Risk of Harm

by Jane Renshaw

  Ben opened his mouth.

  Alec held up a hand. ‘Now, when I say heritability, that doesn’t mean that a child of someone with schizophrenia has an eighty-one per cent chance of inheriting it. It means that eighty-one per cent of variation in the presence or absence of the condition can be attributed to genetics.’

  Ruth could feel her face going bright red. She made her voice light. ‘Alec… I don’t think anyone is interested in a lecture on genetics?’ And she giggled; a high, nervous, slightly manic sound.

  Maybe they would think that she had a mental illness? Maybe they would think that was why Alec knew so much about it? Maybe Ben would pass on his concerns to his boss and they’d decide to look at Ruth a bit more closely?

  Well, even if they did, they wouldn’t find anything.

  She breathed.

  ‘No, but…’ One of the other men was rubbing his chin with the back of his hand. ‘I hear what you’re saying, Alec. These mothers who give up their kids, or have them removed… You gotta wonder what’s at the root of that. You gotta wonder whether – You know, they’re often not the sharpest pencils in the box either…?’

  His partner, a neat corporate type in a grey designer trouser suit, was staring at him in horror. He gave her a placating grimace.

  Alec nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yep, mothers who lose custody of their children also tend to be of below-average intelligence, which is also massively hereditary. So I reckon, quite honestly, that if the child is backward or shows challenging behaviours, there’s probably nothing much we can do about it. The heritability of IQ is around eighty per cent. And you can’t cure bipolar disorder or schizophrenia or foetal alcohol syndrome by putting the kid on the naughty step.’ And he’d flapped his hands in that dismissive way of his, as if to say I don’t expect any of you to understand, though, so what’s the use.

  But then he’d smiled, his wonderful, bashful, infectious smile, and laughed, and said, ‘So should I go on the naughty step then, Ben?’ and all of them, even Ben, had laughed too, and the women had given him the indulgent maternal looks that women tended to bestow on Alec, while Mr Chin-Rubber had beamed at him in something close to awe.

  But she was pretty sure Deirdre wouldn’t appreciate a repeat performance.

  ‘Don’t mention anything to do with the child’s probable gene pool. Don’t say you dislike children. Don’t say you were quite happy that I couldn’t have any, and that at least adopting a toddler will cut out the earliest years of maximum noise and mess. Don’t say you feel like a bit of a mug for volunteering to bring up someone else’s child, like reed warblers would feel about cuckoo chicks if they had brains bigger than a pea, but you’re hoping your own pre-programmed nurturing neural pathways will kick in if and when the child is dumped on us.’

  Alec opened and closed his mouth.

  Pippa said Alec was socially incontinent, like a child, blurting things out, regardless of context or appropriateness – and Ruth had to agree, but she also liked to think it was a sort of social courage, a refusal to compromise himself to fit in with what was seen as acceptable just to be popular – and, ironically, it was this very quality that made him popular. That, and his self-deprecating sense of humour, and a sort of quiet exuberance that had attracted her to him straight away.

  He wasn’t in your face, he didn’t dominate a room, he listened more than he spoke, but he had an air of child-like wonder that she loved, an eagerness to be told about the world, a way of being fascinated and delighted by what people were telling him about quite ordinary things; an awareness that he was a hopeless novice at life and needed to be schooled in it by those more capable than he. At the same time he came across as quite confident, opinionated, prickly at times, easily exasperated by stupidity – but that just seemed to make people want to please him all the more.

  As he laughed shame-facedly at himself now – the sound a cross between a donkey braying and a seal barking – she found herself laughing too, and apologising for being such a pain, such a Stepford nightmare; and felt all the tension that had been lodged in her body, in her brain, in the sore place behind her eyes leaving her as he pulled her to him and kissed her on the lips she’d so carefully made up an hour before.

  It was going to be fine.

  Five years later

  Chapter 7

  Ruth and Pam leant side by side on the gate, sharing a sneaky packet of smoky bacon crisps while they watched their daughters. Although the sun had finally appeared and the Met Office was promising high pressure for the whole weekend, it seemed to have been raining for most of September, and this corner of the paddock was a dubby mess.

  Which was why Ruth and Pam weren’t venturing in there.

