The facility is quiet, its halls empty when she arrives. Glancing up at the red lights of the cameras she knows she is being recorded, that they will have a video of her arrival. In the room beside Eve’s the night nurse sits with her back to the glass, the screen in front of her glowing in the dark. She does not look around as Kate slips past.
As she enters the nursery she knows she cannot stop, that if she lets herself falter she will lose the certainty she needs to do this thing. She picks up a bag, begins to pile in wipes, nappies, bottles, formula and all the other paraphernalia. Then, shouldering the bag, she turns to the crib.
Eve is asleep, swaddled in her blankets, her mouth half-open. Reaching down, Kate strokes her hair, aware that if she does this, there is no turning back. Somewhere nearby a door closes, and Eve murmurs, shifting in her sleep. Without looking around Kate reaches down and lifts her up, cradling her sleeping form to her chest.
Although it is late she is braced to encounter one of the guards or assistants in the hall, but as the lift doors open on the lobby she sees the entry hall is empty. For a moment she wonders whether she had been hoping somebody would be here to stop her, to divert her from her path, but instead she walks out, into the waiting darkness, and on, towards the car.
Foundling
In the mornings Kate wakes early, surfacing into unwelcome consciousness. The first glimmers of light leaking around the blanket she has suspended against the window to keep the sun out, Eve still snoring softly beside her. In the pre-dawn light her memory of Eve’s four a.m. feed suspended somewhere in the netherspace of dream.
At first she could not understand what it is that rouses her at this hour: save for the occasional car passing on the road below and the first cries of the birds outside the room is quiet, peaceful. But in the three months since they left the facility she has realised it is not the sound from without that wakes her but an almost indiscernible change in the pattern of Eve’s breathing, some subtle shift in its register as she transitions towards consciousness.
For those first few minutes Kate always lies unmoving, listening to the soft rise and fall of Eve’s breath and wishing this moment might stretch on, that she might sink back into sleep. But even though her tiredness is immense, geological, she knows she will not.
It is remarkable to Kate that she should have become so attuned to Eve’s presence, that the rhythms of their bodies should have meshed so completely, so unthinkingly. When Eve stirs in the night Kate wakes; when Eve laughs Kate feels the dopamine rush of love. She is even immediately alert to the timbre of Eve’s wordless utterances, cries of anger or frustration setting her on edge, wails of distress cutting through her like a knife, murmurs of hunger making her body ache with the need to sate Eve’s appetite.
Often this pre-dawn sense of dislocation remains through the day and into the evening, heightened by the way the light lingers long after she feels it should have faded and passed. Even after four summers on this island she still finds the length of these southern summer days dislocating, a reminder she is near the edge of the world. Some nights, after Eve is finally asleep, she goes outside and stands in the small space of grass that passes for a lawn in front of the house. Alone in the near-dark she drinks in the smell of the leaves and the grass and the dust and gazes out at the hills to the west, still blue beneath the fading sky. This summer the heat arrived weeks early, and has worn on longer than ever, a blanket of hot air that will not shift; sometimes she smells smoke, glimpses the plumes of fires in the distance. On the hottest days Kate has taken to bathing Eve in cool water to keep her comfortable.
Mostly, though, what she feels is alone. Since they arrived here her contact with the people in the town nearby has been minimal, confined to brief exchanges with the older man who works in the petrol station or the two teenage girls in the small supermarket on the main street, whose harried lack of interest in her and Eve she has come to value.
The reasons for this isolation are simple and immutable. Although it is incredibly unlikely anybody not associated with the project would guess the truth about Eve, Kate knows she cannot risk drawing attention to the two of them. There are questions she cannot answer, and, more frighteningly, people searching for them. Already the world, this new world she and Eve inhabit, delivers blows: although she keeps Eve hidden behind a shawl in her pram when they are outside the house, on those occasions strangers do glimpse her they tend to glance around, ready to smile, then freeze or look away, suddenly reluctant to make eye contact with Kate. Yet even despite this there are moments when Kate has to fight her urge to show Eve off or extol her achievements, the impulse surprising her every time it happens. Only a week ago, in the supermarket, a woman who noticed Kate adjusting the shawl stopped and asked how old Eve was. ‘Six months,’ Kate said before she could catch herself. The woman glanced up in surprise, then took a step back, as she murmured Eve was big for her age.
