by LK Fox
‘What if he doesn’t like us?’ I heard Mrs Summerton whisper. ‘There are children who just fail to bond, and there’s nothing the parents can do to make it work. I’ve read all about it.’
‘You read too much.’ This time, Mr Summerton took her hand and held on to it with a manly grip. He looked four or five years younger than her, around twenty-five.
‘It says the birth mother can’t make contact. Why do you think that is?’ he continued.
‘You know why it is. She tried to injure her own son. That’s how much she hated him. What kind of mother would do something like that?’
I stood with my boots sinking into the mud of the rose-bed. My nails left purple crescents in my palms. That was the moment, right then. I knew that Gabriel was here, and they were going to adopt him.
‘Anyway, I don’t think you’ll ever have to worry about her wanting her child back,’ he said. ‘The law made its decision. She can’t do anything now.’
*
After twenty minutes passed, they were shown to the interview room further along the hall. I had to run across the garden, climb behind a pond and get as close as I could to the open window, and I still couldn’t hear very clearly. Nothing happened for a while. Every few minutes, someone looked in on them and smiled vaguely. Kate Summerton flipped through a copy of Town & Country. At last, a middle-aged woman in a too-tight beige suit waddled into the room. She had this nylony top-knot of hair that was a completely different colour to her real hair.
‘Mr and Mrs Summerton?’ she asked. Sausage stood, pulling his wife to her feet. ‘I’m Debbie. I’m sure this must be a very exciting day for you both,’ she said, smiling. Sausage caught his wife’s glance. ‘Perhaps you’d like to come into the main office. We really only have a couple of small formalities left to cover.’
I hadn’t been prepared for another move but, thankfully, they only went as far as the adjacent room. This was better. I had a clearer view now, and the top window was open, but there wasn’t much foliage to act as cover so I had to stay low. I missed some of what was said but got the general gist.
Mrs Harriman’s office was filled with framed photographs of babies with new parents. The overwhelming number of happy faces was intimidating even from this distance, like the den of a sportsman who’d won countless gold cups.
‘I know the adoption process has been somewhat unusual for you, but it was a rather difficult case.’ Mrs Harriman didn’t drop her smile for a second. I think she meant to look calming, but the effect was unintentionally creepy.
There was a lot of earnest nodding. Mrs Harriman said she was only able to give them a few bare facts about the boy’s mother because she wasn’t allowed to offer detailed information. ‘The good thing is that the regulations have lately been relaxed to make it easier for responsible couples to adopt. And to be honest with you, we feel this is too good a chance to pass up for little – have you chosen a new name?’
‘We haven’t definitely agreed but I was thinking maybe – Stanley,’ said Mrs Summerton, beaming at her husband. ‘It was my grandfather’s name.’
Jesus Christ, I thought. Stanley? You’ve got to be kidding.
‘That’s an unusual choice. It’s nice to hear the old names coming back. Strangely, there isn’t a birth name on file for him.’
Gabriel, I screamed silently at the window.
‘My father’s name was Norman,’ Sausage added lamely. ‘We thought that was a step too far.’
‘Well, it’s nice when a sad story has such a happy ending,’ said Mrs Harriman, beaming at them both, the thrilled new parents of my child.
Nick
Swintons Garage was a single-storey brick autoshop with all the charm of a bomb shelter. It was set back from the road, lurking beneath the cover of surrounding trees. Inconspicuous enough to dole out fast safety certificates for cash payments without attracting the attention of the police. Its forecourt looked like a set from a bad gangster film.
There were no signs out front, but I recognised the dark gleam of grilles in the shadows of the nearby railway arches. The vehicles were stowed away like warehoused treasures. There was no one working on them.
I could see neon striplights shining behind the filthy windows of the office, but it looked empty. The rain had begun once more and visibility was dropping. Plenty of dubious businesses were run like this in the city’s dead-ends. They usually red-lit themselves to my old company as security risks, the kind of places that conducted a lot of business in cash and left it on the premises in old safes. I left the Peugeot out on the street, headed over to the arches and pushed back the first door, slipping inside.
