The Second Child

by Caroline Bond

Phil goes to her. ‘Are we being too loud for you, honey?’ She lowers her hands and signs ‘bed’, two hands to her cheek. ‘Someone else play my go for me, while I take Lauren up to bed, will you?’ Lauren makes for the stairs. ‘But not Ali!’ They disappear upstairs and the battle for Marylebone Station kicks off again.

  SARAH

  They arrive at 6.30 p.m., armed with home-made cakes and brownies, all Jess’s handiwork, and the house expands to absorb them. Music and laughter fill the rooms. Rosie is buzzing, shiny-haired, bright-eyed, happy to have the family together. She flits from Ali to Phil to Jess to James to me and Lauren, embroidering on the thread that connects her to each of us. It’s a proper celebration of family…

  … That I could do without. Because despite the easy atmosphere and the sense of real affection, I feel profoundly uneasy. Ali’s repeated glances are understandable, but they only serve to remind me that I’m deceiving them. I eat, smile, laugh and watch them banter and bond, from what feels like a great height.

  With Lauren settled in bed and a third bottle of wine opened, the mood gets even more hyper. They bicker their way through Monopoly for what feels like hours until, with great hilarity, they bankrupt Phil. When James brings out a pack of cards and suggests ‘Cheat’, I excuse myself.

  I slip out into the back garden, hoping that the fierce competition of their card game will buy me at least a few minutes on my own. I only get five, because Ali follows me out. She passes me a fleece and I put it on, grateful for the warmth and the consideration, but she brings with her questions as well as comfort.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’ve thought about nothing else.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I still don’t know what to do for the best.’ There’s a beat, a moment of pale darkness filled with the sound of laughter from inside the house.

  ‘You can’t seriously be thinking of keeping quiet about it?’ Ali’s indignation fills the garden.

  ‘But if I reveal what she did, what good will it do?’

  ‘She’ll get what she deserves.’ Ali is so sure. I’m so unsure. I say nothing. She makes a despairing gesture. ‘It will eat you up, if you don’t say anything.’

  ‘It won’t – not if I don’t let it.’ I can only hope that’s true.

  Ali doesn’t offer me any comfort. ‘It will. And it will let Anne off the hook. She’ll get away with it.’ She pushes harder. ‘And you’ll have to let her see Rosie. You do get that, don’t you? She’ll still have rights. Can you live with that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  We’re silent for a moment. ‘So… I do it for revenge?’

  Ali hesitates. ‘No. Yes. Sod it! Yes!’

  She doesn’t understand why I’m so conflicted, so trapped by the truth of what Anne did. But I know that whatever I decide, it will lead to more pain. Ali’s voice is still sharp when she says, ‘What about Phil? What about his right to know? Are you going to lie to him about it for the rest of your life?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The thought hurts too much.

  She shakes her head. I reach out and pull her towards me. There is only one certainty in all of this. It’s me who must decide what happens next. No one else. Me. ‘Ali, you must keep your promise. I’m sorry, but you must.’ She catches the firmness in my voice. I can see the impulse to argue bubbling within her, but I don’t let her interrupt. ‘Ali. This isn’t yours to share. I’m asking you to trust me to know what’s best for my family.’

  She looks me in the eye and, after an age, she nods. I feel some of the resistance in her body give, slightly. I know how much it’s costing her to quell her rage, but I also know that I believe her. She will not say anything, because I have asked her not to.

  ‘Thank you.’ We stand there for another few seconds, so far apart and yet so united, then we go back into the house.

  PHIL

  I have to tell them to shush, they’re making so much noise. They’re both red in the face from exertion. Who knew a game of ‘Cheat’ could be so full-on? I’m benched, thrown out of the game for sitting on my ‘impossible to get rid of’ set of fours. Jess, with the coolness of the lovely cucumber that she is, managed to get rid of her cards early on, by slow, stealthy, under-the-radar cheating that none of us spotted, which leaves Rosie and James duelling it out. They both seem to have a lot of cards left.

