Claiming Noah (24 page)

Diana sighed as she picked up the phone. ‘Hello?'

‘Hi, sis. How are you?'

Diana sighed again, but this time it was with relief. It was her brother, Tom. ‘I'm okay. It's so nice to hear your voice. How are you? How's Jerry?'

Diana had always liked Jerry; he was a good complement to Tom's personality. He practised family law and reminded Diana of a father from a 1950s television sitcom: neatly dressed, clean-shaven, sensible haircut. His shirt was always tucked into his pants and she had never seen him wear unironed clothes or scuffed shoes. He was the opposite to her usually unkempt brother who had resisted the accountant stereotype by sporting long hair and a full beard, as well as several tattoos on his arms. But after watching them together for the past five years, Diana felt that they had something special.

‘We're fine, but I don't want to talk about us. We haven't just had our child returned to us after nearly two years. How's Noah? What was it like seeing him again after so long?'

‘Amazing,' Diana said. ‘I can't take my eyes off him. He's adorable.'

‘How's Liam? I bet he's thrilled to have Noah back as well.'

Noah had stopped crying and Diana heard the door to the study close. She probably wouldn't see Liam again for hours. ‘I'm sure he is.'

‘Everything okay?' Tom asked cautiously.

Diana tried not to cry. ‘It's just difficult. I thought once Noah was home things would be different between me and Liam, but nothing's changed.'

‘I'm sorry to hear that.'

Diana shook her head to rid herself of her unhappy thoughts and forced a cheery note into her voice. ‘Now, don't let me get all melodramatic again. Everything's fine. I have my son back.'

Noah started to cry again. Diana waited a few seconds, but she didn't hear Liam emerge from the study.

‘I have to go,' she said to Tom, ‘but thanks for calling. Come visit us soon, okay?'

‘I will, I promise. Love you, sis.'

‘Love you too.'

Diana hung up the phone and walked towards Noah's room. She paused by the closed study door. She could hear a movie playing so loudly that it nearly drowned out the noise of Noah's cries. She contemplated opening the door so she could apologise to Liam, but then she thought better of it and walked towards Noah's room. Liam didn't deserve her apology.

As Diana entered Noah's bedroom he stopped crying and smiled at the sight of her. She lifted him out of his cot and hugged him. She felt his resistance at first, but then his small arms wrapped around her neck and he returned her embrace. At that small sign of affection she felt her anger and disappointment melt away. She had her son back, and he was hugging her, and nothing else mattered.

Saturday, 8 February 2014

C
atriona sat on the floor of her kitchen among the ruins of the birthday cake she had thrown against the wall, ignoring the sound of the doorbell announcing the guests for Sebastian's party. Her phone rang incessantly and someone – probably one of her parents – rapped on the living room window for several minutes before finally leaving. She stared at the wall, knees hugged to her chest, eyes dry and unblinking, unable to think about anything other than the expression on her son's face when he was taken away from her. She shouldn't have let them take him. She should have demanded to go with them, to find out why they thought Sebastian was some other child. How could they have done this to her? They had detonated a grenade at her front door and let it rip her life to pieces.

The officer had told Catriona to wait for someone to call her, but after an hour and a half she couldn't wait any longer to find out where her son was. She rang the emergency number for the police, not knowing what other number to call, and after being transferred a few times she spoke to someone who told her to come to Burwood police station to provide her statement.

She couldn't remember driving to the police station, but somehow she made it there with the directions she'd been given and was escorted into a room. For a few minutes she sat alone, on a hard plastic chair, until she was joined by a male police officer who looked barely out of his teens. Catriona studied his face while he wrote on a notepad. He had only the slightest fuzz of hair on his chin.

‘Do you have to shave every day?' she asked him.

He looked up from his notepad, startled. ‘What?'

‘It's just . . . sorry, I don't know why I asked you that. You just don't look old enough to be here, that's all.'

