Lana shrugged and traced a scratch on the cover of the journal with her finger. ‘It comes and goes. I’m usually fine when they’re monitoring the balance of my medication, but if it’s off I can do some pretty crazy things. I’ve punched a few bosses when I’ve been manic. It’s a great way to lose your job, take my word for it. And the same goes for boyfriends.’
Catriona smiled. There were a few bosses she would have liked to punch over the years. ‘Is that why you’re in here this time?’
‘No, the opposite. My antidepressants weren’t strong enough and I got myself into a real funk. Mum caught me after I’d done this.’ She pulled up her sleeves, twisted her arms and showed Catriona two wide plasters on the underside of her wrists.
Catriona recoiled at the sight. ‘Oh. Sorry, I didn’t know.’
‘Yeah. So, that’s why I’m in here this time. Suicide watch.’
Catriona couldn’t take her gaze away from Lana’s wrists. It seemed incredible that a young, attractive girl could find her life so insufferable that she would try to end it. The irony of that thought wasn’t lost on Catriona. She had nearly done the same thing. And left behind a husband and baby to grieve for her.
Lana was studying her face. ‘How about you? Are you going to be okay when you get home?’
Catriona could only shrug. She hadn’t had a hallucination in over a week and the voices had disappeared completely. She felt like the desire to harm herself or Sebastian had gone, but how could she know? How could she be sure her psychosis wouldn’t return the moment she left the security of the clinic? She couldn’t be sure, that was the answer. No matter how well she felt there would always be that small question mark of doubt nestled somewhere in a dark recess of her mind.
• • •
As she had agreed with James, Catriona stayed another week at the clinic. She spoke to him on the phone a couple of times, but he didn’t visit her again. When she called to tell him she was ready to leave he told her Sebastian was asleep. Despite his protests that he wanted to come and collect her, she told him she would catch a taxi so he didn’t have to wake Sebastian. So, after saying goodbye to Lana and exchanging contact details so they could keep in touch, Catriona checked herself out of the clinic and ordered a taxi to drive her the short distance home.
James greeted her at the front door. He kissed her and took her suitcase from her hand. ‘Welcome home, babe, I missed you.’
‘I missed you, too.’ She looked up the staircase towards the nursery. ‘Is Sebastian awake? I can’t wait to see him.’
‘He’s probably still asleep. Should we have a glass of wine to celebrate you coming home?’
‘In a minute. I’m just going to peek in on him.’
She climbed the stairs, trying to work out whether she was more nervous or excited to finally see her son again, and pushed opened the door to Sebastian’s room. It was lit with the soft glow from a nightlight sitting on the dresser. Sebastian was awake and he smiled up at her as she approached the cot. She reached down for him with hands that shook, gauging his reaction to seeing her, and when he didn’t cry or squirm away from her she picked him up and hugged him to her chest. She held her breath as she rubbed his back, waiting for him to cry, but he didn’t seem upset that he was being held by her. The relief she felt made all the time she had spent in the clinic seem worthwhile.
‘He’s not crying,’ she said to James, who had followed her up the stairs.
‘Of course not. He missed you too.’
Catriona readjusted Sebastian in her arms so she could look at him properly, as James watched her from the doorway. She had only been away for three weeks, but her absence felt much longer. Everything seemed different with Sebastian somehow. He felt lighter in her arms and the expression on his face wasn’t one she had seen before. His skin was paler than she remembered, and even though his eyes were the same soft brown as always, they had a blank look to them that seemed unusual to her.
‘Has he been sick?’ Catriona asked James, walking closer to the doorway so she could see Sebastian in the light from the hallway. ‘He looks like he’s lost weight.’
‘Probably a little bit, but he’s okay now. Just a bug. So, tell me about the rest of your stay at the clinic – how was it?’
