The Trophy Child Read online

  ‘He won’t be long,’ said the woman, then disappeared before Verity had time to answer.

  Then a door in front of her flew open, making Verity jump, and the person she presumed must be Jeremy Gleeson walked towards her, his arm extended, saying, ‘Miss Bloom. Glad you found me. Come on in.’

  Verity was too shy to do anything other than mutter a quiet hello. She followed her therapist into his office, where he asked her to sit wherever she felt most comfortable. Verity glanced from the chair to a narrow, firm couch to what looked like some kind of gaming chair, feeling like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

  ‘Perhaps the chair to begin with?’ he suggested, and Verity said, ‘Thank you. Yes, the chair.’

  He gave her a moment to settle herself while he shuffled a pile of notes around, before fixing her with a smile. ‘The first thing we ought to do is congratulate you for coming here, Miss Bloom.’

  ‘Okay,’ Verity said, unsure.

  ‘It’s a very brave thing to do.’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Yes. It is. All right if I call you Verity?’

  ‘Fine by me.’

  Verity wasn’t sure what to make of him. She’d seen counselling sessions on TV. Seen people confiding in their therapists on American sitcoms. But nothing about this set-up fell into the category of anything she’d seen before. She wasn’t creeped out by him. He seemed a genuine enough guy. He had sandy-coloured, receding hair and freckled skin that was lightly tanned. His smile was friendly.

  ‘Is there anything you’d like to ask me before we start?’

  Verity shrugged and looked around the room, taking in the framed certificates, a photograph of Gleeson in a cap and gown standing with a nicely plump woman around his age who was wearing a pink suit.

  Verity nodded towards the photograph. ‘That your wife?’

  He seemed pleased she’d noticed the picture. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s Heather. We’re at my graduation. A proud day for both of us.’

  ‘What did you do before you did this?’ Verity asked.

  ‘I was a blacksmith.’

  ‘You’re kidding me?’

  ‘No. I did it for twenty years.’

  ‘And so the natural progression was to do this, obviously,’ she said.

  He smiled. ‘Let’s just say I’d outgrown my profession. I was ready for something different.’

  ‘My dad says everyone should have at least one career change.’

  ‘He does?’ Jeremy said enthusiastically. ‘And what was his?’

  ‘He hasn’t had one. He’s been a doctor all his working life. Are you a doctor?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not even a pretend one?’

  He laughed. ‘Not even that.’

  ‘How do I know you won’t screw with my mind, then?’

  ‘You don’t,’ he said. ‘This relationship is all about trust, it’s all about a deepening trust developing between—’

  ‘Whoa!’ said Verity, holding up her hands. ‘That’s sounding a bit paedo. A bit “It’ll be our little secret” kind of thing.’

  Jeremy Gleeson paused. After a moment’s thought, he said, ‘Perhaps I ought to think about rewording that.’

  He lifted a fountain pen from the desk and began rolling it between his fingers. ‘Your dad told me it was your school, Reid’s, who requested that you see someone.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How do you feel about that?’

  ‘I feel like…do I call you Jeremy?’

  ‘Whatever you’re comfortable with.’

  ‘I feel – not to cause offence or anything, Jeremy, because I’m sure you’re very good at what you do – but I feel like my time could be better spent getting on with work. I have a ton of coursework to do. Although I do understand why they want me to see you.’

  ‘Why do you think they want you to see me?’

  Verity looked out of the window. ‘To stop me from doing what I did again.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll do what you did again?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Because…?’

  ‘Because it’s not like…’ Verity sighed. Closed her eyes briefly. ‘It’s not as if I go around doing it every day.’

  ‘Would you say you felt in control when you attacked your stepmother, Verity?’

  ‘In control?’ she repeated. ‘I’m not sure I understand what you mean.’

  ‘Did you feel like it was you…doing what you did? Or did you feel compelled to do it by, say, an outside source?’

  Verity arched an eyebrow. ‘An outside source?’

  Jeremy Gleeson nodded.

  ‘You want to know if I’m crazy. That’s what you’re asking, isn’t it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that,’ he said.

