Give Me the Child

by Mel McGrath

  ‘Look, you must have seen some of the tabloid headlines. Monster kids, devil children. I bet you hate that.’

  ‘Of course I hate it.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t say the children in your psychopath clinic are evil then?’

  I took a breath. White had succeeded in provoking me. How had he found out about the clinic? We’d gone to some length to keep its existence quiet. On the institute’s website I was listed as the director of research into child personality disorders. No mention of psychopathy, nor any clinic.

  ‘I have no idea how you came about that information and I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me, but it would be deeply irresponsible of the Herald to print anything about the clinic. The work we do is highly sensitive. You start bandying about words like “evil” you are stigmatising vulnerable children and potentially putting them at risk from vigilante nutcases.’

  ‘In that case, give me a quote and I won’t mention it.’

  I tried to think clearly but with everything going on that wasn’t easy. And I really just wanted White off the phone. Finally, I said, ‘How’s about this? Some kids are genetically predisposed to respond to environmental stressors with violence, but it’s vanishingly rare to come across a violent child who hasn’t first witnessed violence in their environment. Kids pattern their behaviour from what they see around them.’

  ‘So you’re basically saying we get the kids we deserve?’

  I thought about this for a moment. ‘I don’t think I’d put it like that, but I guess so, perhaps.’

  I put down the phone and took some deep breaths. The brassy, citrusy smell of whatever Emma Barrons had loaded into her e-cigarette still lingered in the room. I knew what I’d just done would probably come back at me, but for now I was more worried about how White had come by his information. However I looked at it, the clinic was vulnerable. Which meant I was vulnerable. And there was nothing I could do about it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  On my run home I spotted a new yellow police board outside Jamal’s. The place was one of those ratty not-actually-on-a-corner corner shops selling super-strength lager, haircuts and money transfer services that Londoners rely on to be open all hours. I often dived in there on my run back from work. Beside the board, on the wall separating Jamal’s shop from the Caribbean takeaway next door, an impromptu shrine had appeared. Bunches of cheap flowers lay scattered around a central core of lit candles and someone had glued a photo of a young, heartbreakingly open-faced boy to a piece of card and nailed it to the wall. Beneath the photo the word ‘warrior’ was misspelled in red ink.

  ‘What is happening to this city?’ I said, while Jamal was ringing up my purchases. ‘Since when did dead kids become warriors?’

  ‘I blame designer trainers and computer games.’ From his jovial tone I knew Jamal didn’t quite mean this. He was aware of what Tom did for a living. They’d talked many times about playing FIFA together.

  ‘I blame us,’ I said.

  Tom and I were twenty-five when we met. I’d just finished my PhD and was giving a paper on the use of psychological games to develop empathy in kids with antisocial personality disorder at a gaming conference in London. In the lunch break this lean, rangy games developer with chocolate curls and a dazzling smile appeared at my side. We talked about the paper for a while. Then, in a voice like a week on a beach, Tom said, ‘Has anyone ever told you that the left side of your mouth turns upwards when you’re thinking hard?’

  I laughed. ‘Not till now.’

  ‘So, what are you thinking about?’

  I laughed again. ‘I’m going to assume you’re being ironically suggestive.’

  He met my eye then and our smiles faded. At that point in my life, I’d never been to a forest but there was something about his gaze that was redolent of the thick silence of trees at dusk. It had a specific stillness and a density which you only found in the forest.

  Tom winked at me. ‘Well, whatever you were thinking about, I know what you’re thinking about now.’ Then, with perfect cool, he added, ‘So, lunch?’

  We went to an Italian place around the corner and ate whatever. I don’t remember what we talked about because it didn’t matter. I think we might have shared a tiramisu. But then again it could have been something else.

  ‘How’s about we go somewhere and play grown-up games?’ he said, after we’d finished coffee.

  ‘Do you ever stop?’ I said. He’d been flirting with me throughout the meal.

  He looked at me. ‘Would you like me to?’ Then, and as if it was the most natural thing in the world, his hand went to my waist. His touch was so light but so absolute it was like being webbed in spider silk. I heard myself laughing. The question was so cheesy but at the same time so hot that no was the only possible answer. I didn’t want him to stop. Not then. And not for a long time after.

