Seven Days(27)

‘Hello,’ Max said. ‘Is this food?’

The man looked at him, a half-smile on his face.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is.’

‘I’m hungry,’ Max said. Of course he was. He’d had no breakfast. He bent over and pointed to the bowl. ‘Is that for me?’

Again, the man smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s for you.’

Maggie watched, tensed on the edge of the bed. This was new. Part of her wanted to snatch Max up, keep him away from any contact with the man.

Part of her wanted it to carry on. He would, she was sure, fall in love with Max given the chance. He was, after all, his father, and there had to be some paternal instinct in there, somewhere. Moreover, there was the change in the man she’d noticed recently, the change that had led her to ask him to let them go.

The change that had led him to smile – half-smile – at Max.

And if he could do that, then … then …

She held the thought. She couldn’t bear the hope.

Max gripped a corner of the foil and pulled it up.

‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘Sausages.’ He pulled the rest of the foil off and pointed at some broccoli. He looked at the man sternly. ‘I don’t like that though.’

‘I don’t suppose you do,’ the man said, a playfulness in his voice that Maggie had never heard before. ‘But then whoever heard of a little boy who liked vegetables?’

Max pulled the foil off entirely. He crunched it into a ball, listening to the sound it made. He dropped it on the floor, then picked it up and threw it across the room.

He laughed, and ran after it.

The man held out his hand to Max. ‘Can I have that, please?’

Max frowned. ‘I want it.’

The man’s smile faded.

‘Give it to me,’ he said.

Maggie leaned forward. ‘Give it to him, Max,’ she said.

‘But I like it,’ Max said. ‘I want to play with it.’ He looked up at the man. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please can I have it?’

There was a long pause, and then the man slowly nodded.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘You can keep it.’ He looked at Maggie. ‘I’ll be back later.’ He pointed at the bath. ‘With the hose.’





3


Bath day.

Once every three weeks they had a bath. Normally she looked forward to it; it was a rare treat. But today her mind had been on other things.

The bath in the corner had no water source. There was none in the room. All they had were the jugs that the man brought, which they used for drinking and washing and brushing their teeth.

On bath day, he fed in a hose. There was a nozzle on the end; he passed it to Maggie to fill up the bath and when she was done, he took it away. He stood by the door the whole time, unable to close it behind himself because of the hose blocking it.

The bath was an old rain barrel that the man had converted. It wasn’t long enough to lie down in, so she and Max had to stand or kneel. Still, it was a luxury, because when he left, the bath was full of hot, clean water and she and Max could sit in it and play and splash and close their eyes and pretend they were in a warm sea somewhere far, far away.

When the water was cold, she would get out and dry Max and hold him until he fell asleep, which wasn’t long because he was exhausted by the novelty and excitement.

Then she would take out the plug and watch the water drain away, knowing that it would be another three weeks until they had another bath day to look forward to.

Because, even though there was no tap, there was a drain. There had to be. Short of removing the water in buckets, there was no other way of getting it out.

The water disappeared down a plug hole and into a pipe that came out of the base of the bath and crossed the two or three feet to the concrete wall. Maggie had tried to figure out where it went – maybe to a drain or a pump or on to some patch of earth floor on the other side of the wall. She had also tried to pull it out, hoping to make a hole in the wall that she could enlarge. But it was stuck fast.

It went somewhere, though, and watching the water drain away tortured her. She always wished that she and Max – or Seb or Leo – could somehow dissolve into the water and escape through the drain.

She heard the scraping sound and waited for the door to open. The man stood there, a hose in his hand. He passed it to her and she squeezed the trigger. Warm water sprayed on to the base of the bath. Max sat on the mattress, playing with the tinfoil ball. The man stared at him, with a look Maggie had not seen before. There was interest, but it was the dispassionate interest of a scientist. Her stomach felt loose and her thighs were weak. She wanted to throw the hose at the man and scream for him to get out, but she didn’t. She held the hose over the bath and let it run.

When the bath was full, the man took the hose from her. He looked at the water.

‘Have fun,’ he said.





4


When the man was gone, Maggie stripped naked and climbed into the bath. The base of the bath was higher than the floor of the room. It had to be – the pipes for the drain needed some space under the plug hole – and it meant she had to bend extra low to pick up Max.

He was standing on the floor, in his underpants and a T-shirt, looking up at her. He gripped the bottom of the T-shirt and pulled it up, exposing the pale, smooth skin of his stomach. His belly button protruded about half an inch; she wondered whether it was because of the way she had cut the umbilical cord when he was born, or whether it would have been like that anyway.