Catriona thought back. The eighth of May. Sebastian was born on the tenth of February, so he would have been three months old then. So, she would have been home, wouldn’t she? Oh, no, wait.
She swallowed hard and looked down at her hands. ‘I was at a clinic.’
‘A clinic?’
‘Yes, I was at a clinic for most of May. Three weeks in total.’ After a beat she added, ‘I was being treated for puerperal psychosis.’
Catriona watched the officer scribble furiously in his notepad. She tried to read his writing upside down, but she couldn’t make out any of the words.
‘Look,’ she said, using the same conciliatory tone she used at work when someone was being unreasonable. ‘I appreciate that you’re just doing your job but I think there’s been a mistake and I’d really like to see my son, Sebastian. Do you know where they’ve taken him?’
The officer looked up and frowned. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Didn’t the officers explain everything to you?’
‘They did, but someone’s made a mistake. They have the wrong child.’
The officer shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Mrs Sinclair, I can assure you no-one has made a mistake.’
Catriona straightened her back and crossed her arms. ‘I want to see my son. Please find out where he is for me.’
The officer excused himself from the room only to return a few minutes later with a cup of tea for her. ‘Someone’s coming to speak with you,’ he said as he put the cup on the table in front of Catriona before retreating towards the door. ‘She’ll be here soon. Just give me a yell if you need anything.’
About fifteen minutes later, a well-dressed woman entered the room. She had a sleek brown bob and kind blue–grey eyes. Her suit looked expensive, as did her shoes. Catriona became vaguely aware of the fact that she had a large smear of icing from the birthday cake on her forearm. She tried to rub it off with her hand as the woman sat in the chair across the table from her.
‘Mrs Sinclair, I’m Doctor March.’
‘Doctor?’
‘Yes, I’m a psychiatrist. I’ve been asked by the officers to talk to you about your situation.’ She pulled a notepad and pen out of her bag, placed them on the table, and smiled at Catriona. ‘Do you mind if I call you Catriona? You can call me June if you like.’
‘June March?’
June smiled again. ‘Yes, my parents were interesting people.’
‘Look, June,’ Catriona said, her attempt at patience giving over to exasperation. ‘I appreciate you coming here but I don’t need a therapist, I just need some answers. I want to know where my son is.’
June nodded, her brown bob nodding along with her. ‘I understand. I’ve been briefed on your case, so I should be able to help you. What would you like to know?’
Catriona let out a loud sigh. ‘Like I keep asking everyone, where’s my son?’
June reached into her bag again and this time pulled out a piece of paper, which she slid across the table to Catriona. She waited a few moments for Catriona to look at the document and then she said, ‘This is a medical certificate describing the cause of death for Sebastian John Sinclair, dated the first of May the year before last. Am I right to assume that you didn’t know your child had passed away?’
Catriona blinked back the tears that prickled at the corner of her eyes as she stared at the medical certificate. The cause of death had been recorded as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
‘SIDS?’ Catriona whispered, looking up at the psychiatrist.
June nodded, momentarily closing her eyes. ‘It’s such a tragic way to lose a child. So unexpected.’ She gestured to Catriona’s empty cup. ‘Can I get you another cup of tea? You probably need a moment to yourself.’
Catriona must have nodded because June took her cup and excused herself from the room, leaving Catriona alone with the certificate. She stared at it, trying to find in the few lines printed on the piece of paper the answers to all of her questions. Sebastian had died from SIDS while Catriona was at the clinic, and James had known. But then she had returned home and James had been there with a child, the child she thought was Sebastian.
June returned to the room, carrying two cups.
‘This morning the police came to my house and took James and . . .’ Catriona faltered, not sure of how to refer to him.
‘A child?’ June offered.
‘Yes, a child. My child . . . I thought.’ She remembered how she had thought Sebastian looked different when she arrived home from the clinic, how James said her memory had been affected by the ECT.
June sat down and pushed one of cups across the table to Catriona. She then took a sip from the other cup before she spoke. ‘The child’s name is Noah Simmons. His legal parents are Diana and Liam Simmons. He’s been returned to them now.’
Catriona thought about June’s words for a moment before she realised the deliberate way June had said legal parents. What did that mean?
June answered the question before Catriona could ask it. ‘Diana and Liam Simmons are the legal parents of the child, but not the biological parents. They adopted him as an embryo.’
The shock of realisation hit Catriona like a lightning bolt. ‘We are, aren’t we? James and me? We’re his biological parents. He’s the embryo we donated.’
June put down her cup and studied Catriona’s reaction. ‘That’s correct.’
Catriona rested her face in her hands, overwhelmed. James had kidnapped their own child. She cupped her hands together over her nose and mouth and forced herself to take deep breaths, trying to fight off the hyperventilation that was starting to take hold of her. Her palms quickly became clammy from the hot air blowing from her mouth.
‘I’ll get you a glass of water,’ June offered, once again rising from her chair.
By the time June returned to the room, Catriona’s breathing had returned to normal.
‘I’ve asked the officers if they can take the rest of your statement tomorrow, and they’ve agreed,’ June said as she gave the glass of water to Catriona, who drank it without pausing for breath. ‘You’ve had a lot of information to process today.’
