by cass green
Angel stares at me and, for a second, she looks unsure.
She gives her brother a slight smile. ‘It is OK, isn’t it? Lucas? Can I just …?’
Lucas is breathing heavily, almost panting, as she approaches him, her movements slow and careful. When she reaches out he whimpers and steps back. But with shushing, comforting sounds she begins to open his coat. The baby is straining hard against the makeshift sling, which appears to be made from a man’s shirt. The sleeves are tied around Lucas’s back, the back of the shirt bagged into an unsatisfactory pouch. One of the baby’s legs, encased in a white sleepsuit, protrudes and dangles awkwardly.
Lucas closes his eyes as Angel reaches behind him and tries to unknot the sleeves. The baby screams on, jolting downwards with every tug of Angel’s arms. It is unbearable to watch. I bite back helpless tears and wrap my arms around myself. I can’t stop shaking.
‘Please,’ I whisper, ‘be careful.’
Somehow, I know this baby does not belong to either Angel or Lucas. So where is its mother?
Angel now has the baby, who is puce-faced, drawing knees to chest. She looks like she is carrying a bag of sugar rather than a squirming child and she places it on the table, not exactly roughly, but with little care. Then she peels off Lucas’s coat, speaking in a quiet, fussy tone all the while, before dropping it onto the floor.
I can’t stop myself from lunging for the child. But Angel is faster and with a yell she slaps me, hard, around the face. My cheek rings, hot with pain. Tears spring to my eyes and, for a moment, Angel looks almost contrite.
‘Look, it doesn’t have to be like this,’ she says, defiant again. ‘I don’t want to have to hurt you?’ She pauses. ‘But I will if I have to. Do you understand me?’
I nod dumbly, holding my cheek.
Angel sighs and says, ‘Oh for fuck’s sake.’ She snatches the baby up. ‘Happy now?’
She holds the hot, angry face to her shoulder, as the baby shrieks on. Lucas emits a small moan and wraps his arms around himself, rocking gently.
Somehow, I find my voice again. ‘Please, please, Angel,’ I say. ‘I won’t do anything. Just please be careful! Can’t you see how little he is?’ I’m sure he is a boy.
Angel meets my eyes, her expression toxic with resentment. ‘It’s all going to be fine if you don’t do anything fucking stupid, alright?’ She begins to jiggle the baby a little roughly, and then, in what is presumably an attempt at a softer tone, says, ‘It’s OK, it’s OK.’
The very words said by Angel in the restaurant after she saved my life. It seems so long ago.
Who, what, have I brought into my home?
The baby isn’t showing any signs of quietening.
‘Please make it stop?’ Lucas’s voice is plaintive, his accent more plummy than Angel’s flat London vowels. ‘I can’t stand this fucking noise! It won’t stop. It’s getting inside me!’ He presses his fists against the sides of his head and lets out a moan of despair.
Dread throbs through me. What is wrong with him? Whether it is drug-induced or simply how he is wired is unclear. But it doesn’t really matter which. What matters is that baby not being injured in any way. I look at the blood on his hands again. I desperately want to examine the child to see if it’s hurt but must tread carefully. Neither of the other two adults present seems to be stable.
‘Come on, babe,’ soothes Angel. ‘It’s just pissed off. Babies are always grumpy, aren’t they? It’ll settle soon, you’ll see.’ Her tone is gentle, cajoling, and it seems to work because he moves his hands away from his head.
‘Now get those wet things off, right?’ she says briskly. ‘Then we can all calm down.’
Lucas shucks the wet black T-shirt over his head and stands there shivering like a whipped dog. His chest is almost concave, delicate, like a boy’s. He has bruises on his ribs. The shape of him reminds me of Sam but the sharp, fearful smell of sweat is adult.
‘Where can he get dry clothes?’ demands Angel. ‘Which room?’
It seems challenging to think of the right answer to this question.
‘What, oh uh … upstairs, second door on the left,’ I say, then, ‘Shall I go?’
