by LK Fox
Climbing forward, I opened it and flicked through the pages, trying to concentrate on the spreadsheet filled with tiny type, attempting to understand the clinic’s plans for me and my child. I felt slow-witted and stupid, but one date raised itself on the page. My beautiful baby was to be removed from the clinic on the seventeenth of the month.
Today.
Which meant that it was the last time I would see him until – when? Where would they take him? How long would it be before I could collect him? I flicked through the pages, searching for further dates, trying to understand, flicking faster, knowing that Jasmine was on her way to the room.
And there it was, spelled out in Marleena’s childish, rounded writing. I may not have got all the details right about everything else, but I remember every word of this: ‘In order to reduce the patient’s level of emotional upheaval, we would prefer to eliminate contact between the birth mother and the adoptive agent. The supervisor is prepared to enforce this rule without recourse to the usual timetable of periodic reassessment.’
Gabriel twisted in his sleep and settled deeper into his blanket, raising a tiny pink fist to his mouth. I could feel his heat, a living creature being discussed as if he was a cut of meat.
I watched him resting in the womb of the cot and knew I would never be allowed see him again. The intention was obvious. My innocence had been destroyed, but the child’s was to remain intact. Marleena had lied to me. These last few moments were the only time I would ever spend alone with my baby again.
He would be removed and placed in a system that would treat him like a parcel or a piece of luggage to be delivered to the other side of the world, and there was no way on earth I would ever be able to track him down, because he would have new parents and a new life, and nothing would remain of me except the final gaze I imprinted on his unfocussed eyes.
I forced myself to think clearly, trying to imagine a foolproof way of tracing him. Jasmine or Marleena would appear in the doorway at any moment and spout more lies, and my little boy would become a statistic on a computer screen. I panicked, pulled myself from the chair and wrenched my bed away from the old stationery cupboard, ransacking its drawers.
The metal hole punch was designed to add pages to the clinic’s ring-binders. I opened it, then squeezed blue antiseptic gel over the sharpened steel edge of the top ring. I took it to my sleeping boy and carefully unlocked his grip on the blanket.
The soft flesh between the thumb and forefinger of his left fist perfectly fitted beneath the punch-hole. I couldn’t dare to delay it for another moment. I squeezed the handle of the punch tight and felt the steel ring crunch through my baby’s flesh. I wasn’t prepared for the amount of blood that welled up, or the scream that pierced the silence of the makeshift bedroom. The hole punch spat out a tiny disc of pink and crimson tissue as it opened.
I put my thumb over the hole to try and stem the blood, but it kept dripping. He screamed and screamed, so much noise from that tiny mouth.
It was only when Marleena and the other nurse burst in and tore the hole punch from my other hand, and I looked down and saw the pale blue blanket blossoming with its scarlet stain, that I knew I would never, ever be allowed near my child again. You have to love someone very much to hurt them like that.
I can find you! I thought as they shouted at me. You’ll carry the scar for the rest of your life, just as I have. I’ll come and find you!
Nick
When she wasn’t working at the hospital or collecting her children, Kaylie ran a hypnotherapy practice from an orange-and-purple Mongolian yurt at the end of her garden. It was off limits to her rowdy regiment, who marauded through the house armed only with the limitless cruelty of their imaginations and a few items of electronic weaponry. The tent that stood beyond Kaylie’s sprawling buddleia was a sanctuary of joss-stick-scented calm; I used to take meditation classes in there. I’d tried to get Ben to try some hypnotherapy once, but he said he didn’t like the idea of someone else trying to see inside his mind.
Kaylie somehow managed to find time for charity work, and she had an evening practice at the Alternative Therapy Wellbeing Clinic, but as she lived two doors along from me it made sense to just go round there and see if she was available.
