Keeping Sam (2 page)

‘I told you you could do it,’ he said as he strolled away. ‘You should have a little more faith in yourself, Kate.’

Chapter 2

‘Kate?’

The woman who greeted her stood out in the crowd milling around in the station’s concourse, not least because of her height. As Kate stepped forward with an uncertain tilt her to head, she wondered briefly what information Daniel, the social worker back in Manchester, had given to identify her. And then she laughed to herself. The crutch kind of gave it away.

‘Did you have a good journey?’ Elizabeth said. She was tall but well-built in a capable, stocky way. Daniel had said she seemed like just the kind of person to facilitate Kate’s visit with Sam, and within moments Kate could see exactly why. Before Kate could even answer her first question, Elizabeth had whisked them into a waiting taxi, positioning Kate’s crutch so that she could reach it easily and depositing her holdall on the floor by her feet. Kate felt as though her feet had hardly touched the floor – which was probably just as well: the new shoes she’d bought were absolute agony, but no way was she going to arrive at her parents’ house wearing the shuffle-slippers she’d been living in for the past three months. She had some dignity left.

In the taxi, Elizabeth did exactly what Kate had hoped she would do: she filled Kate in on what had been happening this end from the perspective of social services. Kate sank back and listened, feeling like a real person again; like someone who was actually worth talking to.

‘So, the first thing to bear in mind is that this is a sensitive situation,’ Elizabeth said, pushing her sunglasses high on her head as she spoke. ‘Your mother has been taking care of Sam now for over a year, and they’ve understandably become close. My feeling, Kate – and I’m telling you this in the strictest confidence – is the one and only reason she hasn’t brought him to see you is that she’s scared of losing him. Of course, there have been other reasons, all of them entirely plausible. So I could be one hundred percent wrong.’

‘What are the reasons?’ Kate asked, folding her hands over the bag on her lap and clasping them tightly.

‘She wrote to you?’ Elizabeth said.

‘Yes.’ Kate thought back to that letter. It still didn’t make any sense. But then, nothing about the past year made any sense at all.

‘Right. Well, there was an illness apparently – your father had been ill and so they couldn’t travel. And then Sam had chicken pox–’

‘Chicken pox! Poor baby! Was he okay? How bad was it?’

‘He’s fine, it’s a common childhood disease.’ Elizabeth pulled a notepad out of a smart leather briefcase and began to flick through it. Kate swallowed over a lump in her throat. Her little boy suffering from a childhood disease while she lay in a bed hundreds of miles away. How did he manage to get through it without his mother?

Not for the first time, she tried to imagine all the landmark moments she had missed. Had her mother recorded them for her? If there were photos, why hadn’t she sent Kate any? Had she kept his first attempts at drawings, a lock of hair after his first haircut, the clothes he was wearing when Kate last saw him?

‘Have you seen Sam?’ she asked, clasping her hands under her chin. ‘Does he seem happy? Is he well?’

‘He’s a perfectly happy, well-adjusted little boy.’ The social worker spoke without looking up. She was scribbling in her notepad, her handwriting spidery and indecipherable. Kate glanced out of the window but couldn’t seem to focus her attention. Excitement was making her jittery – in a matter of minutes she would be seeing her son again, holding him, breathing in his scent. She had been waiting so long.

‘Does he know who I am? Will he recognise me, do you think?’

Elizabeth shook her head. ‘It’s hard to say. And it depends on what your mother’s told him to prepare for this visit.’

‘A year isn’t so very long, is it?’ Kate mused, chewing on a nail. ‘Well, not quite a full year. I mean, kids are resilient, aren’t they? I was reading about it, one of the nurses lent me a book about child psychology. Sam will be fine. Won’t he? He won’t have been ... damaged by having me out of his life?’

‘Your parents appear to have cared for him very well, Kate.’

She watched Elizabeth, absorbed in her notes again. ‘You know, there’s something that’s been bothering me. And I think I need to get it off my chest.’

‘Shoot,’ Elizabeth said, leaning back and smiling. The taxi went over a bump and Kate’s crutch clattered to the floor.

‘Okay, I’m Sam’s parent – not his only parent, obviously, but his dad has been out of the picture for a while.’

‘Yes, so I understand.’

Kate glanced across at the social worker, who was still smiling impassively.

