by Clare Empson
‘But where would she go? Do you have any idea?’
‘I think I do. It’s a gamble and I could be wrong …’
He hesitates for a second or two, and Hannah cries, ‘Tell us, Rick. Please.’
‘I think she’s gone to Southwold.’
‘Southwold!’ Hannah and I speak at the same time.
‘That’s miles away. Why on earth would she go there?’
And it’s the strangest thing, because Rick is looking at my mother and not us, and she is staring back at him with an expression I cannot read. As if they know something that we don’t.
‘Cards on the table time, I think, don’t you, Christina?’ Rick says, and my mother nods. ‘You see, Alice did this once before. Only that time the baby she stole was you.’
Then
Alice
We do all the things we normally do, Charlie and I. We walk down to the pier, stopping off at the hall of mirrors for our daily cheap laughs, extreme thinness, fatness, shortness our shared, fail-safe joke. I take some scraps of bread to feed the seagulls, a new fetish; the birds swoop down right next to the pushchair and Charlie whoops and catcalls his excitement.
On the way home, we stop off at the phone box on the high street and I park the pram outside it. I call Directory Enquiries and scribble down the number they give me and dial again before I can change my mind. When I give my name, it’s obvious that the girl on the other end of the line knows exactly who I am. She sounds intrigued, excited; she begs me to wait while she fetches Mrs Taylor Murphy.
‘Alice, hello.’
There’s a pause now where I am unable to speak, and after a while she fills the gap.
‘You’ve been so brave,’ she says. ‘To try and manage by yourself. You must love your baby very much.’
The deal is struck. Tomorrow at eleven o’clock. No one else. No parents, just her and Charlie and me.
‘We’ll meet on the beach,’ I tell her, because we have been at our happiest there, me, Charlie, Jake.
When we get back to the cottage, Rick is finishing a sketch of Charlie, asleep in his cot with one fist curled beneath his cheek.
‘What do you think?’ he asks. ‘I’m thinking love-struck new parents with dosh to spare. Reckon I could get some commissions?’
He sees my face.
‘What? Alice?’
My voice is wooden as I reveal the facts. I can tell it no other way.
‘The woman from the adoption agency is coming to collect Charlie tomorrow. Eleven o’clock.’
‘No!’
He hurls himself from his chair to the ground, face down on the carpet in a fit of melodrama. It’s real, though; his pain is exactly the same as my pain.
‘He’s mine too, you always say so.’
‘You gave me these months with him, Rick, and I’ll always have that. One day he will come and find us. And when he does, he’ll belong to you just as much as me.’
Rick sits back on his knees but doesn’t look at me.
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure. You need to go back to the Slade and have the career you were meant to have. And Charlie needs stability, security, the things we can’t give him. This house could be sold at any minute, and then where would we live? Your squat? I don’t want that life for him.’
‘How will we bear it?’
‘We’ll take it minute by minute, as we have done all along.’
I don’t sleep much, curled around my baby for the last time, whispering to him in the darkness.
‘You will have a big garden to play in and a pony to ride and a brand-new bicycle. You will be loved and happy. And I will wait for you.’
In the morning I feel strangely calm, waking to the sound of the gulls outside our window. While Charlie sleeps on – he has turned into the world’s best sleeper – I pack up his clothes and nappies and bottles, keeping back a few of my favourite things. The little orange shorts, a yellow and brown striped top, his dungarees.
When it’s time to go, I hand him to Rick and tell him I’ll be waiting for him outside the cottage. I’m not going to stand around and witness his private farewell. I’ve already said mine throughout most of the night, holding Charlie’s tiny fist in my hand. Goodbye, my love. Goodbye.
Walking down to the beach, baby in one arm, plastic carrier full of clothes in the other, I think I will make a funny face so that Charlie laughs one more time, but it’s too difficult, my facial muscles will not obey. And perhaps it’s true what Mrs Taylor Murphy said, because this contented, happy child of mine is solemn and unsmiling, as if my sorrow has somehow transferred itself to him.
She is there waiting for us, wearing a flowered dress with flat shoes – I did wonder about those heels on the beach – and she waves, though she seems rather sombre too.
I hand over the plastic bag of clothes. ‘These are his things.’
And then I remember. His bear is still sitting on the kitchen table.
‘I’ve forgotten his bear. He can’t be without it.’ My voice is frantic, my eyes have blurred over with tears.
Mrs Taylor Murphy puts her hand on my shoulder.
‘I promise I’ll buy him one exactly the same. I think you’re going to need it more than him.’ She looks at me. ‘You’ll want some time to say goodbye,’ she says, and I shake my head because I can’t speak, I can’t see, and if we delay by even one second, I won’t be able to do it.
I pass Charlie over and he tries to cling to me, grabbing at a strand of my hair.
‘I know you’ll see him again, Alice,’ Mrs Taylor Murphy says as Charlie starts to cry. She places a hand over her heart. ‘I can feel it.’