I had a torch app on my phone and checked each of the cars in turn. The BMW with the scraped wing was there, third from the end, its engine still warm and ticking down.
I tried the doors. Locked. So was the boot. Passing around the vehicle, I peered in and checked the rear seats, but I couldn’t see anything unusual.
At the sound of boots displacing gravel, I flicked off the mobile and crouched between the cars as the archway door opened wide, framing a dungaree-clad black man in a panel of low light.
The mechanic entered the garage, paused to pick his boiler suit out of his butt and climbed into one of the vehicles. He reversed the car, drove it on to the forecourt, then backed it into the repair bay as I rose and quickly moved to the door. The front office was still empty. When the mechanic went to the rear of the bay, I slipped out of the arch and into the office. I say ‘slipped’ – there’s nothing more obvious than an unfit man trying to move flexibly.
One big room was divided by a plastic-topped counter, on top of which were plastered Health & Safety warnings about bald tyres and wet roads. Once upon a time, it would have been covered in girlie pin-ups. There was no one in the back. Instead of a computer screen featuring an Excel spreadsheet, there was a stained log book filled with childish handwriting. I turned it around and ran my finger down the list of licence plates, coming to the Series 5 BMW.
It was registered under the name Buckingham. No mobile number, but there was a scribble: 173, Phoenix, Newington St. No postcode. It sounded half-heartedly made up, or maybe it was part of an office address. A collection time had also been inked in by the mechanic, but his writing was illegible.
I was about to leave the office when I glanced up and saw Buckingham himself, walking right towards me. I was standing right beneath the striplights of the manager’s office and could be seen from the yard. I might have put a sign around my neck reading AMATEUR STALKER.
The window was smeary but I could see the baggy suit, the badly trimmed moustache and the red baseball cap, and now that he was standing up I felt even more uncomfortable. There was something really disturbing about him, like if he came and sat next you in a waiting room you’d want to move away. He looked to be around five seven, watchful and wary. Probably had good muscle toning in his upper body because the jacket of his suit looked a couple of sizes too large – you have to buy clothes that way when your shoulders get bigger. As a lapsed gym-bunny myself, I knew it was no indicator of strength or core stability.
I couldn’t tell if he was handsome because he had dropped his gaze to the ground, and he looked downtrodden, like men in those uncomfortable mug shots taken during the aftermath of an especially embarrassing arrest. He roughly fitted the description provided by the woman at the school gates but, more importantly, I could see him as the man settled in the driver’s seat outside Long Lane Elementary school. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see the tattoo.
Judging by his body language, Buckingham was one of those people you’d instinctively expect to try to punch you in the face if you said the wrong thing. Police officers are fond of telling you they can form a snap judgement on a suspect’s character within five seconds of meeting them. Rightly or wrongly, I’d formed a fast opinion about Buckingham. He was nervousness personified, the kind of man who would suddenly get aggressive over any kind of perceived slight. I remembered a few of
those from my now incredibly distant dating days. Men with an edge. Their company is uncomfortable. When Gabriel vanished, I met a few cops with the same air of unpredictability about them, and I knew I would never find out what had gone wrong in their pasts to make them behave as they did. The heart is an intricate organ. If you can’t understand what drives it, you never truly know its owner.
He spotted me and stopped. I froze on the spot. For a moment, we stared at each other through the glass and the drizzle. I thought, This is interesting. Either I’ve got it completely wrong and he won’t react at all, or he’ll threaten to beat me up, or he’ll try to get away as quickly as possible.
I’m not a total coward. In my old job, I liked to get out into the field, and I visited a lot of warehouses and factory floors. If things got argumentative you usually ended up surrounded by guys looking for any excuse to burn off their excess testosterone. All you could do was put them in a situation where they didn’t lose respect by backing down. But I’d never tailed anyone before and knew that anything might happen now.
