Finding You (13 page)
Authors: Giselle Green
‘You think?’ I rub at my arms unhappily. I want to believe this. It’s the version of the truth I’d like to invest in, build my hopes on. ‘I took Hadyn for his appointment with Dr Fraser this morning,’ I remind him now.
‘Oh yes?’ Charlie’s eyes light on me with renewed interest. ‘What did he say? You’ve not had a chance to fill me in on that yet, have you?’
I take a little sip of my drink. ‘Well ... he wasn’t too worried about the delayed speech. He thought being in Spain and so on might have something to do with that, but he said ... he thought someone should take a look at Hadyn’s feet. Because he walks a bit strangely sometimes.’
‘Does he?’ Charlie looks at me in surprise. ‘I’ve never noticed it.’
‘He tends to do it when he’s excited,’ I tell him. ‘A couple of people have commented on it, before. Eva did, remember?’
Charlie shakes his head. ‘Nothing Dr Fraser felt was anything we need worry about, though?’
‘He gave me a card for someone he’s referring Hadyn onto,’ I hesitate, not sure how he’s going to take the next bit. ‘Charlie, it turns out the guy’s a consultant Developmental and Behavioural paediatrician.’
There’s a stunned silence for a moment while Charlie takes this in. He looks away, his attention captured momentarily by a rowboat gently lapping down the river.
‘This is about his
feet
, honey?’ he comes back to me at last.
‘I don’t know. I’m not sure,’ I tell him.
Charlie picks up the drinks menu and looks at it without seeing it. ‘Dr Fraser is just doing his job, J. Making sure. I’m certain I’d have picked it up if there was anything to worry about.’ He looks back at me suddenly, rubs at my arm. ‘Hey ... he’s okay, Jules. He’s
fine
.’ He gives a little laugh, breaking the tension. ‘We don’t need to worry anymore,’ he reassures. ‘We’ve wasted so much time doing that, haven’t we, J? Shall we just talk about ... talk about
us
, tonight?’
I smile, willing to let myself be persuaded. When I saw Dr Noble’s title on that card—
Developmental and Behavioural paediatrician
—it spooked me. I thought maybe Dr Fraser had picked up something, and the truth is I have been concerned by Hadyn’s behaviour at times. It’s only ever me who seems to see it, though. But Charlie is right.
‘Let’s talk about us,’ I agree.
‘To us!’ He clinks his glass against mine and I look into his eyes, expecting the happiness I saw in there before, the excitement, but instead, I think he looks strange. Charlie looks ...
guilty.
‘There’s something else?’ I breathe, sensing his trepidation.
‘No.’ He shakes his head, but his eyes look uneasy now. ‘Nothing.’ He swallows the last of his beer and we both watch as he sets his glass down and all the little bubbles slide back to the empty bottom, orange and golden in the glow of the lamplight. ‘Why do you think there is anything else?’ he asks, his voice thick. He spreads his hands now, smiling, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
I don’t say anything, just keep watching him. This is going to be about Illusion, and the reason why we left Spain in such a hurry, isn’t it?
‘If there’s something else ...’ I prompt.
He hesitates and I see now that his breath is a little shallow, coming faster. ‘Darling, there is
one
other thing that I’ve been aware I needed to bring up with you.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘It’s about ... something that happened in Spain. I should have told you about this before. You needed to know it, and I have ... I’m afraid I have been a coward.’
‘Okay.’ I keep very still, watching him squirm. Okay, he
should
have mentioned it before, but after my initial crossness at him, I realised that this was just Charlie being Charlie; he’s got this strange idea that sometimes women need protecting from bad news. I Googled Illusion and found no bad reports about her—it was just as Alys had said—so apart from Charlie needing to learn that I don’t need him
protecting
me so much, I figure there’s no real harm done.
‘Go on. Spit it out,’ I prompt. ‘
Veratis liberabit vos
,’ I remind him. That’s his old school motto. I saw it once emblazoned on a banner in the background of an old school photo. He won’t have forgotten it.
