The Second Child Read online

  ‘Yes. I know families can find it hard to accept, but many conditions, including Rubinstein–Taybi, are naturally occurring.’ She was looking at me, waiting for an actual question.

  ‘But Lauren would inherit her blood type from us?’

  ‘Well, yes, after a fashion?’

  ‘How do you mean… after a fashion?’

  Ms Langford returned to her desk. ‘It’s somewhat complicated by factors called antigens and antibodies, the Rh factor that you might have heard people mention?’ I neither nodded nor said no. ‘A child is a blend of its biological parents, when it comes to their blood.’

  ‘So you can say what a child’s blood group will be, if you know the parents’?’

  ‘You really need the grandparents as well, but I can assure you, an individual’s blood group isn’t relevant to RTS. Mr Rudak?’ Lauren, as if sensing the tension in the room, stirred and shifted position with a deep, noisy breath. We both watched, waiting to see if she would wake or settle. Sleep claimed her again.

  And that’s when I could’ve just left it, should’ve just left it. But I didn’t. ‘So how come, if I’m O and Sarah is O Negative, Lauren is A Positive?’

  Lauren catches her breath, rolls over and the snoring stops. I clamber to my feet, feeling the stiffness in my joints like an old man. It’s still dark, hours to go until dawn. If I’d just left it, we could’ve carried on as normal, but if I had, we’d never have known about our other daughter.

  4

  Disclosure

  SARAH

  ON FRIDAY morning Lauren sets off for school, Phil for work and James for college. All as normal. The house is empty by quarter past eight.

  The first phone call comes at 9.05 a.m. There are six others before lunchtime.

  By the second call I’m prepared. I’m armed with a notepad and a pen, and an alertness that is purely defensive. I make notes, check the correct spelling of everyone’s names and the precise format of their email addresses. I’m calm and cooperative and organised. I aim for, and assume I’m making, the correct impression. I’m fully aware that these people have power over what happens next.

  The callers are all, initially, hesitant and very courteous. They introduce themselves and their official roles in our ‘case’. They each explain the different processes they have been tasked to initiate. I agree to all their requests for information, confirm that we will participate in something called ‘full disclosure’, though I have no idea what this entails, and agree dates for various meetings with various people. Everyone who disturbs my morning, and my peace, is professional and considerate and implacable. One of the last people to get in touch is a woman called Mrs Winter; she’s from the social-care team. Mrs Winter is the most hesitant, the most polite and the most worrying of them all. I have to strain to hear her, as she quietly explains the situation in terms of our new status as Lauren’s ‘recognised guardians’; we are no longer legally her parents. Mrs Winter is at pains to stress how central our relationship with Lauren is, and will be, in any, and all, decisions, now and in the future; the parentheses do little to reassure me. She whispers on in my ear about ‘the process’ and the need to ensure that everything possible is done to protect and promote Lauren’s well-being, and that of the other child. She also explains that she has been tasked with preparing information for the ‘birth family’. It takes me a moment to grasp what she means by this. She ends the call by quietly insisting on a home visit at the earliest possible date. I politely tell her that the earliest we can do is Wednesday, as we already have appointments booked with the enquiry team and a legal advocate. She sighs, as if deeply disturbed by how long she must wait to meet us. ‘Well, if that’s the earliest you can manage, it’ll have to be Wednesday.’ She wishes me a good day, without any sense of irony.

  The insidious creep of strangers into the security and sanctity of our family has begun.

  I’m still sitting blankly with the phone in my hand when it rings again, making my heart thud. ‘Hi.’ The informality throws me. ‘Hi? Sarah?’ I don’t respond. ‘It’s Ali.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘I was just checking you’re still okay for the weekend.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So? Are we still on?’ I can’t think about moving furniture for my sister in the middle of all this. ‘Look, if it’s a problem, just say.’ The spikiness in her voice is ill-disguised. Coming on top of the litany of calls I’ve received this morning, it punctures my already-frayed patience.

  ‘It’s not that.’

  But Ali has already stopped listening. ‘Look, I’m at work. I’ll text you.’ And she hangs up.

