by Maggie James
‘You get any trouble with Barry, you tell him Emma Carter will come and sort him out. That’ll put the fear of God into him.’ She laughed again, showing a gap where a molar should have been.
‘If you need anything – anything at all – you get yourself over here. You take care of yourself, sweetheart.’ She patted my arm as she spoke, and the ice melted a little more.
Well, I found myself going into that shop every day. The prices were a little higher than elsewhere, but I didn’t care. Emma’s innate empathy reached out to my frozen soul; I craved those few moments of warmth each day. I guess we all need human contact and I was no exception, Daniel, even when I still felt so dead inside.
The numbness seemed to lessen a little each time Emma greeted me, though. After a few weeks of her soft smile warming me through each day, I took out the box containing Gran’s photos, and I was able to look at them without crying. I still missed her and thought of her every day but the pain of her death was no longer as raw, as fresh, as before. I traced my fingers over her beloved face and I realised how lucky I’d been to have her in my life. I may not have received the maternal love I would have liked, but I'd experienced Gran's warmth and understanding instead and I reckon with her I got quality rather than quantity. I’d been blessed, all right, and I realised I’d had the first thought in weeks that held a nugget of positivity.
I found I was no longer spending all day, every day, lying on my bed. The grime and whiff of my bedsit had started to get to me. My inner housewife took over; I went to the shop and bought lots of cleaning products. Well, I did say I was the homebody type. Before, the state of my bedsit hadn’t mattered. Now I figured I might as well spend the rest of my self-imposed sentence somewhere clean that didn’t smell bad. My real motivation was Emma Carter. I wanted her to think well of me, to believe I had some pride; I dreaded what would go through her head should she ever see the ugliness in which I lived.
It took a long time. That bedsit probably hadn’t been cleaned in years. The smell of bleach and lemons and – according to the label on the all-purpose cleaner – summer meadow freshness filled the small space. I buffed the windows and stuffed the grey net curtains into my laundry bag for washing later on. I coaxed solidified grease from the ancient cooker. I squirted polish on the wardrobe and rubbed the battered wood to a semblance of a shine. I wiped bleach inside the old fridge and chipped away at the thick ice around the tiny freezer compartment.
At the end of what seemed like forever, I had somewhere to live that didn’t smell bad, with clean windows, where the once stained furniture now shone. My arms ached, but my inner housewife was satisfied. The place looked unrecognisable from the squalid hovel I’d moved into a couple of months ago. It was still cramped and there wasn’t much I could do about that, but it was clean now, and I intended to keep it that way.
One weekend I bought one of the Sunday newspapers; I'm not sure why. Perhaps I wanted more to do in my day than clean, eat and sleep. I lay on my bed and started reading.
The paper came with one of those thick supplements aimed at women. I scanned through the recipes, skipped the fashion advice, before turning the page to an article that made me draw in a sharp breath. It was entitled ‘Taken Young: How I Dealt With The Loss of My Child,’ by a woman called Mariette Sinclair.
I didn’t read the article at first. I couldn't. Something compelled me to start reading eventually, though, and I didn't stop until the last word.
Mariette Sinclair might have been telling my own story. The raw pain shining through her writing was my pain too. We’d never met, we never would, yet the shared agony of holding a dead child in our arms bound us together. Like me, Mariette had thought cot death always happened to other people; like me, one morning she woke up with the same deep sensation of dread that something terrible had happened. She rushed in to her baby’s nursery and found her daughter limp and lifeless. This woman understood the agony of finding a baby cold and dead, when before there had been a warm body and flailing limbs. Probably she had screamed out her despair in the same way I did. Perhaps she had pounded the floor in anguish as well. She admitted she’d contemplated suicide, like me.
She told how, even with a husband who shared her grief, her sorrow isolated her. She shut him out, walling herself off, describing how she imprisoned herself in the cell of her own mind. I guess her internal jail was her mental equivalent of my frozen heart and soul. Same thing; semantics the only difference.
