LOUK Fan Fic: The Family Photo
Title: The Family Photo
Author: charlsie_esq
Author's website: http://charlsie-esq.livejournal.com/]
Fandom: Law & Order UK
Characters: Matt Devlin, Alesha Phillips
Pairing: Matt/Alesha
Summary: A series of revelations
Spoilers: None. This occurs sometime in A/U, future.
Beta: The very patient and kind diamondrocker. A thousand thanks! Your edits and honesty always make my work better!
Author’s Notes: I have walked boldly through the denial door into the world of A/U and closed it behind me. There was no “Deal” as far my A/U is concerned. Moving on with my canon, I wanted to tackle Matt’s backstory and introduce the rest of his family. I love the idea that though Alesha grew up in an impoverished area, Matt was the one with the miserable childhood. Throw away lines in Series 5 continued the trend of referring to Matt’s childhood without dealing with what must be incredible trauma. Matt got out okay. How? This is my answer to that question.
WARNING: Discusses physical/sexual abuse and rape.
Disclaimer: Dick Wolf and ITV own all things of value. The imaginings are mine.
The Family Photo
Matt was enjoying a rare Saturday off as he sat with Alesha on the floor of his flat, eating pizza in front of the telly. They’d been watching Master and Commander - again. The DVD had long since ended, but they had yet to peel themselves from the floor.
“The little boys in this movie just break my heart,” Alesha sighed as she picked up the DVD jacket. “Can you imagine? At ten years old - all that danger and being committed to a lifetime career?”
Matt started eyeing the uneaten pizza slice. “I knew what I wanted to do for a living when I was that age.”
Alesha continued to examine the DVD jacket. “And when you realized that you were never going to play for Arsenal, did you actually weep, or did you just quietly put your football boots away?”
When Matt stopped laughing a heavy silence seemed to fall over him. It was a specific type of silence that Alesha had learned to recognize, and she knew to tread carefully with him when he entered into this mood.
“So how old were you when you decided you wanted to be a police officer?” she asked, then waited patiently for his answer.
Matt blinked, snapping out of whatever had thoughts had been occupying his mind. “Nine.” Then he furrowed his brows for a second as he remembered. “No, eight.”
“What was it? A detective on television?” She nudged the pizza box towards him with her foot.
“No, my foster father was a detective,” Matt announced, reaching in for the last slice.
“Your what?” Alesha had to force out the question, almost losing her ability to speak with the shock. They’d known each other for years before they’d even started dating. They’d been a couple for more than six months and Matt had never mentioned being in a foster home - until now. “When were you in a foster home?”
“When I was eight,” he mumbled through a mouthful of pizza.
Alesha grabbed the remote away from him and turned off the television, not wanting any distractions. She just looked at him and waited for him to continue.
Matt glanced at her then, knowing that he hadn’t answered her question to her satisfaction, and he swallowed as he turned a self-conscious gaze to the floor. “I was eight. Social services sent me and Luke to go live with this couple in Wanstead.”
“And he was a detective?” Alesha repeated, struggling to absorb this new information and imagining Matt and his younger brother being ferried out of their home and into the hands of strangers.
“Will? Yea, he was in the Flying Squad,” he recounted, smiling wistfully. “When I first heard that, I thought he was a paratrooper. Soon as I met him I wanted to be exactly like him, copied everything he did.”
She shifted, turning herself to face him.
He looked over at her, his face brightening for a fleeting moment. “One day I asked him if he was ever scared jumping out of those planes, and he laughed,” Matt remembered, chuckling to himself. “Then, he explained to me what he did and I just thought, ‘That’s what I want to do.’”
As thoughtful as his story had been, Alesha furrowed her brows, still confused by it all. “Why did social services take you into care?”
Matt wasn’t looking at her now, but instead was eyeing his pizza crust. “You know, abuse and neglect,” he sighed, tossing the uneaten crust back into the box.
“Matt,” she whispered, reaching tentatively for his arm before pulling back.
He snapped back; seeing Alesha’s concerned yet confused expression, he realized that he wasn’t exactly explaining himself well and that she obviously had dozens of questions racing through that lawyer-brain of hers. Matt nodded and shifted his position so that he could more easily face her. “One night my father came home from a binge and . . . .” he trailed off, his eyes taking on a distant quality as he turned inwards, reliving the memories.
He had tried this before -- to maintain eye contact while he described his childhood, but it had never worked. The memories always seemed to prove too difficult for him, especially those surrounding his mother or sisters. Disturbed by the memories that were surfacing, Matt anxiously rubbed at the hair on the back of his head, and rather than meet Alesha’s eyes again, kept his gaze leveled at the floor. “He’d been at it pretty hard I guess. When he came home he started a row with my Mum. He hit her once and she fell down, and then he just kept hitting her.”
Alesha put a comforting hand on his arm, squeezing it gently.
Matt looked up into her eyes and took a deep breath. He looked down at her hand and putting his hand over hers, his courage summoned, he started again. “By the end of the night, he’d all but bashed her head in.” Matt shut his eyes tight for a few seconds and shivered slightly as he picked up where he left off. “So, an ambulance came and took my Mum to hospital. The police took my father away. Then social services came and told us kids to pack some of our things.”
Alesha didn’t move. “How come only you and Luke went to Wanstead?”
Matt looked up at her curiously. “No one takes five kids in one go, you know that. They split us up.”
She thought for a moment about his fractured family, spread across London in pairs, like sentinels, then she nodded, considering the perceived burden of taking in and caring for five children.
“Tommy and John went to one home, Maire went to another. They're older, so you know, older kids go to different homes than the younger ones. Detective Inspector Will Bates and his wife Rose got me and Luke,” he announced, matter-of-factly, then cleared his throat. “They couldn’t have kids of their own so they signed up to be foster carers and they got the pair of us when we were 7 and 8. And for about two and a half solid years, we were a like normal family.”