  The rest of the afternoon is a write-off. I can’t settle to anything and, though I try numerous times, I can’t reach Phil. In desperation I call his office, but they say he’s on a site visit out in the middle of nowhere. ‘Somewhere up beyond Halifax, with the sheep and the hunchbacks,’ Matt unhelpfully and unfunnily adds. So I roam around the house, moving from room to room in a restless, pointless dance while I shift silently through some of the small, simple, devastating phrases that I plan to use when we speak to James.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Lauren.’ That’s our opening gambit. James looks from me to Phil, clearly confused as to why he’s been summoned downstairs for ‘a talk’. It’s Friday evening; he should be lying on his bed playing FIFA or faffing with his hair. I plough on. ‘What I mean is, Dad and I had an appointment at the hospital yesterday, about Lauren. That’s why Dad was at home when you got back. It’s thrown up something we weren’t expecting.’ How’s that for an understatement. ‘It’s not to do with her health, not this time.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I look at James’s half-man/half-boy face and it strikes me how much he’s grown up while we’ve been looking the other way. At seventeen, he can’t remember a time without Lauren, his life has been dominated by her and her needs, yet here I am about to smash the simple but fundamental basis of his relationship with his sister… that she is his sister.

  ‘The appointment was with the genetics team.’ I can hear the waver in my voice.

  He still isn’t really paying attention. I can see his eyes flicking to his phone. He’s so used to us having appointments with one specialist or another that he isn’t expecting this to be any different. ‘Okay.’

  ‘They needed to look into a result they got back on a blood test they did.’ Once I say it I, can never unsay it. ‘It…’ I dry.

  James pushes himself upright, his nonchalance finally replaced by attentiveness. ‘And?’ He may be used to stuff happening with his sister, but he’s not used to hearing fear and uncertainty from us.

  ‘It’s okay. Well, it isn’t. It’s a shock… what they’ve found. But we’ll be okay. I promise we’ll be okay. We’ll work it out.’

  ‘Sarah, just tell him,’ Phil prompts.

  ‘The blood test showed that Lauren isn’t ours. Not biologically.’ There, it’s said and it can’t be unsaid.

  James blinks, twice, and pushes his fringe out of his eyes ‘What?’

  Phil steps in. ‘Somehow there was a mix-up at the hospital when she was born. They think it happened when she was in the nursery. We were given the wrong baby to bring home. They’re starting an investigation.’

  ‘Fuck!’ James immediately looks at me. ‘Sorry.’ He knows I hate him swearing.

  Phil responds. ‘Yeah. To be honest, “Fuck” just about sums it up.’ He smiles at our son and I feel a tug of grief that I can’t communicate with him as naturally as Phil does. I love James ferociously, he is my piece of joy in the world and I would do anything to protect him, but I don’t always know how to talk to him.

  ‘It sounds like something out of a film.’ James looks puzzled more than anything else.

  Phil takes over from me. ‘I know. But I’m afraid it’s not. We’re telling you because you have a right to know and, well, there’s going to be quite a lot of people who are going to have to get involved. Social workers…’ His face betrays hi
s feelings about more social workers poking into our lives, ‘… and the court and the hospital. They’re obviously trying to track down the other family. The other baby. Your biological sister.’ I admire Phil’s clarity, his commitment to punching home the truth of the situation, leaving no doubt about the implications. James shuffles about on his chair.

  I leap in. ‘It’s okay to not know what to say. We don’t, really.’

  James’s first question, when it comes, surprises me. Of all the things he could be worried about or not understand or say, he asks, ‘Does Auntie Ali know?’

  ‘Ali? No, not yet. We’ve not told anyone yet, apart from you.’

  Then he surprises me again. ‘I think we should tell her.’ It’s not like James to have a firm opinion about anything, never mind express it so forcefully.

  ‘Yes, we will.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘This weekend.’ I don’t understand why my sister is his priority in all this.

  ‘Can I tell her?’ He actually reaches for his phone as if contemplating the call there and then.