I read how she started to get to grips with her pain at last. It seemed impossible at first and every tiny step forward she took was beyond difficult for her. She began with tearing down the wall shutting her off from her husband. She started to talk to him and realised their shared grief was a column of support to cling to in her misery. He encouraged her to call a friend who had lost a baby to cot death and she wrote about how valuable she found it to talk to someone who had experienced a similar tragedy. The same friend introduced her to the idea of getting grief counselling, which she did, eventually retraining as a psychotherapist.
I'm not sure why her article spoke to me so strongly. Perhaps it was the catalyst for my brain to unfreeze and start to think about my baby's death. I’d been bottling everything up, Daniel, as I told you. Well, not bottling things up, as that suggested I’d had emotions about the death of my baby to bottle up, but thanks to the pervading numbness freezing through me since that awful day, I hadn’t actually felt anything at all. My baby's death was still a no-go area for me, the ice still solid around the place in my heart where he lived.
I finished reading, curled up on my bed, my knees hugged to my chest, and it was then the ice around my heart started to crack. Big shards of frozen numbness splintered off and fell away, exposing the raw devastation beneath. My baby had died. The awful reality of his death rolled over me in one huge agonising wave, sobs choking me as I broke down. Instead of the floor this time, I pounded the bed with my fists, the words No, No, No tearing themselves from my throat. The pain, the terrible crushing pain I had experienced whilst cradling my dead child in my arms, returned full force, smashing its way into my heart and mind. My beloved baby, my soul and very existence, had died. How could I ever begin to heal the devastation of his death?
The idea of taking a sharp knife to my wrists flashed across my mind again in that moment, Daniel, the thought bright and shimmering and showing me the end of the tunnel. Only for a moment, though. Through my tears, I caught sight of Mariette Sinclair's article on the bed beside me. This woman had experienced the same agony as I had, and she had survived. Somehow, she found a way to deal with her grief.
Perhaps a way existed for me too. I had no idea what it might be. Mariette Sinclair had been married, with a husband and friends to help her in her grief. I had neither. She’d also attended counselling. No way would I be doing that. Impossible, I thought, to talk to somebody who hadn't herself known the searing grief of finding a beloved child dead. There must be counsellors, like Mariette, who had. Other than sharing a common experience, though, how would that help me? Would a counselling session breathe air into my dead baby’s lungs? Would I have to listen to futile questions, such as how was I coping with my child's death? I’d need to lie about his burial and about the makeshift grave under the sapling. I could never have explained about how I’d thought if I didn’t tell anyone, my baby’s death wouldn’t become a reality.
Mariette Sinclair had contemplated suicide. I remembered how I'd thought about killing myself. I wasn't frozen and numb anymore, but the overwhelming searing pain had returned. I'd promised myself pills or a sharp knife would be my release if that ever happened.
Somehow, though, the agony wasn’t quite as crushing as before. Perhaps time, such a tired cliché, had helped a little. Despite the pain, I knew I wasn’t going to commit suicide. That article, written by my sister sufferer in grief, had spoken to me, snuffing out my desire to kill myself. Mariette Sinclair had survived; so would I.
She’d been lucky in having people ar
ound her to support her, though, Daniel. I didn’t.
It sank into me then how very alone I was.
16
HAMMER BLOW
Daniel dragged himself awake late the following morning, head pounding, mouth parched and tasting like shit. The whole weird situation, already thoroughly screwed-up, now came with the mother of all hangovers. Not that he regretted his session on the sauce, although he’d never intended to sink so many beers.
He sent Katie a text, suggesting he should come over early afternoon, adding he was going to take a shower and asking her to text back yes or no. Within two minutes, he got a yes response and switched off his mobile. He popped a paracetamol and forced himself to take the hottest shower he could withstand, willing the water to wash away his hangover. He caught sight of his face in the mirror. Shit. He looked rough, but what the hell.
He glanced at his watch. Half past eleven. He figured he’d go round to Katie’s after he’d caught up on some more sleep, about two o’clock.
He woke up again early afternoon, head still throbbing but definitely better. Time to set off for Katie’s flat in Putney. He hadn't a clue how to tell her what he'd discovered without it sounding like a bizarre joke.