‘Well, why didn’t someone bring Sam to see his mother? Fine, you couldn’t bring him right away, I understand that. I get it that the doctors were concerned for a while about brain damage, but I’ve been fine for weeks now. I mean, weeks and weeks. All I’ve been doing is waiting, waiting for Sam and waiting for my body to get strong enough to let me walk properly so I could leave the hospital. And …’

She tailed off, aware that her voice was rising, her heart rate rising with it. ‘I’d like,’ she said shakily, ‘to know why someone – you or Daniel or whoever had the authority – didn’t simply collect Sam from my parents and bring him to see his mother. That’s all.’

‘Sure,’ Elizabeth said briskly. ‘Okay, well, the fact is, I guess we just didn’t think it was necessary to pluck a nineteen-month-old child from the care of his grandparents, who clearly dote on him, and take him all the way to Manchester to be transferred to the care of someone who hadn’t yet been discharged from hospital after a serious head injury and concussion – someone who was reported to be suffering from amnesia, couldn’t care for herself independently, and didn’t have anywhere to live. We considered that would not be in the best interests of the child.’

‘Best interests … Hold on, I’m his mother. This “someone” you keep talking about is his mother. What about my best interests? What about –’

‘Kate.’ Elizabeth held out her hands, palms together. Her tone was authoritative, although still gentle. ‘With all due respect, this isn’t about you. This is about Sam.’

Kate jerked her head away. She swallowed hard, surreptitiously wiping a tear from her cheek. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘that this is about Sam. All I care about is Sam. It’s just ... I’ve been so worried.’

‘Well, then,’ Elizabeth said, the matter-of-fact timbre firmly back in place, ‘now we’ve got that out of the way, here’s what I thought we’d do. We’ll go and see Sam first – your parents are expecting us – and then I’ll take you to your new lodgings. It’s a nice house, right here in Corrin Cove. The landlady is a friend of my sister. There are two rooms, one for you and one for Sam. It’ll be perfectly adequate until we get you sorted with something more permanent.’

‘Is it furnished?’ Kate said, trying to imagine the sheer scale of what she had to do to make a home now for herself and her son.

‘It is. We thought Sam could come for visits first, maybe stay overnight, and you can get to know what kinds of toys he likes, what kinds of things he’s into.’

Kate looked at the woman in astonishment. ‘Come for visits? He won’t need to visit me, he’ll be living with me.’ A hole began to form inside Kate’s stomach, an empty, nervous space that sensed only the worst. ‘Are you saying he won’t be coming home with me today? Is that what you’re saying?’

Elizabeth said nothing. Kate wondered what her mother had told this woman about her wayward daughter. It was true she’d found it hard to cope with Sam when he was tiny and colicky, and all those nights without sleep had worn her down, making her feel as though she was disappearing into a maelstrom of confusion. How her mother had loved being superior then, when Kate had called out of the blue and asked for help. How she’d gloated.

The taxi driver slid back his privacy panel and called out for directions.

‘It’s just down there,’ Elizabeth instructed, pointing to a narrow track, part hidden by a yew hedge. She bent to pick up Kate’s crutch, a sheet of fair hair hiding her impenetrable face. Before Kate could ask any more questions, the social worker was out of the taxi and standing on the kerb, hunting in her purse for change.

Kate gripped her crutch and looked out of the window, out into another time. Woodland Cottage sat on the outskirts of the seaside town of Corrin Cove, its white-rendered walls and grey slate roof stark against the year-round emerald lawns and trees. Kate had spent her childhood here, playing in the woods behind the house, building dens and tree houses, places to escape to. When she left, she had vowed never to return.

‘Okay,’ Elizabeth said, hoisting Kate’s bag onto her shoulder. ‘Are you ready to see your son?’

Chapter 3

He was an angel. An angel in short blue trousers and a Postman Pat T-shirt. Kate gazed at him, drinking him in, unable to take her eyes off him for a second. She had expected to feel more pain than this, to feel the full weight of everything she’d missed out on, but right now all she felt was joy. Pure, beautiful joy.

Kate sat on the floor, leaning over her son as far as she could, drinking in his scent. The sun streaked through the glass, lighting up his thick blonde hair, his scalp covered completely now, his head round and solid. He was sitting upright, chunky legs stuck out to the sides, stacking cups. ‘That one,’ he said, pointing with a chubby finger to the next in the sequence. Kate passed him the yellow cup wordlessly. It was, she realised with a jolt, the first time she’d ever heard him speak.

