by Jane Holland
I dial, and listen to the ringtone, and wonder what Treve and Camilla must think, seeing their neighbour out there in the sunshine, casually mowing his lawn while his baby son is missing. As though we have shrugged and moved on in less than a day.
Not that it matters what they think. None of that matters anymore. But my head is full of so much noise . . .
The rotary mower makes a sudden crunching, whirring sound. The blades must have hit a stone hidden in the grass.
The engine cuts off.
I see Jon’s shadow through the frosted glass of the front door as he bends over the mower to investigate.
The phone is going to ring out. They must not be in, I decide. I am just about to give up when my mother’s voice breaks into my thoughts.
‘Hello,’ she says breathlessly.
‘Hi, Mum, it’s Meghan.’ I try to sound bright, unconcerned.
‘Meghan? What’s wrong?’
Obviously I am not very good at sounding unconcerned.
‘Is . . . Is Dad in?’
‘Gone to the shops. He should be back in about half an hour. Sorry about the long wait to answer the phone, by the way. I was outside, hosing down the patio, and couldn’t hear it ringing at first.’ She pauses. ‘Why?’
I hesitate, wishing Dad was there too. He’s always been the sensible one and I know he would keep Mum calm. But there’s no way I can escape an inquisition if I try to ring off now, so I plunge in anyway.
Briefly, or as briefly as is possible with my mother, I explain the situation. Harry’s disappearance. The police involvement. Today’s horrific find in the field. That it was not Harry’s body, that was certain. But given this new development, we should probably prepare ourselves for the worst.
I knew this phone call would be a strain. Nonetheless, I had intended to remain calm if possible. But my mother’s exclamations of distress, her constant cries of, ‘Oh no, poor baby!’ and ‘Not Harry! Please God, not Harry!’ bring me to tears before I’ve even finished explaining.
‘That’s it,’ she says. ‘I’m flying straight home to be with you. I’ll call your dad. Assuming he remembered to take his mobile this time.’
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. ‘No, Mum, please. I can’t . . . The house is upside down. I need space to . . .’
‘You need someone to look after you, that’s what you need.’
‘Honestly, we’re coping.’
‘It doesn’t sound like it. You’re in floods.’
‘Obviously I’m upset.’
I rummage in my pocket for a tissue, and try to discipline myself to stop crying. Or at least not to sound like I’m crying. I can’t tell her what I’m feeling inside, the confusion in my head, the agonies I’m crawling through like barbed wire just to make this phone call; it’s too awful, too unbearable to articulate. I don’t want her to worry about me at the same time as worrying about Harry.
‘But it’s such a long way. I don’t want you to come if there’s no need.’
‘No need? Now you’re just being silly. Of course you need us, Meghan. You must be beside yourselves, poor things, and now Jon’s lost both his parents there’s only us.’ My mum takes a deep, quivering breath. ‘Now, listen to me—’
Suddenly, Jon is there, blocking out the light from the outside, plucking the handset away from me.
‘Hello, it’s Jon,’ he says into the phone, then listens. ‘Yes, I know. Thank you. But it isn’t a good time for you to visit right now. No, I’m sorry.’ He looks at me as he listens again, his expression unreadable, then repeats into the handset, ‘It’s not a good time, Rose.’
‘Give me back the phone,’ I insist, but he ignores me.
‘I’m sorry you feel like that, but can Meghan call you back tomorrow?’ he asks smoothly, and does not wait for a reply. ‘We have to keep this line free in case the police need to get in touch. Thanks, Rose, speak soon.’
He clicks off the call, and hands the phone back to me.
I stare at him. ‘Why did you do that? That was my mother.’ My voice rises. ‘Oh my God, what possible right do you have to—?’
I stop as he holds up a syringe.
‘What was this doing in the garden?’ he demands instead of answering my questions. ‘I just ran it over with the mower.’
I rub my eyes with the tissue, my head throbbing with pain. This bloody migraine. ‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
I do not understand. ‘So you found that in the garden . . . So what? There’s no need to look at me like that. I didn’t put it there.’
‘But it’s one of Harry’s syringes, isn’t it?’
