After Aiden’s disappearance, both Josie and Hugh were huge helps, delivering food to the house, offering shoulders to cry on. Hugh even paid for contractors to search the river after the search and rescue team had given up. They were my best friends. My only real friends.
I stopped and stared out at Wetherington House, which stood tall on the hill above Rough Valley Forest. The Bishoptown village lay nestled in the valley of three hills, but the boundary reached up to both the hill where Josie and Hugh Barratt lived, and the larger hill where the Duke of Hardwick resided in his stately home. Between the Barratt house and Wetherington House, part of Rough Valley Forest snaked through the valleys. Looking at it made my chest tighten. Had Aiden been held captive inside the woods, or had he staggered through part of the woods from somewhere else? No one knew how long he’d been walking. No one knew where he had come from.
My phone rang.
I swiped the bar across, recognising the number. “Hi, what’s up?”
“They took my fucking picture.”
“Who took your picture, Rob?”
“The fucking reporters. Who the fuck else?”
“Calm down. I’m at Josie’s place. Come up here. I’m hiding from the reporters. They’re all camped outside my house.”
“I’m on my way.”
Less than ten minutes later, a dishevelled Rob turned up at the door, red-faced and fuming. He ran his hands through his wet hair and brushed past me as he hurried into the house.
“I can’t believe it, the bastard. He shoved that thing right in my face and I nearly lost it.”
Josie popped her head around the door of the kitchen. “I’ll put the kettle on, Rob.”
He didn’t even notice. Instead he paced the length of the entrance hall. “Where’s Aiden?”
“He’s in the living room watching The Jungle Book. Listen, Rob, there’s something I need to tell you about this morning.” I hesitated. I didn’t want to tell him, not like this, but if I left it much longer, it would get worse.
“What? Did the bastards get you, too?” Rob had a wild way about him when he was agitated. He fidgeted like a junkie in need of a fix. He scratched his forearms and rubbed his bulging eyes, as if he had more energy than he could handle but felt exhausted at the same time.
“No, nothing like that. It’s about me and Aiden. I did something really stupid.”
He stopped pacing the hallway and moved closer to me instead. I noticed how his hands moved up, like he was contemplating reaching out to me, but then his arms dropped by his side. “What is it? It can’t be that bad. You never do anything stupid, Em. I bet it wasn’t as stupid as getting your mug photographed by a scummy paparazzi.”
I shook my head and backed away. “It’s worse.”
“Anyone for a cuppa?” Josie called, saving me from blurting everything out.
“Coming,” I called. “Come and sit down for a minute. You’ll feel better.”
“I want to know what’s going on.”
I chewed on my bottom lip and scratched at a patch of dry skin on my hand. The anxieties of the last few days were catching up with me. I was changing in a physical sense. The lack of sleep, the constant worrying, and the fact that I was so busy in the late stages of my pregnancy had brought nothing but dry skin and circles under my eyes. I’d even lost a little weight.
“Long time no see, Hartley.” Josie placed a mug of steaming tea onto the breakfast bar as we moved into the kitchen. “Are those grey hairs I see? And crow’s feet, just there?” She pointed at his eyes.
Rob swatted Josie’s hand away, but failed to hide his smile. “Yeah and that’s a new moustache hair, isn’t it?”
“Cheeky arsehole.” Josie rolled her eyes exaggeratedly when she turned to me.
I mouthed a ‘thank you’ for helping calm him down. But even still, when I swallowed my throat was dry. I was dreading telling him about the incident in the forest.
“They’re gonna think I did it, aren’t they.” Rob let out a long, slow, depressed sigh. “They’re going to think I somehow did this to my own son. That’s what they always think.”
“How could they? You’ve been in the army. You’ve got the strongest possible alibi there is,” I said. I had no idea he’d been worrying about this.
