After the flood

There’s water all over the kitchen floor, it’s seeping into the floorboards, and they’ll probably warp. Chris will be annoyed because he said they should get tiles.

Chloe’s eating her cereal with her hand, milk is trickling through her fingers down her face, into her hair and onto her school cardigan. One of the more conscientious mothers would probably wash and change their daughter in circumstances like these but Jess thinks that a quick wipe down with a damp cloth will probably do. She hates the conscientious mums – their children in neat plaits, ironed skirts and matching shoes. Showy bitches.

Jacob is screaming about something. Her immediate thought is to ask him what the feck he thinks is so fecking serious that he needs to scream the whole fecking house down. This is, however, at odds with the gentle parenting that she occasionally purports to practise so she simply says “What is it Jakey? What is it now?” He doesn’t respond coherently, he is eighteen months old and rarely says anything of substance.

Will Chris spring for a new washing machine? It’d be good if he did. She texts to tell him of the disaster and includes the emoji of the monkey with his hands over his eyes. She’s not feeling the monkey but keeping it light might make him more inclined to help. He texts back immediately: DO NOT ORDER NEW MACHINE! I’LL FIX IT WHEN I’M HOME. LEAVE IT WITH ME.

Chris is the type to let two blue ticks linger. He needs to think deeply before committing to switching the hot water on or buying a loaf of bread. Chris is many things (meticulous, cautious, pompous, fussy about people touching his stuff) but urgent is not one of them.

Jacob has dropped his spoon and so the universe is in a state of collapse. “Chloe, can you grab that for him?”

“What?”

“The spoon, can you grab Jacob’s spoon for him?”

“What spoon?”

“The spoon that he’s just dropped.”

“Daddy says you need to get a new one if you drop a spoon on the floor.”

“Well, Daddy doesn’t follow the three second rule.”

“What’s that?”

“If you pick something up within three seconds it can’t possibly be dirty.”

“Is that true?”

“Well, truth is contingent, it’s a slippery thing.”

“I don’t understand what that means at all. Besides it’s been way more than three seconds.”

“Well, maybe, you could get him a spoon from the drawer, while I try to stop the flood getting any worse.”

Her phone vibrates: “I’LL LOOK WHEN I GET HOME – LEAVE IT TO ME.”

Jess can’t deny that Handy Chris is an upgrade on Pedantic Chris or Why-Do-You-Need-To-Know-The-Netflix-Password Chris, but it is an unexpected change. She’s known him for twelve years, been married to him for nine, and in that time the only thing he’d ever tried to fix were flaws he’d identified in her personality.

“Chloe, do me a favour will you, sweetie? Can you get the wet wipes out of Jake’s changing bag?”

“Daddy says we should only call him Jacob never Jake.” She treats things that Chris has said with the same reverence that medieval Islamic scholars gave to utterances of the Prophet.

“Still, would you mind getting the wet wipes?”

Water continues to leak out of the machine albeit at a slower rate. It now seems slightly more like a domestic disaster than an extinction event. She googles “How to drain broken washing machine” and is instructed to first unplug it before locating the access panel and the emergency drain hose. These things sound achievable. They sound inconsistent with getting Chloe to school on time, but she reasons that she cannot simply leave the thing to gradually disgorge its greyish liquid all over the kitchen floor.

The plug socket is conveniently located behind the machine, requiring her to twist and shimmy it out of its slot over the course of fifteen exhausting minutes. She’s given the kids access to YouTube, which is against one of the household’s golden rules, but she cannot take an eight-year-old giving her well-meaning advice as she splashes, grunts and sweats her way through this.

It’s far enough out now and at such an angle that through an act of mild contortionism she can reach back to unplug it. As she does so, she feels something soft. She gropes blindly in the dark recess and discovers what feels like a small parcel taped to the back of the appliance.

A few more minutes of vertebrae crushing effort reveals that the object is approximately ten centimetres by eight and perhaps two centimetres thick. It is a neatly wrapped package, which is so firmly attached to the machine that she needs tug and twist to get it off. Whatever’s inside the package is tightly incarcerated in thick black plastic. She feels it dragging at her cuticles as she tries to rip it open. The smell of the tape is chemical, distinctive and out of place. She thinks about wrapping presents. She can feel four separate but identical items inside it. The parcel eventually gives way. She tips its contents on to the table.

Everything stops as she reads. The noise of the children, the smell of damp clothes, the harsh kitchen lights, the mundane chaos of existence instantly stills. The moment is prolonged. She is now impossibly distant from everything that had been her world a few seconds before.

The label on the first USB stick says: “4-6 yrs XXX”.

* * *

She does the buckles on Jacob’s car seat and suppresses tears.

“Chloe, put your seat belt on please?”

“Elsa doesn’t have a car seat, why do I need one?” Elsa has dimensions consistent with the squatter type of rugby league player.

“Because you’re not big enough yet.”

“How big do you have to be?”

“You flatter my knowledge of child heights and car seats.”

The drive affords a small chance to have a conversation.

