When I flashed Jake a stern glance he only shrugged his shoulders and went, “What? Sorry, love, you know I speak my mind, and I have to say that it’s all true. What’s happened is truly awful, but for how long are we going to put our lives on hold?” He stood up and cleared away his cereal bowl.
“Are you serious?” I ripped another crust from my toast and angrily threw it back on the plate.
“Yes, I’m serious. Look, I understand that Aiden’s investigation comes first but… but you’re hardly even the woman I married. You’re a mess, Emma. You’re strung out, agitated. Irritable. In fact, your temper is downright awful. The way you screamed at those reporters, well—”
“You watched the video.”
“The whole world watched the video. They all think you’re unhinged, for fuck’s sake. And the way you don’t evenseethat Aiden is not just a traumatised kid—”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on. You read Amy’s article. I know I didn’t know you and Aiden all that well before the abduction, but you already admitted how a lot of what she said was true. Aiden was a badly behaved child—”
“No!”
“You’ve ignored all the bad bits and built him up to be some sort of angel. But it’s not true, is it? He was out of control.”
“Shut up!”
“I would, honey, but you have to hear this. You have to wake up and realise that our house is not going to be safe while Aiden is in it. We can’t bring a newborn home with him living here! He could be workingwiththe kidnapper for all we know. Teenagers build some weird fucking alliances.”
“Jake!”
“I’m sorry. I hate to say these things but they need to be said.”
I let out a gasp. My hands were gripping the table so hard that my nail had bent back. I placed the finger in my mouth and sucked it while Jake finished rinsing his cereal bowl and moved back to the kitchen table.
I removed my finger. “How long have you thought these things?”
He took my injured nail in his hand, gentle as always. “Since we brought Aiden home. I had hoped he would snap out of this fugue, but, honestly, Emma, I don’t think he ever will. I think he has something wrong with him that you can’t fix. Maybe no one can. But don’t you think he should get help from professionals? Don’t you think you’re being selfish by keeping him here in your house?”
Though my finger smarted from the bent nail, that wasn’t the pain that brought tears to my eyes. Jake went to fetch me a plaster while I sat and stewed in the sourness of his words. Was he right?
Aiden stepped into the kitchen and silently moved around. He took bread from the cupboard and placed it in the toaster. He took the butter out of the fridge and a knife from the drawer, and he waited by the toaster staring out of the kitchen window as casually and as eerily as a sleepwalker.
“I hurt my finger,” I said. “Jake’s getting me a plaster. Are you having toast for breakfast?” I began to ramble again, and the more I talked, the more my voice started to crack. “It’s weird without Denise or Marcus here making us cups of tea, isn’t it? They’ve gone to the police station for a meeting. They’re working really hard to figure out who took you. I wish you could tell me. You’d save a lot of people a lot of time and effort if you would talk to us. I know it’s hard, sweetheart, but you have to try.”
The toaster popped up and Aiden calmly removed the toast with his fingers. If the bread was hot, he didn’t show it. He buttered the bread and placed the knife in the sink. I watched, with tears streaming down my face, as my mechanical son ate his toast without even acknowledging I was there.
Was Jake right? Was I being selfish keeping him at home?
ChapterTwenty-Nine
Jake’s words continued to play on my mind throughout the day. I ended up doing as he asked. I went into the nursery and I opened cardboard boxes of stuffed toys, and plastic wrappers filled with brand new baby grows. Carefully, I folded the tiny items and placed them in the shelves of the little wardrobe Jake had put together a month ago. It was only as I was collecting all the empty wrappers and boxes that I saw the doll Amy had given me.
There it was with its perfect porcelain skin, mocking me through the plastic. The worst thing about seeing that doll was that it brought all the emotions rushing back to me. I had been so grateful to Amy for buying that present, and I’d felt so strong and so ready to have this baby. Now all those feelings were absent, leaving me with confused rage that I didn’t know how to direct. I wasn’t excited to meet my new child, I was terrified. With Aiden here the balance had tipped. What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to find enough love in my withered heart?
In a fit of rage, I drove my heel down onto the plastic and smashed through the porcelain. The crack was so sickening that I gasped and retracted my foot as quickly as I’d stamped it. When I backed away there was a tiny shard of the porcelain still stuck in the bottom of my foot. I hopped backwards and tripped, landing on my backside with a jolt. Instinctively, I reached around and cradled my bump with both hands. That was when I saw Aiden standing in the doorway watching me.
“Help Mummy up,” I said. I don’t know why I said it like that. I’d stopped thinking of him as a small boy a few days ago when I realised he was filling out after eating decent food and getting more exercise. But the way I laid sprawled out on the ground made a sense of desperation wash over me, and I guess I couldn’t help but try to endear myself to him by calling myself ‘Mummy’.
He stared while I reached out. He stood five feet away in the doorway, watching, with the same impassive expression as always. Blank, like a doll. And yet… was there part of him that was mocking me? That empty expression with the slow-blinking eyelids. That straight line he kept his mouth in at all times. The way his hands fell at his sides, never gesturing, hardly ever moving. It was all designed to mock me. He was testing my patience. For some reason I was so sure that he was doing all this on purpose. Why did I think it? Why? It was an awful thought. Aiden had been through hell and yet here I was considering that it was all a guise to mock me.
“Aiden,” I said. My voice deepened and took on a stern note. “Help me up. Take my hand, and help me up.”
I already had a plaster on my finger and now my foot was bleeding from where I had cut it on that stupid doll. If Jake was here he’d admonish my clumsiness, telling me how I made him worry and how he hated to leave me alone, especially with Aiden in the house.
“Help me onto my feet,” I pleaded. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up. Do you understand me? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
