Ralph’s Children Read online

  Still, the fact remained that it had once been a place filled with dead bodies, which did make it sort of interesting, plus it was in the middle of nowhere, which meant away from the home.

  Going outside Challow Hall’s boundaries after dark was strictly forbidden.

  Wayland’s Smithy itself, therefore, massively out of bounds.

  And seriously spooky.

  They’d gone after lights out, leaving rolled-up towels in their beds (though bed checks were mostly cursory affairs, staff keen to get back to TV and supper) and making their way silently, armed with torches – two bought, two pinched – along the chalky paths and grassy tracks, waiting until they’d reached their destination before lighting candles nicked from the kitchens.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ the fair-haired girl had said the first time, down in the darker-than-dark passage.

  ‘Don’t be scared,’ the thin, freckled boy had reassured her.

  ‘It’s fucking brilliant,’ the other girl had said.

  ‘The dog’s fucking bollocks,’ said the red-haired boy.

  They’d all laughed then, and heard their laughter bouncing off the ancient stones, the sound seeming to shimmer past the boulders at the entrance, and float on up through the beech trees into the black sky.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ said the tall girl.

  It became their own private ritual. Walkers and cyclists might visit the Smithy in daylight, sometimes even camp nearby in season, but the burial chamber was their place now for what they called ‘doing’ the book. A kind of alternative world for them as they journeyed the two hundred and something pages, taking it in turns now to read, swapping characters as if trying them out for size, growing ever more excited as they neared the end.

  And then, when they had done with the book itself, they set it aside.

  Which was when it really began.

  The game.

  Kate

  Even now, almost a year later, looking back on the dark, painful period leading to their separation, it was still hard for Kate to make complete sense of what had gone so horribly wrong between her and Rob.

  A positive pregnancy test had brought joy in early January, sent crashing down in April with the news that a routine blood-screening test had shown abnormal levels of alphafetoprotein in Kate’s blood.

  She’d gone to her appointment alone, though it was the Easter break and she’d been advised to come with Rob, but he had a meeting that morning, so she hadn’t mentioned it to him. At the time, she’d told herself she’d hoped to spare him unnecessary anxiety, but later she realized it had been more a case of burying her own head in the sand, because if Rob wasn’t beside her listening to any bad news, then maybe it wasn’t real.

  Except that after he’d come home, kissing her first, then stacking up his paperwork on the light oak dining table in their living room (where he usually worked, though they’d turned one room into an office) she’d had to shatter his normality and tell him herself.

  ‘What does it mean?’ Rob had asked. ‘What does this protein do?’

  ‘It means there might be something wrong,’ Kate said.

  She was fighting to remain relatively composed, had made up her mind that the only way through this for her was to at least feign calm.

  ‘Wrong with you?’ Rob asked quickly, alarm in his eyes.

  ‘Not with me,’ Kate reassured him.

  He didn’t say anything, sat down at the table and looked at his work.

  ‘It means,’ she pushed herself on, ‘that our baby might have—’

  ‘“Might”,’ he interrupted, ‘always seems a bit of a pointless word to me.’

  She knew right away how odd that remark was, yet felt a surge of compassion, and understood that it was his way of trying to fend off brutal reality.

  ‘That’s all we have right now, Rob,’ she said. ‘We need to be aware that our child might have spina bifida or—’

  ‘Don’t,’ he cut in again.

  Kate pulled out the chair beside his, sat down quickly. ‘You need to talk to the doctor with me, to ask questions.’ She laid her left hand on the table, waited for him to touch her, but he didn’t move. ‘Though we won’t know any more till after my next ultrasound.’

  That was when she’d seen the strange expression on his face: a kind of obtuse shutting down.

  ‘I need to get on with this work,’ Rob had said.

  As if he had not heard the potentially shattering words she’d spoken.

  Bewildered, needing to know that he had taken it in, needing comfort, needing him to be Rob again, Kate had made another attempt. ‘We have to—’

  ‘No.’ Sharper this time.

