The Other Child

by Lucy Atkins

  Joe comes into the kitchen carrying a backpack stuffed with Lego and remote-controlled helicopters.

  ‘Well done, love.’ She smiles at him, suddenly not wanting him to go with David. ‘You’re all packed up.’

  ‘How’s school going, big man?’ David ruffles Joe’s hair. Her anxiety fades. When he is physically with Joe, David is an excellent father. He might be financially unreliable and hard to pin down, but he loves his son, and is good at showing it.

  ‘Made any new mates since we talked?’ David keeps his hand on Joe’s head.

  ‘Two.’ She watches Joe inflate. This is the first time he has admitted to any successful social interaction. She tries not to look surprised.

  ‘Which one do you like best?’

  ‘Maybe Forrest, he’s OK. He’s into football – soccer.’

  ‘Ah yes, it’s soccer now, isn’t it?’ David sits, legs apart, on the stool, as if this is his kitchen, his house. ‘Vital to learn the lingo. Blend in with the enemy.’

  ‘OK. So. What’s the plan?’ Tess takes David’s coffee cup to the sink.

  ‘Guess what? I got us Red Sox tickets.’ David produces them from his inside pocket. Joe’s face lights up. After so much anxiety, the sight of his smile makes her almost dizzy with relief. She realizes she has not actually seen Joe smile properly since they crossed the threshold of this house.

  She considers taking David’s arm, pulling him aside and warning him that Joe is more fragile than he seems – that he sobs at bedtime and begs her to take him home, that he daren’t speak in class because of his accent and can’t remember the pledge of allegiance, that nobody sits next to him at lunch. Her chest tightens at the thought of Joe, small, alone and sad at the end of a long canteen table.

  ‘Right.’ David slaps his thighs. ‘So, listen, Tess, I’ll have him back here around midday tomorrow. My flight’s at two. Sorry – a bit earlier than I said. I have to catch the red-eye to Amsterdam.’

  She comes out to the porch and watches David’s hire car pull away with Joe waving through the passenger window, even smaller, suddenly, his face excited but uncertain, too, about leaving her, vulnerable, even with his dad. She has a sudden image of her mother’s pallid face pressed against a car window, the pleading eyes and palms flat against the glass, as she mouthed, ‘Take me home!’ And then they are gone and the street is empty again.

  She drops her hand and birdsong fills the air, a subtly aggressive, dominating sound. She feels the back of her neck prickle and suddenly she is sure that if she turns she will see someone standing in the shrubs between this house and Helena’s. She forces herself to look. The garden is empty. She pulls out her phone and calls Nell. It goes straight to voicemail. She leaves a brief message as she walks back down the path and steps into the shadows of the porch.

  She watches Greg receive his award, standing on a Chicago podium in a dark suit. He is authoritative, deep-voiced, witty, self-assured – a persona that she has glimpsed but never fully seen in action. She feels her heart fill up and suddenly wishes she was there, clapping with all those hundreds of doctors, showing him how proud she is of what he has achieved.

  She is just getting into the shower when she hears a dull thud downstairs by the front door. It is less distinct than a knock, more like the palm of a hand slamming onto the mahogany panel.

  She washes quickly, towels her hair, wraps herself in a bathrobe and goes downstairs. Before she opens the door she pauses, barefoot, on the cool white tiles, and listens, but all she can hear are the water pipes gurgling and the repetitive, ha-ha birdsong. She opens the door a crack. The porch is empty, but something by her feet catches her eye, a thin envelope on the doormat. It is grubby, a little crumpled, addressed to Dr Greg Gallo in tight, scratchy-looking handwriting.

  She picks it up, steps back inside and rips it open, unfolding a single sheet of paper.

  How can you look at yourself in the mirror every day?

  It is unsigned.

  She steps onto the porch again, holding her bathrobe shut, scanning the bright street. Nobody is there.

  She goes back inside and double-locks the front door. Then she walks quickly through to the dining room and peers out. A woman with white curly hair, a floral shirt and a small dog is walking briskly past.