And so Kate’s delight in Eve is something she has come to think of as essentially private, contained within their circle of two. Perhaps all children are wondrous, their development astonishing, but for Kate, Eve is doubly so. In the first weeks at the facility there had been some concern that she was reluctant to interact and slow to smile – so slow, in fact, that were it not for her physical strength and capacity to hold her head up they might have thought her delayed – but over the past three months she has hit her other milestones as soon or sooner than a sapient infant would have.
Kate has found this reassuring but is becoming less comfortable with the desire to compare. Even the terminology makes her uneasy. To speak of Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis is clumsy, yet still preferable to depending on the term ‘human’, and its implication that Eve is not. Better again is the distinction she has taken to drawing between sapient and Neanderthal, though even this makes her uncomfortable.
Yet no matter what words she uses there is no question, the differences are considerable. Although at birth Eve was no larger than a sapient infant, her musculature was already surprisingly defined, especially around the neck and shoulders, and as she has grown she has developed faster than a sapient child, learning to sit by four months and crawling by five. Despite Eve’s obvious intelligence, it is difficult for Kate to escape the feeling that she is also different in other ways from a sapient child: not withdrawn exactly, but warier, less attuned to social contact. Kate was in the lab the first time Eve smiled; she remembers the delight that filled her body. But as the weeks have passed she has also come to recognise how inward it is, that like the soft, wheezing sound of Eve’s laughter that she so loves, it does not come easily, readily, but from somewhere deeper in.
This sense of divergence between Eve’s physical and social development should not be a surprise: studies of Neanderthal teeth show they breastfed for less time than Homo sapiens, a fact some argue suggests their children grew faster, and were less closely bonded than sapient children. She does not want to believe this: there is no question she and Eve are bonded. But sometimes, when she watches Eve staring at the play of light upon a wall, she wonders whether she is different in some deep way.
Or perhaps she is imagining it? Could it be this is all a form of confirmation bias? That she is simply seeing what she is looking for? That Eve is more normal than Kate allows her to be, and Kate’s fear of others observing Eve is actually a terror that she will be caught, exposed as a kidnapper.
It is this last thought that preys on her mind as she wakes in the pre-dawn each day. For though she still believes she did the right thing, that Eve is better off here with her, she is stalked by the thought that they might be found, that Eve might be taken from her. Night after night she lies awake, conjuring scenarios in which she is arrested, and Eve returned to the facility or, worse, put into some kind of care or remanded for study, the possibilities spiralling away from her.
She is reassured by the isolation of the house, which is set back from the road a kilometre out of town. But she has also been careful to avoid situations wh
ere she might be drawn into conversation, only visiting the few stores when absolutely necessary. During the day she and Eve rarely venture beyond the backyard.
Yet as this strange, protracted summer has worn on, she has taken to walking with Eve at dusk, partly to escape the heat in the house, partly because she feels the need to be out, in motion. The first few times she went she followed the road, enjoying the quiet, the heat radiating from the asphalt, but more recently she has taken to heading back towards town, and the small recreation area on its outskirts.
Concealed behind a line of trees, the space is divided in two, one half given over to a play area featuring a swing set and a desultory slippery dip set in the middle of a rough circle of bark, the other to a picnic table and benches. Kate has only seen other people there twice: once while walking to town for supplies she glimpsed a pair of women and three small children; the other time two middle-aged women stood watching while a fox terrier raced here and there, their backs to the road, faces hidden behind dark glasses, arms folded.
