by Anna Maxted
George was really excited to go in the water. Molly kept ripping off her hat. He had a baseball cap. The Green Bay Packers. He liked wearing it. Mummy took off her little shorts and top and she had a bikini underneath. The water wasn’t that warm but it was fine. He didn’t need his goggles. He jumped on the surfboard, lying flat, like Ethan, and paddled out. He looked back at the beach and waved to Mummy, but she was giving Molly her bottle and didn’t see him. It was deep, now, but Ethan was right there.
He winked at George. ‘Don’t you worry, big man,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of you. So are we going to catch a wave, or what?’
George grinned. ‘We’re going to catch a wave!’
‘All right!’
He was quite good at surfing but not as good as Harrison and Jesse in his class. They’d had more practice. Ethan was brilliant. We all have different talents, said Miss Gilmore, but Ethan was good at everything.
It was the best feeling when you rode the wave, but he hated wiping out and swallowing sea water. It made his nose burn, but you couldn’t cry.
‘Put your right foot there, bud, you got to balance, you got to feel it – it’s like riding a bike.’
Awesome!
‘Mummy! Mummy, did you see me?’ He ran up the beach.
‘Darling, you were brilliant! And you weren’t bad either.’
‘Mummy! Don’t be rude! Ethan is a really brilliant surfer!’
‘I was joking, darling. I was playing with him.’ Mummy wrinkled her nose. ‘I need to go back in the house for a second. She needs her nappy changed and I forgot the wipes.’
‘Sweetie, don’t worry about it. I’ll get Mark on the radio. He can do it.’
‘Mark can’t change Molly’s nappy!’ Mummy burst out laughing. ‘He’ll die!’
Ethan laughed too. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘Mark gets a bit LA. It’s good to remind him that he’s a human being, like the rest of us.’
‘Well,’ said Mummy. ‘Except you.’
They both laughed. Grown-ups were always laughing at unfunny jokes.
‘Go on,’ said Ethan. ‘I dare you. Ask Mark to take Molly back to the house and change her nappy.’
‘I can’t! It wouldn’t be fair.’
‘Go on.’
Mummy didn’t look pleased. But then she said, ‘OK.’
She said ‘OK’ the same way she said it when George asked for ice cream for dessert and a biscuit and a lollipop, all together.
Mark ran out on to the sand as soon as Ethan called him on the walkie-talkie, and he didn’t look pleased. But he nodded at all of Mummy’s instructions. Ethan winked at George, but George could only wink if he held the other eye open.
‘You have to clean in all the creases,’ said George. ‘And watch out for pooh on your hands.’ George was very helpful.
Then Mummy and Ethan sat on the sand, and Mummy said why didn’t George dig a hole?
He would have liked to do more surfing, but he liked digging holes so it was OK.
Mummy kept looking back at the house. And then Ethan kissed her, and she stopped looking. They were boyfriend and girlfriend. George had two new girlfriends: Amber and Lauren Rosenheim.
It was quite hard work, even with his spade. It was boiling, and he kept being thirsty, even though he drank lots of water. The sun got in his eyes unless he pulled the cap right down, like Ethan did. He didn’t like wearing sunglasses, they got in the way.
‘Darling!’ said Mummy, and Ethan smiled in a cross way. ‘Darling, why don’t you go and check that Mark is all right with Molly? Please?’
‘OK,’ said George, sighing. ‘I feel like your servant!’
‘Thank you,’ said Mummy.
George ran up to the house. It didn’t look like a long way but it was. He used the secret way in that no one knew about, from the garden. It was spooky, being in there without Mummy. He couldn’t hear any noise. Then he heard Molly make a baby squeak upstairs. He ran up. There was a sound of water running.
‘Mark?’
‘Yes, what is it? My hands are covered in crap. I’m disinfecting.’
‘Where’s Molly?’
‘I’ve shut her in the bedroom.’
‘Is she asleep?’
‘I wish.’
‘She doesn’t like being by herself. She always cries and then you have to cheer her up by pretending to be a monkey. You go, “Ooh ooh ooh!”’
