The Friend

by Dorothy Koomson

  The screaming stopped for a moment and I stopped, scared that they were going to come downstairs. I could hear my heart in my ears, pounding out in triple time the wrongness of what I was doing, my ragged breathing telling me I was going to get caught. The silence from upstairs continued to roll through the house.

  ‘I have done so much for you. And you say all this to me!’ Bronwyn screamed at Ed and I reached for the door handle, slowly eased it open. I knew the door was loud to shut, so once I had stepped out onto the gravel outside, I pulled the door as far to as I could before I crept over the stones. Each step was suddenly magnified, but I couldn’t stop, couldn’t wait any longer. They were going to stop shouting at each other soon, and then they would come downstairs and see what I had done.

  The thrumming in my ears grew louder, the hammering in my chest like a drill. The air around us was cold and I wished for a moment that I’d thought to grab a hat for him, nappies, clothes, formula. But I hadn’t. I’d just done this thing like I’d done the other things that had got him here in the first place – without thinking it through properly.

  Go back! I was screaming in my head. Even as I was speeding up, the car seat’s handle hooked over one arm, the other hand steadying the main base so that it didn’t swing too much. Go back. Stop this. This will end in so much trouble. Go back, go back, go back. I could see my breath, escaping from my panting mouth in thick white plumes. My chest ached, truly ached from the pain of running in this cold and in these circumstances. My legs weren’t strong enough, they kept wanting to give way, to drop the load in my arms, to stop doing this stupid, terrible thing. But I pushed on, forced myself to keep going, to get to the little turning along the road where I had parked the car.

  I couldn’t find my car keys. I fumbled one-handed in each pocket, terrified that I had left them in the house. I didn’t want to put him down, not on the ground, not on the bonnet of the car. I shifted the weight of the car seat into my other hand, searched through my pockets again: left front pocket, right front pocket, left back pocket, right back pocket. Right jacket pocket, left jacket pocket. They weren’t there. They weren’t there.

  Think, Maxie, think. Where did you leave the car keys? What did you do with the car keys? Think. Think.

  I clasped the car seat handle with both hands.

  GO BACK. THIS IS A SIGN. GO BACK, part of me was screaming.

  Think, think.

  Deep breath. Deep breath. Now think. Don’t think about them coming down the stairs, seeing the door open, guessing what you’ve done. Think about the car keys. Think about what you did when you got here. You sat in the car, you thought and thought. You kept turning the engine on to warm yourself up. Eventually, you got out of the car, you took the keys out of the ignit—

  I stopped suddenly. I hadn’t done that. I hadn’t taken the keys out of the ignition, I hadn’t reached over to the passenger seat and picked up my bag. I’d just wanted to get it over with. I hadn’t been thinking at all.

  I bent over and peered into the darkened car: there was my bag, splayed open with my mobile phone and purse on show. And there in the ignition were the keys. I tried the handle and it opened with no resistance. I’d learnt how to strap in car seats from my time as a nanny and au pair, and it took me very little time to make sure the car seat and baby were secure in the back seat.

  Don’t do this! I was screaming at myself as I started the car, turned it around and headed back the way I had come. I wanted to speed away, to race off into the night, but I had a baby in the back and I didn’t want to risk his safety on dark, lampless roads that I didn’t know very well. But they had a far faster, far better car than I did. They would easily catch up with me if I didn’t at least get on with it. But maybe they wouldn’t drive. They’d had the best part of a bottle of wine – maybe they would know that it would be dangerous to drive.

  From the passenger seat, my mobile lit up the interior of the car, right before the ringing started. Loud and insistent. It was Bronwyn’s ringtone, of course. I pushed my foot harder onto the accelerator.

  The baby started to grizzle in the back, unhappy at the loud noise in the enclosed space. I didn’t dare take my hands off the steering wheel for even a second, though, not on these unfamiliar roads in this dark, with the most precious passenger in the back. The phone kept ringing, seeming to get louder with each ring.

  I’d done so many stupid, terrible things. This was the first step to putting all those things right.

  10 p.m. Cece still has her hands on mine. She’s still holding on to me, but I can’t look in her face to see what she’s thinking. I can’t look at anything but our hands.

