Gilly MacMillan - What She Knew

‘But they have families, and, sometimes – rarely – you lose a child during surgery, and the families can’t accept it. They blame you. Even when there’s nothing you could have done. Even when the surgery was your only option because without it the child would have died.’

‘Can you think of any families who might have cared more than others?’

‘Cared enough to take my son in revenge? An eye for an eye?’

‘Yes.’

He shook his head. ‘Like I said before, there were one or two who tried to sue the hospital, but even that isn’t very unusual. It’s a risk we take in our profession.’ He passed a hand across his forehead, squeezed his temples. ‘I can’t imagine them doing anything this extreme, I really can’t, but I suppose there is one family that sticks in my mind as being more persistent than the others. I can give you the name of the child, the father’s details will be on the records at the hospital.’

I pushed a piece of paper and a pen across the desk towards him. ‘Write down the name for me,’ I said. ‘The one that springs to mind. And write down the person to contact at the hospital.’

He wrote. He passed the paper to me. ‘Does Rachel know?’ he said.

This time, I made no attempt at conversation as Zhang drove me home.

I stared out of the window and thought about Ruth and Ben, and how much they loved each other’s company. I was transfixed by the sight of schoolchildren walking home with parents, or in messy groups without adults, shouting, laughing, jostling each other, dropping bits of rubbish, which the wind picked up and blew around them. It was the start of half-term this afternoon, as Ruth had said, and they were in celebratory mood.

‘Can we go to Ben’s school?’

‘We can. Why?’ Zhang said.

‘I want to get his stuff. It’s half-term.’

She only hesitated momentarily. ‘Of course,’ she said. She pulled into the forecourt of a petrol station to turn around and we got stuck behind another car. It was impossible not to see the headlines, murky as they were behind the thick plastic of the forecourt newsstand. The front pages of two newspapers showed a photograph of me at the press conference, beside one of my sister in her nightie, berating the journalists outside my house. This is what I read before Zhang pulled away:

FINCH FURIES

INTIMIDATING:Benedict’s auntie lets rip

SISTERS:who aren’t afraid to look SAVAGE

FEARS GROWING:5 days missing and counting

And on another paper, underneath a photograph of my boy:

MYSTERY OF BEN’S CLOTHING

New Timeline of Ben’s Disappearance Inside

Zhang still said nothing. I wasn’t sure if she’d seen them or not. I pulled up the hood of my coat and sank down into my seat. I was afraid of somebody recognising me and I was afraid of what they might say if they did.

Ben’s school was almost deserted as we arrived. We had to manoeuvre around some orange traffic cones that had been placed as a loose barricade across the entrance to the teachers’ car park. Only a few cars remained there, most of the spaces were empty. Zhang parked in a spot where we had a view of the playground, a small tarmacked space with football posts painted on one wall and colourful murals on the others. It was a modest little school, with the old Victorian schoolhouse at its heart, and various unprepossessing modern additions tacked on to it over the years.

Right up until the moment when we parked, I thought it was a good idea to visit the school, but as Zhang undid her seat belt and pulled the keys from the ignition, I found myself paralysed by the fact of actually being there.

It was the sight of the playground. It reminded me that this was Ben’s world, his other world, and that the last time I was here was to pick him up the previous Friday afternoon.

As Zhang turned to me, wondering why I wasn’t moving, images flooded my brain.

The playground on Friday: it had been heaving as usual, crowds of parents waiting for children who were disgorged from the building in various states.

Some looked as if they’d been catapulted out with the sole purpose of expending excess energy, chasing each other around between huddles of mothers, others looked beaten down by the week, bags weighing heavily on their shoulders. Some were sporting stickers proudly on their sweatshirts, one or two burst into tears at the sight of their parent after a long day of pent-up frustration.

I saw all this in vivid little bursts: pushchairs, mothers laden like packhorses, snacks being distributed, tales of injustice or triumph. Children sent back into the building to get forgotten things. A teacher with a cup of tea in hand; the headmaster wearing a novelty tie on a rare outing from his office, a few parents flocking around him. Cut-out figures strung like bunting in the windows of the classroom behind them.

‘Are you having second thoughts?’ asked Zhang.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to do this.’

I made myself focus, take a deep breath. In front of me the playground was empty, except for a green plastic hoop, which had been discarded in the middle of the tarmac, and the remnants of colourful chalk marks on the ground, only partially washed away by the rain. I got out of the car.

‘Be warned that the school’s hired security,’ Zhang said as we crossed the playground to the entrance, ‘because of the press. They caught a journalist snooping in the school office.’

As we walked, my legs felt as though they weren’t working properly, there was faintness in my head and my chest. Everything seemed to take on a cartoon-like quality. I visualised the press as an invasive plant, its roots and tendrils growing implacably into every area of my life and Ben’s, looking for action or information to feed off. I felt distinctly unwell, and I wondered if I should go back to the car and let Zhang go in without me, but we’d arrived at the door by then and to articulate how I felt was impossible.

We were admitted to the building by a burly man, who I’d never seen before. He had a shaved head, an earpiece and a strikingly large beer belly. He checked Zhang’s ID and then let us in.

I led the way to Ben’s classroom. All I wanted was to get Ben’s PE kit from his peg, and anything else he might have left behind. That’s what I would normally have done at half-term. I would have washed his kit, and checked he had everything he needed for the next few weeks in the run-up to Christmas. Not to do that would have felt wrong.

It wasn’t to be that simple though. As we neared the door to Ben’s classroom, I saw a big display of artwork, and in the middle of that display was a picture that I recognised, because Ben had made it. My knees buckled.

After that I have only snatches of memory and sensation: confusion, when I came round, because I was on the floor of the corridor and Zhang was propping me up; eyes refocusing again on the display of artwork, seeing painted leaves and branches in all the shades of brown and orange and green and black that wrapped themselves around Ben and swallowed him up when we were in the woods; seeing Ben’s picture amongst the others and feeling sure that I could see the imprint of his fingers in the smears of paint; feeling an impulse to stand, and put my fingers where his had been, and then an inability to do that.

When they’d got me upright and they were sure I wasn’t going to faint again, they moved me into the classroom and sat me in the teacher’s chair.

Miss May was there, and also the teaching assistant. I heard Zhang’s voice, saying, ‘She wants his things, that’s all, that’s why we’re here.’

I watched Miss May go over to a row of pegs that ran along one wall of the classroom, and take down the only PE bag that remained there, and behind it there was a label. It was a photograph of a dog, black and white like Skittle, and the name ‘Ben F’.