“I know that, but they don’t know it yet. They’ll think I’ve been sneaking out or something, or that I have some sick accomplice. They always think it’s the dad.” He sipped on his tea. “Fuck all this. I don’t want to think about it anymore. What did you have to tell me? Is it worse? Is it better? Have they caught the monster?”
“No, it’s not better or worse, really.” I set down my tea and told Rob about taking Aiden to the woods. Though I didn’t look at him directly, I was aware of his weight shifting as he fidgeted on his stool, aware of his back straightening in my peripheral vision.
There was silence when I finished talking.
“I lost control.” I placed my head in my hands.
“It’s all right, Em,” Josie soothed.
“No it’s not.” Rob set his mug down with an audible bang. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to do this? Why didn’t you phone me? You know what a fucking phone is, Emma, right?”
“Keep your voice down. Aiden is in the next room and the last thing he needs to hear is you ranting and swearing,” I said.
“Yeah, I know that, but I’m mad, aren’t I? I’m fuming because you took our son to do a bloody reconstruction of the day he staggered out of his ten-year captivity.”
“Everything moved so fast. They wanted to keep it as small as possible. They suggested I go by myself. I knew you’d refuse to stay away if I told you about it.”
“Oh, you knew, did you? That’s a pretty trick, reading someone’s mind. You’ll have to show it to me some day.”
I shook my head. Even after all this time he was still just as infuriating as ever. “Grow up, Rob.”
“Guys,” Josie intervened. “Remember what’s important. The kid in the other room watching a DVD. He’s all that matters.”
“Exactly,” Rob said. “And that’s why what you did was wrong, Emma. Don’t you see that?”
I knew when he got to his feet that I’d made a huge mistake choosing this particular moment to tell Rob about the events of the morning. He was too wired, too agitated. He was on the edge. I should have seen that.
“I’m sorry.”
But he’d stopped listening to me.
“I think I should take him home with me. It’s the best way. You’re a mess, Emma. You’re making terrible decisions. You tried to drag Aiden into the woods, for fuck’s sake. The reporters are outside your house. It makes sense.”
It was my turn to get to my feet. “Absolutely not. I’m not giving up so easily. He’s my son, he’s coming home—”
“And he’s not mine?” Rob’s eyes were wide and pleading. Little boy’s eyes. His presence was an intimidating one in the Barratt’s kitchen, but there was something of the child in him too. He’d always had an air of vulnerability about him.
“That’s not what I mean. I’m his mother—”
“And there it is. That’s what it all boils down to. The mother. I remember the first shitshow that came out in the press ten years ago, how every picture was all about you. The poor, distraught mother. Fathers aren’t allowed to grieve, are they? Not in the same way. They aren’t given the luxury of breaking down like a mother is. Mothers get all the rights and are still allowed to fuck up as much as they want.”
“That’s not fair, Rob,” Josie said.
I rubbed my hands anxiously, desperately trying to rub away the things that had happened that morning. He was right, in a way. It was expected for the mother to break down. Perhaps I had been allowed to grieve too much and for too long after Aiden’s disappearance. But this time, I couldn’t. There was no way I could lose control like that again.
I opened my mouth to rebuke his argument, but lost my train of thought when a strange, high-pitched sound came fr
om the living room. I was vaguely aware of my facial muscles slackening as I hopped down from the stool and hurried out of the kitchen. Rob only stared after me with a question on his lips as I rushed through the kitchen door, colliding against the doorframe with my hip. My socks slipped on the wooden floorboards.
By the time I reached the living room, I was out of breath and panting. Aiden was sat exactly where we had left him, watching a different DVD this time, The Aristocats, with the sound on mute. He turned to me as I entered the room, but he didn’t say a word. He didn’t make a sound.
Footsteps sounded behind me and Rob entered the room. “What is it?”
“I thought… I thought I heard him singing.”