  In the middle of the paddock, Emma slithered to a halt as Beckie and Hobo trotted up to her, Alec floundering along at their side, mud spattered all up his jeans. Emma threw her arms round the pony’s neck and flopped against him, wailing: ‘I surrender!’

  Beckie kicked her feet from the stirrups and slid off Hobo’s back.

  Pam shook her head. ‘Beckie, sweetheart!’ she yelled across at them. ‘Have a longer go! Don’t let Emma bully you!’

  ‘I’m not!’ Emma, indignant, yelled back. ‘Beckie wants to be hunted!’

  Beckie, grinning, dashed across the grass towards them while Emma waited impatiently for Alec to lengthen Hobo’s stirrups. At eight, Emma was a year older than Beckie and several inches taller, a raven-haired girl with long supple limbs and a dancer’s grace.

  Which was where any resemblance to Tricia began and ended. Ruth would never have let the two families become so close if she’d had any doubts on that score.

  This new craze of theirs, ‘Hunting’, involved one of them chasing the other down on horseback. Well, ponyback, and with Alec running alongside and grabbing girl and/or reins at the first sign of trouble.

  The paddock was ideally situated between the two cottages. Opposite this gate was another they’d made into the paddock from Pam and James’s back garden, so the girls could nip across it without having to go on the road.

  ‘Look at him running,’ said Ruth as Emma, Hobo and Alec trotted after Beckie. Alec had an exaggerated, uncoordinated, John Cleese-ish running style, managing to look gawky and stork-like at five foot six.

  Pam was trying not to smile. ‘I’d swap James’s athletic ability for Alec’s willingness to spend his whole Saturday morning running about a muddy field any time.’

  ‘He is pretty good that way.’ Ruth dived in for another handful of crisps. ‘He never really wanted kids, you know, in the abstract. When it was just a generic child we were talking about.’

  With most people, she rarely if ever referred to the fact that Beckie was adopted, as if it was something she had to keep a secret, as if one day someone was going to look at her and narrow their eyes and say, ‘Oh my God. They let you adopt a child?’

  Pam was different. She’d never had a friend like Pam. For the first time in her adult life she felt she had a friend she could trust. She had even, in her madder moments, wondered if she would some day be able to tell Pam.

  But of course she wouldn’t.

  If she told her, Pam wasn’t going to nod sympathetically and say ‘But you’re not that person any more.’ She was going to be straight on the phone to Social Work.

  They’d take Beckie away.

  Or Alec would leave her and take Beckie with him.

  Pam was looking at her now with comically wide eyes. ‘Really?’

  ‘As soon as he saw Beckie, of course, that was it. Adoration at first sight.’

  Pam scrunched up the tell-tale empty bag and shoved it in her pocket. She linked her arm through Ruth’s. ‘Who could help but adore Beckie?’

  Who indeed?

  She’d been such an adorable little thing, standing there in the middle of a roomful of toys looking so lost and scared, dressed in a green and pink smock and white tights, a wooden train clutched in one plump little hand. Deirdre had warned them that Bekki may not
respond to them at this first meeting and that they shouldn’t be downhearted or alarmed if they ‘failed to engage’ or Bekki appeared ‘distressed or fearful’. For all her training and experience with children, Ruth had frozen, a fixed grin on her face, and it had been Alec who’d hunkered down to Bekki’s level and given her a quick, easy smile before turning away to pick up a wooden carriage.

  ‘Now then Bekki, I think I’m going to need some help here. Does this fit onto… this?’ And he’d picked up a Duplo brick.

  Bekki had just stood there.

  Alec had tried fitting the brick onto the carriage. First one way, then the other. He’d sat down and frowned, not looking at Bekki, speaking as if to himself. ‘Hmmm. This isn’t going too well. It’s got a little hook on it, so it must attach to something… Something must go on here…’

  ‘Thith one,’ Bekki had finally whispered, squatting down next to Alec and holding out the train.

  And Alec had turned and smiled at her and said, ‘Oh, thank you, Bekki. Just right!’

  Just right.

  Pre-Beckie, the idea of Alec running about a field with a pony and two little girls would have been laughable. The idea of Alec at a Family Fun Day at a National Trust for Scotland property, or at a pantomime, or in a soft play area, or doing anything at all, frankly, involving children would have been something Ruth struggled to imagine.