“Nearly three years? I would have thought it was an emergency placement.”
“It was - at first - but then social services interviewed us, found out about the abuse and it became a ‘short term placement.’” Matt smirked but shrugged his shoulders. “My Mum worked to get us back but when it was time for us to go home, Will and Rose fought to keep us.”
“Did they petition for adoption?”
He nodded. “It was about a year of meeting with lawyers and social workers and psychologists about whether we should to stay with Will and Rose or go back to our Mum.” He furrowed his brows. “They must have spent thousands of pounds.”
“But your Mum won back custody?”
“Yea, she painted a pretty picture and kept my father away just long enough to get us back and then ‘Surprise kids, Dad’s home.’” He shook his head in disappointment and revulsion.
“She lied to Social Services?”
“She wanted her family back, so she did whatever she had to do to get us all back under one roof. Only me and Tommy seem to understand that now.”
Alesha nodded, knowing that only one of Matt’s siblings kept in contact with their mother besides him. “So, if you were eight, your Mum pregnant with Maeve when this happened?”
“No, Maeve was born about a year later.”
“So how did Social Services account for your mother’s pregnancy if they didn’t know your father was back in the picture?”
Matt heaved a heavy sigh. “My mother didn’t get pregnant,” he revealed, a concentrated frown firmly spreading across his face.
“I don’t understand.”
He turned a glance towards Alesha. “Haven’t you noticed that Maeve doesn’t look much like the rest of us?” he asked, narrowing his eyes as if willing her to see what he was describing. “Her eyes are brown, not our --- what-do-you-call-it: Devlin-blue. The rest of us all more or less two years apart, but Maeve is eight years younger than Luke. That never struck you as odd?”
Alesha was baffled. “But your Mum showed me family pictures and she said ‘Maeve is my youngest.’”
Matt nodded slowly to himself. “She’s lying. Well, maybe not the way she sees it, but it’s not the truth.” Matt turned and met her eyes, only then seeing the confusion on her face, and measured the next few words. “She’s my niece, Alesha, not my sister.” His tone was plain and as matter of fact as when he told her he didn’t like ketchup on his chips. Dismissing the gravity of what he was explaining to her with a shrug, he continued. “Maire is her mother. Mum doesn’t tell people that. She won’t. It’s just one of the reasons why Maire won’t speak to her.”
“How is Maire even old enough to be Maeve’s mother?” Alesha asked, astonished at the revelation.
“Maire was 14 when social services split us up. She was sent to a home by herself - I guess because she was the only girl, I dunno. Anyway, she was uh. . . .” He closed his eyes and blanched, but continued after a deep breath and long, slow exhale. “She told us she was raped and molested when she was there. She says it went on for weeks and no one she told did anything to stop it. By the time Mum got her back, she was far along with Maeve.”
Alesha winced.
He stood up and started folding the pizza box. “Instead of letting her be adopted, Mum raised Maeve as one of us. Mum was only 33 at the time - no one doubted she could be Maeve’s mother.”
Matt got up and went into the kitchen to discard the pizza box though still talking from the other room as Alesha continued to listen. “By the time I got home, Maeve was a toddler, and for all we knew, we had a new baby sister.” Matt returned, his smile stiff and fake.
“And Maire kept it quiet?”
“Well yea, mostly,” he shrugged. “When Maeve was 13, Maire told her the truth.” Matt took his place beside her on the floor. “My Mum begged her not to say anything but, Maire wouldn’t be stopped.”
“How’d she take it?”
“Maeve? That was the funny part, she already knew,” he smiled sadly. “My father told her when she was 11. No warning, just sat her down one day after school and told her. He even showed her the birth certificate and all. After that, Maeve told us that she’d just been waiting for one of us to admit the truth to her.” He was staring at the blank television screen as if he were watching the events he had been describing unfold in front of his eyes. “Maire took her to Bristol the next month.” He looked over to Alesha for a moment to explain, “There was no formal adoption giving my parents any rights so, Maire just took her.” He faced forward again. “Mum was inconsolable for weeks.”
“When did you find out?”
“I was 22 or 23, I’m not sure. Right before Maire told Maeve, she told the rest of us.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “That was a day.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes while Alesha let all that he’d said sink in. The sun was starting to set and she stood up and turned on a lamp. She moved to a second lamp but reconsidered, instead returning to her place next to him.
“So what about Tommy and John? Your mother was able to get Maire back after a couple of months, but it took her two and a half years to get you and Luke back. What about your brothers?” Alesha had met Matt’s older brothers only a few weeks before when the pair came to London to visit Matt on his birthday.
“It took her about six months to get Maire back and it took another five or six months I think for John and Tommy to come home.”
“But she had to fight to get a judge to restore her custody of you and Luke?”
“Yea. In the end, the judge said it was ‘more important for the family unit to return to its natural state.’ We just stood there in shock. Rose howled in the courtroom.“ Matt closed his eyes and shook his head at the memory, rubbing the back of his neck again. “I’ll never forget the sound of it.”
Alesha stretched out and moved closer to him, mirroring his gaze at the blank television screen. They were both reflected in it and Alesha found that since he had stopped looking at her, she could get a better view of his face in the screen. “Did you boys want to stay with them?”
“Yea, but we also wanted to be back with our brothers and sister, so it was hard for us to choose. And we didn’t know she was going to bring our father back once we were all home. “
Alesha reached out and took his hand. “Did he get help while he was away?”
Matt looked at her with a confused expression.
“Your father? Did the abuse stop once you were all back together?”
