I've never allowed myself to dwell on this before. It's too painful, too unbearable, for me. Now, though, with all this time on my hands, it's like a scab. An ugly weeping sore on my psyche I can't stop probing. Half of me is reluctant to expose the raw emotions lying underneath, and the other half can't help scraping away at it. I keep asking myself – do I mean anything at all to Daniel?
I lie here and I scratch and pick at the scab, and I can't understand how things have turned out this way. Why doesn’t my son love me? I did all the right things. My love for Daniel has always burned fiercely and being his mother fulfils me in a way nothing else ever has. Nobody will ever love him the way I do. He's never been affectionate towards me, though. Despair hits me when I think of all the times he’s pushed my eager hugs away, his coldness wounding me all the way to the bone.
Under the scab lurks the cruel conviction that Daniel has never loved me. He’d never have done the DNA test if he did. I think again about the results, with those long scientific words alleging I'm not Daniel's mother but which ignore the fact I’ve fulfilled that role towards him in every meaningful way.
My self-torture gets even crueller. In my mind, I’m no longer in this soulless psychiatric facility, but back home. I play the scene in my head repeatedly, whipping myself with his punishing accusations.
I'm watching television one evening when he arrives. The front door bangs open. Seconds later Daniel crashes into the room, clutching some papers in his hand. I'm staggered by his appearance; he’s enraged, his face red, his eyes bulging. I can’t take in what he’s saying.
‘I always thought something was wrong,’ he shouts. ‘Always knew you weren't my mother. This proves it. Read this, you goddamn bitch. It says it plainly here, in black and white. You're not my mother.’
Bitch. He called me a bitch. Daniel never, ever, speaks to me like that, however coldly he may act towards me. I'm too much in shock to grasp what he's saying, or to respond. When I don’t reply, he storms over and thrusts the pages right under my nose.
‘I've had a test done. A DNA test.’ I’m taken aback by this. How and why, I wonder. ‘They don't lie. Read it. There’s the proof we're not related. You're not my mother.’
The words I've always dreaded. He's right, if you take into account the biology of the matter and nothing else. Yet on so many other levels, he's completely wrong.
I stare at what he’s showing me, flinching from his rage, his cruel accusations. Words and phrases leap out at me. Some of them I can’t understand. A lot is science-speak, incomprehensible jargon. I skip past the bits I can’t grasp to the stark paragraph at the end.
And that’s written in language even I can understand.
My life is a henhouse, and the chickens are well and truly coming home to roost. I'm catapulted like a slingshot back into the past, not a place I want to revisit. Daniel has been a part of me for twenty-two years. For me, he's my son, in every way. I hardly ever think about my desperate flight from Bristol so long ago. Now, though, the reality of what I did that night rises up before me, captured in those cold, soulless words I'm reading. Words that deny the truth of what it is to be a mother.
I think quickly. I'm caught in a trap; I can't admit to what I did or to why I did it. I can only do one thing; repeat the story I told Daniel all those years ago, keep telling him I am his mother. You see, I'm hoping if I carry on with the same old lie, it will make it true. Ridiculous, of course, but I need Daniel to believe me so desperately. I'm clinging frantically to the perfect world of motherhood I've created, and I can't bring myself to let go. What else do I have in my life that means anything, besides him?
I realise as I start to speak I'm on a losing wicket.
‘Daniel.’ I look up into his face, so enraged yet so beloved. ‘I don't get what you mean, my love. I'm your mother; of course I am. This test…I don't understand…how did you do it? Don’t you need a blood sample or something?’
‘I took hair from your brush. Did the test with that.’ He pushes the papers towards me again. ‘Read the last lines of the report. Plain enough, I’d say. We don't share any genes. So, tell me for God’s sake, what the hell is going on? Who are you? How did I come to grow up with you?’
