His Kidnapper's Shoes

by Maggie James

  Her doctor told me Gran had suffered a mini-stroke, and once she’d had one, then she’d be more prone to another. He prescribed medication and told Gran she had to start taking life more easily. I realised that however exhausted I might get looking after my baby, I needed to do more to take care of my grandmother.

  I started to fuss more over her, reminding her to take her pills, which she didn’t always do, and making sure she got disturbed at night as little as possible. She still looked tired a lot of the time. I knew she was worried about finances and the state of the house. She’d bought the place after my grandfather died, being unable to endure staying any longer in the house where they had lived together. She’d not had much money and all she’d been able to afford was a small, isolated and run-down place a little way out of town, which needed more cash to set it right than she possessed.

  Anyway, I was telling you about how hard it was for me then, how exhausted I got. The house added an extra strain on my already depleted energy. I spent my days with primer and paint, trying to brighten up our tired home, checking the roof for leaks and replacing the old gaffer tape on the pipes under the kitchen sink. Gran smiled wearily at me, and I knew she appreciated my efforts. I made big pots of soup and pans of thick stew and tried as best I could to get her to eat as much as possible. I became even more exhausted but told myself I’d have to manage somehow. I was eighteen, after all, and I had to be strong, both for my baby and for my beloved grandmother.

  In between decorating and looking after Gran, I stroked my fingers over my son’s fat cheeks and felt his chunky limbs flail around as I held him. I thought about going to college and getting some sort of qualification, maybe in a couple of years’ time; meanwhile, I’d look after my baby and Gran and life would be good.

  Ah, Daniel, my beloved son. As the saying goes, people make plans, and God laughs.

  Will you visit me soon, my love? I miss you. You’re my son, the finest part of my life. I adore you; I’ve always taken care of you and tried my best to do the right thing, no matter what you think of me now. If I could see you and explain things, then you’d understand. You’d realise how it was for me, you’d stop judging me and your anger would start to lessen. We could rebuild some sort of relationship and the knot of pain in my gut would begin to unravel.

  In the meantime, I get daily visits from an eager young man, presumably some sort of psychiatrist, who leaves my room every day looking less and less hopeful that he’ll be able to persuade me to speak. Ian has been in to visit me most days as well. I think he believes he’ll be the one to get me to talk. He takes my hand and looks at me and I find it impossible to look back at him. I stare at the floor instead and like the eager young man, every time he leaves he seems a little more defeated.

  It’s not his fault, Daniel. He loves me and he’s always tried to be a good husband. All this must be hard for him. Ian has never been a man to like change. Suddenly he finds his wife accused of stealing the child who bears his surname, who he brought up as his stepson. I know you and he never had the sort of father-son relationship I would have liked but he still provided a father figure for you, gave you a male role model in your life. I don’t understand why you and he don’t have any contact; it upsets me. I want to ask him to call you and tell you to visit me, but I don’t. I need you to come without being asked. I won’t speak anyway, not until you come. You’ll be here soon; I’m sure of it. I hold on to that thought, as I go through the motions of living and wait for you, my beloved son, to walk through the door.

  Sometimes, though, as I wait, I think I can hear God laughing at me.

  10

  DIGGING DEEPER

  Back at the flat, Daniel’s brain was in one hell of a mess, his emotions veering all over the place.

  He tried to marshal his thoughts into some sort of order. Take his mother and stepfather. Wasn’t his dysfunctional family set-up the core issue here, the real reason for his doubts? He’d always considered himself a bit screwed-up by not coming from an apple-pie happy family like the one Katie had. He’d been saddled with a father he’d never known and a mother he couldn’t relate to, hardly an unusual scenario. Did happy families exist anyway? Even Katie's seemingly perfect set-up contained its skeleton in the closet.

  Be rational about this, he thought. Katie was probably right about the memory playing weird tricks on people, twisting their thought processes so something false appeared to be the real deal. Perhaps all this amounted to was some bizarre quirk in his brain cells breathing life into the illusion of two women who had never existed.