‘Well, I don’t hear anything. I’m sure she’ll be fine for one minute.’
‘Which bedroom is she in? Mummy says I have to check.’
‘Jesus Christ. Fourth door on the right.’
George ran down the corridor. He was scared, more scared than he’d been watching Star Wars.
He opened the door slowly, in case Molly was right there.
She wasn’t.
‘Molly! Molly!’
‘Ga!’ she always said, which was her way of saying ‘George’.
But she didn’t say Ga and George saw the curtains puffing in the breeze. He ran across the room. The doors to the balcony were open and so was the screen. ‘Molly?’ he shouted. ‘Molly?’
Then he saw her, her fat little nappied bottom squeezing through the balcony bars, and he screamed. She disappeared and there was only air. He stopped screaming and a terrible noise filled his ears. He wanted to run down the stairs but his legs were jelly and he could only go slowly, one stair at a time.
‘Mummy!’ he screamed, and then she was there, screaming too.
‘Where is she? Where is she?’
‘She fell,’ he said. ‘She was trying to be a bird but it didn’t work.’
He felt sick and ill. Molly would be dead and she would never see Mummy again.
‘Oh my God, I can hear her.’ Mummy ran outside.
Ethan was there, shouting ‘Mark! Mark!’
George ran after Mummy. There was no one to give him a hug. She was crying and gasping as if she couldn’t breathe and Molly was in her arms, all bloody, screeching in a fast, scary way, and there was blood on Mummy too.
Mark was there. Stupid idiot Mark, it was his fault. ‘Oh, good God, I didn’t know it was open. Is she all right? Thank God she fell on the grass. Should I get the arnica?’
‘Call a fucking ambulance, you fucking fuck, she could have brain damage! Oh my God, what if she – Oh baby, oh baby, Mummy got you, it’s OK, it’s OK – oh God, why did I let him – get off me, Ethan. Don’t just stand there, you bastard, call an ambulance!’
George was a big brave boy but sometimes you’re allowed and he started to cry.
LOS ANGELES, THREE DAYS LATER
Emily
She was frozen. She couldn’t cry. She kept playing the scenario back in her head, over and over, as if, the thousandth time, it might end differently. She was an unfit mother. Her worst fear had come true. She had failed to keep her babies safe. She had refused all medication. And yet she felt as if she were in a fog. She couldn’t connect with reality, as if it were too unbearable for her conscious mind to allow it. Ethan had been useless, totally unlike his character in Sick Day, and it had shocked her. She had expected him to snap to the rescue, be the hero, walk the talk, and yet he’d seemed curiously relaxed, or maybe it was that she was so frantic that a normal human pace was far too slow. She wanted Molly to be seen by doctors that second; she wanted her teleported to the hospital.
She’d dialled 911, even though she couldn’t catch her breath to speak. Finally, she’d puffed it out: my baby, fallen out of window. She couldn’t believe she was forming those words; that it wasn’t some hideous nightmare. She’d given the address.
The ambulance was as slow as a snail, or at least it felt like it. LAPD were faster. When she realized she wasn’t going to be allowed to go with Molly to the hospital, she’d collapsed.
She’d been so naive. It was an accident, but they’d roped off the house as if it were a crime scene. The place was swarming with officers who addressed the guy in charge as ‘detective’.
The paparazzi h
ad gathered like vultures round a corpse.
People say dreadful things when they’re in shock, but had Lurch really said to her, ‘This is terrible for Ethan, I hope you realize’?
She hadn’t been prepared for the questions, the endless interrogation. The guy was friendly but he didn’t let up. Where had she been? Why wasn’t she with the Subject? Who had left the balcony door open? Was she having marital problems? Did she think this was an accident? Did she know of anyone who would want to hurt the Subject? ‘Molly!’ she wanted to shout. ‘Molly!’
All the while, she’d been desperate to get to the hospital. ‘I want to see Molly,’ she screamed. ‘I want to see her now, she needs me, please.’
In England they would have given you a cup of tea for shock. Here, a can of Coke was put in front of her, as if she were a child. She was shivering uncontrollably. She couldn’t touch it.