‘Oh, you know, just lots of sessions about relaxation techniques, coping mechanisms, things like that. It was good, I learned some really helpful things.’ She turned her attention back to Sebastian. ‘Are you sure he’s okay now? He doesn’t look like himself. And he’s so docile. Do we need to take him to the doctor?’
James came up beside her and took Sebastian from her arms. ‘I took him a few days ago and he’s fine, I promise you. It’s been a couple of weeks since you last saw him, remember, so maybe that’s why he seems a bit different.’
He placed Sebastian back in his cot. Catriona followed him and leaned over the side, frowning. ‘Did you give him a haircut?’
‘No, why?’
‘I’m just trying to work out what’s different with him.’
‘Nothing’s different, it must just be your memory. Remember the doctor said the ECT might affect your short-term memory? It’s probably just that.’
Catriona straightened up and tried not to cry. ‘Great, so I can’t even remember my son properly any more. What a wonderful mother.’
‘Hey, none of that,’ James said. ‘It’s not good for you. I’ll settle Sebastian and then you can tell me more about the clinic. There’s a bottle of wine sitting on the kitchen bench. Why don’t you pour us a couple of glasses and I’ll be down in a minute.’
By the time James came back downstairs without Sebastian she had poured the wine, drunk a substantial portion of her glass and then topped it up again so James wouldn’t notice. It had been three weeks since her last drink – they didn’t allow alcohol at the clinic – and she had craved it. Catriona settled back into the couch and tucked her legs up underneath her as the warmth from the wine began to relax her.
As she sat with James in silence, she tried to think of the right way to bring up the topic she wanted to discuss with him. She had role-played several versions of the conversation in her mind already, but none of them conveyed what she actually wanted to say. She took a deep breath. There was no right way, she just had to come right out and say it.
‘James,’ she said, ‘I’ve been thinking about our arrangement: you know, with me at home with Sebastian and you at work. I know when we talked about it when I was pregnant we decided it was better for me to stay home so I could breast-feed . . .’
Catriona took a sip of wine and glanced at James. She couldn’t decipher the look on his face, which made her even more nervous. She put her glass down so he couldn’t see her hands shaking. She wanted to appear confident and resolved, not nervous talking to her own husband. ‘But because he’s drinking formula it doesn’t necessarily need to be me who stays home . . .’
Still, James didn’t say anything.
‘So, I think the best thing, for all of us, might be for me to return to work and for you to look after Sebastian during the day. I’d still see him at night, and on weekends. It doesn’t mean I don’t love Sebastian, you know I do, but Doctor Winder and I have discussed it and he agrees it might be the best thing for me at the moment.’
It felt like minutes but was probably only a few seconds before James spoke. ‘Can I . . . are you finished?’
She hadn’t realised he had been waiting for her permission to talk. ‘Sorry, yes, go ahead.’
He adjusted his glasses and ran a hand through his hair. ‘I know how hard motherhood has been on you and I’m not surprised that you’re asking this. I’ve been wondering the same thing myself – whether we should switch roles – but I didn’t want to upset you.’
Catriona exhaled the breath she had been holding on to and turned to face James. ‘You have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that. I thought you’d think I was a terrible person for even suggesting it.’
James smiled sadly at her, hi
s eyes filled with compassion, and she realised how much she had missed him.
‘Of course I don’t think that,’ he said. ‘There’s no rule to say which one of us has to stay home. But what about your work? Didn’t they hire a replacement for your role for twelve months?’
‘I already spoke to Terry. She said if I wanted to come back she’d find something else for my replacement to do. I can go back as soon as I want to.’
‘There’s no rush; you don’t have to go back to work straightaway.’
‘Yes, I do,’ Catriona said. ‘I need something to distract me. I need to do something I’m good at again.’
James rubbed her arm. ‘Okay. I’ll just need to talk to my boss, then. It’ll be okay, babe. I think we’re doing the right thing.’
• • •
James’s boss agreed to let him take six months’ paternity leave, so he and Catriona agreed that after a few more weeks at home to recuperate she would return to work full-time and James would care for Sebastian.