  ‘Strangling your stepmother “for a sustained period”, as they reported it, is a crazy thing to do, whichever way you look at it. It was actually no more than a few seconds. But no. I wasn’t compelled by voices in my head. Or weird visions. Or hallucinations.’

  ‘Were you under the influence of drugs at the time?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re certain about that?’

  ‘Jeremy,’ Verity said flatly, ‘it was all me.’

  ‘But there were drugs found inside your locker?’

  ‘That’s right. There were.’

  ‘Would you say you had a reason for doing what you did, or is that something you find hard to talk about? Maybe even hard to think about?’

  ‘I don’t find it hard at all,’ Verity said, and Jeremy nodded, waiting for her to go on.

  ‘I hated my stepmother in that moment, and I wanted her to stop what she was doing,’ Verity said. ‘I wanted Karen to stop and she just wouldn’t.’

  5

  THE THING THAT people didn’t get when they accused Karen Bloom of being a tiger mother was that she wasn’t at all offended by it. Even when it wasn’t said in a jokey, leg-pulling kind of way. Even when it was meant as an insult.

  Karen was a tiger mother, and she was proud of it. Why shouldn’t she be? Just because ordinary mothers had decided it was wrong to push their offspring, just because they took the easy way out, saying it wasn’t a mother’s place to mould a child into greatness, it didn’t mean Karen had to go along with it. Because they would say that, wouldn’t they? It was an easy way to justify their own lazy lives, their own acceptance of mediocrity. And Karen was very sorry, but she wasn’t having that for Brontë.

  It was her responsibility – her duty, in fact – to prepare Brontë for the life ahead of her in the best way she knew how. Life was a competition. Only the best and the brightest succeeded, and if that meant Karen had to put her own hopes and dreams on the back burner while she invested everything she had in Brontë’s future, so be it.

  She had tried it the other way, and Ewan was the result.

  Lazy, disrespectful Ewan. She loved him, naturally. He was her son – of course she loved him. But she had failed in her parenting the first time around, and she wouldn’t do it twice. Not with Brontë. Not with such a remarkable child.

  ‘Don’t you think you should ease up on her scheduled activities?’ the other mothers would say. ‘A child needs to be a child, after all.’ And Karen would think: Here we go. Envy camouflaged as concern. Jealousy dressed up as self-righteousness. Karen would smile politely, saying that Brontë could cope. That she positively thrived on hard work. When really what Karen wanted to say was: All this input would be pointless with your child. Your child would remain ordinary – pedestrian – no matter what you did.

  But Karen didn’t air those thoughts because Karen was a nice person. And nice people didn’t say things like that.

  It was 5.20 p.m. and Karen was where she could generally be found: behind the wheel of the car, parked, waiting for Brontë’s lesson to finish; this time, it was piano. From five thirty they had half an hour to get from Grasmere to Windermere, to be in time for her tap class, and in this time Brontë a
lso needed to eat and complete her reading homework. Which, if Karen was correct, was chapter twelve of Holes by Louis Sachar.

  Karen had recently started to zone out when Brontë read, because Brontë could sound a little Dalek-like – something Karen had tried to work on. Karen would repeat sentences, emphasize particular words, trying to get some light and shade into her daughter’s delivery, but, alas, nothing had worked, so she was taking a short break. For now, she let Brontë read however she liked, as long as it got done; though she knew it was a problem.

  A friend of Karen’s had enrolled her child in the Stagecoach Theatre Arts School because she felt her daughter was lacking in self-confidence, and Karen was looking into the idea for Brontë. The problem was, it clashed with her Saturday harp tutorial and Karen had promised herself that music would come first, no matter what. Music came before play dates, sleepovers, before friends’ birthday parties. Music came first because it had to. There was no point giving your child these opportunities if you were going to go at them in a half-hearted way. To excel took real commitment. On all levels. Something the other mothers at school appeared to be ignoring, if their appearance was anything to go by. Those women were not quite doing the school run in their pyjamas, but they weren’t far off.

