The Boy That Never Was

by Karen Perry

  I caught the urgency and high note of fear in her voice, and, seized by a new panic, I stared hard at the house, at the door that was ajar, at the shadows that moved there, shapes coming out of the darkness, announcing themselves as figures. Spencer was inside now, kneeling by the door. All that was visible of him was his hunched form, the soles of his shoes. He turned then, and I saw his face as a streak of fear.

  ‘Call an ambulance!’ he cried out, before twisting away from us.

  ‘Oh God!’ Eva cried. ‘Oh my God!’

  She fumbled for her phone and began punching in digits and I heard the shrill panic in her voice, and I knew all about that panic, that innate fear realized, yet still I didn’t give voice to it.

  In my head, I was willing him to stand up, willing the door to swing back and reveal my husband to me, standing, unharmed, safe. Someone was lying on the floor – I couldn’t see who – and a voice inside me repeated over and over with the pleading insistence of a prayer, Let it not be Harry. Let it not be him.

  How long did I wait there? How long did I kneel in the snow, straining with hope and fear? My whole life stilled and condensed and sharpened down to that one moment in time, that one fervent desire.

  And then the door opened a little more and a face announced itself from within the gloom, and I saw Garrick standing there, his face drawn, his hand to his mouth, bewildered, uncertain. I saw him, and the knowledge hit me with full force.

  My heart clenched, and I opened my mouth wide and felt the screams coming out of me and filling the air, echoing off every tree and wall and icy surface in that cold, wintry space and coming back at me redoubled.

  ‘C’est fini?’

  I look up at the waiter pointing to my empty cup, his voice shattering my reverie and claiming my attention, drawing me mercifully back to the present.

  ‘Oui,’ I say, then order another.

  He casts his eyes briefly over me. I feel that he is looking at me properly for the first time and try to rearrange my features accordingly, smoothing them out to a flat expression, bringing them back from the shadowy depths of the past.

  The people at the next table are lively, their voices raised, a farewell of some kind or other. A sudden crash and the shattering of glass as a waiter in the next café drops his tray, and all along the strip, the other waiters pause to cheer and applaud the mishap, drawing indulgent smiles from the tourists. My eyes follow them, flickering with interest, picking out the many faces among them in an involuntary sweep of the crowd.

  The world is a different place for me now. I see it with fresh eyes. Danger lurks in familiar places. Harry is gone, killed instantly by a bullet that penetrated his heart. An accident, or so Garrick’s lawyers are pleading. The gun went off as the two men tussled for control of it. I try to imagine that moment: the charged atmosphere in that house, the two of them grappling, the sudden violence of the gun going off and the shock it must have caused. When I picture it, I see Harry’s eyes flying open, a look of naked surprise there before the pain clouds his face and his body folds in around the sharp, burning point of it. Luck was not on Harry’s side that day. There is a painful irony to his fate. It might have been either of them.

  The child I had lost has been returned to me, changed, damaged, the bond between us broken. Every day is a battle to win his trust. The suspicion in his eyes that greets me causes my heart to clench with pain. And there is a new child – a girl – a living reminder of her father, with his dark hair and his wide, round eyes, solemn and appraising. She clings to me and I to her. She is my greatest comfort in all of this.

  The baby was born in July, and it was a few weeks later, on a warm September afternoon, that I made my decision. We were sitting together, my mother and I, in the kitchen of my parents’ house, looking out at the garden dappled in golden sunlight. My father was hunkered down beside the flower beds, pulling weeds and deadheading sweet peas. Dillon attended him, watching with a grave expression, dutifully handing over tools when they were called for. I studied the tension in his narrow shoulders, his quiet obedience, and felt vaguely unsettled. He had none of the mischief or vigour that a young boy should have. His stillness and compliance – the good boy that he was – worried me greatly. My head was swimming with exhaustion; every limb felt sodden and swamped, as if I were submerged in water, fully clothed, my soaked garments weighing me down. All I wanted was to let go of these thoughts and fears and constant anxieties and just sleep for more than three hours together. But I was also afraid of what might happen were I to let my guard down. My grief had not hit me yet, and I feared that a lowering of my defences would merely provide it with an opportunity to creep in and engulf me.

