by Jane Shemilt
In the sitting room Goodwill, hemmed by his chair, leans awkwardly to the table, and presses the button on a small recorder. His presence absorbs the energy from the room. The furniture, the rugs, even the walls fade into the background. His face is the only thing I see and his narrow burning eyes. He asks me about my work. How often do I go to the clinic? Who comes to see me? He takes Esther’s phone number, my certificate to practise, my doctor’s bag. Does he think I have drugs? That I would drug my son? The sweat collects around my neck as he frowns over his writing. His gaze skims my body when he asks me about my pregnancy, the birth and afterwards. Postnatal depression? Crossing my arms tightly, I tell him I’ve been happy, that Sam was loved from the moment he was born. What difference does it make? The complicated truth would snag his attention.
He asks if there are problems between me and Adam. As I look outside at the sun on the trees, my mind slides between us whispering in bed and shouting from the door, between love and its opposite. I turn back to Goodwill and shake my head. No problems at all. He turns off the recorder.
He wants photos. As I scroll through the images on my phone, Sam appears unmarked: his photos were always taken from the left. Goodwill uses the passport instead. I feel shame that the only complete picture of my son is an official one.
‘Very fortunate to have this little mark,’ he says. ‘It will help.’
I want to kiss him for those words. I want to thank God in prayer for the mark. Goodwill pulls himself out of the chair with a grunt, and goes into the kitchen to talk to Elisabeth and Josiah, Peo and her friends. There is no message yet from Megan. I text one to her instead: Has David replied?
The children come to wait with me. Zoë sits yawning on my lap. Alice is on the floor next to my feet. I turn the pages of Zoë’s fairy tales but there is no story without death or witchcraft at its heart, so I read from the encyclopedia instead about weaver birds, hyenas, warthogs and giraffes:
‘The sparrow weavers of Africa build apartment home nests in which 100 to 300 pairs have separate flask-shaped chambers …
‘Hyenas are predominantly nocturnal animals, sometimes venturing from their lairs in the early morning …
‘The warthog derives its name from the four large protuberances found on the head, which serve as a fat reserve …’
Facts, plain as water, though my voice trembles as I recount how a mother giraffe, never straying, defends her babies to the death.
Goodwill comes back to question the girls. He pulls out a notebook but they have little to say. Zoë tells him about the concert. Alice stares and shrugs. He scribbles a few lines and they return to the kitchen.
‘What do you think has happened, Goodwill?’
He bends to stare closely at his shoes. A moment passes. He looks up. His eyes are guarded. ‘Would you prefer to wait until your husband returns?’
‘Adam will be late. I’d like to hear now.’
The leather creaks as Goodwill settles his bulk more deeply.
‘Sometimes the cause is found in the home – one parent taking the child to punish the other, for example. The child may be moved quite far.’
On the lawn four days ago Adam lifted Sam from my arms, kissed me and kissed him. In the early evening, the garden was saturated with gold; I shake my head, unable to speak.
‘The abductor can be someone known, very close to the family, who is driven by jealousy. A relative or a close friend.’
‘We have no relations. Both sets of parents are dead.’ There has never been time for many friends, apart from Megan. It’s been family and work, always. When my mother died, my father was there. Later Adam and the children filled my world.
His eyes shift from mine. ‘Someone may come across the baby during the course of work. A delivery man, for example, or a gardener. A man repairing the roof.’
‘Josiah does all the repairs and the gardening. No one delivers here. Josiah can’t drive so Adam takes Elisabeth to Kubung for supplies once a fortnight.’
‘Then there are women who become desperate …’ His voice rumbles on calmly. He could be discussing the weather or a shopping list. ‘Childless women, who take children belonging to others.’
Years ago a baby disappeared from my hospital. A deranged woman who’d miscarried was accused. But we’re too remote for a random snatch. Besides, Adam said people here share babies. There would be no need to steal ours. Goodwill’s speculation isn’t helping.
