I injected some cheer into my voice in a pathetic attempt to lighten the mood. “I’m your mum. We lost each other for a while, but I’m back now and I’m going to make sure you’re safe, okay?” I blinked rapidly and took a deep breath, trying desperately to quell the rising tide of emotions threatening to sweep me away. “Once you’re feeling better you can come home with me and we can get to know each other again. Does that sound okay?”
There was not even a trace of a smile on his lips. His eyes slowly turned back to the television and I longed to wrap my arms around his narrow shoulders and hold him close to me. I turned to the doctor in a panic.
“I don’t… I don’t know what to do.” Despite my efforts to hold back my tears, a sob escaped, breaking through the noisy cartoon and jolting me back to reality. Aiden didn’t need to see me break down. He needed me to be strong, not a dithering wreck.
“You’re doing great,” Dr Schaffer encouraged. “Try to keep talking to him. We want Aiden to hear the sound of his mother’s voice.”
I took a deep breath and steadied myself. Aiden smelled like disinfectant and eggs. My eyes trailed the small table next to his bed. There was a colouring book but no toys, no presents or flowers. My boy should have gifts. I would come back with gifts and he would be Aiden again. He’d be the bright, colourful, and creative little boy I used to know. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. There he was, walking up the school carpark on his way to class with a Power Rangers rucksack and his bright red coat. I opened my eyes and pretended I was talking to that same boy.
“Do you like the cartoon, Aiden? I remember when you were little and you had a Transformer car. Do you remember that? It was red and it turned into a robot. You used to play games where the robot went to war against your stuffed toys. You’d got a bit too big for your stuffed rabbit and teddy bears. You liked robots and cars and Power Rangers, like most little boys your age. But you liked drawing, too. You used to draw the most wonderful pictures for me. They weren’t stick figures either—they were proper, coloured-in, gorgeous pictures of me and Nana and Grandpa. We used to pin them up all around the cottage.” I paused. None of those things were there anymore. No Nana. No Grandpa. No cottage. Suddenly, my mouth felt very dry. “You might not like those things anymore but that’s okay. A lot has changed. We can figure out what we like together, eh? We’ll go to the shops and you can pick out anything you want. Anything.” I let out a nervous laugh and leaned back in my chair. “And in a few weeks, you’ll get to meet your sister. We don’t know her name yet. Maybe you can help me choose it. I would like that a lot.” There was nothing. No reaction from him at all. “You grew into your ears! I always wondered if you would.” I clutched one hand with the other to stop myself turning into a manic, rambling idiot.
As Aiden continued to watch the television, I felt as though I were in a dream. Was I really talking to my son? Was this pasty young man the boy I’d thought had drowned all those years ago? My head was light but my heart was heavy with the implications of everything that had happened. I found myself unable to think of anything else to say.
Luckily, Dr Schaffer noticed my distress and came to my rescue. “Perhaps we could all go for a quick cup of tea while Aiden has a little rest. Then we can talk about what happens next. We would love to draw a little blood from you, Emma, and then we can establish a DNA match to corroborate the DNA test from yesterday. Someone from social services will need to speak to you.”
“I will be able to take him home, won’t I?” I asked. A fist of ice gripped my heart.
“It might just take a bit of time,” DCI Stevenson added. “With Aiden not talking we’ve no idea where he’s been for the last ten years and who he’s been with.”
Who. That word hit me like a truck.Who. Who had he been with? What did they want from him? Nausea rose to my throat, threatening to spill out onto the hospital floor. My fingers wrapped around the armrest of the chair as I attempted to compose myself.
“Where do you suspect he’s been?” I asked, saying the words slowly and carefully.
Both the doctor and the detective glanced across at Aiden and then back to me.
“I think it’s best we talk about that in private,” said DCI Stevenson.
ChapterSix
Of course, after Aiden’s apparent drowning, I suffered from recurring nightmares. There were two images that haunted me as I tossed and twisted myself into the sheets at night. The first was the sight of Aiden’s red coat being pulled from the river. It was the image that the press ate up and regurgitated on the front page of every newspaper. Innocence lost. The contrast of a tiny red coat against a murky dark background, mould and dirt on the sleeves. It was a perfect image for selling newspapers. It hinted at a parent’s worst fear without being so gratuitous that they couldn’t print it.