  ‘What about Hazel?’ my mother said, snagging my attention.

  The baby was asleep in her arms, swaddled in a blanket, my mother’s eyes locked on her little face.

  ‘Hazel?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve always thought it a lovely name.’

  ‘I don’t think she’s a Hazel.’

  ‘Alannah then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you have to call her something,’ my mother said after a moment, a note of impatience creeping into her voice. ‘We can’t go on calling her “baby”. She’s almost two months old.’

  I felt her voice like a tiny hammer pinging against the roof of my skull and turned back to gaze out the window.

  She was right, of course. I would have to give the child a name. But since I had lost Harry, I had become unmoored. My pregnancy had been a blur of confusion, the birth an episode of pain and distress and sudden joy arising from my grief. Since then, I had been drifting through the days and weeks. Things happened around me, but I found it difficult to focus my attention, to lock down hard on any one thing. A form of running away, I suppose, by refusing to confront what was there. But it was the only way I could cope with everything that had happened. Sometimes, a hazy oblivion seemed like a form of solace. I felt the weight of responsibilities tugging at me, but making a decision, one as important as the name my daughter would bear for the rest of her life, seemed beyond me.

  Outside, my father was holding his cupped hand out to Dillon, and the boy peered down into it, his neck straining with curiosity. It must have been a worm, or an insect of some kind, for suddenly my father brought his hand close to Dillon’s face, which sent the boy reeling backwards, and then they both started laughing, and it was so surprising to see my son happy, so rare and unexpected, that my eyes filled with tears, and I had to look away.

  There was a hand on mine then, and I looked down at my mother’s fingers, diamonds sparkling above her wedding ring.

  ‘He’ll be all right,’ she said softly, and I felt the emotion break within me, and the tears fell freely, and my voice, when I spoke, came out liquid and choked.

  ‘He’s so broken,’ I said.

  ‘He’s safe now. That’s all that matters.’

  ‘He won’t talk to me. He can hardly even bring himself to look at me.’

  ‘It will take time, Robin, but he will come back to you. He’s your son.’

  I shook my head and drew my hand away, pressing my fingertips against my eyelids.

  ‘I feel like he blames me – for everything. For letting him be taken from me in the first place. And then, once he had forgotten me, once he had formed new bonds, I came along and broke those bonds, and he blames me for that, too.’

  My mother drew in her breath, and I opened my eyes and saw the worry lines creasing her forehead, her lower lip sucked in in that anxious way of hers.

  ‘Remember what the counsellor said: it will take time – who knows how much time. Months, even years. But children are resilient. And he is tougher than he looks. Just like his mother.’

  ‘I’m not tough. I’m barely hanging on, Mum.’

  ‘Oh, Robin. My poor pet.’

  She squeezed my hand again, and there was love and fear in that reassuring gesture, and I felt like a child again, a thirty-five-year-old child returned home and needing to
be cared for and nourished, protected and guided all over again, and with this thought came a rising impatience with myself. I needed to do something. I needed to regain my life.

  After Harry died, I’d been unable to go back to the house. I couldn’t face returning to the home we had shared and all the memories it contained, both good and bad. I’d had Dillon with me by then, and I couldn’t cope with him alone, his rejection of me, his unassailable anger and resentment towards me. I’d needed help. It was my father who’d suggested that we move back in with them.

  ‘Just until the baby arrives,’ he had said, ‘and you get back on your feet again.’

  At the time, it had felt like a defeat of sorts, but then I’d felt defeated at so many levels that one more hardly made a difference. I’d told myself it would be best for Dillon, and that truth had been borne out as I’d watched him drawing close to my mother and father, accepting hugs from them, slowly opening up to them, a little voice emerging unsteadily from his mouth as they eased him into a routine. But with me he’d remained silent. Cold and distant. Resentment emanated from him in waves, and it amazed me, the patience with which he kept it going. Months had passed, and still there was no sign of any softening towards me. I’d thought that once the baby arrived, things might change, but while he showed an interest in his little sister, it never extended beyond her to me.