Catriona’s mother offered to stay with her for those few weeks, to look after her and to help with Sebastian. Catriona resisted at first, telling her mother she didn’t need her help, but that was what she had told her after Sebastian was born, and she was lying then, too. Maybe if her mother had come over in those first weeks to help with Sebastian she would have noticed that something was wrong. But Catriona had told her that she was fine, that she wanted to be alone with her child, and her mother had stayed away. She had only seen her grandson four times since he was born: once at the hospital, another time a couple of weeks later, before Catriona’s psychosis started, a third time when Catriona had ushered her out the door after twenty minutes, and the fourth time that James had told her about, when he asked her to babysit Sebastian while he visited Catriona at the clinic. Four times in three months. It was yet another thing for Catriona to feel guilty about.
The thought of being alone with Sebastian still terrified Catriona and despite feeling more like her usual self – more like how she had been before she had Sebastian – she couldn’t be sure that she wouldn’t do anything rash if stress got the better of her. Out of shame and embarrassment, she hadn’t described to her mother the full extent of her psychosis. Catriona realised her mother most likely heard the details from James anyway, because she didn’t ask any questions about why Catriona had been hospitalised. James seemed hesitant to have Catriona’s mother stay with them until Catriona told him it would make her a lot more relaxed to have someone else around.
Her mother arrived two days after Catriona returned home from the clinic. Catriona was unsure how she would feel about having her mother so involved in her life, but she was astounded by her organisational skills. Within the first few days she had restocked their pantry and fridge with groceries, thoroughly cleaned the house, washed and hung out to dry the piles of laundry that had accumulated, sorted all of Sebastian’s clothes into sizes and stored in the attic those that no longer fitted him, and cooked several meals that she divided up into individual portions.
‘For those especially difficult days,’ she said as she stacked them into the freezer in disposable containers Catriona hadn’t even realised she owned.
Since her mother was taking care of everything else, Catriona was free to spend time with Sebastian. At first she was scared to be around him unless her mother was in the room with her, but eventually she felt comfortable giving him his bottle, changing his nappy and settling him at bedtime. But she couldn’t bring herself to give him a bath. Her mother did that for her while Catriona found an excuse to leave the house, or do something downstairs. She averted her eyes from the bath whenever she was in the bathroom.
Catriona’s mother encouraged her to leave the house every day, even if it was just to walk around the block. Catriona complained at first, but after a few days she admitted that the fresh air and sunshine made her feel like she was part of the world again.
‘How are you coping being home?’ her mother asked her a week after Catriona had returned from the clinic. They had decided to go to the beach for the day and were eating fish and chips on a grassy area just off the sand. Seagulls jostled each other as they edged towards them, their black eyes searching for scraps. Sebastian was lying on his back on a blanket, his dimpled hands grappling with a toy his grandmother had brought along for him.
‘Surprisingly well, I think,’ Catriona said.
‘And how do you feel about your relationship with Sebastian?’
Catriona thought about the question while she watched Sebastian on the blanket. She enjoyed spending time with him, and the fact that he no longer cried when she picked him up suggested to her that the bond with her child she had felt was missing might finally be starting to develop.
‘Much better now, but I regret not going to the mother–baby unit instead of the hospital,’ Catriona said. ‘I would have had Sebastian with me the whole time, so it wouldn’t feel so strange between us now. Sometimes it feels like he’s someone else’s child.’
Her mother nodded knowingly. ‘I know it feels like you’ve missed out on a lot, but you have the rest of your life with Sebastian. He’s only a baby, he won’t remember any of this.’
‘I guess so.’
‘Don’t let it upset you. You did the best thing for him; you got yourself well.’
‘I just feel like there are all these chunks of time that I’ve missed,’ Catriona said. ‘And the bits I do remember, I don’t know if they really happened or not.’ Except for what she had done to Sebastian in the bath. She remembered that only too vividly. Nearly every night she would wake up in a sweat, having re-enacted the scene in a dream, but in her dream she held him underwater until he stopped moving, and James didn’t interrupt them.
