Three hours later, I called Jake and told him I was coming home. Josie had kindly made us a few sandwiches and a couple more cuppas, though we’d all fancied a vodka and Coke after the day we’d had. Rob settled down with us and watched another Disney DVD before we agreed to keep going as we already were, with Aiden living at my house, but communicate with each other every step of the way. We were in the midst of a journey, for better or worse, and that journey was likely to be arduous. We needed each other.
And I needed Jake, in my own way. I’d already thought of fifty things I wanted to tell him, and plenty of issues I wanted his opinion about. Whether to enlist help with PR was one thing. None of us were experts when it came to the press. God knows I’d failed the first time this happened. I shuddered as I thought about the headlines from the tabloids. Rob had remembered it one way, but I recollected that time differently. “Teen Mum Let Little Aiden Go”, “Young Mum Drinking ‘Heavily’ Night Before Flood”. They’d raided my MySpace and Facebook pages, pulling every picture of me out with my friends. What they didn’t show was Aiden tucked up in bed with his grandparents downstairs. They didn’t show the pictures of me taking Aiden to get his vaccinations or breastfeeding in the early hours of the morning.
No, I was a ‘young’ mum, a ‘teen’ mum, even though I was twenty-four at the time of Aiden’s disappearance. Being young equated to being bad. That was what they really wanted to say. I was a bad mother and it was all my fault that he wandered away from school.
And poor Amy Perry wasn’t let off the hook either. They even found a picture of us both out at the local pub with pint glasses in our hands. We were the ‘boozy mum and teacher’ living it large while a kid drowned in a river. That was what they meant. That was what they implied. Yes, I could lose it from grief. I could break down in a way Rob couldn’t, but I had been persecuted for not shutting my legs when I was a teenager, and I was dragged over hot coals for having a social life while my son was a toddler.
I hated them. I hated them almost as much as I hated the man who took Aiden from me all those years ago. I hated them as I pulled onto my street and still saw the occasional van on our road, even though I’d waited until after the sun went down to try and sneak into the house.
I held my breath as I pulled into the driveway. My heart was racing and my hand trembled as I undid my seatbelt.
“Just stay with me, Aiden, okay? Stay close to me.”
I was far more agitated than he was. He didn’t need any more prompting to stay calm. The events of the morning seemed to have faded away and he was at least a little more relaxed than he had been. The look of terror on his face as we stood by Rough Valley would haunt me for the rest of my life. I took a deep breath and opened the car door, crunching gravel beneath my feet.
“Mrs Price-Hewitt, Simon Gary from the News of the World. Would you be interested in telling Aiden’s story?”
“No, thank you.”
I hurried around the car, avoiding the gaze of the short bald man following me.
“Where has Aiden been all this time?”
I kept my mouth firmly closed as I opened Aiden’s door and took his hand. At least there didn’t seem to be a photographer there yet.
“What’s happened to him? Where did he go?”
“I think you should leave. This is private property.” I fumbled in my handbag for my keys, almost spilling the contents onto the ground.
Before I could get the key in the lock, the door was snatched open and Jake ushered us both into the house. I wrapped my arms around his neck and held him tight.
“Thank you.”
“I’ve got you,” he murmured into my hair. His voice always carried a hint of the south in his huskier moments. “I’ve got you now.”
He led me through to the kitchen and sat me down.
“Aiden, why don’t you pour your mum a glass of water.” Jake moved his head in the direction of the correct cupboard.
I noticed that even the kitchen curtains were closed, which we never usually bothered to do. The kitchen faced a private back garden almost completely secluded by a line of tall fir trees. Aiden moved quietly around the room, picking a glass out of the cupboard and pouring tap water into it. He placed it carefully on the table in front of me.
“Good lad. Now, why don’t you go upstairs for a little bit? I left you some books on your bedside table so you can read.” Jake smiled at Aiden as he gave him instructions. He was in teacher mode and something in Aiden was responding to it. Aiden followed his directions almost robotically. I watched him with interest as he stepped out of the room.
“What is it?” Jake asked.
“It’s probably nothing.”
Jake tilted his head to one side and gave me a questioning look.
“It’s just the way Aiden responds to your direction. There’s something weird about it.”
Jake let out a small laugh. “What are you talking about? He does the same for you.”
“No, it’s not the same. There’s something… different about the way he acts around you.” I shrugged and sipped my water. “Maybe it’s nothing. I’m being silly.”
“You’re not. You’re being a mother.” Jake stepped around the table and rubbed the small of my back. “Maybe it’s hard for you to see a man around Aiden after what’s happened to him. You’re just going into protective mode.”
But I wasn’t sure that was true. I never noticed a change in Aiden’s behaviour when he was around Rob.
