Silent Child

by Sarah A. Denzil

  I wiped my eyes, took a shower, dried my hair, and dressed. I plugged in my phone, which had died while Jake and I had been arguing until late into the night. Then I checked on Aiden. He was up, making himself some toast.

  “Morning,” I said, attempting to inject some brightness into my voice. “I hope we didn’t frighten you last night. Jake and I had some things to discuss and it got a little heated. I know you were working hard on your painting so I don’t know what you heard, but we should probably talk about it. Jake and I are having some problems. He’s made some mistakes and I said some horrible things, but we’re both adults and we’re going to work through them. We might even have therapy, like you do, Aiden. We want to move forward as a family.”

  The more I spoke, the more I worried I was trying to convince myself rather than him. I shook cereal out of the packet and ignored my trembling hands. I swallowed two of my blood pressure pills with a glass of water and sat at the table with my silent son. If he was in the slightest way perturbed by what had been going on, he didn’t show it.

  When breakfast was over, I went upstairs to make a start on putting the blankets inside the new crib. After Aiden’s paint incident we’d bought an entirely new crib. We could probably have washed most of it away, but there was something about seeing the red paint splattered across the baby’s blanket like that. It made me want to buy a new one just to rid my mind of that image. So we did. And I decided to keep Aiden out of the baby’s room.

  That was as far as I’d allow myself to think that morning. Though my due date was looming, there was so much going on that I decided to block out my worries about Aiden around the baby. Did I trust my son? Did I believe that he was dangerous? Those were the kind of questions that played on my mind when I allowed myself to think for too long. If I admitted those things then it led down a road I didn’t want to tread. It meant giving Aiden up. I couldn’t do that. I had to believe that everything would turn out okay somehow, but that belief waned by the day.

  After spreading out a soft baby blanket I went back to the bedroom to straighten up the bed and sort out some washing for the machine. While I was there, I checked on my mobile phone charging up next to the bed. I had five missed calls and a two voicemail messages.

  The first was from DCI Stevenson asking whether Aiden had made any progress. He usually made that call once every couple of days to ‘check in’, or, when the family liaison officers were with us all day every day he’d check in with them. I felt bad for DCI Stevenson. He was a good man trying to do his job under extraordinary pressure. But the fact was that after two and a half weeks of investigation, he had come up with nothing.

  The second voicemail was from Rob. I sat upright when I listened to the message. Then I quickly unplugged my phone from the charger and made my way downstairs. The message said: “Emma, it’s Rob. Dad has just been released. They didn’t find any evidence. They searched the house and there was nothing. He didn’t do it, I know that and you do too, probably. That’s not the main reason I’m calling you. Look, I didn’t want to say this over a voicemail, but you’re not answering and you need to know. I don’t trust Jake, you know that. Well, I’ve been following him for a while. He keeps going to some garage outside Bishoptown near the A59. There’s something dodgy about it all. I’m not saying that he’s hurt Aiden, I’m not saying that… yet. But I think we should go and see this garage and figure out what’s going on. No police. Just you and me. Drop Aiden off at my parents’ place and come meet me.”

  *

  It was Peter who answered the door, though I’d been hoping it wouldn’t be. I offered him a thin smile. “I’m so sorry you were questioned by the police like that.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, ushering me in. “They’ve questioned everyone else. I’m just sorry I never saw Aiden. I had no idea I was so close to where he was taken. If only I’d seen something. Anyway, they’ve cleared me from the investigation now. Apparently the CCTV footage went on to show me taking pictures at the time they suspect Aiden was taken. Why they couldn’t check all that before holding me for hours I don’t know. It’s that duke they should be questioning. I don’t like the look of that fella.”

  “Me neither,” I said. “Is Rob around? He thought it might be a good idea for you guys to watch Aiden while we check something out.”

  “Yes, and he was just as vague. I hope you’re not getting yourselves into any trouble?” Peter walked beside me as we made our way through the front of the B&B to the living quarters behind the main reception.

