Simon Lelic: The Child Who

‘Leo,’ she repeated. ‘Please.’

Leo, with a glance, settled his fingers. He stared at his flattened hands.

What if he’d fled? He must have known, surely, that they would catch up with him. Somehow, at some point – in this day and age. So if he fled. If he panicked. If he suspected he was running out of time… He would let her go. Wouldn’t he? Surely he would. It was the only rational course of action. He was caught anyway. Why make things worse? Not just worse: intensely, immeasurably so.

‘Leo.’

Even to someone as addled as this… this lunatic .

‘Leo, you’re…’

And he was that. A lunatic. Someone deranged. Quite what had happened to make him so, Leo could not begin to imagine. It wasn’t rage, this, after all. Or if a mist had descended, it had settled. Low enough to obscure any guiding light but not so dense that the man was unable to plan, to scheme, to act as though—

‘Leo!’

Megan was facing him now across the breakfast bar. Something in her seemed to have shattered. ‘Stop!’ she said. ‘Please! Stop drumming your blasted fingers!’

Leo swallowed. He slid his hands into his lap. Sorry, he tried to say but his throat, his mouth, was gummed dry.

Megan, eyes closed, said it instead. She started to say something more but turned back in silence towards the worktop. She stood facing the sink. She flicked on the kettle. It must have been the third or fourth time she had set it to boil.

Leo studied her. She had on her pyjamas, as well as the jumper that had emerged from her closet on day two: a polo neck, the one she described as her hot-water bottle and only ever wore when she was ill. It was fraying at the joins and two sizes too big, so that the sleeves hung to her knuckles and the shoulders overlapped her arms. Her hair was gathered in a shabby bunch and her skin was sallow and free of make-up – and not just because it was the middle of the night.

Leo swallowed again. He slid back his chair. It scraped on the ceramic-tiled floor and he saw the sound rattle Megan’s spine. She twitched her chin in his direction, then gripped the handle of the kettle, as though impatient for it to steam. Leo touched the chair, the table, the dresser. He moved from one piece of furniture to the next. He closed on Megan’s back and reached his hands towards her shoulders.

‘Don’t.’ Megan stepped away and turned. She pressed herself against the roll of the worktop and wrapped herself tight.

‘Meg.’ Leo took another step and his wife seemed almost to flinch.

‘Don’t,’ she said again. ‘Please.’

It was the please that hurt most.

‘Meg. We need to talk. Don’t you think?’

She did not answer – and her silence, suddenly, was more than Leo could bear. After weeks of this. The skulking, on his part; the passive loathing on hers. Nothing said, everything implied, even through the cold formality of the words they did exchange. No physical contact of any sort, though Leo longed to hold his wife, to be held in turn by her. They had collided, once or twice, in doorways, around corners, and he had caught the scent of her – the warmth of her – only for Megan to bear it briskly away. She had not even unpacked. The case she had filled the day Ellie had been taken lay distended on their daughter’s floor. Her family had returned to their homes – to their beds, anyway, though Megan’s mother was invariably back with them by nine – but Megan herself behaved like a guest: sleeping apart, eating apart, confining herself to narrow corridors of space. Not a guest, then. A prisoner. Someone trapped. And even though Leo had tried everything he dared to free the both of them, she refused to look beyond what in her mind had the inviolability of scripture: that everything that had come to pass – all of it – was Leo’s fault.

‘I didn’t mean for this to happen, you know.’

Plaintive, he was dimly aware, would have been a better tack: healthier, more nourishing, less like gobbling grease to sate a hunger. Yet he could sense his fury gathering, barging its way towards the surface. ‘Is that what you think?’ he heard himself saying. ‘That I meant for this to happen? That this was somehow my plan all along?’

Megan remained silent. Everything about her seemed to tighten.

‘I’m sorry, Meg! I don’t know how many times you want me to say it!’

She watched him. Just stared at him.

‘She’s my daughter too. I want her back too!’

No movement. Nothing. Not a twitch – until he stepped.

Megan slid away, towards the open part of the room. ‘Don’t,’ she said once more.

Don’t. Don’t, don’t, don’t. Leo held up his hands. ‘Fine.’ He backed as far from his wife as the kitchen units would allow. ‘Don’t talk to me. Don’t touch me. Just carry on acting like I don’t exist. Like you’re the only one who’s feeling any pain.’

Megan made a sound. It was difficult to read. Disdain, most likely. Or pity?

‘We need to get past this, Meg. We need to talk about it. Because when they find him. When they find El—’

‘Don’t! Don’t say it!’

Not pity then. Leo felt his chin fall. ‘What? Why not? They’ll find her, Meg! How can they not? One way or…’ He shook his head. He had not meant to start that sentence. ‘The picture,’ he said. ‘It’s all they needed. With the picture they—’

‘Stop it! For God’s sake, Leo! Don’t you think you’ve taunted fate enough!’

‘Fate?’ Leo felt his lip curl. ‘Fate has nothing to do with this!’

‘No. Of course not. I forgot: this is about you. Right from the start, this has only ever been about you!’

He shook his head. ‘That isn’t fair. You know it isn’t.’

Megan angled her chin as though studying him. ‘You think this absolves you. Don’t you? You think finding some blasted picture makes everything else all right. Well it doesn’t, Leo! It only goes to prove how much you’re actually to blame!’

Leo spread his arms. ‘I just said! Didn’t I? I said I was sorry!’

‘And what? I’m supposed to forgive you?’ She touched her forehead, let her hand rebound. ‘Of course. I forgot. In Leo-land, that’s how it works. As long as you’re sorry , you can get away with anything.’

Leo smiled. He looked at his watch. ‘Congratulations, Meg. You made it, what, a whole thirty seconds this time before bringing up the case?’

‘I didn’t say anything about the fucking case!’ She wiped her chin with a sleeve. ‘And anyway so what if I did? I can’t mention it? We can talk about your daughter being abducted but Daniel Blake being convicted of murder – sorry, that cuts too close to the bone.’ Megan pressed a palm to her brow. She opened her mouth to say something more but seemed suddenly overwhelmed by the futility of it, the effort of it. She made, instead, to walk away. Just walk away.

‘It doesn’t absolve me,’ Leo said. And a voice, after, added: stop. Leave it there. Let Megan go and be grateful that you did. But this was something. Shouting, fighting: it was better than doing nothing. He wanted to keep Megan there because he could not face going back to where they had been. He would do anything to avoid that.

‘It doesn’t absolve me. I never said it did. But at least I’ve done something. At least I’ve been doing something .’ He paused, peered over the edge. ‘What have you done, Megan? Between blaming me? Between pining, making tea? What have you actually done ?’

‘Excuse me?’ The warning sign on Megan’s face was plain to read. Leo hurtled past it.

‘I’ve been out there. Every day. Driving, walking, searching. And I found something. Something important. All you’ve been doing is—’