our own food, with plans for a vast vegetable garden supplemented with foraging, baskets of wild berries and chanterelle mushrooms, thousands of pounds’ worth if you bought the equivalent in any delicatessen. Your father and I would go back to doing what we’d always done, what we did best, what we were put on this earth to do – to plant and grow.
Despite how it sounds, making these plans wasn’t a miserable task. It didn’t depress me. We were pruning our existence back to the essentials not out of some pious philosophy that austerity was good for the soul. To live within our means was the only way to be truly independent. We were pilgrims seeking a new life, escaping the oppression of debt. On the boat to Sweden, Chris and I spent the evening seated on the deck looking up at the stars with a blanket over our knees and a Thermos of tea, strategising household economy as if it were a military operation because we vowed never to borrow money again, there’d never be another letter from the bank threatening us, no more suffocating helplessness at a stack of bills, never, never again!
• • •
FORCING A BREAK, I STOOD UP. Walking to the window, I rested my head against the glass. I’d been certain that my parents could comfortably support themselves through their retirement. They’d sold five apartments, the family home and the garden centre. The recession had hit the value of their properties, that was true, but their decisions never seemed troubled. They were always smiling and joking. It had been an act, one I’d fallen for. They’d presented their decision as part of a master plan. Moving to Sweden was a change of lifestyle, not a means of survival. In my mind, their life on the farm was one of leisure, growing their own food out of pre
ference rather than desperate necessity. Most humiliating of all, I’d flirted with the idea of asking them for a loan, confident that a sum of two thousand pounds was insignificant to them. I shuddered to think of requesting the money with no idea of the anguish it would’ve caused. If I’d been rich I would’ve offered all my money to Mum, every penny, and begged forgiveness. But I had nothing to offer. I wondered whether I’d allowed myself to be casual about my own lack of money because I’d been certain that everyone close to me – my parents and Mark – was secure. My mum joined me at the window, misunderstanding my reaction:
‘Right now, money is the least of our worries.’
That was only partly true. My family was in financial crisis, but it was not the crisis my mum wanted to talk about, it was not the crisis that had made her board a plane this morning. It struck me that if I didn’t know about their finances, what else didn’t I know? Just a few minutes ago I’d dismissed my mum’s description of Dad. I was wrong to be so sure. I had no firm evidence yet as to the reliability of my mum’s account, but I had concrete evidence that my insights were untrustworthy. The only logical conclusion, at this point, was that I wasn’t up to the task at hand and I considered whether to seek help. However, I held my tongue, determined to prove that my mum had been right to turn to me in her hour of need. Since I had no right to be angry – after all, I’d lied to them over a great many years – I tried to keep my voice soft, asking the question: