The Stolen Child

by Sanjida Kay

  ‘Mrs Morley? Have you got time for a quick word?’ she asks.

  I think of Jennifer Lockwood, my agent, waiting for me, and nod reluctantly. It’s bound to be about Evie’s spelling. Or her maths.

  ‘Perhaps you could come inside for a moment? I can’t leave the children and Mr Mitchell has agreed to keep Evie occupied,’ she adds, smiling at me. Her teeth are small and perfectly straight.

  She turns to go into the classroom. If she and Jack have already arranged this between them, perhaps it’s more worrying than I thought. I take Ben out of the buggy and he rushes in excitedly, heading straight for the piles of boxes meant for junk modelling. Hannah hands me Evie’s exercise book. She’s curvy, her waist is tiny: a perfect hourglass figure. She’s wearing a brocade dress, with short, square sleeves in a demure navy. Her legs are bare, even though there’s a slight chill in the air and her sandals are tan. It’s the perfect take on the practical yet professional look. I stifle my jealousy. If I cared enough, I’d do something about it, I tell myself.

  The book is open at a story Evie’s illustrated with a princess in a thin, spiky castle. On the next page the princess is holding the hands of a man and a woman who are on either side of her and she’s beaming. I try not to be shocked at Evie’s atrocious spelling.

  It begins, ‘wuns up on A tim thEr wuz a PrinSEs…’

  Is Hannah going to remonstrate with me about the amount of time I spend practising spelling with Evie? I continue to read. The princess lives with her nasty, wicked stepmother and father. Instead of being rescued by a prince, she sets off across the moor in search of her real parents. She’s accosted by a giant and a witch, but she defeats them with her magic wand that turns into a sword, and finds her true mother and father. Everyone lives happily ever after.

  ‘It’s so imaginative, don’t you think?’ says Hannah. She smoothes one lock of her long straight blonde hair behind her ear. She has green eyes. Her cheeks are round and plump with youth. She looks as if she’s barely out of college but she must be in her mid-twenties. ‘Even her spelling has improved.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I say.

  ‘What do you feel about the content?’ she says, her expression serious.

  I flush. I feel as if it’s an obscure test and I’m failing.

  ‘I was thinking,’ Hannah says slowly, ‘that Evie must be working out some of the issues she has?’

  ‘Issues?’

  ‘Yes. With being adopted.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I look back at the story. The princess has dark hair and green eyes. Her parents have yellow hair and blue eyes. Even the wicked witch and the giant are blonde. When the girl finds her real parents, they all line up at the end, like peas in a pod, with identical sparkling emerald eyes and long black hair.

  ‘We adopted Evie as a baby. She hasn’t known anyone else in her life apart from us.’

  My voice has taken on a defensive note. I glance over Hannah’s shoulder. Ben has strewn cardboard boxes and polystyrene bits all over the carpeted area at the back of the classroom.

  ‘Research shows that children who are adopted from birth still feel a sense of loss,’ Hannah says. ‘After all, they’ve known their real mother since conception. They form a bond with her in the womb and that’s cemented during birth.’

  ‘She’s just feeling a little insecure and jealous about Ben, that’s all,’ I snap. ‘It was his birthday at the weekend.’

  How could Evie have ‘formed a bond’ with the woman who tried to kill her when she was a foetus?

  A girl comes and wraps herself around Hannah’s leg and the teaching assistant bends down and hugs the child and says softly, ‘Sweetie, I’m talking to Evie’s mummy. I’ll be with you ever so soon.’

  Hannah’s smile is filled with empathy and concern and I immediately feel bad for speaking sharply.

  ‘We could try play therapy with Evie if you like?’ Hannah says.

  ‘Play therapy?’

  ‘I worked with kids in a developing country before, before I came here. Their lives are really tough, you know, in comparison… I mean, many of them had lost their parents or their brothers and sisters to disease or war. And the abuse, especially of the girls… It’s a safe way of getting kids to act out what happened or how they feel using play to express their emotions.’

  ‘Oh. That must have been quite hard for you though. To hear what happened to those children?’

  I hadn’t realized Hannah had worked overseas. It sounds a million miles away from the middle-class angst in Ilkley.

  ‘Yes, it was. Heartbreaking.’ She gives a little sigh and a half shrug as if shaking off terrible memories. ‘We could have a go with Evie. I could do some role-playing with dolls or get her to write another story?’

  I hesitate. I don’t want Evie to feel it’s a legitimate concern, for teachers to start making a fuss because she’s been adopted.

  ‘We love Evie just as much as if she were our biological daughter,’ I say.

  Hannah inclines her head. ‘Of course, you do, Mrs Morley.’

  ‘Zoe, please. And thank you for bringing this to my attention,’ I add, feeling awkward when she’s only trying to help. ‘Just, you know, keep an eye on her. Let me know if anything else like this comes up.’

  ‘I will,’ she says, but her words are drowned out by Ben, who’s fallen over and has started crying.

  Hannah walks me to the door.

  ‘By the way, Mr Mitchell says to tell you that next Saturday is fine. And I wanted to say that I’m also happy to do any babysitting if he’s busy and you need someone.’

  Jack has agreed to take the children on Saturday afternoons to give me more time to paint, since Ollie seems to be working longer hours at the weekends, but any extra help is always welcome.

  ‘Thank you. I’m sure Evie would be delighted,’ I say, and Hannah beams.

  After I’ve dropped Ben off at nursery, I head to Brook Street. I want to reassure Jennifer Lockwood that the painting is going well. As I approach the gallery, I feel anxious. If someone other than me has noticed that Evie is behaving oddly, perhaps something really is wrong? I’m also nervous because, if I’m honest, I’m a bit intimidated by Jenny. She’s warm, but also efficient and businesslike. Ollie describes her as an iron fist in a velvet glove. I badly want this exhibition to be a success.

  I tie Bella up outside and go in. The gallery is beautiful: a white, open space. It’s flooded with light sliding off the moor: clear and chill. In my waxed Barbour jacket and paint-streaked jeans, I feel dowdy compared to Jenny. As usual, she’s in navy, wearing her signature red lipstick. She’s talking to someone so I look around. It’s an exhibition by an artist who paints birds in meticulous detail; every feather seems to glow. The backgrounds are an impressionistic blur of colour, the paint running and seeping across the canvas. The cobalt-blue of a sunbird; the lime-yellow of a spiderhunter, all impossibly exotic here in the heart of Yorkshire.

  The man Jenny was talking to is staring at me. He’s tall and broad, built like a soldier, not an artist or a dealer. He has dark hair in rough curls and he’s unshaven. His green-brown eyes are piercing. There’s something leonine about him. He’s scowling and I wonder if I’ve inadvertently interrupted his chat with Jenny or maybe Bella has upset him, scratching at the gallery door.

  Jenny appears from behind a huge vase of proteas and kangaroo paws. ‘Let me introduce you two. This is Harris, one of my artists, and this is—’

  ‘Zoe Butterworth.’

  He has a Bradford accent. He strides forward and holds out his hand. He clasps mine firmly. His palm is warm, his fingers calloused.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, flustered. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I like your work,’ he says.

  ‘How are you, Zoe?’ asks Jenny, giving me a kiss on the cheek.

  ‘Very well, thanks. I hope I’m not interrupting.’

  Harris says, ‘We’re done.’

  ‘I came to show you a couple of photos I took on my phone of my latest painti
ng. I’m sorry I didn’t answer your emails—’

  ‘I know you’re busy, Zoe.’ Jenny smiles. ‘I’m not concerned. Your paintings are wonderful and I’m sure you’ll get them done on time.’

  She still holds her hand out for my mobile though. I give it to her and, to my surprise, Harris stands next to Jenny and leans over to look at the screen.

  ‘It’s good.’ His tone is terse but I find myself welcoming this one word of praise more than any effusive outburst.

  Jenny nods in agreement. ‘Get in touch when you’re ready to bring them in,’ she says. ‘I can’t wait to see them all together.’

  Harris follows me out of the gallery. As the door swings shut behind him, he says, ‘Do you want to go for a coffee?’

