Silent Child(28)

“Emma, let the boy go.”

“No.”

“Emma, look at his face.” Dr Foster was firmer this time. “Look at the distress you’re causing him.”

I blinked, bringing the world back into focus. Aiden, where was my Aiden? I shook my head and tried to concentrate. There he was, all grown up, a different boy than when he left. He was red-faced with wide eyes, shaking his head back and forth, leaning away from me with his heels dug firmly in the ground.

“Aiden?” I let him go, and my knees buckled.





14


I’d messed it up. I’d ruined a good shot at finding out more about what Aiden was keeping locked up inside him, and possibly ruined any trust we’d built together.

Even after sitting in the police car with a steaming cup of tea, waiting for the rain to stop, Aiden was terrified of the woods. He was wary of me, too. He flinched when I tried to hold his hand, he backed away when I walked towards him, and he turned his head away from me when I tried to talk to him. I’d made everything a hundred times worse than before.

I felt like the lowest of the low. I was a slight step up from the deranged monster who took him. I was pond scum. Nasty, grimy. I wanted to go home and take a shower to scrub the filth from my body. What kind of person behaves like that with their traumatised child?

“Here.” Dr Foster handed me the plastic cup from a thermos flask filled with milky coffee. “Don’t dwell on today. We’ll talk about it in the therapy session on Thursday, okay?”

I wrapped my hands around the cup, desperate for its much-needed warmth, and nodded. There was nothing more to say. She couldn’t reassure or placate me. There was nothing anyone could say. I’d been in the wrong. I’d behaved in an aggressive manner towards my own son. I thought about the way I’d tried to drag him, like a farmer with a reluctant bull, and cringed into my boots.

DCI Stevenson rested next to me on the side of the police car. Aiden was in the front seat, sitting quietly. “I shouldn’t have pushed this. I’m sorry.”

“We had to try. It was me who fucked it all up.”

Stevenson shook his head. “I don’t think he would have gone in there anyway. He’s just not ready. Get the two of you home, rest up, bond. We’ll try this another day.”

“What’s going to happen next? Are you still searching the forest?”

He scratched the side of his jaw. The bags around his eyes had deepened, revealing the toll this stressful case was having on his psyche. “As much as we can. Plots of land have been sold off and it’s proving to be difficult approaching the companies they belong to. We’ll need warrants to search for them. We’re checking out any planning permission from ten years ago that might relate to some sort of small room built in the area. There’s a chance that Aiden had been walking for a long time before he was found. We can’t be a hundred per cent sure that he’s been kept in the forest all this time.”

“Okay. You’ll keep me updated, won’t you?”

“I’ll be in touch,” he said, “but my priority is on the case now. Denise or Marcus will be with you from now on and they’ll liaise between you and the police.”

It made sense. DCI Stevenson’s time was best spent working on the case, but part of me had come to rely on his reassuring calmness and would miss his familiar presence.

“Get Aiden home and in the warm,” he said, his voice low and soothing. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I know anything.”

He was right: More than anything I needed to pick myself up. The stress of the last few days had culminated in this complete loss of control, and that couldn’t happen again. Stay strong for Aiden, I thought. It would be my mantra. I was a mother first, and a mother could always be strong for her children. Surely.

Aiden removed his jacket and pulled the seatbelt across his chest without needing to be prompted when we got to the car. I didn’t try to fill the silence with my own jabbering; I put the radio on to chase the silence away. Eventually, the colour returned to Aiden’s cheeks. He lost the wide-eyed, glassy look, and he seemed to relax.

Until we turned onto our street.

“Fuck.”

I hadn’t had time to watch the news or read the papers that morning. If I had, I would have seen the front-page story about the little boy who had come wandering out of the woods ten years after he was thought to have died in the worst flood for a hundred years. I missed it all. My phone had been on silent all morning, and I hadn’t thought to check it as we left Rough Valley. The reporters were lying in wait to ambush us. Their vans lined the streets. There was a television reporter and a cameraman talking to one of my neighbours.

“Shit.”

I backed out of the road before they saw me, and drove in the opposite direction.

*

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Josie stood in the door with her jaw hanging open, her eyes darting from me to Aiden and back to me.

“It’s been a whirlwind, Jo. Can we come in?”

“Yeah, sure.” She backed away, letting us in through the enormous wooden doorway. Her eyes never moved from Aiden. “He’s so like Rob.” She shut the door behind us, still staring at Aiden. It was only when I cleared my throat that she awoke from her trance. “I’ll put the kettle on.”