Little Darlings

by Melanie Golding

  “Do you have any pain, Lauren?”

  Lauren nodded her head, yes.

  There was another injection, and the heat of it took the treacliness away, replaced it with a feeling like candy-floss in her head. She slept, heavy, as if under a weighted blanket.

  * * *

  A sharpness in her arm pulled her up, awake. She found she could move her limbs. When she opened her eyes there was a pink face very close to hers. With short black hair and small eyes, the woman was dressed in a white tunic, and she smiled at Lauren as she withdrew, a syringe in her hand.

  “Hello, love. Do you think you can sit up?”

  Lauren was in a small room, not unlike a room in a hostel, which was freshly painted white. She lay on a single bed against the wall. There was an empty baby’s cot against the other wall. For a second she didn’t understand what was happening, what had happened, but then everything rushed in at once. The woman squeezed Lauren’s hand as she trembled, as the wave of fear crashed, receded, left her beached on the bed, struggling to remember to breathe.

  “You’re all right,” said the nurse, whose name badge said Pauline. And it was strangely comforting, hearing that, even though it wasn’t true in the slightest.

  “Where am I?” asked Lauren, remembering hope, psychiatric, baby.

  “Hospital. Sort of. We’re much nicer than your average hospital though, don’t worry.”

  “Psychiatric unit,” said Lauren. They think I’m insane. She looked sideways at the nurse. Does she think that, too? The window was ajar, but had white-painted bars over it. No escape that way.

  “That’s right,” said Pauline. “We’re going to get you better.”

  Better from what? she thought. The only thing that’s wrong with me is that someone’s got my children. She glanced at the door, which was reinforced in a metal frame. The nurse had a thick leather belt with a chain looping from a pouch. Keys to the doors. She’s not a nurse, she’s a guard.

  “What about the babies?” asked Lauren, “Are they here, too?”

  “Not yet. They’re on the way. They’ll be here soon—your husband’s going to bring them. In the meantime, I brought you a breast pump.”

  Lauren looked down at herself. There were two large wet patches on the front of her vest. She felt the throbbing then. Both breasts were full, and hard, and leaking. There was an urgent need to release the pressure. She said, “My boys. They haven’t fed. They’ll be starving.”

  “Don’t worry, they’ll have had a bottle by now.”

  Who gave them the bottle? Patrick? He’d never get the mix right. What if he gave it to them when it was too hot? What if he burned their delicate mouths? But then, they weren’t talking about her boys, not really. The ones Patrick had weren’t hers. Wherever hers were—

  And her breath caught before she could complete the thought.

  “Let’s get you plugged in,” said the nurse, who had bad teeth and sewage breath. She brandished two plastic funnels attached to lengths of tubing, with collection bottles underneath.

  The breast pump began to hum as it sucked, and the let-down was quick; the pressure was released. In no time she’d filled up the bottles.

  “We’ll need to chuck this,” said the nurse. “Hang on.”

  “Why are we chucking it?” asked Lauren. “It’ll be fine for a couple of hours.”

  “It’s the drugs they gave you, flower. It comes out in the milk.”

  Drugs. Her eyelids were still drooping. How long until she could feed them again? That was supposed to be her job now, to feed those boys. It was the whole of her. Her body cried out for them. But then she thought of the babies that had come back. The idea of letting those changelings suckle her was repugnant.

  “The babies,” said Lauren, experimentally, “the ones Patrick’s bringing. Do you know if they’re the same ones they found at the river?” The moment the words were out, she regretted it: Don’t say that, Lauren. It sounds insane.

  There was a pause before the answer came. “Of course. Your babies, Lauren. Riley and Morgan, right? There aren’t any other ones.”

  Two new bottles were soon attached to the machine, which carried on pumping, whoosh-whoosh, suck, suck. The nurse reached into a pocket for a notebook and pen. What were they for?

  “Oh, yes,” said Lauren, “I know that. Sorry. I’m really tired, and all the drugs and everything. I don’t know what I’m saying.” She tried to laugh but it sounded forced.

