Silent Child

by Sarah A. Denzil

  “Well, I think this one will keep me busy.” I laughed and pointed to my baby bump. But when I saw the tense line of his jaw and the way he gripped the card, I leaned across the sofa and held his forearm. “I know there’s going to be a lot of change happening in our lives, but it’s for a wonderful reason. You and I have created life and we’re going to get the opportunity to watch that wonderful life be born and grow up.” My voice cracked and I steadied myself before continuing. “This is our new beginning.”

  Jake let go of the card and wrapped his fingers around my hand. “You’re right. Our new life together. I’m sorry I got freaked out.”

  I shook my head and squeezed his arm. I truly believed every word I said. There was a dark part of me filled with bitterness and grief, I could not deny that, but the rest of me was hopeful and strong, filled with the optimism of a new baby and a new life.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of our house phone.

  “Shall I get that?” Jake was half-standing, but I pulled him back onto the sofa and pushed myself onto my feet.

  “No, I want to stand up and move around a little. I think I’m getting cramp again.” I walked over to the phone and picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

  “Ms Price. Emma. My name is DCI Stevenson. Carl Stevenson. Do you remember me?”

  The sound of his voice burst a bubble inside me and all the air left my body. I deflated, feeling myself double over. The room seemed to collapse around me, narrowing into nothing but the rushing blood in my ears, and the narrow spot of light by the telephone.

  “Yes, I remember you.” My voice was breathless, only slightly louder than a whisper. Of course I remembered him. I gulped in a breath before I said, “You were DI Stevenson then, though.”

  My heart beat against my ribs. Der-dun-der-dun.

  “That’s right.” He paused. “Emma, you need to come to St Michael’s Hospital as soon as you can.”

  Der-dun-der-dun.

  Breathless again. “Why?”

  “Because I think we’ve found Aiden.”

  4

  I’ve spent my fair share of time disorientated in hospitals. When I was five, I came to visit my dying Granddad and wandered away to find a vending machine. A nurse found me curled in a corner with my arms wrapped around my knees, crying about the scary balloons that everyone carried. They were the fluid bags from their IV drips.

  There was Aiden’s birth, sixteen years ago. The nurse kept telling me I was lucky to be such a young mum—at least I’d get my figure back. “Try having a kid when you’re forty,” she kept saying.

  Then there was the car accident. Mum was in a coma for a week before passing, but Dad’s death had been instantaneous after he flew through the windscreen when the brakes failed on the M1. Their accident had caused a traffic jam of over three hours that day. Twitter had been filled with angry commuters lambasting my father’s death because it made them late for work. But I still remember negotiating those twists and turns around the hospital, failing to remember which ward the nurse said, or finding out that they’d moved her to a different ward. The abbreviations made my head spin. ICU. A&E. CPR. DNR.

  The truth is that I was relieved when she finally passed. By that point the doctors were uncertain whether she would ever regain her mental faculties after the trauma she had suffered, and I didn’t want to be the one to tell her that Dad had died while she slept. At least this way they both slipped away together.

  In just one moment, I lost my clever mother and my caring father. Like the moment I lost my curious son.

  As I burst through the door into the paediatric ward in St Michael’s Hospital, a shiver ran down my spine and I knew in my heart that I had found my son. In one mere moment what had been lost was found again. Moments are what make this life, aren’t they? A life is built on moments; seconds passing by. Some seconds are fleeting—part of a silly dream, or chopping up vegetables, taking the rubbish out, trimming our nails. Some are not.

  Detective Carl Stevenson sat on a small bench in a tiny room on the right of the ward corridor. He rose to his feet—polystyrene cup in one hand—as I approached, and opened his mouth to speak. I didn’t let him.

  “Where is he?” I blurted out. “Is it him?”

  “Emma,” he said, doing away with formalities. “We need to talk. Take a moment and sit down. I want to explain everything to you first.”

  I regarded his dark brown eyes and salt-and-pepper beard—more salt since the last time we’d met—and wondered how on earth he supposed I could sit down at a moment like this. There was a chance my son was back from the dead. God, just thinking about it was insane. This was all insane. And yet…

  “Love, think of the baby,” Jake said. “He’s right. Sit down and listen to the detective.”

