Tears prick the backs of my eyes. I swallow hard and nod.
I start to speak even though the words come out strangled with sobs. The pain is as raw today as it’s ever been. Some wounds never heal.
‘He was fine when I put him to bed the night before.’
‘Cot death. So that's what happened.’ The empathy in Daniel’s voice brings me exquisite comfort, all the sweeter for me craving it for so long. ‘I can only try to imagine how awful your son’s death must have been for you.’
The tears recede as I take in what he’s saying. My boy is trying to understand, and compassion appears to be taking over from harsh judgement in his mind.
‘Something broke inside me when I found him dead.’
He nods. ‘You were young and alone.’
‘I’d not had it easy up to then.’
‘They told me. Your mother. Years in foster homes. The loss of your grandmother.’
‘I was raped.’ I startle myself. I hadn’t meant to tell Daniel that. Nobody but Gran has ever known about what took place that night. ‘By the man Social Services placed me with. He should have protected me, but instead he hurt me.’
‘Christ. So Annie was right. God knows, I understand, I really do, how awful that must have been.’ He turns his hand around so he’s holding mine, and grips it tightly. ‘Was that how you got pregnant?’
I shake my head. ‘No. It was as I told you. Well, mostly. The engineering student. He was the father. But he had no intention of marrying me and he didn’t die in a car crash. He didn’t care at all about me.’
‘He wasn’t bothered about you being pregnant?’
‘Not in the slightest. I intended to be the best mother ever, to make up for my baby not having a father. My love didn’t stop my son dying, though. I couldn’t deal with losing him. The pain – it was unbearable.’
‘You weren’t able to accept he had died.’
‘No.’ A hot tear slides down my face.
‘And you never told anyone.’
Only Emma. And not about my child’s burial. ‘No.’
‘Because it would have made his death real.’
‘Yes.’ My son really does understand. He gets it at last, how things were for me, and that’s all I’ve ever really wanted.
I can see Daniel is weighing up a question and he’s not sure how to put it, and so it must be something big.
And it is.
‘Your baby,’ he says. ‘Where is he?’
My mind flies back to the tree that is part of my child, holding his tiny body firmly in its grasp, and I shake my head. I can’t bear the thought of him being disturbed, dug out of the ground, the protection of the oak’s roots prised away. Burial in some anonymous graveyard, with a proper headstone and a service, won’t give him anything he doesn’t have already. The wood is where he should remain.
‘Leave him be, my love. He’s at rest now.’ My baby has peace, beneath the oak tree, and that’s how it should stay. ‘He’s safe. I took care of that. There was nothing else I could do for him in the end.’
Daniel doesn’t reply, but I know he gets what I mean, and won’t ask any more.
Silence for a while.
‘He lost his eye, you know,’ he says eventually. Relief fills me that we’ve moved away from the subject of my baby’s makeshift grave, although my rapist husband isn’t exactly safe ground.
‘What I did to him. It was like how it was with my baby.’ I can see Daniel doesn’t understand what I mean.
‘It was all I could do for you, come the end.’
Daniel nods, grasping what I’m trying to convey. ‘He deserved what he got and more.’
‘You needed redress, you told me.’
‘That bastard. That vile bastard.’
‘I didn’t realise what he was like,’ I whisper.
‘The anger was eating me up, knowing he’d got away with what he did to me. Then they told me what you’d done…and how he’d lost his eye. Somehow, it helped. Like I had some form of justice at last, and it was through you. I couldn’t hate you as much, not after that, and things started to get better. I was with my family once more, I’d met Annie, I’d started painting again and somehow I managed to get over myself and all the resentment.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘My mother hated my nanny. Always blamed her for what happened. I never did, though. She was always special to me. I know she did wrong, but somehow that never mattered to me. I found myself wanting, needing even, my mother to forgive her. So both of them can heal, and move on.’
I don't ask if his mother will ever forgive me. Perhaps absolution from her would be too big, too huge, to hope for and anyway Daniel’s forgiveness is the main thing I crave. I realise I should tell my boy how sorry I am but the word seems so inadequate, given what he suffered through my actions.
In time, I might be able to stop hating myself for the devastation I caused in Daniel’s life. I thought I was doing the right thing for him, but really, I was trying to plug the gaping hole in my heart. I wonder whether he will ever forgive me. The days and nights won’t seem so long if I know he’s trying.
‘Can you...?’ I can’t go on, but looking at him, I realise I don’t need to. He grasps what I’m trying to say. We’ve never had such understanding between us and I pray it will never end.
‘Yes.’ The most beautiful thing Daniel’s ever said to me. ‘I think so. In time.’
I hear the word yes in my head but it’s in my heart I turn it over, savouring the wonder at how one syllable can fill me with such joy.
Silence fills the room again. I sense our time here today is up. We’ve said so much; all the important things too.
My son presses my hand briefly. ‘I should go,’ he says.
I look at my boy, so handsome, and love floods through me. ‘Thank you. For coming here. For understanding.’
He doesn’t reply, but he smiles at me, the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen.
‘Will you come again?’ I have to ask, even though I dread the answer. But even if he doesn’t, it’s enough for me. He doesn’t hate me anymore. In time, he’ll reach forgiveness towards me; that’s more than I reckon I deserve. And sufficient to last me the rest of my life.
‘I think so.’ He stands up and turns towards the door. ‘Probably.’