But Angel shakes her head. ‘No, not you,’ she inclines her head at Lucas. ‘Find all the landlines while you’re at it, yeah?’ As he begins to walk out of the room she calls out again. ‘Hey?’ He turns to look at her.
‘Wash your hands up there,’ she says gently, then gives a small, tight grin. ‘Your pits too. You stink.’ Lucas’s mouth twists and he leaves the room.
The baby screams on, hoarse now with misery. Every nerve end cries out to take over as Angel jiggles it roughly and says, ‘It’s OK,’ over, and over, again in a voice lacking any warmth at all.
8
Angel
Angel has seen her brother at his lowest ebb before, but this is something different. It is beginning to scare her now, the desperate look in his eyes. She hasn’t seen him for months and now this?
If he’d only tell her the whole story. She hasn’t had all of it, she knows that. It’s something about the way his gaze keeps sliding away from hers, like he’s frightened to meet her eyes full on.
When he’d rung earlier, Angel had been on her way back to a mate, Liz’s, where she’d intended to kip until the next morning. Then, bright and early, she planned to be off into London where she’d blow her money on a ticket to Inverness. She was really going to do it, too, this time. Make a fresh start in the clean sweet air, away from all the crap.
When her brother’s name had appeared on her screen she’d had the briefest moment when she contemplated not answering. It would serve him right for his recent lack of contact.
But she couldn’t do it. She could never really say no to Lucas.
When she heard the state he was in, she’d known straight away that this was it, a turning point in her life, albeit not the one she had been hoping for. He’d been incoherent with gasping sobs. As Angel tried to get him to calm down and tell her what had happened, it felt like everything inside her was swirling helplessly down a plughole. Whatever this was, it was very bad indeed.
She’d finally managed to extract the barest details from him and, while they’d sounded terrible enough, they hadn’t been everything. There was something missing.
It feels like he doesn’t trust her and that is beginning to piss her off. Hasn’t she always been the one to protect him? Didn’t she promise to do that very thing when they were kids?
Whatever he has done, they can find a way through it. How bad can it really be?
He just needs to calm down. Then they can make a proper plan and get the hell away.
The baby is on the table, next to her, screaming its head off still. The noise road-drills inside Angel’s skull. She shoots a look at the squalling creature. Tiny babies are so weird, with their jerky little limbs and crumpled pensioner faces. Strong and delicate all the same time. God knows she doesn’t want to have to hold it.
Angel’s disobedient brain immediately lobs an unwelcome image into her mind, like a shuttlecock over a net.
Her skinny sixteen-year-old legs with blood running down them, and the awful pains slicing across her stomach. The unsympathetic way the people in the hospital had spoken to her, about how she only had herself to blame and that she may have done some ‘permanent damage’.
Lucas keeps gazing at the baby, mournfully. It isn’t even his. But Angel knows her brother and has a strong suspicion that he isn’t going to agree to leaving it and getting the hell out of here. Why even bring it in the first place? It’s insane.
She pictures the bus to Scotland, weaving its way between soft green hills. Travelling far, far away from here.
9
Lucas
For the moment, he’s still bubble-wrapped against the pain.
Getting away had been a good distraction. Pounding down those endless country roads, across rutted fields and along the side of the dual carriageway in the rain, feeling the bouncing squi
sh of the baby inside the coat, had taken every bit of his resources.
But a juggernaut of guilt is bearing down on him and he won’t be able to out-run it for long.
Lucas recognizes this feeling. He wonders whether everything in his life has been a series of wobbly stepping stones from there to here.
‘I’ve found somewhere,’ said Angel when he’d rung her, almost incoherent with shock. ‘It’s not ideal but it’s all I can think of for now. A place with no connection to either of us.’
She knew only the bare facts and hadn’t pressed for more. But she will. And Lucas can never tell her the truth. He can picture all too well how she would look at him if she knew what he’d done. No, he needs her too much right now. His sister is the only person in the world he could have called. If she abandoned him …
Angel had been almost calm on the phone. But Lucas knows this is how she deals with the really big things. For all her dramas, she’s capable of going to a quiet, still place in a storm. That’s what he needs right now.
