I took a deep breath. DCI Stevenson watched carefully, with his hands tucked inside his pockets. Even though he went to great measures to keep his expression neutral, I saw the tension in his body and knew how much it would mean to him for this to work. I longed for it to work, too, but I had my doubts.
“Maybe if I walk into the woods a bit? Would you come with me, just to take a walk?” I suggested. When Aiden inevitably didn’t reply I took a few tentative steps. He didn’t. I reached out for him. “Come for a walk with Mummy.” There was a desperate tremor in my voice. I blinked, forcing back the emotion threatening to erupt. “It would make me really happy if you came for a walk with me. I really want to know, Aiden. I want to know what happened and where you came from. Will you show me?”
He moved with his left foot first and my heart swelled. Then another step. His movements were even stiffer than ever, like a robot taking its first steps. Then another step. I nodded him forwards, smiling so hard I felt the skin crack in the corners of my mouth. My cheeks ached. Another. But there was something wrong. He was breathing heavily.
“It’s okay,” I coaxed. “I’m here and nothing is going to happen to you. You’re safe, I promise. Look, DCI Stevenson will make sure of that. He’s like a bodyguard. He’s strong, like Superman.” I avoided Stevenson’s eyes, worried he might laugh, or, more likely, grimace. “It’s okay, Aiden.”
The rain continued to patter down, picking up speed, almost drowning out the sound of my voice. I moved forward a few more steps, walking between the first line of trees into the woods. It was a large forest, almost as big as a national park but never given the status. There was rumour of private land bought within the woods, and some was owned by a stately house that resided on a hill overlooking the village. I’d often gone wandering through those woods with Rob, taking our vodka and our cigarettes and worse into the depths. Though it was cold and dark, being there with Rob had always evoked a sense of ticklish danger that warmed my extremities. But now it was different. I saw nothing but pain lurking within those trees. The pain experienced by my son, and the pain I’d felt when he was taken from me.
My coaxing seemed to work. Aiden shuffled forward, finally reaching me. I took his small hand, and found that it was like a block of ice. I rubbed it between my palms, injecting heat into those cold fingers. Aiden was deathly pale. Two bruised eyes looked out at me from beneath the hood, which should have been enough to make me turn back. I didn’t.
“Everything is going to be all right,” I said.
I wanted this to work. I wanted it more than anything. I wanted to find Aiden’s kidnapper and get justice, not just for Aiden, but for me too. How could I sleep at night knowing he was still out there? So I pulled him on. He resisted. He pulled back. I was firm. I stepped on into the woods, holding Aiden’s hand, determined that he would show us what he knew. It was in there, deep down. Everything we needed was in there, locked up tight. I just needed the key and I thought it lay within the leaning beech trees of Rough.
“Come on,” I said, my tone frostier than before, frustration creeping in.
But Aiden was resisting. He refused to move any further, digging his heels into the soft, muddy ground.
“Please, Aiden,” I insisted. If he did this one thing, he could solve everything. I was close to tears as I thought of the monster still out there, still lurking somewhere ready to take my son for a second time. I couldn’t allow that to happen. The answers were inside Aiden, I knew they were, but he refused to tell me. I was reduced to begging him. “Aiden.” I brushed away a tear, aware of everyone watching us, embarrassed, frustrated, and close to the breaking point.
“Maybe we should take a break there, Emma,” said Dr Foster. This time I wasn’t interested in hearing her opinion. She was supposed to be backing me up, wasn’t she? Sisterhood and all that?
“No.” I didn’t recognise my voice, it was more like a growl. There was a hint of wild animal in there, and still I gripped Aiden’s arm while he squirmed away from me, no longer silent but panting heavily. “Aiden, you will show us. You will show us.”
DCI Stevenson held up his hands. “This was a mistake. You were right, Emma. He’s not ready. Let him go.”
“No.” My lips trembled. My voice was virtually unrecognisable. I didn’t know who I was anymore. My face was wet, but whether it was from the rain or from my tears I didn’t know. “Aiden, please.”
