Aside from the rise and fall of his chest, Dylan remains silent and motionless. He sits on the floor, his back to the wall, a few feet away from me, but not close enough to be a danger. ‘I can show you some more pictures of him if you like?’
He doesn’t reply.
‘Okay, maybe another time then.’
An onlooker might describe the silence between us as frosty. To me, it’s typical because it’s like this much of the time. Sometimes, when I come downstairs and I spot him lurking in the shadows of the basement, for a split second, I think it’s Jon. I’ve even caught myself calling him that on occasion. To my eyes, the physical resemblance between father and son is so uncanny, I find it hard to know where one ends and the other begins.
‘Okay,’ I say, getting to my feet. ‘The pizza should be just about ready. Shall we go upstairs and eat?’
Again, he says nothing, but he responds by slowly pulling himself to his feet. I take the handcuffs I bought from eBay and slide them across the floor to him. I don’t have to tell him what to do because our routine is well rehearsed. Despite his incarceration, he is bigger and stronger than I am and I’m sure that if presented with an opportunity, he would try to overpower and hurt me to get out of here. But I’ve learned from the mistakes I made with Maggie. And in time, he will become physically weaker and more compliant.
Dylan places his hands behind his back and affixes the cuffs to his own wrists. ‘Show me, please darling,’ I ask, and he turns and pulls his hands apart to demonstrate they are bound. ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Now come towards me.’
He turns again and does as I ask. I approach him, as always, with one of Dad’s golf clubs in my hand. I’ve only used it on Dylan once, when he tried to thrust his head back to break my nose. He caught the bridge but it wasn’t hard enough to cause lasting damage. So I whacked him in the kidneys with the club and he fell quickly to the floor. I remember being struck by a moment of déjà vu, but I can’t think why. I’ve never played golf so I have no reason to have held a club before. Hurting my son caused me more pain than he could’ve possibly felt, though. But I suppose that’s what parenting is all about, isn’t it? Doing what’s best for them, no matter how much it hurts you.
I swap the shorter chain for the longer one and follow him up both sets of stairs until we reach the dining room. When the light catches his face, I note his eye socket is still slightly sunken from where he broke it in the fall down the stairs the day he found me and Maggie together. It’s likely it will always remain this way, but not to his detriment. It gives him character.
There’s very little I can recall about what happened that night. I remember a furious argument with Maggie and the next thing I know, Dylan is lying at the bottom of the stairs and Maggie is locked in her section of the house. I immediately thought the worst and that my son had been taken from me for a second time. It was only when I reached him that I saw him blink and he begged me to get him help. Despite my confusion, something told me that if I did as he asked, I’d never see him or Maggie again. By making one telephone call, I’d lose the only two people I have in my life. So I didn’t do it. And it was the best decision I ever made. Instead, I dragged him down into his new home, the basement.
It hasn’t been easy. As I did with Mum – and she with me – I sedated Dylan for the first couple of weeks with the remaining Moxydogrel, then extra sedatives I bought online. I stitched up his head wounds guided by a YouTube video and when he tried to escape the first time, I chained him to a disused gas pipe coming from the basement wall. It isn’t an ideal scenario but until Dylan comes around to my way of thinking – which I know he’ll do eventually – I have little choice. I am only behaving as any good mother would do, keeping their child safe from harm.
Upstairs, Dylan takes a seat in the dining room and I lock the door behind me. On my return I bring the pizza and garlic bread, and I’ve treated us to a brand of beer and cheesecake he’s been pictured with on Instagram. Before opening the door, I check the app on my phone which is linked to a small camera hidden on top of a bookcase to double-check I’m not going to be ambushed when I enter. It appears safe.
Dylan sniffs at his pizza with the caution of an animal. I don’t blame him; I’ve been forced to use powdered sleeping tablets in his food a handful of times when he’s become particularly restless or combative. But not today.
‘Shall I put some music on?’ I ask, but I don’t wait for his reply before I turn the stereo on. ‘This was my dad’s favourite album. He used to love ABBA.’