  “I need to know,” I said. “I need to see him.”

  What would a sixteen-year-old Aiden look like? Would he have bum-fluff on his chin like the kids at school? Would he be broad and lanky? Or short and stubby? Would he look like me or Rob? I shut my thoughts down. What if it wasn’t him at all? What if this was all some sort of mistake? It was the most logical explanation to everything.

  “I know,” Stevenson said. “But you need to take a breath. Aiden… the young boy we found… has been through significant trauma and is very sensitive at the moment. The doctor will explain more in a moment but I wanted to talk to you first. I thought you might remember me from the investigation after the flood.”

  “I do,” I said.

  After we realised Aiden was missing, search and rescue scoured the surrounding area for him. The River Ouse was searched. The woods were searched. The village was searched. But there was no sign of him. There was no body, either. The experts explained to me that when someone drowns in a flood, they do not float downstream like many people believe. They actually sink underneath the turbulent water where it is calmer, and then they rise to the top very close to where they drowned. But there was no body. Aiden was never found. That was when Detective Stevenson had been assigned, because there was a slim chance that Aiden had not drowned at all.

  I sat down on the bench as a group of three nurses walked down the corridor on our left. I thought they were staring at me, possibly wondering if I was here to ‘claim’ the missing boy. Like a leftover sock after a PE lesson. My hands formed into fists and I clutched at the cotton dress I was wearing. It was damp from the rain outside. I hadn’t even put on a coat.

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “A teenage boy was found wandering along the back road between Bishoptown village and Rough Valley Forest. A couple were heading out of the village and came across him. He was wearing only a pair of jeans. No top or shoes. He was muddy all over. They stopped and asked the boy where he was going. They said he acknowledged their questions but didn’t speak. He stopped walking, looked at them, and maintained eye contact, but he did not reply. They managed to get him into their car and drove him to the nearest police station.”

  I let out a long breath, only at that moment realising that I had been holding my breath at all. The baby adjusted her weight inside me, kicking me as she moved. I placed my palm on the bump, barely registering the movement.

  “What happened next?” I asked.

  “My colleagues at the station ran through a list of missing persons in the area but the boy didn’t match anyone in the system. Then they took a DNA sample.” Stevenson paused and ran his hands along his jeans. He’d been called in, I realised. He wasn’t in the smart suit I remembered from that horrible week when we searched for Aiden. “Do you remember that we put Aiden’s DNA on file after his disappearance?”

  “Yes,” I replied. I had scraped up as much of his hair as I could, and sent in items of clothing with dried blood on them for the police to use. Aiden was always scraping his knees or picking at a scab, and I had never been particularly good at keeping on top of the washing.

  “The boy was clearly distressed. He wouldn’t speak to any of my colleagues at the s
tation, so they brought him to the hospital. A DNA test was run yesterday and the analysis came back a few hours ago. The teenage boy in that room is Aiden.”

  I unclenched my fists, let out a shallow breath, then clenched my hands again. How could this be happening? How? A tingling sensation spread over my body, from my scalp to the bottom of my feet.

  “Are you all right, Ms Price? Can I get you anything?”

  I vaguely heard Jake’s reply. “It’s Mrs Price-Hewitt now. We’re married.”

  “I apologise. Emma, can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall behind me. My thoughts swam with Stevenson’s words. DNA. Teenage boy. Rough Valley Forest. Was it all real?

  I realised Stevenson had been right to take me aside and explain all this to me. I needed to compose myself if I was going to step into that room and face Aiden for the first time in ten years. I declared you dead.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I’m fine. This is all quite a shock, as you can imagine. Can I see him now? I need to see him.”

  “I’ll check with the doctor.” Stevenson offered a taut smile and rose to his feet.

  “It can’t be true,” Jake said after Stevenson had left the room. “It’s been ten years. Where has he been? I bet the police have bungled something. They’ll have got the DNA test wrong or something.”

  “What if they haven’t?” I said. “What if it really is him? Jake, I’ll have my son back.”

