by Adam Croft
We’ve read all the books, bookmarked all the websites. I’ve tried everything. Even the relaxation and mindfulness techniques which are meant to reduce stress — a big reason why many couples have trouble conceiving. I even did meditation sessions. At one point I must have had a dozen apps on my phone, including one which was just daily sessions of some bloke talking soothingly over Tibetan pipe music. It was bizarre, but also strangely relaxing.
The condescending little shit with the irritating voice is a big advocate of visualisation. He says if you want something to happen, you have to be able to see it, to visualise it. And try as I might, no matter how vividly I brought to mind images of me and Chris with a house full of giggling, happy children, it just didn’t feel right. I knew I was only projecting my own desires. I wasn’t looking into the future. I knew, deep down, it would never happen.
And that’s why I know today isn’t going to be good news. One ray of hope that the websites and books all tell you is that practically no couples are ever told they definitely can’t have children. The doctors just say your chances are greatly reduced, or that you should assume it won’t happen. The papers are full of stories of families who have been told one or more partners is infertile, only to end up popping out quadruplets a few months later.
But what can you say to someone who’s given up all hope?
I know they’ll mention IVF today. It’s bound to happen. Especially after three years of trying. And I know what the maths are there, too. Twenty grand down the drain and our chances of conception raised to 5%. Then come the other dreaded words that no person who’s desperate to have children ever wants to hear. Fostering. Adoption.
It’s not simply a case of wanting to look after a child. If that were the case, I’d become a babysitter or go to work at a nursery. It’s not even comparable to having a little person around the house who’s your own flesh and blood. Someone who is entirely made up of DNA and genetic material that is half you, half the person you love and have chosen to spend the rest of your life with. That little person who is, quite literally, scientifically speaking, 50% you. The only person in the world who is. Even your own parents don’t count. They aren’t 50% you; you are 50% them.
Having your own children is seeing your own genetic existence extended by another eighty or ninety years. I think I read somewhere that a child born today has a life expectancy of over one hundred. That’s how incredible medical science is. That something which wasn’t even so much as a cluster of cells just over nine months ago can be more or less assured of a century of NHS-supported existence. That it can go from being a tiny, slimy pink ball to a dying adult with great-grandchildren over the space of ten decades.
But in our case, and in tens of thousands of others, we can’t even get past that first stage. The easy bit. Smashing a sperm into an egg. An accidental collision. A tiny, insignificant event which is the starting point for everything else that is to come. The birth, the birthdays, the schooldays, the friendships, the jobs, the marriages, the grandchildren, the heartache and the loss. Everything results from that meeting of two cells.
They can collide particles at extraordinary velocity inside collision chambers in Switzerland, but they can’t manage this.
And that’s the sanctity of life in a nutshell, isn’t it? That’s why our children are so precious. That’s why you throw yourself in front of a bus to save a toddler. That’s why you walk out into the road so a woman with a pushchair doesn’t have to. That’s why kids go free. Because without them we have no future. We, ourselves, cannot live on.
And that’s why it feels so completely and utterly devastating to have slowly come to the realisation that I can’t — won’t — be a part of that. Instead, I’ll be some sort of cast-off from society. The person nature decided wasn’t good enough to join in the propagation of the species. The person who, try as they might, would never see their legacy live on. The woman who’d die without anyone to talk about her. Who’d never come up in conversation years later. No fond memories, no tall tales. Just wiped from existence as if I’d never been there in the first place.
Chris taps my knee. ‘Come on. That’s us,’ he says, as he gets up and walks towards the consulting rooms. I force a smile and swallow hard. Then I pick up my bag and push myself to my feet, my knees trembling and my heart fluttering in my chest.
I feel like the condemned man walking to the gallows.
12
Megan
Evie’s screams rattle around my skull as I try to calm her down. She didn’t want to be cuddled, didn’t want to be held, so I sat her on my lap. She didn’t like that either, so I laid her down on the floor. When that failed too, I sat her in front of her toys. She stopped crying for just long enough to reach across for one and land face-first in the carpet. Cue screaming.
I can feel my anger and frustration rising as I rub her back and make soothing noises to her, even though all I want to do is scream SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Sometimes, nothing seems to work. I go round and round in circles trying all the usual methods: singing, cooing, bouncing, distracting, showing her her favourite toys. But absolutely nothing stops her crying. Eventually she seems to give up and lay there gurgling, as if exhausted by all the exertion of screaming.
I don’t know why she does it. In many ways I don’t care. I just want it to stop. I’ve tried good old Dr Google. What new mum hasn’t? There are pages and pages of shit on the internet about different methods of getting a baby to sleep, why babies cry, what’s normal and abnormal. The truth of the matter is, there’s no such thing as normal. Any parent will tell you that. But it doesn’t mean I’m happy to let her sit there screaming.