Matt spit out a laugh. “No.”
She squeezed his hand, and noticing that he was wearing his leather bracelet, she ran her fingers along the band. “Did anything change after he got back?”
“Yea, it got worse.”
“Matt, I’m so sorry,” she consoled.
He exhaled, and this time he held eye contact with her as he spoke. “Let me explain. It was different for all of us once we were all together again. Tommy and John ended up in a really rough home, and they learned how to fight there. So, when my father came home and the hitting started again, they fought back. If my father would go after Mum, Tommy would go after him. Then, instead of one-way beatings, there would be brawls - I mean, furniture broken, bones broken, the lot.” He closed his eyes, as if struggling to hold back the painful memories, but he continued speaking. “For the most part, it went from ordinary child abuse to family violence - everyone was in it. It was -----.” He didn’t finish the thought, but only exhaled shaking his head.
Alesha was frowning now. “But why didn’t it stop once you started getting older. I mean, I see how easy it is to torture little ones but you got bigger, stronger - it should have stopped.”
Opening his eyes, he shrugged again. “It changed. At some point every one of us would get it in our heads to try to fight back, but you know, our father was always bigger. So after the first time you try to stand your ground, there would be fewer slaps, more punches and the occasional choking to the point of unconsciousness. The older you get, the harder it is to break an arm or something, but ribs crack without too much effort.” Matt appeared to be struggling to avoid being overwhelmed by what he was remembering. He shook his head again and cursed.
After a few seconds, he looked over at her sheepishly. “Sorry.”
‘No, no,” Alesha tutted, then kissed his cheek. “I’m so sorry.” Her heart broke at the thought of injuries he had suffered.
He smiled at her sympathetically. “It was a long time ago.”
“We don’t have to talk about this anymore if you don’t want to.”
Matt blinked slowly. “No. I want to tell you.” Matt rarely discussed his life before the academy. Tonight, he was making a supreme effort.
Alesha had abandoned the bracelet a few minutes before but went back to his hand, this time stroking the back of it. “So this just went on and on, all the time?” she whispered.
“Oh you know, the odd hospital stay interrupted the routine. And when his family came to visit, there would be a break, you know for appearances.” He looked away, over at nothing. “John ran away a couple of times before the police stopped bringing him back. Tommy ended up at Feltham on a B&E for a while. That’s how he got out.”
“But why didn’t you just tell a social worker or someone at the hospital what was happening.”
Now, he took her hand in his. “Mum would stop us. She told us that if we told anyone the truth, they would split us up again.” He squinted, as if watching the memory flash before him. “And Maire would back her up, she’d say things like, ‘Maybe they’ll send you some place where you can get molested.’ We didn’t know what happened to her but it would scare us just the same; kept us quiet. When I think about it now, I just think she was terrified of losing Maeve.”
Alesha frowned and turned so that she could face him, smoothing down the hair on the back of his head. “I’m sorry.” It was all she could say.
Matt closed his eyes and leaned into her, leaning his head on hers for a brief moment. “We all found a way to get through it.”
Alesha considered her next question for a few moments more before she asked it. “Why do you have relationship with your mother but the others haven’t?”
Matt rubbed his forehead and scrunched up his face in a mix of frustration and emotional exhaustion. “So many reasons. You know, Luke feels like she didn’t stop him so, in effect, she helped my father do what he did to us. It’s the same with John. They don’t believe that Mum was a victim then.”
“But you do.”
“I think she couldn’t make him stop.” Matt sighed. “Maybe because I believe she didn’t have a choice, maybe that’s why I forgive her, I dunno. I think if given the choice, she wouldn’t have wanted to be his punching bag all those years or to see her kids beaten, her daughter raped, family split up, none of it.” Matt started shaking his head as if he was shaking the awful thoughts out of it.
“So you stay in touch with her but you never talk to your father.”
“None of us do.”
“So, why do you think Maeve shouldn’t take sides?”
Matt shot Alesha a disbelieving look but then his expression softened. “Maeve doesn’t speak to Mum out of some misguided loyalty to her mother.” He shrugged again. “I just don’t see what she has to be so angry about, you know? My father never touched her.”
“Come on Matt,” Alesha chided softly. “Don’t be so short sighted. Maybe she felt like she was lied to most of her life. Maybe she feels guilty.”
Matt flinched, looking at her with marked confusion.
Alesha continued carefully. “Do you think she didn’t suffer, watching her brothers get knocked about night after night? Don’t you think she might have felt responsible for some of those beatings? Maybe she isn’t siding with her Mum, maybe it isn’t misguided loyalty to Maire, at all but maybe she feels some sort of guilt for what happened to you boys, while she was the one who was spared.”
Matt didn’t stop looking at her, but his gaze seemed to drift further away.
“What about your neighbors? They had to see things, or hear them?”
Matt’s focus returned to her. “Of course, they saw the bruises and maybe someone even saw him hit one of us. But you have to remember, back then it wasn’t the way it is now.” He cocked his head to the right, both eyebrows raised, and he continued. “It was an Irish neighborhood, you know, not so much trust in the authorities, and a little too much faith in the church. So a neighbor might tell a priest, who would have a talk with my father, things would be quiet for two weeks and then it would start again.”
She shook her head. “When I was a kid, I would have never guessed anything like that could happen in those pretty houses across the River.”
Matt’s far away look returned. “Well now you know the River has nothing to do with it.”
Another silence fell between them. Matt got up and took a few brisk steps into his bedroom where he fished a picture frame out of a drawer. When he came back he handed it to Alesha before disappearing into the kitchen again.