  But he was a great dad. The best. It had brought out a whole new side to him she hadn’t even suspected was there. He just loved being with Beckie. He loved everything about her. He even looked forward now to Strictly and Bake-Off, programmes on which he’d previously heaped vitriol, because he loved watching Beckie watching them.

  And who knew he was so good at stories?

  Ruth couldn’t help being a little bit jealous of this. It was hard not to feel rejected when Beckie sleepily requested ‘a Daddy story’ in preference to the book Ruth had selected. Her favourites were Alec’s stories about The Wanderers, a family who lived on a boat in Viking times. It was, Alec assured them, based on fact, or at least on stories handed down through the generations on the west coast, and from his grandma to Alec and Pippa, and now to Beckie.

  ‘And I’ll tell my children if I have any,’ Beckie would promise, snuggling down with an anticipatory smile as Alec started the next instalment with a recap.

  ‘So last time, Fiona and Donald were sheltering in the cave on Wild Dog Island. Left behind when the others set sail.’

  ‘Their mum thinks they’re asleep in the cabin but they’re not!’

  ‘Yep, and Fiona’s really angry with Donald now.’

  ‘But it’s Fiona’s fault too! She should have said No, it’s really dangerous and stupid. We mustn’t.’

  ‘Mm. Probably if she had, Donald wouldn’t have gone sneaking out to the cave on his own, you reckon?’

  ‘No. He wouldn’t. He’d have been too scared.’

  Beckie loved playing Wanderers whenever they went to the Loch, pretending that she was Fiona and one of her toys was Donald, and Alec was maybe a Viking chasing them, or their dad, or their annoying older brother Kenneth. She wanted nothing more than to be allowed to have sailing lessons so she could be like The Wanderers. This was good leverage to encourage her to keep attending her hated swimming classes – you can only have sailing lessons, Alec and Ruth had told her, when you can swim well enough for it to be safe.

  In the oral histories of the west coast, The Wanderers were families displaced by the Vikings, running from them, or rather sailing away in their boats, but never settling on other shores, always hankering after their own beach, their own turf house, their own lost lives. Their homes had become their boats. They might land on a lonely island or come in to a harbour for a day, a week, a month, but sooner or later they’d be back in their boats and away. Everything had happened in those boats: babies were born, young folk were married, old folk sickened and died and were buried at sea.

  Alec had never told Ruth any of his grandmother’s stories.

  He had never told her a lot of things – although those omissions hardly even registered on the scale compared with hers. Alec’s weren’t really omissions at all. It was more as if Beckie had made him more completely himself, as if the complete Alec, the whole, rounded, wonderful man he was always meant to be, was only now emerging.

  It helped, of course, that Beckie was Beckie. She had proved Alec wrong in his stereotyping of adopted children in that she was very bright, with a particular aptitude for puzzles and games – even chess, at the age of seven! – and shared Alec’s curiosity about life, the world and the Universe. And she was very sweet and good, although Ruth worried a little, still, that she was too eager to please.

  She worried that, with her compliant nature, she might be a target for bullies. But so far so good. She loved school, and her little group of close friends were cheerful, easy-going girls Ruth trusted. That being said, Emma could be a feisty little thing, especially in the face of a perceived injustice, but this was a positive in Ruth’s opinion: Emma could be counted on to protect Beckie from the other children if need be.

  ‘I don’t want to ride,’ Beckie was insisting now, even though riding Hobo was her favourite thing in the world. She was leaning back on the fence getting her breath, one arm hugging a post, as Emma, Hobo and Alec trotted up.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Emma.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Beckie undid her pink riding helmet and balanced it on the fence post. ‘Absolutely sure.’

  Absolutely was a new favourite word.

  Ruth looked at her daughter, drinking her in, feeling her stomach plummet and a shiver run through her. It was as if love for your child was a terrible physical force that swept through you and left you weak, frozen on the edge of a terror you couldn’t name.

  Sara had been right – Ruth had never felt love like this before.

  Or hatred.

  How could those people have hurt her? How could they?

  ‘Aren’t you tired out?’ Alec asked, doing a comical stagger. ‘Personally, I’m knackered.’

  Beckie laughed. ‘We can have a rest if you want? I’m not, like, really tired. But my head’s hot. I don’t need to wear my helmet if I’m not riding, do I?’