  I look at him in astonishment and he regards me calmly. He still hasn’t smiled. He doesn’t explain himself or try to persuade me further. He strokes Bella’s head and undoes her lead from the hook on the wall, before passing it to me. He’s waiting for a response.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘That would be lovely.’ I grin foolishly.

  He turns and marches down the street and I almost have to skip to keep up with him. I dodge passers-by, trying not to get in a tangle with Bella’s lead. He doesn’t ask me where I want to go. He passes Costa and Bettys – I imagine they would be too twee for him – and The Bar, where I would have gone if I wanted a decent coffee, and veers sharply down a little side street. I’m curious now, I can’t think where he has in mind. He ducks swiftly through the last doorway before the mini arcade along Back Grove Road. It’s a tiny cafe I’ve never noticed before. There are only three small booths with wooden benches and on the short counter there’s a lemon-yellow plate with chocolate brownies and a blue one of coconut macaroons; a spiral of cucumber slowly spins in a jug of water. That’s it. But the smell is overwhelming: there are at least eight different kinds of coffee in burlap sacks with labels saying which fazenda they’re from.

  ‘How do you take your coffee?’ he asks.

  ‘I’ll have a latte.’

  He looks disgusted and then, not hiding his distaste, says, ‘Do you want a cake?’

  I shake my head, although I would quite like a macaroon, and slide onto one of the benches. Bella ducks underneath and sits on my feet. Harris squeezes himself in on the other side and stares frankly at me. I start feeling uncomfortable. What am I doing here with this strange man? I should be at home painting. I calculate how much time I have left before I need to pick up Ben. Harris’s coffee is black with a thin skin of froth on the surface; it looks lethally strong.

  ‘What kind of painting do you do?’

  He shakes his head and his curls tremble.

  ‘I’m a sculptor. I make things out of scrap metal. Things you might find on the moor. Or not find.’ I look puzzled and he says, ‘When you look at one of my sculptures, you could imagine discovering it on the moor. It wouldn’t be out of place. Like it belonged. Or it grew. Or the earth ejected it.’ He shrugs. ‘Hard to describe, isn’t it? One’s art.’ He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a flyer. ‘My exhibition opens soon. Will you come to the preview?’

  He pushes it towards me. There’s a picture of him in black and white, looking brooding, and a photo of one of his sculptures, raw and rusty and somehow tortured. His hand, stretched across the table, his fingertips still touching the corner of the flyer, are like something sculptural too – the digits long and sturdy, covered in a web of cuts and scars and callouses. I want to reach out and touch him. I’m still looking at the invitation, wondering how to respond. Is he being so forward because I’m an artist too, represented by the same gallery? I want people to come to my exhibitions but somehow I can’t muster the chutzpah to invite random strangers let alone the parents I know from the school run. And when they do come, I’m so nervous I can’t bring myself to promote my art properly.

  He laughs suddenly and I look up. His teeth are very white against the olive of his skin. Is he from here? Perhaps he’s spent years abroad and developed this sun-baked, wind-burnt look.

  ‘Too soon?’ he says, sliding his hand back and gripping his coffee mug. ‘I’ve only just met you but I feel like I’ve known you forever. I’ve been following your work. Jenny took me on recently – poached me from another gallery – and I saw she represented you too. I thought I’d run into you sooner or later.’

  ‘Following my work?’ I echo.

  ‘Aye. I can see the connection we have to the moor. It runs through everything you do. There’s something stark about your work. Dark – even in the paintings with the prettiest colours. Sunset over the Twelve Apostles. Dawn at Black Beck.’

  He’s quoting the names of paintings I did four years ago. The Apostles are twelve stones set in a circle at the peak of Rombald’s Moor, dating back to Neolithic times. They might have been part of a ritual to worship the sun. In my picture, the silhouettes of the granite blocks are set against a sky suffused with salmon-pink and primrose. Jenny had told me I needed to lighten my work up a bit, use a greater tonal range. I’d sell more, she’d said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter how bright the sky, you can feel the crushing emptiness of your life faced with that wide, open space,’ he says, as if reading my mind. He leans forward. ‘When I look at your paintings, I can sense it. The danger. The way you can lose yourself on the moor. Slip silently into a peat bog. We have so little wilderness left – but there’s some that’s wild and untamed right here.’

