A CHILD MADE TO ORDER: gripping psychological suspense

by Piotr Ryczko

  A CHILD MADE TO ORDER

  Piotr Ryczko

  Published by

  THE BOOK FOLKS

  London, 2017

  © Piotr Ryczko

  To Ewa.

  This is for you.

  For your support and belief.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Vlog, 165th entry 2.9.2014

  PART ONE: Lies

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  PART TWO: Deceit

  Vlog 1st entry 13.3.2010

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  PART THREE: Demons

  Vlog, 59th entry 23.4.2012

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  PART FOUR: Crash

  Vlog, 120th entry 3.2.2014

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Vlog, 1st entry 9.7.2016

  Polite note to the reader

  Other titles of interest

  Vlog, 165th entry 2.9.2014

  She had made all the arrangements. This was it.

  This was her last speech.

  No one could know. Not even the public on her blog. Especially not her public.

  What she could do right now, was share herself with them. After that, after her plan had run its course, she would long be remembered.

  Her emotional overload had started long before she faced the camera. She had learnt to conserve her energy for the public, long before she went live. A necessity of her profession.

  A stuttering, low-quality webcam feed appeared on the laptop screen. Murky shadows parted and revealed the contours of a face. Marianne’s face. Her own face.

  She barely had the courage to face the camera’s lens. Not because of the public, but because she couldn’t bear looking into those eyes. As she met them on the screen, she finally recognised herself. Despite her age of twenty-five, her features were that of someone twice that.

  Marianne’s face was covered with nose and brow-rings. She remembered now that she had first impaled her skin just after her third miscarriage. The rings were only simple tools. A means to dumb down the mental pain she had to suffer through each day. And at that time, she had needed those rings more than ever.

  She had gotten used to the heaviness that pervaded her body. And it was more than apparent on the screen. It had accompanied her ever since she had learned about her disease. Or rather, the nature of its irreversibility. A death sentence for her new-borns.

  But she had more important things to do now. This show was about her final message to her audience, to the community of infertile women who depended on her. And although, right now, she only felt primeval destruction inside herself, it was still genuine. And this authenticity had made all the difference for the past four years of her blog. Only she could muster this intensity, and when her eyes finally faced the viewers, the effect was magnetic in its potency. No wonder she had amassed a following, and not a small one. This kind of pain was hard to come by, even in a world soaked with suffering.

  “I don’t think you get it, do you? Childlessness... that’s not a loss. That’s a death in the family. And this death will never have a funeral, nor a proper mourning. And who would actually care about us?” She stopped for a slight moment to let the viewers meditate over the last question posed, and its absurd notion.

  “Certainly not the doctors, shrinks, family, and the people in charge at Bioteknologirådet. Who would care about a ticking bomb with a rare genetic disease?”

  When she spoke, the words seemed to float into the air. The effect was trance-like, addictive in its quality. She was convinced she was a woman with a mission, and this day would be the greatest milestone in her journey.

  “Mark my words. Mitochondrial disease. Do you want a child with irreversible nervous malfunctions, muscle dystrophy, dementia? You fucking name it, and I will give it to my child. You see this face? That’s who I am.”

  She sniffled and fell into silence. Her body was quiet, as if she was meditating. But the meditation was not about serenity, it was about holding onto her emotional sanity. And the only thing that mattered was to prevent the inner volcano from erupting.

  “Do you know what makes the loneliest moment in one’s life? It is having so much love to give, and then realising that it will never be yours to give. Never! Not to my little one,” she all but hissed at the public. The only thing that could follow this peak was the blackness as she terminated her cam.

  But she wasn’t done.

  It often gave her a thrill of pleasure to let the audio channel run long after the visuals had gone blank. With only her ragged breath remaining, pulsing its pain at her audience, she couldn’t feel more alive.

  This was high drama. Staged and constructed by her God-given talent. She was sure that it left everyone watching numb, with a black hole in their heart.

  They would remember her long after that.

  And this was just the beginning.

  PART ONE: Lies

  Chapter 1

  Monday, 8th February 2016

  Evening

  They were all waiting for her downstairs, Viola knew that. They being everyone who was someone in Oslo’s media circles. The occasion was a late evening cocktail party. A party held in her honour. Viola knew that in the eyes of everybody downstairs she had achieved a career milestone today, the stuff her fellows dreamed of. Syria and Middle East correspondence for the biggest newspaper in Norway, Aftenposten. A position many aspired to but seldom reached. At the age of 41, this was quite an accomplishment. Her intuition as an investigative watchdog had gotten her to this place, a point where everyone either adored her or simply despised her. And it was her unwavering determination that kept her there.

  Except for one small detail. It was all lies.