‘The Truth will set you Free.’ He coughs a little. ‘‘It’s not something I’m proud of, and ... if you get mad at me, I’ll completely understand. If you tell me to go to Hell, in fact, I’ll see why. But the fact is ...’ He looks up suddenly as we’re interrupted.
The kindergarten waitress is back, this time with a slightly flustered look on her face. ‘Is there a Dr Charles Lowerby and a Julia here?’ she’s asking.
‘Both,’ Charlie shoots me a questioning glance.
‘I’ve got Julia’s Mum on the phone.’ The girl looks at me now. ‘She says she’s already tried to reach you on your mobile.’
‘Mine’s been a bit dodgy since Hadyn threw it down the loo yesterday,’ I groan. I thought it was working okay ... I turn to Charlie, a bit frustrated at the timing of this.
What the hell had he been about to tell me, anyway
? I’d thought he’d been about to ‘fess up about Illusion—but what’s he finding it so incredibly hard to be open about?
Unless he really does know something about Illusion that was never mentioned in the paper reports?
I look at him, slightly puzzled and discomfited, but we’ve got other things we need to deal with right now.
‘Hadyn will have woken up, and she won’t know what to do with him,’ I say, as the girl is still in front. ‘I’ll go and take it.’
‘Hello?’ Mum’s voice sounds both spooked and cross by the time I get into the bistro to pick up. ‘I’m very sorry, Julia, but I think you two really need to come back home now.’
‘We do?’ I can feel my heart going faster. I grip the receiver a little bit tighter.
‘Hadyn’s
fine,
but he has just given me the shock of my life,’ Mum is complaining. ‘You don’t need worry, but ... he must have got the child-lock on the upstairs windows undone because he was standing by the open window when I came into the bedroom just now to check on him.’
‘He did
what
?’ I turn the receiver so Charlie can also hear as he catches up with me inside Bianca’s, shoots me a quizzical look. ‘How ... Mum, how could that have happened?’ I ask faintly. I clutch my other hand to my chest. ‘Is he okay?’
‘Darling, he is fine. I brought him downstairs with me and he’s gone straight to sleep on the sofa. I’ve only rung the restaurant because you didn’t pick up.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. I should have checked my dunked phone was still working again before we came out. But Charlie and I had been catching up. We’d left Hadyn sleeping. I didn’t think...
‘Was the window
wide
open,’ I ask her now, still unable to take this in properly. ‘Was it completely open?’
‘It was ajar,’ she says. ‘No harm done, but what if he’d
jumped
, Julia?’ Mum’s voice is wobbly—understandably so—and I recall what she’s like in a crisis. What she’s always been like.
‘We’ll be back as soon as we can get there,’ I promise. When I put the phone down, my legs feel strangely weak. Charlie’s face looks white.
He says nothing, just slides a tenner onto the counter to pay for our drinks and slips his arm through mine.
‘How could Hadyn have opened those windows all by himself?’ he asks me as we reach the car a few minutes later. ‘He couldn’t have, surely? Maybe ... maybe they weren’t locked properly in the first place and we just thought they were?’
I can’t answer him, because I feel too shocked. But I
know
they were properly locked. I checked them all myself the day after we got back home.
‘Maybe some things that are meant to be childproof just aren’t?’ I say faintly. These things happen. ‘Lucky Mum went into the room at that moment,’ I say, pretending to make less of it than there is.
Hadyn, you were supposed to be sleeping, Hadyn! Oh, God.
Bang
goes my evening out with Charlie, just focussing on
us
.
I don’t suppose we’ll be making that weekend to Venice any time soon, either.
16 - Julia
‘I’m sorry this had to happen just as you’re about to leave for your dad’s.’ I put out my fingers to touch Charlie’s arm gently. In the small hours of the night, despite his even breathing, his back turned away from me, I sense he is not quite asleep. ‘Charlie?’ I snuggle a little closer when he doesn’t answer. ‘What are you thinking?’