George, who was frightened out of his wits, had been shepherded into another room by a policewoman.
‘Mummy!’ he’d wailed, as he was taken off. She couldn’t believe that they were going to interrogate a six-year-old.
She felt as if she might actually puke when she thought of the look on George’s face. Last year, Nanny had been ill, and George had bounced into her bedroom at 5 a.m. – this after Molly had been awake on and off all night with a cold. ‘Go back to bed,’ Emily had hissed. He’d shaken his head. ‘I’ll get a man to come and take you away.’ He’d scurried back to bed and she was at once ashamed and relieved: she was a terrible mother but one who would now get some sleep.
Now she would have stayed awake for the rest of her life if it meant that George and Molly could be back safely with her.
And then it had got worse. Bet it was something that idiot Lurch had said in his statement, but suddenly DCFS were being notified – whoever the fuck they were. Department of Children and Family Services, it had turned out.
The DCFS woman was cold and formal. Like the detective, she punctuated her interview with long empty pauses and kept staring at Emily, making Emily feel she had said something incriminating. She felt dull and flat and empty and so desperate with agony, her answers were short and hostile. What did her relationship with Timmy and her parents and her sister have to do with this shit?
Perhaps, had she looked older, not quite so sun-kissed, had she not been wearing skimpy shorts over a bikini, had she sobbed and howled instead of being stiff with grief, it might have gone differently.
Her fingerprints had been taken by a guy with SID printed on his jacket. Another SID took photographs. It occurred to her that he could sell them to the Enquirer for a million bucks. A great rage welled up in her. ‘Why are you doing this to me? You should be speaking to Mark. He was the one who left her. She was in his care at the time.’
It sounded like an excuse. He was at fault, but she was to blame. She was the mother. Then someone had said the words ‘Child Abuse Unit’. It hit her like a blow to the head. They suspected that she had hurt Molly on purpose and there was a chance that her children would be taken away.
She had to fight, but her head was so groggy. Panic meant she couldn’t find the words. They’d asked for her British social security number and she realized that they were going to check with the Metropolitan Police to see if there had been any prior ‘incidents’.
She had been desperate. Surely that she was a friend of Ethan Summers counted for something? This was La-La Land and, in celebrity terms, he was the jewel in the crown. His word was sacred, even if hers was not. ‘Ask Ethan,’ she’d croaked, in desperation, ‘he’ll tell you I’m a good mother.’ She hadn’t expected the response she’d got.
The two officers had exchanged glances, one saying coolly: ‘Mr Summers has given us a statement. Mr Summers was extremely helpful. Mr Summers did all he could to assist.’
Ethan would have told them how she’d made Molly the macaroni cheese, covered her in sun screen, given her a bottle in the shade, played ‘Round and round the garden like a teddy bear’, kissed the deliciously podgy bit at the back of her fat little neck. If you were an uncaring parent, you didn’t do those things. Ethan might have even given them a free mug with Sick Day printed on the side of it.
So why didn’t they let her go?
Finally, at last, she had been taken to the hospital, the DCFS worker there like a guard beside her in the cop car.
She had lost count of the hours they’d waited. She’d remained in a stupor until a doctor had entered the room and, with a strained expression, murmured in the ear of the DCFS woman. The woman had nodded, then informed Emily that Molly had suffered a broken leg, a broken arm and bruising, but the initial scan had revealed no apparent damage to the brain tissue, or the spine. There was no internal bleeding. She weighed only twenty-five pounds, and she had landed on grass, on her stomach. Those three facts had saved her from severe injury.
Emily had gone pale with relief. She could feel the blood drain from her face and her legs weaken. She’d nodded, silently, unable to find her voice.
They had misread everything.
She hadn’t realized what was happening. People were speaking to her, but she gazed at the cold expression on their faces, and their words passed through her.
‘Your children are being placed into protective custody pending a further investigation.’ Case worker … foster home
… District Attorney … court … Judge … expert witness … She couldn’t take it in because she was too concerned that they were giving Emily the wrong milk. She hated American powdered milk. Emily had a British brand imported from the UK. Would they give her jar food? She’d never eaten jar food in her life. And George, he was so sensitive, he wouldn’t say, but he’d be sick with anxiety. He needed his mummy. He might be too shy to ask if he could use the bathroom.
