There will be eating guidelines online, tips for foods to help support a high-risk pregnancy. Lists to add to my weekly online shop.
For now, I go to the kitchen and grab a family size packet of kettle chips and slump on the couch, pretending that’s a reasonable tea. The television goes on because I need something to drown out the dark mutterings coming from the back of my head.
As I watch the news presenter issue a spiel about a governmental minister who—horror of horrors—hasn’t accomplished what they set out to, my hand goes to my abdomen. A quick pat. Then a caress. Then a smile as I think of how happy the news will make Kai.
If the pregnancy takes.
If I had a way to get the news to him.
I close my eyes for a minute, thinking of what it would be like if the yacht I invented for the police was real. If it was waiting right now, fitted out ready for a journey not to the North Island but across to the Cook Islands or maybe Samoa.
There’d be expenses of course. Lots of them. And it’s hard to pick up a passenger when I don’t even know where he’s camped out. A snippet on the news a few weeks ago featured a woman being led into police custody for questioning. The reporter said it was in connection with the kidnapping and as the shot panned around, it caught a large man holding onto a baby. A tiny baby. So small it must have been a newborn.
I’d waited for an hour and caught the clip again on the plus one channel. This time I screen-grabbed the footage and spent hours staring at the grainy images.
Not Kai. Him I would have recognised instantly. But the man seemed connected to the woman being escorted into the station.
It’s not an absurd leap to imagine she might be Rachel. That the child might be the baby he was so keen to reach. The baby who is the proximate cause for all this trouble, innocent though it may be.
Then, like I’ve conjured him up from my imagination, Kai appears on screen. More ragged than when I last saw him, a scruffy beard hiding the lower half of his face.
For a second, I stare at him in awe, categorising every change, wondering at the reasons. My heart flops in my chest like a landed fish, face flushing until it’s hot to the touch.
I choke out a sob, then a laugh, then clap a hand over my mouth as my limbs tremble, the room tilting away from me.
I go from ecstasy at seeing him to deep fear for what happens now. A huge well of emotions pull at me, at just the sight of him, far more than I’m used to, my psyche too rusty to know how to respond.
The wheel of emotions slows to singular ticks, then lands on joy. Watching him move, knowing he’s alive; it’s hard to imagine anything feeling so good.
Then common sense reasserts itself.
His hands are behind his back, a male officer grabbing hold of his upper arm for good measure.
He glances towards the cameras, obviously tipped off to be there because no one would be in whatever small single jail cell town it is without good reason.
A sob chokes me, and I press a hand to my mouth to hold back further cries. My fantasies tear away, leaving desolation in their wake.
“Fugitive arrested,” screams the headline along the base of the screen, underpinning his image.
He’s pushed into the back of a police van, an officer escorting him and slamming the rear door shut from the inside.
His time on the run is over.
CHAPTERTWENTY
NADIA
The next afternoon,I take a seat in the secure visitor room in the prison, a different room than the one I’ve used previously because Josh is currently segregated from the main prison population.
The unit is new, a separate building inside the security perimeter, housing thirty inmates. An upgrade if the facility is anything to go by, although it’s harder to see that on paper where all it speaks about is his troublemaking abilities and the need for protective custody.
Instead of the open room of my last visit, Josh is housed behind thick glass, our only conversation held via phone. For the first ten minutes, he does nothing but glare at me, but I can wait out his mood; lord knows I’ve done it often enough while he was growing.
One more tantrum won’t put me off course.
Eventually, he grows bored glaring and picks up the line. “You’re a month late,” he barks.
“Fuck you, too,” I say, smiling broadly back at him to take the sting from the words. I wish there was something more I could do to take the sting from my heart, but I’m working with what I have. “Aren’t you going to tell me how much you missed me? How concerned you were for my welfare?”