Though the area is clearly barely used, Kate is careful to only frequent it at dusk, when the chance of encountering other parents is minimised. All the same, she has come to love the window in her day when she can walk the kilometre down the road and sit beneath the trees. Most evenings she brings a blanket and lays it on the grass so Eve can watch the branches move against the sky, or the ribbons of cloud moving slowly overhead.
This is what she is doing one evening in February when she notices a woman walking up the short path that leads from the road. Startled, she places a hand on Eve’s chest, tensed to grab her.
The woman wears a loose blouse and narrow pants that emphasise her lean, angular frame but look oddly out of place out here in the country. Although she has obviously seen Kate and Eve she does not approach them immediately. Instead she crosses to the far side of the grass and then, turning back, walks towards Kate. Aware leaving now would seem strange, Kate forces herself to remain where she is. The woman pauses just in front of her.
‘I hope I’m not intruding,’ she says with a smile. Her diction is very clear and slightly formal, as if English is not her first language.
Kate forces herself to smile. ‘No, of course not.’
The woman kneels. Kate tenses, alert for any hint of recoil.
‘She’s yours?’
Kate hesitates, then nods.
‘How old?’
‘Six months.’
‘She’s lovely. What’s her name?’
‘Eve.’
The woman gestures to the patch of ground next to Kate.
‘Do you mind?’
Kate shakes her head, trying to keep her expression calm and welcoming, and the woman sits down beside her. She looks to be in her late-thirties – Kate’s age, or perhaps a year or two older – her black hair streaked here and there with grey. She appears blessed with the sort of self-possession Kate has always envied.
‘I’ve not seen you around here before,’ the woman says. ‘Are you staying somewhere nearby?’
‘Yes,’ Kate says as casually as she can. ‘Just up the road.’
‘Just the two of you?’
‘Yes,’ Kate says.
The woman does not reply, and Kate does not elaborate.
‘And you?’ she asks.
The woman looks up. ‘I live that way,’ she says. ‘The blue house. You’re Australian? American?’
Kate looks at the woman in surprise. ‘I’m Australian, but I spent almost a decade in the US.’
‘Ah. Hence the accent.’ The woman smiles. ‘I still have trouble telling.’ Reaching down, she slips her hands around Eve. They are worn and battered, perhaps by sun, but strong. ‘Is it okay?’
Kate stifles the urge to snatch Eve back. Is it possible the woman is some kind of spy? A private detective? She forces herself to shake her head. The woman lifts Eve and lays her on her shoulder.
Until now Eve has paid the woman only passing attention, but now she turns to her and, to Kate’s surprise, smiles, her wide face opening up into a look of delight. The woman smiles back.
‘She’s got beautiful eyes,’ she says. ‘They’re so big.’
Kate nods, the woman’s recognition of the beauty she sees in Eve almost painful.
A lock of the woman’s hair has come loose, and hangs beside her face. Eve reaches up to grab it. As her hand closes around it the woman laughs and, dropping her head, lets Eve draw her face closer. Even from where she sits Kate can see the shift in Eve’s manner, the way she recedes into herself.
‘You’re good with her,’ Kate says in an awkward voice. The woman nods.
‘I have a son only a little older.’
‘Is he with his father?’
The woman’s expression changes. ‘No. A neighbour. I needed a few minutes to myself.’ She passes Eve back to Kate.
‘I’m sorry. I must go. Perhaps I will see you again. My name is Yassamin.’
‘Kate.’
‘I am very pleased to meet you, Kate.’ Yassamin smiles. ‘Perhaps your Eve might like to meet my Sami.’
‘Yes,’ Kate says.
Kate does not move as the woman walks away, instead she sits and watches her receding back, a fixed smile on her face. But as soon as Yassamin is out of sight she sweeps Eve up and hurries back along the road, glancing behind herself over and over and fighting the urge to break into a run.
That night she cannot sleep. The rational part of her knows Yassamin’s friendliness was almost certainly no more than it seemed, but another, darker voice tells her she cannot discount the possibility that her presence in the park was not a coincidence, its urging converting every sound from outside into an approaching car or footsteps.
