What Lies Between Us(58)

I pull my phone from my pocket and google the drug’s name, Moxydogrel. It’s a medication that has been withdrawn from use. I read a Wikipedia entry:

Moxydogrel was a sedative licenced in 1993 and available by prescription only until 1996. Developed primarily for long-term usage by adults with behavioural issues and/or crippling anxiety, its purpose was to keep patients sedated and in a more manageable, pacified and less aggressive state. If used on an ongoing basis, it could lead to long periods of dormancy, memory loss and compliance.

I let out a breath I’m unaware I am holding and look at the box from all angles. ‘She was using it on me,’ I say out loud in disbelief. Mum must have been stealing prescription pads from work, making them out in different people’s names and rotating her way between chemists to have them filled. It explains why antidepressants weren’t in my medical records – I hadn’t been prescribed them. This Moxydogrel is the reason why so much of the period after Dylan’s birth is hazy. She was drugging me.

I return to my phone and carry on reading the web page, when the words ‘side effects’ catch my attention.

Moxydogrel was withdrawn from the worldwide market in November 1996 when it was discovered that long-term usage can bring about early menopause, and infertility in both sexes. It is unknown how many victims of the drug there have been, although a number of out-of-court cases have been settled.

‘Infertility. Early menopause.’

I repeat those words over and over again, just to be sure that the lateness of the hour and the stress of the last few days aren’t combining to mess with my thinking. I don’t want to believe it, so I park it to process later.

I’m about to close the suitcase when I notice one box is different to the others. It’s called Clozterpan. Again, I rely on websites to explain that it’s a medication used to induce the termination of a foetus. ‘It will help the user to miscarry at home.’ Mum must have given it to me the first time I fell pregnant. Nature didn’t make me lose the baby; she did.

I have no frame of reference to know what to do next, so I sit on the floor, dumbstruck. Not only did Mum kill my first baby, but she gave my second away, then made me infertile. I have no control over the tears streaming down my face.

Now the dark cloud above me swallows me whole. I don’t want to be down here any more. I don’t like the truth because it hurts too much. I’m ready to crawl on my hands and knees up two flights of stairs, lock myself in my bedroom and never come out again.

Yet I find strength from somewhere to continue. I break open the padlock to another suitcase, and inside are adult clothes and brown envelopes containing paperwork. This is what I have been searching for – files and documentation relating to Dylan. There’s also another copy of his birth certificate.

I read the summary page of a social worker’s reports on Dylan and Mum.

Following several meetings at her home, Margaret has made it clear that her son was unplanned and unwanted. She has steadfastly refused the opportunity to be reunited with him and explained that she is married but that the child was born as the result of an extramarital affair. Her husband worked away and she did not want him to know about the baby. Despite our best efforts, she has remained determined not to see the child and would not reconsider keeping him.

By the date of the reports, these meetings and discussions were all taking place just metres away from me while I was drugged and unconscious upstairs.

There are two suitcases left and I don’t want to open them. It comes as a relief to discover they’re filled with more old clothes. Musty-smelling shirts, jeans, T-shirts, underwear, socks, coats and shoes are crammed inside, balled up as if they’ve been put there in a hurry. I rummage through them and find more than a dozen white envelopes in my handwriting. They are stamped and addressed to my dad but there are no postmarks. Every letter I wrote and that Mum told me she posted to him never made it further than the basement.

I’m about to close the fifth and final case when it dawns on me that they only contain men’s clothing. And then a coat catches my eye. It’s a denim jean jacket that Dad often wore. I remember the patch on the elbow where he caught it on a barbed-wire fence and Mum repaired it with a needle and thread. Now I can picture him wearing some of the other items, like his Adidas trainers and work ties. Finally, in a coat pocket, I find his passport and his wallet. Inside it is ￡65 in notes that are no longer legal tender, his expired credit cards and driver’s licence. It doesn’t make sense. Why would he have left all of this behind when he disappeared? Even his golf clubs? You don’t leave one life for the next without taking something with you.

Then it hits me.

Unless Dad never left us.





CHAPTER 49





NINA


TWO YEARS EARLIER


Cold shivers race across the surface of my skin and I place my hands flat on the floor to stop myself from toppling over. I take deep breaths but my vision is beginning to blur and the colours around me are changing into shades of black and red. I tighten my fists and concentrate hard so as not to black out.

Eventually, I rise to my feet and, still shaking, I use the handrail to pull myself up the stairs until I reach the kitchen. The digital clock on the oven reads 3.39 a.m. and it will be light outside before I know it. I continue using my phone’s torch as I unlock the back door and step outside. It’s silent out here and there’s only the barest sliver of a moon to help illuminate the path that will lead me to the flower bed at the end of the garden.