Hair stolen from my brush has unmasked me. I wonder exactly when my son’s treachery took place. He must have eaten roast beef with me one Sunday, making casual conversation as usual but hiding duplicity in his heart. All the while aware of what he intended to do. His betrayal cuts me to the quick but I don’t have time to think about it; the need to carry on the lie is imperative.
‘I’m your mother, my love. You grew up with me because you’re my son, Daniel. How could you think otherwise, darling?’
He snorts with contempt. ‘I've always known you weren't my mother. I remember asking you when I was still a small child. I asked you several times.’ I wind back through the years to those questions, to the terror they always produced in me. ‘I remember another woman; she’d sit by my bed at night. The girl, too. The one with the shiny, swinging hair. She used to play ball with me. I asked you over and over who they were.’
‘You're mistaken, my love.’ I’m desperate to convince him. ‘I can only repeat what I told you before; those people are a figment of your imagination. They were never real. I can't tell you who they are, because they simply don't exist. I'm your mother, Daniel. I always will be. I’m your mother in every way. No one else could ever love you as I do. I looked after you when you were ill, when you had nightmares and when you fell off your bike. That's what real mothers do, Daniel.’
His rage seems to be increasing. He thrusts the papers in my face again. The hand holding them is shaking with his fury. For the first time ever, I'm afraid of my son.
‘The proof is here, you bitch.’ He speaks very slowly and deliberately. ‘You might as well stop telling me all these lies. They're not going to wash anymore. I want you to end the bullshit, right now, and tell me where my real family is and how I came to live with you.’
‘Daniel, mistakes are made all the time. Just because somebody is a scientist and wears a white coat and has a string of fancy letters after their name, it doesn't mean they’re infallible. Perhaps someone mixed up the samples in the laboratory or the results were misinterpreted. This test proves nothing, my love.’
‘What about my eye colour?’ The rapid change in direction throws me off-kilter. I don’t understand what he means.
‘My eyes. They're green. Yours are blue, and though I can't believe anything you tell me anymore, you said my father had brown eyes. The chance of a green-eyed child from parents with brown and blue eyes is pretty low. Improbable enough to back up the test results. You're not my mother.’
‘I don't know anything about such things, Daniel.’ All this science stuff bewilders me. ‘But surely it can't be that simple. There could be any number of explanations for your eye colour. Perhaps one of your grandparents had green eyes.’
‘I can't believe anything you say.’ Bitterness drips from his words. ‘For God's sake, you owe me the truth. Who am I? Was I adopted?’
‘No, my love.’ At least I don't need to lie about that. ‘It's as I told you. You must believe me, darling.’
‘Why should I trust anything you say?’ I wince at the biting contempt in his voice. I'm trapped with no way out. So I carry on the lie. Even though my gut tells me it's completely useless.
‘Because I'm your mother, Daniel. All I can do is to tell you how it was; the only relatives I ever had growing up were my mother and my grandmother. I loved your father very much, we were going to get married and then we conceived you. Right before my eighteenth birthday. I can't tell you something different, because there simply isn't anything else to say.’
‘Prove it.’
‘How?’ I’m completely helpless in the face of such an onslaught.
‘Take another DNA test. Voluntarily this time. I had to falsify your signature on the last one. Two tests can't be wrong. Provide a blood or saliva sample, and we'll do the test again.’
My world is shattering; huge pieces are falling away from me, faster and faster, and even if I could piece them back together, the cracks would be too big, too vast. The urge to try, though, overwhelms me.
‘No.’ I grip tightly onto the cushion beside me. ‘Don't ask me to do that, Daniel. I'm your mother, no matter what you think, and I don't need to prove it. Please, my love. Think about everything I did for you when you were growing up. I've always loved you, and tried to do my best for you. Why are you doing this to me?’
He shakes his head, and doesn't say anything for a while. Then he looks up at me again, and ice grips my stomach as I see the disgust on his face.
‘You bitch. You vile bitch. You never were going to give me any answers. Just the same old shit as before. I hate you. Do you understand? I bloody well hate you.’