  She goes back across the hall and into the living room, looking through the side window, past the swing set towards the corner of the street and the square brick house opposite. She has seen the family getting in and out of their people carrier: parents and three small children, all of them red-haired. But their driveway is empty today.

  She goes into the kitchen, half expecting to find a face pressed against the French windows. But the deck is empty too. A leaf flutters down like a tiny gold butterfly.

  She goes over and checks the locks, then hurries upstairs and shuts the bedroom door behind her. Her phone is on the bed. She calls Greg’s number, but it goes straight to voicemail. Right now he will be surrounded by surgeons and medical reporters. She tries Nell again, but that goes to voicemail too.

  She needs to stay calm. Whoever left the note has gone. It is nothing, just a question, just a scattering of words on a page. She wonders if she should take it to the police – but presumably they will tell her that it is not a crime to ask a question.

  It has to be the same person who wrote to Greg at the hospital. It seems unlikely now that this is someone with no connection to him since they have gone to the effort of finding out his address and delivering the note by hand. It is more likely, surely, to be a grieving relative – someone who lost a child long ago and blames Greg. He has never told her much about his time as a medical student or about his life as a young doctor here in Boston. The note-writer could have surfaced from those shadowy years, drawn out by the news of his return.

  It is not surprising. Greg’s working life takes place on the outermost edges of human experience; he sees and does things every day that take him across an indefinable border and back again, and there must be times when a loved one crosses over with him – a parent, an aunt or uncle or grandparent – and they can’t get back the way he can, they don’t know how; their pain is too deep, their loss overwhelming.

  She pulls underwear out of the chest of drawers, shrugging off the bathrobe and glancing at her belly. New, red-pencilled claw marks have appeared up her sides. As she tugs on a pair of knickers and a sports bra she notices that her jewellery box is open. Her nicest earrings – the delicate aquamarine stones on thin gold hoops that Greg gave her for her birthday – are sitting on the surface next to the box. She nestles them back into their velvet cushion. She is sure that she didn’t take them out this morning. Maybe Greg moved them while he was looking for cufflinks yesterday. Or perhaps he got them out deliberately, wondering why she so rarely wears them. She should reassure him that she doesn’t wear them every day because she loves them too much, not too little. But surely, if Greg got them out yesterday, she would have noticed them before now.

  She pulls on drawstring trousers and a clean T-shirt, and, as an afterthought, slips the hoops into her ears. The quiet house folds itself around her again, the creak of an expanding floorboard, drops from the shower plinking onto the damp tiles. She has always craved solitude but right now it feels cavernous and threatening. She crosses the room to the side window. A scarlet bird with a black face swoops from a branch of the leylandii, spreading its wings, feathers splayed into sharp points – making her jump back. Then she sees movement in the next-door yard.

  Helena is walking towards her garden office, talking on her mobile, and as she steps into a patch of sunlight the caramel streaks in her dark hair are illuminated like long threads of fire. She slows, still talking on her phone, and turns her head to stare through the shrubs at their deck, perhaps all the way through the French windows and into their kitchen. For the second time Tess has the urge to photograph her – to capture the sunlight on her hair, the trees all around. But then Helena moves on, vanishing into her office.

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sp; She slides onto the bed and picks up her laptop. Resting it on her knee, she googles ‘Dr Vaus’. Several links spring up, each one containing the word ‘toxic’. She clicks on drvaus.com and a photo of Helena unfurls: pond-green eyes in sharp focus, the rest of the face softened. Dr Helena Vaus, a ‘Harvard-trained physician’, author of a New York Times-bestselling book, The Green Doctor: Detox Your Life with Energy and Joy.

  The headshot has definitely been doctored. Helena’s teeth look as if they have only ever bitten into almonds or apples, the fine lines around her eyes and mouth have been erased, her eyeballs whitened, the shadows removed, her skin tone evened, her nose slimmed, strategic highlights added to sharpen her jawline.

  She skims through an excerpt from the book’s introduction.