  January, 2010

  Come back, Maxie. Please, come back. Come back and we won’t go to the police. We’ll say no more about it.

  Please, Maxie, please. We can arrange times when you can see him. Please Maxie. Just tell us where you are and we’ll come to you.

  Maxie. Please. He’s my life. I can’t live without him. Please. Just let me know he’s OK.

  Oh God please, Maxie. Please. Ed wants to call the police but I’ve said no. I know you were trying to make a point. You’ve made it. Please come back to us. Just bring him home.

  Ed says he’s going to give it three more hours and then he’s going to call the police. Please, Maxie, don’t do this. It’s not fair on any of us. He’s my baby. I love him so much. Please.

  We’re going to have to call the police. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want any of this.

  Please, Maxie. Please.

  What did you do, Maxie? What did you do?

  I did another bad thing, that’s what I did. I sat in one of the longer-stay areas of the motorway services, in the back seat. The baby had started crying during the second hour of driving and I’d been forced to pull over at the nearest service station. He was wet through and probably hungry. I was shaking. I couldn’t stop shaking. I had stolen a baby.

  ‘I’m sorry, Baby,’ I said to him as he sat on my lap, cradled in his blanket. I’d bought nappies, wipes and cotton wool pads. I’d managed to get some ready-mixed infant formula and bottles that I sterilised with a bottle of mineral water and a bag system. It was not ideal, none of it was ideal, but he’d guzzled down the milk as though he hadn’t been fed in a while and wasn’t sure where his next meal was coming from, and had been surprisingly cooperative when I’d changed his nappy on my lap. Now I rested my feet on the back of the driver’s seat to create a slight slope with my legs and I stared at him. He sleepily stared back at me, gurgling and trying very hard to eat his fingers.

  He was pale, like he could have been Bronwyn and Ed’s child, but he had my nose, my lips, and he was as familiar as looking at myself in the mirror.

  ‘I should never have brought you into all this,’ I said to him. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re here, I wouldn’t change that for the world, but I did some things I’m not proud of and now you’re probably going to suffer because of it.’ I gave him my finger and he took it, held on to it like he knew we were in for the whole of this stupidity ride I’d put us on. He had no choice but to cling to me, to see this through with me.

  I wasn’t sure what to do next. I hadn’t thought any of it through. I’d literally grabbed the baby and run for it. I couldn’t be sure they weren’t closing in any second now, knowing that since I hadn’t taken anything with me I’d have to stop at some point for supplies. Or maybe they thought I’d planned it, had come ready prepared and had somewhere to stay. The one thing I’d done that would buy me some time to think had been to head north, instead of south like they might suspect. It had been a last-minute decision that I was hoping would be the right one.

  I’d just made myself a mother. Did I want to be a mother? No. Not really. Not in that deep, yearning way that Bronwyn had done. Not so much I’d ever entertain letting my husband sleep with someone else. She was mad to have said that even once, but to have repeated it? To have been able to have me living in her house for all those months afterw
ards, knowing that I had done that, she must have so wanted a baby.

  Was that why I had done this? To hurt her like she had hurt me? I hadn’t gone there to get him back. I had only wanted to see him. To hold him. To spend time with him. While being a part of their lives. I hadn’t wanted him back consciously, desperately, but I must have needed him because from the moment I’d picked him up, I couldn’t put him down and let him be someone else’s. From that first moment of real connection, he had to be mine again.

  ‘What we going to do now, eh, Baby?’ I asked him.

  He responded by trying to push my finger into his mouth.

  ‘Yes, you’re right, I need to eat. We both need to sleep.’ I grinned at him, and gently kept my finger away from his plump little lips. ‘So far, I think you’re doing very well as a hostage to a fugitive. We need to get you somewhere warm and out of your car seat.’ I closed my eyes, then opened them again, blinking hard against the tiredness that made them thick and scratchy.

  ‘I have to stay awake until we can find a hotel or B & B or something,’ I told him. He closed his eyes, wriggled then stopped as he pushed out a large sound, followed by a pungent, milky smell. ‘Thanks for that, little fella,’ I said. I wrinkled up my face against the rancid aroma that was fast filling the car. ‘If there’s anything that’s going to keep me awake, it is that.’

