Alex Lake - Seven Days

‘Wow,’ she said. She paused while she searched for an appropriate description of his gyrations. ‘You’re break-dancing!’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m being a snake . A snake doing yoga.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Of course.’ For a while they’d done some stretches she remembered from PE and she’d told him they were doing yoga, and it had obviously stuck with him.

He wiggled around for a while, a look of triumph on his face, then stood up and ran to Maggie. He jumped on her back and pressed his cheek to her skin.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Ride the horsey!’

Maggie twisted and bucked in an attempt to throw him off. It was a game they had played since he was very small. She had done it with Seb and Leo, but they had not enjoyed it nearly as much as Max. He shrieked with pleasure, laughing uncontrollably. It was a strange thing; despite the circumstances, he was a very happy child. Of course, he had no sense that he was missing out on anything, because he knew no different. In some ways it was the perfect set-up for a toddler: unfettered access to his mum and a guarantee of her undivided attention. Nonetheless, Seb and Leo had not been as happy as Max was. Seb was quiet, and prone to outbursts of crying. He’d been like that ever since he was born, sleeping fitfully and whimpering in his crib during the day. Leo was more like Max, but had a wild temper. From time to time, and without apparent reason, he would have screaming fits during which he was totally unreachable. He would hit her, and, if she tried to hold him, claw at her cheeks.

She had put it down to living in a tiny room, but then Max came along, and she wondered whether it was simply the way Seb and Leo were. Nature, not nurture. After all, if it was all down to circumstances, they should all have been the same – this was the perfect way to test. In normal life there were other things that could influence a child’s development, but not here. This was like a cruel experiment designed to examine how three children in the exact same environment turned out differently.

And Max, unlike the brothers he would never meet, was as happy as they came. Perhaps Seb and Leo got it from their dad – she hated even thinking of him as their father, but it was true, at least biologically – and Max took after someone else. He certainly had a look of her brother, the same fair hair and innocent, questioning blue eyes, the same goofy smile and easy laugh.

That was one of the things she regretted most, when she looked at her third son: that he would never meet his uncle, and that her brother, who had been a constant, daily irritation through her unfairly truncated teenage years, would never get to be the mentor to his nephew that he would, in her imagination, have become.

James would have loved him. He would have loved all three of her sons, with the same fierce, painful love that she did.

But Max was the only one she had left. He was the only one James would ever be able to love, and all she wanted in the entire universe was to save him so he could meet his uncle and have the life he deserved.

And she was going to.

Somehow.

When she had successfully bucked him off her back enough times to satisfy him, Maggie sat cross-legged on the floor. Max was on her lap, his legs around her waist. She had her hands on his hips; he was holding her forearms, running his fingers over the soft, fair hairs that grew there. They were new sometime in the last ten years; she didn’t know when they had started to grow, but she had not had them when she was fifteen.

A lot else had changed, too. Some of it – the hair on her forearms, the ache in her knees – were the result of time passing. Other stuff – the sallow skin, persistent cough, acne on her forehead – were from the lack of light and movement and good food. Others still – the heavier breasts, wider hips – were from the pregnancies.

It was one of the strangest features of her imprisonment. Around her, nothing had changed. Her life was frozen. She had not finished school – not even got her GCSEs – not gone to university, not got a job and a house and a car and a husband. All those things were impossibly distant for her, the achievements and waypoints of the life she had been denied.

And yet she was getting older. She had grown up, become a woman, both mentally and physically. Her life was moving along, slipping away. Ten years from now her metabolism would be slowing down; ten years later she’d be going through menopause.

And the man was getting older, too. He was – what, fifty-five? – when he took her, so he was in his late sixties now. He seemed healthy enough, but in another decade or two? He could become ill, or slip and fall, and then what? By the time they got to her and Max they might have starved.

If Max was still here then. It might be another two-year-old, unknowingly awaiting removal as soon as his third birthday arrived.

Max leaned forward, resting his face against her chest. He had always loved the feel of bare skin; often in the morning he would lie awake on top of her, his torso pressed to hers. She wondered why it felt so good to him. Perhaps he was listening to the sounds of her body, sounds he remembered in some dim way from his time in her womb.

‘Mummy,’ he said. ‘Can I have a story?’

Maggie kissed his head. The soft curls of his hair brushed her cheek.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘About Superman? Since you’re wearing your Superman undies?’

He shook his head. His eyes were closing. ‘About the light beam,’ he said.

‘Ah,’ Maggie replied. ‘The beam of light. Our magical beam of light. Our beautiful beam of light. Is that the story you want?’

Max nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Then you can have it.’ She paused, wondering where to start. A few months back she had started telling him a story about a beam of light that had a special property: you could ride on it and it could take you, in an instant, to places far, far away. They had ridden it to visit kangaroos in the Australian outback and beaches on the Australian coast, to experience snow-capped mountains and winter storms in Antarctica, to shop in frantic markets in Thailand where you could buy anything you wanted, to marvel at giant skyscrapers in America and to stare in awe at ancient civilizations hidden in deep jungles. They had gone to meet Harry Potter at Hogwarts, and to stroke Aslan in Narnia and to ride with the hobbits and elves of Middle Earth. Maggie saw no reason to exclude those places – some of the most magical of her childhood – from the adventures.

Today, she decided, they were going into the cosmos.

‘So,’ she said. ‘The beam of light—’

‘Mummy,’ he said, suddenly. ‘Am I a beautiful boy?’

‘Yes,’ Maggie replied. ‘Of course. That’s why I tell you so often.’

‘You’re a beautiful mummy,’ he said.

Maggie blinked, tears springing to her eyes. All parents probably marvelled at the things their children picked up, the words they came back from nursery or kindergarten or school with, the games they learned from their friends, the interests they developed out in the world. Max did not have any of those things, but even he made connections on his own. She had never asked him to call her beautiful, never explained why that would be a nice thing to do, but, somehow, his infant brain had understood that this person who loved him and who he loved used a word to describe him and so it would be nice to use it about them.

It showed that all her stories were working.

‘Close your eyes,’ she murmured, holding him against her and speaking into his hair. ‘Here comes the beam of light.’

He snuggled closer to her. ‘I don’t see it,’ he said.

‘That’s because it’s invisible,’ she replied. ‘But it’s here.’ She made a small jumping motion. ‘We’re on board,’ she said. ‘Hold on tight!’