  Jake wrapped his arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up, love. I’d hate for you to be heartbroken all over again. Remember how long it took you to deal with Aiden’s death?”

  “I know,” I said. And the truth was that my heart was still closed. I hadn’t even realised it. I’d thought I was so open and raw, but I wasn’t. I was closed up and shrivelled inside.

  I rose to my feet when the doctor came to speak to us, and found myself dwarfed by his height. But the man’s kind face and open eyes helped to relieve some of the tension that had built up in my chest.

  “Mrs Price-Hewitt, my name is Dr Schaffer. I am the head of the paediatric ward here at St. Michael’s. There are a few things I want to mention before you go in to see your son. I’ve been briefed by DCI Stevenson here so I understand the delicate nature of this situation. Your son, Aiden, has been through some trauma. He is currently still in shock from whatever that trauma is, and for that reason we have not completed a full examination. We’re trying to space out each procedure to keep him calm and happy. But right now, we can say that he is healthy. He is smaller than most sixteen-year-olds, and we will need to look into that. He has remained mute since his arrival, but he does understand what we are saying, and he is happy watching cartoons or children’s television shows. But please don’t feel disheartened if he doesn’t react when you first see him.”

  The blood drained from my face. What if he didn’t recognise me? I reached out for Jake’s hand and he clasped it with his own.

  “Thank you, Dr Schaffer,” I said with an unsteady voice.

  The doctor smiled and led the way down the corridor. I followed with shaky steps, trying desperately to walk with my back straight and tall, keeping one hand on my pregnant stomach, attempting to soothe my unborn child and soothe myself at the same time. My heart worked double time, pumping and pounding like a dribbled basketball. The hospital walls closed in on me as claustrophobia seeped into my veins, constricting my chest so that I had to remind myself to take deep breaths. I gripped Jake’s fingers so hard that it must have caused him pain, but he didn’t flinch or complain.

  And then we reached the room. The doctor paused and waited for me to nod. He opened the door. In that most mundane of actions, I had one of those moments, the kind you remember for a lifetime, the kind that slow down and leave a permanent imprint on your mind.

  5

  There was nothing remarkable about the boy in the hospital room. He was propped up by pillows on the bed, with a pigeon chest poking up inside blue pyjamas. I never found out who bought him those pyjamas, but I suspected it was DCI Stevenson. The boy had straggly brown hair that hung lankly down to the collar of his pyjama top. He sat with his fingers clutching hold of the bed sheets, his gaze fixed on the tiny hospital television. I took a tentative step forward, following the doctor but barely aware of anyone else in the room except the boy in the bed, whose head turned in my direction and stopped my heart.

  He had Rob’s eyes.

  My Aiden—the little boy I nursed as a baby—had also had Rob’s eyes. They were chestnut brown with a hint of hazel near the pupil. A multitude of photographs popped into my head. Aiden’s first birthday, the time he smeared strawberry mousse all over his hands and face, bath-time, bedtime stories, sitting on Nana’s lap with Grandpa pulling faces, jumping up and down in puddles… all with a big grin across his face and those shining chestnut-brown eyes.

  “How do we know the DNA test was correct?” I heard Jake say. “How do we know there wasn’t some sort of balls-up?”

  “There wasn’t,” I whispered, utterly certain that it was Aiden sitting in front of me.

  “It’s unlikely,” answered DCI Stevenson, “but to be sure I was going to suggest that we test his DNA against Emma’s. That way we’ll know one hundred per cent that this is Aiden Price.”

  I buried you, I thought, with my gaze holding my son’s. In my heart I put you to rest. Can you ever forgive me?

  Did I even deserve forgiveness? Mothers are supposed to never give up. In the movies, when the child is missing, the mother always knows they are alive. They would feel it if the child were dead. That connection, that magical connection between mother and child would be cut, and there was supposed to be a sensation that came along with it. But I’d seen Aiden’s red anorak pulled from the River Ouse and I’d assumed he was dead. I bit my lip to hold back the tears.

