The Second Child Read online

  I know I cannot look too long at Lauren, staring would be too cruel, so I start with Sarah. I do remember her, I recognise her features well enough: the grey eyes, the pretty, mobile mouth, a face quick to express emotion. Her lips are chapped and she keeps trying to catch and bite the flakes of skin. There’s so much that jerks me back into the past. Daniel drones on, laying out the guidelines for our interaction. Sarah’s hair is neglected, a scragged-back mess; she looks my age, maybe older, though I know she is younger by six years. She sits to one side of Lauren and I notice how often she reaches out to pat her daughter’s sleeve or adjust the looping coil of the earphones as we talk, all unnecessary and unheeded gestures, for Lauren is oblivious, sitting quite still, listening to her music, no foot tapping to the rhythm – but then of course there isn’t.

  Lauren is overweight. Phil and Sarah are not. Phil is slim, he has cropped, dark hair with the grey just starting to show through, casually dressed. Him I don’t remember, not in any detail. He’s very attentive, but not to what Daniel is saying, or to Lauren’s needs, or even to Sarah’s flushed distress, but to Rosie. I notice how his eyes roam around the circle, but keep coming back to rest on her. She’s his focus. Rosie herself sits, head tilted forward, shielding herself with her hair, a ball of pent-up energy, and in the midst of my messy, painful emotions I feel a flash of something hot and sharp and very clean: jealousy. I will Rosie to keep her defences up and keep him out.

  Lauren is unavoidable. She draws my eyes precisely because she is more of an absence than a presence. We are all sitting tight-coiled, balancing on the edge of our chairs and our anxieties, wrapped in the barbed wire of our nerves, but Lauren is inert. Her stillness has a peculiar, flat quality. She’s utterly indifferent to what’s going on around her. She listens to her music, ignores the petting and fussing of her mother… Sarah… and looks at no one.

  She looks profoundly disabled.

  She is profoundly disabled.

  The room is very hot.

  PHIL

  Rosie resists us all, head down, her hair a soft, impenetrable barrier. I stare at the crown of her head, her pale scalp visible between the dark swathes of her hair. Her hands twist and flip her phone, over and over, a restless, repetitive action. She has dark, painted nails that click and clack against her phone case, slender fingers, a slim plait of silver around each of her thumbs – her perfectly straight thumbs. Her legs are trembling, energy coursing through them. She looks poised to run. Suddenly she glances up for a second and I catch sight of her face. Sarah’s grey eyes stare back at me, full of challenge, and any uncertainty I had about the reality of the bizarre situation we are trapped in drops away. She dips her head again, cutting me off. Inadvertently I must have caught Daniel’s eye. ‘Sorry, Phil, did you want to say something?’

  Everyone stares at me in anticipation, and I can’t think of a damn thing to say. I look at Sarah, always the one with the words, but even she struggles. ‘It’s just so difficult to know where to start.’ No one leaps in to contradict her, and my heart goes out to her as she ploughs on, trying to stitch some semblance of ordinary out of it all. ‘It’s too much to deal with at once, but I think that it’s important that we… we… are kind to each other. That’s all I can think for now, that we have to be kind to each other because it’s very hard to know how else to start.’

  Everyone’s attention now shifts to Anne. It’s her turn to step up to the plate, but she just reaches out and lightly presses the arm of the guy next to her, which triggers what sounds very much like a prepared speech. ‘I couldn’t agree more. I believe that this first meeting should be kept short, for everyone concerned. The stress you are all under is enormous and there’s no rush, after all. Now you have made this vital, initial contact, there’s plenty of time to’ – a fraction of a hesitation – ‘start the slow process of establishing new connections.’ Smooth, calming, placatory.

  We’re all startled when Rosie spits out, ‘Who asked you?’ The dislike packed into those three words is intense.

  Now Anne responds. ‘Rosie, please!’

  Daniel hesitates, then regroups. ‘I can’t reiterate strongly enough to everyone that this is a process. What you’re feeling from one moment to the next could very well be – will in all likelihood be – very extreme. There are bound to be some very intense, possibly confusing emotions. This has to be a safe place for everyone directly involved,’ and here he looks pointedly at Anne’s friend, ‘to feel, explore and express those feelings and work through them. But Mr Hanson is right: there’s no rush, there does need to be space. I propose a break of, say, fifteen minutes… and then we’ll reconvene.’

