Claiming Noah (17 page)

By the time James came back downstairs without Sebastian she had poured the wine, drunk a substantial portion of her glass and then topped it up again so James wouldn't notice. It had been three weeks since her last drink – they didn't allow alcohol at the clinic – and she had craved it. Catriona settled back into the couch and tucked her legs up underneath her as the warmth from the wine began to relax her.

As she sat with James in silence, she tried to think of the right way to bring up the topic she wanted to discuss with him. She had role-played several versions of the conversation in her mind already, but none of them conveyed what she actually wanted to say. She took a deep breath. There was no right way, she just had to come right out and say it.

‘James,' she said, ‘I've been thinking about our arrangement: you know, with me at home with Sebastian and you at work. I know when we talked about it when I was pregnant we decided it was better for me to stay home so I could breast-feed . . .'

Catriona took a sip of wine and glanced at James. She couldn't decipher the look on his face, which made her even more nervous. She put her glass down so he couldn't see her hands shaking. She wanted to appear confident and resolved, not nervous talking to her own husband. ‘But because he's drinking formula it doesn't necessarily need to be me who stays home . . .'

Still, James didn't say anything.

‘So, I think the best thing, for all of us, might be for me to return to work and for you to look after Sebastian during the day. I'd still see him at night, and on weekends. It doesn't mean I don't love Sebastian, you know I do, but Doctor Winder and I have discussed it and he agrees it might be the best thing for me at the moment.'

It felt like minutes but was probably only a few seconds before James spoke. ‘Can I . . . are you finished?'

She hadn't realised he had been waiting for her permission to talk. ‘Sorry, yes, go ahead.'

He adjusted his glasses and ran a hand through his hair. ‘I know how hard motherhood has been on you and I'm not surprised that you're asking this. I've been wondering the same thing myself – whether we should switch roles – but I didn't want to upset you.'

Catriona exhaled the breath she had been holding on to and turned to face James. ‘You have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that. I thought you'd think I was a terrible person for even suggesting it.'

James smiled sadly at her, his eyes filled with compassion, and she realised how much she had missed him.

‘Of course I don't think that,' he said. ‘There's no rule to say which one of us has to stay home. But what about your work? Didn't they hire a replacement for your role for twelve months?'

‘I already spoke to Terry. She said if I wanted to come back she'd find something else for my replacement to do. I can go back as soon as I want to.'

‘There's no rush; you don't have to go back to work straightaway.'

‘Yes, I do,' Catriona said. ‘I need something to distract me. I need to do something I'm good at again.'

James rubbed her arm. ‘Okay. I'll just need to talk to my boss, then. It'll be okay, babe. I think we're doing the right thing.'

•  •  •

James's boss agreed to let him take six months' paternity leave, so he and Catriona agreed that after a few more weeks at home to recuperate she would return to work full-time and James would care for Sebastian.

Catriona's mother offered to stay with her for those few weeks, to look after her and to help with Sebastian. Catriona resisted at first, telling her mother she didn't need her help, but that was what she had told her after Sebastian was born, and she was lying then, too. Maybe if her mother had come over in those first weeks to help with Sebastian she would have noticed that something was wrong. But Catriona had told her that she was fine, that she wanted to be alone with her child, and her mother had stayed away. She had only seen her grandson four times since he was born: once at the hospital, another time a couple of weeks later, before Catriona's psychosis started, a third time when Catriona had ushered her out the door after twenty minutes, and the fourth time that James had told her about, when he asked her to babysit Sebastian while he visited Catriona at the clinic. Four times in three months. It was yet another thing for Catriona to feel guilty about.

The thought of being alone with Sebastian still terrified Catriona and despite feeling more like her usual self – more like how she had been before she had Sebastian – she couldn't be sure that she wouldn't do anything rash if stress got the better of her. Out of shame and embarrassment, she hadn't described to her mother the full extent of her psychosis. Catriona realised her mother most likely heard the details from James anyway, because she didn't ask any questions about why Catriona had been hospitalised. James seemed hesitant to have Catriona's mother stay with them until Catriona told him it would make her a lot more relaxed to have someone else around.