  I nod. It’s exactly what I believe, what I try to portray in my work. The unthinking cruelty of nature, running alongside our so-called civilization.

  ‘People usually talk about the colours; they buy my paintings to remind them of Yorkshire or because the sky goes with their sofa,’ I say. ‘They don’t see the brutality. They say things like, “You must really love the moors.” I don’t. I don’t love them or hate them.’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with liking. They’re always there, as much a part of you as your bones or the blood in your veins.’

  I look at him in surprise. It’s as if he’s finished my sentence for me. And then I can’t help myself. I beam at him, and Bella, as if sensing my change in mood, wags her tail against our legs.

  ‘I’ve been watching your progression as an artist,’ Harris continues, stroking Bella’s head. ‘It was all there at the start – the ideas, the concepts. But you’re bringing it all together. Making it come alive.’

  ‘Yes!’ I say. ‘It’s as if it’s become, not easy, because it’s never easy, but harmonious. I don’t mean the colours—’

  ‘No,’ he agrees. ‘The concept. It’s fused. There’s no discord between what you’re trying to achieve and the composition of your pictures.’

  I can’t remember the last time I was able to speak to anyone about my work properly – maybe at university? Just afterwards when I was at that shared studio? Ollie is and always has been supportive, but he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t see any real difference between me and one of his clients – who freezes flowers and photographs them – except I make less money. Jenny sells my pictures at a high price, but I don’t paint fast enough to be rich. It’s not about the money, even if that’s all that matters to Ollie.

  ‘Aye, you’re a rare talent, Zoe Butterworth,’ he says, and I glow with pride.

  For all his gruffness, Harris is surprisingly easy to talk to – and, I have to admit, I’m stupidly pleased that another artist has taken the time to look at my paintings. I finish my latte and start to think about getting back. He notices immediately.

  ‘Can I get you another?’

  I should go. But it’s so wonderful to talk about art I can’t bring myself to leave.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ I say, starting to rise.

  ‘No.’

  He orders another latte, returning with two coconut macaroons.

  ‘Must be hard trying to work with two little ones.’

  I look at him in surprise. How does he know?

  ‘Article in the Telegraph magazin
e.’

  I remember it. There was a photo of me with Evie, holding Ben. He was about six months old at the time, and I was feeling this desperate need to get back to my painting – but I didn’t have any childcare: Ben seemed far too little to put in a stranger’s hands. It had been Jenny’s idea – to increase people’s desire to own one of my paintings precisely when I couldn’t supply any. And it worked. People are clamouring for another Zoe Butterworth picture, she tells me. When I married Ollie, I took his name – Morley – but kept my own for my art work. I like the distinction. The photographer, who was local, had made us stand in Well’s Walk, me leaning against one of the little bridges over the beck, Ben on my hip; Evie had looked like a jungle sprite, peering through the foliage of a giant agapanthus.

  ‘It’s tough if you can only work in the mornings when your daughter’s at school and your son’s at nursery.’

  I nod, biting into a macaroon.

  ‘What about your husband? Can he help out?’

  I shake my head. ‘Ollie’s an accountant. His clients are artists – people in fashion, music, art – interesting careers but sporadic incomes. A nightmare for the tax man. I’m sure you know what it’s like. He’s away a lot,’ I add.

  The macaroon is delicious, crisp on the outside and meltingly gooey in the middle. Bella can smell it and whines. I give the last bit to her.

  ‘We used to go out together – you know, fashion shows, book launches – but he’s taken on a lot of celebrity clients. When I have gone with him, they act like I’m less than nobody. The wife of their accountant…’ I tail off. I can’t believe I’ve told all this to a complete stranger. There’s something about Harris though – the quality of the way he listens, perhaps.

  ‘So he’s got money but he won’t help you,’ he says, and I catch my breath because the way he’s put it sounds brutal. ‘It’s not just about the time, is it? It’s the headspace. As an artist, you need the freedom to think and feel. Switching from being a mother to a painter for a couple of hours and back... Can’t be easy.’