By S. D. Brown

So, when your son tells you he’s killed his wife, you’re left with something of a dilemma. Something you don’t know how to fix. He is, after all, your flesh and blood, and to be honest, I never had much time for her, but there is also this sense of justice that won’t let you be.

He came to my door in the early hours that night. He let himself in and shouted up the stairs. I wasn’t really asleep, I don’t sleep well these days, but I knew immediately there was a problem – another problem. I pulled my dressing gown on and went down.

He was sitting on the edge of the sofa. He didn’t look up.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘what is it this time?’

He was always a strange little boy. I didn’t know what to make of him sometimes. He never really made friends, and he seemed to enjoy being on his own most of the time. His dad up and left us early on, leaving me to cope with it all. He couldn’t have been much more than six when his dad went off. It must have made some difference to his young life, I suppose, not that you could tell. They were never really close, like you would imagine, or hope for a father and son to be. He was never really close to anyone, except Shelia, that is, and me, as and when it suited him.

His dad’s leaving took me by surprise though, I can tell you. Out of the blue one day, he strolled into the kitchen and said, ‘I’ve got a job up north.’

He was a driver; trucks, taxis anything with wheels, really. He was always moving from job to job, never able to settle, always falling out with someone or other.

‘What do you mean, a job up north?’

‘I mean, I’m leaving. I’m moving up north first thing. I won’t be back.’

‘You can’t,’ I said, taking a sharp breath. ‘It’ll break your boy’s heart just going off like that. How are we supposed to cope?’

‘He won’t even know I’ve gone, and you know it.’ He stood in the kitchen staring at me, waiting for me to say something, but there was nothing I could say. We both knew, in many ways, he was right, and there was nothing I could say that would stop him from leaving, even if I wanted to. He was hot-headed, and I had learnt over the years when to keep quiet, when to step aside. So that was that, but I still felt that it was no way for a marriage to end. It left me numb.

That evening, I sat him down and explained that his dad was going away to work, and that he wouldn’t see him for a long time.

‘OK,’ he said. His face didn’t register any emotion; he didn’t ask any questions. He was fiddling with a bit of string, winding it around his finger, then he looked up. ‘What’s for tea?’

We never saw his dad again.

I suppose I always made excuses for him, particularly at school, where I played the single parent card more often than not. I was regularly called into school for some misdemeanour or other. They called him ‘challenging,’ but he wasn’t like that at home, not with me. One time they called me in because he was on the roof of the school mini-bus, throwing beanbags. It turned out, when we got to the bottom of it, they had thrown a spanner in his usual routine by setting out the obstacle course in a different order during a PE session. I remember thinking to myself that it seemed my obstacle course had been set in a different order all my life.

He clasped his hands and moved back a little on the sofa. He was still sitting awkwardly. I could see he wanted to speak but seemed to be searching for the words.

‘I’ll make a pot of tea,’ I said. ‘Then you can tell me what it’s all about.’

My best guess was that he and Sheila had split up. It wouldn’t have surprised me. I wondered how they had even got together, let alone managed eight whole years of marriage. When he was a teenager, he didn’t take much interest in girls. He got temporarily fixated on a girl across the road but that didn’t amount to much. He drifted for a while and then managed to get a full-time job where he’d done a spell of work experience. It turned out he was good with computers, and he got himself a position with prospects. He seemed settled at last; I was thrilled for him.

Shelia worked in the firm’s canteen. She seemed to have made a beeline for him straight off. I don’t suppose he ever knew what hit him.

I placed the tray on the coffee table, tightened my dressing gown cord, and looked down at him.

‘Come on then,’ I said, ‘spit it out.’

And that’s when he told me he’d killed Sheila. He looked up at me. No emotion, no tears.

‘What do you mean, you’ve killed her? How? When? What are you talking about?’

‘I pushed her down the stairs.’

‘Pushed her down the stairs?’ I shrieked. ‘Why on earth did you do that?’

‘She just kept on. On and on all the time about moving and getting a bigger house. It was doing my head in. She wouldn’t shut up. I just snapped.’

‘You can’t push someone downstairs just cos they want to move! She’s your bloody wife, for goodness’ sake.’

He looked up at me. There was a long silence. It was like he wanted me to sort it all out, to have the answers, but I didn’t have any. Not this time.

‘Maybe she just fell?’ I said at last, trying to gently plant a seed.

‘No, I shoved her.’

He was always honest. Well, as a child, he was. Too honest for his own good sometimes, and now he was telling me he’d shoved his wife down the stairs. If he were that honest with the police, he’d be looking at manslaughter, if not murder.

I poured us some tea and sat opposite him. We both drank our tea without a word.

‘I can’t go to prison,’ he suddenly said. ‘I just can’t. You’ve got to help me, Mum.’

Well, I thought, help or not, you may not have much choice, but I didn’t say as much.

‘You broke the rules,’ I said, but he didn’t respond as I thought he might. He used to like rules. Things being in their proper order. He was quiet for a moment and then leaned forward.

‘This is how I see it,’ he said, and he tightly clasped his hands again. ‘I came over to see you, and you had a funny turn, so I stayed here all night in case you needed me.’

‘But…’ I started to say.

‘No, hear me out. I stayed here all night. Sheila fell down the stairs. It’s dreadful, but I wasn’t there, so she must’ve just fallen somehow. We don’t know how. Who can say different?’

‘Nothing’s that straightforward,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘Well, did you drive here? The police have cameras everywhere, y’know.’

‘No, I walked the back way, no one saw me.’

‘So you say. Who knows if someone did or didn’t?’

‘No one saw me. Right? I was careful; it was dark.’

‘What about your phone?’ I watch those crime dramas on the telly where they can tell where someone was, or had been, from just their phone, so I told him what I knew.