‘You say that every time,’ he mutters.
‘I’m sorry.’
Dylan looks up to the ceiling. ‘How is my grandmother?’
‘Maggie’s good,’ I lie. She isn’t, and she is getting worse. She is decomposing before my eyes and doesn’t react to the help I offer. We have long since stopped talking about her lumps and bumps because I refuse to discuss them any more. My online research says it’s likely the stress she brings upon herself is manifesting itself in her worsening health. Some people just don’t want to help themselves.
I have considered telling her that Dylan isn’t dead and is living two floors below her because it might give her the will to live. I’ve even considered allowing the two of them to be in the same room so that we can all eat dinner together as a family. But now isn’t the right time, not while Dylan is carrying so much misplaced anger. I don’t want them plotting against me. Perhaps when he reminds himself I’m his mum and not the enemy, he might be in a better frame of mind for me to allow them to meet properly.
I saw Jane, the woman who adopted him and tried to keep him away from me, making another appeal on the local news last night. She’s desperate for anyone who knows about ‘Bobby’s’ disappearance to contact the police. Bobby is gone for good, Jane, because ‘Bobby’ never existed. He has always been Dylan, no matter how much you’ve fooled yourself into believing he’s not.
She was holding a candlelit vigil outside their local church and renewing the family’s appeal to find him. Clearly she refuses to believe the text messages I sent her from his phone saying that he needs some time to himself.Why won’t she just give up?I thought.Take the hint, woman, he doesn’t want to see you!I ended up smashing the phone and flushing the SIM card down the toilet so the police can never trace him back to here.
They did turn up at the house once, about six days after he vanished. Fortunately, I had him under heavy sedation in the basement so all parties were unaware of one another. They told me police cameras had picked up his car registration plate in Northampton, but I denied he was ever at the house, informing them we were estranged. I even invited them inside to take a look around, but they didn’t come any further than the lounge. If they’d looked inside the garage, they would have found his car. If I knew how to drive further than from the road outside to my garage, I’d have disposed of it by now.
Before I begin eating, I cut into Dylan’s pizza and feed him pieces with my fork. And I hold a beer bottle to his mouth when he needs to drink. He looks at me as if he hates me but he knows that he needs me to do this for him. Besides, I was robbed of the chance of helping him to thrive as a baby. Now it’s finally my time and I must take my opportunities while I can, because it won’t always be like this. As soon as he accepts this is where he belongs, the cuffs won’t be necessary. We will be just a regular mother and son, eating dinner together like every other ordinary family.
ABBA’s ‘The Day Before You Came’ plays and of all the times I’ve heard it, it’s only tonight that the lyrics resonate. The singer is describing her mundane existence before a man she loved came into her life and changed everything. Before Dylan sent me his first Facebook message, I was her. And now I’m not. I have everyone I need. My mother is upstairs where she can do no more harm; my beautiful, wonderful boy is safe downstairs; and my father is asleep outside under a soon-to-be-beautiful blanket of colourful flowers.
How many people are fortunate enough to have three generations of one family all living together under one roof? Not many, I’m sure. So I don’t take any of this for granted. I am a very, very lucky woman.
EPILOGUE
NINA
Two novels I’ve been waiting for arrived in the delivery van this morning.Life of PiandFlowers in the Atticare both for Maggie, so I volunteer to refill the shelves and I hide them in my usual spot in the War and British History section.
I start thinking about tonight’s dinner. It’s Dylan’s turn to eat with me and because he’s been looking a little pallid of late, I’m going to pick him up a steak fillet from Waitrose on the way home. It should add a little iron to his blood as I don’t want him becoming anaemic. Choosing tomorrow evening’s dinner with Maggie won’t be so difficult. She doesn’t eat much more than a sparrow, pecking at her food or pushing it around her plate with a plastic fork. Nevertheless, feeding three people on one wage means my purse is taking quite the hit these days. But that’s a small price to pay for what I get in return from them.
The sudden appearance of Benny startles me and for a moment, I think I’ve been caught squirrelling away my books.