‘Have you talked to James about that?’ her mother asked. ‘He’d be able to help you fill in some of the gaps.’
‘Yeah. But it’s hard to hear how I was, all those crazy things I said and did. It makes me feel so guilty for putting him through that.’
‘James loves you. And Sebastian. He’d do anything for you two. I’m sure he’s just grateful that you’re both okay.’
Catriona picked up Sebastian and sat him on her lap, his back supported by her bent knees and his legs resting on her stomach. On seeing his mother his faced stretched into a gummy smile of recognition, which Catriona couldn’t help but return.
‘We’re okay, aren’t we?’ she said to him.
The weeks passed and the time came for her mother to leave and for Catriona to return to work. Despite having enjoyed spending time with Sebastian, and knowing without any doubt that she loved her son and was happy to be his mother, she knew the decision to swap roles with James was the right one.
On the morning she was due to return to work Catriona stood in the kitchen holding Sebastian, dressed in a suit for the first time in nearly five months. She had expected to feel uncomfortable in the clothes, constricted by the layers and tight material after spending so long in T-shirts and leggings. On the darkest days of her psychosis she had rarely changed out of her pyjamas until the evening, when she rushed to change before James got home and asked if she was okay. But the clothes were the reminder she needed that she had another life outside of motherhood, a life where she was in control. She kissed Sebastian goodbye and handed him to James, her resolve strong as she walked down the hallway to the front door, closing it behind her.
12
DIANA
Friday, 11 May 2012
The CCTV footage didn’t reveal the identity of Noah’s kidnapper. Nor did the interviews with shopping centre staff and residents who lived nearby. The forensics team was unable to obtain his fingerprints from the pram; apparently those they had found were smudged and therefore insufficient to compare against criminal records. Diana asked the police whether they were trying to find car registration details from cameras in the shopping centre car park, or looking into credit cards used in the supermarket that day. Anything she could think of to identify the ma
n who had taken her son. They assured her they were doing everything they could.
Diana avoided watching the news. The first time she saw Noah’s face on her television screen – the photo she had given to police the day after he went missing – she collapsed to the floor as if the bones had been pulled out of her body. Her mother, who was with her at the time, had switched off the television and embraced Diana while trying, and failing, to hold back her own tears.
Three days after Noah disappeared, Sergeant Thomas arranged for Diana and Liam to speak at a media conference. He had already spoken to the media several times himself, but he felt the public would take more notice if the message came from Noah’s parents. He told them that plenty of cases had been solved because a member of the public came forward with information that helped the police to locate the kidnapper. He didn’t say, although Diana knew without him having to, that an appeal was also a way to prevent the kidnapper from harming Noah by reminding him that Noah had a family who loved him.
‘The longer Noah’s story stays in the headlines, the better the chance we have of finding him,’ Sergeant Thomas had said, and Diana didn’t want to ask what would happen if the media stopped reporting on Noah’s kidnapping before they found him.
She asked Liam to speak because she didn’t think she could manage it without breaking down and in a rare moment of compassion towards her, he agreed. Diana stood beside Liam at the podium in the police station’s media conference room, her body quivering and her palms wet. She stared at the lights and microphones thrust towards them and listened to Liam describe what Noah was wearing the day he was kidnapped, what the pram looked like and where he was taken from. His voice remained steady until the last part of his speech, when he spoke about how much he and Diana loved Noah and begged whoever had him to take him to a police station. When she heard the quiver in his voice Diana reached for his hand, but he pulled it from her grasp and didn’t look at her.
For a week after the appeal the police fielded dozens of phone calls from the public about people who matched the description of the man in the supermarket. Apparently some had even reported seeing a man with a baby who looked like Noah. But the leads never proved to be the man and baby they were looking for.
Claiming Noah Page 13