Matt Shaw: A Sting in the Tale: A Collection of Short Stories

“That’s great,” Esslee said. He turned to the boy, “Isn’t that great?”

The boy nodded. Esslee’s words playing over and over again in his head, just play along.

“And how was your day? Do anything interesting?” Esslee asked the boy.

The boy hesitated a moment, “I went to the park with some friends,” he said — his voice shaking; full of fear.

“The park? Those were the days — lazy days playing on the swings with my friends. Oh to turn back the clock once in a while,” Esslee laughed. He turned to Jade, “You ever wish you could turn the clock back?” he asked. A sly way of asking whether she wished she could go back to earlier in the day — before she had snatched the boy from the park. She looked at him blankly with vacant eyes. It was in this look that he knew it was too late. What little sanity had remained — after her son had disappeared — was now but a shadow.

Her answer, “Why would I want to do that?” was the icing on the cake.

Esslee pushed regardless, “Sometimes I get the urge to wind the clock back so I can redo things, you know?”

Jade shrugged, “I don’t. I’ve got my boy. I’ve got my man. What more could I want?”

Esslee swallowed a mouthful of food and tried to hide the guilt in his face. She didn’t have her man and she didn’t have her son. Little did she know but the authorities were waiting outside. Esslee had managed to talk them into letting him go into the house first to try and get the boy out, without causing a scene. Realising he hadn’t been involved with the kidnapping — and that it was a case of a broken parent doing something foolish — they let him in; albeit on a strict timeframe. If he wasn’t out within ten minutes, they’d be going in. Whether he managed to get the boy out, or they came crashing in — he knew the amount of trouble Jade was in. It didn’t matter that she’d had a breakdown. She would be doing time for this. The only question was whether it would be in a secure unit or whether it would be in a normal prison. He hated the idea of it but… He couldn’t think of it now. Now he just needed to get that boy out of there and out of harm’s way. He didn’t believe Jade had it in her to hurt him but, then, he didn’t think she had it in her to kidnap someone either and he had obviously been wrong about that.

He glanced at the clock hanging from the wall. Time was running out.

“Why do you keep looking at the time?” Jade asked. Heavy suspicion in her tone.

“I was just curious as to what the time was,” he said with a smile. “Just wondered if we had time to have a quick kick about, with the ball, before bedtime,” he turned to the boy and smiled at him too. “You fancy that?”

The boy nodded enthusiastically.

Esslee nodded down towards his bowl of chilli, “You finished?”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t finished yours,” Jade pointed out. She was right. Esslee had taken a couple of spoonfuls in total and had hardly made a dent in his dinner.

“I don’t get to spend time with Aidan much anymore,” he said, thinking on his feet. “I can reheat it when he goes to bed.”

“Well he can’t leave the table yet,” she said. “I have ice-cream for pudding.”

“That’s cool. We can go outside for a bit while you dish up.”

“Don’t be stupid, it will take me two seconds.”

Jade stood up and started clearing the bowls — starting with her own bowl and the boy’s. She took them out first.

“I’m scared,” the boy admitted to Esslee.

“She’s harmless. I promise. She’s just a bit confused at the moment. Anyway you have nothing to worry about, the police are waiting right outside. Okay?”

The boy nodded. His eyes welled up.

“Don’t cry,” Esslee told him, “everything will be fine you just need to be strong for a little while longer. In fact, wait here…” He picked his own bowl up and carried it through to the kitchen.

Jade was standing by the window. Her eyes were fixed on the glass, looking beyond, whilst her hand was digging out chunks of raspberry ripple ice-cream and dropping them into one of the three bowls she had lined up on the counter.

Esslee walked in and put his bowl on the side.

“I would have brought it out,” Jade told him.

“I know. I thought I would save you the hassle.” He tried to change the subject again, desperate to get the boy outside before the police came in. “Listen — he isn’t hungry at the moment. I think he is feeling a little under the weather. I’m going to take him outside and have a kick about in the garden for ten minutes or so. Fresh air might do him some good.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jade said. “Look — it’s drizzling out there and I don’t know where his rain-coat is.”

Esslee looked out into the garden. His eyes were drawn to the bushes surrounding the perimeter. More particularly, the uniformed men hiding in them — waiting, on the off chance that Jade came out of the kitchen door and tried to make a run for it.

“It’s not that bad out there. Come on, I think it will do him some good. You can come out too, if you want, you can be the goalie…”

Jade finished putting ice-cream into the final bowl and returned the tub to the freezer. She turned to Esslee, “Look — I don’t want him going outside. It’s late. It’s nearing his bedtime and he still has to have his dessert.”

“He isn’t hungry!”

“I don’t care! He hardly touched his chilli. He needs to eat something before bed and — the way I see it — ice-cream is better than nothing. Besides, what boy doesn’t want ice-cream whenever the chance comes up?”

Time was nearly up.

“He isn’t your boy!” Esslee snapped. He didn’t know what else to do. He knew it would be bad if the police rushed the house. In her current mental state, Jade was completely unpredictable. If he could have at least got the boy outside it would have got him out of harm’s way. If she followed, even better, there would have been less opportunity for her to hurt herself too. But clearly he wasn’t going to be able to achieve either.

“He is my boy!” she insisted. “He’s not your boy!” A truth even if it had been the real Aidan sitting in the other room. She continued, “And I don’t like the way you’re trying to tell me how to raise him.

Esslee noticed the pictures on the table and started shifting through them — looking for a more recent one. When he found one taken less than a year ago, he waved it under Jade’s face, “Look — this is your boy! Look! They’re different! They boy in there — he is not your son!”

“He is!”

“They look different!”

Jade grabbed an even earlier picture than the one Esslee had picked up and thrust it in his face, “And he looks different here too. It’s amazing how quickly they grow up.”

“Your boy is missing!” he continued, becoming more and more frustrated. Time must have been up now. They must be out there, organising how best to breach the property. It wouldn’t be long now. He figured he didn’t have anything to lose by reminding her what had happened to her own son. “You took him to the park,” he said. “Remember?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You took him to the park. There was an ice-cream van. You went to get one for the pair of you. You left him in the park…”

“He’s in the next room!” Jade insisted.

“You got the ice-creams and walked them back to where you had left him. By the time you got there — he was gone. Is any of this ringing any bells? Please tell me you remember this.”

“I do remember!” she said. Esslee momentarily felt relief. That is, until she continued, “We had two ice-creams with a flake each. He had sprinkles on his with some strawberry sauce and I had mine plain. We ate them by the pond and then, when we had finished, we came home! I don’t know what has gotten into you,” she finished.