Claiming Noah (11 page)

‘It's going great. Wonderful. Most joyous experience of my life. Now, if you'll excuse me, Sebastian and I have to be somewhere.'

•  •  •

Catriona found herself driving forty minutes north to a secluded lookout near Newport beach. Hers was the only car parked by the fenced-off lookout at the edge of a sheer cliff. She fed Sebastian his bottle in the back of the car while he was strapped into his seat. The milk was cold because she had nowhere to heat it up, but Sebastian didn't seem to mind.

After he finished his bottle Catriona closed the car door, leaving him inside, and walked to the edge of the lookout. She looked down to the ocean; the drop must have been at least a hundred metres. She imagined her body falling through the air, maybe turning in a full rotation or two, before she crashed on to the boulders in the ocean at the base of the cliff. The fence was only waist-height, it would be so easy. And it would all be over in a matter of seconds. She shivered despite the sun warming her arms through the sleeves of her jumper and glanced back at Sebastian, still nestled in his car seat. He would be so much better off without her. They all would. James would be able to take care of Sebastian by himself. Maybe he'd even remarry, and Catriona was sure that woman, whoever she was, would be a much better mother to Sebastian than she could ever be. She was such a burden on them all. James, her parents, her friends. None of them deserved the misery she imposed on them.

She clenched the wooden fence with both hands and leaned forward. The waves crashed in a spectacular fashion against each other and the cliff, like the crescendo of an orchestra at the end of a performance. She closed her eyes and inhaled the briny smell of the ocean. Without opening her eyes she stepped up on to the bottom rung of the fence and swung one leg over the top of the fence, followed by the other. She stayed in that position for a minute, sitting on the fence with her eyes closed and her hands tightly gripping the wood beneath her before she shifted her weight and let herself drop to the ground on the ocean-side of the fence. Her feet grappled for a second to find a firm footing in the loose gravel. Catriona opened her eyes and surveyed the ocean from her new vantage point. Now there was nothing standing between her and a way out. All she had to do was let go of the fence and take two steps forward. Then it would all be over.

The sound of Sebastian's sharp, pained cry carried over the noise of the waves crashing below her. Catriona looked back at the car. Sebastian's face had turned red and his fists were flailing about. She watched him for a minute, trying to decide what to do. Finally she sighed, cast one last longing glance at the ocean, and climbed back over the fence.

Halfway to the car, she heard a voice speaking to her as clearly as if there was someone standing next to her. She looked around for the source of the voice, but she and Sebastian were alone at the lookout. As the voice spoke to Catriona, explaining what had to be done, she felt a sense of calm settle over her. After eleven weeks of uncertainty, she now knew the right thing to do.

•  •  •

‘Where have you been?' James asked as Catriona walked in the front door later that evening, carrying Sebastian in his baby capsule. ‘I've been worried about you. Why haven't you answered my calls?'

Catriona reached into the capsule and moved the blanket away from Sebastian's face. He had fallen asleep in the car after they left the lookout. She had meandered through back streets, going nowhere in particular, until he woke up and she reluctantly turned the car towards home. She had no idea what time it was.

‘We went for a drive,' she said to James.

‘Well, it's time for his bath. Do you want me to do it?'

‘No, I'll do it.'

‘We'll do it together.'

‘I'm perfectly capable of giving our son a bath. Why don't you make dinner?'

‘All right. What do you want?'

‘You haven't made that lasagne of yours for a while,' she said. ‘Why don't we have that?'

‘It takes ages to make.'

‘I know. But we're not in any hurry, are we? I don't mind if we don't eat for a while.'

After James disappeared into the kitchen, Catriona unstrapped Sebastian from his capsule and carried him up the stairs to the bathroom. They washed Sebastian in a plastic cradle that sat in the bath and held him in a reclined position with his head above the water. James had done the research and told Catriona it was the safest way to bathe a baby who couldn't yet hold up its head.

Catriona undressed Sebastian, took off his nappy, and laid him on the mat while she filled the bath. She smiled at him, tickling a spot on his neck that always made him squirm, and laughed as he flailed his legs in response. She tested the water temperature, making sure it wasn't too hot, and turned off the taps when the water level reached halfway up the bath cradle.

