Keeping Sam (22 page)

She found Elizabeth by the coffee machine, blowing into a cardboard cup.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just hard to keep perspective.’

Elizabeth sipped her drink and said nothing.

‘Is she?’ Kate asked. ‘Is my mother breaking her heart?’

‘What do you think? She didn’t get to him in time, she had to watch him fall. She said the sound of him screaming was like–’

‘I should have been there!’

‘You shouldn’t have stormed off when your mother tried to explain to you what happened.’

‘No.’ Kate bit her lip and nodded. ‘You’re right. That was immature. I was angry at her, and scared. Scared for Sam.’

‘So, you’ll talk to her?’ Elizabeth looked at Kate over the rim of her cup, one eyebrow raised. ‘Like a grown-up?’

‘Elizabeth, it’s what I’ve been trying to do all along. But first,’ Kate said, turning back in the direction of the wards, ‘I need to check on Sam.’

***

Bones. White and smooth. Holding you together, but still so fragile. Breakable. On the X-ray, Sam’s bones had been translucent and glowing, the fracture disturbingly distinct. His broken arm was encased in a plaster cast now, with just his chubby wrist poking out of the end, his hand palm up, fingers splayed, the way they had been during sleep when he was a baby. Kate stroked his cheek but he didn’t wake up. He was exhausted, poor lamb. At least the painkillers were working.

She glanced up at a movement in the doorway.

Her mother edged into the room uncertainly. She held Sam’s favourite teddy. She must have gone home to get it.

Kate returned her gaze to her son.

‘He’s such a brave boy,’ her mother said. ‘I was so proud of him.’

Kate said nothing. She brushed a stray hair from Sam’s face, watching his eyelids flicker in the safety of sleep.

‘Kate, I–’

‘Mum, just leave it, okay? Elizabeth’s explained what happened. I know it wasn’t your fault. Sam will be fine. Let’s just ... Look, I’ve had a hell of a day. Do you think we could just sit for a while? Just not talk?’

Barbara nodded mutely and tucked her chin into her neck. Kate allowed her shoulders to drop. She wondered what was happening at the police station, whether she’d still have to go there or whether Elizabeth would be able to sort it out. It all depended on whether or not they believed what she’d told them about Evan. The way her luck was going, it seemed unlikely.

‘You broke your wrist once,’ Barbara said softly.

‘Mum–’

‘I don’t suppose you remember it. You weren’t much older than Samuel. We brought you here, to this very hospital. Such a long time ago now.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ Kate sighed.

‘He did it.’

Kate froze. She looked down at Sam. Every detail of him seemed so distinct and clear, and the shape and sound of her breath seemed suddenly loud and uneven. She moved her head slowly, feeling every bone in her neck grind.

‘What did you just say?’

Barbara blinked furiously, then met Kate’s eyes. She nodded. ‘He did it. I can’t remember what you were supposed to have done that time, but he was drunk and clumsy and he picked you up and then he dropped you.’ She swallowed. ‘Ironically, the time he broke your wrist was actually an accident. If you can call it an accident. But that doesn’t excuse all the other times. It doesn’t excuse how he treated you. Or how often I ignored it.’ Her voice cracked at the same moment as her face began to crumple, blurring and melting, tears making tracks down cheeks. ‘I denied it, Kate, for all these years. I’m so sorry.’

‘Mummy?’

‘Hey, sweetheart.’ Kate turned to her son and forced herself to smile. Her heart was pounding. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Nana crying.’

‘I’m fine, Samuel,’ Barbara said, wiping her eyes on a handkerchief. ‘Just so happy to see you feeling better.’

‘Feel funny,’ Sam said. He lay back, his bottom lip wobbling. Kate kissed his forehead, then gave him a tumbler of water to sip from.

‘The doctor said you might feel a little sicky for a while. We’ll wait for him to come and see you again, then you can go home.’

The word hung in the air between them, a hollow sound, full of meaning.

‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘Why did you lie for him? And why are you telling me this here, now?’

Barbara had made an effort to control her tears, but now they started afresh. ‘I don’t know,’ she sobbed. ‘Just seeing Sam in pain like that, it brought it all back to me. I remembered you, so helpless, so needy. I let you down, Kate. I wasn’t ...’ She choked on her words, turning her face away. ‘I’ve been searching my soul to find a way to explain this to you. The truth is, I didn’t want it to be true. I thought that if I just ignored it, if I pretended it wasn’t happening, then it wouldn’t be happening. I wouldn’t be that person, married to a man who drank too much and got so angry and did those terrible things to us.’ She took a violent, shuddering breath. ‘To you.’