She said I could have the lunchtime slot, as long as we didn’t overrun, so we went out to the yurt, me following her immense, undulating rear down the toy-strewn garden. Around us, the terraces stood silent and dead in the dim grey shadows of the afternoon. On the balcony of the building opposite, three small Middle Eastern children with kohl-ringed eyes stood motionless, as if waiting for the end of the world.
The air in the yurt was cold and smelled of mildew. Kaylie set me down on a damp sofa-bed while she lit candles and more joss sticks. There was an armchair, a moth-eaten Afghan rug and a sideboard covered in candle-holders and fake-looking African masks. She listened impassively while I explained why I was there.
‘Darling, I’m not a psychologist, but it sounds like you remember more than you realise,’ she said when I’d finished. ‘I’m going to charge you for the session, not for myself but for you, because I need you to place value on what I tell you.’
I thought about explaining that I could place value on her advice without paying for it, but before I could do that a painted head appeared through the tent flaps, next to something that looked like an elongated rat.
‘Kaylie! Jameel bit me.’
‘Well, bite him back, only harder. Scoot. And I’ve told you a thousand times, the ferret isn’t allowed out when she’s menstruating.’ She slapped her hands hard, and he shot back out. ‘Can I say how sorry I was for both of you, Nick? I know we haven’t spoken as much as we should have—’
‘It’s fine,’ I said, with more curtness than I’d intended, because I couldn’t take any more condolences. ‘Can we do this?’
‘Let’s define a goal first,’ she said. ‘You saw something that wasn’t there and you want to know what really happened. What if it’s something you don’t want to hear?’
‘I’m prepared to deal with that.’
‘I meant, would you be happy paying for a second session?’
‘Oh. Yes. I guess.’
Kaylie scrunched her chaotic hair away from her face. ‘All right. What was your state of mind yesterday morning?’
‘I’d been drinking the night before. I was dreading the anniversary. Thinking about it, trying not to think about it. I honestly believed I saw Gabriel on my phone’s camera. Would it help if you saw the picture?’
‘No, dear,’ she said firmly.
‘I have to accept that there was no boy there. I imagined it. But why would I do that?’
‘You saw something that seemed real to you,’ she replied, lighting the last candle and blowing out her taper. ‘And you really did go to the school.’
I agreed. ‘Yes, that part was real.’
She looked over at her beaten-up old tape deck. ‘Do you want whale sounds or chanting monks?’
‘Neither.’
‘No, they’re a bit shit, aren’t they?’ She seated herself in the chair beside me and folded her arms. She studied me for a while without speaking, a counsellor at work on a client. Finally, she asked, ‘Have you ever been hypnotised before? I wouldn’t recommend treating depression with hypnosis. It can be efficient for some of the anxiety and somatoform disorders, but not for depression.’
I’d only ever seen the loud, laughing lady with the terrible make-up in the minibus full of kids, not this serious-minded professional. ‘I don’t think I’m suffering from depression now,’ I told her. ‘I’m just looking for answers.’
‘It’s very important that you feel safe and relaxed. Are you warm enough, or should I get a bar heater?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
She pushed my head gently back. Her palm felt cool and welcome on my forehead. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘If you feel constricted in any way, loosen your shirt, take off your shoes. First, we’re going to start with some breat
hing exercises. Then I’ll just ask you some questions.’
She said there was a system they used at the therapy centre. People sometimes came to her because they’d had a ‘defining incident’ – a fight or an accident that had brought them to the realization that they had a problem. They tended to focus on the wrong things when they tried to recall a traumatic event. After a traffic accident, they would remember a windscreen wiper lying in the road, the last words on the radio before impact, a car passing in the opposite direction. They wouldn’t be able to describe seeing an injured loved one. They might not even remember if it was raining.
One of the first things the police check in drunk-driving collisions is whether the driver had their lights on. Often, nobody can remember and they have to rely on the witness reports and examinations of the vehicle’s electrics.