  Callum rises, takes Anne by the elbow and ushers her towards the door. Their social worker gathers together her bags and follows, but Rosie doesn’t move. At the doorway Callum turns. ‘Rosie?’

  ‘I’m staying here.’

  Anne starts to object, but again Callum takes charge. ‘Very well, if Jenny could, perhaps, stay with you. We’ll be back very soon.’ He delicately pushes Anne from the room. Rosie ignores the awkward return of her nominated chaperone and, for the first time, looks at us properly. Her gaze swings back and forth from me and Sarah with a kind of startled panic. She does not include Lauren in her scrutiny.

  She is beautiful, flawless. Our child. I cannot imagine what she must be thinking, looking at her parents for the first time in her life. I yearn to reach out and touch her, to still her jerking leg and her restless hands, but of course I can’t. I have no rights.

  ROSIE

  ‘Can I take a picture?’ My voice sounds way too loud, demanding and screechy, and I see her flinch, but he meets and holds my eye, smiling carefully. I just want their picture on my phone, and that’s all I want. I don’t want to talk to them, get to know them, tell them anything about me – I don’t want any of that and if I don’t want it, then no one can make me. I just want a picture.

  ‘Yeah, sure, of us together?’ His eagerness is almost pathetic.

  ‘Yeah.’ I click on the camera icon, but when I frame the shot, it’s not what I wanted at all. I take the photo quickly, not caring if it’s even lined up; who gives a shit if I chop off their heads or they’re out of focus? Phil stands and starts digging in his pocket for his phone. I walk out before he can even ask, catching a glimpse of the raw disap-pointment on their stunned faces as I leave.

  SARAH

  Is she what I was expecting? I’ve no idea. I’ve not been able to imagine her, because, as much as we’ve pored over the contents of the file, I’ve struggled to connect the images and details in it with a real person. Yet here she is, real, darker, nervier, more tangible and more alien to me than I can comprehend.

  She’s so agitated that it’s hard to look at her. It feels like I’m invading her space every time I so much as turn in her direction. She uses her hair and her body to ward everyone off. The only moment of contact comes when she refuses to leave with her mother when we take a break, preferring instead to stay back and take our photo. It’s a chink of something, an admission of some degree of interest in us, but the minute Phil tries to reciprocate, she bolts. The mountain we have to climb feels even higher.

  After the break the conversation continues to swoop and stagger around the room. I hear myself waffling rubbish and wish I could sound more in control, but coherence is beyond me. The whole experience is destabilising, it’s like being drunk. Anne seems to be struggling as much as me. She is mute and wild-eyed. She sits rigidly, gripping her handbag as if it’s her lifeline. The man with her keeps stepping in with suggestions and observations that she accepts without comment. I’m relieved when Anne quietly says that she’s struggling with the heat and feels she may have a migraine coming on. This thankfully, effectively brings the session to a close, but not until we’ve agreed to meet again in the evening… if Mr Brownlee can find us an appropriate location. Mr Brownlee is ominously confident that he knows somewhere that will be ‘perfect’ for an early, informal meal, not too far away from e
ither of our hotels.

  At last everyone gets to their feet and the tenuous, distended web that we’ve painstakingly and inelegantly spun over the past couple of hours frays and pulls apart.

  22

  The Gallery

  ROSIE

  THE FIRST thing I do once we get to the hotel is lock my door and collapse on the bed. On my own, at last. I stretch, listening to my joints click and crack. Mum and Callum are talking in the room next door, or rather he’s talking and Mum isn’t, her favoured response at the moment. I flick on a music channel, some R & B crap, anything to drown out his droning, monotonous voice and her nothingness. My T-shirt stinks, a disgusting reminder of the sweat-inducing meeting. I feel tainted. I should shower, face the cold light of the en suite, but I can’t. I can’t be bothered to roll over, never mind haul myself into the bathroom and get undressed in front of the wall of mirrors. I reach for my phone and click on Gallery.