  There was the weird eye colour thing, though. Genetics had added a new dimension to this whole screwed-up mess, although he didn't pretend to understand it. Science hadn’t been his thing at school; he'd never paid much attention to anything other than painting, sport and girls. He hadn’t a clue whether it made any real difference; as Katie had said, it wasn’t by any means impossible for him to have green eyes with a blue-eyed mother and a brown-eyed father.

  His father. Had he really been the music-loving undergraduate who had died in a tangle of twisted metal and broken bodies on the M4? Or had his mother invented the tragic engineering student and his death? If so, it added weight to the idea of him being adopted and his mother not being able to admit what had happened, for whatever reason. The problem being, as he’d pointed out to Katie, if he’d been adopted, it wouldn’t have been official. There would be no records for him to check.

  Wait a minute, though. Perhaps he’d been right in thinking the woman who called herself his mother was really his aunt. Laura Bateman might have had a sister who’d given birth and then died, and she took the child on as her own. Maybe the death of this sister had traumatised her with grief, and so she never spoke about her. It would explain why Daniel had never bonded with her as her son, because he wasn’t. Might be the reason for the eye colour thing as well, he thought.

  Both birth and death certificates would be on record if there had been a sister. Easily traceable, if he chose to do so. He could put Tim’s fascination with genealogy to use, feigning a newfound interest in his family history to satisfy any curiosity from his flatmate.

  It didn’t explain, though, who the girl and the woman in his memories were, unless perhaps the woman was his maternal grandmother and the girl his actual birth mother. Hang on, though, he thought. He couldn’t shake the strong sense of connection with the woman beside his bed, as if she were his mother, not the girl with the dark hair. Something still didn’t stack up here.

  The same old story, he thought, as he paced his bedroom. He didn't have a damn clue what to do about any of this, or even whether he should do anything at all. He could always decide to live with the whole crock of crap and get on with his life. There was a lot to say for taking a walk down the path of least resistance.

  Shouldn’t he resign himself to the fact life had dealt him a less than wonderful family hand and move on? Sure, it might not be the ideal solution, but with Katie with him, he’d get by.

  Yeah, taking the easy option sure looked like a good one.

  What had he once heard, though? How the hard way always got easier and the easy way always got harder.

  He’d be taking the hard way, then, because he couldn't lie to himself. The old familiar feeling stirred in his gut. He knew he’d never convince himself the memories weren’t genuine and the woman who he called his mother really had given birth to him. Especially now, after Katie had told him the science stuff about genetics and eye colour. The doubts had now doubled, tripled, multiplied out of control.

  He dug down into his memories, spiralling back twenty-two years, searching for the girl with the dark hair and the woman beside his bed. He saw the girl, her hair about shoulder-length. The memory blurred in his head and he needed to concentrate to play what happened through in his mind. They were outdoors; he remembered the green of the grass, but he didn’t recall any other details. All he could remember was the ball being tossed to him and the way the girl’s hair sw
ung around her face as she moved. In his mind, she laughed at his infant self and he giggled with delight in return, a moment of bliss in an otherwise unhappy childhood. The same conviction he always experienced stirred again in his gut. The girl was real, and she had been important in some way in his early life.

  He dug down again, and brought up the unknown woman. This time, he was warm and comfortable in bed. This memory was even more indistinct, the room being in darkness. The woman sat on the edge of the bed as if she belonged there. He didn’t remember her speaking or doing anything other than tucking him in. He didn’t recall what she looked like. Whenever he thought of her, though, a sense of calm, of peace, came to him. This woman represented safety, warmth, security. No monsters lurked in the dark in that child’s bedroom.

  What struck him, pretty damn forcefully when he thought about it, was the contrast in the way he felt when he thought about his mother and when he remembered the woman beside his bed. There was always a certain detachment, coldness even, in his heart when Daniel brought his mother to mind. Yet when he thought of the woman sitting at his bedside, he always felt loved. Warm, safe and secure. He knew that was why, deep down, he always believed this woman to be his mother rather than Laura Bateman.