He hands the cracked syringe to me. The needle cap is missing. It’s damp and bent out of shape, presumably by the mower, and a little grass-stained. It could be one of Harry’s. But then again, all syringes look alike.
‘Maybe. I’m not sure.’ I turn it over, examining it gingerly. I don’t want the needle to scratch me. ‘It could be any syringe. Perhaps someone walked past and threw it over the hedge into our garden.’
‘What, you mean, like a drug addict? Here? In suburban Truro?’
I look up at him, perplexed by his accusatory tone. ‘Well, I don’t know where it came from. What on earth makes you think I do?’
‘You’re sure you didn’t drop it yourself?’
‘In the front garden?’ My voice is high, incredulous. ‘Is this why you hung up on my mum? Because you found this in the grass and wanted to tell me off about it?’
‘Not tell you off. Just ask you about it.’ His face is grim. ‘You’ve been in such a daze lately, Meghan. I simply thought perhaps—’
‘Jon, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never even taken Harry on to the front lawn, let alone given him his injection out there. I follow the procedure the hospital gave us. What kind of mother do you think I am?’
I wish he would stop being so cold with me. I can’t help feeling he blames me for Harry’s abduction. But he was the last one to see him before he went missing.
I hold the broken syringe back out, my palm flat.
‘Careful,’ I tell him. ‘Don’t touch the sharp end.’
He takes the syringe back, but stares at me moodily. ‘I’d better tell the police.’
I’m startled, not sure what to think as Jon picks up the handset and bends to check the notepad beside it. The mobile number DS Dryer left us is still on the top sheet, scribbled in the policeman’s hurried scrawl.
‘Tell them what?’
‘About the syringe, of course.’
Of course. The syringe.
‘If this syringe does turn out to be from the nursery, and you didn’t leave it in the front garden,’ he continues, still watching me, ‘then it must have been dropped by whoever took Harry.’
Chapter Sixteen
DS Dryer arrives at about four o’clock in response to Jon’s call, followed within ten minutes by a more surprising visitor: Dr Shiva. I am talking quietly to the detective when the consultant walks in and everything changes, the air subtly shifting around us. I had forgotten how much energy she seems to radiate just entering a room.
I stand up when Jon closes the door behind her, unsure what her arrival means. Beside me, the detective sets aside the album of photographs of Harry we had been discussing and stands too, right beside me. It feels awkward.
‘Dr Shiva? I didn’t expect . . .’
I stare from her face to my husband’s. Did he contact her?
‘Coffee, doctor?’ Jon offers politely.
She smiles back at him, saying, ‘No, thank you, I can’t stay long,’ then comes straight across to shake my hand. ‘Meghan, how are you?’
Her grip is cool and oddly loose, as it was on the day she gave us her diagnosis of Harry’s condition. Non-committal, I thought at the time. But I suppose she must shake lots of hands during the course of a day clinic at the hospital, so perhaps it’s easier for her not to grip too hard.
I make some polite noises in reply,
and she nods sympathetically.
She shakes DS Dryer’s hand too, exchanging a few words with him, then turns back to me.
‘How are you coping, Meghan?’ She is the kind of woman you can’t lie to easily, so I say nothing. ‘Please, sit down. I’m sorry to turn up like this without checking first. Detective Sergeant Dryer asked if I could come over.’
I sit down again, but my nerves are on edge and I can’t help myself. ‘Are you here because of the syringe?’ I ask the doctor.
‘Syringe?’
DS Dryer holds up the transparent evidence bag in which he has placed the bent syringe.
‘Jon found this in the front garden earlier,’ he tells Dr Shiva. ‘It appears to be one of Harry’s syringes, but nobody knows how it got outside.’
Nobody meaning me.
‘I’ll be sending it off to the lab as soon as I get back to the station,’ he adds. ‘It could take a while to get the results back though. So if you could check the rest of Harry’s medication while you’re here, doctor, and let us know if any of it seems to be missing, that would be very helpful.’