  “No, nothing like that.” I hesitated outside the door into their personal rooms. “Listen, Peter. This is hard to say, but I need to say it. Can you make sure that Sonya doesn’t do anything without getting my okay? She had another child visit Aiden last time and it didn’t go so well. He isn’t up to playing with other children just yet. It’s all a delicate balance and I need to be sure that Sonya isn’t going to—”

  “Upset the apple cart?”

  I let out a sigh of relief. “Exactly.”

  “I’ll keep her reined in, don’t worry,” he said.

  “Thanks, I appreciate it.” I paused. For a moment I was going to tell him that I never suspected he could have hurt Aiden, but that would have been a lie. There had been a moment where I’d sat down and thought about whether Peter could be capable of kidnapping, imprisoning, raping, and torturing my own son. The truth is, I had thought that it might be possible, just as I had thought about virtually everyone in my life being capable of such an act. As we walked into the back rooms of the B&B, I felt sick to my stomach with the realisation that I presumed everyone guilty.

  Whoever did take Aiden had won. He’d broken Aiden to the point where he was an empty shell, and he’d turned me into a suspicious, anxious woman. I attempted to rearrange my face to hide these thoughts from the others, but Rob was the first to frown at my fixed grin.

  Nevertheless, we settled Aiden and left the B&B. I was on edge, scratching my hands and my temples. I didn’t want to leave Aiden with them, but I knew we couldn’t take him with us. We made our way back out of the B&B and headed to Rob’s truck.

  “Are you all right?” he asked as I climbed into the passenger’s seat.

  “I’ve been better.”

  “What’s happened?”

  I pulled the seatbelt across my body and clipped it in place. “There’s something you need to know. Whatever Jake has at this garage it might not be what you think. I found out yesterday that he’s been lying to me. He’s been meeting women and having sex with them.”

  “What?”

  “I know. I’m… I’m in shock, too. I… Look, can we just get on with this? Why aren’t we going to the police anyway?”

  “Because they already think I’m an idiot. I’m aware that this whole thing might be nothing and that’s why I wanted to bring you along. I’m not wasting their time if he has some secret motorbike in there or whatever. And I want you to see it too so I have someone to back me up. Besides, they’d need to get a warrant or whatever, and God knows how long that would take.”

  “It’s probably some awful sex room.” I shuddered. “Full of porn and sex toys. He says he’s an addict.”

  “Fucking hell.”

  “Don’t say anything more. Just drive. I can’t… I don’t want to think about it, and I need to know what’s in that garage.”

  Rob started the engine and the radio came on, blaring out Katy Perry. He apologised and turned the volume down as he pulled out of the B&B carpark. He had the radio tuned into a local station as we made our way out of the village and out towards the A59. Neither of us spoke, and we barely heard the radio, but there was some sort of talk about a storm hitting the Bishoptown area.

  The baby was unsettled that day. I rubbed my pregnant belly and tried to calm myself down. Stressed mothers produce stressed babies, or so they say. With my due date approaching, I needed to think about my own wellbeing more than I had been. That wasn’t an easy task given what was going on around me
.

  Rob’s old truck thrummed with the sound of rain as it began to spill down from the dark clouds above. There wasn’t a single part of the sky that wasn’t grey or dark. There was no blue whatsoever. No sun. No light. I pulled the collar of my coat higher and tried not to think about the threatening sky.

  We pulled into the storage centre in grim silence. Before clambering out of the truck, I pulled the hood from my coat down low over my face. Rob used a baseball cap to protect himself from the rain. We hurried along a long line of garage doors until Rob stopped.

  “It’s this one. Number 29.”

  “How are we going to get in?” I asked. “We can’t break in.”

  “I have a mate who works here. Remember Fletcher?”

  I groaned. “You mean your weed dealer?”