His face showed an almost comical expression of concentration as he placed the cup on top of the stack, then he looked up in delight, grinning, waiting for approval.

‘Oh, well done!’ exclaimed Kate. ‘Well done.’

She caught her breath. She was having a conversation with her son. It was almost too momentous to take in.

His hair was cut short, close to his head, but instead of making him look a little thuggish, like it could on some boys his age, on Sam it was angelic. He gave off a solid, contented aura, impossible to describe, and all Kate wanted was to pick him up again and crush him to her chest, as she had the second he’d toddled into the room, clutching his grandmother’s hand at the sight of two strangers. That was what her mother had called her. A stranger.

‘You’ll frighten him,’ Barbara had said, her arms folded, watching Kate and Sam through wary eyes. ‘Give him a bit of space. He’s not good with strangers.’

‘Kate’s hardly a stranger.’ Elizabeth’s gentle rebuke had fallen on deaf ears. Barbara stayed on the edges of the sun room; Kate’s father was nowhere to be seen.

Sam was murmuring under his breath now, and he pushed the stacking cups over, reaching instead for a box of brightly coloured bricks. ‘I need blue ones,’ he insisted solemnly, gazing up at Kate. She nodded, awestruck.

‘He speaks really well,’ she said, glancing up at her mother. ‘For his age, I mean.’

Barbara shrugged. ‘You did too, at that age.’

‘When did he …’ Kate didn’t know where to start. When did he walk, run, climb, eat his first ice cream, fall over for the first time? Has he had all his jabs and vaccinations, is he healthy, does he ever have nightmares …?

Does he ever ask about me?

Her unspoken questions hung in the air. Elizabeth coughed and pulled her notebook out of her briefcase again. She turned to a page with a yellow sticky note attached to the top.

‘Mrs Steiner,’ she said, ‘I think Kate has a few questions for you, and it might be an idea for her to ask them while I’m here.’

Kate wondered who Elizabeth was trying to protect: her or her mother. Then she realised that the social worker didn’t care a jot about either of them. She was only interested in Sam.

‘I’d like to know why you didn’t visit me in the hospital,’ Kate said softly. Sam regarded her with clear, calm eyes. Kate smiled at him, trying to send him all the love she had in her heart. He turned away, disinterested.

There was a pause, then Elizabeth spoke up. ‘Kate would like to know why you didn’t go and–’

‘I heard her,’ Barbara interrupted. ‘There’s no need for her to talk to the floor like a child.’

‘Maybe you could just tell her,’ Elizabeth suggested. ‘Explain your reasons. I’m sure Kate will understand once she hears them in your own words.’

Kate rolled a ball along the floor to Sam, wishing the two of them could go somewhere else and be alone together.

‘Well, I did come,’ Barbara said. ‘David and I came every day for the first few weeks. We had no idea what would happen, to Kate or to Samuel. We visited her in the hospital – I brought her some things from the flat, and we brought Samuel to see her.’

‘And then,’ Elizabeth prompted.

‘The doctors told us it was very unlikely she’d wake up from the coma. They said she might be brain damaged, or worse. We were looking after Sam with us in a hotel, but it wasn’t ideal. So we made the decision to come back here. It was for the best.’ Barbara voice rose with a hint of defensiveness that made Kate look up from the floor. Her mother was talking to Elizabeth; it was as though Kate didn’t exist. Kate bit her lip, taking her attention away from Sam with extreme reluctance.

‘But when you heard that I had woken up, when you found out I was going to be alright, why didn’t you visit again then? You could have phoned or written. Weren’t you happy to hear that I was okay?’

‘Of course I was.’ For a moment, Kate saw a flash of pain cross her mother’s face, but seconds later it was gone. ‘It was hard for us, seeing you lying there in the hospital. You can’t imagine. I’m glad – more than glad – to see you so recovered now, to see you well again.’

Barbara’s gaze slid to Kate’s crutch, which was propped up against the side of the sofa, then she turned to face Elizabeth. ‘Kate and her father and I had been estranged for many years,’ she explained. ‘I had seen Kate briefly when Sam was three months old, but prior to that we’d had no relationship for a long time. I had reconciled myself to the fact that our daughter did not want us in her life.’

‘Briefly?’ Kate echoed in astonishment. ‘Mum, you came and stayed with Sam and me for over a month. You fed him at night, changed him, took him out in his pram. We had … we had meals together, walks together. I thought it was okay between us, I thought–’