She answered his ring on the doorbell immediately, all curves and spice in her trademark tight jeans and figure-hugging top, and pulled him straightaway into a fierce kiss. All thoughts of what he'd come to tell her vanished from his mind, his only thought the sensations she provoked in his groin. God, he yearned to fuck her senseless, to celebrate his discovery with sex, fast, furious and feral, their fucking marking a new start for him. Not yet, though. He'd tell her first and then they’d hit the sack.
He pulled her into the living room, sitting down beside her on the sofa.
‘Katie…’ His hands reached out and grabbed hers. ‘I’ve got some news. Incredible news. You won’t believe what I’ve found out.’
‘About your real mother?’ Excited impatience sprang from Katie. ‘Did Laura Bateman tell you the truth when you confronted her?’
‘She didn’t tell me anything. Same old story of denial. No surprise there.’
‘What then?’ Puzzlement clouded her face. ‘Did you tackle your stepfather instead? Did he reveal something to you?’
Daniel snorted. ‘I haven't seen the bastard in years and even if I did there's no way in hell he'd ever say or do anything to help me. Found it all out myself, Katie. I've discovered who I am, where I come from, my real parents, everything.’
‘How?’ Bemusement drew her forehead into lines, endearing puckers Daniel longed to smooth away. He relished sweet satisfaction over the news he'd soon reveal, picturing her reaction. Disbelief first, probably, then shock and amazement once he convinced her he wasn’t bullshitting. Then a hundred eager questions, prising every detail out of him.
‘The British Library.’ He savoured the moment. ‘That's how I found out the truth. Checking through the newspaper archives.’ He drew in a breath. ‘I was kidnapped, Katie. My real name is Daniel James Cordwell.’
She gasped, the sound strangling itself in her throat. Taken aback, he checked her face, gauging her reaction.
Not what he was expecting. Shock, definitely shock, but the incredulous response he'd anticipated was missing. Instead – what was he seeing? Anguish, although he had no idea why. Katie’s expression spoke to him of denial, of wanting to crawl as far away as possible from what he was saying. His confidence slipped several notches, making him stumble over his next words, uncertain as to what her reaction meant.
‘Katie…what is it? What's wrong?’
He'd never seen her so pale. This wasn't Katie, his confident sassy girlfriend. Something in her expression reminded him of the time she'd seemed strange to him a while ago when talking about her sister. He didn't like it, didn’t understand it but something told him not to press her, to wait for her to speak.
‘No way. No way, Dan. This is crazy. You're talking bullshit.’
He didn't answer, not trusting himself to reply.
‘What’s happened? Why are you saying this?’ She gulped, walked quickly from the room into the kitchen, returning with a handful of paper towels. She wiped her face, blew her nose.
‘You’re not making any sense.’ A sob came from her. ‘OK, so your mother isn’t your mother and you need to find out what’s behind all that, but you being kidnapped?’ She shook her head in confusion and denial, more tears running down her face. He'd never seen her cry before. He still had no idea what lay behind her reaction.
‘Katie.’ She wouldn’t look at him. He continued anyway. ‘Katie, I read the newspaper reports of the kidnap. I saw the picture of my mother and I recognised her as the woman who used to sit beside my bed. The girl I remember, the girl with the dark hair - she was my nanny.’
‘No.’ Katie shook her head. ‘No, I don’t believe this.’ Her voice started rising in pitch. ‘It’s all coincidence. Just because you find out your mother isn’t your mother – it doesn’t follow you were kidnapped. You have no proof of this.’ She dabbed at her face with a paper towel. ‘You should have thought this through before barging in here, spouting crap like this. I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it.’
‘Katie…’
‘Don’t do this to me, Dan.’
In order to convince her, he undid his belt, pulled down his jeans and boxers a few inches and twisted his body towards her. ‘Look, Katie.’ He pointed at his hip. ‘The newspaper article said Daniel James Cordwell had no distinguishing characteristics, apart from a mole on his right hip. You’ve seen it often enough. There’s your proof.’