  The photos I took, three in total, are all crap. My real mum and dad, and Mum’s real daughter. What crap. The whole thing is crap. I turn up the volume, knowing full well it will irritate her, grate on her already shredded nerves. I feel so mad and messed up that I don’t know what to do with myself.

  I wanted their picture, not Lauren’s. I can’t show these to anyone, because she’s slap-bang in the middle of all of them. The minute I asked, they crouched down either side of her wheelchair, their heads forming a tight little huddle, the perfect, imperfect family. A wave of rage slams through me. I consider hurling my phone at the wall or smashing it against the bedside table. I imagine the smashed screen, the flying bits of phone innards, all my contacts lobbed into thin air, but as quickly as my anger storms, it breaks and I’m left feeling flattened and wobbly, too choked by the pain in my throat to cry. The picture of the three of them stares back at me. I expand the image, using my fingertips to isolate and enlarge… first her face, then his. She looks knackered, but as I stroke away the tatty edges of the shitty little room, her bland clothes and her nothing hair, her features come into focus – my features come into focus. Sarah looks like me. I look like her. We have the same eyes, the same-shaped mouth. It’s the weirdest feeling, like being on a ride that’s making you feel really sick and disorientated, but that’s exciting at the same time. Do I look like him? I can’t see it. My dad. Not Nathan. This man. Someone completely different and new. The wave of not knowing how to feel smashes over me again. I pull Dog out of my bag and hold him against my cheek, feeling the softness of his synthetic fur against my skin. I close my eyes and breathe in the smell of him.

  After an age, Callum’s voice finally stops and I hear him leave Mum’s room. I shut down the photos and step back into my other life, the one I’ve been living for the past fourteen years, thinking it was all there was. It’s still going on as if nothing has changed. According to my messages, Lily and Kennedy are off shopping after school, Stacey has got some new footie boots, expensive ones, and Megan’s new kitten is so cute she’s just had to post another ten photos of it. Katie has messaged me saying she hopes it’s going okay, and that she’s there for me if I want to talk. And say what? There’s a knock at the door. I ignore it. I lied to Katie and said I had a hospital appointment. I deliberately left it vague. I wonder how many people Katie’s told about my mysterious day off school, and what the rumours are? Mum knocks at the door again, louder this time, loud enough to be heard above the music. I know she won’t shout, not in a hotel corridor. I decide to leave Katie hanging. At the third knock I force myself off the bed, tuck Dog out of sight under my pillow and open the door.

  ‘Could you turn it down, please?’ I hit ‘Off’. ‘I said down, Rosie, you don’t have to turn it off if you’re watching it.’ I climb back onto the bed, leaving her standing in the middle of the room. I see her eyes flick to the clothes spewing out of my bag onto the floor, but she stops herself from making a comment. She comes and sits on the edge of the bed, a gap of a few centimetres between us. Her perfume is strong and flowery, recently reapplied; nothing stops Mum looking her best. She smells good, I smell bad. She’s obviously waiting for me to say something to reassure her. I don’t oblige. After a moment she says, ‘Are you all right? I know today was difficult – well, impossible – but it went as well as we could have expected, I suppose.’ I have nothing to add. ‘Rosie, please, darling. I don’t know what’s going on in your head.’ I close my eyes. ‘Rosie!’ There’s an edge to her voice now, she’s getting pissed off with me, but she doesn’t move. I can tell that she isn’t going to go away until I say something.

  ‘They seem nice.’ There, make something of that. I’ve been brought up to be polite, so I’ll be polite.

  ‘Nice?’

  ‘Yes, nice. They seem like a nice family.’

  ‘Well, yes… on first meeting, but I meant more: how are you coping with it all?’

  ‘I’m fine. I’m going for a shower in a minute.’ I open my eyes quickly and catch her looking at me; she’s frustrated, like always.

  ‘Yes, good idea. It’ll be good to freshen up.’ She means sort myself out and stop being such a disgrace, in comparison to her. ‘And you’re sure you’re okay about this meal, tonight. If it’s too much, I can ring and cancel, say I’m not feeling up to it, I’m sure they’d understand.’ She twists her opal ring back into line on her finger and checks her nail polish. So we are definitely seeing them again, all of them this time. I can tell she wants to get out of it.