  The girl and the woman. Surely to God they must think about him, where he lived, what he might be doing? He wondered where the hell they were now and how he’d react if he ever met them again, which, God knows, didn’t seem remotely possible. He didn’t have a single clue to go on about who they were or where they might be, assuming they were both still alive. He had no reason to think they weren’t; after all, the girl had been young, and the woman, well, she’d probably still only be in her forties or fifties now.

  There remained the idea of going through his mother’s things to find answers, something like photos, letters or a diary. He dismissed the thought, as he’d always done before. He wouldn’t sink so low as to pry through her possessions. He wasn’t about to invade his mother’s privacy without a very real expectation he’d find something, and he didn’t have that. Besides, if he did find anything, he wouldn’t be able to tackle her about whatever he came across anyway. She’d never provided answers in the past and he didn’t have any reason to think she’d start now.

  Shit. His thoughts were turning in circles, ever widening ones, without giving him any relief. Still, he now possessed something more tangible to go on. He’d talk to Tim as soon as he got in. He’d have something more solid with which to confront Laura Bateman and get some answers, if he found out she’d had a sister.

  Time to put the brakes on all this navel gazing, though. His brain was fried. He decided to call Katie.

  ‘Hey, sweet pea. Missing me?’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself.’ He pictured the eye roll she’d be doing as she spoke. ‘What’ve you been up to?’

  ‘Thinking. I’m surprised you didn’t hear the wheels turning.’

  ‘Thought any more about what we talked about?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He briefly outlined to her what he planned to do.

  ‘Makes sense. As you say, Tim can help you. I’ve never done anything along those lines, but these things are all a matter of public record, aren’t they? This thing about her having a sister who may be your real mother, well, you’re right. There’ll be both birth and death certificates if she did exist and your mother, I mean aunt, covered it all up for some reason. But Dan…?’ Her voice held a warning.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You need to think about how you’re going to tackle this, if you’re right and you do find your mother is really your aunt. You’re not going to be able to march in and confront her, if she’s suppressed the memory of her sister’s death, and if she’s always suffered mental health issues. That would be cruel, not to say dangerous, Dan.’

  ‘Yeah. You’re right. Hey, one bridge at a time, right? I’ll talk to Tim tonight. Let’s see if this hypothetical sister really did exist first. We might come up with nothing, after all. Perhaps Mum always has been an only child.’

  ‘Have you thought about what you’ll do if that turns out to be the case? If you don’t come up with a sister?’

  ‘I’ll be back where I started. Feet firmly planted on square one. I haven’t a clue what I’ll do then.’

  ‘Not a problem. I have the answer. A pretty simple one, too.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘This conviction you have that she’s not your real mother – well, I’ve thought of an easy way to prove that, one way or another. A private DNA test.’

  This woman never ceased to amaze him. ‘How do those work? Don’t you need a blood sample?’

  ‘Blood works best, sure, but plenty of other ways exist to get DNA. Hair, for example. Now you should be able to obtain some of her hair from her brush. With the roots attached. Take some of yours, send both sets of hair off to the lab, and they’ll run the DNA. They’ll be able to tell you for sure if she’s your mother.’

  Jeez. He’d never thought of that but Katie was right. It would be easy enough to get a hair sample from her brush. All he had to do was to go into the bedroom she shared with his stepfather the next time he went to visit her. She’d never know he’d taken the hair and if it did turn out she was his mother, well, he’d keep quiet and she’d never find out what he’d done.

  ‘Dan? You still with me?’

  ‘Still here, Katie girl. So tell me about these tests; how do I find somebody who’ll do them?’

  ‘Have a look online, Dan. You should be able to find plenty of companies offering DNA testing. You can do it through the post. It’s usually used for proving paternity or otherwise, but DNA will work for maternity testing as well.’