Catriona nodded and placed the empty glass on the table. ‘Thank you, I appreciate that.’
Both women rose from their chairs.
‘It’s important that you grieve for Sebastian,’ June said. ‘Even with the amount of time that’s passed since his death. Take your time to process the news, visit his gravesite.’ She pulled a business card from the front pocket of her bag. ‘Here’s my card, please come in and see me when you’re ready. And I’ll call you tomorrow to see how you’re going.’
Catriona took the card and walked through the door June held open for her. She blinked as her eyes struggled to adjust to the bright fluorescent light in the hallway, a sudden jolt of reality compared to the dark room she had been sitting in for the past hour. Catriona nodded a goodbye to June and then stumbled down the hallway towards the entrance of the police station and the car park outside where she hoped her car was waiting, even though she didn’t remember parking it there. As she walked through the police station she felt like everyone was staring at her. It was as if they could tell that her reality had just been turned inside out.
• • •
It was quiet in the house without Sebastian and James. Eerily quiet. For the first few weeks after James’s arrest, the phone rang constantly. Sometimes it was people from the media hounding Catriona for comments on her husband’s arrest, sometimes it was people she knew asking if she was okay. But then the phone calls stopped, and silence took over. The media eventually tired of her when she declined to comment under the advice of James’s lawyer. Friends and colleagues, their societal duty now done, also turned their attention to other things. So, Catriona was alone in a house that had no shouting, no voices, no sound of footsteps running up and down the stairs. There was no television blaring, no musical toys with their repetitive drone, no sound of Sebastian crying or laughing. The relentless silence ga
ve volume to the questions swarming through Catriona’s mind.
How had James hidden Sebastian’s death from her? How had he pretended all this time that the child she came home to when she returned from the clinic was the same one she had left? Had Sebastian’s death been caused by something that had happened to him when she tried to drown him in the bath? James had told her that the doctor said he was fine, but how could she believe anything he said now, after he had lied to her for nearly two years? How had James known what had happened to their embryo? How did he find the other boy, and what was going through his head when he decided to kidnap him?
She tried to silence the questions by turning on the television and playing music in every room but they rose louder, mocking her for losing her husband and her son, permeating the walls of the house and tainting her every thought.
Catriona couldn’t decide which was worse: losing her son or James’s deceit. She thought she knew everything about James, but the fact that he had kept Sebastian’s death secret from her made her question everything he had ever told her. What else in her life had been a lie? She was furious at James for what he had done to her and refused to visit him in the remand centre or attend his committal hearing. Spencer went and called Catriona afterwards to tell her that James’s case had been committed for trial. She had been sitting on the couch with the phone on her lap, drinking her way through a bottle of wine and trying not to think about the hearing.
‘So, what does that mean?’ Catriona asked him. ‘He’ll have a full trial, with a jury and all of that?’
‘I think so.’
‘Did he say anything at the hearing?’
‘Just his plea.’
Catriona waited for Spencer to elaborate, but he didn’t. She swilled the wine around in her glass, watching the ruby liquid catch the light from the lamp that dangled over her head.
‘So, what was it?’ she asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
‘Guilty to illegally obtaining confidential information about the child, but not guilty to kidnapping him.’
She scoffed. ‘How can he say he’s not guilty of that?’
‘He said it’s not because he didn’t take him, but because he doesn’t consider it kidnapping.’
‘Oh.’ She picked at a strand of blonde hair that was coiled on one of the couch cushions, wishing her resolve was strong enough not to wonder how James was coping. ‘Spencer, can I ask you something?’
‘Of course.’
‘How did he find out that there was a child out there? I’ve never seen any information. We agreed with the clinic that we didn’t want to know.’
There was a pause. ‘They didn’t go into any of the details at the hearing. Sorry. Just something about a donor register.’
‘You haven’t asked James about it?’
‘No. We mainly just talk about you.’
‘About me?’
‘He’s worried about you. About how you’re coping. He’s desperate to see you.’
‘I’m sure he is.’
‘Are you planning to visit him?’
Catriona snorted and took a sip of wine. ‘No.’
But her desire to quell the questions which consumed her mind was too strong to ignore, so the next day she called Spencer and told him that the next time he went to visit James, she wanted to go with him.
• • •
Three days later Catriona found herself sitting in Spencer’s car in the car park of the Silverwater Correctional Complex, staring at the imposing facade in front of her. James was in the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre, the MRRC, where he would stay until his trial was over.
The complex didn’t look like a prison to Catriona. It looked more like a high school, with a dense community of buildings, ovals and basketball courts. Only the eight-metre security fence lined with curls of razor wire betrayed the identity of the occupants within.
Spencer placed a reassuring hand on Catriona’s tensed shoulder. ‘Are you ready?’
‘No,’ Catriona said, but she got out of the car and walked towards the prison.
As they walked through the entrance, Catriona felt a mix of anger and nerves at the thought of coming face-to-face with James for the first time since his arrest. The last time she had seen him he had been standing in his pyjama pants on their staircase on the morning of his fortieth birthday party, and now she was going to see him incarcerated in the prison where he would most likely remain for a number of years.