Alesha stared at the picture of a tiny, bushy haired Matt sporting a huge smile. A very young Luke sat beside him with a similar but gap-toothed grin. In what appeared to be a park, a nice-looking young couple, whom Alesha could only guess were Will and Rose, flanked Matt and Luke in a ‘family picture’. Judging by the clothing and the boys’ hair, the picture was probably taken sometime in the early 80s. Matt didn’t have many pictures from his childhood, yet he had kept this one in a special place and Alesha felt privileged that he would share it with her. The sight of the smiling boys moved her and she suddenly felt as if she were going to cry.
Matt returned with wine glasses and put one down in next to her before returning to his former place on the floor. “We all have a copy of that. The four of us, I mean.”
“So you were able to stay in touch Will and Rose, then?”
“Luke had worked something out with Rose before we left so we could send letters back and forth. We even got to see Rose a couple times over the years. And when Luke was 16, and I was 17, we moved back with them.”
“You did?” Alesha was startled.
“I wanted to finish school, and Luke was desperate to get out. Will and Rose told us that we could come back - so we did.” Matt was looking into his wine glass and then reached in to fish out an errant piece of cork.
“That must have broken your mother’s heart.”
Matt half nodded in agreement. “It took about 8 years, but we went back. Will helped me get into Hendon. It was Will who gave Luke the money to start that pub.”
“So that’s why it’s called The Rose!” Alesha said, mostly to herself.
Matt picked up her glass, making sure no bits of cork had made their way into her wine. Satisfied that her glass was clear, he put it down and caught Alesha’s eyes with his, having avoided them for the last while.
She reached out again and rubbed a soothing hand down his arm. “Sometimes you have to find your family, I guess.”
He looked at her dreamily. “Or make it.”
They sat side by side in silence again as Alesha looked closer at the faces of his foster parents. Will had bushy blond hair too and wore long sideburns and a mustache, typical of 80s’ detectives. Rose had dark hair that, in the picture, she had styled into a side swept ponytail, with glasses perched on her nose.
Alesha kept staring at the picture. “So it was Will who inspired you?”
“Yea. He would talk to me about the cases he was working on all the time. And once he even took me to watch him testify. After that, it was all I wanted . . . to protect people.”
Alesha smiled with understanding. “What else did you get from him?”
“He used to read a lot. The other room there,” Matt gestured to the half room in his flat, “that’s his influence. He used to read all the time.” The room had no window so it wasn’t a bedroom, it wasn’t much larger than a jail cell, in fact, and Matt kept it full of books. Bookcases lined the walls and on the floor were stacks of even more books, there not being enough space to find them a home on the already overcrowded shelves. He’d once told her that reading was how he kept himself from taking his cases home with him - he would get lost in the books and disconnect from whatever he’d seen that day. A simple aviator chair with a footrest was the only other piece of furniture aside from the bookcases. Alesha loved that room.
“And her?” she asked, pointing at Rose in the photo.
“Rose? She was brilliant. She was an art teacher. She used to make lamps, taught us how to use a blow torch.” His face lit up as he spoke.
Alesha was touched by what she saw. “You must have been very happy.”
“We were lucky.” Matt reached over and took the picture and looked at it fondly.
“What does Rose think of how you boys turned out then?” Alesha smirked, gently prodding him in the ribs with her elbow.
Matt abruptly turned to face her. “You should ask her.”
“What?” Alesha was taken a bit by surprise.
Matt was nodding quickly, “You can meet her and then you can ask her.”
“None of your other girlfriends have ever asked her if she is proud of you?”
“She’s never met any of my girlfriends.”
Alesha was stunned. “And you want her to meet me?”
“Yes.” Matt was nonplussed at her reaction. “I think you two will get on really well.”
“And you never thought she would get on with anyone before?”
“I wasn’t committed to anyone before,” Matt stated simply.
He had no idea of the gravity of what he’d just said to her. He couldn’t. Alesha blinked quickly. “Okay.”
“We should go tomorrow. They’re usually home on Sundays.” Matt continued, still oblivious to her shock. He jumped up and went to his phone, eager to put his plan into action. He sat in the book room on the phone to Will, and started to make plans for them to drive out to Wanstead the next morning.
Alesha hadn’t moved. She was still stunned by all he’d told her. Before today, he’d only surrendered scraps of his past, and reluctantly at that. Today had been different for a host of reasons -- the most important of which being that, today, he’d told her about a time in his childhood when he had felt safe and happy. And he had wanted to bring her into that world. She could hear him on the phone in the other room.
“I know, I’ve been really busy with work.”
She had to admit to herself that she hadn’t given much objective thought to the status of their relationship. Maybe it was because they had woven themselves into each other’s life so effortlessly.
“I’m going to bring Alesha with me. I want you to meet her.“
This meeting was some sort of benchmark - that she couldn’t deny.
“How about we meet you after Mass?”
Alesha smiled listening to him. She hadn’t really taken the time to think about where they were going, and she had to admit that she hadn’t thought about it simply because she was happy, and they were happy together.
“No, she doesn’t eat red meat.”
Looking back now, she realized that they’d become one of those couples that cocooned themselves in a world of their own, easily forgetting to see friends or family for weeks, filling all the empty spaces in each other’s life. They had, quietly and soberly, started to build a life together. How had she missed this happening?
“I think she is, yea.”
He had said he was committed. It wasn’t really a surprise - she was committed too - but it was strange to hear him say it in that way. It was strange and exciting at the same time. Alesha felt her cheeks flush with a surge of happiness and excitement and she clasped her hands over them in an attempt to cool them down.
“Right, see you tomorrow.”
The sounds of his bare feet padding towards her on the floor snapped Alesha out of her reverie.
Matt emerged from his conversation lit up like a Christmas tree. “We’re all set for Sunday chicken roast.”