‘Whatever has happened, we’ll get through it. Together,’ she’d said, then, ‘Hey, do you remember Grandad’s? Remember what I said?’
How could he forget? It was what he’d been thinking about all the way to this woman’s house.
Their safe place.
The sharp animal stink and the prickly, itchy straw in the barn. Lying on their bellies and peering down, pretending no one could find them. Eating Grandad’s weird old-school food. Pies and tinned peas. Custard creams and cocoa.
Laughing at his crap jokes, and playing with Boris. Lucas having to be prised away from him every night at bedtime. And even then, the old sheepdog would find its way onto his bed and Grandad would pretend not to know anything about it in the morning. He’d say things like, ‘It’s the funniest thing, but Boris’s bed looks quite untouched. I can’t understand it,’ and pretend to shake his head, while Lucas vibrated with suppressed giggles and hugged the dog harder.
Angel doesn’t know about the photo he keeps in his wallet, soft now with age and handling. Marianne is in it, grinning at Angel, so Grandad must have taken it. His sister is standing on one leg and making a daft face. Lucas leans against Marianne, with one hand on Boris’s head.
‘It’s OK,’ Angel had said in a harsh whisper. ‘I’ll look after you, Lu. I’ll always be the one who looks after you best.’
He looks at himself in the mirror in the small bathroom now, forces himself to meet his own eyes. He almost flinches at what he sees there, the burning shame.
Leaning his head against the cool glass, he tries to slow his breathing down.
He wishes the baby would stop crying.
10
Nina
The water pipes rattle, telling me that Lucas is using the bathroom upstairs. I try to summon the most benign expression I can muster but my face is stiff and mask-like. It feels like an impossible thing, to make this horrible situation better.
The pure disbelief – that this really is happening to me, ordinary me – is beginning to pass now. I’ve finally stopped shaking. But every time I look at the baby I’m overwhelmed by an instinct to grab him and just run for my life.
‘Look,’ I say gently, ‘Angel. I think the baby is too hot under all those layers. Can you please let me hold it and help? I’m not going to do anything stupid.’
Angel regards me warily. ‘I wouldn’t.’ She lifts her chin. ‘You have to know that the kid isn’t important to me. It’s Lucas I’m bothered about, alright?’
‘Yes, yes.’ I know I’m nodding a bit too vigorously. ‘I get that … please? Can I? I might be able to settle him.’
Angel pulls in a long suck of breath and then thrusts the baby towards me like an unwanted parcel. I cringe at her lack of gentleness and quickly take hold of him. The baby hesitates, contemplating this new location and then, presumably finding it still isn’t the desired one, continues to wail.
‘It’s OK, little chap,’ I croon gently, looking around.
I need somewhere soft to put him down.
When we had the large kitchen renovated, we made the decision to hang onto a battered old mustard-coloured sofa we’d had since first getting together. It sits at one end of the room and is covered in a fleece blanket. I cross the kitchen and grab the blanket, fashioning it into a mat with one hand, while I hold the tiny boy over my shoulder with the other.
Then I lay him down gently, murmuring the sort of soft nonsense words I used to say to Sam; a time that feels both near and yet very long ago. The baby pauses and for a moment I think it’s me, I’ve performed the magic of making him calm, then the room is filled with a powerful smell.
‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ says Angel holding her wrist delicately towards her nose, her face scrunched. ‘Has it done a shit?’
The baby is now grumbling, rather than giving full-throated cries. I ignore Angel’s theatrical complaints.
‘You just needed a poo, didn’t you?’ I sing-song, ‘and now you feel better, don’t you?’
The little boy stares up at me. His eyes are a dark blue, which might be on the cusp of turning brown. It gives them a look of being bottomless; alien and other.
How am I going to change him? There haven’t been any nappies in this house for years and years. And what about when the child becomes hungry?
He starts to cry again, his little face scrunched in pure misery as I try to unpeel the suit. I’m terrified of hurting him, of being too rough. All the hours I put in with Sam as a baby seem to be for nothing; I have entirely lost that ease with small babies. There is apparently no muscle memory for this practical role. I feel an irrational but powerful disappointment at this.