Dad suggested taking her to a doctor, which wasn’t something I was keen on. I’m not about to go up to a medical professional and admit I’m a failure as a mother. Fortunately, Mum didn’t like the idea either, and said something about all babies being different. That you have to follow your own instinct and do whatever feels right at the time.
The only problem is my instincts are all over the place, not to mention the rest of my mind.
The one good thing about Evie’s screaming is that it’s distracting me from what’s really going on inside my head. When I close my eyes, all I can see is Riley Markham’s face smiling from underneath that baseball cap. The blue and white one with the number 82 stitched onto it. The one that’s nestled inside my wheelie bin, stained with blood. With what I can only assume is Riley’s blood.
It’s not often you pray that someone’s broken into your property, but I really hope that’s the case. I pray to whatever higher being there is that someone — Riley’s killer — was so desperate to make his escape that he jumped a few fences and ran through people’s gardens to get away, and that on the way he dumped Riley’s cap in our wheelie bin.
That should be the logical explanation. That should be the conclusion that I come to automatically, with nothing else even worth considering. But deep down I know it’s not true. I know from the expression on Chris’s face when I look at him, from the way he fidgets agitatedly in his sleep, from the ways in which he’s changed in recent times. I know something’s not right.
You don’t spend your entire life with someone without knowing deep down when something is wrong. History’s full of women who claim they had no idea their husband was the person he actually was. They’re in denial. Their brain was hiding all the signs from them, trying to protect them. It’s a coping mechanism. If you couldn’t handle the truth were it to come out, your brain won’t let you discover the truth. Everything that points towards it will somehow be stretched or distorted or spun into something else. Something which has far more innocent, far less dangerous implications.
I wonder how long my brain’s been doing that to me, and why it’s stopped now. Is this really the first time I’ve suspected something odd about Chris? The first time I’ve known he’s hiding a dark secret? I can’t say for sure, but if I dig down deep enough I suspect not.
My heart alm
ost bursts out of my chest as I think about Evie. Is he a danger to our daughter? How could I live with myself if I didn’t tell someone what I’d found and Evie ended up coming to some harm? If not Evie, another child. More children.
It could have been an accident. He might’ve been talking to Riley, or accidentally knocked him over. People do that, don’t they? You see it all the time on TV and in films. Someone accidentally dies and it looks as though the other person did it, so they have to hide it as if they were guilty. But they’re not.
Or it’s all some huge elaborate setup. Or it’s the killer who decided to choose our bin to dump the cap in, coincidence of coincidences. And why not? Most people in this village know each other. Even if he picked a bin at random, the killer would be hard pushed to find an owner who didn’t have at least some tenuous link to Riley Markham, I’m sure.
It’s all going round and round in my head, over and over again, and I know it’s logical to take the cap to the police. If it’s Chris, he’ll be dealt with. Our lives will be torn apart but justice will be done. Won’t it? What will happen to Evie? What if it wasn’t him? He’ll be arrested, certainly. And even if he’s innocent that’s sure to wreck his career as a teacher. Everyone in the village will know what happened and his name will never be completely cleared. There’ll always be the people who think something happened, who think he got away with it. And even those who know the truth will still associate his name with what happened. Things will never be the same again. Evie will never hear the last of it. She doesn’t need that sort of start in life.
And even if things could — somehow — be kept confidential, can we rely on the police to get to the truth? To do things properly? I’d love to think so, but I have one huge nagging doubt.
I don’t trust the police. I can’t. Not since what happened.
It’s been a long time since then, I tell myself. It was a different part of the world. A different culture. Different ways of doing things. Those sorts of things are far less likely to happen over here. Police corruption might have been big business here years ago, but it’s got to be better now. We’re always told it’s better. But that still doesn’t help my inherent distrust of anyone in a uniform.
We’re all affected by our past experiences, but I need to think clearly and logically about this. We have the best judicial system in the world over here. Miscarriages of justice are rare. Aren’t they?
13
Eight years earlier
The sun beats down on the back of our necks as we try to hug the shade. Anything after ten o’clock in the morning is unbearable in Oualidia at this time of year. The Moroccan coast has played host to a heatwave for the past three or four weeks, according to the locals. People joke that no-one comes home from their honeymoon with a tan as they’re too busy staying in their hotel room, and we may well have that problem for very different reasons. Air conditioning.
When we have dared to venture out we’ve been hopping from bar to bar, necking cool drinks and enjoying the fans blowing slightly less warm air across us.
Believe it or not, the temperature has dropped a little today — it’s only in the high thirties as opposed to the mid forties — so we decided we’d head to the market.
It’s a kaleidoscope of colour, with just about everything you could name for sale somewhere. From carpets and spices to building materials and electronic gadgets, it’s like a noisy, muddled up, slightly dirty outdoor department store. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.
This isn’t a browser’s market. You need to know where you’re going and what you’re buying, because if you slow down at any point to look at what’s on offer you get jostled from side to side by people pushing past you to get to where they’re going. It’s brash, it’s loud and it’s in your face. But I love it.