  She stared at him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘But I do.’ She had stood up. ‘We have to.’

  ‘No,’ Rob said, definitely. ‘We do not.’

  ‘Not yet, perhaps, if you can’t—’ She broke off, confused. ‘But if—’

  ‘Stop,’ he had said. ‘Please just stop.’

  She’d told herself it had been nothing more than a blip, a refusal to face the possibilities; and though she knew it might have helped her to share her fears with him, she remembered the shock he’d had at losing Emmie and resolved to give him more time.

  Nothing had changed. The intelligent, loving man she’d been married to for two years seemed to have disappeared, hidden behind a frustrating fog of obduracy. When Kate begged him to talk over prospects and options, Rob let her talk, but seemed hardly to be listening and offered no response.

  ‘This is so stupid,’ she had told him. ‘And horribly unfair to me.’

  ‘I see no point in talking about something that’s not going to happen.’

  ‘But what if it does?’ Kate was growing desperate. ‘What if the ultrasound shows something badly wrong with our baby.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ Rob said.

  ‘But you just said—’

  ‘I mean termination,’ Rob said. ‘There’s no point talking about that.’

  ‘I’m hoping – praying – we won’t have to,’ Kate said. ‘God knows it’s the last thing in the world I want to even think about, but if the very worst happens, and they tell us our child is going to suffer in some dreadful way or . . .’

  His eyes stopped her. They’d always been a bright, but gentle blue, but now their softness was gone, leaving them hard as gemstones.

  ‘You need to understand,’ Rob said. ‘No matter what anyone tells us might be wrong with our baby, I will never, under any circumstances, agree to an abortion.’

  For an instant, she felt a bubble of hysteria rise inside her. ‘That’s not you talking,’ she said. ‘You sound like a Victorian, or—’

  ‘What?’ Rob asked. ‘Like a father?’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Kate had retaliated. ‘What do you think this is doing to me? I’m the one carrying this baby, I’m its mother.’

  ‘You’re talking about killing our child, Kate.’ Rob had been implacable. ‘Which makes me realize that maybe I don’t really know you at all.’

  It had been to all intents and purposes an ultimatum which Kate, already overwhelmed by fear and the possible prospect of all kinds of grief, had felt unable to cope with. Which had made it almost a relief when, that same night, Rob had packed a bag and left the cottage, heading for Manchester.

  ‘I need to be with Emmie,’ he’d told her at the door.

  ‘And to hell with me,’ Kate had said.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said. ‘At least try to understand that much.’

  She had suppressed an impulse to hit him.

  ‘When will you be back?’ she’d asked, instead.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘The ultrasound’s scheduled for Wednesday,’ Kate said. ‘I assumed you’d want to come with me.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Rob had said.

  Kate had shut the door in his face.

  Ralph’s
Journal

  Those four children didn’t care that William Golding’s novel was a modern classic. They came upon it by pure accident and became tantalized by it because Lord of the Flies is a terrific adventure yarn about children turning into savages, complete with heroes and villains – all of them kids – and a mysterious beast needing to be slain.

  The story plucked them, for a while, out of their own miserable, boring lives, simple as that. And when they’d finished reading it, they took from it just what they needed, nothing more.

  What they took were four characters named Jack, Roger, Simon and Piggy (all boys because there were no girls in the story) – and, of course, the ‘Beast’ – and they created a game of pretend. A role-playing fantasy game which became the focal point of their lives. Which became so real and vital to them that they carried it with them into their adult world.

  Four characters plus one other, who invited herself along for the ride, and who was lucky enough to be allowed to stay, and become their ‘chief’.

  Laurie

  During one of her scans at the Clinique Saint Joseph-Martin – situated just outside Avignon, three miles from where her Aunt Angela lived – they had told Laurie that she was expecting a son. Neither of her parents had been present, but her aunt had observed the joy in her young niece’s face and had phoned Shelly later to say that she was only sorry they hadn’t seen it for themselves, because if they had, any doubts they might have about Laurie’s fitness for motherhood would have melted away.

