by LK Fox
Nick
When the police turned up at the school they let everyone know they were taking over.
Instead of talking it through and asking me to go with them, they got me to write out what had happened. Then a barrel-chested police chief named John Redditch took me off to an empty classroom with his sidekick, a detective called Hannah Colberton, who had cropped coppery hair and a face that that seemed predisposed to kindness. Redditch sat astride one of the kids’ chairs, like he was riding a horse: the alpha male ready to take charge of the situation, ready to deal with these silly fags who had managed to foolishly misplace a child.
‘So you and your partner were raising this boy between you?’ He stared at my statement as though he was expecting it to magically reveal that I was lying.
‘Ben’s my husband. We’re married.’
‘Ah yes, “married”.’ I could hear the air quotes around that last, loaded word. ‘You can do that now, I forgot.’
The same-sex marriage law had been passed, but sometimes you could be forgiven for thinking that no one had heard about it. Even in my street there were neighbours who acted as if granting human rights to those who had been denied them somehow removed their own. I felt very strongly about this and tended to push back. Ben would tell me to rein it in, so that I wouldn’t offend the nuclear families. I told him there was a line between not wishing to cause offence and being bullied.
Redditch asked me what I did for a living. Whenever I tell someone I’m a horticultural therapist, I can see them struggling with the concept so I explain that it’s a palliative occupation, both for me and my clients. I’m employed by hospices to teach those in terminal situations how to plant gardens. We’ve known for a long time that animals and music can have a calming effect on the terminally ill, but you’d be amazed by the power of plants, the idea of seeing them grow and leaving something behind that you’ve helped to create.
One of the things you hear a lot from patients is how they wish they’d seized more chances in life, spent less time as an office monkey, been braver, more decisive, more prepared to embark on other paths. You listen to their regrets. I’d changed jobs because I didn’t want to have any regrets. That was why I had married Ben. We had fought long and hard for the rights that others took for granted, and I wasn’t about to waste them.
‘So,’ said Redditch, ‘where’s the boy’s mother?’ He looked around the kitchen, as if half-expecting her to appear in an apron.
‘She took off years ago,’ I explained. ‘She wanted nothing to do with Gabriel. She died of breast cancer. You can ask Ben.’
‘Then Gabriel was your partner’s son from his actual marriage?’
‘Yes, and now Gabriel’s my son from Ben’s second “actual” marriage.’
He ignored my sarcastic tone. ‘But he’s not, is he? The most you’d be to him is a stepfather. You meet this guy in a bar and go back with him and find out he’s got a kid.’
‘How is that any different to you meeting a woman with a child from a previous relationship?’ I asked angrily. ‘Assuming you’re straight?’
‘It’s not a competition,’ said Redditch, nettled. ‘You have to accept that it’s different, though. Any tension there?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Between you and your “stepson”?’
‘No, none, Gabriel and I got on right from the start.’
‘How did the boy feel? Did he get teased at school? I mean, two men turning up on parents’ nights. Children are quick to pick up on – unorthodox – arrangements.’
‘They’re only unorthodox because people have been denied their lives in the past.’
‘Well, let’s not get into politics, Mr Maddox.’
Hannah Colberton stepped in. I guessed she was used to heading off her partner whenever he started offering his opinions. ‘You say the boy had “recognition difficulties” – what do you mean?’
‘He was undergoing tests for Pervasive Developmental Disorder,’ I explained. ‘He registers low on the autistic spectrum, but he has difficulty relating to people and events. He won’t make eye contact, his facial responses are wrong, and he’s abnormally possessive about certain objects.’
‘It makes him vulnerable,’ Ben added.
‘So he’s more likely to get into a stranger’s car than another child?’
‘I can’t answer that because the situation has never occurred,’ I said. ‘Well, not in that way.’
‘What do you mean?’
Then I knew I would have to explain something that had happened on a bright Saturday morning back in July. We were in a fancy patisserie in the market, one of those places full of china stands and iced fairy cakes, the sort of shop I normally avoid. The safest pace in the world: the smell of baking, the room crowded with hot dads wearing baby papooses. I chose a couple of cakes for Gabriel and me and turned to pay for my purchases. There was no one waiting at the till so it only took a moment.
When I looked back, I couldn’t see him. Gabriel had walked out of the shop, or so I thought – but one of the fathers tried to tell me he had been following something, a scrunched-up ball of red wrapping tape that someone had dropped.
The market gets crowded with tourists at the weekend. I couldn’t even see the pavement, there were so many people. It was sunny; everyone was out having a good time. Everything looked so sunlit and normal. When I started asking people if they’d seen him, they acted as if I was making an unnecessary fuss.
I’d found him twenty minutes later, in the garden at the back of the observatory, under the trees where the branches grow their thickest leaves and it gets quite shadowy. Only a short walk from where I was, but I felt sure he couldn’t have got there by himself. He seemed fine, a little distant, and he told me about the man who gave him money.
Gave him money. I’d told him, the school had told him and yet he still did it. Because he had no fear and didn’t see any wrong in it, despite all our warnings.