‘I thought about that too,’ he said. ‘I left it at home. I haven’t got it with me now, so I couldn’t call Sheila to say I was stopping over. See? And my phone is there, but l wasn’t; I was here with you. I’ll say I forgot it when I came to see you. They can’t prove otherwise. Do you see?’

No, I couldn’t see. Telling me his story was one thing, telling it to the police was quite another.

I picked up the teapot. ‘I’m just going to cheer this up,’ I said, and I went into the kitchen.

I felt cold. This was becoming a nightmare, I thought. I held the teapot to my chest and felt its warmth against me. I looked out of the window. It was light already. I could see the rope swing still hanging from the tree branch after all these years. In tatters now, of course. He used to sway on that for hours, lost in his own world. And now here he was, turning both our worlds upside down.

I had him quite late in life. There were times when I thought I would never have a child, and then there he was, a perfect little boy. He was a beautiful baby and grew to be a fine-looking young man as well. I could see what Shelia saw in him. Good looking, good money and prospects.

I found her strange and quite controlling, though. He seemed to just follow along in her wake. The first year they were married they came here for Christmas lunch. I was looking forward to it, but I could tell straightaway that she didn’t want to be here. She wouldn’t pull a cracker or put a paper hat on, because she had just had her hair done. We sat, the three of us with a rather dry turkey crown, pushing it round our plates, trying to make conversation. After dinner she announced that they really must be going.

‘What, no sherry trifle?’ I asked.

‘Sorry,’ she said as she got up from the table. ‘Things to do.’

Who has things to do on Christmas Day, I thought. He said nothing. He just followed like he always did. Christmas was all done and dusted before the Queen had a chance to put her twopence worth in, and that was that. They went to her parents every year after that.

She didn’t deserve to die like that, though.

I took a fresh pot of tea into the sitting room. He was leaning back on the sofa. He looked calmer somehow.

‘Are you sure she’s dead?’ I asked quietly. I didn’t like to ask, but I had to know. ‘Did you check her pulse and that?’

‘Yes, I told you.’ He seemed momentarily irritated, but regained his composure.

‘No blood was there? You didn’t step in any blood, did you?’

‘No, no blood.’ He held his foot up so I could see his sole.

‘So,’ I asked, ‘how do you think you’re going to sort this? Are you going home now to ‘find’ her dead, or what?’

‘No.’

‘No? What’re you going to do then? Hang around here ‘til someone smells her? You’ve got to go home and find her. Treat the girl with some bloody dignity, for goodness’ sake. She deserves better. Did you love her or what?’

‘Yes, of course I did. I loved her like crazy. I didn’t mean to kill her. I didn’t plan it; it just happened.’

I never thought he had planned it, but how was I to know? He was showing a different side to me – a side I never expected to see. A side that tied me in knots and was pulling me apart bit by bit.

‘So? What’s the plan from here on then?’

‘Her sister will find her?’

‘Her sister? Are you kidding me? You mean the last image she will have of her sister will be Sheila spreadeagled at the bottom of your stairs? Is that what you’re planning? Is that what you’re telling me?’

‘I haven’t planned anything. She’s going round this morning to do Shelia’s hair. She has a key. That’s what she does on a Sunday morning. I can’t stop it happening, can I? I can’t phone and tell her not to go, can I?’

This was getting out of hand, I thought. This was real life happening right in front of me. This wasn’t throwing beanbags because you got in a tizzy in a PE session, this had consequences; this had serious outcomes that you couldn’t predict. Her sister would contact the police, no doubt, and they may or may not suspect foul play, and look to the husband as the most obvious suspect. The sister knew where I lived. She might guess he would come running to me. At the very least, the police would want to question him. Would he be able to take it? Would he be able to hold up his end once the questioning started? And where would that leave me if things started to fall apart? Aiding and abetting? Conspiracy to murder? My mind was racing. He sat there looking at me as if I had the answers but had yet to share them with him.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘why not just say she fell down the stairs, you panicked, and came round to me in a state.’

‘I can’t go to prison. Just can’t.’

‘It may not even come to that, if it was an accident,’ I said.

‘I’ll go to prison. I know I will. That’s it. It could be years; I could be in prison for years and years. You could be dead by the time I come out.’

‘I’m not that old.’

‘Mum, you are a pensioner. I’m just saying, that’s all. It’s too risky saying I was there when it happened. We’ve got to go with my story. It’s my only chance.’

I didn’t say, but I thought, well, if he does go to prison, I could visit. I could support him while he’s inside. There was no way of knowing which prison he might go to, but I could get a coach if it’s a long way away, or maybe my neighbour could drive me if I paid her petrol. So many thoughts. My mind was racing. Once you start your story, there’s no going back, but he is, after all, my son, my only boy.

There was a loud knock on the door. I glanced at my son. His face held a look of despair; it was the first real emotion from him I had seen all morning. Another knock. Much louder this time. I got up from my chair and brushed gently past him, placing my hand on his shoulder as I went by. He didn’t reach for it. He looked up at me.

‘Mum, what are you going to do? Mum,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘What are you going to say? Mum, Mum, what?’

So, when your son kills your daughter-in-law, it leaves you with a dilemma. The walk from my armchair to the front door is a short one, but l feel as though I started it over thirty years ago, one step at a time.

‘Ok, ok,’ l shouted. ‘I’m on my way.’

About the Author

S. D. Brown is based in Dorset, England. He writes poetry, short stories and novellas.

He has had work published in Acclaim, Platform for Prose, The Fortnightly Review, Vine Leaves Press, Litro Publishing, The Orchard Poetry Journal, Eucalyptus Lit., Eunoia Review, and The Bookend Review.