Finding You (17 page)

22 - Charlie

‘Mmm, freesias ... these are gorgeous.’ Julia buries her face in the large, scented spring bouquet I’ve just brought her. ‘What’re they
for
, though?’

‘Can’t a man buy his best girl some flowers without needing a special reason?’ I kick off my shoes into the corner, relieved to be home from work. The house is warm and there’s an enticingly familiar, if unexpected, aroma of Mediterranean food wafting into the hall from the kitchen.

‘His best girl?’ she holds off a little as I catch her about the waist for a kiss.

‘All right. His
only
girl,’ I concede, my face in her hair, on the soft skin of her neck, and Julia laughs, clearly pleased with herself. Something’s gone on today, I’m picking up. Something important to her, clearly, or her mood wouldn’t have shifted so drastically. She’s made some progress with Hadyn, perhaps? I feel a warm, satisfied feeling in my belly. I’ve got some pretty encouraging news to share with J myself after seeing Pippa Killman this lunchtime, haven’t I?

Where is my boy, anyway? He usually comes rushing to the door every time I come home. He always stops a few feet shy of me, doesn’t come right up, but it’s the moment I most look forward to, nonetheless, seeing him at the end of my day’s work. There’s certainly a calmer atmosphere in the house tonight; it seems quieter.  I know J’s mum had been coming round, but that’s all I know. Perhaps they’ve both come up with some clever child-rearing plan that’ll make her life easier?

‘No Bubba?’ I raise my eyebrows inquisitively and she laughs softly.

‘Not tonight. Come and see
this,
’ she urges, tugging at my hand to follow her, and upstairs in the hallway is a mini bombsite. The bathroom door is open wide and there are discarded clothes and towels and shampoo bottles all over the floor. There’s a large puddle of bubbles sinking slowly by the bath mat and everywhere I look, I can see little piles of ...
sand?
  But there’s no sound of any splashing going on. ‘In here,’ Julia indicates his bedroom, her finger to her lips as we tiptoe in.

And there he is, sprawled out in his old cot all scrubbed pink and clean and fast asleep, a perfectly peaceful look on his face. As he no longer has Bap-Bap the elephant—the only soft toy he ever seemed to care for—the duck and the panda have as usual been ejected and are lying on the floor. It’s only seven p.m.

‘What’s happened here?’ I stroke his cheek gently, feeling astonished. ‘He never normally goes down before ten. Something’s
worked
?’

‘Something’s worked.’ J’s face is a picture of triumph. ‘Look.’ She gestures, and there, directly beneath his bedroom window on the patio out back, is this huge red plastic rectangle.

‘What in heaven’s name ...’ It’s drawing in dark already and I have to peer out a little closer to see it, but I can’t figure out what it is, this marvellous thing that has got my son into bed at a decent time, given us some space in our evening back. For today, anyway. Then I make out some things I
can
recognise. Hell, no.

I swallow, wanting to be wrong.  But that definitely looks like a pile of sand-play toys all neatly corralled into the corner there.

Julia’s bought a sandpit, hasn’t she? A huge sandpit. And we’re supposed to be avoiding any reminders of Spain, anything that could trigger off a bad memory in him. I feel my heart sink, realising that any moment now, I’m going to have to rain on her parade.  She didn’t know about any of this, of course. It’s unfortunate I only got to speak to Pippa this lunchtime. Julia must have ordered this a while back and then it had to arrive today while I was out. What are the chances, dammit.

‘It’s a little large, I know,’ J’s voice is only slightly apologetic. ‘But it’s plenty big enough for water play, too,’ she enthuses. ‘He’s been sitting in it all afternoon, Charlie, and he’s been so
happy.
’ She clasps her hands together and then she rushes on with her crowning piece of today’s news. ‘He even ate some of the Spanish food I cooked for him tonight—okay, only two teaspoons, but that’s
something
, right?’

Spanish
food,
too?

‘Darling, I ...’ I take her hand, pull her back out of the room, wanting to take her somewhere we won’t disturb him. ‘Shall we talk about this downstairs?’   