  ‘She’s born to it,’ Angie had said.

  ‘We’re all born to it,’ Shelly had replied.

  ‘This was really special,’ her sister had insisted. ‘And even if most mums-to-be do look like that,’ she’d added, ‘they haven’t usually been sent into exile because their parents are still trying to stick their heads up their own backsides.’

  At twelve weeks, a Combined Ultrasound and Biochemical screening had been undertaken. This and the Triple Test – a blood screening to establish risk factors for spina bifida and Down’s syndrome and the less common Trisomy 18 – had established Laurie’s baby as being in the low risk group. Not that anyone had been concerned, the mother being young and healthy and an earlier scan having shown no structural abnormality.

  ‘Thank God,’ Angela said to Shelly, who’d come to stay.

  ‘Yes,’ Shelly had said. ‘Of course.’

  Her sister had stared deep into her eyes, blue as her daughter’s and her own. ‘You do mean that, don’t you, Shelly?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ Shelly had shaken her head, tossed her blonde bob like a pony shaking off insects. ‘Don’t be stupid, Angie.’

  They had known as soon as he was born.

  Laurie had seen it in their eyes, first the obstetrician’s and nurses’ and then, a little later, after they had taken him away, in her parents’ and her aunt’s.

  ‘What’s wrong with my baby?’ she had asked.

  The question had been trapped in her mind till that moment, packed in ice, not emerging because she’d been too afraid of hearing the answer. Yet she had held her son, had scanned him from head to toe, and he had looked to her eyes utterly perfect, and suddenly it occurred to her that maybe this reaction was some kind of ploy, a trick. Maybe now was when they had planned to play their endgame, to try to keep her baby from her, maybe to . . .

  ‘They’re not sure yet.’ Her father’s clumsy answer broke into her thoughts.

  ‘What of? Where is he?’ Laurie had felt fretful, afraid. ‘I want him back.’

  They had said when they’d taken him away that there was nothing to be concerned about, that they were just doing routine checks.

  ‘Try not to worry,’ her mother had told her. ‘It’ll be OK.’

  ‘Not it,’ Laurie had said, quickly. ‘He. Sam. His name is Sam.’

  ‘That’s a lovely name,’ her Aunt Angela had said, warmly. ‘He’s gorgeous.’

  ‘I know he is,’ Laurie had said.

  They had reached their decision swiftly. No talk of adoption, nothing as savage and pointless as that, because they knew she would never agree, but only three days later, while Laurie and Sam were still at the clinic, Pete and Shelly had arrived fully armed for their sales pitch on the Mann Home. Brochures, letters of praise, glowing results and tributes from families, doctors and even Members of Parliament.

  ‘Nowhere else that comes close,’ Pete had told her.

  ‘Nowhere else like it, is what we’ve heard,’ Shelly had backed him up.

  ‘No way,’ Laurie had said, her whole body rigid. ‘He’s my son. I’m going to take care of him.’

  ‘I wish, my darling,’ Shelly said, ‘that was possible.’

  ‘The fact is,’ Pete said, ‘you just don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  They had taken their time, speaking patiently to her, kindly and, worst of all, sensibly, telling her she had very little choice. Even though it appeared, so far, that her son was one of the lucky ones, in that he had no immediately apparent heart problems, Sam was still going to need special attention, they said, if he was going to have the best possible chance in life. Which was, of course, what they all wanted.

  ‘You’ve wanted me to get rid of him from the beginning,’ Laurie said.

  ‘At the beginning, that was true,’ Pete admitted. ‘But not any more.’

  There were tears in his eyes, and Laurie couldn’t imagine he was that good an actor, had not wanted, even after such a long period of embattlement, to think him capable of that.

  She had waited for him to say that it might have been better if she had gone through with an abortion, had waited, wound up like a killer creature with claws and teeth ready to rip out his throat, for him to say it might have been better for Sam. But he didn’t say anything of the kind. He and Shelly had just continued on their magnificent sales pitch, giving her time to hear them out, mull it over.