I watch them walking away, the flowered dress getting smaller and smaller, the plastic bag just a white dot in her hands. And above the shriek of gulls I listen to my baby, programmed so acutely to hear him as he cries all the way along the beach.
Now
Luke
The guilt at giving up a child is ravaging and inescapable and a birth mother will normally react in one of two ways. She will become deadened inside, closing off her grief in order to carry on. Or she will become utterly tormented by it.
Who Am I? The Adoptee’s Hidden Trauma by Joel Harris
The drive to Southwold takes less than three hours, powered by Rick’s silver Alfa Romeo and maniacal driving.
He tells me about his and Alice’s flight from the hospital, in an old Morris Minor with red leather seats.
‘You and Alice slept in the back seat the whole way, and you woke up just as we arrived at the beach for sunrise. In spite of all the heartbreak, it felt like a new beginning. Like we’d been given a second chance.’
I learn on this journey how Rick was, to all intents, my father for a short while; Rick, Alice and me, a team of three.
‘You and I spent a lot of time together in the first few weeks. I wanted Alice to have the space to grieve and so I’d take you out wrapped up in a shawl and tied to my chest. We’d walk for hours along the beach and over the marshes, and when we got back, Alice’s face would be red from crying, but she always made a point of smiling for you. She never cried in front of you; she said she wanted you to only know love and happiness. I’m not sure how she managed it.’
‘Poor Alice.’
‘She never got over it. A love like theirs is a rare thing. They weren’t just lovers, they were connected on a much deeper level. For one thing they’d both survived abusive childhoods and they held each other up. Together they were strong, but without Jake, Alice couldn’t function. I asked her to marry me once; I thought it was the solution after he died. But she wouldn’t have it. She’s never loved anyone except Jake. I don’t think she ever will.’
‘Did you have to give me up?’
I see the way Rick tightens his grip on the steering wheel. I understand that the question hurts him
in the same way it hurts me.
‘Perhaps not. Perhaps we could have found a way through. It was a decision that wrecked her life. Even more than losing Jake, I think. She closed off, lost her character, became someone else. I kept thinking she’d recover, but she never did.’
We are silent for a long time after this.
Hannah and my mother are at home waiting for the police, all of us clinging to Rick’s conviction that there is only one place Alice would go. I didn’t want to leave Hannah, but nor could I sit around waiting. It is a relief to be in this car, driving at ferocious speed, believing, or at least trying to, that every mile covered brings me closer to my son.
It’s Rick who speaks first.
‘You look just like Jake, same voice, mannerisms, everything. It’s almost unbearable at times, even for me.’
‘You think I remind Alice of him?’
‘I know you do. She told me she cried herself to sleep the day you first met. So happy to find you, so devastated all over again that she’d lost him.’
‘Why did she get so obsessed with Samuel?’
‘Because he’s exactly like you. It was hard for me too, seeing Samuel the first time, don’t you remember? It was like we’d got our baby back. Alice hasn’t been very well these past years – that’s obvious, isn’t it? And I think she used to disappear into a fantasy world when she was looking after Samuel. In her mind, she allowed Samuel to become you, the baby she’d lost. She didn’t mean any harm. It was the escape of a rather sad and heartbroken woman. But she went rapidly downhill when you stopped her seeing him. She was talking about Southwold all the time, the months we had there, the things we used to do, and I just wish I’d realised where it was all heading. She was fixated on saying goodbye to the baby.’
‘And did she call him Samuel?’
Rick turns his head to look at me for a second.
‘Nope.’
‘I could see it happening, but no one believed me. I started following Alice around the park most days, and I know how that sounds. But I knew something was wrong, something I couldn’t put my finger on.’
‘Her mental health has been fragile for a long time. The reunion with you, something she’d longed for, tipped her over the edge. It was as if Jake was back in her life again and she’s missed him so much. Only, of course, he wasn’t. Obsessing over Samuel was easier than dealing with all that pain again.’
‘I wish we’d had this conversation before it was too late.’
‘It isn’t too late. We’re having it now.’
‘You don’t think …’ I break off. Fear has vacuumed up the words that cannot be spoken. But Rick needs no explanation.
‘She loves him. She wouldn’t hurt a hair on his head.’
We have arrived in Southwold now, in good time; there’s still plenty of daylight left, there’s still heat in the sun. I’ve never been here before, don’t know what to expect, am slightly amazed by the chichi-ness of it, although I don’t know why. Architecture in colour-coordinated pastels with Farrow & Balled doors. Delicatessens and second-hand bookshops and hip-looking cafés that probably specialise in chai and almond-milk lattes.
‘Notting Hill on Sea,’ I say.
‘Not in our day. Back then it was deeply unfashionable and all the better for it. Fish and chips on the pier, candy floss, an arcade with slot machines. There was one machine you loved; it used to have a moving shelf of pennies – you know the kind? – and when the pennies tipped over the edge, you laughed your head off.’ There’s a wistfulness in his voice, and it makes me sad to think of Rick and Alice, those two young art students with their baby.
‘Rick?’
He turns around from the steering wheel, tears in his eyes as I expected.