“Emma, let the boy go.”
“No.”
“Emma, look at his face.” Dr Foster was firmer this time. “Look at the distress you’re causing him.”
I blinked, bringing the world back into focus. Aiden, where was my Aiden? I shook my head and tried to concentrate. There he was, all grown up, a different boy than when he left. He was red-faced with wide eyes, shaking his head back and forth, leaning away from me with his heels dug firmly in the ground.
“Aiden?” I let him go, and my knees buckled.
14
I’d messed it up. I’d ruined a good shot at finding out more about what Aiden was keeping locked up inside him, and possibly ruined any trust we’d built together.
Even after sitting in the police car with a steaming cup of tea, waiting for the rain to stop, Aiden was terrified of the woods. He was wary of me, too. He flinched when I tried to hold his hand, he backed away when I walked towards him, and he turned his head away from me when I tried to talk to him. I’d made everything a hundred times worse than before.
I felt like the lowest of the low. I was a slight step up from the deranged monster who took him. I was pond scum. Nasty, grimy. I wanted to go home and take a shower to scrub the filth from my body. What kind of person behaves like that with their traumatised child?
“Here.” Dr Foster handed me the plastic cup from a thermos flask filled with milky coffee. “Don’t dwell on today. We’ll talk about it in the therapy session on Thursday, okay?”
I wrapped my hands around the cup, desperate for its much-needed warmth, and nodded. There was nothing more to say. She couldn’t reassure or placate me. There was nothing anyone could say. I’d been in the wrong. I’d behaved in an aggressive manner towards my own son. I thought about the way I’d tried to drag him, like a farmer with a reluctant bull, and cringed into my boots.
DCI Stevenson rested next to me on the side of the police car. Aiden was in the front seat, sitting quietly. “I shouldn’t have pushed this. I’m sorry.”
“We had to try. It was me who fucked it all up.”
Stevenson shook his head. “I don’t think he would have gone in there anyway. He’s just not ready. Get the two of you home, rest up, bond. We’ll try this another day.”
“What’s going to happen next? Are you still searching the forest?”
He scratched the side of his jaw. The bags around his eyes had deepened, revealing the toll this stressful case was having on his psyche. “As much as we can. Plots of land have been sold off and it’s proving to be difficult approaching the companies they belong to. We’ll need warrants to search for them. We’re checking out any planning permission from ten years ago that might relate to some sort of small room built in the area. There’s a chance that Aiden had been walking for a long time before he was found. We can’t be a hundred per cent sure that he’s been kept in the forest all this time.”
“Okay. You’ll keep me updated, won’t you?”
“I’ll be in touch,” he said, “but my priority is on the case now. Denise or Marcus will be with you from now on and they’ll liaise between you and the police.”
It made sense. DCI Stevenson’s time was best spent working on the case, but part of me had come to rely on his reassuring calmness and would miss his familiar presence.
“Get Aiden home and in the warm,” he said, his voice low and soothing. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I know anything.”
He was right: More than anything I needed to pick myself up. The stress of the last few days had culminated in this complete loss of control, and that couldn’t happ
en again. Stay strong for Aiden, I thought. It would be my mantra. I was a mother first, and a mother could always be strong for her children. Surely.
Aiden removed his jacket and pulled the seatbelt across his chest without needing to be prompted when we got to the car. I didn’t try to fill the silence with my own jabbering; I put the radio on to chase the silence away. Eventually, the colour returned to Aiden’s cheeks. He lost the wide-eyed, glassy look, and he seemed to relax.
Until we turned onto our street.
“Fuck.”
I hadn’t had time to watch the news or read the papers that morning. If I had, I would have seen the front-page story about the little boy who had come wandering out of the woods ten years after he was thought to have died in the worst flood for a hundred years. I missed it all. My phone had been on silent all morning, and I hadn’t thought to check it as we left Rough Valley. The reporters were lying in wait to ambush us. Their vans lined the streets. There was a television reporter and a cameraman talking to one of my neighbours.
“Shit.”
I backed out of the road before they saw me, and drove in the opposite direction.