  Not too much time, though. Just enough to get it right.

  ‘See if you can look at it as the best possible start for Sam,’ Pete said. ‘Nothing more than that, sweetheart.’

  ‘The best possible start for Sam, same as any baby,’ Laurie told them, ‘is with me, his mother.’

  At least that was what she had tried telling them, but there was something wrong with her; she felt too weak and drained, not up to competing on what felt more like a negotiation with people vastly more experienced.

  And of course, they were right, weren’t they? He did deserve to have the best start available to him. And if all these people – mothers and fathers, grandparents, siblings, doctors, psychologists and the rest who’d written those letters of praise – if they all felt that being in a place as fine as the Mann Home was more important for children like Sam than being with their own mothers, then who was she to argue with them?

  There. She had already used one of their phrases. ‘Children like Sam.’

  No one else like Sam on earth. Unique as his DNA and fingerprints.

  Remember that, Laurie had told herself. Remember it for ever.

  If she forgot that, he was as good as lost.

  Kate

  After Rob had left, Kate had stayed alone for a time, keeping away from her parents and the paper – telling her friend Abby, who’d been coming to visit, that she and Rob both had flu – putting all her energies into what she was best at: researching what their child might face if one of the disorders thrown up speculatively by the blood screening was confirmed by the next stage of testing.

  She could have gone to the hospital, spoken to specialists there, had a talk with Mary Kennet, their GP – and she knew, of course, that she might well have to do all that in time, but she knew too that the only thing keeping her sane for now was the pretence that this research was work, was not about her and certainly not about her own unborn child.

  Except, of course, it was her baby, which meant that even if Rob had walked away, she was not alone because their child was growing inside her – and there was the clincher, finally,
for her. And she was almost certain that she would have arrived at the same decision even if Rob had not refused to talk things through, had not cut and run.

  Their child was growing inside her, and had a right to live.

  In sickness or in health.

  She had asked her parents, finally, if she could meet them together, deliver all the news to date in one hit, rather than having to endure two painful encounters.

  ‘And please,’ she had told Michael on the phone, ‘can we keep this to just us?’

  Meaning could he please not tell Delia.

  The new woman in his life. Delia Price, a website designer from Melbourne. A clever, attractive brunette, taller, younger and steelier than Bel – and, according to Kate’s besotted dad, courageous into the bargain, bearing scars on her back from an old riding accident yet still getting back on horses at every opportunity.

  ‘Which pretty much sums Delia up,’ Michael had said a while ago.

  Kate had never quite managed to get past her dislike of Delia, who was always charming to her when Michael was around, but cool if they were alone. Not to mention the way she had of trying to score points with Rob, inviting him to go with her on Sunday morning horse rides, knowing Kate wouldn’t come because she’d been badly thrown as a child and had been nervous of horses ever since.

  ‘If she had any sensitivity,’ Kate had told Rob, ‘she wouldn’t rub my nose in it.’

  ‘But she isn’t asking you to ride,’ Rob had pointed out.

  ‘Quite,’ Kate had said, knowing she was being unreasonable, but Delia had made her hackles rise from the first.

  She certainly wasn’t about to share this most private, sensitive matter with her.

  ‘I’m not keen on keeping secrets from Delia,’ Michael said.

  ‘Fair enough,’ Kate agreed. ‘Except then I won’t be able to tell you what’s happening to me, and I really could use your support, Dad.’

  ‘Emotional blackmail,’ her father said. ‘Bit beneath you.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Kate said, ‘that just can’t be helped.’

  ‘Rob must be very relieved about your decision,’ Michael said after she’d told them. It was warm for April, and they were sitting out in the cottage’s back garden, using the teak table and chairs that Kate and Rob had bought last summer, sitting beneath an apple tree on the grass that, in growing season, Rob liked to mow once a fortnight.