  We went to the first hotel we could find and played grown-up games. Later, drinking room-service whisky, I asked Tom what he thought made a great gamer.

  He propped himself up on one elbow and, running the fingers of his other hand along my belly, said, ‘Perfect hand–eye coordination, precision, responsiveness and the ability to focus completely on the game to the exclusion of everything else.’

  Basically, I thought, the exact same stuff that makes a man great at sex – and I decided there and then that I wanted Tom Walsh in my life.

  Jamal handed me my change. I thanked him and went out of the shop. At the shrine I stopped a moment and read some of the messages, absent-mindedly pouring a sachet of popping candy down my throat and waiting for the miniature explosion. I wasn’t looking forward to going home. I wished I could sit Tom down and say, ‘You know what? Let’s just draw a line under this, make a fresh start.’ But I wasn’t big enough to allow that to be the end of it.

  I broke back into a run. I wanted it to work between us but I wasn’t about to be a martyr to my marriage. I had my pride. I also had Freya to think about. I didn’t want her growing up thinking that the long-suffering wife was any kind of role to aspire to. At the same time, things were delicate. I needed to be strategic about this. Like many men of his class and upbringing, Tom couldn’t deal with any kind of direct confrontation, especially not from a woman. I wanted to make life uncomfortable enough for Tom that he would never be tempted to stray again but I knew if I tried to box him in, he’d do whatever it took to game his way out and I’d lose the upper hand.

  The girls were in the garden. Ruby, a thin, sallow-skinned, befreckled creature with an enormous shock of red hair in whose delicate blue frame I couldn’t see anyone I had ever loved, was sitting beside my daughter and pulling at the grass, the two of them building something with Lego. A brief, fleeting moment of relief came over me then, followed by an odd sense that the girl with the orange hair wasn’t real and any minute now she would vanish, leaving the three of us alone once more.

  ‘Hey, girls!’

  Freya jumped up and came running.

  ‘I’m showing Ruby our magic castle, only she doesn’t believe me,’ she said, clasping me around the waist and burying her head in my belly.

  At eleven, Freya still occupied a world of childish possibility. She was young for her age, emotionally, and I was happy with that. I knew what growing up too fast in the city was like and I didn’t want that for my kid.

  ‘Well, you can show it to me later.’ I took my daughter’s sweet, small, ‘not quite white’ hand and we walked up the garden to where Ruby was sitting.

  ‘Hi, Ruby, how was your day?’

  ‘Hello,’ the girl said, regarding me with a level gaze. Her eyes were the colour of the late summer sun catching in a mirror. Amber beads with pupils trapped inside, like something very old which had never found a name. She reached for a brick and, pressing it into her hand, said, ‘My mum died, so now I’m living here.’

  ‘I’m very sorry about what happened to your mother.’

  The girl nodded without looking up so I couldn’t properly read her face. Sh
e didn’t look as though she’d been crying but maybe it hadn’t hit her yet. Or maybe it had but she didn’t feel like crying. Or maybe she was all cried out? Ruby Winter was a mystery to us. Probably even to herself.

  ‘You didn’t return my call.’ I felt Tom’s presence and swung round. His hands were on his hips and there was a little tic playing on his jawline. I remembered then that he’d called me back and left a message.

  ‘The day ran away from me.’

  He eyed me questioningly as if waiting for me to thank him for the roses, which I was in no mood to do. It was Freya who lightened the atmosphere.

  ‘Mum, Ruby likes pizza and ice cream. Isn’t that cool?’ Our daughter was sitting beside her half-sister now, idly picking at the grass.

  ‘Well, good, that’s our tea sorted, then.’ It was a relief, suddenly, to be talking about the everyday. ‘How was the bed in the spare room, Ruby? Did you sleep OK?’

  ‘She likes my room better,’ Freya said, handing her half-sister a frogged brick.

