“Mum?” Simon was scratching at the door. “Mum, are you okay?” he paused. “It’s just I thought I heard you yell…”
The child beside her stilled like a small animal trying to escape notice and then she smelled ammonia. She gathered her breath, kept her voice steady and said, “Yes, I’m fine. A dream is all. Go back to bed.”
She listened as his heavy footsteps receded and his bedroom door closed. She could feel the little boy relaxing.
“It’s all right,” she whispered. “It’s all right.”
Ignoring the wet stink, the warm damp that was rapidly turning cold, Caroline wrapped her arms around the child and slept soundly.
“I want to go outside,” Simon mumbled through his food.
He wasn’t using a knife—she hadn’t put one out—and hacked away great chunks of French toast with the edge of his fork, then shovelled each one loaded with disks of banana into his mouth. Syrup dripped down his chin.
Caroline turned back to the stove and deftly flipped over another piece of bread dipped in egg mix. It sizzled as it hit the pan and the smell of heated butter filled her nostrils. She nodded, as if buying herself a few moments. In truth she felt guilty, guiltier than at any other time in her life. She told herself it was because she’d been a bad mother, because she’d feared him, and because of that fear she’d hated him. But it was worse and she knew it.
She hadn’t simply hated him. She’d forgotten him. For the briefest of hours she had forgotten him altogether and she had loved another child. Another child who was everything Simon no longer was—vulnerable, innocent. A child who’d filled her need for such a short time. But had done so nevertheless, and in doing so had widened the fractures between Caroline and her son.
So she nodded again and said, “Where would you like to go?”
“The park? Just out, Mum. Just…out.”
“The park it is, when I finish the dishes. Wrap up, it’s cold.”
She could feel, tight by her left leg, the cold weight of the ghost child leaning on her. The small frozen hands gripped her mid-thigh, hampering any movement, but she didn’t shift; didn’t want to dislodge him, just stayed in place revelling in the sensation of being essential.
When Simon finished jamming breakfast into his maw and brought his plate over to the sink, she felt the ghost child dissolve, his presence melt away, leaving only his fear of Simon and a disturbing sense of resentment in Caroline’s chest.
It was okay, she thought. It was going to be okay.
The bench was warm beneath her; an unseasonal burst of sun had burned away the chill and the damp and she was toasty in a bubble of light, hidden from the wind by a stand of trees and the toilet block not far behind her. She snuggled down in her coat and closed her eyes for a moment.
The park had been a good idea. Stiff and formal at first, they’d eventually relaxed. Simon had scraped together a tiny, wet ball from remnants of snow (but mostly mud) and thrown it at her. The mark was still visible on her coat; any other time she would have lost her temper, seen it as mean, but there was a kind of relief in seeing him behave like a child for the first time in what seemed an age.
It made her remember how it had been when he was small. When loving him wasn’t something she thought about, wasn’t something she resented, but something she simply did; something she did not question. So she laughed and made snow-mud pies of her own and threw them until they were both breathless with laughter and covered with cold, dripping brown.
When she sat to catch her breath, Simon played on the swings. The park started to fill up with other children but he didn’t seem to notice them. More importantly, they didn’t appear to notice him. The few parents standing around smoking and watching their own offspring didn’t recognise her son either. He took to the slides, then the roundabout, climbed the tree fort, then told her he needed to go to the loo.
She’d smiled and nodded, touched his arm and squeezed to let him know it was going to be okay.
Now she sat, warm and drowsing, as close to happy as she’d been in…she didn’t know. They would move, yes. Up north, somewhere with a small school, but close enough to a city with good psychologists; Simon would need help. He would need someone to talk to—as she would, let’s face it—someone who could get him to speak about what made him do what he did. Someone who could make him face what he had done, look at it and see it for what it was, and then turn away in disgust—aversion therapy, she thought. He would realise that his choices in future must always turn away from whatever the voice inside him advised. He would recognise his action had been an aberration. He’d acted on a whim, a curiosity. It was hideous, terrible, but he had to be allowed to move on. If he didn’t, her son would be tied to that awful, awful thing forever.
And so would she.
But they could get past it.
They could work together.
Everything would be okay.
The hand was small and frigid on her face. At first she thought it was Simon, but the hand was too small. Too tender. The touch was sad, tentative, but somehow determined. She moaned no, but it didn’t help. Caroline didn’t want to, but the tiny fingers brushed across her lids, made her blink, let the smallest sliver of daylight in and she had to come back to the world.
When she opened her eyes, the ghost child was a few feet away. He wasn’t looking at her, but staring towards the toilet block. She felt as heavy as she ever had, cemented to the wooden bench, but she heaved herself upwards. Every step was leaden, and she couldn’t make herself run. Her legs operated independently of her will and resolutely brought her to the entrance to the male toilets.
The smell of urine assailed her. The floor was tiled and damp. She rounded the corner and peered into the dim-lit rectangular room.
Stalls to the right. A urinal against the far wall. A row of sinks to the left. And in the far corner, her son just visible in the doorway of the furthest stall. Caroline approached quietly, oh so quietly. Behind her she could feel the arctic presence of the ghost child, his little hands holding onto the bottom of her coat. In the moment before Simon sensed her and turned around, she saw into the stall.
An elfin girl this time.
Caroline felt her heart stop, leap, thud like a drum.
The child’s face was pinched and pale but she seemed otherwise unhurt. She was crouched on top of the closed lid of the toilet, curled in on herself like a terrified hedgehog. She looked clean and cared for in jeans with sequins along the line of the pockets, a pink, puffed jacket, and purple gumboots decorated with flower-shaped raindrops and umbrellas held by black and white cows. Not a Traveller’s child this time, not a child Simon might think no one would care about. Caroline couldn’t help the flare of irritation that after everything that had happened he could be so stupid.
The little girl caught sight of Caroline and her mouth opened in a wail of relief and fear.
That was when Simon turned, his eyes widening, pupils dilating, his mouth working like a fish trying to gather breath on land.
“I wasn’t! I wasn’t doing anything!” He cowered. “I wasn’t going to…”
Caroline had thought her son’s lies had no more power to hurt her. The moment her hand grasped the collar of his jacket and began to shake him, the girl used the chance to dart out, haring through the tight space between their bodies and the stall door. She let loose a steam train squeal as she passed them by.
Caroline had enough presence of mind to drag him outside and to the car before the shouting started, her own and that of the outraged parents gathering around the little girl who’d made her way to the far side of the park with amazing speed.