  Jess and I chat about work. She’s passionate, me less so, but after a while we lapse into a comfortable wine-induced silence. The bang makes us both jump. The back door? A sudden gust of wind? From somewhere in my ‘pre-programmed, good parent’ brain, I remember that Lauren’s window is still open. With an effort I haul myself up.

  As expected, Lauren is fast asleep, despite the shouting and carrying-on downstairs. The curtain is billowing. I reach up to pull her window shut and hear, ‘What about Phil?’

  It’s hard to enjoy the party after that.

  I wait until Sarah and I are upstairs and the house is quiet. I close the bedroom door behind me. That gets her attention. I switch the main light on. I want to see her face.

  ‘What is it that you’re not telling me?’ She pulls her T-shirt up over her head, obscuring her face for a second. ‘Sarah, I heard you in the garden with Ali.’ Her face re-emerges. I can’t read the emotion that ripples across it. ‘Sarah, tell me. Whatever it is, just tell me.’ Something changes in her demeanour, a tiny adjustment; again I can’t decipher its meaning.

  Then she says, ‘I did something that I shouldn’t have.’

  ‘What?’

  There’s another uncomfortably long pause. She looks down at the carpet. ‘I sent a photo of Lauren to Nathan Elkan.’

  It’s not what I was expecting, though I don’t know what I was expecting. ‘Sorry, I don’t understand.’

  She meets my eye. ‘Neither do I. Not really.’ She sits down on the bed. ‘I was angry. I hated how he was rejecting Lauren, as if she didn’t matter. I did it to shame him.’ I’m stunned at her rashness. It’s so not Sarah. ‘I hated that he was ignoring the whole thing as if he wasn’t involved. I wanted him to have to accept that his child had a disability, but that she still had value. I did it on principle.’

  ‘But if he’d got involved, it would have been a nightmare.’

  She nods. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I know that nothing about this has anything to do with principle, does it?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve being telling you all along.’

  She looks down. ‘I know. And you’re right.’

  I go and sit next to her. She says ‘Sorry’ again. ‘And you never heard back from him?’ She shakes her head. ‘So we dodged a bullet.’ She nods. ‘And that’s what you’ve been keeping from me?’ She nods again, very slowly. ‘Okay.’

  She looks up, her face still clouded by anxiety. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Yep, okay.’ I kiss her on the cheek, and for an awful moment I think she’s going to burst into tears. She tries to smile. ‘Come on, it’s late, let’s get some sleep. We’ve got Anne to face down tomorrow.’ I’m relieved. It was stupid and very unlike Sarah, but no harm’s been done. From the way Ali was talking, I thought it was something serious.

  47

  The Last Day

  ANNE

  I’VE BEEN summoned to appear before them.

  After days of nothing, I receive a message from Sarah on Saturday morning. It is brief and brutal: Arrive on Sunday afternoon, after 1 p.m., not before. That’s it. A clear instruction, but no indication of what she’s planning.

  As I pack my few belongings I feel anxiety building in my chest. This hotel room has been my sanctuary for the past few days, the world outside has shrunk away. I’ve barely had contact with anyone. I’ve received a couple of chatty messages from Steph that have required me to lie, and another polite, insistent enquiry from Nathan’s solicitors. That hardly seems to matter now. Nathan hardly matters. It’s to my shame that it’
s taken me this long to realise that. He has always stood between me and my capacity to love my child. From Rosie herself I’ve had a few normal, uninformative texts. I’ve read them again and again, cherishing their bland ordinariness. They’ve given me a fragile thread of hope to hold on to. They cannot have told her, yet.

  At Reception I settle my account. The girl is clipped, efficient, impersonal. She processes the payment, passes me back my credit card, and wishes me a nice day. If she’s curious about my hermit-like stay, she does a good job of pretending otherwise. Perhaps she simply doesn’t care. As I walk through the revolving door I have to discipline myself not to keep pushing and merely emerge back into the lobby. How ridiculous have I become? At the multi-storey car park it takes me fifteen minutes to find my car and to the pay the huge sum for four days. Driving down the ramp and straight into the city-centre traffic is a baptism of fire. I’m honked at twice as I switch lanes, struggling to find the road that leads to the west of the city. I’m anxious about being late, but I’m even more fearful of arriving. I know that at long last I’m about to pay the real price for stealing Rosie away from them. My suffering up until now has merely been a precursor. Rosie has wriggled and struggled for years and now she’s about to rip free, back to where she was always supposed to be. When Sarah tells her what I did, she will hate me. I took her away from parents who would have loved her properly, naturally and unconditionally. That is unforgivable.

