The Stolen Child Read online

  THE STOLEN CHILD

  Sanjida Kay is a writer and broadcaster. She lives in Bristol with her daughter and husband. Bone by Bone was her first thriller.

  To Jasmine

  Come away, O human child!

  To the waters and the wild

  With a faery, hand in hand,

  For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

  ‘The Stolen Child’, W. B. Yeats

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  London

  May

  Seven Years Later

  August, Saturday

  September, Monday

  Tuesday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Two Weeks Later

  Thursday

  Friday

  Saturday

  October, Friday

  Saturday: The Day After

  Sunday: Two Days After

  Monday: Three Days After

  Tuesday: Four Days After

  Wednesday: Five Days After

  Five Months Later

  March

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Sanjida Kay

  Copyright

  LONDON

  MAY

  She’s coming! She’s going to be early! I half knew it, felt it in my bones. Thank goodness Ollie believed me and helped me get the nursery ready. We have all the essentials: a cot, a buggy, a pile of nappies, Sudocrem, an adorable rabbit with Liberty-print ears. Babygros. A Moses basket. Blankets. Bottles. A mobile that sings and cascades coloured lights across the ceiling.

  ‘Zoe! The taxi’s here!’ Ollie shouts.

  He’s standing looking out of the window of our first-floor flat. He has his coat on already and is holding mine for me.

  As he carefully slides my jacket over my outstretched arms, I say, ‘I haven’t finished the mural!’

  The mural is my way of trying to keep calm during the pregnancy and I wanted it to be finished and perfect before she arrived. It’s on the nursery wall and it’s of Ilkley Moor, where I grew up: the Cow and Calf rocks at sunrise, a friendly giant called Rombald striding through the purple heather. Ollie kisses my cheek.

  ‘It looks wonderful. She’ll love it just as it is. And you’ll have time to finish it when she’s here.’

  We already know we’re having a girl.

  ‘I won’t!’ I say, my voice rising in pitch. ‘Babies never sleep. They’re up all night. I’ll be too tired to paint!’

  ‘Newborns sleep all the time. Especially bottle-fed ones,’ says Ollie, steering me towards the door, his arm around my waist.

  He’s the youngest child in his family and I have no siblings, so what do we know? But Ollie has read the most enormous stack of books about babies so maybe he’s right. I tried, but it made me even more stressed. What if she gets colic, roseola? Has a febrile seizure?

  ‘The bag!’

  ‘I’ve got it,’ he says. He packed it weeks ago, just in case.

  ‘What about—?’

  ‘I’ve put your handbag in and I’ve got money and my phone. I’ll grab the car seat. We don’t need anything else.’

  He smiles gently at me. The seat is already by the door. Ollie said we should bring it just in case we can take our baby home straight away. Ollie researched the best one to buy online. He joined forums on Mumsnet and BabyCentre and took out a subscription to Which?. I found one in a charity shop, but he was horrified and made me take it back. Apparently it’s not safe to buy second-hand baby car seats.

  ‘I can manage,’ he says, carrying everything. ‘Careful on the stairs.’

  He’s noticed the tears blurring my vision. In the car he holds my hand. He tells the driver we need to get to hospital as fast as possible. The man looks at me in the rear-view mirror and then at the baby seat. He looks puzzled for a moment, and then he smiles.

  ‘Hold on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen,’ he says. He’s wearing a turban.

  We drive past a kebab shop, a Polish grocer, a newsagent with red peppers and oranges stacked in Tupperware bowls outside, and then he veers abruptly down a side street, hurling us over the speed bumps. Red-brick blocks of flats merge into white and brown Victorian semis with palm trees and mock orange trees in the gardens and we shoot onto Chatsworth Road opposite a storefront full of succulents and Kilner jars and a Spanish deli with jamon in the window. Just before the traffic lights, past a pizza restaurant that looks like an upmarket pub, the driver takes a sharp right. The baby seat tilts forwards. I glance in the window of a toy shop with a pink wooden castle, all fairy-tale turrets and gold flags, on display.

  I’ve lost my bearings.

  ‘Almost there,’ says Ollie, squeezing my arm.

  The young woman at the hospital says, ‘It’s going to be an emergency Caesarean.’ She leans forward. ‘The baby is at risk if we don’t operate.’