‘Of course.’ The consultant peers at the bagged syringe without touching it, then shrugs. ‘It could be one of Harry’s disposable syringes, yes. Until the contents are analysed, it will be hard to tell for sure. But I’ll certainly check how many of his pre-filled syringes are left, if it will help you.’
‘Thank you.’
Dryer places the plastic evidence bag on top of the photo album, which is still lying open on the coffee table. I stare at it, and my hands clench into fists in my lap.
The bag is resting on a photo of Harry, taken when he was only three weeks old and lying asleep in his see-through cot in the ICU. His tiny, twig-limbed body is obscured by the folds of plastic, but in my mind’s eye I can still see his reddened arms and legs, his skin baggy and shrivelled like an old man’s, as though he had been left in a bath too long, and his screwed-up face turned towards the camera, eyes closed, his body peaceful. Without all the machines wired up to his body, the soft, steady beep of the monitor, I might never have been sure he was actually alive.
‘It’s been almost twenty-four hours,’ I say, my tone angry and accusatory. I look up at the detective. ‘When are we going to hear something?’
‘Meghan.’
I ignore Jon’s quiet voice.
‘This endless waiting . . . It’s driving me insane.’ I stand up, clasping my hands together, squeezing them restlessly. ‘Sorry, I’ve tried to be patient. But I thought you would have heard something by now.’
‘These things take time,’ Dryer says.
‘But the first twenty-four hours are the most crucial, aren’t they? I read that on . . . on the internet.’ I glance from him to Jon, then to the doctor’s concerned face. ‘If you don’t get an abducted child back within the first day, the chances of ever finding him alive begin to . . . begin to . . .’ I end on a gasp. ‘Diminish.’
Dr Shiva comes to me, her hands warm, reassuring. ‘Sit down, Meghan, please.’
‘I don’t want to sit down.’ I break away from her and pace the room, breathing very quickly. There’s so much to do, yet nobody seems to be doing anything. ‘My son is out there somewhere,’ I remind her, ‘being kept in God alone knows what kind of conditions. How on earth can I sit?’
‘But you will do yourself no good like this.’
I turn to stare at her. ‘It’s been nearly a day since Harry had his shots. You said they had to be administered regularly. That it could endanger his health even to miss one injection.’
She nods.
‘So tell them,’ I say, pointing to DS Dryer. ‘Tell the police how important it is. Tell them he has to be found.’
‘We know how important it is,’ Dryer insists.
‘Tell them my son is going to die if he does not get his medication.’ I do not recognise my own voice. ‘Tell them, tell them.’
The doctor catches at my hands as I swing past her, and I realise that I have been scratching at my face, driven by some deep, instinctual need to act, to do something, anything, even if it is just to punish myself.
‘I have told them,’ she assures me, her voice soothing. ‘But I need you to sit down and stop hurting yourself. It is a very bad situation, I agree. But this behaviour cannot help Harry. It will only make matters worse.’
‘How can they be worse?’ I am almost screaming at her. ‘He’s gone. Someone took him. And nobody seems to care what they’re going to do to him. Nobody but me.’
‘What who is going to do to him?’ DS Dryer asks.
‘What?’
‘You said, they,’ he points out, his expression neutral. ‘Do you know who took him, Meghan?’
‘Of course I don’t. How could I know that? Do you think if I knew I wouldn’t say?’ I turn to Jon, staring wildly. ‘What have you been telling them?’
Jon does not reply, merely closes his eyes. As though he’s sick of me. As though he wishes I was not his wife.
‘What’s going on here? Am I a suspect now?’ I’m finding it hard to breathe. My fingers are tingling. I stare down at them. ‘Fuck, fuck.’
I collapse on to the armchair, unable to stand any longer. There’s a silence in the room, then Dr Shiva crouches beside me.
She rubs my back, bending me slightly forward. ‘Head down,’ she tells me, her voice infuriatingly calm. ‘Try to breathe more smoothly. In, out, in, out.’
I shake my head. My whole body is trembling. Like I’ve got hypothermia.
I see DS Dryer’s polished black shoes approach, and try to focus on them. He asks my husband, ‘Would you happen to have a paper bag? Maybe in the kitchen?’
‘A paper bag?’
