Hope to Die

She never saw it coming. Perhaps she should have. But all those years of make-believe and disavowal can layer on a cocoon, erode your watchfulness. So when it did come, she was utterly unprepared. No speech carefully rehearsed, no easy explanation ready to hand. Just sharp words breaking into a fitful day-sleep full of phantoms.

‘Mom, can I talk to you?’

When she opens her eyes, he’s standing there. Her son. Her kind, thoughtful, considerate son. But he looks none of those things now. There’s a frown across his dark-blue eyes.

She struggles upright. There’s an ache in her neck where she’s lain crookedly. This sofa was never designed for sleep. Just as her bed was never designed for hours of waking. Her days are all the wrong way round.

‘What’s the matter?’ she says groggily, checking her watch.

‘This,’ he says, holding out something. ‘As in, what the hell is it?’

It’s a piece of paper. No – not paper. A photograph. There’s a rush of bitterness in her mouth. She knows exactly what it is. Buried, like the memories, all these years, but like those memories, never lost. She wasn’t supposed to keep it; she promised David she’d destroyed them all, and he’d held her as she sobbed and said he knew how hard it was but it was the only way, the only safe way, because he’d looked into the future and seen a day like this, seen the abyss it would open up in their lives.

‘Where did you get it?’ she says. Faux-naif. Buying time.

Noah’s frown has deepened. ‘In that box of yours. In your underwear drawer. As if you didn’t know.’

‘What on earth were you doing in there?’

‘Just answer the question, Mom.’

He’s been talking, lately, about going to law school. On this showing, perhaps he should.

‘It’s a picture of you, sweetheart. In the hospital.’

The one David took the day the hospital moved their baby to the general ward. The first day they were allowed to hold him properly, after all those dreadful weeks when they thought they’d lose him. Their miracle son. Doing so well. Putting on weight, his little cheeks rounding out –

‘It can’t be,’ he says.

‘Why not?’

‘Because of this.’

A second photograph. And this has no secret history. It’s the one they took, After. The one they had no choice but take because they’d promised everyone back home that they would send a photo and there was no excuse any more because he was out of the hospital and home for Christmas – their first Christmas as a family …

That tiny sitting room in Edgbaston she always hated, Noah on her lap, David’s arm around her. And yes, looking at it now, perhaps his grip is a little tight, perhaps the smiles are a little stiff, but no one back then thought that was odd because everyone knew what they’d been through.

Or thought they did.

‘It doesn’t add up,’ he says, stubborn now, pointing again at the first picture. ‘Look.’

She doesn’t need to. She knows what he’s talking about. That bright strawberry mark on her son’s brow. The one they told her would fade over time; the one she never even began to fret about because it was so trivial, so inconsequential, compared to everything else they were dealing with.

She swallows.

He’s watching her face. ‘I googled them – those birthmark things. It can take years for them to fade.’ He holds up the other picture. ‘But here, two months later, max, and it’s gone. There’s nothing there at all. It’s as if it was never there.’

He’s still staring at her, waiting for her to deny it – waiting for some sort of explanation. But nothing comes.

‘It’s not me, is it? The kid in the hospital. It’s Noah, but it’s not me.’

She looks up at him, expecting anger, fury, incomprehension. But his eyes are full of tears.

‘Who am I, Mom?’

* * *

AF: What did you say?

RS: I told him exactly what his father had told me. That we had rescued him. That that was all I’d ever known.

AF: How did he react?

RS: [sighs]

He didn’t believe me. He wanted to go straight to his father and demand the truth. He said he’d been lied to his whole life – he wanted to know where he came from, who his ‘real’ parents were.

AF: That must have hurt.

RS: Yes, it did. But I couldn’t blame him. He was right: we had lied to him. Out of love, and for the best reasons. But right then, all he could see was the lie.

AF: And did he speak to your husband?

RS: No.

AF: You’re sure? Noah never spoke to him about it at all?

RS: David was in the hospice by then. He was on so many pain meds he barely knew me. He probably wouldn’t even have understood what Noah was saying. And I didn’t want him dying with that on his mind. So I made Noah promise not to say anything.

CG: [hesitantly]

And I’m guessing you didn’t want your husband’s last days disturbed by the possibility of prosecution? I mean, you don’t just ‘rescue’ other people’s babies. Even if you didn’t know exactly what David had done, you knew he’d almost certainly committed a crime. You both had.

RS: [quietly]

That was a consideration, yes.

AF: And all this was when, exactly?

RS: Last August. August 2017.