  “Aiden,” I said, stepping towards the bed. “Hello.” I smiled at the boy with the dark brown hair and small chin. My old withered heart skipped a beat when it hit me that he was so small—not much bigger than a twelve-year-old—with eyes that seemed too big for his face.

  “Don’t panic if he doesn’t react,” said Dr Schaffer. “We believe he’s listening and taking everything in, but it will take some time for him to process what has happened to him. Would you like to sit down, Mrs. Price-Hewitt?”

  I nodded, and moved my body accordingly as the doctor pulled a chair close to Aiden’s bed. But as I was sitting, all I could think about was what had happened to my boy. Where had he been? A decade. Ten years. Wars were fought and lost in a decade. Prime Ministers and Presidents came and went. Important scientific discoveries were made. And all that time, my boy… my child… had been missing from the world. Missing from my world, at least.

  Nudging the chair forward, I leaned towards him and let my hand hover a centimetre above his. Aiden stared down at my hand, frowned, and pulled his away.

  “He’s not keen on physical contact at the moment,” explained Dr Schaffer.

  I tried to ignore the pain those words caused, and withdrew my hand to place it on my lap. Twice I opened my mouth to speak, but twice I closed my mouth again. There was a Transformers cartoon blaring out through the room, interrupting the hanging silence, but even so the atmosphere was electric.

  “Aiden, do you remember me?” I said in a croaky voice. “Do you know who I am?”

  He blinked. He was so still it was terrifying. The little boy I had known was never still, and even though I knew instantly that this boy with the chestnut brown eyes was my son, I was having difficulty associating the curious six-year-old chatterbox with this soulful, mute young man.

  I injected some cheer into my voice in a pathetic attempt to lighten the mood. “I’m your mum. We lost each other for a while but I’m back now and I’m going to make sure you’re safe, okay?” I blinked rapidly and took a deep breath, trying desperately to quell the rising tide of emotions threatening to sweep me
away. “Once you’re feeling better you can come home with me and we can get to know each other again. Does that sound okay?”

  There was not even a trace of a smile on his lips. His eyes slowly turned back to the television and I longed to wrap my arms around his narrow shoulders and hold him close to me. I turned to the doctor in a panic.

  “I don’t… I don’t know what to do.” Despite my efforts to hold back my tears a sob escaped, breaking through the noisy cartoon and jolting me back to reality. Aiden didn’t need to see me break down. He needed me to be strong, not a dithering wreck.

  “You’re doing great,” Dr Schaffer encouraged. “Try to keep talking to him. We want Aiden to hear the sound of his mother’s voice.”

  I took a deep breath and steadied myself. Aiden smelled like disinfectant and eggs. My eyes trailed the small table next to his bed. There was a colouring book but no toys, no presents or flowers. My boy should have gifts. I would come back with gifts and he would be Aiden again. He’d be the bright, colourful, and creative little boy I used to know. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. There he was, walking up the school carpark on his way to class with a Power Rangers rucksack and his bright red coat. I opened my eyes and pretended I was talking to that same boy.

  “Do you like the cartoon, Aiden? I remember when you were little and you had a transformer car. Do you remember that? It was red and it turned into a robot. You used to play games where the robot went to war against your stuffed toys. You’d got a bit too big for your stuffed rabbit and teddy bears. You liked robots and cars and Power Rangers, like most little boys your age. But you liked drawing, too. You used to draw the most wonderful pictures for me. They weren’t stick figures either—they were proper, coloured-in, gorgeous pictures of me and Nana and Grandpa. We used to pin them up all around the cottage.” I paused. None of those things were there anymore. No Nana. No Grandpa. No cottage. Suddenly my mouth felt very dry. “You might not like those things anymore but that’s okay. A lot has changed. We can figure out what we like together, eh? We’ll go to the shops and you can pick out anything you want. Anything.” I let out a nervous laugh and leaned back in my chair. “And in a few weeks you’ll get to meet your sister. We don’t know her name yet. Maybe you can help me choose it. I would like that a lot.” There was nothing. No reaction from him at all. “You grew into your ears! I always wondered if you would.” I clutched one hand with the other to stop myself turning into a manic, rambling idiot.