  ‘She’s premature,’ I say. ‘Four weeks. It’s too early—’

  ‘They’ll take good care of her. She’ll be put straight into an incubator.’ She takes my hand in both of hers. I try and recall her name. Sarah. That’s it. I should have remembered.

  She says softly, ‘We did warn you this was likely to happen, Zoe.’

  I nod and gulp back hot tears. Ollie passes me a tissue. I blow my nose. I don’t want my baby to be cut out. Surgically removed as if she were a tumour. Put into a box. I want to hold her in my arms, still slick with blood and mucus.

  ‘We’re prepared,’ he says, and takes my hand, lacing his fingers through mine.

  The wait is interminable. The smell of boiled eggs and slightly burnt mince drifts down the corridor from the cafeteria. It makes me feel even more nauseous. I grip Ollie’s hand so hard my nails cut his palm. He winces and gently removes it from my grasp. He puts his arm round me instead.

  ‘It’s going to be okay,’ he says, whispering into my hair.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and push away the pain of those years of longing and miscarriages; forget the blood, ‘Scissor Sisters’ playing on the radio as the surgeon bends over me, tears running into my ears. That’s all in the past. It’s finally happening. This is what we’ve always wanted. We’ve been together for eight years, since I was nineteen and Ollie was twenty, and now we’re going to have a baby at last. We’re going to be a family.

  I can’t stop myself. ‘What if. . .’ I say.

  We’ve been over this endlessly, with each other, with officials and doctors. We’ve been told all the risks. It’s been brutally spelled out to us. She’s so premature she might die. She could be brain damaged. They told us to wait before we gave her a name. They said if we named her, it would make it harder. But we ignored them. We’re going to call her Evelyn Catherine Morley. Catherine after my mother; Evie for short.

  I remove Ollie’s arm so I can look at him properly. He has blue eyes and dirty-blonde hair that flops over his forehead. Mine would be the same colour but I’ve been dying it since I was at university. ‘Natural blonde’ it says on the packet. I’ve just done my roots because I know, once Evie is here, I won’t have time. Ollie’s expression is kind. He’s listened to me and reassured me patiently for months.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he says again. ‘It will be all right.’

  How does he know? It was far from all right in the past.

  The room we’re in is painted white with grey linoleum and terrible pastel-coloured paintings on the wall. I imagine telling my daughter about those paintings one day, when she’s old enough to understand how we waited for her to be born with such love and hope: Stippled, like the French Impressionists, I’ll say, but fake, modern, vacant. Do you know what I mean? When you’re waiting fo
r someone as important as your baby to be born, you want everything to mean something. And she’ll open her eyes wide and say, Did you know, Mummy, some artists even use scribbling as a technique?

  ‘I love you,’ Ollie says.

  ‘I love you too.’

  ‘It’s going to be okay.’ He kisses me on the forehead. ‘We’re going to take our daughter home very soon.’

  I can’t believe how tiny she is. Her entire body could fit in one of Ollie’s hands. We press our faces against the incubator.

  Ollie has tears in his eyes. ‘Evie Cathy Morley,’ he says. ‘Our daughter.’ He hugs me tightly. ‘We did it,’ he whispers.

  We aren’t allowed to touch her yet. She’s encircled by tubes. There are flashing lights and beeping monitors next to her trolley. She’s wearing a cream cap to keep her head warm. It would fit a doll. She’s turned away from us, so I can’t see her face. Her body is emaciated, arms and legs like sticks, ribs winging out with each strenuous breath. She’s covered in downy hair. I walk round to the other side so I can look at her properly. I feel a hot flare in my chest: fear or love. I can’t tell.

  I bend down so I’m level with her and peer in. It’s so hot in here, I can barely breathe. A shock of black hair juts out from beneath her hat. There’s something odd about her features. Something is not quite right. I struggle to inhale. Something is wrong. Seriously wrong. Evie opens her eyes for the first time since we saw her. They’re large and unfocused, enormous in her minute face. They’re too far apart and a colour I can barely describe. But they’re definitely not blue. Her skin is pale brown. She doesn’t look like our child. She doesn’t look like a baby at all. Not a human one. Sarah puts her hand on my shoulder. I’m hyperventilating.