Normally at this point she would have laid out Sebastian's jumpsuit and a clean nappy on the bathroom floor, to dress him straight after his bath so he wouldn't get cold. But she wouldn't need to do that tonight.

She placed Sebastian in the bath, keeping his head and neck supported until he was lying in the cradle. Sebastian loved having a bath and would usually kick his legs in the water, sending splashes all over Catriona and covering the bathroom floor in a slick of water. But tonight he lay still, not taking his eyes from his mother. She knew he was waiting for her to do what she needed to do.

It all made sense now: the voices, the messages, the people she had seen that nobody else could. She wasn't going crazy; they had been trying to tell her what she needed to do to protect her family. Sebastian wasn't supposed to be born. She wasn't meant to have children. For a while she thought she had changed her mind, but now she realised that was only an illusion. She knew people thought she was a bad mother, and she knew they were right. Sebastian didn't deserve to have a mother like her. But she knew she could turn it around, that there was one thing she could do to make herself a good mother. It was the best thing for Sebastian, for her, for James. For all of them.

Sebastian agreed with her. She had explained it to him while she was driving home and he had listened patiently. It was obvious to her that he had understood every word. And his smile when she finished her explanation had confirmed that he understood the sacrifice they both had to make.

First she took a cloth, added a pump of soap, and washed every inch of Sebastian's skin, taking particular care to get into the creases of his chubby thighs. With the tip of her finger she gently removed the mucus that had collected in the corner of his eyes, and she rubbed baby shampoo through his hair before rinsing it clean. Then she rinsed out the washcloth in the bath water, wrung it dry and laid it over the rim of the bath. He was clean now. He was ready.

She leaned into the bath and kissed Sebastian's forehead, allowing her lips to linger against his skin as she inhaled his soapy scent.

‘I love you,' she whispered.

Then with one hand she applied pressure to the back of the bath cradle and slowly tipped it backwards so Sebastian slid head-first under the water.

Catriona watched as a stream of bubbles escaped from Sebastian's mouth and travelled to the surface of the water. He kicked his legs once, twice, sending a spray of water into the air and wetting Catriona's jumper, but then his legs relaxed against the bottom of the bath. His gaze remained fixed on Catriona's and she smiled at the image of her son floating peacefully underwater like a hairless seal pup.

The sound of footsteps in the hallway shocked Catriona and broke her out of her trance. She looked towards the closed bathroom door.

‘I don't think I can be bothered making the lasagne after all,' James said as he opened the door and walked into the bathroom. ‘Would you be all right if . . . oh my God, what are you doing?!'

He rushed to the bath, pushed Catriona aside and plucked out Sebastian, who started to cry as soon as his body left the water.

Then, everything went black.

Tuesday, 8 May 2012

E
leanor reached for the muslin wrap that covered Noah's pram.

‘Let me peek at him again,' she said to Diana.

They were on the down escalator in Diana's local shopping centre. Ever since Diana quit her job she had marvelled at how many people were out shopping and lounging in cafes during the week. It seemed that while half of the country spent their days locked in offices, watching the clock, the other half enjoyed a world made up of lattes, movies and shopping. She could understand why the mothers and retirees were in a shopping centre in the middle of the day, but how did everyone else manage to live a leisurely life without having to work?

She laughed at her mother. ‘You just looked at him five minutes ago. He looks exactly the same as he did then.'

Eleanor smiled, leaned down into the pram and ran a finger across Noah's flushed cheek. He stirred, but didn't wake up. After Eleanor straightened up, Diana adjusted the wrap over the pram to keep it dark while Noah slept. He was a light sleeper and the fluorescent lights of the shopping centre would be enough to wake him. Also, Diana didn't like the way strangers looked into the pram and commented on Noah, even if they were paying him a compliment. It made her uncomfortable to have a stranger that close to her baby and she had not yet become accustomed to the familiar way strangers seemed to feel they could address mothers and their babies.

‘He looks just like you,' Eleanor said.

Diana looked sideways at her, one eyebrow raised.