16
Three hours later, I called Jake and told him I was coming home. Josie had kindly made us a few sandwiches and a couple more cuppas, though we’d all fancied a vodka and Coke after the day we’d had. Rob settled down with us and watched another Disney DVD before we agreed to keep going as we already were, with Aiden living at my house, but communicate with each other every step of the way. We were in the midst of a journey, for better or worse, and that journey was likely to be arduous. We needed each other.
And I needed Jake, in my own way. I’d already thought of fifty things I wanted to tell him, and plenty of issues I wanted his opinion about. Whether to enlist help with PR was one thing. None of us were experts when it came to the press. God knows I’d failed the first time this happened. I shuddered as I thought about the headlines from the tabloids. Rob had remembered it one way, but I recollected that time differently. “Teen Mum Let Little Aiden Go”, “Young Mum Drinking ‘Heavily’ Night Before Flood”. They’d raided my Facebook page, pulling every picture of me out with my friends. What they didn’t show was Aiden tucked up in bed with his grandparents downstairs. They didn’t show the pictures of me taking Aiden to get his vaccinations or breastfeeding in the early hours of the morning.
No, I was a ‘young’ mum, a ‘teen’ mum, even though I was twenty-four at the time of Aiden’s disappearance. Being young equated to being bad. That was what they really wanted to say. I was a bad mother and it was all my fault that he wandered away from school.
And poor Amy Perry wasn’t let off the hook either. They even found a picture of us both out at the local pub with pint glasses in our hands. We were the ‘boozy mum and teacher’ living it large while a kid drowned in a river. That was what they meant. That was what they implied. Yes, I could lose it from grief. I could break down in a way Rob couldn’t, but I had been persecuted for not shutting my legs when I was a teenager, and I was dragged over hot coals for having a social life while my son was a toddler.
I hated them. I hated them almost as much as I hated the man who took Aiden from me all those years ago. I hated them as I pulled onto my street and still saw the occasional van on our road, even though I’d waited until the after sun went down to try and sneak into the house.
I held my breath as I pulled into the driveway. My heart was racing and my hand trembled as I undid my seatbelt.
“Just stay with me, Aiden, okay? Stay close to me.”
I was far more agitated than he was. He didn’t need any more prompting to stay calm. The events of the morning seemed to have faded away and he was at least a little more relaxed than he had been. The look of terror on his face as we stood by Rough Valley would haunt me for the rest of my life. I took a deep breath and opened the car door, crunching gravel beneath my feet.
“Mrs Price-Hewitt, Simon Gary from the News of the World. Would you be interested in telling Aiden’s story?”
“No thank you.”
I hurried around the car, avoiding the gaze of the short bald man following me.
“Where has Aiden been all this time?”
I kept my mouth firmly closed as I opened Aiden’s door and took his hand. At least there didn’t seem to be a photographer there yet.
“What’s happened to him? Where did he go?”
“I think you should leave. This is private property.” I fumbled in my handbag for my keys, almost spilling the contents onto the ground.
Before I could get the key in the lock, the door was snatched open and Jake ushered us both into the house. I wrapped my arms around his neck and held him tight.
“Thank you.”
“I’ve got you,” he murmured into my hair. His voice always carried a hint of the south in his huskier moments. “I’ve got you now.”
He led me through to the kitchen and sat me down.
“Aiden, why don’t you pour your mum a glass of water.” Jake moved his head in the direction of the correct cupboard.
I noticed that even the kitchen curtains were closed, which we never usually bothered to do. The kitchen faced a private back garden almost completely secluded by a line of tall fir trees. Aiden moved quietly around the room, picking a glass out of the cupboard and pouring tap water into it. He placed it carefully on the table in front of me.
“Good lad. Now, why don’t you go upstairs for a little bit? I left you some books on your bedside table so you can read.” Jake smiled at Aiden as he gave him instructions. He was in teacher mode and something in Aiden was responding to it. Aiden followed his directions almost robotically. I watched him with interest as he stepped out of the room.
“What is it?” Jake asked.
“It’s probably nothing.”
Jake tilted his head to one side and gave me a questioning look.
