Finding You (18 page)
Authors: Giselle Green
I stare at her, shocked. I hadn’t been expecting that. I feel relief. And then shame at the relief which I feel because she was talking about something else altogether. Something far more important. I shake my head rapidly.
‘I
don’t
know how Illusion looked after him, and that’s the truth, J. I swear it. Okay, I wanted us out of Spain, you’re right. I wanted him away from her and I was worried that you’d ... you’d see her or make contact somehow, and I didn’t want that to happen.’
Julia stares at me for a good few moments. ‘So you don’t have any proof she hurt him?’
‘Not proof, as such. But you see how he’s returned. You asked me to get you some help, J ...’
‘You
swear
, Charlie?’
‘On my son’s head, I swear it.’
I see her taking in a breath now, relieved, believing me, but when she comes back, I see a new thought has taken shape.
‘Okay.’ She wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘So you and Dr Killman think that Hadyn ticks all the right boxes for trauma. But ... what if the reason we’re seeing all these characteristics is something else altogether? What if it’s quite the reverse—he’s formed such a strong attachment to Spain that he
can’t
forget about it—and that’s what’s making him feel so unhappy?’
‘He hasn’t formed any attachment to Spain, honey. At least, if he has, it is not a good one. Not one we can afford to encourage.’
Julia is silent for a while, then grasps at the one straw that is left to her. ‘We haven’t seen the paediatrician yet. What if he comes up with a different opinion?’
‘We’ll take Hadyn to see him,’ I tell her grimly. ‘But I’ve already been warned that when we do, they won’t be used to this and Hadyn is likely to be missed.’ God, why can’t I make her understand; why won’t Julia
listen
to me? This must be hard for her to hear, I know it must be, but Dr Killman made a convincing case and she was quite clear: if we don’t face the truth, we run the risk of making things so much worse for Hadyn.
‘You’re going to need to go and see Dr Killman yourself, J. She’ll tell you. And I am sure once you see her, she will convince you, too.’
She had better, because if we don’t act now, according to what Pippa’s told me, we also run the risk that what’s ailing our son may never, ever be fixed.
23 - Julia
Is it the moon that wakes me?
I feel so restless, awake suddenly and chasing the tail end of a dream which I know I have had before. It’s the one where I have lost Hadyn again. Only, in the dream ... I’ve
really
lost him this time and there’s nothing to be done about it. I know this because of the dull, tight pain in the centre of my chest and when I wake up it’s still there, hurting me. The kind of pain you think will never go away.
God, Charlie
. I snuggle in a little closer to him, wanting some comfort, but he’s fast asleep, his body turned away from me right now, and he doesn’t respond at all.
‘Hey,’ I say quietly, both wanting and not wanting to wake him, but he doesn’t stir and I’m left alone with it, the pain in my chest and the strong, almost irresistible urge that I have now, to get up and go check, make sure our son’s still there. I close my eyes tightly, bury my face in Charlie’s back.
Of course he’s still there, you dolt
. You
know
he’s still there. And you’re not going to get up and go check anything just because of a dream.
In the dream, I get up one morning and go into Hadyn’s room, only to find that he’s gone back to Spain. Only ... it’s not because anyone stole him this time. In the dream, I know very clearly that Hadyn has gone because he
wanted
to go, and for some reason, that breaks my heart even more than what happened the first time around. It hurts me a thousand times more. Oh, it’s an anxiety dream, Mum would say, sparked off by all the things that you fear, all those little worries that gather in the corner of your mind during the day. And—let’s face it—after having had a brilliant, lovely day with Hadyn and Mum yesterday, Charlie’s news from the psychologist certainly ignited an anxiety or two in me before I went to bed. And Charlie’s so certain that she’s right, isn’t he? It
bugs
me. How can he be so certain because surely ... even if Hadyn
ticks all the boxes
on Dr Killman’s list, there still might be other explanations for what we are seeing? From what Charlie told me, even she admitted to that much. She urged him to get Hadyn seen by that paediatrician Dr Fraser has referred us onto, so even Dr Killman isn’t one hundred percent certain.
