Page 123 of Stolen

chapter 62

We don’t leave the next morning as I’d planned. The child is sick and running a temperature. What kind of mother would I be if I took her out now, in the cold and rain, and dragged her halfway across the country on a bus? The woman who was staring at us in the café hasn’t returned. The child needs rest and sleep and plenty of liquids. We can leave in a day or two, when she’s feeling better.

But she doesn’t get better. She gets worse.

She’s always been a voracious eater, but now she has no appetite. She’s listless, curled up on the sofa, staring blankly out of the window at the grey, rain-sheeted beach below. She doesn’t want me to read to her; she doesn’t even want to watch TV. This difficult, wilful child is suddenly biddable and compliant, and it terrifies me.

I make her favourite tomato soup but she eats a spoonful and then pushes the bowl away. Her eyes are sunken into her skull and her skin is pale and clammy. I can’t believe the transformation in her in just a couple of days. She looks almost consumptive. Maybe it’s flu. She’s been sick before, but not like this, never like this. I don’t even have any Calpol to give her to bring down her temperature and I can’t leave her to go into the village to get some. All I can do is try to keep her comfortable.

On the morning of the fourth day since she got sick, I have difficulty waking her.

She cries out when I open the curtains, flinching from the light.

My stomach plunges.

I lift the top of her pink pyjamas and note the telltale rash across her chest. My heart in my mouth, I pick up the empty glass beside her bed and press it against the rash. The spots do not disappear.

Meningitis.

‘My head hurts,’ she whimpers.

Can I risk taking her to hospital? Even if I give a false name, there’ll be so many questions. There won’t be any record of her in their computers. They’ll want to admit her and, with every moment she spends in the hospital, the chance someone recognises her will increase.

I could leave her there. I could take her to A&E and just leave her there.

But if I do that, I won’t be able to go back. I’ll lose her forever.

We’ll ride it out. I have some penicillin I bought online. It’s past its expiry date, but those don’t mean anything. I’ll keep up her fluid intake and crush a couple of paracetamol into a spoonful of jam to help with the headache. If I can get some food into her, that’ll help, but fluids are the important thing. And we need to get that temperature down.

I run her a tepid bath – not cold, that would be too much of a shock to the body, that’s the mistake everyone makes – and gently help her out of her pyjamas. She lets me sponge her down without complaint, and then I lift her out of the bath again and wrap her in a soft, fluffy white towel.

She leans her hot head against my shoulder.‘I love you, Mummy,’ she says.

It’s the first time she’s ever said that to me.