  “The very same. Anyway, he owed me, so he’s left the door open for me. Look, if anyone finds out, we say that we heard something inside and the thing was open anyway, so…”

  “Just get it open, Rob. Careful of fingerprints, though.”

  Rob pulled on a pair of leather gloves. “Way ahead of you.”

  The garage door opened with a rumbling rattle that sounded uncannily like thunder. The pouring rain was cold, leaving a chill on my skin so that I was glad to duck under the doors and into the garage.

  “What the hell?” Rob said.

  I pulled my hood away to glimpse the filled garage. What I saw took my breath away. It wasn’t anything at all like I had expected, and I admit, I had already considered the worst. I had thought of a terrible soundproofed dungeon for nefarious activities. I’d thought of a place dedicated to a sex addict, covered in pornography with a dirty mattress pushed against a wall. I’d thought of it all, and yet I was still surprised.

  There was one element that I had guessed correctly: The garage was filled with pictures, but they were not pornographic—at least, not all of them. Most of the pictures were paintings. There were dozens hanging from the walls, and in between the portraits were small photographs all with the same subject… me. In the middle of the garage was an easel with a desk stacked with paints. There was also a tall filing cabinet shoved against the wall.

  I walked across the garage and stood close to the wall, taking in all the photographs of my face. There were pictures of me walking through Bishoptown, sitting on a park bench feeding the ducks, carrying shopping bags home, getting off the bus. None of them appeared to be in chronological order, they were all jumbled up along the walls. In some I had Aiden’s small hand in mine. Here we were throwing pebbles over the bridge into the Ouse. There we were sitting in the park eating sandwiches. Me stood at the bottom of a tree gazing into the branches at my monkey-like child. Me wandering through the streets of Bishoptown with my make-up spread halfway down my face, bags filled with bottles of Pinot Grigio. And then, the most disturbing of all: me getting on the school bus. Me dressed for the school prom, with Rob on my arm (though Rob’s face had been scratched out).

  “Look.” Rob pointed to a large portrait in the centre of the back wall. “You’re wearing the school tie. That was before sixth form. We didn’t have a uniform in sixth form.”

  And then it hit me. Partway through our argument the night before, Jake had admitted that he had fallen in love with me the first time he had seen me. I was in school the first time he’d seen me. He was a teacher.

  “Oh Jesus.”

  “Emma, I’m so sorry. I didn’t expect any of this.”

  “What did you expect?” I whispered.

  Rob didn’t answer, and I was too distracted by the pictures to listen anyway. It was the paintings that disturbed me the most. He’d mostly painted my face. They were intricate portraits, almost photo-realist in style, with my features captured perfectly. In one of the paintings I was clearly sleeping, with my hair flowing out behind me. On its own I would have considered it a beautiful and flattering surprise, but as it was part of this disgusting invasion of my privacy, it was creepy and made my skin crawl.

  “Don’t scratch your hands,” Rob said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of thin plastic gloves, the same sort that surgeons wear. “Put these on. We can’t leave any DNA. This is a crime scene.”

  I was about to ask why, but of course, I was the crime. He stalked me. He took pictures of me when I was a minor. Some of them were definitely provocative. I might not be naked, but I was bending over wearing a short skirt, or spilling out of my school shirt. I wanted to run away from that garage and immerse myself in scalding water to get the stink off me. I’d been violated.

  “Let’s see what’s in the filing cabinet,” Rob said.

  He was gentle now. It wasn’t like Rob to keep from erupting in a stressful situation, so I knew it was for my benefit. He knew that things were more complicated than Jake being a ‘bad guy’. I was carrying his baby. We were linked, however disgusting that felt.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” I said in a quiet voice. “If he was so obsessed with me why was he sleeping around with all those women?”

  “I’m not sure he was, Em,” Rob said. “I think he came here instead.”

  “But why? He had me. I was married to him.”