Catriona and Spencer passed through the security screening and were taken to the visitor centre by a uniformed officer. The room was bare of adornments other than a series of wooden seats and tables bolted to the floor, a row of vending machines against one wall, and glass doors leading to an astro-turfed children’s playground. Half of the tables were occupied by men in white jumpsuits and people dressed normally, like her. She had purposely dressed down for the occasion, in jeans and a T-shirt, not wanting James to think she had made an effort with her appearance for his sake.
Catriona looked around the visitor centre for James, but she couldn’t see him.
‘We have to take a seat first,’ Spencer told her as he directed her by the elbow to a table in the far corner of the room. ‘Then they’ll bring James in to see us.’
A few minutes later, James appeared in the doorway. Like the other men in the room he wore a white jumpsuit that was zipped at the back, marked with the word ‘Visits’ in black lettering. His face broke into a smile when he saw Catriona. He tried to embrace her when he reached their table but she pulled back, out of his reach. She asked herself what she was doing in this room, with a man who had become a stranger to her. She no longer wanted to hear what he had to say. No words from him would make any difference to her at this point. Feeling her anger rise at his proximity, she balled her hands into fists and felt her fingernails cut into her palms.
James looked dejected as he sat down, but he maintained a fixed smile as he looked back and forth between Spencer and Catriona.
‘How are you both?’ he asked with a false brightness that contradicted the defeated look on his face and the darkness under his eyes.
When Catriona didn’t respond, Spencer spoke up instead. ‘I’m good, mate. No complaints. But how are you? Are they treating you okay?’
‘Well, you know how it is in here; it’s not exactly the Hilton.’ From the corner of her eye Catriona saw James staring at her, but when she didn’t speak to him or meet his gaze he tried again. ‘Cat? How are you? I’ve been calling you, but you haven’t accepted any of my phone calls.’
‘How am I?’ Catriona said, her voice deliberately slow and menacing as she finally made eye contact with him. ‘Well, let’s recap, shall we? I woke up on the morning of my husband and son’s birthday party and my biggest concern of the day was whether I could decorate an Elmo cake well enough. Then, within the space of a few hours, my husband was arrested, my son was taken from me, and I’m told by a therapist that the child I gave birth to died twenty-one months earlier. So, how am I? Fucking brilliant, James, couldn’t be any better.’
She leaned back in the chair and looked away from him as the smile slid off James’s face.
‘Please don’t be like that. You have to understand that I did it for us, for our family.’ He tried to take her hand across the table but Catriona snatched it away from him. The thought of him touching her repulsed her.
Spencer tried to interject. ‘Mate, you have to appreciate she’s still in shock. Finding out that your child has died isn’t something you can get over quickly.’
‘Stay out of it,’ James snapped at Spencer and then turned his attention back to Catriona. ‘He’s our son, you know. It’s not like I kidnapped a stranger. He’s our son, our flesh and blood. He should be with us, not with strangers.’
‘You replaced our child,’ Catriona spat out in response, turning back to look at him. ‘Do you not understand how sick that is? It’s not like replacing a dead goldfish. Sebastian was our son. You can’t just replace him
with another child.’
James opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, but no words came out.
‘Where did you bury him?’ she asked James, her voice now a whisper. ‘I don’t even know where my own son is buried.’
James bowed his head, not meeting her gaze as he responded. ‘He was cremated. I couldn’t bear to think of his little body lying in the ground. There’s a plaque at Waverley Cemetery. I used to visit it on Tuesday afternoons while you were at work. I went there with . . .’
He trailed off as the sound of his son’s name stuck in his throat.
‘The child you were passing off as Sebastian?’ Catriona said.
James sighed deeply and cradled his head in his hands. Had she not been so angry, Catriona would have felt sorry for what was obviously a broken man.
‘You can’t think that it was an easy thing for me to do,’ he said, his voice muffled as he buried his head against his chest. ‘When Sebastian died I was in shock, I didn’t know what to do. I was a wreck, I couldn’t think straight, and I was too scared to tell you. I thought you’d blame me for his death and even if you didn’t I knew you’d never go through IVF again, not after . . . well, you know.’
He looked up at that point and Catriona wondered if he would be brave enough, or stupid enough, to bring up her psychosis. He was. ‘Not after what you went through when Sebastian was born. I knew you wouldn’t ever want to have another child.’
He paused for a moment to gauge her reaction, but he must have interpreted Catriona’s blank stare as an invitation, because he kept going.
‘I panicked.’ He started to cry. ‘Sebastian had gone down to sleep, just as usual. I did everything you were meant to: laid him on his back, no loose covers, good ventilation. But then a couple of hours later the baby monitor alarm went off and when I went into his room he wasn’t breathing. His little face was blue. I rushed him to the hospital but it was too late, he was already dead.’
He shuddered at the memory. ‘And then a guy had to come out to the house to examine Sebastian’s room, some paediatric pathologist. And they performed an autopsy to determine the cause of death. I guess I should have been relieved when they said it wasn’t anything I had done, but I couldn’t stop picturing his tiny blue face and the feel of his stiff body in my arms. I’m never going to be able to forget that.’
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