‘Oh. That's okay. I'm twenty-four.' He offered her a small smile. ‘I shave every second day.'

After making a few more notes the officer put down his pen and looked at her. ‘Mrs Sinclair, we'd like to take a statement from you in relation to the kidnapping of Noah Simmons. As you know we have placed your husband under arrest and we are questioning him on the same matter separately. Can we please start with where you were on the eighth of May the year before last?'

She blinked at him. ‘How would I remember that?'

‘Please try. It's very important that we establish your whereabouts on the day the kidnapping took place.'

Catriona thought back. The eighth of May. Sebastian was born on the tenth of February, so he would have been three months old then. So, she would have been home, wouldn't she? Oh, no, wait.

She swallowed hard and looked down at her hands. ‘I was at a clinic.'

‘A clinic?'

‘Yes, I was at a clinic for most of May. Three weeks in total.' After a beat she added, ‘I was being treated for puerperal psychosis.'

Catriona watched the officer scribble furiously in his notepad. She tried to read his writing upside down, but she couldn't make out any of the words.

‘Look,' she said, using the same conciliatory tone she used at work when someone was being unreasonable. ‘I appreciate that you're just doing your job but I think there's been a mistake and I'd really like to see my son, Sebastian. Do you know where they've taken him?'

The officer looked up and frowned. ‘I'm sorry, I don't understand. Didn't the officers explain everything to you?'

‘They did, but someone's made a mistake. They have the wrong child.'

The officer shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Mrs Sinclair, I can assure you no-one has made a mistake.'

Catriona straightened her back and crossed her arms. ‘I want to see my son. Please find out where he is for me.'

The officer excused himself from the room only to return a few minutes later with a cup of tea for her. ‘Someone's coming to speak with you,' he said as he put the cup on the table in front of Catriona before retreating towards the door. ‘She'll be here soon. Just give me a yell if you need anything.'

About fifteen minutes later, a well-dressed woman entered the room. She had a sleek brown bob and kind blue–grey eyes. Her suit looked expensive, as did her shoes. Catriona became vaguely aware of the fact that she had a large smear of icing from the birthday cake on her forearm. She tried to rub it off with her hand as the woman sat in the chair across the table from her.

‘Mrs Sinclair, I'm Doctor March.'

‘Doctor?'

‘Yes, I'm a psychiatrist. I've been asked by the officers to talk to you about your situation.' She pulled a notepad and pen out of her bag, placed them on the table, and smiled at Catriona. ‘Do you mind if I call you Catriona? You can call me June if you like.'

‘June March?'

June smiled again. ‘Yes, my parents were interesting people.'

‘Look, June,' Catriona said, her attempt at patience giving over to exasperation. ‘I appreciate you coming here but I don't need a therapist, I just need some answers. I want to know where my son is.'

June nodded, her brown bob nodding along with her. ‘I understand. I've been briefed on your case, so I should be able to help you. What would you like to know?'

Catriona let out a loud sigh. ‘Like I keep asking everyone, where's my son?'

June reached into her bag again and this time pulled out a piece of paper, which she slid across the table to Catriona. She waited a few moments for Catriona to look at the document and then she said, ‘This is a medical certificate describing the cause of death for Sebastian John Sinclair, dated the first of May the year before last. Am I right to assume that you didn't know your child had passed away?'

Catriona blinked back the tears that prickled at the corner of her eyes as she stared at the medical certificate. The cause of death had been recorded as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

‘SIDS?' Catriona whispered, looking up at the psychiatrist.

June nodded, momentarily closing her eyes. ‘It's such a tragic way to lose a child. So unexpected.' She gestured to Catriona's empty cup. ‘Can I get you another cup of tea? You probably need a moment to yourself.'

Catriona must have nodded because June took her cup and excused herself from the room, leaving Catriona alone with the certificate. She stared at it, trying to find in the few lines printed on the piece of paper the answers to all of her questions. Sebastian had died from SIDS while Catriona was at the clinic, and James had known. But then she had returned home and James had been there with a child, the child she thought was Sebastian.