  Rob didn’t answer so I began to look through the stacks of paintings piled along the floor, while Rob opened the filing cabinet. I gasped. These paintings were even worse than the ones on the wall. Jake had painted me in sadistic ways. In most of them I was naked or scantily clad, with my hands tied up and a ball gag in my mouth. There wasn’t any hint of desire in my eyes. He’d painted me afraid. His fantasies saw me as a reluctant slave; an unwilling participant in his games. This was all about dominating me. But he hadn’t been like that in our relationship at all. He was… controlling, yes, I can look back on that and recognise it for what it was. He found me the job at the same school where he worked. He owned the house and the car. He was finicky about what was in our home. But he was never sadistic. He never hit me or even tried anything daring in the bedroom. Why did he need these bizarre pictures?

  I was beginning to understand Jake’s true addiction. It wasn’t sex, it was fantasy. It was ownership. What was better than putting a child inside me? I thought back to the day I’d found out I was pregnant. I’d blamed it on a cold making my birth control pill less effective, but what if… what if Jake had tampered with it?

  A cold stone of dread sank to the pit of my stomach.

  “Emma, come and look at these.”

  I left the paintings the same way I’d found them and walked over to the other side of the garage to see what Rob was looking at. He’d found a large binder inside the filing cabinet. He lowered it so I could see what was inside. At first I didn’t want to look, but then I forced myself to.

  “It’s another girl,” said Rob. “Remember when the press got hold of that Facebook photo of Jake with a student? That’s the student. There are a ton of pictures of her in here.” He flipped the page and I gasped. The girl—pretty and dark-haired—was naked on the next page. “Fuck. He lied. He did have a relationship with her.” The pages flipped, showing more and more photographs of this young girl in shockingly vulnerable poses. I knew then that her slightly bemused expression would haunt me forever. The poses were brash and confident, but her expression was one of complete insecurity. “He took advantage of her. Fucking arsehole. Look, he has two or more copies of some of these. He kept them as leverage, I bet. To make sure she didn’t tell anyone. I bet the bastard threatened to show people.” Rob slammed the file shut and a USB stick fell onto the floor.

  I picked it up. “I don’t even want to know what’s on it.”

  Rob shook his head, then dug out a bunch of letters held together with a rubber band. He pulled the top one out and began reading. “‘I miss you so much. Please call me back, Jake. I want to see you. I’m so frightened that people will find out what happened and we’ll get in trouble…’ Shit. It’s from the girl. And this is post-marked a week ago. He’s still in touch with her. I bet he keeps her as his litt
le pet, hanging onto every word he says.”

  I wanted to collapse onto the ground. I wanted to stop and let the weight of the world push me down until I was nothing. But I didn’t do any of that. I searched through the filing cabinet with Rob looking for more incriminating evidence against the man I had sworn to love in sickness and in health, until death do us part. Did this count as sickness? Was I supposed to remain in love with this man forever?

  I straightened myself and took a deep breath. No, I wouldn’t collapse, and I wouldn’t throw up. I wouldn’t do any of the things I would do if this were a movie I would keep my head, and I would find out exactly what was going on.

  “Emma.” There was a warning in Rob’s voice that tickled at my stomach and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “There are newspaper clippings in here… about your parents.”

  “What?”

  I took the scrapbook that Rob was holding and read through the pages. Every article about my parents’ death was documented within the book. He had meticulously cut out each page and glued it into the book, taking care not to fold over or crumple the corners.

  “Why would he have this?”

  “Emma, he was obsessed with you. Don’t you think he would have wanted your parents out of his way? Aiden was gone, I was gone—that left just two people in your life.”

  My eyes burned with withheld tears. My arms lost all strength and I almost dropped the scrapbook. It was Rob who caught it before it fell.

  “You think he killed them,” I whispered.

  Of all the horrible things that had happened to me, this was the most unexpected moment since I’d walked through the hospital doors and seen my son alive. This I had not anticipated at all.