I could tell Buckingham suddenly sensed trouble. He paused, then turned sharply on the gravel and walked off in the opposite direction. I ran towards the door, threw it open and went after him without any plan as to what I’d do if I caught him. I thought, Bad call, you should have headed for the road. There’s nowhere you can go in that direction.
The rear of the forecourt ended in a steep bank of straggly rowan shrubs and plane trees, but Buckingham surprised me by charging straight into it, stamping his boots into the mud, climbing the grass slope with ease.
I couldn’t keep up. My left ankle had mended badly after an accidental foul that had got me kicked off our old company football team. As I hit the bank, I found my designer trainers sinking into mud. I thought, He can’t have any idea where he’s going. My target was already thrashing through the bushes above in an awkward slow-motion chase. Just then, he burst out of the foliage ahead of me.
I realised he was heading for the railway line at the top of the slope. If he got there, he would be able to make his escape. Beyond the garage, the railway line cut over the outbound roads on arches. Wide brown fans of train tracks spread out from the city, a legacy from the past that had to be built over, round or under.
I remember thinking, Crazy person, railway line; this is where your sense of self-preservation should kick in. Turn around right now. But I didn’t. My need for an answer overrode everything else. I wasn’t happy about it, but I went on.
I reached the low brick wall and sort-of vaulted it, just as he jumped down on to the rails, stepping along the wet sleepers. But I was caught up on the gorse bush branches that virtually overhung the track.
I hardly heard the commuter train approaching above the sound of the traffic, but I could feel the vibration of wheels on steel under the soles of my trainers, and knew it was coming close.
It was a yellow branch-line train, ploughing towards me in a spray of displaced rainwater, and it was likely to get me killed. I looked around and realised that there was no room to stand on my side of the tracks. Turning, I saw a twenty-foot drop to the road below. If the fall didn’t get me, the speeding traffic would.
There was no choice except to run across the track, but my right arm was held in place by the gorse. I pulled, but it refused to give. I could feel the thorns tearing into my skin.
I had no time to think about it; my very expensive Hugo Boss jacket slipped off my shoulders and bounced back into the foliage, as if the trees had just mugged me for it.
Firing myself forward, I was halfway across when I slipped on a concrete sleeper and almost fell in the path of the train, but somehow my initial momentum propelled me and I stumbled on, reaching the far side on my knees just as the carriages hammered past, spraying me in filthy water.
I dropped beside the rails as the whirlpool of funnelling air and rain hit me with full force. Trying to scramble to my feet in its rushing wake, I looked around for Buckingham but found myself alone.
He’d vanished into the greyness somewhere up ahead, where the embankment flattened out. I suppose I could have carried on, but I was exhausted. And really, what was I meant to do if I caught him? Resting my fists on my knees, gasping for breath, I waited for the burning sensation in my chest to die down.
I still had the address – what he’d written of it – locked in my head. I wondered who the hell he was, and what I thought I was doing tracking him halfway across town.
I was sure of one thing. On a rainy Monday morning just over a year ago, Buckingham had driven Gabriel away from the school and had done something so terrible that my boy had died a lonely death on a flooded building site.
Ella
One hour and seventeen minutes later, the brand-new Summerton family walked out of the adoption agency. Between them was my baby boy, Gabriel Field, now to be called Stanley Summerton.
‘Oh no,’ said Mrs Summerton, suddenly looking as if she was about to burst into tears because it was starting to rain. She didn’t seem to have much stamina.
‘It’s okay. Maybe that’s a sign of luck, like weddings. Anyway, it’s just a spit.’ Sausage helped his wife put the boy in the collapsible buggy.
I followed. First to the station, hiding at the far end of the platform, then on to the train, staying a compartment further on, watching them all the time. Then out on to another platform and into the street, through the town centre, past the war memorial, keeping a few pedestrians between us. My eyes never left the baby buggy.
By this time, we were in the town of Ashton, which consisted of a single hilly street with narrow pavements, adull chain stores and angry-looking old women in electric go-carts. A watery sun made an embarrassed appearance through the rainclouds.