  ‘She may have Foetal Alcohol Syndrome,’ she tells me. Sarah has been our case worker throughout the pregnancy. ‘It’s normal in a situation like this. We’ll run tests later, when she’s stable. Right now,’ she says, ‘Evie is being treated for drug addiction.’

  Ollie is openly weeping. We knew it was likely, but we still hoped she’d be okay. He reaches for me, tries to pull me closer.

  ‘Is she going to make it?’ he asks.

  Sarah hesitates. ‘We don’t know yet. But the team here will do everything they can to save her. To cure her. It’s why we chose this hospital,’ she reminds us. ‘They specialize in treating the babies of drug addicts.’

  I stand up abruptly. I need some air. I have to get out of here. I’m shaking with rage.

  I could kill Evie’s mother.

  SEVEN YEARS LATER

  ILKLEY

  AUGUST, SATURDAY

  Ben’s helping and I can feel my stress levels rise. He’s managed to smear icing from his wrists to his elbows and his chocolate grin is as wide as the Joker’s. I glance at the kitchen clock. In forty-two minutes the first guests will arrive. We’re still icing Ben’s birthday cake. I’m trying to get the buttercream to stick to the sponge and not my knife without ripping off the surface; Ben is sucking the beater. I haven’t changed out of my jeans that sag at the knees and Dad’s old shirt yet and there are still balloons to be blown up, party bags to be filled, cocktail sausages and cheese-and-pineapple sticks to be skewered. I sprinkle sugar stars randomly over the top of the cake and plonk two candles in the middle. Ben looks happy.

  It’s a far cry from Evie’s second birthday. By then she was already talking in full sentences, demanding a princess cake. Ollie ordered one from Bettys. It cost a fortune and it was beautiful – pale pink icing fell like folds of fabric, a tiny sugar princess rising from the midst of her Victoria sponge ballgown. The cake was so sweet it set your teeth on edge. I look up, hoping to see Evie. The kitchen is at one end of the house. When we moved in, Ollie had the partition wall knocked down and now the whole downstairs space is open. Light floods through from Rombald’s Moor behind us and the hills on the far side of the valley. I’d hoped she’d help – enjoying her role as a big sister; cutting the crusts off cheese sandwiches and wrapping up the yo-yo and the bubbles for pass-the-parcel – but she’s nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Evie! Evie?’ I shout.

  She loves making cakes. And it’s not like her to miss out on the chance of licking the bowl. There’s no sign of her and I feel uneasy. She’s been behaving oddly round Ben for the past few months now.

  Bella, who’s finished lapping icing sugar off the chair Ben is standing on, clicks across the polished wooden floor towards the garden. We always had English springer spaniels when I was growing up; after my mum died, I bought a liver and white puppy to remind me of her.

  I rinse out the dishcloth and wipe Ben with it. It’s not hygienic, but I’m running out of time.

  ‘Chocolate,’ he says happily, pointing to his mouth.

  I’ve invited too many toddlers. What is it that BabyCentre says? You should have the same number of guests as the age of the child? It seemed a bit unfair for Ben to have only two kids at his party and I couldn’t just invite some of his friends and not others. In the end, I asked everyone at his nursery – and nearly all of them are coming. Is there any point in changing Ben? I roll his sleeves down and smooth his blond hair flat. The cowlick curl at the front bounces up. I give him a cuddle and kiss his fat cheek and he wriggles away from me, desperate to run after Bella. Unlike Evie, who was always so still as a small child. Almost unnaturally so.

  I look at the clock again. Where the hell is Ollie? He said he had to go back to work. On a Saturday. On the day of Ben’s party. I’d protested as I was wrestling with the Sellotape and flowery wrapping paper that was all I could find in the house at 10.30 last night. He’d made a face and said it was unavoidable.

  ‘I’ll go early, catch the first train. I’ll be back, don’t worry,’ Ollie had said.

  He didn’t say whether he’d be back in time to help or if he was planning to arrive as the party was going to start. He’d left before I’d stirred, shutting the front door too hard, waking Ben and sending Bella into a flurry of barks. I clear up the chocolate icing and streaks of butter from the work surface. The entire kitchen is stainless steel – the tops, dishwasher, fridge. Ollie insisted and it looked brilliant until the kids got their hands on it. Now it’s covered in smeary fingerprints. I chuck the bowl and beater in the dishwasher and I’m just making a start on chopping the cheese into cubes, when the doorbell rings. I swear and wipe my hands on my trousers. In my head, I’d imagined myself welcoming the first parents and their children with Ben clinging to one leg, wearing his tractor top, Evie in that polka-dot dress I love, and I would look chic, with glossy hair, in kitten heels, skinny jeans and my new Breton top. Some chance.