Does anything sell newspapers better than death? Maybe sex can sell more, given the right story, but the death of a child is the very apex of morbid curiosity. In a tower of sex scandals, prostitutes, and celebrities, infanticide rules. Tragic, accidental infant death is just underneath the glory of a child’s murder. Aiden was reduced to that one image and it almost erased every preceding memory I had of him. I couldn’t think of his cute, tongue-poking-out look of concentration when reading a book without seeing the red anorak dirtied by river mud. I couldn’t picture him shimmying up the tree in our garden wearing a superman cape without the newspaper headlines revolving through my mind.
The second image was pure imagination, but it was one that I could not shake away. It was Aiden, small and pale, floating in the water. Deep under the surface of the river was my child, half-eaten by fish, bloated and rotting. I dreamed of the flow of the Ouse as it met the Humber. Rushing and gushing and pouring over rocks, between built-up grassy banks, beneath stone bridges, behind houses, chasing and churning to the sea. I saw him washed away from me. Washed away from the world.
During the investigation, we’d had search and rescue experts talk about the currents and the places he could have washed up. It was irregular for a body not to resurface from a river. Out at sea, you would expect a body to disappear, but in a river, they tended to be found. That was why DCI Stevenson was assigned the case. It was only when they found Aiden’s coat that a kidnapping had been almost completely ruled out. There had been a flood and during that flood Aiden had wandered off, presumably towards the river. Not long after his disappearance they found his coat in the water. End of story. The thread of logic is all there, isn’t it?
Except this time the thread of logic was obviously wrong, because that was my child sitting in a hospital bed wearing the same expression you see on children pulled out of a wrecked building after an earthquake, or rescued from a war-torn country. Which was why I knew my nightmares were likely to come back, and what they would be about.
With Jake by my side, I followed Dr Schaffer and DCI Stevenson into a small office. Dr Schaffer sat at a desk, I was offered a chair, and DCI Stevenson shut the door behind us. That disinfectant smell of the hospital had even seeped into this room, and the tiny window behind the desk was shut, trapping us in a heady miasma of sickness. Part of me almost opened my mouth to Dr Schaffer to open the window and let in some fresh air, but I decided not to bother. It would only mean more faffing about and I was impatient to get on with things.
DCI Stevenson moved towards the desk and hovered there. Jake sat on a chair to my left, his fingers drumming against the grey wool of his trousers. I felt small beside them all, despite my distended stomach. Here I was, one pregnant woman amidst a cluster of men. A shock of femininity thrown into a testosterone-filled room. Despite the situation, I found myself straining to stay composed, self-conscious of breaking down in front of them. I was almost positive that there would be no judgement on their part even if I did, but it would only waste more time. I needed to know everything they knew about my son.
Dr Schaffer pushed a file across his desk and then pulled it back before clearing his throat. His head was bent down, looking at the file rather than at me. He seemed tall, even sat there in the desk chair. With his head bent like that, I could see the way his hair was thinning. I saw the pink of his scalp, slightly shining, beneath the soft greying hairs.
“This is a very difficult case,” Dr Schaffer said. “Without Aiden talking to us it’s difficult to make an assessment.”
“Just tell me everything you know, and what you think it means,” I said. I turned to DCI Stevenson. “And I mean everything.”
Finally, the doctor lifted his head and I saw that he had composed himself as a professional. He rested his hands on top of the file and linked his fingers together. “Aiden is small for his age, which leads us to think that he has been malnourished. When he was found on the road, he was walking very slowly, with a limp, and was short of breath. His posture is a little crouched when he walks, perhaps to overcompensate for the limp. During our examination we found that he has underdeveloped calf and thigh muscles, and there is an indication of ankle injuries in the past, though we will need to perform more tests to discover the extent of those injuries. They are healed now.
“Aiden’s teeth are quite crooked and though I’m no expert in that area, I believe that they have not been cared for particularly well, though he may have had a toothbrush. His skin is very pale, and his eyes were particularly sensitive to bright light.”
It was at this point that the rushing of my blood, and the thudding of my heart, became far louder than the doctor, and I was afraid that I was about to swoon forward in the chair. I took a deep breath, stroked my stomach, and willed myself to stay conscious. The problem was, I’d already guessed what he was about to say and I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted to stand up on my shaky feet and my swollen ankles, and run as fast as I could while eight months pregnant. I wanted to get out of that place—to even get away from Aiden, as sick as that sounds—and never think of any of this again. But I couldn’t. Aiden had been born. He had existed. He was still here. And he had a story deep down inside that deserved to be heard and processed by his mother.
“Emma,” Jake said quietly. He squeezed my hand. “Are you all right, love?”
“Do you need a break?” DCI Stevenson asked.