My eyes fill with tears. Daniel stares at me with contempt, and I'd do anything, anything at all, to tear such a look from his face. Then he delivers his final blow. Straight through the heart.
‘I've never loved you. Never.’
He gets up, and turns and makes for the door. I grasp his arm to try to stop him, but he shakes me off and I let him go.
Pain, the like of which has only hit me once before, slams through my soul when he says he's never loved me. Pain nobody should ever experience. The sort that slices through your gut and coils around your body, squeezing the life out of you and making you want to scream away what’s happening. Scream until your throat is raw and all you can do is lie on the floor with the tears pouring down your face and the word NO hammering through your brain.
The first time I lost my son, I reacted that way.
The second time, with Daniel telling me he’s never loved me – well, I don’t scream. This time a numbing fog creeps into my brain. My mouth goes dry and that is the last time I say anything.
Ian comes home to a wife he’s never encountered before. It’s not so much that I don’t speak; I can’t. Speaking seems an utter impossibility. Daniel is the only one I want to talk to and he’s not listening to me right now and I don’t know if he’ll be back and should I go to see him at that poky flat of his and it all becomes too much and I run upstairs to bed. I drag the duvet over my head and shut out the sounds of Ian’s footsteps on the stairs.
Ian stays home from work the next day. I can register, with the part of my brain that still seems to function, that the not speaking thing worries him. Each time I’ve had one of my turns, as he calls them, I’ve never stopped talking entirely. Now, it’s as if I’ve lost the ability and I never want to speak again. Unless it’s to Daniel. He told me he’s never loved me but I can’t, I won’t, believe he meant to be so cruel.
Ian mentions seeing the doctor, pills, getting proper help, and I understand exactly what he means. Well, I won’t do it. I’m not going to allow some fresh-faced graduate whose experience of life is all from a textbook to probe around in my thoughts. Someone older wouldn’t be any better, either. I doubt any of them would have dealt well with the crap I endured in my early life and until they take some steps in my shoes, they won’t be throwing clichés like broken childhood home and unresolved issues at me.
I picture again the rage on Daniel's face, and right now, I can’t fathom how to replace it with the understanding I crave. I tried my best, I really did. It’s all been a mirage, though. I thought everything was perfect; I had the husband, the home, and what I wanted above everything else, my son. Now I realise the foundations of my so-called happy life were nothing but sand. I’ve been refusing to see the obvious; despite all my efforts, Daniel has never loved me, or regarded me as a mother.
I can't believe it has happened again. My son has deserted me. I’m not sure I can bear the searing pain of his loss a second time.
14
THE TRUTH WILL OUT
Daniel lay in bed, forcing down the fury still burning in him from the night before, trying to work out what the hell to do. One thing was obvious; he wouldn’t get answers from Laura Bateman anytime soon.
He was obsessing, sure, but he couldn't help himself; his head was full of DNA results and genetic markers and blue and brown eyes. All swirling around and mixing themselves up with his hazy memories, resulting in total chaos in his head. Understandable, though. Hell, he thought, wouldn’t anyone obsess, if they found themselves in a situation as weird as this? Everything was so incredibly screwed-up. Right now, he needed Katie here with him; damn her double shifts at the hospital. He’d already texted her to tell her he planned to confront Laura Bateman, but hadn’t updated her about the abortive result.
Amid all the confusion, though, a thought had surfaced, an impossible and yet compelling one, one that gripped him and wouldn’t let go.
Twenty-two years ago, Laura Bateman had stepped into the role of his mother, for reasons still unknown. The why might become apparent later. The how struck him as more important right now. Perhaps she’d kidnapped him from his real parents.
He pulled a face. The idea seemed so far-fetched, so bizarre. Things like that rarely happened and when they did, they happened to other people. Not to him, not to Daniel Bateman, an average guy from West London.
Abduction. Impossible. Ridiculous, even. So why couldn't he get the idea out of his head?