  Before I can reach the hall, Andy shouts, ‘It’s only us,’ and half falls in with his two children, Sophie, who is Evie’s best friend, and eight-month-old baby Ellen.

  ‘So lovely to see you,’ I say, embracing Gill, his wife.

  ‘We thought you might need some help,’ she says. ‘Sophie. Go and find Evie.’

  Gill unpacks her bag. She’s brought brownies and flapjacks, all home-made and chopped up into bite-sized squares, a bumper pack of Hula Hoops and a huge, almond-studded fruit cake from Bettys.

  ‘For the grown-ups,’ she adds.

  I feel as if I’ve known Gill and Andy forever. We met at Leeds University. Andy studied History of Art with me. I used to be Gill’s best friend but I hardly ever see her these days. She’s a lawyer.

  ‘I don’t know how you found the time,’ I say, taking a flapjack. Gill works even longer hours than Ollie.

  ‘Ollie’s working?’ she says, looking around for my husband.

  I make a face. He hasn’t replied to my texts asking him when he’ll be here.

  ‘I’ll do this while you change,’ she adds, eyeing my outfit, and getting mugs, a cafetière and coffee out of the cupboard. ‘Andy, love, put the party playlist on.’

  I can’t find my stripey top so I end up wearing my favourite shirt that’s worn a bit thin in patches, and ballet pumps. I had my hai
r cut short after Ben was born and now it’s grown into a ragged bob. It’s still blonde but my beige roots are showing through. It’s definitely not glossy. I give my hair a quick brush and tuck it behind my ears. Gill’s hair is immaculate: recently highlighted, smooth and as shiny as oiled teak.

  By the time I come back downstairs, the first families have already arrived. Andy is surrounded by toddlers and is blowing up balloons. Songs from The Jungle Book are playing, Gill has laid the rest of the party food out on paper plates on one of the worktops in the kitchen. Ben is shrieking with delight and wiggling to ‘I Wanna Be Like You’. Ollie hasn’t arrived and there’s still no sign of Evie but I assume she’s in her bedroom with Sophie.

  ‘Let’s play musical statues!’ I say, cranking up the volume so the toddlers will start dancing. I begin twirling and stamping my feet until they join in.

  I pass the remote to Andy and take the laundry basket – now full to the brim with presents for Ben – upstairs so they’ll be out of the way of little people who might be tempted to start opening them. I catch sight of Sophie, curled up in an armchair, watching something on the iPad.

  ‘Sophie? Where’s Evie?’

  She shrugs and doesn’t look at me. ‘She didn’t want to play with me.’

  ‘Evie?’ I call.

  I can’t hear anything. When was the last time I saw her? I leave the presents on the landing and climb the stairs to her room, but she’s not there. I check my studio, the bathroom and our bedroom, but there’s no sign of her.

  ‘Evie!’ I shout more loudly, in case she’s hiding somewhere and can’t hear me above the sound of ‘Colonel Hathi’s March’.

  I push open the door to Ben’s room. I give a little scream, floored by the sight that greets me. Evie is hard to spot at first. She’s at the far end of the room, balancing on the end of Ben’s bed. She looks guilty for a second and then defiant.

  ‘Evie! What have you done?’

  I can’t quite make out what it is at first. The room is full of streamers criss-crossing the space from Ben’s bed to the wall and back again – like those crazy webs made by spiders given drugs. There are things hanging from them. I duck under one. She’s unwound balls of wool in all different colours and tied the ends to the furniture. She’s attached postcards to the skeins with yards of Sellotape and, dangling from the bottom of the cards, are socks. She’s stapled one of Ben’s socks to every card! A jumble of thoughts goes through my mind all at the same time: it’s so bright and dense I feel as if it’ll bring on a migraine; it’s going to take a hell of a long time to clear up; Ben’s socks are ruined. A less logical part of me is applauding the unbridled creativity of the sock-stapling. I also feel like shaking her. Hard.