June returned to the room, carrying two cups.

‘This morning the police came to my house and took James and . . .' Catriona faltered, not sure of how to refer to him.

‘A child?' June offered.

‘Yes, a child. My child . . . I thought.' She remembered how she had thought Sebastian looked different when she arrived home from the clinic, how James said her memory had been affected by the ECT.

June sat down and pushed one of cups across the table to Catriona. She then took a sip from the other cup before she spoke. ‘The child's name is Noah Simmons. His legal parents are Diana and Liam Simmons. He's been returned to them now.'

Catriona thought about June's words for a moment before she realised the deliberate way June had said
legal parents
. What did that mean?

June answered the question before Catriona could ask it. ‘Diana and Liam Simmons are the legal parents of the child, but not the biological parents. They adopted him as an embryo.'

The shock of realisation hit Catriona like a lightning bolt. ‘We are, aren't we? James and me? We're his biological parents. He's the embryo we donated.'

June put down her cup and studied Catriona's reaction. ‘That's correct.'

Catriona rested her face in her hands, overwhelmed. James had kidnapped their own child. She cupped her hands together over her nose and mouth and forced herself to take deep breaths, trying to fight off the hyperventilation that was starting to take hold of her. Her palms quickly became clammy from the hot air blowing from her mouth.

‘I'll get you a glass of water,' June offered, once again rising from her chair.

By the time June returned to the room, Catriona's breathing had returned to normal.

‘I've asked the officers if they can take the rest of your statement tomorrow, and they've agreed,' June said as she gave the glass of water to Catriona, who drank it without pausing for breath. ‘You've had a lot of information to process today.'

Catriona nodded and placed the empty glass on the table. ‘Thank you, I appreciate that.'

Both women rose from their chairs.

‘It's important that you grieve for Sebastian,' June said. ‘Even with the amount of time that's passed since his death. Take your time to process the news, visit his gravesite.' She pulled a business card from the front pocket of her bag. ‘Here's my card, please come in and see me when you're ready. And I'll call you tomorrow to see how you're going.'

Catriona took the card and walked through the door June held open for her. She blinked as her eyes struggled to adjust to the bright fluorescent light in the hallway, a sudden jolt of reality compared to the dark room she had been sitting in for the past hour. Catriona nodded a goodbye to June and then stumbled down the hallway towards the entrance of the police station and the car park outside where she hoped her car was waiting, even though she didn't remember parking it there. As she walked through the police station she felt like everyone was staring at her. It was as if they could tell that her reality had just been turned inside out.

•  •  •

It was quiet in the house without Sebastian and James. Eerily quiet. For the first few weeks after James's arrest, the phone rang constantly. Sometimes it was people from the media hounding Catriona for comments on her husband's arrest, sometimes it was people she knew asking if she was okay. But then the phone calls stopped, and silence took over. The media eventually tired of her when she declined to comment under the advice of James's lawyer. Friends and colleagues, their societal duty now done, also turned their attention to other things. So, Catriona was alone in a house that had no shouting, no voices, no sound of footsteps running up and down the stairs. There was no television blaring, no musical toys with their repetitive drone, no sound of Sebastian crying or laughing. The relentless silence gave volume to the questions swarming through Catriona's mind.

How had James hidden Sebastian's death from her? How had he pretended all this time that the child she came home to when she returned from the clinic was the same one she had left? Had Sebastian's death been caused by something that had happened to him when she tried to drown him in the bath? James had told her that the doctor said he was fine, but how could she believe anything he said now, after he had lied to her for nearly two years? How had James known what had happened to their embryo? How did he find the other boy, and what was going through his head when he decided to kidnap him?

She tried to silence the questions by turning on the television and playing music in every room but they rose louder, mocking her for losing her husband and her son, permeating the walls of the house and tainting her every thought.