I asked Gabriel what had happened so many times I made him panic and cry. The man had promised to buy him a model boat; he just had to pick it out. Finally, Gabriel gave in and said he knew it was wrong because they didn’t go to the shop, they went into the park. The man said he had to get his bike. Gabriel started to get worried. He didn’t remember anything very clearly after that, except that the man didn’t come back. Gabriel started to get scared and ran off to find me, but got lost.
He stayed in the park and then I was there, and that was all there was to it. I wanted to go to the police, but Gabriel wasn’t able to give me a description. So, a couple of Saturdays, I went there alone.
I had an idea of the kind of person Gabriel might trust. The market is impossible to cover on foot because of the density of people around the stalls. Looking back now, I think I may have seen a smartly dressed man in a suit hanging around in the crowd, just like the man whose car I collided with. There was something about him that felt wrong. He was neatly dressed, alone, not really interested in anything that was on sale. But you can’t just stride up to someone and accuse them . . .
‘Do you think the fact that it was his birthday could have anything to do with it?’ asked Colberton. ‘Was there anywhere he was likely to go?’
‘Not by himself. He was looking forward to coming home tonight. He knew we had presents for him.’
‘He didn’t want a party because he doesn’t function well at them,’ Ben explained.
Redditch looked at me as if to say, How much of this did he get from you two?
I could understand why social services made things difficult for us after Gabriel disappeared. We figured it was their job to be suspicious of everything. But it was Redditch who made our lives hell. I honestly believe he helped to destroy my marriage. I blamed Ben for leaving, but I also knew he had been placed under intolerable pressure. He felt guilty because he worked such long hours and I was the one who always took care of Gabriel.
‘He’d been warned about strangers,’ I replied, ‘just as you
’d warn any child.’
‘Was he taking any medication?’
‘No.’
‘And knowing that he had a mental illness, you say you didn’t wait until he went right inside the school?’ said Redditch.
‘I waited,’ I told him, fighting to stay patient. ‘All I’m saying is I might have missed the last couple of seconds. I didn’t see the door shut behind him. And it’s not a mental illness, it’s a manageable condition that doesn’t affect his day-to-day functioning. We just have to be a little bit careful, that’s all.’
‘In that case, what was so urgent that you couldn’t hang around long enough to make sure that he was safe?’
‘Do you have any children, Mr Redditch?’ I asked. I remember Ben shot me a warning look.
‘Three ‒ a boy and two girls.’
‘Then you know that the routines become so second nature you sometimes make shortcuts without realising.’
‘It’s my wife’s job to make sure they don’t.’
I threw up my hands in defeat. There was nothing I could say or do that would make him stop being mistrustful.
I must admit, I still thought perhaps there would be the kind of miracle you get on a TV cop show, that Colberton would go back to the school and find a tiny clue everyone else had missed. Validation would follow as Gabe was brought back looking sheepish, with profuse apologies all round. Even Redditch would start behaving like a decent human being. I wanted a nice, tidy ending.
Unfortunately, the real world doesn’t work like that. Events never finish neatly. Some things always remain unknown.
As I gave a report at the station, I thought I would just talk and someone, Redditch probably, would one-finger-type it into a file on a computer screen. Instead, they made me write everything down in longhand, seated at a desk with a lined yellow pad and a leaky blue ballpoint, as if I was taking an exam at school. I wondered, What are they expecting me to say? Do think really think I’m going to slip up and reveal that it was all my fault? I’d had enough dealings with the police in my former job to know how bloody-minded they could be.
After that, we spoke with the Met officers again. They’d obviously had better diversity training, and they were okay, sort of, but they didn’t really understand how Ben and I divided the parenting chores, and it didn’t help that Ben was a human clam at the best of times and wasn’t keen on explaining the situation. Maybe I was being over-sensitive, but they still made me feel uncomfortable.
I was taken around the neighbourhood in the back of the squad car, being ‘too emotionally involved’ to drive ‒ and the cops were pretty good. I think at that point they honestly thought we would turn a corner and find Gabriel in a shop or a playground, except I knew they were wrong. He hadn’t had time to walk back out of the yard and head off along the street without me seeing him. Besides, it was raining hard and he had no jacket, just that blue sweatshirt – I should have insisted on him wearing something waterproof, but he didn’t like his coat and was being picked up later so I knew he’d hardly have to see the outside world.
We looked and looked, and found nothing. The rest of the day escalated into panicked tension. And Ben’s reaction was strange from the start. Not emotional or judgemental, just cold, distant, almost indifferent. Whenever I tried to have a proper conversation with him, he turned away. I was later told that it’s the state some people go into, a reaction to shock that newspapers always interpret as guilt, because these days we all have to sob our hearts out in public, otherwise we obviously don’t care enough.
But I also knew it was something more than that. Ben had been pushed hard by parents who had great ambitions for him. He had to be the best at everything. He’d wanted to set an example as the perfect father, but that dream had faded, leaving a space between him and Gabriel.
As I watched the passing streets, I thought about the press getting hold of the story. There was a good chance that if it was a slow news week the whole question of men raising children would be opened up again, in that sly, knowing style the tabloids use when they were pretending to be concerned. I knew that Ben wouldn’t be able to handle the exposure of his private life.