  … After I gave birth to my first child, I was a mess. I couldn’t shift the thirty pounds of baby weight, no matter how far I ran on my treadmill or how restrictive my diet. I was working all hours, stressed out and depleted – emotionally, physically, spiritually, sexually. So what did I do? I ‘leaned in’ of course – worked harder, sucked it up. I was determined to succeed, as a physician, wife, mother, even if it killed me. I was in Toxic Meltdown.

  There follows a long description of how Helena turned her life around with organic food and meditation.

  I still run my Women’s Clinic, but I now have a brilliant co-director. I have trained as a yoga teacher; I pick up my daughters from school, attend their soccer and track meets and recitals; I have a powerful sex drive; I sleep like a baby; I no longer fly into rages or take mood-regulating medications; my marriage has never been better …

  She scrolls through more beatific images of Helena, in a Lotus pose, drinking a green smoothie, jogging through a dappled wood. There is a blog, too, with posts about diet and exercise, mala bead meditation, toxin-free make-up, natural tampons, the benefits of daily orgasm, ‘cortisol-lowering’ green shakes. There is a Dr Vaus Facebook community – a huge following – and links to YouTube videos. Helena is some kind of modern-day guru.

  She clicks on ‘Dr Vaus supplements’ and there is a photo of the little pill bottles with their orange flame logos – $159 for a month’s supply of probiotics, omega-threes, vitamins and herbal anti-stress remedies.

  She pushes the laptop aside. It all feels like an elaborate lie. Helena is not picking up her girls every day from school – they are in the after-school programme, and other than that one time in the school playground, it has always been Josh who takes and fetches. Their marriage, what’s more, is clearly not problem-free. But at least the vitamin gift makes sense now. It was not flirtation – it was promotion.

  She should feel relieved, but somehow she doesn’t. Perhaps a small part of her was hoping that Helena would turn out to be nicer than she seems, and they would become friends. This, now, feels out of the question.

  Chapter Seven

  Greg was supposed to be back from Chicago hours ago. It is almost seven now, and he is still not home. They spoke as he waited for his flight: she told him how proud she was and he sounded tired but elated. He was due to touch down around four, but now he is not answering his phone. There will be a simple explanation; his flight is delayed or he has stopped by the hospital and become involved in something, but she is beginning to feel anxious. She just wants him home.

  Darkness is creeping around the house. She has spent the afternoon working, rather unproductively, on Hand in Hand. There has been no more bleeding, the sickness has vanished and the baby is active inside her, but after the last twenty-four hours her body still feels precarious.

  She gets the ingredients for a stir-fry out of the fridge and begins chopping red peppers, trying not to slice into her fingers with the Japanese knife. She closes the blinds. She wants to call David and speak to Joe, but she knows she mustn’t – she must leave them alone this weekend. It is important to do that.

  She hears a noise – a shifting sound, a scrabble, followed by a small thud – and stops chopping.

  ‘Greg?’ She holds the knife suspended. ‘Is that you?’ She can’t see into the hall from where she is standing. But there is it again: a shuffle, a little thud. ‘Who’s there?’ Her voice comes out high and unexpectedly loud. Someone is in the basement.

  With the knife in one hand, its blade pink from the peppers, she steps towards the archway, peering into the pallid hallway. She hears it again. It is definitely coming from the basement. She lurches over and bolts the door.

  Her head feels bright; her heart pumps against her ribs. ‘I’m calling the police!’ She reaches for her phone, but then she hears a tiny tapping sound – rapidly receding claws, definitely claws, heading back down the basement steps.

  If it is a rat, it is a huge one. Perhaps a dog – or a coyote – has found its way in through the garage. She presses her ear against the door. The tapping has stopped.

  She dials Greg again and leaves him a message: ‘Where are you? I think there’s an animal in the basement. Where the hell are you, Greg?’ She wishes she could pour herself a massive glass of wine. Inside her, the baby turns, dreamily, as if she has woken it.

  Back in the kitchen she fries strips of tofu in ginger and garlic and cooks the noodles, leaving them to cool in a bowl like little entrails. The evening is still again; there are no cicadas anymore. She didn’t notice when they stopped, but now they have gone everything feels eerily quiet.