“Chloe, is daddy always kind to you?”

“No.”

“When isn’t he kind?”

“He doesn’t do voices when he reads bedtime stories, and he never lets me wear a crop top.”

“Is there anything else?”

“Loads of people my age wear them. It’s the style but he doesn't understand. Can we listen to Matilda?”

That seems to be it for the conversation, Jess doesn’t want to push it, so she puts the CD on. Chloe sings with passion, her voice is way off key, she’s throwing shapes like a diva, her demeanour is very serious, she is completely content. Jacob is asleep and looks warm and soft and perfect. Jess starts singing too, quiet and cracked, she doesn’t quite break into tears.

They are late and have to ring the bell for someone to open the school gate. Chloe looks nervous.

“Mummy, I’m worried.”

“What about?” Her voice is too urgent, and she thinks she needs to control it.

“Mrs Rowley will make me apologise.”

“For what?”

“For being late. She says if she was late for a meeting, she’d have to apologise so we should say sorry if we’re late for school.”

“Tell her it’s not your fault.”

“She’ll say that it doesn’t matter whose fault it is.”

“Then tell her she’s an irrational, sour faced bitch.”

“Mummy!” Shocked but smiling.

On the way home Jacob is violently sick. It’s somehow in his hair, on his clothes, all through the intricate straps and clips of the car seat. She could stop and sort him out, at least a little, but he seems ok for now. He’s lifting strands of vomity-saliva and watching them descend neatly into his lap. He has the awed expression of someone seeing the northern lights for the first time.

Once home, she pulls him out of the vehicle and thinks “Yet who would have thought the small child to have so much puke in him? What, will these hands ne’er be clean?”

While seemingly perfectly content with being smeared in his own vomit, Jacob is implacably opposed to warm water and strawberry scented shampoo. He’s shouting “bad water” between throat shredding screams. “My friend, none of us is having a brilliant day, could we perhaps limit the screaming?”

Content that at least ninety five percent of the sick is gone from his hair and pragmatically determining that she would rather give him a buzz cut than spend any more time attempting to clean him, she takes the fluffy duck towel and creates a toddler burrito. He finds this instantly and intensely funny.

Jess turns on the white noise, pulls down the blinds, backs out of the room as though escaping a tiger, and immediately goes to fetch the USB sticks. Jacob sleeps for ninety minutes during which time Jess discovers: 1) that Chris is predictable in his use of passwords; 2) that he has hundreds of child abuse images stored on these USB sticks; and 3) that he has over seven hundred thousand pounds in cryptocurrency of which she was previously unaware.

* * *

When she learns that Chris’s mum’s close to death, Janet understands and says that she’s only too happy to take the kids for the evening. Jess feels a tiny bit bad about the lie but concludes that, in the circumstances, it’s permissible. On the doorstep, Jacob is in the sling while Chloe is squeezing the life out of Jess’ hand.

“I don’t want to have a sleepover at Poppy’s. I don’t like Poppy.”

“As a tiny social suggestion can I recommend not mentioning that while you’re there.”

“Mummy!”

“Oh, I know, darling. And I’m sorry. It’s just that Grandma Lizzy is very poorly so daddy and I need to go to see her right away.”

“Why can’t I come too?”

“Because this is a thing that’s just for grown-ups.”

Janet opens the door.

“Hello darling! How are you holding up? You’ll have to excuse the chaos around here.” Even from the doorstep Jess can see the house is immaculate. Her jealousy is tangible: your husband’s not a paedophile and you have vacuumed your house, you are profoundly lucky.

“No, don’t worry about it. Thank you so much for helping out.”

“How are you Miss Chloe? Poppy’s really looking forward to having a sleepover.”

Chloe says nothing but her face is perfectly calibrated to express the thought: I despise Poppy and being here is an unbearable torment.

“Sweetie, why don’t you go on in? I need to grab Jakey’s things from the car.”

“Yes, come on in darling, Poppy’s in the living room drawing the planets – you can help her.”

* * *

She’s sitting at the kitchen table when Chris gets in.

“Where are the kids?”

“At Janet’s. Can you sit down please? We need to talk.”

“Sure but give me a few minutes to get changed.”

“Sit down. I found something behind the washing machine this morning.”

“I told you to leave it to me – that’s my stuff. I think we’ve spoken before about how I don’t like people going through my things.”

“Chris, I didn’t lever open a locked drawer. It was taped to the back of the washing machine.”

“It doesn’t matter where it was.”

“Are you kidding me? Do you really think you’re in a position to pull off moral outrage here?”

“The point stands that you have violated my privacy.”

“It’s so difficult to tell whether child pornography is worse than opening a mystery package.”

“This isn’t a competition. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“Am I? Let’s carry on and see where I get to. You know what I found?”

“The USB sticks?”

“Mm hmm.”

“Did you open them? You shouldn’t have done, they’re password protected.”

“I opened them and I know exactly what’s on them.”

“It isn’t mine.”

“Were you looking after them for a friend? You’re not fourteen and you’re not trying to explain a copy of Playboy tucked under your mattress.”