  The feeling had been growing within me for some time that we needed to get away. There were too many memories here. I was dogged by nostalgia – and by gossip. The press had got hold of the story and had a field day with it. And while things had died down, I knew it would all start up again once the trial began. I felt too old to be living in my parents’ house. Were I to have any chance of rebuilding my relationship with my son, it would have to be done somewhere far away, without any help from my parents or anyone else. This was something I needed to do alone. I had the sense that were we to be thrown together in isolation, he would have no choice but to learn to trust me again.

  Sitting there with my mother, staring out at the garden in the last flush of summer, I had a thought. It was unbidden and surprising, and yet, in that moment, it felt completely right. It felt like a gift. Tangier. The place of Dillon’s birth. But more than that, it was the one place where Harry had felt truly alive. The one place he had called home. I’d realized, in the weeks after I’d lost him, that he had never really settled in Dublin. The house had not been home to him, a place of refuge, a harbour. Instead, it had been a shell, lacking a centre. A hollow space within which we had rattled around, circling each other, a cold cavern within which our suspicions of each other had been nurtured and allowed to grow.

  Tangier was where he had left his heart. It was as if he had exacted an unspoken promise from me in the longing of his gaze that last time I’d looked upon him. To go back there. To bring the boy home.

  Resolve formed within me, and I felt it strengthen and harden, and for the first time in all those long months, a feeling of excitement caught tightly in my chest. It glowed inside, and I looked up to tell my mother, but then decided against it. She was not ready for that. She would not understand my need to go, and I hadn’t the strength yet to persuade her of it. Instead I looked at her gently cradling her granddaughter in her arms.

  ‘Martha,’ I said softly. ‘That’s her name.’

  My mother’s eyes clouded, and she offered me a watery smile before looking down at the sleeping child.

  ‘Martha,’ she said gently, trying it out.

  Then she brought her face down to the baby and pressed her lips against Martha’s head.

  She had not understood, but she had let us go. And since I’ve arrived back in this old familiar town, with my two small children and my broken heart, I have spoken to my mother often. I know she thinks that this is just a passing phase, that I will return home once the seasons change. I haven’t the heart to tell her otherwise. Tomorrow, my brother and his girlfriend will leave, and there is an attendant fear about striking out on my own. I acknowledge the fear and then try to put it aside, sipping my coffee and watching the leaves of the giant palms flutter and sway in the warm evening breeze.

  A trial date has been set. Eight months from now, I will sit in a courtroom and listen as the drama of my life and Harry’s death is played out for the gallery. Garrick, I am told, has hired a specialist legal team. He has dipped into his family’s wealth, which, as it turns out, is considerable – the Garricks are brewing multimillionaires, and their sphere of influence is broad – and he is employing the very best lawyers to explore and exploit all legal loopholes to ensure that he and his wife escape justice. So far, he has been successful. In Ireland, he was awarded bail. I neither know nor care where he is living. Here in Morocco, there seems to be no appetite to dredge up the horrors of that night, to open the old wounds of many who lived through that earthquake, not to mention the legal and political hoops that would have to be gone through in order to extradite Garrick and Eva. I am not sure I have the energy for that fight. Everything I have is taken up with survival, with reconnecting with the boy I lost and getting to know this new little girl I have been blessed with.

  Certain things will have to happen now. For one thing, I will have to put my house in Dublin on the market. My father will baulk at it not achieving its true value. Still, I need the money. And I have come to believe that it is the best thing for me and Dillon and Martha. I hope my parents will understand that.