  ‘Yes you do, Beckster.’ Alec picked it up and plonked it back on her head. ‘What if you tripped up and Hobo stood on your head?’

  Both girls for some reason found this scenario hilarious. For several minutes all they could do was laugh, Emma staggering to the fence and supporting herself on it and then on Beckie, the two girls clutching each other as they shook, eyes streaming.

  All three adults laughed with them.

  Then: ‘Now, come on, girls,’ said Ruth when it had gone on long enough and showed no signs of abating.

  ‘Sorry Mum,’ Beckie gasped, leaning back on the fence and trying to make her face serious.

  ‘Emma,’ said Pam.

  The girls were both gasping, more exhausted by their laughter than by any amount of running around the field. Ruth remembered how it had felt, this hysterical prolonged hilarity with friends, the agony of trying to stop. There was something almost desperate about it, something not really enjoyable at all.

  ‘Come on now,’ she said again.

  But they couldn’t stop. They would sober for a while but then erupt in fresh paroxysms of mirth whenever they looked at each other, made all the worse by Alec’s, ‘It wouldn’t be so funny if it actually happened.’

  When they seemed finally to have laughed themselves to a standstill, Alec looked over at her. ‘Mum, Beckie needs to wear her helmet, yes?’

  In fact, Ruth considered this unnecessary – Hobo wasn’t going to step on Beckie if she fell over, the pony was far too sensible – but she said, ‘Yes. Let your head cool off a bit and then put it back on. Better safe than sorry.’

  Beckie’s mouth twitched.

  And then Emma was gasping, ‘Imagine you all sorry,’ and Beckie was making a sad head-squashed-by-Hobo face, and Emma was wailing ‘… wee m
yself!’ and running for cover in the broom.

  Chapter 8

  Jed rolls over on the settee when I put on the telly and goes ‘Load a pish.’

  But I’m having my Bargain Hunt. I’ve been sweating on that bastard exercise bike all morning while that prick’s been swadging on the settee wasting space as per usual.

  ‘Get to your bed if you’re wanting to sleep,’ I says, getting comfy in my chair with my wee bit scone and my cup of tea. The Rotty comes and shoves his gob at me, slavers swinging, and I says ‘Beat it.’ The kids feed the dug crap and that’s why he’s in your face twenty-four-seven.

  I get my tablet on my knee and navigate though to FAF: the Forced Adoption Forum. I cannae post after that wee fucker EagleHasLanded got me banned, and I cannae open the ‘Members Only’ section, which is the best bit, but I can still read the other posts. I can still see how my pal Big Bertha’s doing trying to stop her lassie’s bairn getting taken off her. I dinnae have an email or nothing for Bertha so I cannae get in touch with her. I registered again under a different email and username and sent Bertha a wee PM asking for her email, but then I cannae help myself, I’m getting sucked in to a thread on hearings, and some bastard goes ‘CoopyBird is Bekki’s Gran back’ and that’s CoopyBird’s arse banned before Bertha’s had a chance to reply to the PM.

  I dinnae want on their crap wee forum anyway.

  The bastards banned Bekki’s Gran the first time for telling MrMan to get his babby’s photy on Facebook like we’ve got Bekki’s, and get the media involved and try and find your wee laddie. Fucking FAF is meant to be helping folk who’ve had their bairns taken off them, and I get my arse banned for that? All the other bastards were just giving it ‘I know it’s hard but at least you’re allowed to send your son birthday and Christmas cards and get photos three times a year’ like MrMan was gonnae turn round and say ‘Aye that’s fine then thanks very much’. The poor guy has lost his wean because the wean’s ma wanted it adopted, and she got pregnant by MrMan when they were both jakied, and the court says the poor guy isnae fit to look after the babby, even though he’s at Uni and that, and his ma and da are gonnae help, because he’s on the sex offenders’ register because that wee hairy was fifteen? When I says about Facebook and the media he’s all ‘But I don’t want to get in trouble and have them stop the little contact I do have’ and I’m ‘Couple of fucking cards a year?’ and he’s ‘Yes, you’re right, Bekki’s Gran, what have I really got to lose?’ and I’m ‘Go for it MrMan,’ and my arse was banned for that?