  48

  Us

  SARAH

  AFTER TEN minutes of crashing about, fetching coats and shoes, the door bangs shut and the house falls quiet. Lauren glances up from her iPad. She pats the carpet, requesting my presence, and I settle down beside her.

  Anne is on her way.

  I sit on the floor and we watch a stream of happy, sunny children’s TV. The time edges by.

  Phil and I haven’t really talked any more, beyond reassuring each other that it’s going to be all right. He still thinks that today is little more than an uncomfortable formality, a simple step on the path to a bright future. And I’ve let him think that. He’s looking forward, confident that the good times will roll, gathering pace and momentum, sweeping any obstacles out of the way.

  But there is an obstacle: Anne’s confession.

  I know in my bones that keeping it from him is wrong. Last night I lied to his face and he believed me, and the strongest emotion I felt was relief. I was relieved that he only heard the end of Ali’s conversation and that he accepted my tale about Nathan Elkan and the photo. But it also reminded me that to keep a secret for ever I’m going to have to lie to him, for ever. Which is wrong. It’s a betrayal of our marriage. Phil and I do not lie to each other. We have never lied to each other. Yet now I am, because I’m paralysed by the thought of telling him the truth. When I tell them what Anne did, it will shatter, yet again, the fragile equilibrium we’ve managed to re-establish in our lives.

  But I’m going to have to do something, because the time is up. Anne is on her way.

  Lauren nudges me and signs for a drink, reminding me that I have responsibilities in the present. She drinks noisily, a full beaker of juice, straight down. I feel bad that she was thirsty and I didn’t realise. After she’s finished, she hesitates and I wait for her to fling the cup across the room, but she doesn’t, she passes it back to me, politely. I return the beaker to the kitchen. On the side the photo frame scrolls through its endless loop: me, Phil, James and Lauren, Dad, Ali and Jess, different combinations of our family across the years. Only a couple photos of Rosie so far, but there’ll be more. When Rosie finds out that it was Anne who robbed her of her place in her real family, it will destroy their relationship. And what else will it smash in the process? Her faith in adults, in the truth, in ever feeling secure enough to grow up into a confident and positive young woman? How will she survive finding out that both Nathan and Anne put their needs and desires before her? That she was little more than a pawn in their weird, twisted marriage. What good will that truth do Rosie?

  Back in the lounge, Lauren pats the floor next to her again, demanding my company. I re-join her and watch the clock inch slowly round as the rain patters down the window, drawing comfort from being close to the child who has had my heart for fifteen years, but who was never supposed to be my daughter.

  It would’ve been so different without Lauren.

  There’d have been a whole other life. A career for me, options for Phil, more travelling, more money, more excitement and choice, more time and space. There’d have been less stress, less anxiety, less clinging to what was safe and predictable, in the face of what was uncertain and fragile. And there’d have been no surgeries, no grey dawns after sleepless nights, no watching my child in pain, no leaving my other child to fend for himself, no specialists, no social workers, no endless forms and relentless appointments. There’d have been no slow realisation of the gap between our expectations and our future. No acceptance of the loss.

  Something on the screen amuses Lauren and she laughs and pokes me, requiring me to pay attention. It’s a clip that she’s seen a thousand times before, but she laughs, delighted by the simple silliness of it. I stroke her cheek.

  It would’ve been so different without Lauren.

  There’d have been no unequivocal love. No Dad with his reserved, concerned affection; and no Ali, supporting us through it all, going way beyond what it’s reasonable to expect from a sister. There’d have been no James, my kind, unselfish, resilient son, who has grown into a strong, decent young man full of empathy and compassion. And, above all, there’d have been no Phil and I, locked together by our love for them all.

  If there’d have been no Lauren, there’d have been no us.

