by cass green
24
Nina
Zach is fussy again. As he stutters out a cry and draws in his knees, I pat his back and try to rearrange the wriggling shape of him. But nothing really seems to settle this fretful baby. Maybe he really is sick?
At that moment, I glance at Lucas and his expression makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise. What am I seeing? It’s not indifference, that’s certain. It’s not the expression his sister holds whenever she comes near the baby. There’s definitely something softer there. Can I risk that he wouldn’t hurt this child?
An idea forms in my mind. I lower my eyes to the baby’s downy red hair while I try to think it through.
‘Lucas?’ I try to sound matter-of-fact even though my stomach is twisting with anxiety.
He jerks his head at me in response. I get up and approach him before he has time to stop me and calmly hold Zach towards him.
‘Take Zach for a minute? I need a glass of water.’ I don’t meet his eye and after a moment’s hesitation he takes the writhing bundle of baby. I force myself not to say anything about holding the head, terrified I’m endangering Zach for nothing, but out of the corner of my eye, I see Lucas rest the baby against his shoulder, one hand expertly against the small head. He makes a gentle shh-ing sound and his face is soft. He sees me watching and I have to turn away to the sink to hide my delight.
He cares about that child. He’s not going to hurt him, I’m sure of it. I wonder again if Zach is actually his flesh and blood.
Angel is another matter. But it would take a special kind of sadist to be able to actively hurt a tiny baby.
So it’s only really me they might be prepared to hurt …
There must be something I can do. I just need to think.
After I have drunk a glass of water at the sink, I go back to Lucas and take Zach without meeting his eye.
Back at the table, I search the room with my eyes.
My back aches and when I stretch my legs out, my foot knocks something under the table. Glancing down, I spy one of Sam’s felt-tip pens under the table; a dark red one.
As Zach squidges his hot, cross little face into my shoulder a thought blossoms in my mind. My heart races. Is it a laughable idea? Or might it work? I glance at Angel. Her long body is curled over her phone, attention completely taken up by the screen. Lucas is lying on the sofa, hands between his knees, staring down at the floor.
Lucas wouldn’t do anything to actively harm this child, I’m sure of it now. Angel has been playing up the threat to Zach because it is the way of controlling me. But would Lucas really allow her to hurt the baby?
Sam comes into my head again and I squeeze my eyes shut against the wash of pain, remembering that small voice on the other end of the phone. He’s almost taller than me now, filling out in all the ways he should. But he’s still my little boy. He’ll always be that.
Being forced to deny him access to his home – to what should always be his sanctuary – is so terrible I can’t think how I will ever be able to bear it. Some time I will be able to explain that this is entirely about his own safety. But that doesn’t matter now, it won’t erase the lonely sense of abandonment he must be feeling right this minute.
The anger smouldering at the edges of my misery takes light. I have to do something.
I reach with my toes for the marker pen, then deliberately knock the kitchen roll I’d been using to wipe away Zach’s milky spit-up onto the floor. Angel grazes me with the barest glance as I reach down, sliding the marker pen inside my sleeve.
Zach has quietened, unhelpfully. His eyes are glassy with fatigue and his lips twist and pucker. There’s a tiny milk blister on his bottom lip. His cheeks are flushed, which is helpful.
I murmur something deliberately, making Angel look up.
‘What?’ she says.
I scrunch my face into a deep frown. ‘I just heard some kind of explosion in his nappy,’ I say, then lift Zach to smell his bottom and grimacing dramatically. ‘I think this is going to be a really bad one.’
Angel stands up.
‘I can live without this,’ she says, just as I hoped she would. ‘I’m going for some me time. Lu, keep an eye?’
Her brother acknowledges her with a nod and Angel walks out of the room. Lucas pays scant attention as I get up. I stand and angle my back to block the view of what I’m up to.
Must act quickly. I mutter in a stage whisper, ‘Going to need some hot water for this one,’ and, with Zach over my shoulder, I run the hot water and push a hand towel under the stream until it is drenched.