Kaylie told me that what sometimes worked was sitting the patient in a calm place and slowly talking them through the event, simply concentrating on their senses and reactions. But they had to be in a state of total relaxation. She said if I could recall all the morning’s details I might find an interpretation, but she couldn’t promise anything.
‘I don’t think it’s going to work,’ I said. ‘Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.’
‘Do you always fight anyone who tries to help you?’ Kaylie was direct, but her wide eyes and upturned nose gave her an air of comic primness, so you couldn’t take offence. I could see why kids liked her.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to try.’
‘Okay, then. Let’s get you in the right frame of mind first, because there’s no point in trying if you’re going to fight me. We need to create energies inside your body that will take away stress, allowing you to think more clearly.’ She settled herself with her hands upturned in her lap.
Since starting my new job, I’d become much better with alternative therapies than I used to be, and I knew there were certain techniques that could calm me down, so I tried to follow her instructions. It didn’t help that I could hear a child wailing somewhere further up the garden. I wondered if Jameel had just been bitten.
‘Take no notice of her. That’s Rosalie, she’s such a cry-baby,’ Kaylie said. ‘My third youngest. You probably won’t think you’ve been hypnotised at all. The important thing is not to resist. You should want to do it. Afterwards, you may feel it was a waste of time and that you gave me money for nothing. But you may also find yourself needing a nap and falling into a deep, refreshing sleep, which will be an indication to you that the session worked.’
‘Is this all part of it?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I suppose it is. Now, I want you to imagine yourself in a park or open countryside, somewhere light and sunny. Somewhere safe.’
‘There’s nowhere safe. I hate the countryside.’
‘Somewhere else, then. Once you’ve settled your mind, tell me where you are.’
It took her another ten minutes to get me properly calm. She checked my pulse to make sure it had slowed, but I flinched when she touched me. I don’t like people touching me.
‘I want you to answer me as simply and naturally as possible. You don’t need to stop and think about what I’m saying, just tell me what comes into your head.’
I told her to go ahead and do her worst.
‘Let’s try and understand what happened to you yesterday morning.’
‘I’m more interested in what happened to me a year ago.’
‘Imagine the past is a locked door, and the key to it is what you saw this time. What was the first thing you remember doing yesterday?’
‘I got up with a hangover and went to Gabriel’s old bedroom.’
‘And that’s where you first saw him?’
‘No – not at first.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I couldn’t see him. Then suddenly he was there.’
‘Can we break that down a little? You pushed open his door, and what did you experience?’
‘I saw a sock.’
‘A sock.’
‘The red one he was wearing in the autopsy room. Then he climbed out from under the covers.’
‘So you conjured him up from your subconscious desire to see him again. And after that?’
‘I drove him to school. I mean, I thought I did.’
‘You repeated everything you did on the last day you saw Gabriel alive. Did you talk to him on the way?’
‘Yes.’
‘But neither of you said anything new or surprising.’
‘If you’re trying to make me realise that I was trading on my old memories of conversations with him, you’ve made your point.’
‘Why do you think you became so convinced that Gabriel was there in the car with you?’
‘I don’t know. I see him every day, he’s always with me.’
‘But he couldn’t have been there, could he?’
I refused to answer.
‘Could he?’ I imagined this was how she was in her office, gently but persistently questioning confused outpatients, removing their doubts and fears. I wasn’t sure it was going to work with me.
‘Haven’t you ever wanted something to be real?’ I asked.
’All right. Let’s go back to the top. You woke up in an alcohol-induced fug yesterday, so you weren’t focussing properly, which made you susceptible to your subconscious. When we’re not fully in command of our faculties, we can be controlled more easily.’
‘Nobody controlled me, Kaylie,’ I said stubbornly.
‘Okay,’ she said, blowing her nose noisily. ‘But yesterday morning you saw something more than you saw a year ago. That’s where we start.’
Ella
It turns out that the name on that blue folder wasn’t mine. It said Hani Amburo – the name of the Somalian girl in room six. It was her child they were taking away, not mine.