  ‘No, I will, when she comes over tomorrow. I’ll speak to her then. Okay?’ He nods, but seems disappointed. We gabble on, offering him reassurances that I’m not sure we’ll be able to deliver on. ‘We promise to tell you everything. Let you know what’s going on. Nothing will happen immediately; well, nothing that should impact directly on you or Lauren.’ God knows what may happen in the future. ‘You can talk to us – ask us anything. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’ But he doesn’t ask anything else. He shuffles about some more in his seat, stretching his legs out and flexing his huge feet. There’s a hole in one of his socks and his big toe is poking through the shredded cotton. He studies his feet, and Phil and I study him, trying to gauge his reaction. ‘So, is it still okay for me to go round to Ryan’s, like I was gonna?’

  ‘Course.’ Phil hands him his ‘Get Out of Jail pass’. ‘Back by ten-thirty p.m., though.’

  ‘’Kay.’ And James slides out of his seat and away from our scrutiny.

  5

  A Family Photo

  SARAH

  AFTER JAMES leaves, the evening stretches out ahead of us like a challenge. For the want of anything better to do, I go and search out a bottle of wine in the kitchen. I screw off the cap. Phil sits at the table, silent.

  ‘That went as well as it could, I suppose?’ I can hear the plea for reassurance in my voice.

  ‘Um.’ He doesn’t turn his head as he responds.

  I pour the wine, spilling some in the process. ‘We’re going have to keep a close eye on him, though. You know how he bottles things up.’ The wine soaks into the kitchen towel as I wipe the splashes off the base of the first glass. I pour a second. ‘Phil?’

  ‘I heard you. I agree.’ But he’s still staring off into the middle distance. It isn’t difficult to see where James gets his diffidence from.

  As I carry the glasses across to the table I realise what he’s looking at: it’s the digital photo frame that Ali gave us. It sits on the side, unnoticed most of the time, the images so familiar that they’ve become wallpaper. I place the glasses down carefully, fearful of disturbing Phil’s thoughts, and we watch in silence. The past and the present parade before our eyes on a random, seemingly endless spool: a shot of Ali, in her peroxide phase, with a chubby-faced, pre-school James, playing car crashes on the hideous old carpet we used to have in the lounge; a rare photo of Phil and I all dressed up for night out, from years back; Lauren, at eleven, fit to burst with excitement, hugging Mickey Mouse in Florida. Just as I feel a smile of recognition start to form at the memory, the image shifts again and there it is: a shot of me in the hospital just after Lauren was born. It shows the ghost of a new mum, propped up in bed, attached to a drip, with a tiny baby bundle on her lap. Me and my new daughter. I look at Phil, but he doesn’t react, he doesn’t even blink. He stares without a flicker of emotion on his face. When I glance back at the frame, the image has disappeared, replaced by a recent photo of the four of us lined up on the sofa: the classic happy-family snap.

  ‘Phil…?’ My voice finally triggers a reaction in him, but not the one I was hoping for.

  He pushes his glass of wine away. ‘Would you mind if I went for a run?’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m sorry. I just feel I need to do something. Get out of the house, just for a bit.’ He must see the hurt on my face. ‘It’s not you. It’s just all this. I promise I won’t be long. We can sit and a have a drink together when I get back. Talk about stuff then.’

  There is no possible answer other than ‘Okay’. As soon as I say it, he gets to his feet with exactly the same look of relief on his face as James had, five minutes earlier. Once the front door slams shut behind him, I stand up and bring the frame over to the table with me. I want it close so that I can see every tiny detail, every expression captured within each frozen moment, and I sit and wait for the photo to reappear.

  Phil took the picture on the day she was born. I know that, but I don’t really remember him taking it because, in truth, I remember hardly anything about Lauren’s birth, or the days afterwards. I’ve never really wanted to before, not until now. It’s such a patchwork of half-memories, a blur of pain and panic followed by sleep, but buried somewhere in those muddy, confused echoes there could be a clue to how and when the baby I struggled so hard to deliver got replaced by another baby, who became our child.