  ‘No.’ I sit up. ‘Might as well get it over with. Is he coming tonight as well?’

  ‘Yes, Callum is coming.’ The tone warns me not to even bother putting up a fight.

  I leave her sitting on the bed, cross to the bathroom and reach for the handle. ‘Just keep him away from me.’ She sighs and runs her nails down her skirt, smoothing out an invisible wrinkle. I want to shake her. The rage returns and I deliberately try to provoke her. I want her to hurt, like I’m hurting. ‘And my brother and my aunt will definitely be there tonight, won’t they?’ ‘Brother’, ‘aunt’, ‘grand-father’, they’re new words in my vocabulary. I’ve been trying them out over the last month, not just to see her flinch, but to get used to them meaning something.

  ‘Yes,’ she says faintly, as I pull the door shut.

  Why I’m being such a bitch is beyond me. All I really want is a hug.

  23

  Table for Eight

  SARAH

  MR BROWNLEE has booked us in for dinner at a local restaurant. We’re going early to avoid the crowds. I’m now convinced this is a bad idea. I imagine an echoing, nearly empty dining room, the scrape of knives on plates and the stutter of forced conversations He stressed that he’d double-checked that the place was wheel-chair-accessible; apparently it even has a disabled toilet. He seemed disappointed when we didn’t express much enthusiasm or gratitude. I can’t believe we thought it a good idea to try and meet again today. I feel bone-tired, papery-dry from being trapped in that room for so long, trying to acclimatise to the shock.

  Getting back to our hotel room was such a relief.

  Lauren is out of her chair, sitting, back braced, against the bed. She’s content, flicking between YouTube clips on her iPad. It’s the usual pre-school cacophony, an endless loop that never fails to delight and surprise her, even on the hundredth viewing. At home it’s easier to ignore, but here the ‘Dingle Dangle Scarecrow’ is even more insistently sunny and saccharine than normal. I lie on the bed, within stroking distance of Lauren’s happily bobbing head, my eyes closed and my shoes kicked off. Phil, James and Ali are sprawled on the other bed. It’s Twenty Questions time – all of them completely valid, but no less tough to answer. ‘What’s she like? Who does she look like? What were her mum and dad like?’

  ‘What do you mean he wasn’t there?’ Ali is shocked by his absence, but she doesn’t know the backstory. We haven’t discussed Nathan Elkan’s increasingly firm rejection of every approach that has been made to involve him in the process. All we’ve had are a number of very formal
, impersonal letters from his legal representatives. It has been made very clear that Mr Elkan wishes to waive any claim on Lauren. He is, and will remain, absent: that is the message.

  I feel for Anne. His denial of her, their past and their child is brutal.

  I can tell that Phil’s patience is thinning and cracking with each question. Ali doesn’t ask what the reaction to Lauren was, as always she’s the unspoken presence, un-ignorable, but at the same time unmentioned. I reach out and stroke her hair. She briefly presses her head against my hand, recognising my affection in her usual distracted way.

  James brings it all back down to reality. ‘It’s not somewhere posh tonight, is it?’ ‘You mean will they do chips?’ Phil’s relief at getting back on solid territory is obvious. ‘I expect so.’

  ‘Can I google it and see what they do for pudding?’

  Phil nods. I can’t work out whether James’s mood is bravado or genuine okay-ness, but for now I’m just glad he’s coping. He slides down on the floor next to Lauren and she reluctantly lets him pull up the menu for the restaurant. When the photos of Banoffee Pie and Double Chocolate Cheesecake appear, her interest noticeably increases. Their heads dip together over the screen.

  ‘Are you okay, Sarah?’ Ali’s concern pulls me back into their conversation.

  ‘Yeah, nothing that a hot shower and a big glass of wine won’t put right.’ She holds my gaze for a fraction longer than necessary, then smiles so cautiously that I feel a sudden tilt towards losing it. Movement, momentum – it’s the only solution. ‘Honestly, I’m okay. Come on, let’s get sorted.’ I force myself off the bed. Somehow we have to keep going forward. Ali goes next door to change and call Jess, and I head into the bathroom.