‘Your wife is hyperventilating,’ the doctor explains succinctly, still rubbing my back. I hear her speaking, but for some reason the words do not register properly. Like a flat stone bouncing off water, then sinking without a trace further on. ‘The detective is right, a paper bag would be useful.’
I’m gulping at the air now, barely able to catch my breath. My lungs hurt. It feels as though everything below my throat has been closed off.
Am I going to die?
I stare down at my hands. My fingers are stiff and outstretched, slightly turned up at the tips; I can no longer bend or relax them. Then I realise with a shock that my fingertips are starting to turn blue.
I struggle to speak. ‘Wh . . . what’s happening . . . to . . . me?’ My voice sounds like air bubbling up from the bottom of a swamp, thick and incoherent.
‘You’re having a panic attack,’ Dr Shiva tells me, no change of expression on her face, as though this is something she has to deal with every day. ‘It’s perfectly okay, just follow my instructions and you will be fine.’
Perhaps the doctor does see this kind of thing every day. But I have never felt like this before, never had my body refuse to do what I tell it, and I am scared. Too scared to be able to listen properly, to process what she is telling me.
Someone hands her a paper bag. Jon, probably. I can’t look up, focused on my stiff, blueish fingers. Dr Shiva shakes out the bag, blows into it, then fits it carefully over my mouth. It’s not what I had expected; it’s a simple white paper bag I folded and put away in a kitchen drawer a few weeks ago. It had contained cinnamon and sultana rolls from a baker’s in town, and I thought it might come in handy.
Though not for this.
‘Breathe,’ she instructs me in that gentle, relaxing tone. ‘You need to breathe. Nice and slow and easy.’
I struggle to obey her, but can’t. She tells me again to breathe. My whole body is tingling now, and I can feel the two men staring, standing about uselessly while I am dying.
‘Meghan, come on.’ Her voice in my ear is like a hot needle now, piercing my brain. ‘Just let your diaphragm relax and take a breath. Stop resisting, you can do it.’
‘Look at her fingers!’ Jon exclaims. ‘Meghan, for God’s sake!’
He is so angry. Angry that I am
refusing to obey. I rock backwards and forwards, hysterical now, fighting against the paper bag. Does he think I am doing this deliberately? I want to live. I need to live, if only for Harry’s sake.
‘One more time,’ Dr Shiva insists, relentlessly patient. I want to push her away but can’t manage even that small effort. ‘Try sitting up instead. Here, shoulders back. Relax your torso. Breathe into the bag.’
I fight to follow her instructions. Shoulders, torso, airway. My body rebels, first against the idea of drawing air into my closed lungs, then against the absence of oxygen. I thrash backwards, and the bag comes with me, held in place by the doctor. Her voice comes again from a distance, cruel, persuasive. She won’t let me go, won’t let me faint, won’t let me die. The pain in my chest is building to a crescendo, my head spinning horribly. She tells me I’m going to be fine, and I almost begin to hate her.
‘I’m calling an ambulance,’ DS Dryer says.
At that second I drag in air, more like a violent hiccup than a breath. The air burns in my airways.
‘That’s it, good girl,’ Dr Shiva tells me, warm approval in her voice, like I’m a ten-year-old, not a grown woman. ‘And again.’
I gasp.
More air floods my lungs, and I choke on it, coughing.
The bag inflates, then is sucked flat against my face as I breathe in and then out, and then in again, suddenly hungry for oxygen. I smell the long-gone rolls, remember how they tasted, split and toasted, then buttered. The sweet spice of cinnamon, the rich sultanas, the luxurious melt of butter on the tongue.
‘There now. Sit back, try to relax.’
Jon walks out of the room.
Dr Shiva settles me more comfortably on the armchair. ‘She will be better soon,’ she says, a note of satisfaction in her voice.
‘Should I call for an ambulance anyway?’ Dryer asks.
She hesitates. ‘In my experience, there is rarely any point once the attack is over. There is nothing they would do at A&E except check her over.’
‘So that’s a no.’
She stands up, the two of them talking over my head like they’re my parents. ‘Yes, that’s a no. But I do think a prescription would be in order.’