“It’s just the way Aiden responds to your direction. There’s something weird about it.”
Jake let out a small laugh. “What are you talking about? He does the same for you.”
“No, it’s not the same. There’s something… different about the way he acts around you.” I shrugged and sipped my water. “Maybe it’s nothing. I’m being silly.”
“You’re not. You’re being a mother.” Jake stepped around the table and rubbed the small of my back. “Maybe it’s hard for you to see a man around Aiden after what’s happened to him. You’re just going into protective mode.”
But I wasn’t sure that was true. I never noticed a change in Aiden’s behaviour when he was around Rob.
“How’s Bump today?”
I pulled myself out of my thoughts to answer. “She’s fine.”
“You look tired out, Emma Hewitt. On the sofa with you. I think a foot rub is in order.”
“That does sound good. What about Aiden?”
“He needs some space, Em. Let him be.” Jake took my hand and led me through the kitchen into the living room. It didn’t even occur to me until long much later that he’d called me Em for the very first time.
*
We became our own little world in the days that followed. We turned off the television, we ignored the newspapers. We put our phones on silent. Only Jake was brave enough to leave the house, fetching us food from the suggestions Dr Schaffer gave me. But I added comfort food: chocolate, ice cream, white bread… I couldn’t help myself We shut the curtains and unplugged the landline from the wall. Our family liaison officers would come for meetings and ask us questions that didn’t seem relevant. Questions about our daily routine. After the questions stopped they tended to hover awkwardly around us during the daytime. For the most part they were useless, seeing as the police hadn’t found anything.
The only people I had telephone conversations with were Rob and a far too cheerful woman from a PR company who offered to help us write a statement to the press. I decided that the generic ‘please respect our privacy at this difficult time’ would be enough. And when it came to offers of appearing on television, I decided silence was the best option. I couldn’t stand the thought of an interview appearing on YouTube after doing its rounds on the news, free to be judged by the hordes of people following Aiden’s case. Instead, after speaking to DCI Stevenson, it was agreed that he would issue a statement appealing to any witnesses from the night Aiden was found wandering along the back road.
“We’re extending the se
arch,” he said. “We’ve started looking into houses in the area with large basements as well as anyone who might have put in planning applications for unusual builds a decade ago. It’s going to take some time.”
This was the countryside. There were plenty of wealthy families with extensions, outbuildings, and cellars.
“How is Aiden?” he asked. There was an edge in his voice. We both knew it was there, but neither of us acknowledged it.
“He’s not talking yet,” I replied.
After hanging up the telephone, I closed my eyes and tried to wish it all away. For a while, I almost did. None of it mattered because we were an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. We were off the coast of Australia, and every morning I greeted Aiden with a ‘G’day, mate’. Then we’d spread out the picnic blanket, put Netflix on, and pretend we were sat on the top of the tallest mountain, with the world below us. I chose some of my favourite films that I’d always wanted to watch with Aiden but had been waiting for him to get a little older. The Neverending Story, Bugsy Malone, The Goonies. More than once I almost turned off those innocuous films when any character was in peril. I reached out for the remote with my heart racing, but Aiden never reacted. He sat, and he chewed his food, and he didn’t say a word.
“You can’t do this forever,” Jake said from the sofa. He had an art history textbook in his hand, and his glasses pushed high up his nose.
“I know.” I pushed the ice cream around the bowl. “Okay, time for a game of basketball.” It was something we’d played when Aiden was little. I used to take pieces of paper, screw them up, and play at throwing them through a hoop I’d made out of a wire coat hanger. In fact, all of the games were rehashed versions of what we had done when Aiden was a toddler. Like the indoor picnics, which inevitably occurred in fictional versions of the Great Wall of China, or Kilimanjaro, or Cairo, or anywhere but Bishoptown-on-Ouse. It had been the only way to curb my wanderlust when I was a teenage mum without the same prospects as my friends.
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