She
isn’t
. I feel a sudden rush of the same frustration I felt last night because now—just because of what Dr Killman has said—we’re going to be getting rid of the one thing I’ve found so far that has made Hadyn happy. And I am finding it so hard to make him happy, can’t Charlie see that? He doesn’t seem to see it. He doesn’t
want
to. I move my face away from the warmth of his back now, cross with him all over again because tomorrow morning, first thing, he has insisted, the sandpit must go. And I’m not to offer him any more Spanish food, just in case it reminds him of
her
.
So what am I supposed to do? What the hell
is
there to do? Charlie spooked me at first when he started talking about not wanting to re-ignite memories of extreme danger in Hadyn, but he doesn’t have any evidence to that effect. Maybe Hadyn doesn’t have any such memories; maybe that’s just conjecture. I could tell Charlie was telling the truth when he said he knew nothing much about Illusion, I could see it in his eyes. He doesn’t know. He’s just wary of her, because of the people she comes from, because of what he imagines it will have been like for Hadyn, because of the simple fact that she was the one who had our little boy all that time.
But he doesn’t
know
.
I get up now, filled with a sudden impatience, and go look out of the window because I just can’t stay still in bed anymore. When I push open the window, my fingers cold against the glass, the full moon is a dull yellow lamp in the sky. ‘Moon,’ Hadyn used to say before he was taken. He was always looking up at it, fascinated. ‘Mooooon
.
’ He pointed out the
luna
to me the day I came across him in the park with Illusion. I wonder if he still knows that, somewhere inside his mind, what the moon is called? I wonder if he still cares?
In the dark garden below, everything is suffused by a strange blue light. How strange the whole place looks; I can even hardly recognise it. I rub at my eyes, still groggy from sleep, but I know that nothing much down there is as it appears to be; that flock of birds frozen in the sky is only the outline of the elm tree, etched against the faint grey of the night; all those little laughing faces climbing up the wall are my early roses and the giant trapdoor on the patio is the sandpit. I think: that’s what the moon can do, Hadyn. It casts light and makes a nasty monster out of your rose bed, it casts shadows and makes a fine, safe helicopter landing pad out of your fish pond. All these things I think I’m seeing, they’re nothing but a trick of the light. I’m not properly awake but I still know this, that they are nothing but an illusion.
An
Illusion.
The irony of it doesn’t escape me. Because maybe all those things we are now assuming about her—that she was a bad person who hurt you in some way, who traumatised you so much that we’re now seeing the effects of it—maybe they are an illusion, too? In my dream, it is not that way, is it?
The fragments and remnants that I awoke with swirl back into my mind now. In my dream, you go. Because you want to. In my dream, it is me who takes you. We climb over some rocks, lots of rocks. There is water to the side of us, and I can hear the sound of waves crashing nearby, like the sea. The sky is a leaden grey, a big sky. It’s the sort of place where you can breathe easy, not too many people around and you are happy, but in my dream, I’ve got that pain deep in my chest and while there is great joy for you, there is only a sadness for me. And I think,
I am taking you back to her because you love her now in a way that you will never love us. Not because I want to let you go. Not because I believe I will ever know a moment’s joy again once you are gone. But because it is wrong for me to keep you.
Shit.
I rub at my head, hating that I’ve let so much of it come back into my mind. Bloody dream, stupid dream. It’s all crap and bullshit because none of that’s ever going to happen. Yeah, like it ever could.
And all my resistance crumbles because I steal through into Hadyn’s bedroom to check that he’s still there and he’s still sleeping where I left him. And of course, he is. He’s dreaming something. I can see that he’s happy, just like he was during his afternoon in the sandpit, because he’s smiling, and I wonder where he’s gone to in his dreams, I wonder who he’s with. Is he with her, or is he with me?
And that’s when I make the decision. When I tiptoe downstairs, the kitchen clock says three thirty-four a.m. My laptop, waking up, sounds loud in the early hours’ silence. The Internet is running fast, and when I Google her name knowing that I am sneaking this in, that Charlie will hate it if he knows I’m doing it, I feel a surprising lack of guilt about it because I know now that things are moving too fast for me to hold back. I need to find out about Illusion, everything I can about her, whether she was good or whether she was bad, because like Charlie, I still think she holds the key to what’s wrong with our little boy. Charlie believes it may be because she hurt him, but I wonder ...