Is he thinking what I’m thinking, I wonder? That it wouldn’t occur to most two-and-a-half year-olds to try and open a window? That Hadyn’s behaviour isn’t altogether normal and maybe Dr Fraser referring him on to that Developmental and Behavioural paediatrician isn’t just because of his feet? I can still feel myself trembling, recalling the moment Mum told me Hadyn had been standing on the windowsill, looking out, when she came into the room.
‘I’m thinking that was a near miss,’ Charlie says tersely. ‘I’m thinking that there’s no way a child of his age should have been able to get that window open.’
‘He
could
, though, Charlie ...’ I begin. But Charlie is focussed on the logistics right now.
‘No,’ he says.
‘I wouldn’t have imagined it before,’ I tell him. ‘But when it comes to puzzles and locks and figuring out how things work, I have already seen how smart our son is.’
‘Well, sure he’s smart, but I doubt he could have managed this one,’ Charlie comes back, adamant. ‘I’ve had a text from our maintenance guy, and he’ll be in first thing to make them doubly secure, but I checked the mechanism myself, J.’ He turns to look at me suddenly and I can feel his upset and his shock, still reverberating in his body. ‘There’s no way he should have been able to undo it.’
His words sink in slowly, and I take in the fact that he is also angry.
‘You think ... someone
left
it open by accident?’ I put to him.
‘What else?’ He makes a slight movement with his mouth. ‘I swear, Hadyn could not have opened it ...’
‘He did,’ I say simply. ‘Because I checked the room myself before we left. It was locked, and Mum would never have opened the window. There
is
no more safety-conscious person on the planet.’
There’s a small silence while he takes in this fact.
‘It may have been a faulty window mechanism then,’ he relents at last. ‘Hadyn might have heard a noise, thought it was us returning and gone to see ...’
‘He might,’ I agree. Then I add, ‘He didn’t need to push the window open, though.’
Charlie stares at me for a moment. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I
mean
that even if the mechanism was faulty, the window surely didn’t open all by itself? He pushed it open.’
Charlie spreads his hands, as if to say
so what
?
‘He’ll have seen others push windows open before, Julia. It’s what people do. Who knows—we keep our windows locked for his security, but maybe where he was before ... she kept them open every night. Spain is hot. This might be what he is used to. He has to learn that he mustn’t do that here.’
Then he adds, ‘And we have to make sure in the meantime that he
can’t
do it. We need to keep one step ahead of him ...’
Keep one step ahead. For some reason, that comment fills me with a deep anxiety. I think this will be easier said than done. I let out a small sigh and Charlie’s eyebrows rise questioningly.
‘I’ve already got the impression that Hadyn won’t be that easy to keep on top of,’ I tell him.
‘Won’t he?’ he asks softly.
‘I
try
, Charlie. But he resists me,’ I admit eventually. ‘He resists me all the time. Hadyn’s ... a constant challenge.’ I’ve not made a big thing of every little misdemeanour to his dad because it would have seemed so unfair to Hadyn. As Charlie has pointed out, he is still getting accustomed. Maybe a few little quirks here and there are to be expected; he’s been living a different life with another mama in a faraway country. But tonight’s episode has given us both a shock.
Should getting our son accustomed back to his own home really be this hard?
‘Ever since we’ve got home, I find I have to be hypervigilant around him, Charlie. Always. I can’t take my eyes off him for two minutes and it’s becoming, frankly,
exhausting
.’
Charlie is looking at me in astonishment as if he’s never, up to this point, even been the slightest bit aware that there might be anything amiss.
‘Hypervigilant?’ he says. ‘Why?’
‘Why?’ I sit up a little on my elbows. ‘Because ... because I never know what he is going to do next. Sometimes, it feels as if he’s never still for more than two minutes, Charlie.’
‘He sits for hours,’ Charlie pulls a half-smile, ‘doing his art. You’ve said so yourself.’