  But what if Brontë did grow up without adequate public-speaking experience? That was sure to hamper her chances of performing well at university interviews. So it had to be addressed. It was needling Karen more than she had realized. Perhaps she should make an allowance just this once and—

  The car door opened and Brontë climbed in, telling Karen in a strained voice that she was starving and she really needed to eat something, ‘Straight away, Mummy.’

  ‘You’ll have to eat and read at the same time,’ Karen said, turning the ignition and checking her mirror before quickly pulling out in front of a learner driver whom she couldn’t take the chance of getting stuck behind.

  Brontë took three fast bites of her cream-cheese sandwich before reaching into her rucksack to retrieve Holes. Then, without any prompting from Karen, she methodically thumbed through the pages until she found her spot and began to read.

  She read as if there was a full stop after each bloody word.

  Karen had to do something. She would speak to Brontë’s teacher first thing tomorrow. See if she knew of anyone who could tutor Brontë and get her out of this awful habit. It was actually quite embarrassing.

  The traffic slowed. There were temporary traffic lights up ahead. Karen watched Brontë. Watched as she ran the fingers of her bad hand shakily underneath the words as she spoke them out loud.

  Surely she should have stopped with that by now?

  6

  NOEL BLOOM HAD been supposed to be heading home when he found his car unexpectedly steering itself into the car park of the Wateredge Hotel.

  One drink.

  One drink wasn’t going to hurt anyone.

  And the great thing about this kind of hotel, as opposed to, say, a pub, was that nobody there would know him. Not the guests. Not the staff. None were local to the area – they were mostly Europeans who came for the season – so he could slope in and out in relative safety.

  Sometimes Noel found his recognizability burdensome. It wasn’t as if he’d signed up for it. Not like the rock stars and football players who bemoaned their inability to leave a hotel room to fetch a pint of milk. Noel had never imagined that being a small-town GP would prevent him from going wherever he pleased. But it did. He couldn’t frequent popular local restaurants or bars, for fear of bumping into patients, all wanting a piece of him, all wanting to ask about the side effects of their statins or what the cause of their night-time restless legs was.

  Noel sat in the hotel bar, gazing out at the lake beyond, and thought about Verity. He really should go home and talk to her about the counselling session. Find out how she had got on.

  He glanced at his watch.

  Seven forty.

  He wondered if she’d opened up to the guy. He couldn’t see it himself. Verity had been a closed book since the incident; no one could get through to her. In desperation, he’d gone to talk to Verity’s mother about it. But of course, Jennifer couldn’t exactly talk back, because of her condition. There was something oddly comforting about her presence, though, and he could now see why patients often came to him asking for a referral to someone ‘who would sit and listen to their problems’. Someone who wouldn’t judge.

  Verity’s therapist wasn’t what Noel would class as qualified, but who was any more? You had bank clerks doing hypnotherapy in their garage conversions, beauticians injecting poison into people’s foreheads. The veterinary surgeons had it right. They had long lobbied against anyone but themselves performing anything invasive on animals, and the industry was a lot safer because of it.

  Verity was still on the waiting list to see an NHS psychologist, so if it turned out to be a waste of time with the Gleeson fellow, there was still that.

  But had Verity talked about him at her appointment? Perhaps she’d said he was a shitty, absent father.

  When Noel was a child every father he knew had been absent, and that’s how he and his friends liked it. Noel looked at the dads of today and didn’t quite know what to make of them, all wearing their sling and their nappy bag with pride. It went against his instinct to be provider, protector. He wasn’t sure he had what it took to be one of those men. He was far more comfortable leaving the early-years stuff to the woman in his life – first Jennifer, and then Karen. Neither had complained that he wasn’t very hands-on, that he partook little in the raising of Verity and Brontë. But now he questioned if his idea of normal dad behaviour had in fact been wrong. Could he have done more? Should he have done more?

  —

  ‘How was it?’ he asked Verity when he returned home.

  ‘How was what? ’

  Noel tilted his head to one side and waited for Verity to reply.

  ‘It was fine,’ she said eventually. ‘He was fine, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘Did he…?’ Noel paused, searching for the right words – words that would not provoke an attack. ‘Did you get into what happened that day?’

