Scott Nicholson - Head cases

"Was she ever real?" Katie asked.

"Shhh," Peter mumbled around the toothbrush. "It's okay, honey. It wasn't your fault."

Even Peter believed it. She looked at his hands. No. They would never have been able to slip a bag over a baby's head, hold it loosely until the squirming stopped.

She was surprised she still had tears left to cry. Maybe she would run out of them in a week or two, when she was beyond utterly. When she had put it behind her.

"Peach," she said. "I think peach walls would look good."

"It's only for a little while. Until we have enough money to move. The sooner we get you away from this house, the better."

The million wouldn't buy Amanda back. But at least it would help bury her, confine her to a distant place in Katie's memory. Maybe one day, Katie really would be able to forget. One morning, she would awaken without guilt.

She made coffee, some eggs for Peter. He rushed through breakfast, checking over the NASDAQ in the newspaper. She kissed him at the door.

"I promise to try harder," she said to him.

He put a hand to the back of her neck, rubbed her cheek with his thumb. "She had eyes just like yours," he said, then he looked away. "Sorry. I'm not supposed to talk about it."

"We'll be away from here soon."

"It wasn't your fault."

She couldn't answer. She had a lump in her throat. So she nodded, watched him walk to his car, then closed the door. After he'd driven away, headed for the Battery in Manhattan, she went up the stairs.

She reached under the bed and pulled out the keepsake box. She untied the pink ribbon and opened it. Amanda Lee Forrester, born 7-12-00. Seven pounds, nine ounces. Tiny footprints on the birth certificate.

Katie shuffled through the photographs, the birth announcement clipped from the newspaper, the hospital bracelet, the two white booties, the small silver spoon Peter's mom had given them. Soon Katie would be able to put these things behind her and move on. But not too soon.

She could cry at will. She could pretend to be utterly if she needed to, if Peter ever suspected. She could hide her guilt in that perfect hiding place, her disguise of perpetual self-blame.

Katie put all the items of Amanda's life into the plastic bag, then tied the box closed with the ribbon. She returned the box to its place under the bed. Peter would never understand, not a trade such as the one she'd made.

A million dollars to forever carry the weight of silence.

She clicked on the nursery monitor, sat on the bed, and listened.

###

We knew it was a bad idea to isolate ourselves so much when it was so near her time but it had been years since our last holiday and besides, her doctors assured us that we were at least three weeks away from the birth.

It wasn't planned-not at all. We'd settled for a couple of weeks' rest and I'd booked a three-month sabbatical from the office, hoping to get some work done on the house. Then we won the competition. One week anywhere in Britain of our choosing as long as we took the holiday in the next month. One day we were in our flat in London, surrounded by half-finished building work, noise, dust, and general aggravation, the next we were all alone on the west coast of Scotland, in a cottage by the shore on Jura-just us, the seals, and the view over the sea to Argyll.

I wasn't sure at first. I wanted to be near a hospital, just in case of emergencies, but she insisted. It would be our last holiday alone for a while, she was fit and healthy, and she wanted to do it.

The nearest house was five miles south, the nearest doctor twice that distance. To the north and west there were only the rugged hills and the deer. We didn't even have a boat. At least there was a road, a single-track lane with passing places. It had recently been resurfaced and we had been provided with a new Range Rover for the duration. I was confident that we could reach the doctor's house in less than twenty minutes in event of an emergency. That was quicker than I could have managed it in London. And we had warned the doctor we were coming. I had talked myself round to the idea and I wasn't worried. I should have been.

We arrived late. Jura is not the easiest place to get to. It involved a flight to Glasgow and a short hop over to Islay. The Range Rover was waiting at Islay airport, which is more a glorified field than an airstrip. After that, it is a fifteen-mile trip to the Port Askaig ferry, a small ramshackle affair that can take four cars on a calm day across the half mile of treacherous waters towards the stunning mountains of Jura.

Once on the island, it was a single track road all the way. There is only one road twenty miles of it-with Craighouse, the only town, halfway along, but we were going right to the far end.

We stopped in the one and only hotel for a meal but we were too late to pick up any other provisions. That would have to wait till the morning.

It was dark when we arrived and Sandra was too tired to do anything other than fall into bed and sleep. As for me, I was restless. I never believed that I would miss the bustle of London's streets, but the lack of noise here had me on edge.

The only sound was the gentle lapping of the sea on the rocks only ten yards from the cottage's front door. Occasionally there would be the forlorn cry of a gull or the croaking of a crow, but apart from that, it was silent and dark and strangely disquieting.

I paced the floors, studying the titles of the books on the long shelves round the walls, listening to the radio, drinking whiskey and trying to pretend that I didn't miss the television.

It was very late by the time I snuggled into bed, taking advantage of the radiating heat from my pregnant wife beside me. I believe I slept soundly, I don't remember any dreams, and nothing disturbed me during the night.

She woke me the next morning with a whisper.

'Get up. Hurry. You've got to see this.'

I was still groggy when I raised my head to see her leaving the room. I got out of bed, wincing at the cold seeping through the floorboards, and joined her at the window in the front room.

'Look', she said, 'Isn't it wonderful?'

It was very early morning-the sun was just coming up over the hills of Argyll, spreading a pink glow across the wispy clouds.

The sea was being slightly ruffled by a small breeze and, there in the foreground, just at the edge of the small lawn in front of the house, sat three otters obviously a mother and two smaller young. As we watched they trotted along the shore then slipped into the water.

We crept out, still naked, and watched them cavorting among the huge fronds of seaweed until I slipped on the wet grass and the sudden movement caused them to dive, resurfacing again much farther out. Sandra came over and squeezed me, her full belly pressing its heat against my flesh.

'Thanks for bringing us here John. I love it.' We kissed and I marveled again at how hot and alive and heavy with life she had become. It was only as we turned back to the house that I noticed the mound.

It had been too dark the night before to see any details of the surrounding area but now I could see that the cottage was built on a small raised piece of land between two arms of a river. We had come across a small bridge last night but in the dark I had failed to notice it.

Behind the cottage, just where the rivers split, there was a huge stone cairn, standing eight to ten feet high and topped off with a cross which looked to be the same height again as the cairn and made of solid iron. Around the cairn there was a wrought iron fence with spiked railings jutting up towards the sky.

'Why would they put something like that out here?' she asked me 'I thought that cairns were usually built on top of hills?'