Alesha beamed back at him. “I can’t wait!”
###
Author: charlsie_esq
Author's website: http://charlsie-esq.livejournal.com/]
Fandom: Law & Order UK
Characters: Matt Devlin, Alesha Phillips
Pairing: Matt/Alesha
Summary: A series of revelations
Spoilers: None. This occurs sometime in A/U, future.
Beta: The very patient and kind diamondrocker. A thousand thanks! Your edits and honesty always make my work better!
Author’s Notes: I have walked boldly through the denial door into the world of A/U and closed it behind me. There was no “Deal” as far my A/U is concerned. Moving on with my canon, I wanted to tackle Matt’s backstory and introduce the rest of his family. I love the idea that though Alesha grew up in an impoverished area, Matt was the one with the miserable childhood. Throw away lines in Series 5 continued the trend of referring to Matt’s childhood without dealing with what must be incredible trauma. Matt got out okay. How? This is my answer to that question.
WARNING: Discusses physical/sexual abuse and rape.
Disclaimer: Dick Wolf and ITV own all things of value. The imaginings are mine.
The Family Photo
Matt was enjoying a rare Saturday off as he sat with Alesha on the floor of his flat, eating pizza in front of the telly. They’d been watching Master and Commander - again. The DVD had long since ended, but they had yet to peel themselves from the floor.
“The little boys in this movie just break my heart,” Alesha sighed as she picked up the DVD jacket. “Can you imagine? At ten years old - all that danger and being committed to a lifetime career?”
Matt started eyeing the uneaten pizza slice. “I knew what I wanted to do for a living when I was that age.”
Alesha continued to examine the DVD jacket. “And when you realized that you were never going to play for Arsenal, did you actually weep, or did you just quietly put your football boots away?”
When Matt stopped laughing a heavy silence seemed to fall over him. It was a specific type of silence that Alesha had learned to recognize, and she knew to tread carefully with him when he entered into this mood.
“So how old were you when you decided you wanted to be a police officer?” she asked, then waited patiently for his answer.
Matt blinked, snapping out of whatever had thoughts had been occupying his mind. “Nine.” Then he furrowed his brows for a second as he remembered. “No, eight.”
“What was it? A detective on television?” She nudged the pizza box towards him with her foot.
“No, my foster father was a detective,” Matt announced, reaching in for the last slice.
“Your what?” Alesha had to force out the question, almost losing her ability to speak with the shock. They’d known each other for years before they’d even started dating. They’d been a couple for more than six months and Matt had never mentioned being in a foster home - until now. “When were you in a foster home?”
“When I was eight,” he mumbled through a mouthful of pizza.
Alesha grabbed the remote away from him and turned off the television, not wanting any distractions. She just looked at him and waited for him to continue.
Matt glanced at her then, knowing that he hadn’t answered her question to her satisfaction, and he swallowed as he turned a self-conscious gaze to the floor. “I was eight. Social services sent me and Luke to go live with this couple in Wanstead.”
“And he was a detective?” Alesha repeated, struggling to absorb this new information and imagining Matt and his younger brother being ferried out of their home and into the hands of strangers.
“Will? Yea, he was in the Flying Squad,” he recounted, smiling wistfully. “When I first heard that, I thought he was a paratrooper. Soon as I met him I wanted to be exactly like him, copied everything he did.”
She shifted, turning herself to face him.
He looked over at her, his face brightening for a fleeting moment. “One day I asked him if he was ever scared jumping out of those planes, and he laughed,” Matt remembered, chuckling to himself. “Then, he explained to me what he did and I just thought, ‘That’s what I want to do.’”
As thoughtful as his story had been, Alesha furrowed her brows, still confused by it all. “Why did social services take you into care?”
Matt wasn’t looking at her now, but instead was eyeing his pizza crust. “You know, abuse and neglect,” he sighed, tossing the uneaten crust back into the box.
“Matt,” she whispered, reaching tentatively for his arm before pulling back.
He snapped back; seeing Alesha’s concerned yet confused expression, he realized that he wasn’t exactly explaining himself well and that she obviously had dozens of questions racing through that lawyer-brain of hers. Matt nodded and shifted his position so that he could more easily face her. “One night my father came home from a binge and . . . .” he trailed off, his eyes taking on a distant quality as he turned inwards, reliving the memories.
He had tried this before -- to maintain eye contact while he described his childhood, but it had never worked. The memories always seemed to prove too difficult for him, especially those surrounding his mother or sisters. Disturbed by the memories that were surfacing, Matt anxiously rubbed at the hair on the back of his head, and rather than meet Alesha’s eyes again, kept his gaze leveled at the floor. “He’d been at it pretty hard I guess. When he came home he started a row with my Mum. He hit her once and she fell down, and then he just kept hitting her.”
Alesha put a comforting hand on his arm, squeezing it gently.
Matt looked up into her eyes and took a deep breath. He looked down at her hand and putting his hand over hers, his courage summoned, he started again. “By the end of the night, he’d all but bashed her head in.” Matt shut his eyes tight for a few seconds and shivered slightly as he picked up where he left off. “So, an ambulance came and took my Mum to hospital. The police took my father away. Then social services came and told us kids to pack some of our things.”
Alesha didn’t move. “How come only you and Luke went to Wanstead?”
Matt looked up at her curiously. “No one takes five kids in one go, you know that. They split us up.”
She thought for a moment about his fractured family, spread across London in pairs, like sentinels, then she nodded, considering the perceived burden of taking in and caring for five children.
“Tommy and John went to one home, Maire went to another. They're older, so you know, older kids go to different homes than the younger ones. Detective Inspector Will Bates and his wife Rose got me and Luke,” he announced, matter-of-factly, then cleared his throat. “They couldn’t have kids of their own so they signed up to be foster carers and they got the pair of us when we were 7 and 8. And for about two and a half solid years, we were a like normal family.”