  Pauline flipped the notebook open. She’s not just a guard. She’s a spy.

  “You don’t have to write that down, do you? What I said, I mean.”

  Pauline turned her vulpine eyes on the prisoner.

  “Sorry, petal. You’re under observation. I have to write everything down.”

  “Yeah, but, not that. I know they’re mine. Morgan and Riley. I can’t wait to see them. I don’t know why I said that before, it wasn’t what I meant.”

  “Sorry,” said Pauline, pen to paper.

  “Please,” said Lauren, begging. But it was no use. Every stroke of the pen was further evidence against her. The doctor would read it, and decide she was mad.

  The nurse finished writing and put her notebook away. She smiled at Lauren with a closed face, reaching over to rub Lauren’s shoulders as she sat there being milked. Lauren’s back was rigid and wouldn’t be loosened. She couldn’t tell what Pauline was thinking, this gaoler, this enemy dressed up as a care worker.

  Another two bottles were half full before the milk flow slowed to a trickle. Pauline took the bottles of thin white fluid into the bathroom, from where there was the sound of splashing in the sink. The tap was turned on for a second before the nurse came out and started to bag up the machine and its tubing. She looked at Lauren and smiled again in that flat, unsympathetic way.

  “The psychiatrist will be along for a chat soon.”

  “Everyone thinks I’m nuts, don’t they?”

  Pauline sat down next to Lauren on the bed. “Whatever you do, don’t say the word nuts to Doctor Summer. She hates that kind of thing.”

  “What do you think I am then? Loopy?”

  A laugh escaped from Pauline, but she clapped a hand over it and frowned with forced concern. “You’ve been under pressure, flower. It’s affected you badly, that’s all. We’re going to help you.”

  “I need to go home. How long do you think they’ll keep me here?”

  “Doctor Summer knows what she’s doing. You’ll feel better after you’ve chatted to her.”

  “I feel fine,” said Lauren, thinking that she definitely sounded very reasonable, very sane. So why wasn’t she writing that down?

  “Don’t worry, my lovely,” said Pauline. “Let me get you a nice cup of tea. Doctor Summer will probably be ready to see you after that.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  At the Infirmary, the doctor explained what she was going to do before she did it. She would check the boys over, inspect all their “nooks and folds”, then weigh them.

  “Nothing invasive. They’ve been through enough today already, from what I hear.”

  Patrick didn’t respond to that. He glanced at Harper, who smiled her reassuring smile again. It was a dumb thing for the doctor to say, under the circumstances. Nobody knew what the babies had been through—what the suspect had or hadn’t done to them in that hour in which they were missing. Patrick’s imagination would be coming up with infinite excruciating possibilities, if it was anything like hers. The difference between them, the father and the police officer, was that she didn’t need to imagine the depths that humans could sink to; she knew it first-hand. His fear that something terrible might have happened to his sons was matched and beaten by her certainty that the outcome could easily have been much worse.

  The doctor asked for the boys to be undressed, and Harper watched Patrick fumble with the babies’ clothing, pulling the yellow vest over Morgan’s head with unpractised fingers. As he removed each item from the baby he passed it to Harper, who placed it in
a labelled evidence bag. Morgan woke up when his father started to undress him, but he didn’t cry. He kicked his legs and looked amused when the doctor made a face. Riley, still strapped into the car seat, made the sea-bird sound, and Morgan copied it precisely. The doctor smiled at Patrick.

  “Cute,” she said. “They’ll have their own language soon.”

  “Yeah,” said Patrick, rather dismissively, as if he didn’t believe it.

  Harper had also heard that twins sometimes developed a language no one else could understand. The idea of it fascinated her and creeped her out in equal measure.

  Soon the boys were side by side on the hospital trolley, vests successfully removed.

  “I’m just going to get them out of their nappies, if that’s OK with you, Dad,” said the doctor.

  “Sure.”

