Page 85 of Days You Were Mine

On his third visit, the doctor tries to find out more about my genetical history. My mother is present, which is just as well, for I am unable to speak about Jacob’s depression without crying, unable to speak full stop.

‘We only have the patchiest details from Alice – Luke’s birth mother – about what happened,’ Christina says. ‘We know that he was a depressive and was prescribed medication, which he stopped taking. It was during an episode that he killed himself.’

‘It sounds like he was bipolar – a manic depressive as it was known back then. This kind of depression is often determined by genetics. You say Luke’s breakdown has been triggered by finding out about his natural father, but it’s also likely that it has been coming for years. Has he had depressive episodes in the past?’

My mother turns to me with so much compassion in her face I have to look away.

‘He’s very sensitive,’ she says. ‘He always has been. He takes things to heart, if that’s what you mean.’

‘The real danger with manic depression is that it can tip over into a state where someone is so full of negative feeling they present a threat to themselves. I think Luke is ill enough to warrant inpatient care. I’d like to organise a place at the Priory Hospital in Roehampton.’

‘No, no, no. That isnotgoing to happen.’ My mother jumps up from her chair, her face lined with anger. ‘I am here by his side and I do not intend to leave until he is fully recovered. Luke is not suicidal. He is depressed, and with good reason. There’s a difference.’

The doctor nods. ‘I thought it wise to point out the risks. Let’s keep a close eye on his medication and find him an outpatient appointment as soon as possible.’

Once the doctor has left, my mother returns to her bed-watching post. I’d like to thank her for this outburst of loyalty, I’d like to apologise for not realising how much she loved me. But words are as unstructured as cotton wool and I say nothing.

Next door, Samuel begins to wake up, and my mother smiles at his midday coos, the clucking and trilling that signals not just his alertness but also his sunny, optimistic mood. The baby who loves to laugh.

‘Shall I bring him in?’ she asks, and I nod.

I’d speak if I could, and I do try moving my tongue around my mouth, but it’s as if I have forgotten this most fundamental of skills. She stops at the door and turns around to look at me.

‘This is a blip,’ she says. ‘Brought on by traumatic circumstances. But you are strong and you will get through it.’

‘How do you know?’ My voice when it comes is thick and rasping, an old man’s voice.

There is no doubting the tears in my mother’s eyes.

‘I know because you aremyson,’ heartbreaking emphasis of the pronoun, ‘and you have always got through everything.’

Then

Alice

I suppose my parents would always have found out. They could have rung all the hospitals on a daily basis. Or perhaps the hospital rang them, informing the parents of this young, unmarried, seemingly deranged mother, who cries so hard when she feeds her baby, his small, soft head is soaked in tears.

They arrive on the third day of my hospital stay, Charlie asleep in his tiny cot on wheels. I love it when they bring him in from the neonatal unit, wheeling him through for his four-hourly feed.

‘Your parents are here at last, lovey,’ says Penny, my favourite nurse, with her soft Scottish accent and her bleached Norwegian-blonde hair.

My father is wearing a suit and tie, which seems oddly formal for a hospital visit, and my mother too is dressed in a matching skirt and blouse, her rarely worn pearls a note of discordance, a hint of something I cannot comprehend. She is carrying a cellophane-wrapped bunch of carnations – did I never tell her how much I hate those flowers? – and I wave it away.

‘On the table, thanks,’ I say.

My mother tries to take my hand, but I snatch it away.

‘I’m so very sorry,’ she says.

‘Look at the baby,’ I say, gesturing to Charlie in hissee-through cot, asleep with one small fist resting beneath his cheek, lips curved in a rosebud pout.

‘Lovely,’ says my mother, looking.

‘Now, Alice,’ says my father, sitting down next to the bed, not looking.

I stare at my beautiful sleeping boy, Jake’s boy, and I try to blank out the noise of my father talking.

‘We’re here to help you. And we forgive you, absolutely. Let’s start with a clean slate for all of us. I’m sure you want this baby—’

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