I wonder if the truth is she did something else?
24 - Julia
Did you mean
Illusionist
missing boy British Spain?
British
Illusionist
Esoteric Jones, currently living in
Spain
,
swerved narrowly
missing
a
boy
...
Scrub that. I type a new search into the engine.
Arenadeluna. Illusion. Hadyn
And up pops a picture of her immediately, taking me aback because after all this time when Charlie and I have studiously avoided any mention of this woman at all, how easily I have conjured her up like a ghost out of the ether and here she is. I have invited her right into my kitchen.
A lot of little spooked thoughts, like moths flitting through the darkness, edge around the corners of my mind. Seeing this photo of her standing there by the police car, she looks haggard and surprised and ... angry. Of course she is angry; we have just taken Hadyn away from her,
stolen him back,
as she would see it. How easy it was to find her, too. Could she also be looking for us, I wonder? Is there any danger that she will one day find out where we live and come looking?
I push all these thoughts away. They are not the reason I came downstairs tonight, I remember; I came down to find out what Charlie isn’t telling me. Because I have to.
Because there is something he held back from me last night, I know it. I saw it in his eyes when I asked him,
what was it you’d been about to tell me that night when my mum called us home?
I saw it. He hesitated. A whole host of things went through his mind before he answered. Oh, Charlie swore to me that he had no reason to think Illusion ever harmed our son and yet ... and yet ... why, then, is he so sure that Dr Killman is right? What has he told her that he has not told me?
Who even are you, Illusion?
I peer a little more closely at the photo. It’s a slightly fuzzy picture of her, taken on the move on somebody’s cell phone, no doubt. Two burly Spanish police escorts are on either side of her and a woman police officer, too. The policewoman looks distinctly sympathetic, I see, her eyes on Illusion, who looks so enraged and also, the longer I stare at her, so
hurt
, as any mama would be whose child has been wrenched from her.
Te compadrezsco
, Charlie’s grandmother Agustina once said to me, striking her breast.
I feel for you.
At this moment—most strangely—I feel the same towards Illusion, too. In her mind, she has suffered the same loss that I did.
I shake the thought out of my mind, rub at my eyes. The kitchen clock sounds so loud in the small hours’ silence. A solitary car revs in a driveway a few roads down, punctuating the fact that, apart from that driver and me, the rest of the world is asleep. How ironic that I am so fretful, awake tonight all by myself on the very first night that Hadyn is sleeping peacefully right through. Was it the sandpit that soothed him? Some comforting memories of Spain?
I click to translate the article on screen:
Illusion Moreno, 49 years of age and a resident of LaPiedra (LaPiedra—where is that? I frown) has been released without charge after having been accused of abducting and harbouring missing British toddler Hadyn Lowerby for nearly a year. Friends say she doted on the boy, who she believed to be the son of her late brother, Diego Moreno. Investigations are ongoing ...
I skim over the article a second time. Nothing but the reference to LaPiedra stands out to me. I write that down on my kitchen notepad. When I do a few more searches, varying the search-terms a little, there appears to be very little else up there. What articles do appear all tell me things I already know: they speak about me and Charlie more than they do about her. About his job and how he is a renowned surgeon who has had to give up his charity work; about me, the tireless and devoted mother who refused to ever give up on her child even when the chances of ever recovering him looked so bleak ...
I drum my fingers on the table, feeling frustrated. I get up and go and boil a kettle for a cup of tea I do not really want. I have to find a way to get some more information on this woman, don’t I? This is what’s frustrating me; that I know so little, that so much seems to be hidden from me. If only I knew a bit more about Illusion, then I could come to some sensible conclusion as to whether this Dr Killman is likely to be right or not. What if we proceed with her advice only to find that she is completely wrong and we have only made things worse?
But who is going to tell me anything? Nobody wants to!
I click on my emails idly while waiting for my tea to brew, and there’s an email from my old school friend Naseem waiting for me. Headline:
Sorry.