‘I know, I know – but he does.'

Diana thought Noah looked more like Liam than her. Now that Noah was two months old his features were more pronounced than they had been when he was a newborn, and Diana could see in him the same intense brown eyes as Liam's, the same dark whorls of thick hair that always looked as if they had just been brushed and even matching dimples on their right cheeks. It would have been impossible for anyone to suspect that Liam wasn't Noah's biological father. Most of the time she herself forgot they weren't genetically related.

‘He's smiling all the time now,' she told Eleanor as they walked into a cafe on the ground floor of the shopping centre. Diana chose a table near the entrance so there was enough room to park the pram next to her. She peeked under the wrap and saw that Noah was still fast asleep, with his little hands clenched into fists on either side of his face. He often slept in that position, which made him look like a little boxer; it was such a contrast to how placid he was when he was awake.

‘Look how gorgeous he looks in this photo,' Diana said as she opened the locket on her necklace and held it towards her mother. One side held a photo of Liam and the other side held a recent photo of Noah smiling, his pink gums bared. The locket had been a present from her parents for her twenty-first birthday, and since Diana's father died it had never left her neck.

‘And he can lift his head up already,' she continued as she closed the locket and slipped it under the neck of her T-shirt. ‘He likes it when I put him on his stomach.'

Eleanor smiled at her. ‘Listen to my little girl, sounding like a seasoned professional already. You've adapted so well to being a mother, I'm proud of you.'

‘It's the best thing I've ever done,' Diana said. ‘I can't even imagine life without him now.'

‘And does Liam feel the same way?' Eleanor asked.

Diana picked up a menu and studied it so she could avoid looking at her mother while she answered her question. ‘Of course, he loves being a father.'

In truth, she wasn't sure how fatherhood had changed life for Liam. She knew he loved Noah, but his affection for his son seemed to be at a remove. He held him gingerly, as if Noah's bones were as fragile as a bird's, and he let Diana take care of nappy changes and bath time. She didn't mind. Motherhood enthralled her. When she woke up in the morning she couldn't wait to see Noah and learn what new discoveries he had in store for them both that day. He amazed her by the way he constantly came up with new faces and sounds.

‘You watch Noah the way other people watch television,' Liam teased her one night when he walked past Noah's room and caught her staring into his cot while he slept.

‘He's a lot more interesting than television,' Diana replied as she adjusted the blankets around Noah for the fifth time that night.

She felt lucky that Noah was a calm baby, happy to be held by anyone. Diana's friends adored Noah. She was the first of her friends to have a baby and in their excitement they had showered her with every imaginable toy and a wardrobe full of miniature designer clothes that Liam would have happily worn had they been in his size. Her friends wanted to visit at every opportunity and Diana often obliged, but she was happiest when she was alone with Noah. She could spend hours gazing into his cot as he slept, memorising every centimetre of his unblemished skin, but she often willed him to wake up just so she could see him looking back at her and receive the ultimate reward of a toothless smile from her baby, meant just for her.

Diana hadn't remembered ever feeling that her life was empty, but there must have been a missing piece of her heart because now she had Noah in her life she was complete and her purpose in the world was clear: she was always meant to be a mother, and Noah was the legacy she would leave to the world. She was going to make it her sole purpose in life to make sure Noah had the happiest, safest and most fulfilling life any child could hope for. She was a lioness and it was her job to protect her cub from the big bad world.

The only thing Diana wasn't enjoying about motherhood was the leftover weight gain. While she was pregnant with Noah it hadn't bothered her, but now that Noah was two months old she was disappointed that none of the weight had dropped off. She had gone up three dress sizes since she fell pregnant and it didn't sit comfortably with her. Liam hadn't said anything about her weight gain, but she was concerned that he didn't find her attractive any more. They hadn't slept together since Noah was born and she convinced herself it was because Liam no longer found her desirable. He had always complimented her on her appearance in the past, but he hadn't done that in a long time. She was determined to lose her pregnancy weight, but in the meantime she wanted to buy some nicer clothes in her size so she didn't have to keep wearing her unflattering maternity clothes.