“No, I don’t mean it like that, obviously. I mean the material isn’t for my use. It’s not what you think.” There is a silence. Jess is aware that it’s not a good idea to roam the featureless prairies of comparative guilt.

“It is precisely what I think. You have been downloading illegal pornography.”

“I mean, I’m not a paedo. I get the pictures and sell them. My involvement is purely commercial. It’s not, you know, sexual.”

“Ooh, add that to your CV. You can put it in Other Interests: Purveying sexual images of children but not enjoying them.”

“A bit hypocritical.”

“What?”

“You wear clothes made by kids no older than Chloe, eat food produced by slaves working in the black economy, we’re all complicit.”

“Not the time Chris.”

“The world’s spoilt, it’s corrupt, it’s… we keep our heads down and try to live as comfortably as we can next to all the filth and horror. That’s all this is, I’m finding a way to make us comfortable. You’re lucky it’s me getting my hands dirty.”

This is both pre-rehearsed and deeply unconvincing.

“Are you advancing a kind of Marxist-Leninist defence of kiddy porn?”

“Be as sarcastic as you want but it’s not like you haven’t enjoyed the house, the car, the holidays, the lovely long baby break from work. Jacob’s eighteen months now, I don’t see you scouring the job ads.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I mean this house, the cars, the kids, everything, I work hard to provide but it’s not always enough and I never wanted you to have to work so I started compiling this stuff and selling it on. I’m not a paedophile, I’m not making the stuff and I’m not watching it, I’m just making a bit of money on it.”

Chris stands up and goes to the washing machine. He reaches around the back and gropes around.

“Do you know what, Chris? Having discovered my husband’s extensive collection of illegal pornography I chose not to carefully repackage it and return it to its hiding place.”

“Don’t talk to me like that.”

It’s said quietly but Jess understands that it is intended as an instruction rather than a request.

“Chris, it’s over.”

“What’s over?”

“This marriage, this family, this...”

“You’re angry you don’t mean that.”

Jess takes a deep breath and decides that it’s time for her own pre-prepared speech.

“Do you know what else I found along with the images?”

“No, Jess, what did you find?”

“I found the crypto.”

“It’s my money, I earned it.”

“But Chris, I know how you earned it. You need to transfer all of it to me tonight.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll tell the police everything, Chris.”

“You’d do that to the kids would you?”

“I’ll have to live with that. The thing is Chris, whether you transfer the money or you don’t, you’re going to leave the house tonight and never come back. One way is you transfer me the money, I let you go on your way and you never contact us again. The other involves a squad car, neighbours watching from their front steps as police carry all of our electronics out in those see through evidence bags.”

“Give me one good reason to trust you.”

“I don’t need to, trust isn’t part of the thing that is us anymore.”

“It’s not that easy to transfer crypto.”

“I’ve looked into this a little if it were cash, you’re right, there would be all sorts of checks. But crypto’s so much easier. I’ve set up a Serbian bank account, at somewhere called Go Ahead Bank. You’re going to convert your coins into cash and deposit it there.”

“You think you’re clever, don’t you?”

“Chris, you need to face up to this. Just get your phone and do it now.”

Once the money is in her account, he says, “We’re in a bit of a mess, eh?” He smiles, red eyed, tear streaked but not sobbing.

“Not really, no. You need to book a room for the Travelodge for tonight. I can’t have you in the house when the kids are back.”

“Oh, come on, Jess, don’t be unreasonable.”

“I’m not being unreasonable, Chris, I’m just trying to think straight. You need to do the same thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“You need to understand that I’m deadly serious about this. You know the consequence of making this difficult?”

“Are you threatening me Jess?”

“Do you know what happens to people like you in prison? They’ll hurt you while you’re in there and when you come out you’re a pariah. Your family, friends, job everything is gone. You don’t have a life at all…”

“But I love the kids. Come on, you know that.”

“I don’t care. They and I are better off without you. In fact, you can book the room now and give me your house keys.”

“Ok, ok, I can see you’re angry and, truth is, I don’t blame you but let’s talk it out.”

“Chris, book the room now, if you don’t, I’ll simply call the police.”

He complies amid sounds of exasperated bafflement. “You’re mad, Jess, completely mad, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Now, go.”

“We need to talk, you said so yourself!”

“Chris, I am so serious right now, get out of the house.”

“But I don’t have any of my stuff.”

“I’ll pack a bag and leave it at reception later this evening.”

“Jess, just think, the kids need their dad, and, honestly, you need me. Do you really think you’ll cope by yourself?”

“Chris, please. Don’t stop, don’t speak, don’t do anything other than walk out. If you make another sound, I call the police immediately. Go.”

Shaking his head and sighing, he stands and says “None of this is over Jess. Not until I say it is.”

Two hours later the kids are back at home and finally asleep. Chris messages “My stuff?”

Jess comes out of her revery and makes the call “Oh, hi, yeah, this is going to sound a bit odd but I need to report my husband for a crime…”