  The stuff everybody expected of her and thought about her was one thing. But in her case, the appearances never corresponded with the inner truth.

  That’s why she was here. Upstairs, in the bathroom. Dressed in her onyx Sherri Hill one-shoulder cocktail dress. Hiding like a wounded animal, scraping her knees against the bathroom tiles.

  This was the only place where she didn’t feel like she was about to lose her mind. And the only thing that took away some of the numbness, stabbing at her heart, was the scrubbing. Her hand clenched onto a piece of wiry cloth, while she did her best to remove a practically non-existent stain from the bathtub. Holding onto it, the steel fibre felt real enough, jagged enough to hurt, a necessary pain.

  The screeching movement back and forth held another quality. She was convinced it would wipe away everything that had happened here. In this bathroom, in this very tub. Five years ago. And t
he further into the past that date drifted, the more actual weight it carried.

  She needed this cloth to lighten that load. It held a potential. She wasn’t naive enough to think it would remove the thing called the past. The hole in herself. It certainly wasn’t an eraser of all the wrong choices she had brought upon herself. That never worked in her case. But it was, nonetheless, the best option she had.

  She had to believe that.

  A thought skittered along the periphery of her mind. Surely someone would notice she was missing downstairs. And would eventually knock on the door, forcing her to pick up the pieces, what was left of them anyway, and put on that unwavering mask of the hostess. And before that realisation could wreak further unease in her thoughts, a dull thud sounded against the door.

  “Viola? Hon? You okay? Remember the party? Your party?” a muffled voice said. Ronny worried about her, maybe too much. Always prepared to hug her and soothe her. The way only a trusted partner would be willing to do. Most people would cherish this quality in a man. And sometimes she reminded herself this was good. She explained to herself that she was lucky.

  “Sure. Perfect.” She uttered the words, more preoccupied with whether he would sense the quiver in her voice than their content. But however much turmoil she might have stirred up inside herself, she had also perfected the art of self-presentation. A quality that, in her profession, translated into self-preservation. Her tone was as controlled and soft-spoken as a Buddhist monk during a retreat.

  “Okay... It’s just... You’ve been in there for over forty minutes – you okay?” Viola heard the underlying concern in his voice, which immediately grated on her nerves. Beneath his compassion, she could discern pity.

  They both knew this kind of visit was far from the first one. And if there was something she couldn’t stand, it was to be reminded of this very fact. That gaping hole in herself.

  “Perfect. Go ahead. Will be right down.” She heard his feet shuffle away, resigned, into the distance.

  She slid her face closer to the tub, inspected the perfectly polished surface, and felt an inner groan spread through her body.

  Her time was up. She was needed downstairs. Now.

  But the stain, it was still there. Difficult to discern at this point. Tiny as it was. But barely visible didn’t mean it wasn’t there. She knew. It was there.

  She felt it.

  She felt it all over her body.

  Late evening

  As she made it down the stairs, Ronny watched her. He had waited in the hall for her to come down, and his face was blanketed with concern. Several unanswered questions hung in the air. How could she leave her guests for so long? What was she doing up there? Would she blow this party in some inconvenient way?

  On bad days, she was scared witless of the growing intimacy between them, of feeling that something deep inside her was beginning to stir.

  But she also had good days. And with them came the capacity for emotional insight, a voice that whispered to her that this man was a treasure.

  Despite her erratic behaviour, he was still here, backing her more than ever. Their mutual history went back only two years, but he had made it this far with her. With the wreckages of her past relationships, the burnt bridges, the unending escape hatches, his stamina baffled her.

  Yet, her moods and her fickleness, these were nothing compared to her lie. The same one that had forced her to scuttle up to the bathroom, while she should have been taking care of her guests.

  She had no second thoughts about this. After all, it was for his own good, a sacrifice she had to resort to in order to keep him. Simply because if he found out the truth about her, he would leave her that very second. She was sure of that.

  If she had learnt anything in the past twenty years, it was that men leave. Every single time. So, naturally, her lies were more than justified. And she would do anything to keep the status quo. Most of the time it was worth it.

  She had experienced way too many relationships where the only glue that existed was the dizziness of the initial infatuation. There were guys she connected with, and men whom she respected professionally. But most of the relationships dwindled off after half a year or so. When she was the Dumped instead of being the Dumper, there were always excuses and apologies for why it didn’t work out. But as she listened to them, it was more than obvious that none of them were actual reasons. Maybe because none of the men had the guts to admit, or the capacity for understanding, that the romantic love spun by society as the be-all and end-all was just a fairy tale. Yes, there was the unconditional love of a mother to her child. This she had experienced in every pore of her body. The addiction and emotional blindness of romance she could not understand.