  The other thing I will have to tell them is that there is to be a posthumous exhibition of Harry’s work in Dublin in a couple of months. It was Diane’s idea, and I must admit that I was surprised when she contacted me about it. I was sceptical at first; it seemed too soon for such a gesture, and I worried whether it might also be too maudlin for Harry’s tastes. Would his spirit rile and protest at being remembered by a roomful of stiffs in suits and stuffy art bores clutching glasses of cheap wine, and others present merely out of a prurient curiosity, drawn by the whiff of scandal that attached itself to his name after death? I don’t know. Still, the decision has been made.

  My phone rings. It is Mark, telling me that the children are tired so he and Suki are taking them home. I tell him that I will join them, but he urges me to relax. There is no rush.

  I finish my coffee and pay my bill and walk away from the square. The peasant women in their striped robes and wide-brimmed hats have gone, taking their wares with them, replaced now by merchants setting up their stalls for the night market. I wander past, ignoring any calls to peruse and purchase, keeping my eyes fixed on a point in the distance, feeling the night air sweeping in off the Strait of Gibraltar. I wear my solitude lightly here, sensing, with a degree of pleasure, the anonymity it brings.

  Close by, in the warren of streets that huddle and spread over this part of the medina, is the place where Garrick had lived – the place we used to go to together. I have a fleeting recollection of lying next to him, staring up at the lazy revolutions of a ceiling fan. Immediately, I put that thought away.

  Instead, I think of Harry, of his conviction in those last days of his life and how he discovered the truth purely by chance and through his own dogged determination and unshakeable belief that Dillon was still alive. I try to imagine how it was for him that day on a street in Dublin when he set eyes on a boy and felt the frightening jolt of recognition. It had seemed to me a fantasy, that he was merely imagining the boy to life by virtue of the fact that his mind could not bridge the gaping chasm of loss. And I remember how I had doubted him, how my doubt had been the very worst kind of betrayal, and when I remember it, I feel the shame rise through me and I need to concentrate very hard on the ground in front of me to prevent my emotions from claiming me.

  I am aware, too, that my grieving has not started yet – not properly. It lies in wait around a corner, lurking in the shadows, ready to jump out and catch me unawares. I cannot yet conceive of a world without Harry in it. For now, when I think of him, what I feel most is gratitude. All-encompassing and overwhelming
gratitude. For his stubborn belief, his refusal to be swayed from the crazy notion that our boy had been stolen when everything pointed so clearly to his death. Had he not held on to that belief, had he not trusted his instincts and pursued them against all the odds, then … No. It does not bear thinking about.

  Sometimes, in the nights I have spent here, I’ve dreamed that Harry is with me, and that we are lying alongside each other in a companionable silence. When I wake, it is a renewed shock to see the empty space on the pillow next to me, and in those moments, the longing I feel is achingly physical, and I want to draw the covers up over my head and surrender to it all. But then I hear Martha crying in her cot and I force myself to swing my legs out of bed and press my feet into my sandals.

  On the Rue es Siaghin I get caught behind a group of tourists milling about outside the Spanish Cathedral. For a moment they stand looking around themselves, consulting maps and trying to find their bearings, and the cries from the street sellers rise in pitch. The place, all at once, is too crowded, too loud and oppressive. Time to go home.

  The sky above the medina is streaked with bands of gold. Gulls wheel and swoop, their echoing cries carried aloft.

  I turn to go, and it is in the motion of turning that I feel it – the sense that someone is watching me, a sensation like a feather passing over the skin at the nape of my neck, goose-bumps crawling over the space between my shoulders. I stop, my eyes scouring the crowd. And then I see him. Tall, rangy, his intense gaze fixed on me. That face so familiar and yet impossible. Disbelief plunges to the very depths of my stomach. Impossible. It cannot be.

  He turns away quickly, pushing hurriedly through the crowd.

  I need to go after him, but I am paralysed.

  I need to shout out his name, but it catches in my throat.

  Emotion bubbles and roils within me, filling my inner spaces, drowning out sense and reason.

  ‘Harry!’ I call out, my voice a hoarse shout of fear.

  He turns a corner without looking back.