‘He will do that,’ I agree. ‘But I never know when he’s going to tire of it and go and do something else. He doesn’t come looking for me when he’s done with it. He’ll just up and leave.’
He puts a consoling hand on my arm. In the semi-darkness, I can see Charlie’s face and though his eyes are full of a tolerant compassion, I can see that he doesn’t really understand. He’s thinking ... that I am simply overwrought. That maybe, with all we’ve had to cope with over the past few months, it’s just too much.
Then I admit to him, ‘I keep the downstairs door locked in the daytime because I’ve already seen him drag a chair over to it twice, to try and turn the handle.’
Charlie stiffens. ‘Has he ever
opened
it? Has he ever got out?’
‘No.’ Pause. ‘The chair was in the way.’
‘Maybe he likes opening things?’ Charlie suggests. ‘He likes to feel the fresh air, to be outside. England is so cold compared to the south of Spain; we’ve been keeping him cooped up a lot more ...’
‘We’d already just been out, Charlie. It wasn’t that.’
He goes silent now, thoughtful. When he comes back to me at last, his voice sounds different, a little cracked. ‘What was it then, J? What do
you
think that was all about?’
‘Hadyn likes to run,’ I tell him softly. ‘He likes me to take him to places where he can run free.’ Charlie is nodding slowly. This fits in with his cooped-up theory. ‘But even when I let him run, like in the park where there’s a big open space boundaried by trees ... he just goes, Charlie. He bolts for it. Makes for the wide blue horizon and never looks back.’
‘That’s normal, isn’t it?’ Charlie’s not entirely sure about this, I can tell. ‘Running free. It’s what young lads like to do, honey.’
I shake my head. ‘He
isn’t
doing what others do, though. I’ve watched them. Other kids, they all run so far and then, they stop. They look back for their mums or dads or whoever they’re with, they don’t just keep on going. They seem to know ...’ I wave my hands, trying to explain it to him. ‘It’s like they have an invisible thread, binding them to their carer. With Hadyn, that’s just not there. It’s as if I’m not really ...’ I stop, feeling my throat jam up.
It’s as if I’m not really there. As if he doesn’t care if I am or not because I don’t signify. I don’t matter.
It’s as if—as far as he is concerned—I am not really his mum.
‘He likes to run,’ Charlie observes. ‘And he runs a bit further than the rest. Maybe he’s going to be a sportsman? He’s desperate to be outdoors, clearly ...’
‘
Charlie!
He snuck out of the front door while I was occupied with the postman yesterday morning.’ That stops him in his tracks. ‘I swear, I have no idea how he did it,’ I rush on, feeling ashamed and bewildered as I tell it to him, as if it is happening all over again. ‘He just ... slipped out between us. I didn’t even see he’d gone until we heard a car’s wheel’s spinning and when I walked out onto the main road to see what had happened ... there he was.’
‘Christ.’ Charlie sits bolt upright, his eyes filled with horror. ‘I didn’t know things were that bad. You didn’t mention that before.’
‘No,’ I admit. ‘I didn’t like to. He was
fine
, and you’ve had enough to concern yourself over, what with your dad and going back to work and so on ...’
‘But he ... this sounds serious. Very serious.’ Charlie seems to be having trouble catching his breath now, formulating his words. ‘I can’t lose him, J.’ I’m taken aback by the sudden ferocity in his voice. ‘I can’t lose him again.’
‘We won’t.’ When I lean over and touch him, I can feel his heart hammering in his chest. ‘We are not going to lose him, Charlie.’
This little scrap of a child who means everything to you because you do not expect to ever father another, and everything to me because I am his mum.
And I
am
his mum, even if he doesn’t know it or acknowledge it yet.
‘Of course we are not going to lose him.’
I hear his deep shuddering sigh in the darkness. Outside in the garden, a baby fox is mewling. A stiff breeze is shivering all the topmost branches of the trees, making a shushing sound.