‘I must warn you that there are other cases, even more … challenging.’ He is watching me closely and his voice has a sharper edge. ‘Finance is involved.’
‘We have savings, a house …’
‘Kidnapping for ransom is one possibility, but we must consider others. Trafficking generates large funds, ransom isn’t usually demanded.’
Trafficking? My mind stalls. Fragments of his speech come to me through a roar of panic.
‘… evil trade … porous borders … sold like loaves of bread …’
Sold? Who buys babies? Why? His lips frame more words but I can’t hear them. Inside my chest a space opens into which my heart seems to fall. His eyes move over my face, assessing damage.
‘We should wait for your husband. Tomorrow there will be time to answer more questions. Now we need to make a thorough search of the premises.’ He stands, walks to the door, then turns back. ‘The press will phone. Keep them on your side but at a distance.’ Goodwill pushes his hand away from his body to demonstrate; the wide fingers are identically scarred over four knuckles.
The room is silent after he leaves. The girls are eating in the kitchen; their pale faces swivel towards me. Peo hands me a bowl of warm sorghum but I’m unable to swallow any food. Zoë leans her head against my shoulder, yawning. Afterwards, I express milk into the basin, watching the tiny tubes of thin white liquid hit the metal, then dribble uselessly down the drain. My breasts feel bruised but lighter.
Later the men hunch over the broken doors, scrape walls and furniture, then remove the phone with its cut flex. They fingerprint everything.
As the girls drowse in their rooms, Goodwill’s warning reverberates: trafficking conjures immigrants packed into lorries, men forced to work, women held in cellars. Sam could be jammed with others into a tiny space, roughly held, semi-conscious with hunger and heat. I pace and sit, pace again, shaking my head but the images don’t shift.
The cot is dismantled, the mattress wrapped and taken to the car. Sam’s little elephant has disappeared. Perhaps they took it with them. My heart lifts fractionally at the thought. Later, Goodwill brushes the ground beneath the doors of our bedroom, collecting fragments of glass and soil. He doesn’t reply when I point out the imprint of a toe. I sense he dislikes my hovering presence.
Zoë wakes from her nap and we watch from the window as Kopano puts on waders, entering the pond with a wide, sweeping net. She exclaims as the dog bounds in and out of the water, barking and shaking its heavy coat, the spray glittering like diamonds. If we had followed Kabo’s advice we would have had dogs like this on hand, dogs who might have barked at the men who came or, better still, attacked them.
The dog jumps from the water, a small grey rock lodged in his jaws. Kopano follows, holds out his hand and the dog drops it into his palm. Kopano puts the object into a transparent bag, then slips it into his pocket.
My mobile rings. ‘Adam?’
‘Botswana Gazette here. Can you tell me with whom I am speaking?’ The woman’s voice is nasal.
‘Mrs Jordan.’ How did they find my number?
‘I’m sorry to hear that your four-month-old son disappeared from your home yesterday …’
Yesterday? Is that all? It feels as if he has always been missing, as if I’ve been waiting in this room all my life.
The woman continues firing words like bullets from a gun. ‘So you are doctors, working locally, I believe. How does it feel –’
‘Thank you.’ Why thank her? There is nothing to be grateful for. I cut the call. They have been in touch soo
ner than I expected.
The mobile rings again.
‘This is the Ngami Times, ma’am. Am I speaking to the lady of the house?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you confirm that while you were out your baby son was taken from his cot?’
While you were out, while you were not watching.
‘Please contact the police,’ I reply.
Goodwill said to keep the press on my side but it feels as though insects are hovering in a stinging cloud, drawing blood. There is another call but I let it ring until it stops and then turn the mobile off.
Goodwill knocks to let me know they are leaving, that they will return tomorrow. They have finished with our bedroom, he says. We can use it now, though the window will need boarding. Kopano pauses to collect his case; the dog is back on the lead.
‘What did the dog find in the pond, Kopano?’
