Give Me the Child

by Mel McGrath

  I got home early, just as the builders next door were finishing up. Tom was in his study. Time was he’d have come out to greet me but today, when I knocked on his door, a weirdly formal voice I barely recognised responded with, ‘I’m working.’

  Afraid that he would find a way to duck out of it or, worse still, cancel, I hadn’t told Tom about Meg Winter’s impending visit and, given her coolness at the funeral, I wondered if she would show up. What, other than curiosity, could be in it for her? I wanted to find out why Meg didn’t want Ruby to come and live with her and I wanted to try to change her mind. If that proved impossible, I hoped to be able to change my own.

  It was just after seven when the doorbell rang. Meg stood on the front step, scrawny and ill-looking. As she stepped inside, Tom burst from his study, with a look on his face somewhere between a wounded bull and Penguin from Batman, and, in spite of myself, I let out a little gulp of laughter and had to swallow it back.

  ‘Meg has come for supper,’ I said.

  Tom swallowed hard and forced a smile. ‘So I see.’

  I guess I should have predicted that the evening would be a disaster. Tom and Ruby sulked comprehensively and Meg appeared to be interested only in the size of the house and, by extension, our bank account. If she was at all interested in how her granddaughter had settled in or how she had reacted to her mother’s death, then she didn’t show it. Other than to enquire how long we’d been in the house and where we’d bought a few of the things in it, she failed to ask a single question and did her best to avoid answering any of mine.

  After we’d eaten, I sent the girls upstairs to play in the hope that Tom, Meg and I could have an adult discussion about Ruby’s future, but each time I made an attempt to address the issue, Meg grew evasive and Tom changed the subject. It became very clear to me in a way it hadn’t been before that Meg blamed her granddaughter for Lilly’s death and the only way she was going to have anything to do with Ruby was if the law obliged her to do so. I didn’t know enough about family law to know if that would be possible, but I knew it wouldn’t be what Tom wanted. By eight thirty both Tom and Meg were looking for an excuse for her to leave. As we stood and said our awkward goodbyes, I got the distinct impression that unless we really pushed it, we were unlikely to see Meg Winter again.

  Once Meg had gone, I expected there to be a row but Tom only said he was very tired and was going to bed. When I followed him up a while later he was either already asleep or doing a very good job of pretending. I lay in bed until it became clear I wasn’t going to be able to drift off, then tiptoed out and went downstairs to the kitchen. A huge, low harvest moon, as vivid as blood, drew me out into the garden. The air was still and mild and, from somewhere nearby, a fox was screaming. I breathed its musk, then, in amber moonlight, walked up the garden path past the trampoline and the paddling pool and the still-broken fence, until I found myself under the ideas tree. After a while, when no ideas came and a cloud passed across the moon, I looked back at the house, my eyes resting on the spare room window, and I thought about the girl inside and all the moments of disquiet, the hamster claw and the iPad and the bottle of perfume under Freya’s bed and the paper clip and the bruising on Freya’s arm. With a thudding heart I made my way slowly back down the path. In the kitchen I put on the kettle and made myself a cup of chamomile tea. As I climbed the stairs I saw Ruby Winter standing in the half-light from the window, as if summoned by my thoughts, her lips curled upwards in a bright, tight little smile.

  ‘Can’t you sleep?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘In that case, I think we should have a little chat.’

  The girl moved towards her room. I followed, closing the door behind me. Ruby got back into bed and I took this as my cue to sit down beside her.

  ‘This must all be very bewildering, Ruby. I don’t want to make it any more difficult. But there are some house rules and, since you’re going to be living with us, at least for now, we need you to stick to them.’ I raised my hand and stuck a thumb in the air. ‘Number one is no stealing, number two is no lying and number three – the most important rule – is not to hurt or bully Freya.’ I tried and failed to catch her eye before going on. ‘I don’t know if I believe you about the locket or the iPad and I’m not convinced you didn’t have something to do with Harry going missing. That thing at the crematorium with the headstone? I understand it must have been a terrible day, but I expect you not to do anything like that ever again. As for those marks on Freya…’ I could feel the anger rising and forced myself to push it away. ‘What I’m trying to say is, if you’re feeling angry or confused or upset in any way, you can talk to me or your father. We won’t judge you and we’ll try to do what we can to help you feel better.’