  As I wait I try and summon up what I can. It’s not much. I can remember our excitement when my waters broke, and our giddy confidence at the beginning. We naïvely thought that because this was our second child, it was going to be easier. We had it all mapped out in our minds: a quick labour, a few hours in hospital and then us, bringing our new baby daughter home to our son; our perfect little family complete. We were so wrong. Nothing went to plan. My labour was stop–start from the beginning, a lot of pain but very little progress. ‘Nothing to worry about,’ the harassed midwives kept saying, ‘walk around, keep moving. Baby will come when it’s good and ready.’ So that’s what I did all day, with Phil, on the ward, then all night, alone, around an empty TV lounge; endless, anxious loops, with my hands cradling my belly. But the following morning there was still nothing to show for it, so they induced me, using chemicals to achieve what nature hadn’t. And it worked. It was like a switch being thrown. I went into immediate, full-blown labour. It was a storm of pain and pressure. The only still-point amidst the roar was Phil, talking to me, anchoring me, trying to keep me safe. It went on for hours. More drugs were administered, this time to try and dull the pain, but they didn’t work. I felt like I was being ripped apart. Then at last, almost unbelievably, there was a final body-rending push, then relief. Then nothing.

  She was born.

  I didn’t hold her. I didn’t even look at her.

  And afterwards, after they’d patched me up and sent me back to the ward, I wanted her gone. I just wanted to rest and recover from the shock of her birth. I remember how much I resented the midwife forcing me to feed her that first day, how the sensation of her being held against my breast left me drained, and how all I wanted to do was slide down under the sheet and go back to sleep. And that’s what I did. I rejected her. I rolled over, turned my back on her and left them with no choice but to take her away.

  A photo of me holding a tiny Lauren fades up on the frame: three months old, tiny, fluff-haired, asleep on my lap. Then, as if in mockery, the very next photo is the one from the hospital again. As it slides in front of me and away, as impermanent as everything else in my life right now, I allow the possibility that I never held my other daughter in my arms to crash down on me, heavy and hard.

  The absurd cruelty of it leaves me breathless.

  PHIL

  I set off fast, way too fast, and within minutes the burn in my throat and the tightness in my chest remind me that I’m no longer young and fit, but I push on, hard up the hill, my breathing growing more ragged and labo
ured with each step. I want nothing more than to get away from the house and the ambush of memories. At the top I deliberately cross over and take the path that leads down onto the ring road, committing myself to the long loop round. The physical punishment is a welcome distraction. All my energy goes into forcing my feet to lift, my arms to drive and my lungs to respond. For about ten minutes it is pure pain and exertion, but as my body acclimatises and I find my rhythm, my heart rate steadies and my breathing starts to keep pace with my stride.

  People say that you forget the trauma of birth, but that’s crap. I remember every awful moment of when Lauren was born, all the noise and blood and pain and, above all, the overpowering feeling of utter, abject helplessness. The sense of loneliness that settled on me as Sarah retreated deeper and deeper inside herself, searching for the reserves to cope. I remember the sheets soaked in blood and the journey down to the Delivery Suite. I can picture, as if it was yesterday, the crush of people in the lift and how I had to let go of Sarah’s hand as they wheeled her out into the corridor. There was a split second when I just stood there and the possibility of simply not moving, of letting the doors grind shut and properly separating me from her, occurred to me, even appealed to me.

  Then there was the battle of the following hours, a fight that Sarah’s body raged through alone, with me pinned on the sidelines. The staff remained impassive. They resisted any involvement with Sarah as a person, but by then she had been reduced to something quite inarticulate and basic.

  By midday there was still no baby, but I truly no longer cared. I just wanted it to stop, any which way; it needed to stop. But it didn’t, it went on and on and on, until the old nurse came in and saved us. She went straight to Sarah, bent low over the bed and spoke clearly and loudly to her and, indirectly, to the rest of us. ‘Right. I’m sure you’ve had enough of this. We need to get this baby out. And we will. Soon. We’re going to move you up the bed. Then you’re going to push as hard as you can, when I tell you to, for thirty seconds at a time, and I promise you this baby will be out and this will be over.’ She directed everyone, brooking no dissent. They hoisted Sarah up the bed, more blood, but there was a momentum about this nurse that spread around the room and this somehow got through to Sarah. For the first time in hours she focused outwards. ‘Good girl. You keep looking at me. When the next contraction comes, use it. Work with it. Push down. Dad, get ready.’ Sarah took a deep breath and started pushing. She gripped onto the edges of the bed. I put my hand on the back of her neck, just to keep contact with her. ‘Good. Keep going. Keep pushing. Good girl. That’s it. Harder. Push down.’