“Nearly three years? I would have thought it was an emergency placement.”
“It was - at first - but then social services interviewed us, found out about the abuse and it became a ‘short term placement.’” Matt smirked but shrugged his shoulders. “My Mum worked to get us back but when it was time for us to go home, Will and Rose fought to keep us.”
“Did they petition for adoption?”
He nodded. “It was about a year of meeting with lawyers and social workers and psychologists about whether we should to stay with Will and Rose or go back to our Mum.” He furrowed his brows. “They must have spent thousands of pounds.”
“But your Mum won back custody?”
“Yea, she painted a pretty picture and kept my father away just long enough to get us back and then ‘Surprise kids, Dad’s home.’” He shook his head in disappointment and revulsion.
“She lied to Social Services?”
“She wanted her family back, so she did whatever she had to do to get us all back under one roof. Only me and Tommy seem to understand that now.”
Alesha nodded, knowing that only one of Matt’s siblings kept in contact with their mother besides him. “So, if you were eight, your Mum pregnant with Maeve when this happened?”
“No, Maeve was born about a year later.”
“So how did Social Services account for your mother’s pregnancy if they didn’t know your father was back in the picture?”
Matt heaved a heavy sigh. “My mother didn’t get pregnant,” he revealed, a concentrated frown firmly spreading across his face.
“I don’t understand.”
He turned a glance towards Alesha. “Haven’t you noticed that Maeve doesn’t look much like the rest of us?” he asked, narrowing his eyes as if willing her to see what he was describing. “Her eyes are brown, not our --- what-do-you-call-it: Devlin-blue. The rest of us all more or less two years apart, but Maeve is eight years younger than Luke. That never struck you as odd?”
Alesha was baffled. “But your Mum showed me family pictures and she said ‘Maeve is my youngest.’”
Matt nodded slowly to himself. “She’s lying. Well, maybe not the way she sees it, but it’s not the truth.” Matt turned and met her eyes, only then seeing the confusion on her face, and measured the next few words. “She’s my niece, Alesha, not my sister.” His tone was plain and as matter of fact as when he told her he didn’t like ketchup on his chips. Dismissing the gravity of what he was explaining to her with a shrug, he continued. “Maire is her mother. Mum doesn’t tell people that. She won’t. It’s just one of the reasons why Maire won’t speak to her.”
“How is Maire even old enough to be Maeve’s mother?” Alesha asked, astonished at the revelation.
“Maire was 14 when social services split us up. She was sent to a home by herself - I guess because she was the only girl, I dunno. Anyway, she was uh. . . .” He closed his eyes and blanched, but continued after a deep breath and long, slow exhale. “She told us she was raped and molested when she was there. She says it went on for weeks and no one she told did anything to stop it. By the time Mum got her back, she was far along with Maeve.”
Alesha winced.
He stood up and started folding the pizza box. “Instead of letting her be adopted, Mum raised Maeve as one of us. Mum was only 33 at the time - no one doubted she could be Maeve’s mother.”
Matt got up and went into the kitchen to discard the pizza box though still talking from the other room as Alesha continued to listen. “By the time I got home, Maeve was a toddler, and for all we knew, we had a new baby sister.” Matt returned, his smile stiff and fake.
“And Maire kept it quiet?”
“Well yea, mostly,” he shrugged. “When Maeve was 13, Maire told her the truth.” Matt took his place beside her on the floor. “My Mum begged her not to say anything but, Maire wouldn’t be stopped.”
“How’d she take it?”
“Maeve? That was the funny part, she already knew,” he smiled sadly. “My father told her when she was 11. No warning, just sat her down one day after school and told her. He even showed her the birth certificate and all. After that, Maeve told us that she’d just been waiting for one of us to admit the truth to her.” He was staring at the blank television screen as if he were watching the events he had been describing unfold in front of his eyes. “Maire took her to Bristol the next month.” He looked over to Alesha for a moment to explain, “There was no formal adoption giving my parents any rights so, Maire just took her.” He faced forward again. “Mum was inconsolable for weeks.”
“When did you find out?”
“I was 22 or 23, I’m not sure. Right before Maire told Maeve, she told the rest of us.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “That was a day.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes while Alesha let all that he’d said sink in. The sun was starting to set and she stood up and turned on a lamp. She moved to a second lamp but reconsidered, instead returning to her place next to him.
“So what about Tommy and John? Your mother was able to get Maire back after a couple of months, but it took her two and a half years to get you and Luke back. What about your brothers?” Alesha had met Matt’s older brothers only a few weeks before when the pair came to London to visit Matt on his birthday.
“It took her about six months to get Maire back and it took another five or six months I think for John and Tommy to come home.”
“But she had to fight to get a judge to restore her custody of you and Luke?”
“Yea. In the end, the judge said it was ‘more important for the family unit to return to its natural state.’ We just stood there in shock. Rose howled in the courtroom.“ Matt closed his eyes and shook his head at the memory, rubbing the back of his neck again. “I’ll never forget the sound of it.”
Alesha stretched out and moved closer to him, mirroring his gaze at the blank television screen. They were both reflected in it and Alesha found that since he had stopped looking at her, she could get a better view of his face in the screen. “Did you boys want to stay with them?”
“Yea, but we also wanted to be back with our brothers and sister, so it was hard for us to choose. And we didn’t know she was going to bring our father back once we were all home. “
Alesha reached out and took his hand. “Did he get help while he was away?”
Matt looked at her with a confused expression.
“Your father? Did the abuse stop once you were all back together?”
Matt spit out a laugh. “No.”