  I reached out my hand, palm up, in anticipation of a high-five. ‘Deal?’

  Ruby Winter looked at my hand for a moment, then she turned her back to me and pulled the sheet over her head.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  At breakfast the next morning it was as if Meg Winter had never come. Tom bustled about making eggs while Freya poured orange juice. Ruby was still upstairs. I grabbed a piece of toast, packed my rucksack and, after kissing my daughter goodbye, I went out.

  The atmosphere had noticeably thickened overnight. Traffic poured by as usual but the buses seemed empty. There were plenty of people on the streets but it was oddly quiet and no one made eye contact. The tension was palpable, as if some unstable compound had been released into the city’s air supply and all it would take would be one dropped match to hit flashpoint.

  Not far from Jamal’s shop I passed yet another fresh yellow board sitting beside a makeshift shrine. The incident had taken place overnight and the police were appealing for witnesses they were unlikely to get. There had been so many over the past few months, they were losing their power to shock. People thronged by, no longer stopping long enough to read the text, which, they probably figured, would only tell them what they already knew: that the capital wasn’t a good place to be in right now if you were young and especially if you were young and black.

  The moment I got into the office I switched on my laptop and checked the Herald’s website. The incident on Holland Hill had made a paragraph low down. Fifteen-year-old kid. No one arrested. Motive for the attack unknown.

  Claire popped her head around the door. ‘Diary?’

  ‘Yup.’ I picked up my phone to bring up the calendar but for some reason the screen froze. I shook it then banged it hard on the desk. Claire cocked her head and gave me a quizzical look. ‘You OK, Caitlin?’

  ‘Yes, sorry. Bloody devices!’

  Claire smiled briefly then pointed first to my shirt then to the mug on the desk. ‘You’re buttoned up wrongly and you haven’t touched your coffee.’

  I looked down at myself. ‘Oh God. It’s the heat. Driving everyone a bit mad.’

  Mid-morning, I walked over to the clinic to meet with Emma and Joshua Barrons. Today Joshua was charming, running around the clinic with a lightsabre and making everyone laugh. Emma was wearing shades.

  Anja, Emma and I watched him for a while then Emma said, ‘On days like this, it’s nice to pretend there’s nothing wrong with my son. But there’ll be a price to pay for his good mood. There always is.’

  The boy approached us.

  ‘Hello, Joshua’, I said. ‘Are you a Jedi?’

  ‘Just for today.’

  ‘Oh? And what would you like to be tomorrow?’

  ‘A Tube driver.’ Joshua swooshed the lightsabre around his head.

  ‘And why’s that?’

  A beat. ‘Because when people jump in front of the train their heads explode and it’s cool.’ With that, he was off. Behind her glasses, his mother met my eyes.

  The last time Emma had come she’d seemed so vulnerable and damaged but now, while she was in a better frame of mind, the shades notwithstanding, I thought it might be an opportune time to tackle the leak to James White.

  ‘Shall we go into Anj
a’s office for a moment?’ I let Anja take the lead then waved Emma in front of me and took up the rear. I waited until everyone was settled, then began.

  ‘As you know, Emma, what we’re doing here – with Joshua and the other children – is experimental and sensitive. Your husband has a high profile and so we all need to be particularly careful about who we tell, especially with so much coverage in the media about teen gangs and violence at the moment – the press are on the lookout for anything to fuel the hysteria. It could be very damaging to Joshua if word got out about his diagnosis.’

