Dark Lullaby by Polly Ho-Yen (ready to read books .txt) 📕

THEN

‘Jakey!’ I called out before I knew what I was saying.

He did not look up at my appeal and instead chased the rice cake around the white plastic of his high chair.

I glanced at Thomas, who wore a stunned expression, one I imagined I was mirroring. He walked up to Jakob and picked up the rice cake so the child could reach out and grab it. He took it with one, chubby starfish hand and thoughtfully sucked on its corner.

Thomas and I regarded his every movement as though it were a miracle.

Evie laughed, delighted, at her son, at our gormless expressions.

‘Surprise!’ she said. The shade of her lipstick was a little too bright; it cracked at the bud of her mouth. ‘Can you believe it?’

She leant into the top of his head and took a long inhale.

‘It’s really him,’ I said. He was larger, lengthier and had a stability that he’d not possessed before, but he was the same Jakob.

I reached out towards him, and Jakob following the movement of my hand, put out his fingers to meet mine. It was as he stretched forwards that I saw the short sleeve of his babygrow rise and, beneath it, the OSIP band around his wrist.

Evie, spotted me noticing and smiled at me rigidly; her tight expression stopped me from asking her more.

‘When did he come back?’ I asked instead.

‘The day before yesterday,’ she said. She ran her fingers delicately through his hair.

On her wrist, she wore a matching OSIP band. She turned it round and round and then drove it further up her arm as though she were worried it would slip off.

‘What happened?’ Thomas asked in the end, after we had wordlessly looked from baby to each other to baby to Evie and then back to Jakob.

‘Well,’ Evie said, as she started to tear lettuce into a bowl. ‘Remember what you said about trying to find out procedures about getting Jake back? I didn’t want to listen to you, but you were right. There are classes that you can take. I did a course, had to take some tests and, well – I passed.’

Thomas caught my eye, his expression painfully disbelieving, as Evie snapped off the yellow heart of the lettuce and scattered its thin petals into the bowl.

‘That sounds—’ he began to say.

I cut into his sentence before he could finish it.

‘Wonderful,’ I exclaimed. ‘That sounds wonderful.’

I had been worried that he was going to say it sounded easy. Because it did, it sounded far too easy. After everything that Evie and Seb had gone through to have Jakob and the trauma of how he was taken – was it really so simple to get him back?

‘And Seb?’ I asked quickly.

‘He hasn’t seen him yet.’ Evie sliced a red pepper into thin strips. She sped up as she reached the last remaining chunk. ‘But he will, of course. He’s still Jakey’s father, whatever has happened between us.’ She tossed the peppers into the salad and slammed it on to the table so that its contents jumped a little out of the bowl.

‘It’s the best news ever,’ I said. I reached for my sister and she let me hold her for a moment before Jakob babbled something and she knelt beside him, checking over his face.

‘Is it back to normal with OSIP now?’ Thomas asked. ‘Do you get to start over?’

‘Thomas,’ I said warningly, shaking my head. I didn’t want any more talk of OSIP.

‘They’ll keep doing regular checks,’ Evie said. ‘But the course I took and passed counts for a lot.’ She looked unconcerned.

‘What was it called?’ Thomas asked.

‘It had some kind of abbreviation,’ Evie said. ‘I can’t remember it exactly.’

‘Well, it’s just terrific. I can’t believe it. We should be drinking champagne!’ I said. My eyes met Thomas’s, willing him not to ask any more.

‘Yes!’ Evie said. She opened the fridge door and brought out a green bottle. ‘We should. And we must celebrate your wedding, too. I’m sorry I couldn’t come. It was the course – I’m sure you can understand why I had to miss it.’

‘Don’t even think about it,’ I said. ‘What matters is that Jakey is back.’

I bent down to kiss his head. Like Evie, I was drawn to the smell at the very top of his head. I took a lungful and for a moment I didn’t want to expel it, I wanted to keep it inside of me.

All dinner, we were all drawn to every movement that Jakob made, every utterance. We returned to him after every mouthful, with each word. By the end of the meal, he was quite exhausted from all of the attention.

‘Did they tell you much about the compound that Jakob was at?’ Thomas asked over dinner.

Evie frowned. ‘No, they don’t tell you that kind of thing.’

‘When did you find out?’ he continued to ask. ‘How long did you have to wait after the course finishing to know you were getting him back?’

‘Not very long,’ Evie said vaguely. She kept her gaze fixed on Jakob as she spoke.

‘It’s just brilliant that that course exists,’ Thomas went on. ‘I’ve never heard of it before. I wonder if your friends whose baby was extracted found out about it?’ he asked me.

‘Marie and Leo? I hope so,’ I said.

‘Well,’ Evie said. ‘Part of it was that you were selected to go on it. The course. It wasn’t open to everyone. They don’t tell you how they decided – maybe it was something to do with what kind of IPSs you had or how you behaved or something.’

‘Did you meet anyone else on it?’ Thomas asked.

‘No, it was done in an isolation booth,’ Evie said. ‘I didn’t meet any other parents.’

I was afraid Thomas would go on questioning all night and so when, moments later, Evie left to go to the toilet, I hissed into his ear, ‘What’s with the twenty questions?’

‘What? It’s just amazing that it’s happened, don’t you think?’

‘Don’t ask any more about it – can’t you see