She squeezed his hand, and noticing that he was wearing his leather bracelet, she ran her fingers along the band. “Did anything change after he got back?”
“Yea, it got worse.”
“Matt, I’m so sorry,” she consoled.
He exhaled, and this time he held eye contact with her as he spoke. “Let me explain. It was different for all of us once we were all together again. Tommy and John ended up in a really rough home, and they learned how to fight there. So, when my father came home and the hitting started again, they fought back. If my father would go after Mum, Tommy would go after him. Then, instead of one-way beatings, there would be brawls - I mean, furniture broken, bones broken, the lot.” He closed his eyes, as if struggling to hold back the painful memories, but he continued speaking. “For the most part, it went from ordinary child abuse to family violence - everyone was in it. It was -----.” He didn’t finish the thought, but only exhaled shaking his head.
Alesha was frowning now. “But why didn’t it stop once you started getting older. I mean, I see how easy it is to torture little ones but you got bigger, stronger - it should have stopped.”
Opening his eyes, he shrugged again. “It changed. At some point every one of us would get it in our heads to try to fight back, but you know, our father was always bigger. So after the first time you try to stand your ground, there would be fewer slaps, more punches and the occasional choking to the point of unconsciousness. The older you get, the harder it is to break an arm or something, but ribs crack without too much effort.” Matt appeared to be struggling to avoid being overwhelmed by what he was remembering. He shook his head again and cursed.
After a few seconds, he looked over at her sheepishly. “Sorry.”
‘No, no,” Alesha tutted, then kissed his cheek. “I’m so sorry.” Her heart broke at the thought of injuries he had suffered.
He smiled at her sympathetically. “It was a long time ago.”
“We don’t have to talk about this anymore if you don’t want to.”
Matt blinked slowly. “No. I want to tell you.” Matt rarely discussed his life before the academy. Tonight, he was making a supreme effort.
Alesha had abandoned the bracelet a few minutes before but went back to his hand, this time stroking the back of it. “So this just went on and on, all the time?” she whispered.
“Oh you know, the odd hospital stay interrupted the routine. And when his family came to visit, there would be a break, you know for appearances.” He looked away, over at nothing. “John ran away a couple of times before the police stopped bringing him back. Tommy ended up at Feltham on a B&E for a while. That’s how he got out.”
“But why didn’t you just tell a social worker or someone at the hospital what was happening.”
Now, he took her hand in his. “Mum would stop us. She told us that if we told anyone the truth, they would split us up again.” He squinted, as if watching the memory flash before him. “And Maire would back her up, she’d say things like, ‘Maybe they’ll send you some place where you can get molested.’ We didn’t know what happened to her but it would scare us just the same; kept us quiet. When I think about it now, I just think she was terrified of losing Maeve.”
Alesha frowned and turned so that she could face him, smoothing down the hair on the back of his head. “I’m sorry.” It was all she could say.
Matt closed his eyes and leaned into her, leaning his head on hers for a brief moment. “We all found a way to get through it.”
Alesha considered her next question for a few moments more before she asked it. “Why do you have relationship with your mother but the others haven’t?”
Matt rubbed his forehead and scrunched up his face in a mix of frustration and emotional exhaustion. “So many reasons. You know, Luke feels like she didn’t stop him so, in effect, she helped my father do what he did to us. It’s the same with John. They don’t believe that Mum was a victim then.”
“But you do.”
“I think she couldn’t make him stop.” Matt sighed. “Maybe because I believe she didn’t have a choice, maybe that’s why I forgive her, I dunno. I think if given the choice, she wouldn’t have wanted to be his punching bag all those years or to see her kids beaten, her daughter raped, family split up, none of it.” Matt started shaking his head as if he was shaking the awful thoughts out of it.
“So you stay in touch with her but you never talk to your father.”
“None of us do.”
“So, why do you think Maeve shouldn’t take sides?”
Matt shot Alesha a disbelieving look but then his expression softened. “Maeve doesn’t speak to Mum out of some misguided loyalty to her mother.” He shrugged again. “I just don’t see what she has to be so angry about, you know? My father never touched her.”
“Come on Matt,” Alesha chided softly. “Don’t be so short sighted. Maybe she felt like she was lied to most of her life. Maybe she feels guilty.”
Matt flinched, looking at her with marked confusion.
Alesha continued carefully. “Do you think she didn’t suffer, watching her brothers get knocked about night after night? Don’t you think she might have felt responsible for some of those beatings? Maybe she isn’t siding with her Mum, maybe it isn’t misguided loyalty to Maire, at all but maybe she feels some sort of guilt for what happened to you boys, while she was the one who was spared.”
Matt didn’t stop looking at her, but his gaze seemed to drift further away.
“What about your neighbors? They had to see things, or hear them?”
Matt’s focus returned to her. “Of course, they saw the bruises and maybe someone even saw him hit one of us. But you have to remember, back then it wasn’t the way it is now.” He cocked his head to the right, both eyebrows raised, and he continued. “It was an Irish neighborhood, you know, not so much trust in the authorities, and a little too much faith in the church. So a neighbor might tell a priest, who would have a talk with my father, things would be quiet for two weeks and then it would start again.”
She shook her head. “When I was a kid, I would have never guessed anything like that could happen in those pretty houses across the River.”
Matt’s far away look returned. “Well now you know the River has nothing to do with it.”
Another silence fell between them. Matt got up and took a few brisk steps into his bedroom where he fished a picture frame out of a drawer. When he came back he handed it to Alesha before disappearing into the kitchen again.
