Seven Days(28)

He lifted his hands, stretching the cotton over his face. He wriggled his shoulders, bending at the waist and twisting his arms in a futile attempt to take the T-shirt off. She laughed; watching him try to undress but succeed only in wrapping himself even tighter in his clothes was one of the few sources of amusement she had.

‘Mummy,’ he said, his voice muffled. ‘Can you help me?’

‘Of course,’ Maggie said. She straightened out the T-shirt – it was getting tight, he was growing so quickly – and pulled it off in one smooth movement.

He smiled up at her, his face red with the effort, then stepped out of his underpants and held up his arms to be lifted into the water.

As she picked him up she held him against her body. She loved the feeling of his skin against hers; it had been the same with Seb and Leo and it brought back memories of her other sons, of Max’s brothers.

It reminded her she had lost them.

And it reminded her she was going to lose Max.

She started to cry. She blinked away the tears. Max didn’t need to see her crying. She sank down and dipped her head under the surface, washing her face clean, then sprang out, water dripping from her face, and grinned at him.

‘Surprise! It’s the bath monster!’

He giggled, and started to splash water at her. ‘No! I’m the bath monster!’

‘You are,’ Maggie replied. ‘You’re my little bath monster.’

He splashed her again and she shrieked in mock terror. ‘Oh! Stop! Please, Bath Monster, please!’

He erupted in laughter and splashed harder. She remembered doing the same thing with her parents; for a child of Max’s age there was something irresistible about splashing or tickling or pushing your parents over. It was a kind of subversion of the natural order, and she remembered finding it delicious.

Max clearly did, too, and she let him throw and kick and push as much water at her as he wanted.

When he had had enough and the water was getting cold, she pulled the plug and climbed out of the bath. She reached for Max.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I want to stay in.’

‘OK.’ She picked up the towel – the man left one by the door, a thinning, faded-pink scrap – and dried herself. ‘Let me know when you’re ready.’

She dressed, running her hands over the dark hairs on her thighs and lower legs. It had been a few months since the man brought her a safety razor and she had shaved her legs. She never asked for one, but from time to time he left one, along with a bar of soap, on the food tray.

The first time she had ignored it – God, it seemed so long ago, so much of her life had been spent between these four walls – but the next bath day it was there again.

The man gestured at it as he left the room, then caught her eye. His face was expressionless, but it looked like he was struggling to keep it that way. She got the impression that underneath it was a subdued rage.

He pointed at the light bulb.

Use the razor, he said. In fact, I’ll watch. I shouldn’t have left it with you. Never know what you might do. I wasn’t thinking.

And since then, every few bath days, he brought a razor and sat and watched as she spread soap on her legs and shaved them. It would probably be time again quite soon, judging by the hairs that had grown.

She became aware that the room was totally quiet.

She looked up, and her heart stopped.

There was no noise coming from the bath – no splashes, no dripping, no giggles.

No little boy peering over the side.

‘Max!’ she called. ‘Max!’

He was probably fine. The bath was deep, so he could easily be hidden, but it was the lack of noise that worried her, that made her picture his body, face down in the water.

It was funny: losing your child in a supermarket or park or outside school was every parent’s worst nightmare. The moment, even if it only lasted for a split-second, when you couldn’t see them, was heart-stopping. Even she, trapped in a place where there was nowhere he could have gone, had that feeling. It was something primal, instinctive.

And she was panicking now.

Then there was a noise. A hollow thump, like a bass drum. There was a pause, and then it came again. Maggie breathed out, her lips pursed. He was there. Safe and making noise. She walked over to the bath. Max was sitting on the floor, banging his heel against the wood. The noise reverberated around the room, amplified by the space between the floor and the base of the bath.

Maggie smiled. ‘Well, well,’ she said. ‘Quite the musician, aren’t you?’

‘Bang!’ Max thumped the wood. ‘Bang!’

Maggie leaned over and tapped out the knock that everyone learned – dum dum duh-dum dum – dum, dum – then ruffled his hair.

‘Try that.’

Max banged a random series. Maggie did the knock again. He frowned in concentration, then tried to copy her. It wasn’t much better, but she clapped her hands together.

‘Well done! I think you might be a pop star when you grow up.’

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘Someone who sings songs.’

‘I like singing.’

‘Me too. And you never know. Maybe you’ll be famous.’

He would be, if he ever got out of here, but not as a pop star. As the boy who had been born in a basement. The problem was he wouldn’t get out. In four days he’d be three, and the man would come for him.