  Verity shook her head. ‘Not yet. But I’m sure we will at some point. Happy? Anyway, do you want some of this?’

  Verity was stirring the contents of a deep stainless-steel pan. Her damp hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her skin was flushed and fresh from the shower. She wore grey yoga pants and a vest.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Pasta. What else? I’ve made enough for me, Ewan and Dale, but I can probably stretch to another portion. As long as you’re not too hungry.’

  ‘What about Brontë and Karen?’ he asked, and Verity gave him a look as if to say, What about them? ‘They’ll have eaten by the time they get back,’ she explained.

  ‘What kind of pasta is it?’

  ‘Penne with tomato, chilli and salami.’

  ‘Where’d you learn to cook that?’ he asked.

  ‘I have a brain,’ she said. ‘I can follow a recipe.’

  Verity was acting as though she did this every day, and it struck Noel, suddenly, that she might very well do just that.

  After draining the pasta in the sink, she picked up her phone and handed it to Noel. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘text Ewan and tell him it’s ready while I get this into the bowls.’

  She was treating him as the child. She was the mother. It was her way of acting around him, her way of connecting, and he sort of liked being bossed in this way by her. Better than her recent silences, anyway. He did as she asked – texted Ewan – and as she tipped the sauce over the pasta, stirring and adding a handful of Parmesan and some chopped parsley, he asked her how often she fed Dale.

  ‘Whenever he’s here,’ she said casually. ‘I don’t like to eat alone, and I can hardly cook for Ewan and leave Dale out.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose so, but—’

  ‘His mum works evenings and he can�
��t cook for himself.’ She shrugged as if it was no big deal.

  Noel set about grabbing the cutlery as Ewan and Dale filtered in, silently, woollen hats pulled low, though the temperature outside was still close to seventy degrees. An Indian summer. That’s what people were saying. Didn’t they say that every year? Two warm days in September and it was an Indian summer. It wouldn’t last. It never did.

  ‘Hello, lads,’ Noel said, and both seemed bemused but not put out to see him.

  Dale said, ‘All right, Dr Bloom?’ as was his way. Noel could smell the customary scent of weed hanging off their clothes. It was sweet, musty and really quite lovely, and for a split second Noel felt a rush of yearning to be seventeen again. Smoking the afternoon away, nothing in the world that needed to be done except vaguely think about A levels or how he might go about persuading a pretty girl to have sex with him at the weekend.

  ‘You’re back early,’ commented Ewan, spooning penne into his mouth. And then, without waiting for Noel to respond, he looked at Verity. ‘Good this, V. I think I like this one better than the chicken meatballs. What do you think?’ he said, now addressing Dale.

  Dale smiled at Verity. He had always been enraptured by her, and she handled him sweetly. ‘I like all of them,’ he said, dropping his eyes to his food.

  ‘I tried to get away a bit earlier today,’ Noel said. ‘Trying not to be married to the job so much.’

  ‘Good plan,’ replied Ewan. ‘Any dessert, V?’

  ‘The freezer’s bare,’ she said. ‘You could take a box of cereal back up with you.’

  Ewan shook his head. ‘Nah. We’ll head out and get something later. We’re going to dye Dale’s hair. You want to come and give a hand?’

  ‘What colour?’

  ‘Black.’

  Verity smiled and shook her head. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  Noel tried to act nonchalantly as he ate, glancing at the three unlikely dining companions around the table and wondering how long this arrangement had been going on. Probably a good while, he now realized. Stupid, really, but it had never occurred to him that Karen left the two older children to fend for themselves. Stupid, because what had he supposed they’d been doing? Karen didn’t cook during the week. She and Brontë would ‘eat on the wing’, as she liked to say, and he was rarely home in time for dinner. Funny, but for all Karen’s standards, for all her constant striving to give Brontë the best possible start, she was remarkably lax about their daughter’s nutrition, which Noel couldn’t quite make sense of. When he raised the subject Karen would counter his questioning with ‘Where exactly do you expect me to feed her this home-cooked meal you’re so set upon, Noel? At the side of the M6? In between her harp lesson and her maths tutorial?’