The heat within the market is stifling. It’s hot and humid, the combination of the late morning heat and the hundreds — if not thousands — of people who are crammed in here to pick up the week’s bargains.
After half an hour or so, it all gets too much and we decide to leave. We nip through a gap between two stalls and leave the cover of the market, panting as the outside temperature feels so much lower than it did in there. It must be pushing forty celsius out here, but it feels like a cool English autumn to us.
We look both ways and cross the road, and it’s only when we reach the other side that we hear the shouting. I turn to look at what’s going on, and it’s then that I feel the large hand on my shoulder.
The voice shouts at me in Arabic. I don’t understand a word, but I know it doesn’t sound good.
It takes me a moment to realise that the men who’ve stopped us are police officers. I’m confused. Is jaywalking illegal in Morocco?
They push us further away from the road and stand us up against a grey wall.
‘English?’ one of the officers, who I can now see has a rather impressive bushy moustache, asks Chris. Neither of them speak to me.
‘Yes,’ he replies. I can tell he’s shaken.
‘Open your lady’s bag,’ the same officer says to him.
Chris processes this for a moment, then does as he’s told. I hand him the drawstring bag I’ve had slung over my right shoulder since we headed out this morning. As soon as I bring the bag in front of me to hand it to Chris, I can see that the mouth of the bag is more open than I left it. I make sure I always pull the strings tight. Chris knows this, and a look flashes between us as he hands the bag over to the moustachioed officer.
The officer looks me up and down, sniffs through one nostril then pulls apart the jaws of the bag, plunging his arm inside and pulling out what looks like quite an expensive watch. If that’s come from the market it’ll be anything but expensive, but the forgeries are getting better and better these days.
‘What is this?’ he asks me, dangling the watch in front of my face. I can almost smell it.
‘I don’t know. I didn’t put it there,’ I say.
I catch Chris’s eye, and he knows in an instant that I’m telling the truth. We both have a very uneasy feeling about this.
‘You lie,’ the officer says. ‘Turn around.’
The next thing I know, we’re up against the wall, our hands are in handcuffs and we’re being led towards a police van.
* * *
We spent the next two hours sitting in stuffy, stinking, dusty cells without any food or water. There were many points where I thought I was going to pass out. Eventually, someone opens my cell door and indicates for me to stand and follow him.
He leads me through to what I can only assume is an interview room. Chris is already seated in there when I arrive.
We sit in silence for a few moments, before the moustachioed officer enters the room and sits opposite us.
‘You are aware that theft is a very serious crime in Morocco?’
I say nothing, but Chris nods. I’m fairly sure we should have access to a solicitor. We would in England. Surely it’s the same here?
‘How did you find our cells?’ the officer asks me.
I don’t know how to answer this. ‘Not very nice,’ I say, eventually.
‘You do not want to spend next ten years in one, no?’
‘No. No I don’t.’
He sniffs through one nostril again, then leans forward, his hands clasped together on the table.
‘But this is what I must do when people commit theft. This is my job.’
‘I didn’t st—’
Chris places a hand on my knee to stop me talking. I immediately get the impression he was in here for some time before me. These two have already spoken before.
‘Fortunately, there are certain... arrangements... that we can come to. You are very sorry for what you did, yes?’
Chris taps me on the knee.
I blink a few times. ‘Yes. Yes, I’m very sorry.’
The officer nods and strokes his moustache. ‘Good. Good. And you would like to be released now, yes? You would like to continue your holiday?’<
br />
I nod. ‘Yes. I would.’
‘Sometimes these incidents can be bad for diplomatic relations,’ he says. I get the feeling he’s said this many times before. ‘If you have money, I can release you.’
I look at him. He’s asking for a bribe.
‘Processing fee,’ he says, smiling, as he catches the look that crosses my face.
I swallow. ‘How much?’
‘Five thousand Dirham.’
I almost choke. That’s around four hundred pounds.
‘We don’t have that much on us,’ I say. Our hotel is all-inclusive, so we only brought enough cash for the odd visit to the market or visits to some of the bars in town.
‘How much?’ he asks.
I look at Chris. Chris doesn’t look back at me. Instead, he answers. ‘Just under two thousand.’
The officer seems to consider this for a moment. Then, silently, he curls his lower lip and nods, his eyes closed. He puts his hand out and rubs his thumb against his fingertips.
Chris takes the cash out of his pocket and places it on the table. The officer picks it up and counts it out.
‘One thousand, nine hundred forty Dirham.’
‘Yes. It’s all we have,’ Chris says.
‘But price is five thousand Dirham.’
‘It’s all we have.’
‘We still need three thousand sixty Dirham.’
‘We don’t have it. This is everything we have.’
‘Perhaps for three thousand, your wife...’ He makes a hand and mouth signal to symbolise oral sex, then gives us his biggest, dirtiest grin.
Chris and I sit silent and shocked for a moment.