‘Okay,’ Charlie concedes after a bit, ‘we’re going to need to get some help in for you, plainly. We’re going to need some sort of rehabilitation program put in place.’ I hear him sniff in the half-light, swallowing his tears. ‘I’d hoped—
expected
—that it’d all fall into place naturally, that you’d both be able to cope but ... maybe not.’ He gives me a brief apologetic hug, and I see that Charlie has slipped back into executive mode. ‘I’m sorry, honey. But if you’re finding him this challenging, we need to nip this in the bud.’
‘Of course,’ I agree, a little stung at his intimation that I’m somehow part of the problem because I am
not coping
. ‘Perhaps that consultant that Dr Fraser has referred us onto will be able to help?’
‘We’ll see,’ Charlie says. ‘I’m not sure that a Behavioural and Developmental paediatrician is what’s needed here.’
‘Well, no. Neither am I,’ I say, relieved that he doesn’t like the idea any more than I do. ‘It sounds so ... severe, doesn’t it?’
Charlie doesn’t answer. Right now, I see he’s looking pensive.
‘It makes it sound as if he’s got some sort of terrible problem.’
Charlie comes straight back to me. ‘Our little boy hasn’t got any
problem
, J. He’s perfect.’
‘No.’ I hesitate. ‘We do have a problem though, Charlie.’ At least,
I
do, I think, because I’m his mum. I’m the one in the front line when my little boy doesn’t do all the things that other people seem to expect him to be able to do.
‘The problem is not, it seems to me, what Hadyn
can’t
do,’ I say. ‘It’s what Hadyn won’t do. Because he doesn’t want to. Because I haven’t found a way yet to convince him that he’s back where he belongs.’ I hate to admit it. I really hate to admit it, but ...
‘Sometimes I think maybe he misses her, Charlie,’ I tell him unhappily. ‘Sometimes, I think he misses her like crazy.’
Charlie looks at me in astonishment.
‘He doesn’t
miss
her, J.’ For the first time, I see his face crease into a disapproving frown. ‘Why do you even say that?’
I shake my head a little, my throat clamming up. How can I even explain this to him? That I have thought this ever since the first time I saw Hadyn make a bolt for the door? That I thought it again tonight, when I heard he had been found standing at the window.
‘I think that’s unlikely, honey,’ Charlie dismisses at last. ‘My concern is more that by taking him to a paediatrician who’ll be focussing on whether or not Hadyn’s reaching his developmental milestones, we’ll be looking at the wrong problem. All our son needs is help adjusting to his new circumstances. It’s as simple as that.’
‘You still think this is all a problem of
adjusting
?’ I say doubtfully. We’ve had him back in our care since December. We’ve been home in England for four weeks. Could Charlie be right, I wonder? God, I would love him to be right.
‘I think that’s precisely what it is. There is nothing wrong with Hadyn, darling. Nothing at all that won’t be fixed, given enough time and love. And ... perhaps, a little informed intervention.’
‘Informed intervention?’ I say slowly. ‘You mean like ... the health visitor? Or like the guy Dr Fraser wants us to see?’
‘I’d rather we used our own people where possible. Go private.’ A new thought occurs to him suddenly. ‘It so happens there’s a Dr Killman—an expert on trauma recovery—who’s just started at the Drapers Street clinic. She might be a useful first port of call.’
Trauma recovery?
‘What’s she going to be doing at Drapers Street?’ I look at him puzzled.
‘She’ll be seeing the clients who come to us following injury and facial disfigurement, alongside our structural work.’
‘I see.’ I look at him doubtfully. ‘You really think her experience will be relevant to
us,
though?’
‘I do. Angus introduced us, and I was talking to her about her role earlier today. She’s all about helping people to adjust to their new circumstances. That’s her area of expertise, J. I think she might be precisely the right person for us to solicit help from.’
‘You think?’ I’m taking in this new idea, but I’m not sure ... ‘Hadyn hasn’t had any physical injury that he needs to adjust to.’