  The doctor raised her eyebrows at Harper, who nodded, go ahead. She pulled off the nappy tabs, then picked up the naked baby and turned him onto his front, shining a pen light all over the skin, her gloved hand gently parting folds where the chub met itself. She turned the boy back over and shone the light into his mouth. Patrick looked sickened, his lips twisted. His hand rose slowly to cover them, and Harper could see that the man’s eyes were filling up.

  The doctor repeated the procedure with the other baby, placing them both on their backs, naked on the trolley before she spoke.

  “I can’t see anything notable.”

  “OK,” said Patrick, his voice thick, “what does that mean?”

  “It means there are no signs of any maltreatment, in my opinion. No injuries,” she looked at Harper, “no, um, visible evidence of foreign objects, fluids, or matter of any kind.”

  Patrick groaned, a pitiful sound of disgust and relief. He covered his eyes with his hands. When he took them away, white finger marks at his temples slowly faded. The doctor put the nappies back on the babies before she turned towards the computer and began to make notes.

  “You can get them dressed now, Dad,” she said, over her shoulder.

  And Patrick looked at them both, lying there, gurgling, and then he pulled from the changing bag two clean vests, one yellow and one green. He held one in each hand, for a moment stood motionless then slowly raised his eyes to meet Harper’s, who saw the panic in his face. He looked from vest to vest, from baby to baby. Which was which?

  “Did you see which way round they were?” Patrick’s voice was high and quiet.

  Harper couldn’t say. She mirrored his panicked eyes, shrugged helplessly. Morgan had been the one on the left, she thought. But did the doctor put them back in the same places? She hadn’t been paying attention.

  Patrick scrutinised them both, picked one up in his hand, turned him over. The baby’s arms and legs stuck out like a parachutist. He put the boy back down, picked up the other. No way to tell. They looked exactly the same.

  Harper said, “Don’t they have moles, or something?”

  “No,” said Patrick, “Yellow for Morgan. Green for Riley. Lauren wanted to paint their nails but I wouldn’t let her. Stupid, stupid.”

  “You weren’t to know,” said Harper, thinking, yes, that was stupid, why wouldn’t you do that?

  Patrick slid his eyes over to the scale, just to the right of the trolley. Of course, one would be bigger. They could check the notes, find out which one was which. Harper allowed herself to relax.

  To the doctor, Patrick said, “Um, could you tell me their weights again, please, by any chance?”

  The doctor tapped at her keyboard, scrolled down the screen.

  “Oh, yes, funnily enough they both weighed the same. Four point six-two kilos. Amazing. You’d think one would be bigger and one smaller, even by point zero one of a kilo. Huh.” The doctor laughed, but when she caught sight of Patrick’s face she stopped laughing and stood up.

  “Oh, no,” said the doctor, “can’t you tell—”

  “Of course I can,” snapped Patrick, “I just, wanted to make sure. I think I know my own children, thank you very much.”

  He picked up the one on the left. Decisively he began to dress the baby boy in the yellow vest. The doctor turned back to the screen and started typing again. Her cheeks had turned a shade of dark pink.

  Well, thought Harper, even if that one isn’t Morgan, he is now.

  Both babies were gazing coolly at her as their father struggled with the fastenings on now-Morgan’s vest. It was as if they knew what he’d done, and they wanted her to know that they knew.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The therapy room at the secure unit had been decorated with babies in mind. There were black and white patterned posters on the ceiling. Contrast stripes were supposed to be good for little babies to focus on. On one wall was a painted mural of a yellow bear, holding on to a red balloon. Lauren looked at the thick rug between the two chairs, and the crossed feet of the doctor in her low-heeled powder-blue pumps. Next to Doctor Summer’s chair, there was a small table with a clipboard and a pen. Next to her own, a bright red plastic box of board books and a yellow one of rattles and crinkly fabric leaves.

  “What are you thinking, Lauren?” asked Doctor Summer.

  Lauren ceased her inspection of the room. She looked at her hands in her lap. “I was thinking about my babies,” she said.

  “Can you tell me what the thought was, precisely?”

  “I miss them.”