  Pudge the cat wandered over. On any normal day, Freya would have held Pudge in the air and kissed his paws, but I saw Ruby pull up her hands like a drawbridge, a look of mild distaste on her face, and my daughter, ever in tune with other people’s feelings, reached over, picked him up and gently deposited him over on the other side of the garden before returning to her spot.

  ‘Ruby prefers Harry to Pudge, don’t you?’ Freya had been allowed to take the school hamster home to look after in the holidays.

  ‘Sort of,’ Ruby said.

  Tom had sat down on the grass beside his daughter and was now rifling through the Lego bricks.

  ‘We can fix up your room any way you want it,’ he said casually. ‘For when you come and visit.’

  A thin smile broke out inside me. At least on that matter Tom and I were in accord. The girl would live with her grandmother. For the majority of the time Dunster Road would remain just us three.

  ‘Good idea,’ I said.

  Later, after pizza and ice cream and when the girls had gone into the living room to play a dance game on the household Wii and Tom and I were clearing up, I said, ‘Roses. Really?’

  ‘Worth a try,’ Tom said.

  ‘I binned them.’

  ‘Can’t say I blame you.’

  So he had decided to play nice, which meant I had to do the same or hate myself.

  ‘Did you get to talk to Freya on her own today?’ I went on, changing the subject.

  Tom stopped what he was doing, went over to the counter where the open bottle of wine sat and poured himself a glass.

  ‘Of course. She’s super cool about having a new sister.’

  ‘Half-sister.’

  Tom shot me a little look of reproach. ‘Yeah, whatever.’

  Then, as if magicked, Freya appeared and the conversation ended before it had begun.

  At eight thirty I hustled the two girls up to bed and sat with Freya a while. Just as Tom said, she was excited about the new arrival and full of girlish plans and if there was any hint of jealousy or foreboding, or even anxiety, she didn’t show it. I loved her all the more for that – her generosity and innate decency.

  By the time I got back downstairs, Tom was on the sofa playing on his games console. I joined him, poured myself a glass of wine and invited the cat onto my lap.

  ‘Shall we talk?’

  Tom stiffened then looked up with raised eyebrows as though I’d said something surprising.

  ‘What, now?’ He had this way of making it seem as if all conversation should only ever be about an exchange of essential information, that there was no such thing as simply talking. Because talking brought up the possibility of confrontation. And avoiding confrontation was the way Tom absolved himself from responsibility whilst seeming completely reasonable. If you want to talk, of course we’ll talk, but I wonder if this is really the right time? Wouldn’t tomorrow be better? If I pushed it, he’d usually run off, returning a few hours or even, on one or two occasions, a few days later, as if nothing had ever happened, knowing that I’d be too spent to want to start up again. A couple of times, when I had, he had lost it in the most spectacular way, one time pushing his hands through a window, another (we’d been in the car) driving straight into a wall.

  I met his question with another. ‘How has Ruby seemed today?’

  ‘Calm. OK. In shock a bit, I guess. She could do without the social workers and all that administrative bullshit.’

  ‘Maybe we could come to some arrangement with the grandmother for Ruby to stay with us every other weekend on a sort of experimental basis?’

  Tom reached for his glass and took a long gulp. ‘Maybe.’ He sounded as though he was hiding something.

  ‘But?’

  ‘But I haven’t spoken to her. When the police finally got through she said she was too upset to talk to me or Ruby. I’ll call her later, find out what the funeral arrangements are. The social worker seemed to think it’s important for Ruby to go.’

  ‘How were your meetings with social services and the police?’

  He shrugged. ‘If I’m honest, most of it went straight over my head.’ If I’m honest. I liked that.

  ‘But there’s no suggestion of anything weird, is there?’

  ‘No, why would you think that? The woman had a drink problem and, from what the cops said, a rather chaotic life.’ The way he said ‘chaotic life’ made it clear that he was expecting me to feel sorry for Lilly Winter, which I did, but that didn’t make me any sorrier for Tom.

  We fell silent, the dead woman in the room between us. Eventually, when I couldn’t stand it anymore, I said, ‘Did you really only sleep with Lilly Winter once?’ My voice was breathy, and with no weight to it, like sea foam breaking on pebbles.