‘Maybe everything can be all right between us.’
‘It can, Luke. I know it can.’
He is turning down a side street, and now the sea is ahead of us, a silver skin dissected by a cloudless sky. We pull into a little car park in the showstopper car, the beach in front of it lined with a row of candy-coloured huts: pink, yellow, blue and green. My heart is surging with hope and fear.
‘This is our beach. The first time we came here, Alice and Jake and Tom and me, we drove through the night and arrived at sunrise. We made that same trip the night we ran away with you. This beach means so much to her; it’s the last place she was with you before she gave you away.’
A thought strikes me.
‘Can I go alone?’
Rick looks at me. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I think it’s important. Just me and him and her. I want to get it right.’
He nods. ‘Understood. I’ll wait here.’
I get out of the car and walk towards the beach, past a family making their way back to a bright-orange camper van with faded gingham curtains in its windows. The kind of van, I’d like to think, that Alice and Jake might have had back in the day. A mother, a father and two small girls, wet hair plastered to their heads, bodies shrouded in towelling robes. One of the girls is carrying a shabby-looking panda, and it’s like an electric shock to the heart. I need to find Samuel; I need to find him right now.
There’s a sloping cement path down to the beach, and I find myself running down it, scanning the space between the breakers: late-afternoon picnickers, dog-walkers and a young couple hand in hand, but no woman and child, not that I can see. My despair is instant, fierce, vengeful. Bloody Rick for leading me on this wild goose chase, I think as I scan the beach again, more slowly this time. He seemed so sure they would be here. And I believed him.
A red flag is flying down by the shoreline, and two policemen stand close to it, looking out to sea. I know what they are waiting to tell me. No Alice, no Samuel.
There is a fizzing in my veins, a tightening, a blurriness that warns me to stop and take my time. Breathing in the smell of salt and seaweed, familiar and intoxicating, but not today; hold, count, exhale all the way out. I repeat this several times until my vision sharpens and my heart begins to slow.
I won’t cry, I tell myself, gripping my hands together in a tight clasp, trying to stay strong. They could be on the pier; in the arcade, playing with one of the penny machines that used to make me laugh. In a moment I’ll go back to the car and get Rick and he’ll know where to look. We’ll exhaust every nook and cranny in this postcard-pretty town.
I take out my phone and read a text from Hannah.
No news here. Call me as soon as you get to Southwold.
I consider phoning just to hear her voice, but I want to extend her hope for as long as possible, and for the same reason I stand still, allowing myself whole minutes of procrastination before I approach the policemen.
‘Excuse me?’
The pair turn to look at me in surprise.
‘I’m Luke. The father of the missing boy.’
‘A missing child?’
They look at each other. The taller one, prematurely balding but around my age, shrugs.
‘We haven’t been told anything about that.’
‘Are you sure? He disappeared in London a few hours ago, but we think he might be here in Southwold. The police are involved.’
The bald one shakes his head. ‘There’s been an accident on the beach this afternoon, that’s why we’re here. See the red flag?’
He nods at the shoreline, and for the first time I take in the violent foaming waves.
‘A drowning. Happened about an hour ago. A woman and her baby got caught in a rip tide and carried out to sea. Absolutely tragic. Sir? Are you all right? Sir?’
When the world ends, as you know it, you will find that all the clichés are true. Your head will swim, words that are uncontainable darting before your eyes like little black dots. Your knees will buckle, you will collapse onto the sand clutching your heart, while above your head seagulls wheel and screech their sombre s
ong.
Epilogue
The pilgrimage to Southwold at the end of August marks also the end of the school holidays. We don’t observe the actual day but the closest Saturday, and we always stay the night at the Swan Hotel, which the children adore. We book the family room, year on year, and the staff know why we come.
Rick comes too, driving down in his pillar-box-red Ferrari, bought, we suspect, for the sole reason that our son was in love with it.
We mark Alice’s drowning not with sorrow, not any more, but with flowers and music and a picnic, even when it rains like today. We sit on a rug, holding umbrellas over our egg sandwiches and toasting the children’s grandparents with Coca-Cola and champagne.
We douse ourselves in cologne – Acqua di Parma in its bottle of vivid blue – and Rick tells us that smell is the sense most closely connected to memory. We all inhale, and this particular fragrance is delicious and achingly familiar to me now: lemons and cedar and woodland. The scent of Alice and Jake.
Rick cues up Apparition on his iPod with his fancy new Bluetooth speakers, and when ‘Cassiopeia’ comes on, he tells us about a night of stargazing on this same beach long ago.
‘Alice and Jake were so happy that night. It was the first time she had told Jake she loved him. And we lay on our backs looking at the sky while Jake pointed out all the different stars. Did you know that Cassiopeia was a queen who thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world?’
Rick talks about Jake, everything he can remember, he brings out new details each time like a gift. Sometimes it’s the food Jake cooked, spaghetti vongole, which he pronounces with a wildly exaggerated accent to make the children laugh. Or it might be about the songs he wrote. But mostly he tells the love story of Jake and Alice.