  10:15 p.m. ‘Do you want to stop?’ Cece asks me.

  I shake my head. I need to get it all out there. I need to tell. I’ve started so I’ll finish.

  January, 2010

  I was sure he was missing her.

  The smell of her, the shape of her, the simple herness of her. He’d had me for two weeks, her for seven months. He knew her, he didn’t know me. And he cried about it. After he’d been fed, after he’d been changed, after he’d been settled for the night, he would sob. I’d got to know his cries the last couple of days, and this was a sort of desolate cry, him whimpering for his mum. I would hold him, hush him, remind myself that I was a terrible person for inflicting this upon him. I should take him back. I should return him to his rightful mum and dad. But I couldn’t. I needed him.

  It was all about me, yes. Parents are meant to put their children first, meant to look beyond their hurt and do what they think is right. Everyone would hate me for the fact this was all about me. They would know that I wasn’t doing the right thing for him, but because I was alone without him.

  I’d waited, these last two days, for the knock on the door, for the appeal on the TV and in the papers, to hear that Bronwyn Sloane had had her child snatched from her by an unbalanced individual and the police were leaving no stone unturned until they found her. I had found a place to stay near where we’d stopped that first night. Partly because I didn’t know where else to go, and partly because if they were going to find me, I’d rather it was here. I’d rather be nearby so he wouldn’t have a very long journey home. I scoured the papers every day to see if she was mentioned, to see if there was anything out there that would tell me what my fate would be if I brought him back or if I kept him. Nothing. The only hint that something was wrong was his little cry, which would drill through my heart, make me rethink what I was doing to him, what I was doing to her.

  I rocked the baby on my shoulder, listened to his little desolate cries as they grew softer and quieter, as he edged himself towards another sleep. Maybe I should go back to Sheffield. Just face the music. Take responsibility for what I’d done these past couple of years. Sleeping with someone’s husband, essentially selling a baby, stealing that baby. Maybe I should stop making such terrible, impulsive decisions and face up to what I had done. If Bronwyn and Ed had got my address from Mum and Dad and were waiting for me, then so be it. I lay the baby back in his car seat and began packing up the stuff we’d accumulated in the past few days. I had to go home. I had to give him some semblance of normality. Living in a hotel room, even as nice a one as this, was not good for him. If they were there when I got back, they were there. It would be a sign that I was not meant to be with him, and I needed to be punished for what I’d done.

  The baby whimpered one last time before he fell properly asleep. ‘It’s OK, Baby,’ I whispered to him. ‘We’re going now. And hopefully you’ll be with your mother again soon.’

  January, 2010

  ‘I just want to see if he’s all right,’ Ed said. He came towards me with his arms out, his hands up, showing me he was no threat. I’d rented this flat at a great price, using the money I’d got from being Bronwyn’s researcher, and hadn’t noticed his car when I’d pulled into my road and unloaded my bag and the baby from the car.

  The closer he got, the worse he looked: a full beard, unkempt hair, his clothes creased and grubby. He kept his hands raised in peace and surrender, and he approached us slowly. He wasn’t looking at me, though: his attention was entirely focused on the car seat.

  ‘Have you come to take him back?’ I asked. My heart was thumping as loudly as a jackhammer.

  Ed stared at me, almost surprised that I was there. His eyes were a network of red veins, his skin was the dull grey of a winter morning. He squinted slightly. He looked how I had felt all these months away from the baby – shocked, scared, unable to properly function. He shook his head. ‘I don’t think I have, no,’ he said. He refocused on his son. ‘I don’t know what I’ve come for. Bronwyn and I have split up. I wanted to go to the police, she didn’t. I got your address from your parents. I can’t even think. I just … I just want to make sure he’s OK.’ He inhaled deeply. ‘Once I know he’s OK, I’ll be able to sleep.’

  ‘He’s fine,’ I said.

  Ed stopped staring at the baby and looked up at me, a penetrating, withering stare that caused me to shrink a little. ‘I’m supposed to take your word for that, am I?’