She didn’t look at his pointing finger. She didn’t need to.
‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘Oh, my God. It’s true, then.’
‘Yes. Katie, what’s wrong? Why are you reacting this way?’
The air hung thickly between them.
‘Katie, talk to me.’
After what seemed like forever, her eyes met his. Pain hit him at the torment in them.
‘Christ, Daniel, I wish to God there was an easy way to tell you this. The woman in the newspaper article, the one you recognised as your mother. Her name’s Sarah, isn’t it? Sarah Cordwell.’
Confusion pushed aside pain. ‘How the hell did you know...?’
She dropped her gaze before delivering the hammer blow.
‘She's my sister, Daniel.’
Then she was on her feet, running from the room into the hallway and into the bathroom. The door slammed behind her. Loud choking sobs hit Daniel’s ears.
He sat in stunned silence.
His mind flew back to being in bed with Katie, when she’d talked about her family. Oh, God. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t possibly be.
Sarah Cordwell. He’d never known the surname of Katie’s married sister. He was her son, Daniel James Cordwell. Katie was his aunt. His blood relative. His kidnap by Laura Covey must have been the skeleton in the family closet she’d mentioned.
He’d have laughed at the irony of the situation, if he hadn’t been so utterly distraught, if his guts weren’t twisting themselves into a double helix, the double helix of the DNA he shared with Katie.
He’d gone looking for an aunt, expecting her to turn out to be the sister of Laura Covey.
Well, he’d found an aunt all right. The problem was - she’d been sharing his bed for the last few weeks.
And holy shit, he’d always wanted to be part of a different family, a happy, united one that didn’t include Ian Bateman. He’d envied Katie her family set-up, with the devoted parents and the adoring sister. And there lay the irony. Turned out he belonged to it and always had done.
The only problem being - he was the loud, rattling skeleton in the family closet.
A bad case of be careful what you wish for, he thought.
He rubbed his hand over his face, forcing down the emotions blocking his throat. He’d met the one woman capable of turning Daniel Bateman, consummate player, into Mr Faithful, the only girl he�
�d ever thought he could fall in love with, and she turned out to be his aunt. An aunt whose penchant for sculpture had drawn her into the shop where he worked, the conversation they’d had about Balinese carvings bringing them together. The sense he’d had when he first met Katie of somehow already knowing her must have been déjà vu waving a red flag at him.
Dear God. He and Katie were over; they had to be. In order for him to be reunited with his mother and father, and even for Katie’s sake, he wouldn’t deny himself, or them, that reunion, what they’d forged between them would have to end. How he’d handle seeing her in the future, he had no idea. They’d have to make sure they didn’t meet for as long as possible, to take the heat out of the situation, until the passion between them had died. Their relationship had to remain a secret too, if he knew anything at this completely screwed-up point in his life. Her family didn’t need another skeleton in the closet. He’d release the one they already had, and he wasn’t going to replace it with another.
Christ. He’d told Katie this was a big can of worms – boy, he’d had no idea of the truth behind those words. An almighty can of maggots, in fact, and now he’d opened the can, they were crawling everywhere, leaving trails of filth over his life and his relationship with Katie. There was no way to seal them back up again, either.
Katie, oh, Katie. Would he turn back the clock, undo opening the can of worms, if it meant being able to continue with her, never knowing his real family, both of them oblivious to their blood relationship? Would he suppress the memories, the gut feelings, accept Laura Bateman as the only family he had, if he could keep Katie?
No was the answer. He’d rather find his roots than carry on unawares with Katie. His identity, or rather the fact he’d always felt as if he didn’t have one, meant too much to him. And he was pretty damn sure he’d have got to the truth anyway. Katie would have told him eventually about the kidnap and his doubts would only have grown stronger. He’d have met Katie’s sister, his mother, at some point and his gut would have flagged up to him their shared genes, as it had done when he read the newspaper article. Then, when the truth came out, Sarah Cordwell would have to endure knowing her son had slept with his aunt, a bombshell with enough power to blow his new family into the stratosphere.