I dropped further back, afraid that the couple would turn and see me, but all their attention was taken up by the baby. My baby boy.
I was drawn to the husband. He was young, earnest and rather intense, but ready with a smile that could turn to a look of genuine concern. I could see his future mapped out. Saturday at football, Sunday at the zoo, the odd stroll around the grounds of a country house, a walk through a park with a dog and a ball, playing games on his phone while he waited at the playground – nothing too unexpected. The wife looked less inclined to gentleness. I didn’t like her. She was too thin-lipped and her clothes were too corporate. It surprised me that she wanted a child at all. Perhaps she had done it to please him.
The brand-new instant Summerton parental unit turned into a cul-de-sac of boxy modern houses called Wellington Close and entered the third one on the left, number seventeen. I strolled casually past, looking into the lounge window.
It’s just how I imagined, I thought. Funny how the spaces we live in are shaped by our characters. Beige leather DFS sofa. Give me strength.
After my mother left, Harry transformed the house in The Avenue into something bleak, masculine and cold. He’d thrown out anything frilly or ornamental, only to have Karen arrive and fill the rooms with several hundredweight of stuffed ponies, novelty cushions and teddy bears. I hadn’t been back there for a long time. The Summerton house was like their name, bright and light-filled, decorated for the most part in warm, blandly pleasing colours. I could glimpse a green lawn and a new play-set just beyond the back window. A child could, I conceded, be happy out there. I’d been surreptitiously hoping for something less attractive so that I would at least have a reason to hate them.
I wanted to get closer, just to be sure. There was no use calling on the house right then – it would have looked too suspicious. I knew I would have to come back when the time was right.
I waited for four agonising days, rehearsing different stories, playing out every possible response until I was word perfect. Then I returned. I dressed down and waited outside until the husband had left for work. Then I rang the doorbell, balancing nervously on the front step. I repeated the words under my breath. I hoped she was going to be easier than the wrong Mrs Summerton.
&nb
sp; The door opened, and there he was. Gabriel was balanced on his thief-mother’s hip, wrapped up in a blue towelling pocket like a miniature sleeping bag. It was obvious that she would go absolutely nowhere without him.
My heart tightened at the sight of Gabriel’s scrunched face. I was only just able to stop myself from reaching out to touch him. Mrs Summerton was studying me with an enquiring look. ‘Can I help you?’
This time, I was better prepared. I raised the laminated Oxfam card from the chain around my neck and showed it to her. From the way she squinted at it and gave up trying to read anything, I could tell she usually wore glasses but couldn’t be bothered to go and get them. ‘We were calling in your area on Monday, but I must have missed you.’
‘Oh, we were out collecting my baby boy,’ said Mrs Summerton, beaming at me, begging me to ask. She just couldn’t wait to tell someone. ‘We’ve only just adopted him.’
‘Oh, how lovely – may I see?’ I used the innocent smile that had always worked with the teachers. Mrs Summerton unwrapped Gabriel as carefully as if she was opening a box of Belgian chocolates, and showed me. It was like feeling the sun on your face after a hard winter. I know that sounds like a Hallmark card, but it’s hard not to trot out clichés when you describe your child to someone.
‘He’s gorgeous,’ I said. ‘Have you got a name for him?’
‘We’re down to the last couple of choices, but I think we’re going to christen him Stanley.’
‘Oh. I can’t think of anyone I know with that name. Except, you know – Stan Laurel.’ I let that hang in the air between us for a moment. ‘You know who he looks more like to me, with those wide eyes? An angel. Gabriel.’
‘Gabriel,’ she repeated, and laughed. ‘That’s nice.’
‘It looks like he has quite a grip on him already.’
As I moved my face into his line of sight he saw me and let out a burble of delight. He couldn’t associate me with the pain of piercing his hand; he remembered I was his mother and felt joy at seeing me. I felt like crying.