  Emma gave me a strange look, somewhere between puzzlement and irritation. ‘I’m well aware of that,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Another thing.’ I searched for the right words. ‘If there is some difficulty at home, perhaps we might think about admitting Joshua to the residential programme after all?’ The situation was incredibly delicate. If Emma Barrons disclosed that she was being hit by her husband, we would be duty-bound to report it. We didn’t want Joshua to witness domestic abuse but neither were we keen for social services to step in. The boy might well end up in the care system beyond our reach.

  Emma stiffened and, pushing her shades further up her nose, said, in a glassy voice, ‘I don’t know what you mean by difficulty. In any case, his father would never agree.’

  I was about to go on when I saw Anja narrow her eyes. Enough. We didn’t want to push Emma Barrons so far that she took her son out of the programme.

  We found Joshua standing at the side of the sandpit repeatedly smashing the clinic’s toy truck collection into the walls. His clinical therapist was standing nearby trying to calm him. The charmer of an hour ago had flipped. Emma called out to him and, at the sound of his mother’s voice, Joshua immediately stopped what he was doing and wheeled about. His face was as placid as a summer pond; he spread his arms to indicate the shambles around him and, without taking his eyes off his mother, in a voice full of recrimination, he said, ‘Look at this, see? This is what happens when you leave me here alone.’

  ‘Lunch?’ Anja said afterwards.

  ‘’Fraid not.’ I had chores to do.

  Anja gave me a sympathy grimace. ‘Everything OK at home?’

  ‘Why is everyone asking me that this morning?’

  Anja’s brow lifted. ‘It’s just, well, you seem a little distracted.’

  Outside in the tiny park beside the institute, office workers lounged on dusty grass. As I passed McDonald’s on the corner I noticed that a group of kids had begun to gather, chatting and smoking spliffs, fingers working the keypads of their phones. At the zebra crossing I stopped. Freya came to mind. I did my chores. The lunch hour was nearly over by the time I got back. At the institute car park, I stopped for a moment to adjust my sunglasses and didn’t notice a man rapidly approach to my right until he was almost on top of me.

  James White stepped deftly into my path and, reaching out an arm as if to open the door, he managed to swing his body in front of me so there was no way around him. He was close enough that I could feel his breath on my neck.

  ‘There’s been another stabbing.’

  ‘I know. I saw the yellow board this morning and I read the piece in the Herald. What’s that got to do with me?’

  ‘He’s one of yours.’

  Immediately I thought of Joshua. But I’d already seen him this morning and anyway, the report had said the dead boy had been fifteen.

  White went on: ‘Name’s LeShaun Toley. He lives on the Pemberton Estate. Lived. Isn’t that where you grew up?’

  I took a step back and waited for what I was pretty sure was about to come next. There was no point in denying this or asking White where he’d got his information. It was his business to know stuff and he wasn’t likely to tell me anyway. A colleague slid by us, sent me a greeting and disappeared through the revolving doors. White waited until we were alone again, his eyes slicing from one side of the car park to the other, then, lowering his voice, he said, ‘Listen, my editor’s giving me hell for sitting on the Barrons story.’

  ‘And?’

  He held up his hands, palms towards me, in a gesture of surrender, but I knew it was anything but.

  ‘What do you want? As you bloody well know, the kids I work with have personality disorders. Stabbings are not my area of expertise. Now, please, just let me get back to my work.’

  White persisted. ‘You’re working on predictive models.’

  It seemed unlikely that White had guessed this. Only a dozen people knew about it in any detail, all of them employees of the institute. My research was highly confidential. I hadn’t published it yet so there was nothing in the public domain. Evidently there was a mole.

  ‘Whoever is passing you information doesn’t know what they’re talking about. I work on correlations, not predictions. Anyone who says they can predict human behaviour is lying. Now, please.’

  White’s jaw tightened and he looked up, sombre now. He wasn’t going to stop until he got what he wanted.

  ‘Look, I don’t want to break the Barrons story but my editor’s a hungry bitch and it’s my job to keep her fed.’

  ‘Are you trying to blackmail me?’

