“I’m fine. Just a little bit of high blood pressure, so I have some tablets to take.”
He kissed both hands and then let them go. “You need to rest. Why don’t you ask Rob to take Aiden for a few days? He can take on some of the responsibilities for a change.”
Mentioning Rob only made me think about the things he’d said over the phone. I couldn’t stand to think about Aiden somehow still connected to his kidnapper. But what if it was true? What if Aiden was even in touch with his kidnapper? Did Aiden know how to use a phone? Could he speak when I wasn’t around? I rubbed my eyes before letting my fingers run through my hair. Jake reached forward and took my arms, pulling me towards him.
When he kissed me, I kissed him back, but my body reacted on its own. My mind was elsewhere. I was considering everything I knew so far. I knew that Jake had been called in for questioning. I knew that the adult learning centre could not confirm that he worked there, but they did offer up a story in line with Jake’s personal life. He hadn’t been working at the centre since Aiden was found. He had been going to work at the school part-time but that was all. And I couldn’t stop thinking about how things had been with Jake before all this started. In fact, before I found out I was pregnant.
We’d been married for a year. Though we’d discussed the idea of a child, Jake had always said that there was no rush. He wanted to make sure I was ready after everything that had happened with Aiden. I thought it was sweet, and I’d agreed. I wasn’t even sure I wanted another child. It felt too much like replacing Aiden.
But after the honeymoon period a lot of things changed. After we’d filed the wedding pictures in an album and found ourselves lost in the routine of day-to-day living, something changed between us. Jake was very particular about how the house should look, and whenever I tried to buy a new ornament or rearrange the furniture to accommodate my own belongings, Jake didn’t like it. For a time I could see that he was trying to put up with these changes, but I saw the long hard look he gave the old pine desk I’d brought from my parents’ house. He made plenty of offhand comments about the paint marks and the coffee rings on the lid, and more than once jokingly suggested we put it in the garage.
Then one day I came home and in the place of my beloved childhood desk stood a brand new glass-topped monstrosity.
“Ta-da!” he had announced, standing next to the desk with his arms out wide.
I remember that it was a Saturday and I’d spent the morning with Josie in York. In fact, it had been Jake’s idea for me to go. Clearly, he’d wanted me out of the way so he could replace the desk. I had stood there, thin-lipped and tense, digging my thumbnail into the palm of my hand.
“Where’s my desk?” I asked.
“I bought you a new one. It has—”
“Where’smydesk.”
It was probably the worst fight we’ve ever had. Jake had not thrown the desk out, as I had first feared. Instead, he’d created an art studio in the garage with the desk, my paints, my easel, and a bunch of my paintings. Once I had cooled down, I decided that it was nice to have my own space, even if it was relegated to the garage. In summer, the garage is the perfect place to paint. The sun streams in through the open shutter door.
But after the desk incident, it was plain to see that the honeymoon period was over. Though Jake had always had a voracious appetite when it came to the bedroom, our night-time activities became a desperate way to convince ourselves that despite the constant bickering about who should do the washing up or whose turn it was to take the bin out, there was love at the core of our relationship.
I fell pregnant with Bump a few months after that, despite taking my birth control pills daily. And after I fell pregnant—which we called kismet because it was a happy accident—Jake rarely touched me. There was something about me being pregnant that turned him off. Even when the pregnancy hormones made me rage with sexual frustration, he completely ignored me. He even slept in the spare bedroom half a dozen times, saying that I “clearly needed some space,” which I decided was code for “satisfy yourself tonight, honey, I’m not in the mood”.
Jake did not like the way I looked as a pregnant woman. He was supportive. He rubbed my feet and made me cups of tea. He asked after the baby and checked that I was feeling okay. But he never touched my bump. Not ever. He never felt the baby kick. He was delighted to know that she was kicking, but he could not touch my bump. He said it made him feel nauseous but wouldn’t go into any further detail when I pressed the matter. Of course I found it a bit weird, but I had been creeped out about pregnancy at one point, and he was so supportive about everything else. He came to all the scans. He held my hand. He listened to the birth plan and took an interest in how to make it as safe and comfortable as we could. He could be quite protective about what I carried and how much I moved around. I used to jog three times a week, but once my belly began to get bigger, he found the thought of me tripping and landing on my stomach too much to bear. In the end, I gave up the running in favour of yoga.
Jake was, is, and has always been a complicated man. That evening when he came home from the police station and wanted me more than ever… well, it made me realise that I was also a complicated woman, because I wanted him too.
ChapterTwenty-Five
The next day—Wednesday—I learned that women have to pay a price if they allow themselves to be shrill. I was a YouTube phenomenon. The clip of me screaming at the reporters went viral, and the comments were toxic.
Women can never be shrill. It does something to a man. It hits them square in the testicles and shrivels them right up. I’ve seen Jake physically wince if my voice rises a few notes. I’ve seen the reaction of internet users to popular TV shows where the man is a murdering anti-hero with a wife who, on occasion, dares to yell at him. Guess who they hate.
The time of societal pity towards my tragic circumstance was over. The media had taken their gloves off.
Headlines took a punch at my mental health:Back-From-Dead Mother in Banshee Screech, Aiden’s Mum Loses It, She’s Lost her Marbles!, Is This the Face of a Good Mother?They dug out every unflattering photo they could find on social media and plastered them between poorly written paragraphs in online news articles. In nearly every single one, I was holding an alcoholic drink. They even found a picture of me drunk off my face in the background of someone else’s photo. My bleary eyes weren’t even looking at the camera. It had been taken not long after my parents had died and I was ill, but of course no one cared about that.
It was clear that the reporters thought Jake was the kidnapper and they’d found a new angle: I was an accomplice. For some reason it made sense to them that I would have my ‘lover’ kidnap my own son and imprison him for a decade, only to release him and claim him back.
The house phone did not stop ringing that morning until I unplugged it. The only call I answered on my mobile phone was one from Josie.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. It was the third time she’d said it. “You haven’t done anything wrong, you know. Those fuckers deserved to be yelled at. Why shouldn’t you scream at them?”
“It’s okay. I don’t care about what they think anymore. There’s nothing they can do or say that will change my mind.”
“Just stay safe, all right? Do you want me to bring food around to the house? Stay at home so they leave you alone.”
“I’m okay, Jo. Honestly. We have tons of food in. We’re staying holed up with Denise and Marcus.”
“Who are they?”
I rolled my eyes. “Our family liaison officers.”