Her mother arrived two days after Catriona returned home from the clinic. Catriona was unsure how she would feel about having her mother so involved in her life, but she was astounded by her organisational skills. Within the first few days she had restocked their pantry and fridge with groceries, thoroughly cleaned the house, washed and hung out to dry the piles of laundry that had accumulated, sorted all of Sebastian's clothes into sizes and stored in the attic those that no longer fitted him, and cooked several meals that she divided up into individual portions.

‘For those especially difficult days,' she said as she stacked them into the freezer in disposable containers Catriona hadn't even realised she owned.

Since her mother was taking care of everything else, Catriona was free to spend time with Sebastian. At first she was scared to be around him unless her mother was in the room with her, but eventually she felt comfortable giving him his bottle, changing his nappy and settling him at bedtime. But she couldn't bring herself to give him a bath. Her mother did that for her while Catriona found an excuse to leave the house, or do something downstairs. She averted her eyes from the bath whenever she was in the bathroom.

Catriona's mother encouraged her to leave the house every day, even if it was just to walk around the block. Catriona complained at first, but after a few days she admitted that the fresh air and sunshine made her feel like she was part of the world again.

‘How are you coping being home?' her mother asked her a week after Catriona had returned from the clinic. They had decided to go to the beach for the day and were eating fish and chips on a grassy area just off the sand. Seagulls jostled each other as they edged towards them, their black eyes searching for scraps. Sebastian was lying on his back on a blanket, his dimpled hands grappling with a toy his grandmother had brought along for him.

‘Surprisingly well, I think,' Catriona said.

‘And how do you feel about your relationship with Sebastian?'

Catriona thought about the question while she watched Sebastian on the blanket. She enjoyed spending time with him, and the fact that he no longer cried when she picked him up suggested to her that the bond with her child she had felt was missing might finally be starting to develop.

‘Much better now, but I regret not going to the mother–baby unit instead of the hospital,' Catriona said. ‘I would have had Sebastian with me the whole time, so it wouldn't feel so strange between us now. Sometimes it feels like he's someone else's child.'

Her mother nodded knowingly. ‘I know it feels like you've missed out on a lot, but you have the rest of your life with Sebastian. He's only a baby, he won't remember any of this.'

‘I guess so.'

‘Don't let it upset you. You did the best thing for him; you got yourself well.'

‘I just feel like there are all these chunks of time that I've missed,' Catriona said. ‘And the bits I do remember, I don't know if they really happened or not.' Except for what she had done to Sebastian in the bath. She remembered that only too vividly. Nearly every night she would wake up in a sweat, having re-enacted the scene in a dream, but in her dream she held him underwater until he stopped moving, and James didn't interrupt them.

‘Have you talked to James about that?' her mother asked. ‘He'd be able to help you fill in some of the gaps.'

‘Yeah. But it's hard to hear how I was, all those crazy things I said and did. It makes me feel so guilty for putting him through that.'

‘James loves you. And Sebastian. He'd do anything for you two. I'm sure he's just grateful that you're both okay.'

Catriona picked up Sebastian and sat him on her lap, his back supported by her bent knees and his legs resting on her stomach. On seeing his mother his faced stretched into a gummy smile of recognition, which Catriona couldn't help but return.

‘We're okay, aren't we?' she said to him.

The weeks passed and the time came for her mother to leave and for Catriona to return to work. Despite having enjoyed spending time with Sebastian, and knowing without any doubt that she loved her son and was happy to be his mother, she knew the decision to swap roles with James was the right one.