  She remembers a conversation she and Greg had about the cicadas, soon after arriving here. They were lying in bed, listening to the rasping, ticking sound.

  ‘They’re so loud it’s like they’re inside your head,’ she said. ‘There must be hundreds of them, but you never even see one.’

  ‘It could be just a couple,’ he said. ‘A single male cicada can make a phenomenal racket when it’s calling for a mate.’ He pulled her closer and she rested her head on his chest, hearing the faint thumping of his heart and the comforting rumble of his voice deep in his ribcage. ‘There’s this one type of cicada in Massachusetts that spends seventeen years buried underground feeding on roots,’ he says, ‘Then one day, all at the same time, they claw their way to the surface, split their skin and sprout wings.’

  She lifted her head and looked up at him. ‘Seventeen years?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Once every seventeen years cicada experts in Massachusetts get really excited. It’s called a “periodical brood”.’

  She laughed. ‘What must it be like inside your brain, Greg? How on earth do you know this stuff?’

  ‘At college I had a roommate who was studying the periodical brood. They’re kind of scary-looking – black bodies, spooky red eyes, bright-orange legs – but they have very beautiful wings, iridescent, like fairies’.’ He ran a hand through her hair, stroking it gently off her face.

  She goes through to the dining room and lays the table now, using napkins and their best glasses, wanting to make things special to dispel the feeling that everything is subtly off-kilter. She tries not to think about the fat black bodies that are out there deep in the soil, buried in the roots of the shrubs and the trees, biding their time.

  Before she closes the blinds she peers through the criss-crossed windows at the front yard. Dusk is closing in, the lights from the Schechters’ front room casts a shallow yellow pool on the road. Just for a second she thinks she catches movement in the shadows by the Schechters’ garage. She presses her nose to the glass but it fogs up. She wipes the condensation away and peers out again, holding her breath. The street is empty.

  She feels the baby swivel, then hiccup. It is definitely alive – its movements feel stronger, as if it wavered but has now committed itself to being here. She thinks about the little heart on the ultrasound, squeezing faithfully. She remembers, just a few weeks ago, hearing Greg telling Joe about a talk he was going to, given by some doctors from California who put tiny balloons inside the hearts of babies while they are still in the womb.

  The two of them were in the kitchen and she was in the dining room next door, but sh
e could hear everything they said.

  ‘Inside its mom, the baby’s heart is just the size of a little grape,’ Greg said. ‘Imagine trying to thread a needle into exactly the right spot inside a moving grape! The doctors practise using a grape in Jell-O because it wobbles around like the heart would inside a little baby.’

  ‘Is our baby’s heart the size of a grape?’

  ‘Yes, right now it is, but it will get a lot bigger before it’s born.’

  Her phone buzzes in her back pocket, making her jump. She yanks it out: a text from Greg.

  hope you got msg? Just out of the OR – home in under an hour – SORRY!

  Before she can reply the phone begins to buzz, and Nell’s name appears.

  ‘Tess? I only just got your messages – I had that massive engagement party today.’

  ‘Oh – sorry, I totally forgot. How did it go?’

  ‘Fine, fine – I emailed you a picture of the cake I made; it’s three tiers with a blue VW camper van as the top tier. Everyone loved it, thank God. But look, are you all right? You sounded really rattled.’

  Tess glances at her watch. ‘God, Nell, what time is it there? It must be one in the morning – what are you doing calling me? Why are you even up? Go to sleep. We can talk tomorrow.’

  ‘No, no, I can’t sleep; that’s why I’m calling you, I need to wind down. What’s happening? Did you have more bleeding?’

  ‘No, I’m fine, the baby’s fine.’

  ‘You sound odd.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m just … well, something slightly creepy happened today.’ She goes through to the sofa and folds her legs underneath herself as she tells Nell about the note on the doormat. There is a long pause.

  ‘What?’ Tess says.

  ‘How can you look in the mirror? I don’t know, it just …’ Nell is speaking quietly, presumably so she won’t wake Ken. ‘It sounds a bit like something an angry lover might say.’