He pulls the bag from his pocket and shows me. Sam’s little elephant is inside, the body looks a little larger as if it has absorbed water. One ear is missing, perhaps torn by the dog.
I hold out my hand, my fingers trembling, but Kopano slips the bag back into his pocket. ‘Evidence,’ he says.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Botswana, March 2014
Hours later, Adam still hasn’t returned. Peo’s friends have gone back to the village and the house is quiet. I fall asleep on the sofa but am woken by dragging footsteps outside, fumbling at the handle. My mouth dries. There will be weapons I can use in the kitchen: a knife on the draining-board, a bottle in the fridge. Before I can edge halfway across the room the front door opens and Adam stumbles in. His bloodshot eyes stare blankly at my face, as if he doesn’t recognize me. He sinks heavily into a chair; my heart slows as I kneel next to him. He shakes his head. His cheeks are the colour of putty; even his lips look bleached, like those of a patient who has been bleeding for a long time.
After a few moments, Elisabeth brings warmed-up food and a glass of water; she must have been waiting patiently in the kitchen all this time. Adam balances the plate on his lap as he explains what happened.
‘Finding the hospital was easy.’ The hands on the knife and fork tremble; I doubt it was easy. The roads would have been difficult to navigate, the signposts few and far between.
‘The deputy manager told me the mission had been discontinued. She remembered Megan’s parents and the younger man, David, who worked with them.’ Adam pushes food around his plate and swallows a mouthful of water.
‘When they died, David took charge of an orphanage but she had no idea which one. There were three. I went to them all. A disused church, a bungalow and some huts, just out of town. None of the staff in any of them had heard of Teko. I ended up looking in cafés and shops, showing Teko’s photo to everyone I could. No one recognized her.’
People would have been discomfited by a wild-eyed European, begging for information. They might have even been frightened.
‘I got your text about you scaring Teko away.’ He puts his plate down and stares at me. ‘Were you that angry? I don’t remember.’
‘I was furious. We’d trusted her. If she’d been with Sam, he would still be here.’
Was that fair? Would I have been hovering next to the cot all the time? The attackers might have broken in and stolen him in seconds, while she made a cup of tea.
I shouldn’t have shouted, I see that now. ‘According to Elisabeth, she was terrified she might go to prison.’
‘So she ran away,’ Adam says slowly. ‘I can understand that.’ He gets up and pours wine at the sideboard. He drinks quickly and sits down on the sofa next to me, his face paler than ever.
‘We still need to find her, Adam. Even if she’s innocent, she could know something. She might have seen a car, heard voices or glimpsed a figure.’
Adam leans back without replying and closes his eyes. His face slackens and he starts to breathe heavily. Behind him, through the window, sheet lightning flashes green in the blackness. It’s been one and a half days since he had my milk. I dig my nails deep into the skin of my arms. Megan hasn’t got back to me yet – what the hell is taking her so long?
Megan.
The name scribbles itself across the darkness of my mind, and images start to unfurl faster than thought: Megan’s glance as it rested on the photo of our family the first time she came to the house, the hand open on the table; I’d thought even then she was waiting for something. The way she looked at Sam.
It could be someone known to the family … driven by jealousy …
Did Megan envy me the handsome man she worked for, the beautiful children she saw in that photo? Or did she want to punish me, the competitive wife, a mother whose daughter was unhappy, the careless woman who left her baby in a shop? She’d suffered for her appearance: had my response to Sam’s birthmark lit some vengeful flare? The tumbling mug, the falling mousse: trivial retribution compared to what she might have been planning.
I crouch beside Adam, twisting memories into new shapes: Megan persuading me to come to Botswana, then offering to find us help. Had she begun to plot even then? Did she deliberately procure someone young, distractable, smoothing the way for thieves to creep in unnoticed and steal our son for her? She organized my certificate: it would be easier to steal a baby whose mother was at work.
‘Adam, wake up.’
He is deeply asleep, snoring heavily.
‘It could be Megan.’ I shake his shoulder.