Alesha stared at the picture of a tiny, bushy haired Matt sporting a huge smile. A very young Luke sat beside him with a similar but gap-toothed grin. In what appeared to be a park, a nice-looking young couple, whom Alesha could only guess were Will and Rose, flanked Matt and Luke in a ‘family picture’. Judging by the clothing and the boys’ hair, the picture was probably taken sometime in the early 80s. Matt didn’t have many pictures from his childhood, yet he had kept this one in a special place and Alesha felt privileged that he would share it with her. The sight of the smiling boys moved her and she suddenly felt as if she were going to cry.
Matt returned with wine glasses and put one down in next to her before returning to his former place on the floor. “We all have a copy of that. The four of us, I mean.”
“So you were able to stay in touch Will and Rose, then?”
“Luke had worked something out with Rose before we left so we could send letters back and forth. We even got to see Rose a couple times over the years. And when Luke was 16, and I was 17, we moved back with them.”
“You did?” Alesha was startled.
“I wanted to finish school, and Luke was desperate to get out. Will and Rose told us that we could come back - so we did.” Matt was looking into his wine glass and then reached in to fish out an errant piece of cork.
“That must have broken your mother’s heart.”
Matt half nodded in agreement. “It took about 8 years, but we went back. Will helped me get into Hendon. It was Will who gave Luke the money to start that pub.”
“So that’s why it’s called The Rose!” Alesha said, mostly to herself.
Matt picked up her glass, making sure no bits of cork had made their way into her wine. Satisfied that her glass was clear, he put it down and caught Alesha’s eyes with his, having avoided them for the last while.
She reached out again and rubbed a soothing hand down his arm. “Sometimes you have to find your family, I guess.”
He looked at her dreamily. “Or make it.”
They sat side by side in silence again as Alesha looked closer at the faces of his foster parents. Will had bushy blond hair too and wore long sideburns and a mustache, typical of 80s’ detectives. Rose had dark hair that, in the picture, she had styled into a side swept ponytail, with glasses perched on her nose.
Alesha kept staring at the picture. “So it was Will who inspired you?”
“Yea. He would talk to me about the cases he was working on all the time. And once he even took me to watch him testify. After that, it was all I wanted . . . to protect people.”
Alesha smiled with understanding. “What else did you get from him?”
“He used to read a lot. The other room there,” Matt gestured to the half room in his flat, “that’s his influence. He used to read all the time.” The room had no window so it wasn’t a bedroom, it wasn’t much larger than a jail cell, in fact, and Matt kept it full of books. Bookcases lined the walls and on the floor were stacks of even more books, there not being enough space to find them a home on the already overcrowded shelves. He’d once told her that reading was how he kept himself from taking his cases home with him - he would get lost in the books and disconnect from whatever he’d seen that day. A simple aviator chair with a footrest was the only other piece of furniture aside from the bookcases. Alesha loved that room.
“And her?” she asked, pointing at Rose in the photo.
“Rose? She was brilliant. She was an art teacher. She used to make lamps, taught us how to use a blow torch.” His face lit up as he spoke.
Alesha was touched by what she saw. “You must have been very happy.”
“We were lucky.” Matt reached over and took the picture and looked at it fondly.
“What does Rose think of how you boys turned out then?” Alesha smirked, gently prodding him in the ribs with her elbow.
Matt abruptly turned to face her. “You should ask her.”
“What?” Alesha was taken a bit by surprise.
Matt was nodding quickly, “You can meet her and then you can ask her.”
“None of your other girlfriends have ever asked her if she is proud of you?”
“She’s never met any of my girlfriends.”
Alesha was stunned. “And you want her to meet me?”
“Yes.” Matt was nonplussed at her reaction. “I think you two will get on really well.”
“And you never thought she would get on with anyone before?”
“I wasn’t committed to anyone before,” Matt stated simply.
He had no idea of the gravity of what he’d just said to her. He couldn’t. Alesha blinked quickly. “Okay.”
“We should go tomorrow. They’re usually home on Sundays.” Matt continued, still oblivious to her shock. He jumped up and went to his phone, eager to put his plan into action. He sat in the book room on the phone to Will, and started to make plans for them to drive out to Wanstead the next morning.
Alesha hadn’t moved. She was still stunned by all he’d told her. Before today, he’d only surrendered scraps of his past, and reluctantly at that. Today had been different for a host of reasons -- the most important of which being that, today, he’d told her about a time in his childhood when he had felt safe and happy. And he had wanted to bring her into that world. She could hear him on the phone in the other room.
“I know, I’ve been really busy with work.”
She had to admit to herself that she hadn’t given much objective thought to the status of their relationship. Maybe it was because they had woven themselves into each other’s life so effortlessly.
“I’m going to bring Alesha with me. I want you to meet her.“
This meeting was some sort of benchmark - that she couldn’t deny.
“How about we meet you after Mass?”
Alesha smiled listening to him. She hadn’t really taken the time to think about where they were going, and she had to admit that she hadn’t thought about it simply because she was happy, and they were happy together.
“No, she doesn’t eat red meat.”
Looking back now, she realized that they’d become one of those couples that cocooned themselves in a world of their own, easily forgetting to see friends or family for weeks, filling all the empty spaces in each other’s life. They had, quietly and soberly, started to build a life together. How had she missed this happening?
“I think she is, yea.”
He had said he was committed. It wasn’t really a surprise - she was committed too - but it was strange to hear him say it in that way. It was strange and exciting at the same time. Alesha felt her cheeks flush with a surge of happiness and excitement and she clasped her hands over them in an attempt to cool them down.
“Right, see you tomorrow.”
The sounds of his bare feet padding towards her on the floor snapped Alesha out of her reverie.
Matt emerged from his conversation lit up like a Christmas tree. “We’re all set for Sunday chicken roast.”
Alesha beamed back at him. “I can’t wait!”
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