  So when the sex fizzled out, the man’s interest in her went with it. Suddenly, she would go from being the number one priority on the list, to sharing the last place with all the excuses they scrambled to come up with.

  Her relationships, in general, meant disillusionment. But she didn’t think of this as a negative term. It was simply drawing away the illusion that was draped over her eyes during the initial romantic crush period, revealing the man’s true nature, be it more or less self-absorbed.

  So, it was quite unexpected, this whole thing with Ronny. Sure enough, the passion cooled off after about a year, but was replaced with a growing intimacy. Something she had never thought herself capable of. And while her past partners had looked for every reason to get off at the next stop, Ronny did everything in his power to be sure she didn’t look for the same reasons. He made sure that he was there for her, that he supported her, even when it didn’t fit his schedule. And when she really stopped and considered this, how many men were actually prepared to give up so much of themselves, their career and boys’ time, in order to nurture a relationship? Not to mention, every day could be quite good. They fit together. This both amazed her and frightened the hell out of her, in equal measures.

  Suddenly, she noticed his quirks. Like leaving the freezer door open so everything would melt inside, or tossing his clothes into the wrong drawer, mostly her drawers. She never had the calling of a housewife, but she would wash out the refrigerator without making a scene. Or even mentioning it. Then she would separate his clothes from hers. And where others would grow resentful of his habits, she found these things endearing.

  As she eyed him in the hall, she knew he wanted to approach her, provide the necessary comfort, but she lifted up her hand, waved off his worries. She sent him a soft glance, a gentle reassurance that she was fine. He needn’t worry because of that bathroom thing.

  The look in his eyes showed his relief.

  She put on a smile. The one she had practiced to perfection for the past twenty years. The one that said she felt awesome. She couldn’t be any better.

  And as she stepped into her living room, she was prepared to play her role pitch-perfect in what was supposed to be the greatest moment in her life.

  Chapter 2

  Viola was immediately greeted by twenty or so of the very finest and brightest in the journalism business in Oslo. Their glances were filled with genuine concern. But as she greeted everyone with warmth, the tension melted away and worried glances vanished.

  The exhausting hours she spent with many of them certainly made them more a family than her own flesh and blood. These were the people who laid down the groundwork so her stories wouldn’t fall through at the editorial. Day in, day out, they sacrificed their health to give their story, and the people in it, the justice it deserved. They stood behind her one hundred percent when the information for the story needed to be firmed up, by getting confirmations from her sources, on or off the record. And she reminded herself that their loyalty wasn’t due to their fears, but out of genuine respect. Something she had won through incessant perseverance and investigative insight.

  As she finished her cheek-to-cheek rounds, she had melted away all the curious glances. Her unspoken absence became a thing of the past.

  And as she s
tood back, eyeing them all standing there, one thing struck her. Whenever she painted an overtly rosy picture of people, as she did now, she was slapped back by a reality check. Despite everything they had been through, could she be sure these smiles were genuine, or their presence here was not forced? After all, she had the tendency to forget one simple fact: She was at Aftenposten on separate terms than most. She was the daughter of the chief editor.

  Maybe it was time to curb her gullibility.

  * * *

  “And as your sorriest excuse for editor-in-chief, and drunk at that, I was supposed to announce my daughter’s phenomenal success – another one. That’s disgusting, right! This time only as the Middle East correspondent for our smallish paper.” As always, Anne had all the guests grasped in her steely grip. And her proclamation was immediately met with thunderous claps. Flashy speeches were her domain, the moments she lived for, and one of the few things able to satiate her ego. Viola had never shared this showmanship quality with her mother.

  No one else in Viola’s life would bring up such a storm of clashing emotions. There was the utter respect and devotion that stemmed from two decades’ worth of watching the best editor-in-chief in action.

  It was Anne who had shown Viola what it meant to be both the managing editor and, later on, editor-in-chief. Viola’s memories about the paper went as far back as she could remember. In her wide-eyed pimply-faced stage, she spent all her free time observing reporters after school. She had done everything in order to get a summer job, just to do the most lowly work there. She remembered the exhilaration of making her first editorial pitch.

  Anne and her father had played no small role in shaping post-war journalistic ethics in Norway. Her journalist family were the initiators of the “Be Cautious” manifesto, which laid out some of the most concise ethical rules a journalist working in the profession could hope for.

  But as with everything, all these accolades had their murkier side. As time passed by, Anne grew more self-conscious about this family tradition. It became baggage that weighed her down. And in recent years, this weight turned into fear of showing her weaknesses and losing her grasp on the people that slaved for her. So Anne made sure that if anyone presented a threat to her position, she would pulverise them into professional non-existence. Therefore, the competition was nil, out of respect, sometimes even out of admiration, but mostly out of fear.