‘No cry, Nana,’ Sam said, reaching out his good arm to pat Barbara’s hand. The older woman’s skin was mottled and lumpy; Sam’s perfect and unblemished. Kate laid her hand on top of Sam’s and said nothing. There was a dull throbbing in her head, and her throat was raw, but other than that she felt strangely calm.

‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ Barbara asked, her eyes pleading. ‘I thought you’d be furious with me.’

The throbbing intensified, then died away to a pulse.

‘Well, for one thing my son is awake now, so I’m not going to start bawling and arguing with you. We’ve done enough of that. And for another thing,’ Kate paused and thought for a moment, ‘I just heard you call him Sam.’

Barbara nodded. ‘I found his birth certificate. I’ve been getting his things ... sorted.’

‘Kate?’

Elizabeth’s head appeared around the door, her blonde hair falling in curtains on either side of her forthright face. ‘I need to talk to you right now. It’s important,’ she added when Kate demurred.

‘What?’ Kate said in the corridor, narrowing her eyes. ‘What’s going on?’

Elizabeth flicked to a page near the back of her notebook. ‘The police picked Evan up tonight during a raid in King’s Cross.’

‘What? I don’t understand.’

‘I don’t have all the details. It was something else, someone they’d been after for a while, but Evan was there and he got caught up in it somehow. Anyway, he was on the system, they knew the police here wanted to question him, so he got taken in.’

‘And have they? Have they questioned him?’ Kate felt her breath catch in her throat. The social worker nodded. ‘And?’

‘It was him. The officer said Evan needed to prove his whereabouts that night, he thinks that’s the only reason he came clean. But there it is. They’re dropping any charges.’

Kate leaned against the wall and looked up at the strip-lit ceiling. ‘Could today get any weirder? You won’t believe what my mother just said to me.’ She waited for Elizabeth to answer, but Elizabeth was still looking at her notebook.

‘And the other time?’ Kate prompted. ‘Back in Manchester? Did Evan confess to that too?’

‘That wasn’t all he said, Kate,’ Elizabeth said with a pained expression. ‘He told the officer that leaving the drugs in your bedsit here in Corrin Cove wasn’t his idea.’

Kate glanced through the window into Sam’s ward. Her mother was talking to him, leaning in, her body language relaxed.

‘Who’s idea was it?’

Elizabeth followed Kate’s gaze. ‘He showed them a text.’

Kate nodded. ‘Of course he did. He’s not stupid. Evan would have kept all her texts. He would never take responsibility for anything if he could help it.’

She watched as her mother turned and smiled wanly through the window. Kate raised her hand and gestured for her to come outside. She steeled herself, allowing all the hope she had felt only moments before to seep out of her body, feeling most of her strength escaping with it. For a second she sank against Elizabeth’s arm. The social worker glanced down at her in alarm.

‘I’m okay,’ Kate said, ‘but will you go and sit with Sam for a moment?’

Elizabeth hesitated, but then nodded. ‘Go easy,’ she said quietly, passing Barbara in the doorway.

‘Are you alright?’ Barbara asked. Kate shook her head. When she tried to speak her throat felt raspy, and her voice hardly sounded like her own.

‘I didn’t get chance to tell you, Mum, but they found drugs in my flat earlier. Just like they did in Manchester.’

‘Oh.’

‘You don’t look well, are you okay?’ Kate said through her teeth.

‘It’s nothing. Carry on.’

‘Okay. So, they caught up with Evan tonight. And he told them everything.’ Kate leaned closer, close enough to see the thin lines that radiated from her mother’s tightly clenched mouth. ‘I mean, he told them everything.’

‘Kate, I–’

‘Don’t bother, Mum. There’s nothing you could say to make this right.’

‘I had nothing to do with what happened in Manchester, you have to believe me.’

‘And that makes it okay? You tried to set me up, knowing that after everything that’s happened to me, after everything I’ve been through, there was a good chance I’d get a criminal record for this. Why ...?’ Kate stopped, hardly able to speak the words. ‘Why do you hate me so much?’

‘I don’t hate you,’ Barbara cried. ‘I hate myself. Don’t you see? I was a terrible mother, and I was a useless wife. The only thing I’ve ever been any good at was looking after Samuel. The thought of losing him, it was more than I could bear.’

