Silent Child(45)

My spine straightened. This was the woman whose negligence had led to my child being stolen from me. No wonder Aiden was cowering behind me. “It wouldn’t have been appropriate, Amy.” My fingers tingled. After all these years I thought I’d forgiven her, but I was wrong. I’d only managed to push those feelings aside in favour of getting on with my life. Now that Aiden had come back, those old feelings had resurfaced. Perhaps it was the unfortunate incident with the woman in the surgery, or perhaps it was the strange black van following me around the village, but I was in no mood to coddle the woman who had turned her back and allowed my son to disappear from school.

Her face fell. “You’re right. Sorry. I’m so stupid. I’m just so… I’m so glad Aiden is alive. I mean, I know he’s been through…”

“Hell,” I finished for her. “He’s been through hell.” As I stood there on the street looking at Amy, our years of working together melted away, leaving only my bitterness for the woman. I forgot all about the doll she’d bought for my unborn child, and the friendship we’d tentatively garnered over the last few years. I’d been desperate for someone to blame and suddenly here she was.

“I’m so sorry, Emma,” she said. From the red flush working up her neck, and the way her bottom lip trembled I could tell she was about to cry.

I turned away. “I should go.”

“Wait,” she said. “I don’t want… Emma, we’ve been friends for a long time now. I thought we’d got past what happened.”

I shook my head. “Everything is different now. I grieved for him and I let him go; that was the only way I could look past what you did. But now he’s here and he’s in pain and I can’t help but…” I paused. For the first time I really looked at her. Why was she so emotional? Why was there a single tear running down her cheek? It all seemed… contrived. How could I trust anything she said?

I pulled Aiden away, hurrying to my car. Thinking back to the reports and eyewitnesses on the day of Aiden’s disappearance, I wondered if there was anything inconsistent about Amy. I remembered that, after she’d noticed Aiden was missing, she had asked another teacher to take care of the class while she’d gone looking for Aiden herself. She was on her own for a number of minutes. What if…? I opened the car door and let Aiden inside. DCI Stevenson had admitted that the kidnapper didn’t have to be a man, though it was most likely that it was a man. I put the key into the ignition. Aiden would do something if he was face-to-face with his attacker. Wouldn’t he? He’d recognise them.

So why was I suspecting everyone? Why was I suddenly believing that Amy, a petite and shy woman, could have stolen my son away and kept him locked up? Because I was beginning to believe that people were capable of anything. People are multi-layered. Anyone can have a private side that verges on the dark and dangerous. Your doctor could be a sadist. Your primary school teacher could be a paedophile. Your beauty therapist could be a murderer. It could be anything.

I watched Aiden put on his seatbelt and wondered if he remembered anything from his time as a captive. He was frightened of Rough Valley Forest, that much I knew, and I understood. But would he remember his kidnapper, and how would he act if he came face-to-face with them?

As I pulled quickly out of the parking space, a black Renault Clio had to brake suddenly to avoid my car. I fumbled with the gear stick and waved sheepishly as the driver of the Clio honked his horn at me. My fingers trembled as I guided the car out of the space and onto the main street.

“Shall we listen to the radio?” I said, too brightly.

Aiden didn’t respond. He gazed straight ahead in that same uninterested way. I clicked on the radio and tried to stop myself wondering what was in his mind. All the knowledge was there but he refused to let it out. That was when I realised I was angry with him. I couldn’t help it. I was angry with Aiden for not communicating with me. And I was suspicious. I was suspicious of everything.

“Why don’t you talk?” I said, banging the steering wheel. “Why won’t you tell me?”

I ran a red light. If Jake had been there he would have forced me to pull over and driven the rest of the way home. He would have hated to see me in this state. But he wasn’t there. It was only Aiden, who didn’t seem perturbed by my unhinged state in the least. All he did was stare out through the windscreen—staring and thinking and not reacting to anything around him. Maybe Jake was right. Maybe he was a vegetable.

No, I wouldn’t believe it. A vegetable doesn’t paint. A vegetable doesn’t acknowledge my words. There was the time he nodded at me, and the time where I thought I heard him singing—unless it had been a figment of my imagination…

As the streets faded one into another I took deep breaths and eased my foot off the accelerator. The paper bag from the pharmacy sat on Aiden’s lap. My heart was pounding all the way home. When I checked the rearview mirror, the black transit van was back. I pulled in to my drive and swore. Even more reporters were clustered all around the house.

The transit van stopped a little way down the street. I was right—they’d been following me around as I went about my day-to-day chores, hanging around in a transit van like the mob following a target.

The front door burst open and Denise stepped out. She rushed over to the door and opened Aiden’s side, as a swarm of people with cameras and microphones gathered around us.