The Darkness that Divides Us. Renate Dorrestein

articles and editorials, comparing and contrasting them until they had reconstructed the statement Lucy’s mother had presumably made in court, from beginning to end. Where the accounts conflicted, our mothers simply split the difference. When a question came up that even the prosecutor hadn’t been able to resolve, they hit upon the answer. That was because they were able to fill in every hole in the story straight from the gut; they didn’t need anyone telling them what it meant to be a mother.

      Their conclusion was that it had been an emotional chain reaction. There had been no premeditation on Lucy’s mother’s part; she’d had no plan, she hadn’t known what she was going to do. There had been no time. She hadn’t even put on a coat. She had simply dashed out of the house, driven by her maternal instinct.

      They couldn’t check with her if they’d hit the nail on the head, naturally. But according to the explanation they’d cobbled together, and which they managed to turn into a convincing story through sheer force of imagination, it must have happened as follows: their friend had been about to turn in when she’d heard a strange noise outside. It sounded like the moaning of a dog that had been hit by a car. Startled, she’d gone to check it out. She didn’t see anything unusual out on the road. But as she strode back up the garden path, she heard it again. She debated whether she should wake the Luducos. And then she spotted Lucy.

      Her little girl, whom she’d thought tucked safely into bed, was lying rolled up in a little heap under a privet bush. She was clawing at the earth as if trying to dig a hole she could sink into and disappear. She was whimpering pitifully.

      Horrified, she had carried the traumatized child inside. There, not knowing what else to do, she had run a hot bath. But Lucy had refused to take her clothes off. She’d stood in the middle of the bathroom, teeth chattering, stiff as a board, hugging herself. And then the whole story had come pouring out.

      Lucy’s mother knew she had to stay calm. That only a calm and composed reaction from her could make the world bearable again for Lucy. So she had gently lowered her into the bath, sponged her back, and quietly sung to her. And after that, she had put her to bed with a sleeping pill. The child had almost immediately nodded off from sheer exhaustion.

      Pulling the attic door shut behind her, she was still intending to wake up the Luducos; it was her turn to weep and groan and get it out of her system. But the next thing she knew, not really realizing what she was doing, she was already out of the house, spurred on by some primitive urge further inflamed by bitter self-reproach. Could she have failed more drastically as a parent? Her little girl had run away from home! She had to put things right, fix it, undo the damage.

      Assaulted by someone the kid had run to for shelter! A great wrong had been done to Lucy, an injustice of the worst kind. She had a red haze swimming before her eyes. She thrust her hands into the pockets of her cardigan, but found nothing there except a couple of pencils and crayons.

      She had already left the centre of the old village behind, she felt sand crunching underfoot, she was running up to the new housing estate, stumbling and cursing. The wind blew paper and other debris into her face, she had to halt for a second to wipe the tears from her eyes, and then she spotted him, in the orange glow of the construction floodlights. He was standing in the lee of one of the piers of the new overpass, smoking a cigarette.

      She thought, coolly, Sure, out for a breath of fresh air to get rid of the smell of sex! Slowly she walked up to him. She raised her arm. And just as she was about to tap him on the shoulder, he turned round.

      He didn’t even have a chance to register surprise or alarm. The moment his eyes met hers, he was done for. His were the eyes that had lusted after her child.

      Afterward she went home, drained. She decided she would cook up a special breakfast in the morning. Pancakes for Lucy and scrambled eggs for the Luducos, who had no inkling, sleeping the sleep of the innocent, as always, their shoes lined up neatly in the corridor like good boys and girls.

      Our mothers felt as if they had been there themselves. They seethed with indignation and solidarity, and at home the sisterhood was now a presence at every meal, like an uninvited guest who doesn’t have the decency to keep quiet. There was a fair bit of fist-banging and dish-rattling. Grim slogans like Dictatorship of the prick were bandied about, and when it was time for the washing-up, we’d hear protest songs coming from the kitchen along the lines of Bollocks to balls!

      It was all making us more and more anxious. If we understood correctly what was meant by ‘emotional chain reaction,’ then it looked as though soon there would be nothing for us to eat but cream-cheese crackers. We’d have to stuff our own clothes into the washing machine and work out which knobs you had to push. We’d come home from school every day with a latchkey on a string around our necks, back to a house with not a single pumpkin in the window. There’d be nobody to clap her hands in admiration of our drawings, or to praise us for how fast we could read an entire page from top to bottom!

      Our mums had completely flipped out on behalf of a mother who—admit it—had never really understood how a mother was supposed to behave. We remembered the way she would coolly stay at her drawing table even when we were in the process of reducing the place to rubble. Her bare feet. The tea that was never offered. The dirty dishes in the sink. The dust along the mouldings. The skirt with the slit up the side. The purple lipstick. The long, sweet-smelling hippie hair.

      ‘And don’t forget those Luco boys of hers,’ said our fathers, cross-eyed with spite. ‘Lodgers, my foot! And with a child in the house, too.’

      ‘Please! Where did you get that idea? It just goes to show you’ve got a one-track mind!’ our mothers bitched back, in their it’s-always-the-same-story-with-you-isn’t-it voice.