*
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Josie stood in the door with her jaw hanging open, her eyes darting from me to Aiden and back to me.
“It’s been a whirlwind, Jo. Can we come in?”
“Yeah, sure.” She backed away, letting us in through the enormous wooden doorway. Her eyes never moved from Aiden. “He’s so like Rob.” She shut the door behind us, still staring at Aiden. It was only when I cleared my throat that she awoke from her trance. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
Josie led the way through the large, modern entrance hall to the even larger and more modern kitchen. Jake was a huge fan of this kitchen. In fact, he had quizzed Hugh, Josie’s husband, about kitchen contractors for hours. He was a big admirer of the clean, white lines and the soft-close drawers. There was even a revolving wine rack that lit up with little blue LED lights.
“Hugh’s in London on a business trip so it’s just the two of us. I’m sure he’ll call today. It’s all over the news. He’ll be so happy to see Aiden.” Josie bustled around the kitchen flicking on the kettle, pulling white porcelain mugs out of the cupboards. “I just can’t believe it. After all these years.”
I sat on a stool by the breakfast bar and Aiden stood awkwardly away from me. When I pulled one of the stools towards him, he continued to stand, which I pretended didn’t feel like a stab to the gut. I had amends to make.
“It’s all really complicated,” I said. “It’s… There’s a lot.” I took a breath.
Josie leaned over the counter. “Hey, it’s going to be okay.”
I shook my head. It wasn’t, but I couldn’t say that while Aiden was stood right with us.
“Aiden, would you like a tea? When you were little, you used to come and stay with us, do you remember? You liked milky tea and strawberry jam on toast.”
Aiden just blinked.
“He’s not talking right now,” I said. “But keep talking to him, I think it helps. We’ve just come from Rough Valley. I’ve messed up, Jo.”
Josie sensed the mood, so she walked around the breakfast bar. “Aiden, I think I have a DVD of The Jungle Book. I know you’re all grown up now, but you loved that film whenever you stayed with us, remember? You’d sit with Uncle Hugh on the sofa and watch it together. Shall I put it on for you?”
“He’ll follow you,” I said. “He won’t respond, but he likes watching TV so that could help.”
When Josie came back she poured boiling water over the teabags. “What’s happened, Em?”
I traced the pattern of the marble with my finger. “He was kidnapped. Someone took my child, chained him up in a dungeon or something awful, and they did stuff…” I couldn’t say it.
Jo’s arms wrapped around my shoulders, holding me tight. When she sniffed loudly I could tell she was crying too.
“I can’t believe it.” She pulled away, dabbed her eyes with a tissue, and distributed the tea, made strong and brown: builder’s tea.
“There were reporters outside my home, waiting for me, filming my house. I have fifty missed calls, most of them from numbers I don’t even recognise. I haven’t called Jake back, or Rob, or Sonya. They’re all expecting me to know what to do. Aiden needs me to know what to do and I just lost it.”
“When, honey?”
I sniffed and tried to compose myself. Snivelling wasn’t going to help anyone. “No more than an hour ago. The police wanted to see if Aiden would walk through the woods and retrace his steps back to wherever he was kept, but I lost it. I tried to drag him into the woods, Jo. I physically grabbed him and tried to force him to do something he didn’t want to do. I’m as bad as the monster who took him.”
“No you are not.” Josie handed me a box of tissues and I wiped my eyes. “Don’t ever think that. Whoever did those things to him is a monster. They’re barely even human. Their brain is wired all wrong, Em. It’s not the same thing at all.”
Halfway through The Jungle Book, we stumbled out of the kitchen and into the living room where we watched Aiden watching the film. Josie nodded for me to sit down. Rather than sit right next to Aiden, I chose a spot in a comfy armchair just next to the sofa. Josie pulled a bean bag chair closer and sat next to me.
With her help I’d called Jake, Rob, and Sonya, and talked through the situation with the reporters with them. I’d listened to voicemails from DCI Stevenson warning me that the story was out, several reporters, a woman from a PR company, and Denise, our family liaison officer. The second cup of tea finally warmed up the chill I’d gained from standing out in the cold. I felt calmer. I was almost relaxed for the first time in days.
