Read The Wrong Mother for Free Online Page B

spent a week with Mark Bretherick last year. How many can there be in Spilling, with wives called Geraldine and daughters called Lucy?
    ‘Where do they live?’ I ask Nick in a stretched voice. ‘You said you knew the house.’
    ‘Corn Mill House—you know, that massive dobber mansion near Spilling Velvets. I cycle past it all the time.’
    I feel faint, as if every drop of blood in my body has rushed to my head and filled it, pushed out all the air.
    I remember the story, almost word for word. I have a good memory for words, and names. It didn’t even used to be a corn mill. There was a corn mill nearby, and the people who owned it before us were pretentious gits, basically. And Geraldine loves the name. She won’t let me get rid of it, and believe me, I’ve tried.
    Who said that to me?
    I spent a week with Mark Bretherick last year, and the man I’m looking at is not him.
    Police Exhibit Ref: VN8723
Case Ref: VN87
OIC: Sergeant Samuel Kombothekra
     
    GERALDINE BRETHERICK’S DIARY, EXTRACT 1 OF 9 (taken from hard disk of Toshiba laptop computer at Corn Mill House, Castle Park, Spilling, RY29 0LE)
     
     
    18 April 2006, 10.45 p.m.
     
    I don’t know whose fault it is, but my daughter now believes in monsters. They are never mentioned in our house, so she must have picked it up at school, like God (about whom she’d heard so little at home that for the first few months she called him Gart—Mark found this hilarious) and her obsession with the colour pink. Education, even the fraudulent (sorry, creative) Montessori variety that we pay through the nose for, is no more than a process of brainwashing—it does the opposite of train children to think for themselves. Anyway, Lucy’s terrified of monsters now, and insists on sleeping with a night light on and her bedroom door open.
    The first I knew of it was when I put her to bed yesterday at eight thirty, turned the light out as I always do and closed the door. I felt the usual sweeping relief all through my body (I don’t think I could explain to anyone how important it is to me to be able to close that door) and I punched the air in triumph as I often do, though never if Mark is watching. I don’t mean to do it, but my arm moves before my brain has time to stop it. I feel as if I’ve escaped from prison—all my dread disappears; even the certainty that it will return tomorrow can’t stifle my joy. When Lucy goes to bed, my life and home are my own again and I can be myself, free, doing whatever I want to do without fear, thinking about whatever I want to think about for a few precious hours.
    Until yesterday, that is. I closed the door, punched the air, but before I was able to take more than a couple of steps towards freedom, I heard a loud wailing noise. Her. I froze, trying to close my ears from the inside. But I wasn’t mistaken, it wasn’t a cat outside or a car coming up the lane, or bell-ringers at the church across the fields (though it’s bliss when this happens the other way round: you hear a faint whine or some other high-pitched noise that you’re certain is your child wanting attention, more attention, and then—oh, thank you, Gart!—it turns out to be only a car alarm, and you’re saved). But I wasn’t, because the source of the awful whining noises was my daughter.
    I have a rule that I’ve made for myself, and that I stick to come what may : whatever I feel inside, however I feel like behaving towards Lucy, I do the opposite. So when she cried after I’d closed her door, I went back into her room, stroked her hair and said, ‘What’s the matter, love?’ because what I really wanted to do was drag her out of her bed and shake her until her teeth fell out.
    There must be parents who are so strict and terrifying that their children make sure never to annoy or inconvenience them. Those are the people I both envy and loathe. They must be cruel, vicious, intimidating ogres, and yet—lucky them—their children tiptoe round them trying