Dammit
, I think. I’ve asked him to be a witness at our wedding—I hope he’s not going to tell me he can’t do it. We were supposed to be meeting up tomorrow, too. He and his wife, Nadia, put me up for a bit when Charlie and I were separated last year—he’s never even seen my son, and I was so looking forward to introducing him to Hadyn and seeing him again.
There’s a new mail from Eva, as well. Great. She’ll be nagging me about those papers we left in Spain, no doubt. I have to do something about that, I know.
I pull myself up and go and rescue the teabag. Maybe I am going to need this brew after all?
When I sit back down again, the warming cup cradled in my hands, Naseem’s only mentioned tomorrow’s meeting;
Got to fly out to Malaga at 11
th
hour, Jules. Will be in contact to rearrange on my return.
Typically brief. Still. At least he’s not crying off being a witness. And right now, I’ve got other worries on my mind, haven’t I?
Eva’s email is still waiting. I bet
she
could tell me a thing or two about Illusion if she wanted to. She won’t, though. She wouldn’t tell me a thing all those weeks ago when I tried asking her in Spain, and she won’t tell me anything now.
Why?
Her email, as I suspected, is all about the papers that still need to be transferred to us.
Hi Julia,
I still have the box of papers waiting for your instructions. Rob pointed out that there is someone coming over to London soon who we could ask, if you are happy for them to bring the box over for you. I was not sure if you would be happy with this, though?
Why not, I think, marginally relieved to hear that this problem at least might be easily solved. I take a sip of my tea and read on.
If you would like me to ask for you, I will. I know you might have some reservations about seeing Lourdes again. She’ll be in London from the 16th to the 20th of June.
Hell, no. I put my tea down, immediately aware of a sinking feeling in my belly. Not Lourdes. Not here. No. I don’t want to see her. It’s obvious now why Eva’s being so tentative about it.
I open up a reply window.
Hi Eva,
Thanks for letting me know about this ...
Then I close it down again, realising that it’s still only four-thirty a.m. What’s it going to look like if Eva sees I’m up sending emails at this time in the morning? She’ll think I’m an insomniac. This is all I need now, isn’t it? First I’m up tormented by thoughts of Illusion, and now this woman Lourdes has to come into my mind to trouble me.
The two are connected, when I think about it. Both of them in their own ways have laid claim to the two males in my life. And both of them still, I suspect, live in hope when they should not.
And yet...
I wonder if Lourdes does know anything at all she could tell me about Illusion? The Santos family are so well-connected in that area of Spain—fingers in every pie, as Eva made such a point of saying—and Lourdes
might
know something, or else be able to find out. She offered, if I ever needed any help, didn’t she, that night we left her party in Spain? I push my fingers through my hair, allowing myself to test out this new way of thinking. It’s not as if Lourdes is a horrid person, I tell myself. She’s a helpful and well-intentioned sort, always involved in some charity work or other as far as I’ve been able to see. When she offered to help me that night, did she mean it, was she being genuine ... or was it just her way of maintaining some contact with Charlie?
I wouldn’t want to encourage that. When Eva commented that she thought Charlie’s ex will always love him, I have no doubt that she was right. When you love someone, you can’t just switch those feelings off like a tap; those feelings remain, even if they’re pushed down and ignored, even if they’re subjugated and denied, they remain, and I know that Lourdes loves Charlie still. I know that she always will, even if he no longer returns those feelings.
And my son
. The thought snakes into my body now, threading a thin line of sadness, like a cord, around my heart ...
who does he love
?
I pour the last of my tea into the sink. I don’t have to make any decision about this just yet, but as I make my way quietly back up the stairs, the thought grows in my mind: what if Eva
does
ask her to bring over those papers for us, and I end up getting the opportunity to ask Lourdes about Illusion?
If I asked her about Illusion, she’d want to know why I haven’t got this information from Charlie, I imagine. And ... there is always the danger that she might want to run anything she tells me past him first.
But then, she has a son, too, I remember. If I met up with her in person, asked her, mother-to-mother, Lourdes might just be the one person who’s willing to answer the question that’s increasingly burning in my mind: did Illusion really traumatise Hadyn, or are Dr Killman and Charlie wrong about that? Because if they are wrong, I have a bad feeling their treatment plan could end up doing him a lot more harm than good.