Gabriel screamed and screamed.
A thin trail of blood led across the pale blue tiles on the floor. I tried to wrap his hand, but he only cried louder, twisting about in his blanket. My stomach lifted with each cry. I couldn’t make him stop.
The nurses arrived and wanted to know how I could have done such a thing, but I stayed silent. They took Gabriel from me. I saw him being carried away into the corridor, then the door shut.
I felt terrible about letting Marleena down, but there was no way I could explain my actions. They called meetings and argued about whether or not to report the matter to the police. I didn’t fight back or give them any trouble. I heard people going in and out of Marleena’s office, but no one came to see me and no police turned up.
I listened, trying to pick up any sound of Gabriel, but there was nothing, only hurried footsteps, urgent whispers, then silence.
I fell asleep for a while, and awoke just after 11 p.m. My clothes were in the cupboard, so I dressed and got back into bed, lying there until I heard the duty nurse go off. I wondered if someone had written a report of the incident. I thought if I could just get into Marleena’s office and access her computer I might find out what they had decided, but it was bound to be password-protected. It was clear that I couldn’t stay – not with Gabriel gone and the fact that they might call the police at any moment.
The clinic’s main door was protected by a four-digit number, but everyone knew it was 1-2-3-4. Nobody knew how to reset it. I slipped outside and ran across the forecourt, away into the street.
I couldn’t go home. I knew Harry wouldn’t take my side when he heard what had happened. I went up to the bridge across the motorway and looked down at the traffic. It was a spot where people came to kill themselves. But I knew I couldn’t leave Gabriel alone in the world. I carried on over the bridge and sat on the other side beneath a tree, and tried not to cry.
*
For the next few days, I lived out of cash-only rooms, but after that I knew I’d have to rely on the credit card, which meant that Harry would be able to trace me. He would hear that I’d escaped, but I was pretty su
re he wouldn’t close down the account unless I began spending loads.
There was someone who could help me. Her name was Aunt Charlie, short for Charlotte, and she was the black sheep of the family, if black sheep were more than a little crazy. She lived on a barge.
Harry and Karen hated her because she was a chain-smoking liberal and took scruffy, drunk lovers and lived with three stray cats on the cluttered barge in a basin near the estuary. She was now on the far side of fifty and showed no signs of mending her ways. Men came for a beer on the Podwinkle – her shiny red, yellow and blue boat – and left the next morning with bags beneath their eyes.
Charlie sold terrible hand-thrown clay pots and vases through a chain of stores scattered across the county. Sometimes, when times were hard, she sold a little hand-grown dope, and sometimes she was run in by the police for causing a disturbance outside a local pub. She helped at homeless shelters and cooked for the other barge owners and set out stews in tureens along the basin’s wooden tables in winter, and raised her anchor for the canals in summer, travelling wherever she thought she might find money, a man, a few laughs. If she had any spare cash left over from her sales, she usually gave it away to destitute kids.
Aunt Charlie was easy to find. The Podwinkle was unmissable. It was stacked with wood and old sun-chairs and straggly flowers in blue enamel pails, and was covered in all kinds of rescued junk. It was moored in a crowded basin, on its last stop of the year. I arrived just as Charlie was cooking dinner, the prodigal niece returned.
‘Honestly, Ella, what did you think was going to happen?’ she asked once I had finished my story. She was turning the frying pan around and shaking caramelized pork ribs. They were shivering in hot, crackling oil. She had long, dyed auburn hair pinned up in an untidy bun, and her arms were circled in hand-woven bracelets. I’d told her everything, even the part about the hole-punch. She was the kind of person you could tell everything to.
‘Do you know how much it must have hurt Harry even to suggest you should have an abortion? It would have gone against everything he was raised to believe in.’ She threw a handful of peppers into the pan and gave everything a stir. ‘Imagine how he’s going to feel when he finds out you scarred the poor kid for life.’
