A Ladder to the Sky(82)

The sound of a door opening to his left made him turn around, and he watched as Daniel walked towards him. The boy was wearing his favourite Spider-Man pyjamas and carrying a furry animal of no obvious species. He smelled of the lavender bubble-bath that he’d been splashing around in only an hour before and he was carrying his blue Ventolin inhaler. His asthma had been particularly aggressive lately and he’d had to spend ten minutes sitting quietly when they got home, taking puff after puff, before the congestion in his lungs cleared.

‘Feeling better?’ asked Maurice as the boy jumped up on to the sofa next to him, leaning over to bury his body into his father’s side. Maurice held him close, kissing him on the top of his head, breathing in his scent.

‘If I say sorry to Jupiter tomorrow, will I still have to go to see the doctor?’ asked Daniel, sounding a little less anxious about that particular ordeal than he had when they’d arrived home. There had been tears then and a declaration that he shouldn’t have to be kissed if he didn’t want to be, a sentiment that Maurice thought was actually rather fair.

‘I think so,’ said Maurice. ‘Otherwise this could all end up in a big drama that neither of us needs. I’m sure the doctor will be very nice, anyway.’

‘Will she use a needle?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The doctor. Will she use a needle when she sees me? I don’t like needles.’

Maurice shook his head. ‘She’s not that type of doctor,’ he said. ‘There’ll be nothing like that. All you’ll do is talk to her, that’s all. And then it will be over.’

Daniel frowned, his expression suggesting that he couldn’t believe you could attend a doctor with no pain being involved, just conversation.

‘I didn’t like it when she kissed me,’ said the boy.

‘I never really cared for it much either,’ said Maurice. ‘But you can’t go around committing random acts of violence when people do things you don’t like. You should have just told her not to do it again.’

‘Everyone was laughing at me,’ whispered Daniel.

Maurice hugged him again and looked down at the perfect feet and toes emerging from the ends of his son’s pyjamas. He had always expected to feel unadulterated love for a child, if he ever had one, but things hadn’t quite worked out that way. He was terribly fond of Daniel, certainly, but the boy irritated him as often as he pleased him. He was always there, was the problem. Hanging around. Needing food, toys or new clothes. Saying that it was time to go to school or to be picked up again. It was endless harassment. Maurice did his best to keep an even temper with the boy – he was just a child, after all, and he recognized that – but still, he looked forward to the day that he turned eighteen and was heading off to college. He might get his life back then.

The idea of using a surrogate had come to him on the night that he’d been shortlisted for The Prize, which, to his immense disappointment, he’d lost out on to an old rival, Douglas Sherman. He’d been thinking about what to do with the sudden influx of royalties and made an appointment with a solicitor later that same week in order to get the ball rolling. Six months later, a young Italian girl working as a chambermaid in a Central London hotel was pregnant with his child and there had been no trouble whatsoever during the pregnancy or the birth. Although the legal agreement had been tight, he had naturally worried that the woman might have second thoughts once the baby was born, but no, she had kept to her part of the bargain and disappeared from his life the moment he took Daniel home from the hospital.

It hadn’t been easy at first, of course. He had no experience of babies and had to rely on books for most of his knowledge. But Daniel had not been a difficult infant, sleeping through the night almost from the start and apparently happy to lie in his crib, reaching up for the toys that swung from a mobile above him, as long as Maurice was in his sight-lines, which he always was, since he worked from home in those early years, only spending more time at the Storī office after Daniel started kindergarten. They’d travelled to international literary festivals together, where other writers seemed charmed by the image of this handsome novelist, hugely successful at a young age, going everywhere with a small boy in tow. It helped that Daniel liked books too, as he was content to sit reading while his father offered himself up for endless interviews or took part in public events.

‘Why did you slap her, anyway?’ he asked now, and the boy shrugged.

‘I told you. Because she kissed me.’

‘No, I know that,’ said Maurice. ‘I mean, why was that your reaction? Violence. Striking out. When have you ever seen people behave in that way? No one has ever hit you, have they?’

The boy paused for a few moments, and Maurice wondered whether he was trying to decide whether or not to tell the truth.

‘Sometimes in school,’ he said eventually, letting out a deep sigh as he looked down at the floor.

‘A teacher?’

‘No,’ said Daniel, shaking his head.

‘Who then?’

‘No one.’

‘Come on,’ urged Maurice. ‘Tell me.’

‘Just some of the boys in my class.’

‘Which boys?’

‘I don’t want to say.’

Maurice frowned. He didn’t want to push him, but if Daniel was being bullied, then he wanted to get to the bottom of it.