Back at the table, I slide the marker pen out from my sleeve and begin to undress Zach. He whimpers and complains but is more compliant than I could have hoped. He’s exhausted too, no doubt. This whole experience must be so unsettling for him. At this age, he doesn’t even understand that he is a separate person from his mother.
Come on, little fella, I think, try and be a bit floppy. Play the part.
The nappy is completely clean and dry, which is no surprise, but I whip it off and tie it into a tight ball. As I lay the new nappy under the wrinkled little bottom, I glance at Lucas to check he is not watching. But he appears to be somewhere else entirely, his shoulders hunched inwards and his eyes clouded and distant.
My breath comes faster as I un-cap the marker pen. Hesitating for a second, I mouth a silent apology and begin to dot it across the baby’s belly and chest. Zach responds with a howl of outrage. I’m doing it so softly, but his skin is so fragile I’m scared of hurting him. I look anxiously at Lucas again, who responds to the noise by turning his body the other way on the sofa and covering his head with his arms.
I work as fast as I can with clumsy, shaking hands. Dab, dab, dab goes the pen, speckling the baby’s fragile skin, and my heart sinks because it looks so fake. I can only pray that an untried eye will not be able to tell the difference between this and the real thing.
Then, whispering another apology to Zach in my mind, I test that the wet towel is hot but not scalding, and lay it across his brow. Zach’s screams intensify. I try to stop the swell of panic about the discovery of my plan. What if I’m hurting him?
I’m so sorry, baby, I say silently. But this is our only hope.
I can hear Angel moving in the hallway and so I quickly stuff the pen inside my sleeve again, but it slips out and rolls under the table with a slight ting. Seconds before Angel enters the kitchen, I stuff the wet towel under the table.
‘Angel, come here, quickly,’ I say, holding Zach up. I’m trying to keep his body away from my clothes, which might smudge the ink.
Angel moves to the table in her languid way and sighs. ‘What now?’ she says, looking at me, rather than Zach.
‘I think the baby is sick,’ I say. ‘Feel his forehead. He’s burning up!’
Angel lays her bony hand on the baby’s face and turns her mouth down.
‘Aren’t babies always a bit warmer though?’ she says but I hear the doubt creeping into her voice.
‘Not like this,’ I say. ‘What’s really worrying me is the rash.’ Barely able to breathe, I pull Zach away, so Angel can see the red spots covering his belly and chest.
Angel pulls sharply away with a loud, ‘Fuck, what is that?’ turning her head away. I’d suspected she was squeamish about illness from her overreaction about nappy changing and say a small silent prayer of thanks.
‘It could be a number of things,’ I say in an urgent tone, ‘but I’m really worried that it might be … well, it could be meningitis.’
‘What?’ Lucas is sitting bolt upright now, his eyes wide and his skin ashen. ‘Did you say you think the baby has menin-fucking-gitis? Shit!’ He’s on his feet, ruffling his fingers through his curls, expression stricken. ‘Let me see!’
He crosses the room at speed and looks down on Zach. When he places his pale hand on the baby’s quickly rising and falling tummy, right where I’ve daubed the ink, I almost break down on the spot. But he is looking up at me, apparently fooled.<
br />
‘That can be really fucking serious, can’t it?’ he says. ‘Kids die of that, don’t they?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid they do,’ I say. ‘It can be very bad indeed.’
Lucas gives a moan of distress and walks across the kitchen, hands buried in his curls as he paces.
‘Let’s just calm the fuck down, shall we!’ snaps Angel. ‘It might not be anything like that! She’s not a doctor, is she? What does she even know?’
‘No,’ I say, reasonably, aware that my over-jiggling is making Zach even crosser and louder. But I have to do it. Have to make him uncomfortable for his own good. ‘But I am a mother and I know what a sick baby looks like. Even if it isn’t meningitis,’ I have to raise my voice over Zach’s rising screams, ‘just having an untreated fever can make a baby have febrile convulsions. Fits. Did you know that?’ I pause for effect. ‘They can die from these too.’ I don’t even know if that part is strictly true but it seems to work.