‘So you’d stop at nothing? Nothing. You’d go to any lengths to keep him.’

‘Only because I love him so much. Oh, please, Kate. Please don’t take him. I know you could, I know you have every reason to hate me, but please don’t do it. It’s the only home he’s ever known. You can visit him every day, you can move in with us if you like. Just don’t take my Samuel – my Sam – away from me.’

‘Mummy? Nana? What’s wrong?’

‘Sam, you shouldn’t be out of bed.’ Kate carefully lifted up her son and cuddled him, throwing Elizabeth an accusing glare over his shoulder. Elizabeth shrugged, unconcerned.

‘He’s broken his arm, not his legs. And you can discuss all this in court on Friday.’

Kate walked away from her mother’s grasping hands and set her son down on the bed. She picked up his teddy and began to play with it, relaxing into Sam’s delighted giggles. But when she heard a movement behind her, she spoke again, low and controlled, leaving no room for misunderstanding.

‘There will be no histrionics on Friday. I will stand up in court and fight for my son, and I won’t need any dirty tricks. No matter what I’ve done in the past, my love for him will shine through for everyone to see. Now I’d like some time alone with him, before you take him home.’

‘Goodbye, Kate,’ her mother said. When the door closed softly, Kate didn’t turn around.

Chapter 29

Bow Hill looked different in the rain. Glistening and polished, the flat-fronted houses were reflected in puddles, and streetlights sparkled with orange droplets in the night sky. Patrick had to park further down the street than usual, and then he spent a while digging around in the back for an umbrella.

‘I know I have one here somewhere,’ he said. Kate wasn’t bothered about getting wet, but she wasn’t in a hurry to get inside either.

‘What weather,’ Patrick said when he finally gave up and leaned back in his seat with a sigh. ‘Every time you and I spend time together it seems to rain.’

‘Thanks for the lift home,’ Kate said. ‘I couldn’t face hanging round the hospital, waiting for a cab.’

‘It’s not a problem.’ Patrick held up a supermarket carrier bag. ‘You can put this over your head if you like.’

‘I’m not so depressed I want to end it all.’

‘I didn’t mean ... I meant to keep the rain off.’

‘I know, I was joking. Sorry. I’ve never had good timing when it comes to a sense of humour.’

‘Me neither. The other day there was this man in the woods, and he said–’

Kate reached up and put her finger to Patrick’s lips. The gesture surprised them both, and Kate allowed the feeling of heat that rose inside her core to swell until it spread all through her body. Her fingers tingled with it; her legs felt heavy and far away. ‘You’ve done so much for me,’ she told him. ‘More than you realise. Just by being there. By being normal.’ Her eyes flicked away from his, but not before she had flashed him a look of unmistakable invitation. She got out of the car and crossed the pavement.

This wasn’t a night for being alone. This was a night for sinking into the arms of a man who undressed her with such care she might have been the most precious creature in all the world. It was a night for forgetting, but at the same time for remembering – remembering what it was like to come alive inside, to be known by hands that explored and were hungry, and to shout out with joy, knowing only that moment, feeling happy. Feeling wanted.

It was a night to be herself.

***

Early Friday morning, Kate curled up on the floor in her son’s room and waited for the sun to rise. In a few hours it would be time to go to court and the waiting would be over.

A knock woke her; she must have fallen asleep. The room was bright now, viciously so, and the shadows thrown from the tree outside made patterns like sharp fingers on the freshly painted walls. Kate stretched out her legs and winced. There was the knock again, and in walked Marie, holding her ubiquitous tray of coffee and biscuits, and getting right down to business.

‘Kate, tell me to mind my own beeswax if you want, but I’m here if you need somebody to talk to. Here, drink your coffee. And eat. You need to keep up your strength.’

‘I don’t feel like eating,’ Kate said. But she drank the coffee, feeling it burn her throat the whole way down.

‘Don’t suppose you do,’ Marie agreed amiably. She was wearing a badly fitting red trouser suit and an orange silk scarf, and her perfume smelt like candyfloss. Kate felt cheered just at the sight of her.

After a few more shots of caffeine, Kate remembered Marie’s ordeal at the hands of the police and apologised again.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Marie said. ‘Besides, my rooms didn’t get searched in the end.’

‘So you didn’t have to show off your artwork?’