Silent Child(15)

I imagined him hurrying through to their living space in his woollen socks. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

“Sonya, it isn’t what you think. They haven’t found a body. They’ve found Aiden, but he’s alive.”

There was silence. Eventually, I heard Rob’s dad in the background. Sonya? What’s she saying Sonya? Tell me.

“He’s… alive?”

“He’s alive and he’s at St Michael’s hospital. I can’t explain much over the phone, it’s difficult to… You just need to see him and he needs to see you.” I decided to warn them face-to-face rather than over the phone. “And… well… you need to call Rob. He needs to come too.”

“Okay. Okay… I… Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, Sonya.”

“Oh… Oh my, that’s…”

“I have to go. I’ll see you when you get here.”

I lifted the phone away from my ear and ended the call, drawing in my own deep breath. I leaned against the wall of the silent waiting room and closed my eyes for a second.

“Um, Mrs. Price-Hewitt.”

My eyes opened and my shoulders slumped. Dr Schaffer stood in the doorway with his hands deep in his coat pockets.

“If you have a few moments it might be a good time to draw some blood. It’s important to run the tests as soon as we can.”

“Of course,” I said.

“How are you feeling? Are you up to this?” he asked, meaning the blood draw.

As I followed him out of the waiting room I mulled that question over, and no matter how many times I thought about it, I still didn’t have an answer.





8


I got a cup of tea, a sandwich, and yet more explanations of what was to come. There were more tests to be done: x-rays, scans, psychological assessments. A therapist would see him soon. There might have to be an investigation into our home to check it was ‘suitable’. It was all too much.

Sonya and Peter were in tears at the sight of him, but Sonya was the first to turn to me and nod. They knew. They saw Rob in him just as I had. The phlebotomist took my blood but it wasn’t necessary, not to me. The boy in that room was Aiden, and we all knew it.

I had almost fallen asleep when the social worker turned up to talk to me. Jake ended up doing most of the talking. By that point, little seemed to matter to me except for Aiden, and certainly not a cross-examination about me as a mother. By 10pm, my head was spinning but the social worker appeared happy with the interview and informed us that she would ‘pop round’ to the house when Aiden had been discharged from the hospital. Reluctantly, I left Aiden’s room to let him rest, and slipped away from the others, picking up a bottle of water. Outside the hospital, I sat down on an uncomfortable stone bench, and let a pattering of drizzle land on my hair. It would frizz, but I didn’t care.

“I’ve called Rob.”

I flinched. Sonya moved like a panther. Her voice cut through my own suffocating thoughts, jarring me back to reality. “Thanks.”

She sat down next to me, leaving adequate space between us for another person. She wrapped her arms around her body. “It’s really him. I don’t know whether to rejoice or cry for what he’s been through.”

“I know the feeling.”

“I bet you do.” She turned towards me. “I want to call it a blessing, but… I can’t. The way he sits there, barely moving…” She covers her mouth with her hand. “He was never this quiet. Peter used to call him Chatterbox. He’d tell us all about the spiders and worms he’d collected from the garden. A real boy’s boy.”

I nodded. “I remember.”

She shuffled uncomfortably. “Rob will be here in the morning. He’s arranged a leave of absence.”

“That’s good. Aiden is going to need him. He’ll need all of us.”

Sonya nodded and bit into her thumbnail. “Where is Aiden going to stay when he leaves the hospital?”

Surprised, I turned to face her. “He’ll be staying with me. I’m his mother.”

Sonya lifted a hand like she was trying to placate me. “Oh, I know, it’s just… Well, you don’t live in your parents’ home anymore. I wondered if maybe he’d want to stay somewhere he already knew, like the B&B.”

I let out a cold, hard laugh. “Absolutely not. Aiden is my son and he’s coming home with me.”

Her lips tightened into a thin line. “Okay. As long as that’s what’s best for Aiden. He’s all I care about now. All I’m thinking about.”

“And I’m not?” My chin lifted as I regarded her through the dim glow of the hospital windows around us.

“Now, Emma, I never said that. It’s just that I know you have the baby coming soon, and Aiden doesn’t know Jake at all, does he? He knows us though. He knows Rob. He knows the B&B.”

“But that wasn’t where he grew up,” I said. I hated that some of what she was saying made sense. I pushed that thought away. Aiden needed me more than he needed Rob, Sonya, and Peter. “He grew up with me more than anyone else. I was his constant before he…” I struggled to compose myself. “I know I’m going through some changes at the moment, but I was the one to bring him up and it won’t matter where we live or who lives with me, I’m his mother and he’s coming home with me.” I paused to brush away a stray tear. “If that was Rob in there, would you let anyone else take him home?”