‘Can you fill the washing up bowl with warm water?’ I say to Angel. ‘And bring me the kitchen towel roll?’
Wrinkling her nose, she moves around the kitchen and mechanically follows instructions, bringing bowl and paper towels to the table. Then she steps back and lights up a cigarette, standing with her smoking arm resting on her other. I will deal with that later, I think, peeling off the white sleepsuit. It all feels so unfamiliar. I have forgotten about bending tiny limbs in and out of clothes and the fear of causing accidental hurt. I used to do this ten times faster, when it was part of my everyday life.
Angel is now pacing the room, darting glances at her phone screen and occasionally mumbling under her breath.
It’s like having a small electrical storm in the kitchen, whirling around me. She positively crackles with a malign energy that makes me instinctively want to hold the baby as close as I can. Would she hurt him? Maybe. I wouldn’t put anything past her right now.
I finally release the small nappy and the smell intensifies. I was right. He’s a boy.
Mustard-coloured shit is smeared up to his belly button, which is still new enough to be swollen with a small scab nestled in the folds. This baby was clearly born very recently. Far too tiny to be away from his mother. Where is his mother?
I quickly check him all over for injury, but, thank God, he seems unharmed. As I then carefully wash around the scrawny little legs and the nub of the penis, he releases a thin stream of urine in a perfect arc I just manage to dodge. This makes Angel laugh – a quick, sharp bark of mirth – and I snap her a look before continuing with my task. The little boy is now hiccupping miserably. I try to fashion a nappy out of clean kitchen towel but it’s hopeless. All I can do is wrap it around his bottom, awkwardly.
‘Does Lucas have any of the baby’s things?’ I ask, but I already know the answer. He arrived with only that coat as far as I could see. A too-big coat and a too-small baby.
‘No,’ says Angel, distractedly, looking again at her phone. ‘We’re just going to have to make the best of it.’ I wonder if she is waiting for a message from someone.
A thought suddenly chills me; maybe they have kidnapped this child and are waiting to talk terms with his parents.
I swallow, trying to quell my queasy stomach. What the hell have I become caught up in
? The baby grumbles and I stare down at him, feeling all at sea for a moment until I pull myself together. I have to look after him the best I can. I’m all he’s got tonight.
That’s when I remember my self-indulgent time in the attic the other day. Maybe it was meant to be.
‘Look,’ I say, trying to sound calm but firm. ‘My son’s baby clothes are in the attic. I can find them easily if you’ll let me get them. There might be a bottle there too, which we can at least use to give him a drink of water.’
There’s no ‘might’. I know exactly what’s there because I thought, ‘Why am I keeping this?’ before shoving it back into the bag the other night.
Angel narrows her eyes through a stream of smoke. ‘I don’t want you leaving the room. Can’t you do something else?’
I want to scream in frustration, but I must stay calm. I’m conscious of how odd and unpredictable she is.
‘What exactly do you suggest?’ I say after a moment.
‘I don’t know.’ Angel casts her eyes about the kitchen and spies the towel she used to dry herself with. Then she starts opening cupboards and comes back with a handful of tea towels, which she thrusts at me.
‘Do something with these.’
I’m awash with incredulity now. I can’t help my sharp retort.
‘Don’t be so ridiculous!’ I want to grab this feckless creature and shake her by the shoulders. Breathing heavily, I say, ‘If you want this child to stop crying he is going to need to be clean and comfortable. And he’s very possibly dehydrated. Babies can get sick if they are dehydrated.’
She gazes back at me and shrugs, defiant. Doesn’t she even care if he gets sick? Can she really be that callous? I force myself to be calm, to think of something that will actually matter to her.
‘Look,’ I say, trying to quell the shaking in my voice, ‘he’s just going to scream even more if he’s uncomfortable or unwell.’ I pause, letting that sink in. ‘I can quieten him down if you let me get the stuff out of the attic.’