Dear God. Did my Daniel really say those words?
‘We both need it,’ he continues, and then I know he will come again.
I can’t speak. I smile at him through my tears. Then he is gone.
I grab a tissue, wipe my face and lie down on the bed. The male nurse has left, and I’m alone.
I’ve got my son back, at least that’s how it feels. He may have another family and another life now, but part of him has returned to me and I hug that thought tight, remembering what he said. The joy of
I think so
, married with
probably
. They’re the most wonderful words he could have uttered and I can exist on them for what remains to me of my life. I have calm in my world now. Daniel brought that gift to me today.
I can be at peace from now on, because my boy has moved on from his anger and his life is looking good, what with going to college to do his precious art. If he’s happy, so am I. I wonder briefly about this woman of his and I send her silent thanks. Whoever she is, even if she’s only temporary in his life, she’s good for him. Sometimes the people who touch our lives the most are only passing through. Like Emma Carter.
I’ve not had a happy life. I’ve experienced pain, loneliness and tragedy. But I’ve also known love and what it means for someone who you love beyond everything to touch you with their forgiveness, and that’s the most beautiful experience, it really is. I’ll carry Daniel’s compassion with me always, and what it’s meant to love him so dearly, both when he was a baby and now he’s a grown man. The two are inextricably linked for me and that’ll never change.
I lie on my bed for a long time and then I go over to the window and look out.
There’s a tree in the grounds, an oak, the same sort I buried my baby under, and it’s tall and strong and I draw new comfort as I look at it. I picture another oak, its roots thick, long and winding into the ground, and the beloved child I entrusted to its care, and I smile.
‘Sleep well, my darling,’ I say.
POSTSCRIPT
I hope that you enjoyed His Kidnapper’s Shoes! The
paperback version
is also available from Amazon via the link (under ‘formats’).
I’d be very grateful if you would write a review on
Amazon
and/or
Goodreads
.
Please visit my website at
www.maggiejamesfiction.com
, where you can sign up for my newsletter to keep you notified about new novel releases. My blog is also on my website - I post regularly on all topics of interest to readers, including author interviews and book reviews.
Follow Maggie James on Facebook:
Maggie James Fiction
And on Twitter:
@mjamesfiction
And on
Google+
And on
Goodreads
And on
LinkedIn
And finally on
Pinterest
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to:
Jeanette, Gary, Jeni and Mary for their invaluable help and feedback;
X, for giving me the kick up the backside I so desperately needed;
and finally, to the people of Sucre, Bolivia, where the first draft of this novel was written.
This novel is dedicated in loving memory of Jeni Moss.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maggie James is a British author who lives in
Bristol. His Kidnapper’s Shoes is her first novel.
Visit Maggie James’s website and sign up for her newsletter! An occasional email with details of new novel releases. Maggie James’s blog is also on her website - she posts regularly on all topics of interest to readers, including author interviews and book reviews.
Follow Maggie James on Facebook:
Maggie James Fiction
And on Twitter:
@mjamesfiction
And on
Google+
And on
Goodreads
And on
LinkedIn
And finally on
Pinterest.
OTHER NOVELS BY MAGGIE JAMES:
THE SECOND CAPTIVE
Stockholm syndrome: the psychological tendency of a hostage to bond with his or her captor.
What happens when you love the man you should hate?
Beth Sutton is eighteen years old when Dominic Perdue abducts her. Held prisoner in a basement, she’s dependent upon him for food, clothes, her very existence. As the months pass, her hatred towards him changes to compassion. Beth never allows herself to forget, however, that her captor has killed another woman. She has evidence to prove it, not to mention Dominic’s own admission of murder.
Then Beth escapes…
And discovers Dominic Perdue is not a man who lets go easily. Meanwhile, despite being reunited with her family, she spirals into self-destructive behaviour. Release from her prison isn’t enough, it seems. Can Beth also break free from the clutches of Stockholm syndrome?
A study of emotional dependency, The Second Captive examines how love can assume strange guises.
Available from Amazon
here
.
SISTER, PSYCHOPATH
When they were children, Megan Copeland adored her younger sister Chloe. Now she can hardly bear to be in the same room as her.
Megan believes Chloe to be a psychopath. After all, her sister’s a textbook case: cold, cruel and lacking in empathy. Chloe loves to taunt Megan at every opportunity, as well as manipulating their mentally ill mother, Tilly, a woman blind to Chloe’s sociopathic nature.
Chloe currently has her eye on James Matthews, Tilly’s employer. James, however, is preoccupied with his own conflicts. Both his marriages have been failures. Now Megan’s former lover, Toby Turner, is causing him to question everything in his life.
When Tilly, under Chloe’s malignant influence, becomes dangerously unstable, the consequences turn ugly for everyone. Megan’s world falls apart, allowing long-buried secrets to rise to the surface. Her sister’s out of control, and there’s little Megan can do about it. Until she realises Chloe is targeting Toby Turner, and planning to step well beyond the rules...
Available from Amazon
here
.
GUILTY INNOCENCE
Two eleven-year-old boys. One two-year-old girl. A murder that shocked the nation.
Ten years after being convicted of the brutal killing of a toddler, Mark Slater, formerly Joshua Barker, is released on parole from prison. Only the other boy jointly sentenced for Abby Morgan’s murder, the twisted and violent Adam Campbell, knows the truth. That Mark played no part in Abby’s death.