“How’s the baby?” Josie asked.
I stroked my pregnant belly. “She’s a wriggler. She’ll be playing for Arsenal as soon as she comes out.”
Josie laughed, and when I joined in, it felt good.
“How are things with Hugh?”
Josie tucked her legs underneath her body, and wrapped her hands around her mug. It was a small, insignificant movement, but it seemed to me that she was stalling answering the question. “Things are pretty much the same.”
“Ahh.” Josie and Hugh had been experiencing some marital problems over the last few years. While they’d been the epitome of a happy couple back when they first married seventeen years ago, that relationship that gradually disintegrated.
Josie was a little older than me. She married Hugh straight out of university in a fancy church ceremony. Hugh wasn’t from Bishoptown, but they’d decided to move here to start a family. Hugh’s family had been wealthy for generations. Josie’s family had made money running a successful chain of furniture shops. But Josie had been unable to conceive, and their large country pad echoed from emptiness. Hugh fell into a pattern of leaving Josie alone for long periods of time while he went to conferences and business trips in London, working in his brother’s corporate investment business.
“Except that every time he goes on a business trip, he contacts me less and less. He used to ring me twice a day, then it was once. Now I’m lucky if I hear from him after two or three days. He doesn’t even bother to call me when he arrives safely.”
“Do you call him?”
“I used to. But these days I don’t even feel the need to do that. It’s like I’ve stopped caring.”
“Jo…”
“I know. It’s awful.” She curled up on her bean bag, hugging her body tightly.
I sighed. “I hate to think of you all alone in this house, not even talking to Hugh on the phone. You need to pick up the phone and call, Jo. At least call me so I can come over and keep you company.”
She lightly waved her hand to simulate a breezy denial, but I could tell how hard she was trying not to cry. “You’ve got the baby and now you have all this with Aiden. My crap doesn’t even compare.”
“Of course it does. Don’t ever say that.”
; Josie had been through things she didn’t talk about. Not even to me. Perhaps that was why I thought of her first. I could have taken Aiden to Rob’s. He was Aiden’s father, after all. Perhaps I just didn’t feel like dealing with Rob’s mother. Either way, it was Josie’s door I’d turned up at, and it was Josie who I felt had the strongest affinity with Aiden and what he had been through. Though Josie had never really opened up to me, I knew there was something dark lurking beneath her tight smile. I’d always known. She’d dropped little hints over the years—nothing particularly concrete, but I had a feeling she might understand more about how Aiden was feeling than anyone else I knew.
15
On the way to the bathroom I found myself wandering around the Barratt house, refreshing my memories of a happier time. Josie and I went to school together, but she was a few years older than me and we never really hung out. But one day when I was struggling with Aiden in a Bishoptown café, Josie came to my rescue, standing up for me against a busybody old lady who had told me to ‘shut that thing up’. Aiden was four and had dropped his ice cream on the floor. Josie swooped in with a second bowl of ice cream to give to Aiden and plonked herself on the chair next to me. We were friends from that first moment. She even helped me snag a part-time job at the accountancy firm where she worked, on the outskirts of Bishoptown. I hadn’t needed the money but I had needed a life outside Aiden, and the job gave me a new sense of purpose. I had always thrived on being a mother but it didn’t satisfy me in the same way a career did. I needed that extra direction in my life in order to find my own brand of happiness. Though being a mother had always been wonderful to me, having a job fulfilled me in a different way.
Josie and Hugh welcomed us into their house with open arms. Looking back, I think they may have been a little desperate. At that point they’d been trying for a baby for around a year and nothing was happening. Their house suddenly seemed empty and they needed to fill it with people. I’d always thought that Aiden was both a reminder and a distraction them from that difficult time. I walked through the corridors, remembering the time Rob, Aiden, and I all squished into one of the spare rooms. There were plenty to choose from, but we’d all decided to sleep in the same bed.
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