Lucas emits a distressed sound and brings his hands to his face, gazing wildly at his sister, who tells him to ‘Get a grip’ and turns back to gaze doubtfully at Zach.
When she turns her basilisk-stare on me, I attempt a shrug. ‘You guys are in charge here. What do you want to do?’
Turning my face away I quickly began to re-dress Zach in his vest, clipping the poppers between his bicycling legs gratefully and hiding the evidence of my work. I hope the marker pen won’t seep through the soft cotton fabric of the vest. No one questions whether it is wise to put more clothes on a feverish baby, to my relief. It feels like the power has shifted in the room. They are relying on me knowing the things they don’t know.
There’s a pause when everything seems to hang and then:
‘Shit!’ Angel pounds her fist onto the table and we all flinch, including the baby, who is shocked into a series of miserable hiccups. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘I do,’ says Lucas. ‘We’re letting her go, Ange.’ He sounds more assertive in tone than I’ve heard to date. ‘I’m not having Zach on my conscience. Not him too.’
The words ‘Not him too’ chill me but I say nothing as some unspoken dynamic plays out between the siblings.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ says Angel, bitterly, after a few moments. ‘This is all such a fucking mess!’
She starts to say something else, but her words are drowned out then by the sharp trill of the front doorbell.
It feels like there is a collective intake of breath and we all look at each other wildly.
Angel seems to relax. ‘It’ll be the car, won’t it? Go on, Nina. Give me the baby. I’m going to have this,’ she pulls the gun from her pocket and waves it around, ‘trained on the back of your head the whole time.’
They have lost the bargaining chip of harming Zach. Any threat will now rest solely on hurting me. This is a funny sort of consolation prize to contemplate.
Reluctantly I hand Zach to Angel, glancing anxiously at his belly. But the pen hasn’t leaked through yet, thank God.
I try to pat down my hair, which is springing from my head in an unruly way, and wipe away the smudged make-up under my eyes.
At the front door, I pause and then open it. My breath seems to die in my throat and I am just able to force out the word.
‘Ian?’
25
Angel
It is obvious from the way Nina’s entire body has gone rigid that this is not the mechanic, returning her car, but someone else entirely.
Angel gestures wildly at Lucas to take the baby as far away as he can go and, wide-eyed, her brother obeys, taking Zach and fumbling so he almost drops him. He closes the kitchen door with a gentle click.
‘What are you doing here?’ Nina’s voice is strangulated, like someone has their hands around her throat. Standing as she is at the doorway to the kitchen, out of sight of the front door, Angel can see that Nina has started to shake, quite obviously.
Shit. Keep it together for fuck’s sake, she thinks. She couldn’t make it more obvious that something is wrong if she came right out and said she was being held hostage.
‘Sam’s passport,’ says the person at the door, in a slightly pompous male voice. ‘I thought you’d packed it? I’ve been ringing you but your phone’s going straight to voicemail.’
‘Oh, I, er …’ Nina flails. Angel lets out a slow hiss of breath. ‘I really meant to,’ Nina continues. ‘I was sure I had.’
‘Well, you didn’t,’ says the man.
It’s obviously the errant shagger of a husband. Even his voice is annoying to Angel’s ear. She’d quite like to get a look at him, give him a piece of her mind about trading in his wife for a younger model. Typical man, she thinks.
He’s still talking.
‘Look, I didn’t use my key out of …’ He pauses and the weird atmosphere between these two thickens so much, Angel swears if she thrust her hand into it, it would have a texture. He continues, ‘Out of courtesy.’
‘What does that mean?’ says Nina sharply. Even her hair appears to be bristling.
‘Sam told me,’ says Ian, ‘about your … guest.’ There’s a pause before he goes on. ‘Only we leave for the airport in an hour and I have to have the passport.’
‘Oh God.’ Nina’s distress is so obvious now that Angel’s hand tightens around the gun. She’s going to blow the whole thing, right here on the doorstep.
Angel’s heartbeat is thudding in her head and a series of panicky images are crowding into her mind but Nina is speaking again, sounding calmer.