  ‘I’ll look into it. Do a Google search; see what I can come up with.’ This woman was one to hang on to, if he possessed any sense in his messed-up brain. He’d thought he had no options available to him before he’d told Katie about all this shit; he’d been convinced he had no choice but to live with the nagging doubts and the memories. Then she’d dragged his innermost thoughts from him and hadn’t pegged him as weird but had been Katie, ever practical, coming up with answers when he’d thought none existed. He was one hell of a lucky bastard.

  ‘Gonna go now, Katie girl. I’ll call you later. Hey, Katie?’

  ‘Yes, Dan?’

  ‘You’re one hell of a woman.’

  11

  SILENCE AND SCREAMS

  Life seemed comparatively good back then, Daniel. I didn't mind the constant exhaustion; I went through my days happy and fulfilled, in a way I’d never been before. I'm the nurturing type, you see, Daniel; all I wanted, all I've ever wanted, was to be a homemaker in a stable family set-up. Taking care of Gran and my baby, looking after our home – these simple things satisfied the nesting instinct in me, and I revelled in them. For the short time God allowed me to enjoy them, I mean. Because He was indeed laughing at me, as I cooked, scrubbed and cleaned. He had His hands firmly on the rug of domestic bliss I was standing on, and I’d soon find Him wrenching it out from under my feet.

  One morning I woke up late, having slept really well. I went over to check my sleeping baby, grateful for the unusual peace. Gran wasn’t one of life’s morning people; she wouldn’t be surfacing much before ten o’clock. I scuttled back into the warmth of my bed, thinking about the chicken I’d roast later on, followed by a trip to the park if Gran felt up to it. There was a new detective thriller on TV that night we’d decided to watch. A perfect day stretched before me. I dozed off once more.

  The unfamiliar silence was still there when I woke up again. The lack of sounds got me worried, you see, Daniel. The house seemed too still, too quiet; something jarred in my mind as being off-kilter. OK, so Gran wasn’t at her best early in the morning, but normally the noises from her bedroom as she moved around told me when she’d got out of bed. I’d not heard a thing.

  I pulled on my dressing gown, shoved my feet into my slippers and walked down the landing. I hesitated before knocking on her door. S
he might still be asleep; she’d been unusually busy yesterday, and hadn’t gone to bed until late.

  ‘Gran?’ Silence came back at me. ‘Gran, are you awake?’

  Perhaps I should leave her be. A feeling in my gut, though, told me something wasn’t right here.

  I tried again. ‘Gran? Do you want some breakfast?’

  She didn’t reply. I shoved open the door and walked in.

  I realised she’d died as soon as I looked at her. Her face was a terrible colour, the sort of colour no living human being ever is, and her mouth hung open. Her head had lolled to one side and I saw where her spittle had stained the pillow. The left side of her face appeared distorted, as if some invisible hand had dragged her cheek down towards her shoulder.

  I remember the words No, No, No, spinning round in my brain and I shook her, although I had no idea what good that would do, but I clung desperately to the hope she might still be alive. A false hope. She was cold beneath my hands; she must have died hours before. My wonderful grandmother, who had been the backbone of my life ever since I could remember, had gone from me, and oh Daniel, I had no idea how I would bear her loss.

  I was only eighteen and although I felt decades older sometimes, I was petrified. I was all alone now, except for a small, demanding baby who depended on me for everything. So I looked at my dead grandmother, lying grey and flaccid against her spittle-stained pillow, and I felt more scared than I’d ever done before, even worse than when I’d been hungry and had no idea when I’d next eat. Being alone terrified me because everything was down to me now and I didn’t know if I could cope.

  I called an ambulance and the paramedics were so kind, as they’re trained to be. A doctor came out as well, telling me my grandmother had suffered a massive stroke, and calling an undertaker to transport her body to the mortuary. I finally broke down after everyone had gone. I was devastated, Daniel. Perhaps if you ever lose someone who you really love, although I hope to God you never do, you’ll know what it’s like. I wouldn’t wish on anybody the agony I went through then, slumped down on the living room floor of the damp house I called home. I cried and I cried, both for my dead grandmother who had been torn away from me whilst still only in her seventies, and for myself.