In which we bear witness to madness
Helen has seen Addison withdraw mentally – she has seen it before. There is something about him that shrinks into an invisible case that confines him to quarters. Her heart quickens. If he fails now, it will be her fault. She must give back some of what he expended on her.
The crooning has started again.
‘They daren’t come near, baby darling. You’re all fine – mine until I give you up.’
Carla is no longer moaning. She is clinging to Helen, the tears dried on her cheek, fear stark on her face.
Helen tries to think. It is made difficult through Steve’s drunken litany. The hum sucks her mind into a black hole.
‘I think it’s time to give you up, baby.’
She must shield the blackness out. Until she has the thing she needs, which is near the door.
She hurries Carla to the entrance, whispering urgently to gain her co-operation. ‘I’ve got a plan, Carla, just hold on for Dinah.’ Thrusting the girl none too gently at a Follower, she grabs from near the door the small glass vial they use for anointing people.
Slipping quietly back to a vantage point from where she judges she can succeed, she watches a moment more. There has been silence for nearly a minute. Steve is swaying to a soundless beat, eyes on Addison. She cannot detect his intention since his face is side-on to hers, but in a moment she must take her chance. There will not be another. They are like tigers sizing up the opposition and awaiting the first strike.
Addison glances down at her, and the emptiness in his face triggers the decision. She nods briskly at him, indicating Dinah with her left hand. With her right, she hurls the glass vial in a projectory straight at Steve. Worthy of her bowling days, but there is no time to gloat.
The man senses some change, is startled into distraction and looks over his shoulder.
Addison, acting more on instinct than plan, Helen is sure, leaps forward and grabs the baby as intended, pulling her away from Steve’s insanity into his own strong safe arms.
In horror Helen watches as Steve sways, stumbles sideways and flails around for the railing. He emits a cry and loses his balance. The thigh-height rail fails to contain his fall. Helen cannot move to do so. A bullet from behind flings past her with a scream, ‘No, Steve!’
Carla is too far away to make the distance in time. The thud on the wooden floor echoes round them and dies away as she stands screaming into the emptiness of the evening.
Helen runs to her side and cradles the hysterical girl in her arms.
She is wimpering again, ‘He didn’t have to die, he shouldn’t be dead. He wasn’t bad really.’
‘He was drunk. It was an accident, but it was his fault,’ Helen states firmly. At all costs, Carla must hear the truth, for Addison’s sake.
Suddenly others move to surround them. Helen, searching the room over the top of Carla’s head, realises the screaming has brought the prayer meeting to an abrupt halt, and they are all gathering in the room, spreading out and around the body spreadeagled on the floor.
In death, Steve wears a puzzled expression. As if he cannot understand what has happened. Helen cannot bear to look at him for more than a few seconds. The body doesn’t tell a true story. It points a finger at them when it should accept blame, and is therefore a travesty of truth. She values truth highly. They are going to have to fight for it to be acknowledged. Addison will not help his own cause, she suspects.
He stumbles from the walkway stairs with Dinah, his face distorted with some agony Helen cannot name. No one speaks as he hands the baby to Carla.
He is crying. The terrible sobs grow to fill the arena and Addison crumples onto his knees, his face buried in his hands. Carla crouches beside him, helpless, unable to comfort both him and the baby. He seems to diminish before them, even in his brightest waistcoat.
‘God, what have I done? I killed a man.’
His words are raw and pitious, to Helen a statement of guilt before a supposed court. One that they have not set up.
Nothing he says in the next half hour is at all coherent. He seems deaf to all their entreaties; they lead him to a chair. His eyes remain wide open but his brain has turned in on himself.
At someone’s suggestion, and with a distant nod from Carla, Helen pulls out her mobile and rings for the police and an ambulance.
The only sound is the heavy pounding of rain on the skylights – no one even comments on it.