‘Well, I’m sorry,’ says Nina. ‘I hope he’s alright. He seems really anxious about this holiday.’
The irritated sigh that puffs from Ian is loud enough for Angel to hear three feet away.
‘We’ve been through this, Nina,’ he says. ‘He’s going to have a wonderful time. If you hadn’t poisoned his mind about the whole—’
‘Poisoned his mind! I did no such thing!’ Nina is yelling now. ‘I’ve done everything I can to calm his fears! How dare you? How bloody dare you, Ian!’
‘Neen, look, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. But can I come in? Or can you at least go get the passport?’
‘You can wait here,’ says Nina, ‘I’ll get it.’ She slams the front door so hard Angel feels the vibrations through the soles of her feet. Nina doesn’t meet Angel’s anxious gaze as she runs upstairs. Angel can hear the sound of drawers being yanked open and closed again and then she is charging back down the stairs.
She opens the front door again.
‘Here, take it,’ she says, ‘and please promise me that you’ll remember that Sam can be anxious about journeys like this.’
‘I do know that,’ says Ian quietly. ‘He is my son. It’s not like he’s going away with some strangers. You really ought to give me a bit of bloody credit for knowing how to look after him.’
There’s another pause and Nina blurts out, ‘He thinks Laura’s parents are going to make him eat frogs’ legs.’
There’s a moment of silence that makes Angel stiffen and edge closer. Is Nina mouthing something to Ian about getting help? Then she realizes that Nina is actually laughing.
She can hear Ian laughing gently too, indicating this is clearly some kind of shared parenting moment. Angel wouldn’t know about that.
‘Oh, bless him,’ he says in a softer voice now. ‘He wouldn’t tell me what it was.’
‘Well, now you know,’ says Nina. Already, the warmth has begun to drain away again from her voice. ‘Just please tell him I love him very much, OK?’ The end of her sentence skids away from her and Angel thinks, Come on, don’t mess this up now. ‘And that he can ring me any time of the day or night for a chat?’
‘Course I will,’ says her ex.
Nina starts to close the door without another word and then Ian must say something.
‘What?’ she says.
‘I hope he’s a good bloke,’ says Ian. ‘You deserve that.’
Nina emits a sharp laugh of pure bitterness
now.
‘Yeah, well I thought I already had one of those,’ she says. Then, ‘Bon voyage, Ian.’
She closes the door and slides onto the bottom stair, resting her head in her hands so her face is hidden.
Angel watches, wondering if she is distressed. Her shoulders shake, and she thinks Nina is crying. But the other woman looks up and Angel can see a bitter sort of amusement on her face. She has a weird sense of humour.
‘What’s funny?’ Angel hates the feeling that she is a heartbeat off what is happening around her. ‘Didn’t seem all that funny to me.’
Nina lets out a huge sigh.
‘No,’ she says, ‘you’re right. None of it is funny.’ She pauses. ‘It’s just … this imaginary boyfriend of mine. I wish I was having the fun people think I’m having right now.’
Angel doesn’t know how to respond so she says nothing.
The kitchen door opens and Lucas peers out. He is evidently Zach-less.
‘Where is the baby?’ says Nina, hurrying towards him.
‘It’s OK, he’s sleeping,’ says Lucas, a bit sulkily.
There’s a noise then and they all turn to look at the front door. Car keys have been pushed through the letterbox and sit on the mat.
‘Thank God for that,’ says Angel. ‘We can get the fuck out of this place.’
26
Lucas
At first, it had been easy enough to avoid the stuff about the new book.
Lucas has never been much of a reader. Once he was at boarding school, his poor performance in any subject beyond art became one of the things that defined him. Well, that and the bed-wetting, which had continued until he was thirteen and resulted in him gaining the nickname of Pissant for the entirety of his time there.
Lessons had been a nightmare and Lucas could still recall the biting shame when the words on the page would wriggle and jump away from him. There was one teacher he still remembered, and he hoped there was a special circle of hell just for him, who would belittle Lucas’s poor reading in front of the rest of the class.