  I put my arm around my daughter and hold her tight, but only for moment, because she unceremoniously wriggles free and signs ‘rain’, demanding that I sing to her.

  I hear the van arriving back. When I open the door they flood in, all noise and energy and wet, cold air. ‘Whoa, you’re not traipsing all that upstairs.’ James halts on the step and grins at me, he’s plastered in mud. They obviously won. He bends and starts untying his laces with dirty, clumsy fingers. Ali comes in, shaking raindrops off her jacket, followed by Phil and Rosie, both of them soaked.

  Rosie bounds upstairs. ‘I’ll run a bath.’ James, free of his boots, steps into the hall, dripping wet. His big feet and curiously manly toes are white and wrinkled. His shins are clean up to his knees, filthy above, his kit streaked with mud and grass stains. As he tries to pull off his soaking football shirt he gets himself into a tangle, the wet fabric sticking to his back. I step forward to help. As I tug the shirt over his head, a shape appears on the other side of the door. Silhouetted in the frosted glass is Anne. The hall falls silent. She doesn’t reach for the bell. She simply stands there, an ill-defined presence awaiting admission. We all freeze, like cartoon characters: James mid-strip, Phil halfway out of his coat, Ali on the bottom stair, unzipping her boots. Anne must be able to see us through the glass. James recovers first. He scoops up his stuff and pelts upstairs. Phil shakes himself out of his inactivity and goes to open the door. I turn away, clutching James’s wet football shirt to my chest, and escape into the kitchen.

  ANNE

  I see their van pull up, followed by a small white car. Ali climbs out of it. Phil, James and Rosie emerge from the van. The boy is covered in mud. There’s a flurry of voices and activity, the front door opens and the house swallows them up. I have to get this over with. I climb out of the car, pull on my coat and walk up the ramp towards the house, listening to their voices bouncing off one another inside. Through the frosted glass I can see their outlines moving around, a blur of colour and shapes. I stop and wait; inside, they stop and wait. As I stand there, I notice the jasmine that I brought up for Sarah all those weeks ago. It’s dumped outside the front door, no flowers any more, just a few leaves clinging to the twisted stem and a scatter of unopened fallen buds around the base of the pot. The pause stretches out, then t
here’s a flash of movement across the hall, followed by Phil coming forward to let me in. ‘Come through to the kitchen. We’ve just got back.’ No anger, just dismissal. She cannot have told him, yet.

  I step inside. ‘I can wait in the car if you’d prefer.’ My voice wavers. Perhaps if I prostrate myself before them, they’ll have pity on me.

  ‘No. Don’t be ridiculous.’ Phil is brusque. ‘Come through.’

  I follow him into the kitchen. It’s painfully bright, the over-head lights have been switched on to combat the gloom of the day outside. Sarah is over by the sink and Lauren is sitting at the table, a plate of toast in front of her.

  Ali has her back to me, but she turns around and glares as I walk into the room. ‘Hello, Anne.’ The coldness reveals that she knows.

  ‘Hello.’ For a second they all stare at me, even Lauren. The eyes that are missing are Rosie’s.

  Sarah picks up on my unspoken question. ‘She’s upstairs, getting changed; she’ll be down in a minute, then we’ll talk. I’m making tea, would you like one?’ Sarah’s voice is colourless, deliberately so. ‘Yes, please.’ My own voice sounds small and pathetically polite. My only option is to sit down and await my fate. Sarah and Ali make forced small talk about the unseasonal weather and the football, and about how nicely Lauren is eating, while I sit dumbly in their midst waiting for Rosie to come downstairs. It’s a conversation designed to exclude me. I can’t bring myself to look at Lauren in Sarah’s presence. Ali, however, has no problem meeting my eye. She stares at me, plainly outraged. As I go to take a sip of tea, my hands shake so much that I have to put my mug down. Rosie has still not appeared. Phil goes to the foot of the stairs and calls her. ‘Rosie! Anne’s here. Can you come down, love?’ His voice is so normal, so at ease, as he strips me of my role. There’s a thud and footsteps and, finally, she enters the kitchen. I twist round at the sound of her.