‘It’s fantastic, isn’t it?’ 

Somehow, that aroma from the kitchen doesn’t smell so appetising anymore. When I sink down beside her on our sofa while she pours out some wine for me and a soda for herself, there’s a moment’s pause while Julia takes in that I’m less pleased than she imagined.

‘Everything okay?’ she leans in, still smiling but a looking a little puzzled now. I take her in my arms, and she’s so warm and lovely, exuding such happiness this evening, that I hate myself for what I’m going to need to say next.

‘Honey, I’m ...
thrilled
for you that you’ve found some success today but I really don’t think this is the route we want to be going down with him.’

Julia lifts her head up from my shoulder, looks at me in surprise. ‘What on earth are you talking about, Charlie?’ she laughs, a little unsurely now. ‘What have I done that’s so wrong?’

‘The sandpit. The Spanish stew. All this ... trying to recreate Spain for him,’ I say gently.

Julia’s eyes grow wide and surprised.  ‘I wasn’t trying to recreate anything, Charlie. I was only trying to make him feel more at home.’   

‘I know you were, honey. And I’m so sorry, but we can’t do it this way.’ She remains silent, not really sure where I’m going with this and I add, ‘He
is
home, don’t you see, darling? Our task is to help him recognise that, not ... not bend over backwards ... all these things, the sandpit, the food, they’re all what Pippa calls Associative Triggers.’

 Julia blinks.  ‘I wasn’t bending over backwards; it was no trouble at all. And who the heck is
Pippa
, anyway?’ She moves away a little now, out of my arms, leans forward to hand me my wine glass.

‘I’m sorry. That’s Dr Killman. The psychologist I was seeing at lunchtime today.’ Has she forgotten?

      ‘Ah, the psychologist.’ Julia takes in slowly. She takes a sip of her soda water. ‘The thing is, our son has been blissfully happy all day, I promise you. If this Dr ...
Pippa
—can think up any more
associative triggers
, then maybe she should pass them onto me and I’ll incorporate them into his day.’ She smiles.

I take in a breath. ‘Honey, this is not some joke we’re talking about here. It’s serious.’

‘How serious?’ she throws up her hands, still looking at me a little dubiously. ‘Honestly. How can she be so sure when she hasn’t even seen Hadyn yet?’

‘She didn’t need to see him, hon. I spent a good hour going through all his various symptoms with her this lunchtime, and Hadyn ticks all the boxes.’

Julia puts her drink down now and stares at the table for a moment.  The penny is beginning to drop. When she turns to look at me, I see she’s still not clear what I’ve learned today, but at least she’s now listening.

‘Go on,’ she breathes.

‘Okay.’ I rub at her arm a little, knowing that this isn’t going to be easy for her to hear. ‘Darling, when Pippa Killman heard all about Hadyn today, she was very clear. She feels he’s most likely to be suffering from some kind of trauma that was triggered off by the abduction. She was adamant that we steer him clear of anything that might remind him of his time in Spain.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if we remind him, we’ll just be strengthening his associations with what took place. We have to help him
forget.
Concentrate on helping him adjust to normal life here.’ 

‘By ... how? Doing what?’ She’s frowning slightly. ‘Things like taking him to nursery and such?’

‘Not nursery,’ I say quickly. ‘He shouldn’t be expected to cope with too many children at once. Dogs might be a problem, so we should avoid the park. You might want to leave off Mummies and Bubbies for a bit, as well ...’ I say as an afterthought.

‘That’s ... ridiculous,’ Julia says a little breathlessly. ‘What am I supposed to do—wrap him in cotton wool and keep him in complete isolation? It’s the complete opposite of what everyone else has suggested I do, anyway.’ She’s shaking her head.

‘Why is it ridiculous?’ I frown. ‘We’re not the experts here. Neither is everyone else. We don’t
know
what’s disturbing him so much, do we?’ I thought she was listening to me. She should be. Right now, she just feels stubborn.  ‘Honey,’ I take in a breath, ‘I went to see Dr Killman because you asked me for help, remember?’ All the crying at night times and running away in the park and not eating and not talking to anyone, after all this time, five and a half months ... she begged me for help.