  Tom twisted around to look at me.

  ‘Yes. Jesus, Cat, you want the truth. I regretted it then I forgot about it. It was just a really stupid mistake. And I’m sorry, really.’ He reached out but I pulled back. As a conciliatory gesture, he picked up the bottle of Malbec on the coffee table and waved it in the air. He was quite pissed, I realised then.

  ‘A glass of this? Or there’s some chilled “not quite white” in the fridge.’

  ‘That was funny before you fucked that woman.’

  Tom cocked his head and grinned. ‘Nah, that was actually funny.’ I snorted and gave ground and immediately the tension between us eased.

  ‘Was it really tricky? Back then, I mean.’

  ‘Bloody awful.’ His knee started beating under the table. ‘Not just tricky, actually scary, like I’d lost you just at the moment when you were about to give birth to our daughter. You were so paranoid you wouldn’t even be in the same room as me.’

  ‘What did I think you were going to do to me?’ I didn’t remember much about my mental state back then and now I felt trapped between my anger at Tom and the fear of expressing it. The look that came into his eyes from time to time when he was afraid of what he saw as my instability.

  He went quiet for a moment, his fingers rubbing the wine glass. I could tell he was working out his next move.

  ‘That’s not the point. Anyway, we’ve never talked about whether you cheated on me. I know you wanted to, with that lawyer guy on the Spelling case. Dominic. You were hot for him.’

  I dismissed this with a wave, but Tom was more right than he knew. I’d been far from the perfect wife. I stood up.

  ‘I’m going to check on Freya.’

  Our daughter was sitting in bed watching the hamster turning aimlessly on its wheel. It was far too late for her to be awake.

  ‘What’s up, sweet pea?’

  She crossed her arms over her delicate little chest. ‘Auntie Sally’s your sister. Now I’ve got one too.’ Her tone had a hint of reproach. Jealousy? Resentment of my failure to provide a sister? A kind of possessiveness? It was always hard to tell with Freya.

  ‘Yes, darling.’ I bent down and we kissed each other. She snuggled into her duvet and I stroked her head until s
he fell asleep, but as I crept back through the hall past the spare room, darkened now, where Ruby Winter slept, I remembered her words, I live here now, and a feeling of disquiet trailed me like a shadow.

  Sometime in the middle of the night I woke to the sound of murmuring voices. Tom was beside me, dead to the world. Creeping out of bed, I found the two girls sitting at the bottom of the bed in Freya’s room, playing with the hamster.

  ‘What are you two doing?’

  ‘Ruby wants Harry in her room,’ Freya said, by way of explanation.

  ‘I see. Well, we can talk about that in the morning. For now, I think it’s best if the hamster stays here and we all go back to our beds and get some sleep.’ I put the animal back inside his cage and, as I held out a hand for Ruby, the girl slid by without a word and went onto the landing. I kissed Freya then followed Ruby to the spare room and waited for her to get back into bed. As the light went out, she was lying stiffly with the duvet tucked under her armpits and her arms uncovered, hands working into little blue-white fists on the counterpane.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I woke early, with Ruby Winter on my mind. There had been some hint of slyness about the way she’d been with Freya last night that I didn’t like. Although she was a few months younger than Freya she already knew things, sad, troubling things that had yet to darken Freya’s horizons. I was familiar with what knowing too much too soon could do to a kid’s spirit because I’d been one of those kids who’d had to grow up too fast. Unless you were very careful or just plain lucky, a background like that could make you cynical, angry and preternaturally old. I sensed that with Ruby the damage had already been done. You might be able to apply a few sticking plasters but you could never erase the scar. I didn’t want that happening to my girl.

  I got up and padded out to the landing in my nightdress. Pudge the cat let out a greeting, but otherwise everything was quiet. Tom had decamped to the sofa bed in his study in the early hours, disturbed by my restlessness. The girls’ bedroom doors were closed and the house was still thick with sleep. I went back into the bedroom, pulled on my running gear then slipped downstairs to make breakfast.