This anxiety is not new: it has shadowed her since the moment she fled the facility. She had no clear plan that night, only a determination to get away, find somewhere safe for her and Eve. In the car park behind the buildings she placed Eve in the footwell of the car, bundling her in so she was safe, then, climbing in, accelerated away into the night. Although her mind was racing she knew she could not let herself think too hard about what she had done; instead she gripped the steering wheel and stared ahead, into the darkness. But a few kilometres from the facility she glanced down at Eve in the footwell and felt the irreversibility of what she had done begin to dawn on her. Taking a deep breath she forced herself to focus on what to do next.
She knew it would not take them long to discover Eve was gone, what she did not know was how soon they would realise it was her that had taken her. Presumably one of their first acts would be to call Jay, who would realise she was missing, and, probably sooner rather than later, make the connection.
Would he try to find her himself? Or report her absence to security? She had left her phone back at the house, but as long as she was in her own car she knew she was vulnerable. As darkened farmland and bush gave way to sleeping houses she pulled the car to the side of the road and, gathering her bags and Eve, set off along the road on foot. Mercifully the night was mild, and traffic on the road sparse, yet still she was relieved when she glimpsed a petrol station up ahead. Wary of being caught on camera, she did not enter the illuminated space of the station, instead lingering by the road a little way back. Over the next half-hour cars passed in ones and two, until finally a taxi pulled into the station. She waited while the driver filled his tank, then as he drove back out towards the road she stepped out into the light, one hand raised.
She climbed in, ignoring the driver’s curious glances in the mirror. She had already decided to head for a motel she knew on the road out to the airport, but wary of travelling straight there she directed the driver to drop her at a row of shops a little further up the road. Along the way Eve fussed and stirred, but Kate calmed her, rocking her gently as she watched the sleeping city pass outside.
It was well after midnight by the time she climbed out of the taxi. She waited for the driver to pull out and disappear into the night before she headed back along the roa
d towards the motel. The office was locked, but she knocked anyway, rapping on the glass until a middle-aged man appeared from a back room. He sized her up through the window then turned the lock and opened the door.
She could see him regarding her carefully, no doubt aware of the reasons women turn up in motels with babies in tow after midnight. When he asked her for her driver’s licence and credit card she told him she needed to pay cash; to her relief he didn’t argue, just told her she would have to pay in advance.
The room was worn, bland, a loveless box with a television and a wardrobe along one wall, and a bed and two bedside tables on the other. The curtains were a murky mess of purple and red across the window facing the car park. For a moment Kate remembered a similar room with her mother, many years before, a week spent in a motel after one of her relationships dissolved. Lowering the sleeping Eve to the bed, she sat down beside her, and all at once began to sob.
That was the last time she would cry, and even then she did not let it continue long. Instead she wiped her face, trying to think through what came next. The impossibility of untangling this thing she had done slowly revealing itself. Whatever happened now, her old life was gone.
Step by step she began to think through what she needed to do next. First, and perhaps most importantly, she needed cash, as much of it as she could lay her hands on. Then she had to find somewhere to stay, somewhere she and Eve would be safe. The rest of it – transport, communication, clothing – could come later.
With the outline of a plan forming in her mind, she lay down beside Eve. She would be awake soon, demanding food, but though Kate was so tired her body hummed with exhaustion, she knew she would be unable to sleep. And so instead she lay there, staring blankly at the ceiling.
She realises now it was always in her, this talent for extremity, the preparedness to embrace solutions without concern for their implications. Yet that night she was afraid, not just of what she had done, but of whatever she had unleashed in herself. When morning came she took Eve and walked to the nearest bank, where she emptied her and Jay’s accounts. Then she walked until she found a thrift store, where she bought an old stroller, blankets, clothes for Eve, ignoring the questioning stare of the woman behind the counter as she paid in cash.
Ghost Species Page 7