‘I did,’ J contends, her energy suddenly changing. ‘I didn’t think it would be
this
kind of help, though.’  She stands up a little abruptly and some wine spills onto my shirt. I look at it and I can feel myself frowning because she can’t do this. She can’t ask me to find help and then reject all the things that I’ve discovered. She wasn’t the one sitting there, having to answer all Dr Killman’s questions today, listening to what was coming back. She can’t just unilaterally conclude that Pippa’s talking nonsense and we can afford to ignore her entirely.   

‘Honey, it’s just as well you
did
ask me to seek some advice when you did. In a child Hadyn’s age, Pippa gave me to understand that time can be of the essence. We can still get him back on track, you know. We’re just going to need to act very cautiously around this.’

‘
How
act cautiously?’

‘I just said,’ I tell her patiently.  ‘We can’t afford to expose Hadyn to
anything
that puts him in mind of where he’s been or how he’s been living before we found him. We might unearth other memories of his time away, re-ignite the trauma. And that means the sandpit is out.’

Julia has moved away from my arms now, cradling her soda water.  

‘But ... Hadyn’s been so
happy
today,’ she repeats, unable to comprehend what it’s taken me a good few hours to come to terms with this afternoon. ‘Explain to me how he would be so happy playing in the sand if it really reminded him of some terrible time he had in Spain?’

‘It might seem like counter-intuitive, but it’s not,’ I tell her earnestly, needing her to understand. ‘It turns out hostages can sometimes become morbidly attached to items they associate with their capture.’

‘He wasn’t a hostage,’ Julia comes back decisively now.

‘J. Please ...’

‘Well, what if he ... what if it wasn’t like that for him?’

I shake my head, feeling a sudden spiral in the pit of my stomach. Why won’t she believe me? It
was
like that. She needs to believe this or we’ll never get him back.

‘It’s a defence mechanism,’ I explain, ignoring the sidetrack because we both need to be totally clear on this. ‘Where the individual perceives themselves to be in extreme danger, they form an attachment to something, and that association can remain even once the danger is past. Sand-play could be that thing for him.’

She swallows hard now, and I know that something I’ve said is finally getting through to her.  Was it my use of the words
extreme danger?
I had to say that. I had to make her see.

‘Charlie.’ Her eyes cloud over now and I see she’s struggling with something she wants to ask me, something she’s at the same time scared to know. ‘Is there something ...
anything
... that you still haven’t told me?’

‘Honey, there isn’t ...’

She cuts across me. ‘That night we went out for dinner—you’d been about to tell me something important then, remember, when Mum called us back?’

That night? I look away from her direct gaze for a moment, feeling confused. Then I remember. I’d been about to confess to her that night about my
stupid
visit to the Hermosa clinic, come clean about it like Angus had suggested. Julia deserved to know about that, and I knew I needed to clear it. That’s what I had been about to tell her that night, nothing to do with our son.

I look into her eyes uneasily, realising what bad timing this would be to bring it up now. Unless ... has someone else told her already? I feel a hot trickle of shame under my collar. I was an idiot. A complete idiot. I don’t know what came over me the day I let myself be persuaded to go there. Given, Julia and I were separated at the time, but still ... it was a betrayal. It
feels
like a betrayal.  I rub at the side of my head, hammered by the strong, painful pulse going in my temples. And the incongruity of this.

If Julia knows about my trip to the Hermosa clinic, surely she wouldn’t choose to bring it up now? Why would she? I take a gulp of my wine and she accuses, her voice wobbly,  ‘You’d been about to tell me that you knew of Illusion being released, weren’t you?’

I stare at her, making the link—albeit the wrong one—that she has made. ‘Alys told me about that even if you never did.’

‘J...’ I begin.

‘It’s the real reason you rushed us out of Spain, isn’t it?’ Her eyes are hard, shiny with tears. ‘If you know something—if you
know
that Illusion did him some terrible harm ... why is it you’ve never shared that with me, Charlie? What is it that you think she did to him, for God’s sake?’