Later, I drove around by myself, hoping to see something. Finally, I came home and just sat beside Ben on the sofa, waiting for news. Hannah Colberton elected to stay with us for a while but was called back to the station. Redditch rang with more questions, this time suggesting I was somehow to blame because I worked instead of staying at home. He asked about the birth mother again and I started stonewalling him. He said he would speak to Ben separately, implying that he would somehow find a way to catch us out.
I took Ben to one side and asked him, ‘There isn’t anything you haven’t told me, is there?’
He looked mystified. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Just about Gabriel. You hardly ever mention your ex-wife. I don’t know who your friends were, or which of them knew your son.’
‘I had a different life then,’ he said. ‘It’s not something I feel comfortable discussing.’
‘Even now? Even with me?’
‘Not with you or anyone else.’
‘It could help, Ben. I want to be sure that we’ve checked everyone, that we’re not going to be put on the spot here.’ I looked around at the police. ‘This is a bad situation.’
‘There’s nothing,’ he assured me. ‘You know everything you need to know. We’re on safe ground. Really. Safe ground.’
Ella
I limped out of the filthy alley at the side of the pub and tried to pull my hooded jacket back together, but the zip was jammed. I’d lost my woollen cap; my jeans were buttoned wrongly. The top of my right thigh was so sore I could hardly walk. I felt weird and shaky. I had dropped a Hello Kitty purse containing most of my money somewhere, but I didn’t want to go back and look for it. Nothing in the world could make me go back there.
I tried to understand how it had all gone so wrong, but I couldn’t even pinpoint the moment. I remembered being surprised that he hadn’t wanted to kiss me. A sexy little kiss ‒ what harm could that do? It would have been a sign that he fancied me, and then I could go home knowing that the coolest guy in the world knew who I was.
It was only when I looked into his blank eyes that I realized the seriousness of the situation. He had no idea what he was doing. My hands had dug into his chest. I’d tried to push him away. It seemed ridiculous, almost comical – and then it wasn’t funny at all and I was really fighting him off, which only made him tighten his grip.
He wasn’t vicious or violent, but he wouldn’t be stopped, even when I struggled. And then I thought, This isn’t about him thinking I’m sexy, this isn’t about me at all, he’s just doing it for him. And that thought turned into Any second now this will end, this has to end and I’ll be free . . .
After, I hobbled around to the front of the building, but the pub was locked up and the lights were off inside. I realised then that the landlord probably knew what went on and didn’t give a damn. That was why the back room hadn’t been locked; the band members were allowed the use of it. Nobody ever checked to see what they got up to.
Tamara had asked why the raffle hadn’t offered bottles of vodka as prizes. Why should they give away alcohol when the tickets could just as easily be used to deliver sex to the bands? I asked myself how I could have been so stupid, how I could have got so drunk. I felt that anyone looking at me now would be able to see what had happened. It was as if I had been branded.
I had let a burned-out junkie have sex with me on a filthy couch in the back of a pub. I could have stopped it, but I didn’t. I could have shown some sense earlier. I could have not gone there at all. What on earth had I expected to happen? I had lost the most precious thing I owned and ruined everything.
I’m not a crier. The only time I cried was when I found out that Mum had died. But when I touched my face now, I found that it was wet.
‘Are you okay?’ called a cab driver, slowing down besi
de me.
I looked at him and another man walking past and moved away against the wall, keeping my head down, walking faster. I tried to work out what to do.
Emerging from that empty pub into the darkened streets, there was no rationality in me, just fear, like the whole world had suddenly turned bad. I could smell that rancid sofa on my fingers. What had happened was bound to get out, and the other girls at school would know. I’d be called a whore. I could tell people whatever I wanted, but I wouldn’t be believed. I had been drinking, I had won the raffle by buying most of the tickets and had chosen to go backstage – even Tamara would admit that. I had been seen hanging around outside Ryder’s dressing-room door like a lovesick kid.
Even though I’d dropped my purse, I still had my travel card in my jacket pocket, so I could catch the tube home. But it was brightly lit down there and I felt sure that the other passengers would stare at me in disgust. I was sure they would see what I’d done, that it was somehow showing on my skin, neon lettering blinking beneath my pores.
I didn’t think of the obvious word for what had just happened. It didn’t seem right. It wasn’t as if he had jumped out on me in the park with a knife in his hand. He hadn’t put me in fear of my life. I had wanted to do it. If a line had been crossed, it was scuffed and blurred. If I told anyone – the police, my father – they would ask me whether it had been consensual, and I would have to answer yes, kind of. No, kind of. And they would say, Well, which is it? And I wouldn’t know what to say. All I knew was that I had horribly misread the situation, thinking we could go so far and then sort of stop.
I felt like something had altered inside me. It wasn’t just my fantasy that had been destroyed. I knew there was nobody in the world I could tell – no one I could rely on to believe me. At school, I sometimes exaggerated how much experience I had, just to be noticed. But now I was terrified about anyone finding out what I had done.
As I walked down the main road, it was still raining hard, but for once I was glad. The downpour hid me from others.