  ‘Of course not! Just a little friendly persuasion. People are looking for answers. I think maybe you have them. All I’m asking for is background. Unattributed, strictly off the record.’

  ‘I give you what you want, you’ll go away?’

  White thumped a palm across his chest where his heart should have been. He was setting this up to be a favour, but I knew very well I had no choice. If he leaked the fact that Joshua Barrons was at the clinic, I could well lose my job.

  ‘Not here, though, and not now. And only if you guarantee to leave the Barrons family out of it.’

  We agreed a time and a place to meet later that day, then I swiped through security and went back into the building. I found Anja hunched over the screen in her office. A large box of sushi lay unopened on her desk.

  I related my encounter with White. ‘I don’t think this came from Emma Barrons. “Predictive models”, White said. Suggests an insider to me.’

  Anja thought about this. ‘Lucas?’

  ‘I can’t see how.’ My postgrad research assistant had always been super loyal. More likely the leak had sprung from one of the few dissenters at the institute who felt threatened by the work we were doing. Going to the media was high risk, though. If whoever it was got caught, they’d be in deep shit.

  ‘Can’t we just ignore him?’ Anja opened the box of sushi and pushed it towards me. I hadn’t eaten but I didn’t have any appetite.

  ‘He’s not going away until he gets what he wants.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘A quote about why the kids out there are killing each other, preferably one with enough scientific backing to make him look authoritative.’

  ‘He’s an arsehole.’

  ‘I’ll tell him that when I meet him.’

  ‘Wait, you’re meeting him?’

  ‘He’s threatening to expose the fact that Joshua Barrons is a patient here if I don’t.’

  Anja picked up her chopsticks and began mixing a glob of wasabi into a puddle of soy sauce. ‘It does sound like you don’t have much choice.’

  Noting the swerve in her pronoun switch, I thanked her for her advice and went back to my office feeling troubled. Claire had returned from lunch and wanted me to look at a minor research grant application which needed my sign-off by the end of the day to meet its deadline. The paper began with a long and complex meta-survey of early experiments in the use of softbots in neurological disorders and, like so much of the cutting-edge research in the field, it questioned the need for psychiatry. In the author’s view, future mental health would be left to psychologists and neurologists. Interesting if not particularly enlightening. It took me till 2.30 p.m. to finish reading and another half hour to write up my report. The remainder of the afternoon was taken up with meetings. In between, I texted Tom to say I’d be back an hour later th
an usual and received a terse reminder that he was taking the girls to the cycle track and they’d probably eat out at McDonald’s afterwards.

  White was waiting for me at a corner table in the public bar at The Wheatsheaf, looking worryingly eager. The place was one of those very rare survivors from the seventies: dark, with a head-swimming carpet permeated by the sticky odour of a long-departed past. I chose it because no one from the institute would ever think to go there and because my former life had left me with an allergy to swankier places. A few old geezers propped up the bar. Otherwise we were alone. I hated White. I knew he was only doing his job, but I still hated him – for what he’d done to me but mostly for what he’d done to Kylie Drinkwater, turning a murdered baby into a cheap headline. But I knew he wasn’t going to leave me alone until he’d got something from me. At least this way I got to set the agenda. I steeled myself and went over to him.

  A pint of lager sat on the table. ‘Can I get you one?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  He smiled. ‘Straight down to business then. You’ve seen what’s happening on the streets. Something’s going to kick off. When it does, our readers will want to know who to blame. I just want to know what the science would say.’

  ‘Science doesn’t deal in blame.’

  White had his pad out but at this he leaned back in his seat and rubbed a hand through his hair. ‘That’s no good to me,’ he said irritably.

  I wasn’t about to let White unsettle me. ‘I didn’t realise I was here to be good to you.’

  He leaned in. ‘You’re here because you’re too scared not to be.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ I said. ‘I’m here because if I hadn’t shown up, you’d write what you usually write, that the streets are being taken over by evil monsters hardly worthy of the label “human”.’