On the morning she was due to return to work Catriona stood in the kitchen holding Sebastian, dressed in a suit for the first time in nearly five months. She had expected to feel uncomfortable in the clothes, constricted by the layers and tight material after spending so long in T-shirts and leggings. On the darkest days of her psychosis she had rarely changed out of her pyjamas until the evening, when she rushed to change before James got home and asked if she was okay. But the clothes were the reminder she needed that she had another life outside of motherhood, a life where she was in control. She kissed Sebastian goodbye and handed him to James, her resolve strong as she walked down the hallway to the front door, closing it behind her.

Friday, 11 May 2012

T
he CCTV footage didn't reveal the identity of Noah's kidnapper. Nor did the interviews with shopping centre staff and residents who lived nearby. The forensics team was unable to obtain his fingerprints from the pram; apparently those they had found were smudged and therefore insufficient to compare against criminal records. Diana asked the police whether they were trying to find car registration details from cameras in the shopping centre car park, or looking into credit cards used in the supermarket that day. Anything she could think of to identify the man who had taken her son. They assured her they were doing everything they could.

Diana avoided watching the news. The first time she saw Noah's face on her television screen – the photo she had given to police the day after he went missing – she collapsed to the floor as if the bones had been pulled out of her body. Her mother, who was with her at the time, had switched off the television and embraced Diana while trying, and failing, to hold back her own tears.

Three days after Noah disappeared, Sergeant Thomas arranged for Diana and Liam to speak at a media conference. He had already spoken to the media several times himself, but he felt the public would take more notice if the message came from Noah's parents. He told them that plenty of cases had been solved because a member of the public came forward with information that helped the police to locate the kidnapper. He didn't say, although Diana knew without him having to, that an appeal was also a way to prevent the kidnapper from harming Noah by reminding him that Noah had a family who loved him.

‘The longer Noah's story stays in the headlines, the better the chance we have of finding him,' Sergeant Thomas had said, and Diana didn't want to ask what would happen if the media stopped reporting on Noah's kidnapping before they found him.

She asked Liam to speak because she didn't think she could manage it without breaking down and in a rare moment of compassion towards her, he agreed. Diana stood beside Liam at the podium in the police station's media conference room, her body quivering and her palms wet. She stared at the lights and microphones thrust towards them and listened to Liam describe what Noah was wearing the day he was kidnapped, what the pram looked like and where he was taken from. His voice remained steady until the last part of his speech, when he spoke about how much he and Diana loved Noah and begged whoever had him to take him to a police station. When she heard the quiver in his voice Diana reached for his hand, but he pulled it from her grasp and didn't look at her.

For a week after the appeal the police fielded dozens of phone calls from the public about people who matched the description of the man in the supermarket. Apparently some had even reported seeing a man with a baby who looked like Noah. But the leads never proved to be the man and baby they were looking for.

With each update from the police, Diana felt herself falling further down a rabbit hole of despair. She haunted her house like a ghost, drifting between rooms in search of an answer she never found. She slept during the day, with the curtains in her bedroom drawn shut and the covers over her head. At night she sat at the living-room window with the lights off and the blinds open, watching moths hover around the street lamp and cats prowl across front lawns. She stayed at the window until the moonlight shadows receded and night gave over to day, then she returned to bed. Sometimes she and Liam went days without talking, and when they did speak it was with the detached politeness of people who had only just met. Liam returned to work a week after Noah disappeared, telling Diana that he needed to do something to take his mind off it. He slept in the study on a fold-out sofa bed and spent the rest of his time out of the house. Whether he was at work, or with friends, or at a bar, Diana didn't know. She never bothered to ask him.

Diana refused to see anyone other than the police or her mother, and refused to believe that Noah wasn't coming back to her. She was convinced that the person who had him would soon realise the enormity of the grief they had caused her and would turn themselves in to the police. She couldn't believe that anyone could be so inherently evil as to steal a person's baby from them. During her nights sitting by the window she fantasised about Sergeant Thomas turning up at her front door with Noah nestled in his arms. Noah would smile at her and she would take him from Sergeant Thomas and all would be right with the world again. Sergeant Thomas did call and visit Diana often, but it was never with good news, and never with Noah.