  Doctor Summer uncrossed her feet, and re-crossed them the other way. The shiny skin on her legs looked as if it might be naturally hairless. It sagged slightly at the calves, shot through with spider veins.

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  Lauren noticed a smear of dried mud on the back of her thumb and rubbed at it.

  “I think so,” she said. “I got upset.”

  “You were upset,” said Doctor Summer, making a note.

  “Yes. The boys were gone, I didn’t know where they were, I was going crazy waiting for them to be found. It was the worst thing imaginable.”

  “You didn’t know where they were.”

  “No. And I didn’t know if they would ever come back. You don’t know what it was like.”

  “Tell me, Lauren. I want to understand.”

  Lauren didn’t say anything for a long time. She kept thinking that the rug on the floor between them should have had her two kicking, smiling boys on it, and it was odd being here in this room without any babies at all. Morgan would have loved the black and white posters. Riley would have loved the crinkly fabric leaves.

  “Tell me about what happened when they found the babies,” said the doctor. “When they brought them back to you. How did you feel?”

  It seemed a loaded question. Surely she already knew what happened. Lauren tried to work out what the doctor wanted her to say.

  “At first I was happy. They’d been gone for … I don’t know how long. It felt like forever.”

  The doctor waited for her to go on. After a time, Lauren said, “So, when they were returned, it was the best feeling in the world.”

  The doctor waited again for Lauren to continue, but she did not.

  “And then what happened?”

  Lauren looked past doctor's head at the sky through the window. There were several enormous trees in the distance. She could hear laughter, from somewhere outside. A toddler’s laughter. She tried to imagine what the boys would be like as toddlers, but could only conjure those unnerving, unknowable faces from the riverside. The doctor moved her head into Lauren’s eye line. The woman really had an alarmingly unusual face. Wouldn’t her parents have been given the option, as a child, to have those ears pinned back?

  “Lauren,” she said, “you told me you got upset. Why do you think you felt that way?”

  “I don’t know.” She did know.

  “Was there something about the babies that upset you? You just told me how much you missed them. Why would seeing them upset you so much?”

  Lauren looked directly into the doctor’s eyes. She opened her mouth slightly, b
ut didn’t speak.

  Doctor Summer waited patiently for a very long time. Then she said, “The police officer who brought you in said you tried to push the stroller into the river. Why would you do that, Lauren?”

  Lauren dropped her eyes.

  “I don’t know.” But again, she did know. The answer ran through her mind: I wanted to put them back where they came from. I hoped that, if I put them back in the river straight away, maybe my boys would be returned to me.

  “I’m on your side, Lauren.”

  Lauren thought, she thinks I’m mad. Am I mad? I can’t tell her the truth, I know that. She said, “I just … for a second I thought … it sounds ridiculous, actually.”

  “Nothing you say will sound ridiculous to me. Believe me. You can trust me.”

  No, she thought, I can’t trust you, writing things down. Who’s going to read it? How long do they keep the notes for, before they throw them away, wipe the record clean? Lauren wanted to say nothing, but at the same time had a strong urge to explain herself. Perhaps if she explained it in the right way they would let her go. Give the doctor something, half of the truth, or the old bat wouldn’t give up trying to find it out.

  She cleared her throat. “Well, I just thought for a second that they weren’t my babies. But I was wrong, I know they were. Are. I know they are.”

  Silently, while she lied to the doctor, her brain kept supplying the truth: I know they aren’t. I have never been surer of a thing. The thoughts were so loud in her head she was scared she would speak them and not even realise. Am I mad? she thought. I might be. What if I am? What if I’ve got it wrong and the boys are my boys and I did all of that for nothing? I feel like I know. But what if I can’t trust that feeling?

  Doctor Summer wrote something down. “Is there anything else you can tell me about that?”

  Lauren swallowed. “Only that I know it sounds insane. I know it. That counts for something, doesn’t it? I don’t think it was normal, to think that. I think it’s crazy. Crazy people think they’re sane, don’t they? I understand how it looked, I do.”