  ‘Look, come up to my flat and see him properly if you don’t believe me. I’ve been looking after him. I really have.’ Another impulsive, terrible decision. Ed could do anything to me up there. He could beat me up and take the baby away again. He could call the police and have me arrested. I was queen of stupid decisions. Well, I thought as I unlocked the outer door, at least I’m consistent.

  In my living room, as small and boxy as it was, Ed got down on his knees to take the baby out of his car seat. I’d driven through the night, but had had to keep stopping to make sure he didn’t spend too much time in the car seat, so morning was starting to peek over the horizon by the time we’d pulled up outside the flats.

  ‘Are you going to call the police?’ I asked Ed. Carefully, but expertly, he lifted the baby out of his seat, then he got to his feet, stepped backwards and sat down on the sofa.

  Ed ignored me. Instead, he gazed at his son, his tired face softening and brightening. ‘Are you OK, Frankie mate? I missed you.’ He bent down and brushed his lips against the baby’s forehead. ‘I really missed you.’

  ‘It’s fine if you are going to call the police,’ I told him. ‘I don’t care if you are.’

  He stopped staring at the baby, and glared at me. ‘I’m not going to call the police. I wouldn’t put Frankie through that.’

  ‘Why do you keep calling him Frankie? Isn’t Frankie his third middle name?’ I’d been calling him ‘Baby’ these past few days because it felt wrong to call him Damien, his given name. I hadn’t liked it, I hadn’t had any choice in it, and when I called him Damien it reminded me that he wasn’t mine. Not legally. Not morally.

  ‘Frankie was meant to be his name but Bronwyn changed her mind at the last minute. On the way to the register office that morning, actually, she said I could have it as his third middle name or not at all. It was another way to punish me for … for sleeping with you. She always had the final say in everything to do with him because I could never make up for what I’d done to her. She couldn’t stop me calling him Frankie, though, despite how hard she tried.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I sat next to him on the sofa. He didn’t turn away from me in revulsion; instead he stared at me with a smal
l frown wrinkling the space between his eyebrows. ‘Why did you split up with her?’ I asked.

  He returned to looking at, marvelling and delighting in, his son. ‘Because I wanted Frankie back and I didn’t care what it would mean. She only wanted him back if no one knew what she’d done. That turned out to be my line in the sand.’ He smiled down at the baby’s sleeping face again. Suddenly the smile disappeared and the frown was aimed back at me. ‘You shouldn’t have taken him, Max. I would have persuaded her to let you see him. You shouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘Yes I should,’ I replied. I’d opened my mouth to agree with him, to say I’d done a terrible thing and I was sorry, but instead the truth had come tumbling out. The truth of it was, I should have taken him. ‘Because I should never have given him away in the first place. Sold him. I shouldn’t have done it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah.’ He suddenly held the baby out to me, offering him back, saying he understood that I shouldn’t have cleaved myself away from the little boy.

  ‘No, no, I didn’t mean you weren’t to hold him, I just—’

  ‘I think I’m going to pass out, Max,’ he interrupted. ‘I have literally not slept since I last saw you. Take him, please.’

  ‘Oh, oh, OK.’ I gathered Frankie in my arms and stood up.

  ‘I’m going to lie here for a bit,’ he said. ‘Don’t run away with him again. Please. Please. I just need to sleep. OK? Don’t run away. I’m not going to hurt you, I’m not going to call the police. Don’t run away with him and we can sort everything else out afterwards. Right now, I just need to sleep.’

  ‘Cool. Yeah. I need to change him and stuff anyway. You sleep. And I won’t run away. I most definitely will not run away again.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Ed whispered in the dark of my bedroom. Frankie was asleep on the bed between us. Since Ed had arrived, even though he’d been asleep when Ed had held him, Frankie (as I was now calling him) hadn’t sobbed. Hadn’t cried for his mummy. We’d spent the day playing quietly in the bedroom while Ed slept on the sofa. Ed had eventually woken at five, bleary-eyed and subdued. I’d said he could take a shower and afterwards, he’d emerged with his damp hair slicked back off his face, dressed in only a pair of my grey jogging bottoms. None of my T-shirts would fit him and he couldn’t wear his own clothes because I’d put them in the wash the second he took them off.