She was permitted to see Molly briefly. It was so painful to see the tiny arm and leg in plaster, a tube up the tiny nose and know that it was her fault, that Emily could actually not stand to look at baby Molly and turned away. She saw the doctor and the DCFS bitch look at each other. She’d understood the look: this woman has a heart of stone.
Emily had been so focused on the little details that she’d ignored, or perhaps hadn’t wanted to acknowledge, the terrible reality: a man was coming to take George away.
And when Molly was well enough to leave the hospital, she too would be taken, by a stranger, to live with strangers.
Then she had broken out of the trance and become hysterical. She’d lashed out, screaming, scratching, biting, sobbing. They’d handcuffed her. She had the right to appeal against the decision if the judge allowed it. It would depend on the evidence. What evidence?
‘What evidence?’ she’d screeched. ‘What fucking evidence?’
They’d ignored the question, which is what they did when they didn’t wish to give an answer. ‘I want a lawyer,’ she’d croaked. ‘I want my lawyer, now.’ She had been in such a state of trauma that, in the land of litigation, she hadn’t thought to ask for her lawyer. Now, she asked for everyone: her lawyer, her mother. She wanted Innocence, because Innocence was as tough as old hide and Innocence would not let this happen. Her father – ach, her father was no use.
She wanted Ethan. She wanted his strong arms around her, soothing her, making her feel better, making it all go away. He would make it right. He’d get her babies back. At least she wasn’t under arrest … yet.
She’d rung Lurch’s mobile, in a daze.
‘I’ll send the driver,’ he’d said. She’d felt her gut wrench with hatred, just hearing his voice. He was poison. He was the one who’d let Molly fall and not so much as a word of apology. She bet it was because he was scared of being sued. If he said ‘sorry’ he was admitting liability. He was a piece of shit. She’d get Ethan to fire him, and the interview she was going to give to People (free of charge) would ensure that Lurch would never work again.
She’d had to turn off her mobile in the hospital. There were missed calls from Innocence, from Claudia. The new
s was out. Claudia was flying out tomorrow. Innocence was already en route to LA on the jet. Too little too late, was Emily’s reflex thought. She found she despised the shock in her mother’s voice.
You could have helped me before, Mother, and now look. As for Claudia, half-crying on the phone … Emily felt her lip curl. How dare you appropriate my grief. As Emily stepped into the bright sunlight (normally she revelled in the heat but now it felt stifling and oppressive) a great mob of photographers and TV cameras surged towards her – ‘Emily, Emily!’ – with their horrible familiarity, as if they were her friends. She battled through them, trying not to cry with fear, as they jostled, sneered, taunted her to provoke the perfect sound bite, the five-hundred-thousand-dollar cover shot. She shook her head, covered her ears. Ethan’s driver waited, impassive, by the side of the Bentley. He made no attempt to help. As she got to the car, gasping and trembling, he held open the door as if nothing were amiss.
The driver switched on the radio, and as the music played Emily curled into a ball, rocking silently on the back seat, her mouth open in a silent howl, all the way to the Hollywood Hills.
‘Ethan!’ she cried, rushing past the housekeeper. ‘Ethan! Ethan!’
He appeared at the top of the stairs, freshly shaven, immaculate in a black T-shirt and khaki shorts. ‘Ethan, oh God, you have to help me, they’ve taken my babies, they’ll be so frightened, they need me, we need to get them back, today, now, please, I know they’ll listen to you …’ She sank to the floor in a heap and covered her face.
She expected him to exclaim in horrified disbelief, to race down the stairs, to stroke her hair, but there was nothing. He didn’t speak. She looked up, and he hadn’t moved.
‘Come upstairs, Emily,’ he said.
Slowly, she stood, and slowly, she walked up the stairs, with legs like lead. Her heart pounded. He looked so serious. Oh God, had he already tried to help? Was it bad news?