His head jerks upright and his eyes snap open. He looks confused, glancing round, as if she might be in the shadowy corners of the room. ‘Megan?’
‘She could have planned the whole thing. She might have Sam now.’
‘What?’ He rubs his face rapidly, as if trying to rub away my words. ‘Have you gone mad? How do you make that out?’
‘She lived in Botswana before. She has contacts here. She could have organized the whole thing. It makes sense.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’ His eyebrows draw together. ‘This is crazy talk, Emma. You need to calm down.’ He stares at my face closely. ‘Have you eaten anything today?’
‘You don’t know what happened to Megan in the past.’ I stand then and pace back and forth, twisting my hands as needling suspicions light up other thoughts that had been buried in darkness.
‘She knew a witch.’ Adam looks blankly at me as my words tumble out. ‘The girl who bullied Megan at school was murdered, and they found the bones. Megan said the witch did it for her sake. The same witch could have Sam now.’
‘Witches and bones,’ Adam repeats incredulously. ‘Emma, this is insane. How could Megan possibly do this? Why would she? She’s a friend, she’s very fond of us –’
‘Of you.’
The first time I’d seen her, scented and groomed, the thought had flashed through my mind. At our dinner party, her hand had rested on Adam’s sleeve. She had blushed when he kissed her.
‘That’s it, of course. She’s in love with you.’
‘What can you mean?’ The lines between Adam’s eyebrows deepen. ‘Megan’s married to Andrew.’
‘That’s the problem. They have no children.’
… women who become desperate … childless women who take children belonging to others …
‘She’d want a child. Yours. It all fits.’
‘I can’t listen to this any more.’ Adam’s voice is flat. He pushes himself out of the chair. ‘I need to sleep.’
‘She got the certificate for me on purpose. That way I would be away from the house.’
‘How the hell would she smuggle him abroad?’ Adam interrupts, as he walks to the door. ‘If we’re going to find Sam we have to remain sane.’ He disappears into the corridor.
The kudu head stares into the distance. The necklace of dried pods has vanished. Unadorned, he looks wilder, the horns capable of carnage.
Adam’s words percolate through the silence. Could he be right? Am I going mad?
In the quiet I can feel the throb of my heart as it slows, an
d after a while the pictures in my head shade into others: I see Megan’s head bowed as she listens to my worries; I hear her voice consoling me. I remember that she trusted me, sharing her past. She’d stepped in to look after the girls; she’d read them stories. She’d knitted toys for them, looked after me and made me rest. She’d told me to love Sam. She got through to Alice when neither of us had been able to. Her sanity had kept me going.
Which set of memories tells the truth?
I find Adam in the bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, unlacing his shoes.
‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m mad to think it’s Megan. I know she’s my friend, it’s just that …’ It’s just that there’s roaring emptiness where we need answers. There’s an answer somewhere; someone has Sam, even if it’s not Megan. ‘There’s something else.’ I speak to his bent head. ‘Something worse.’
He straightens. His face, flushed and swollen from bending, looks unfamiliar. His eyes search mine impatiently. ‘What?’
‘Goodwill mentioned trafficking.’
‘I don’t think babies get trafficked,’ he replies. ‘Men, women, children, yes.’ He pushes his boots off and lies back on the bed. ‘Not babies.’
‘Goodwill wants to give both of us more information about it tomorrow.’ I lean against the door, too tired to move. ‘He wouldn’t tell me much. He thought we should be together.’
‘I won’t be here,’ Adam says, closing his eyes. ‘I phoned the consulate – I’ve got an appointment.’
If I went, too, it might dull the anguish for a few minutes. I might feel I was doing something useful.
‘You need to stay here,’ Adam continues, guessing my thoughts. ‘The girls … the police …’
He’s right. Even without those responsibilities, a knock on the door might come at any time and Sam could be there, held out to me by the stranger who found him by chance. Sam, bouncing with eagerness, his mouth wide open in a smile. My throat aches with longing.
