Dark Lullaby Polly Ho-Yen (drm ebook reader .txt) 📖

and the weight and then the sun hat and remember that time when I was showing him the pigeons flying in the park? And then it just comes down to putting him into a car seat.’

Evie had been by herself and was strapping Jakob into his car seat. She’d been running late in the supermarket and he was starting to get tired. The queue was longer than she’d expected. She’d forgotten to get nappies, which was the reason that she’d made the trip in the first place.

‘I could see that he was beginning to change. You know what it can be like. It’s like the sky suddenly darkening over. It’s beautifully sunny one moment and then the next, it looks like it’s going to storm. He just needed to go to sleep, he just needed his nap. That’s what it was. I almost ran towards the car to get him into it. I could see what was going to happen. His eyes started to close then, just from the motion. Once we got in the car and I started driving he would fall asleep straightaway.

‘As soon as I lifted him out of the pram, he started screaming. But like I said, he was going to be all right as soon as we’d got going. That was what I thought. And I’ll tell you this, Kit, although I won’t admit this to anyone else, not even to Seb, I knew what I was doing was wrong. Because I looked all around me just before I lifted him out. I checked to see if anyone was watching me, to see if there were any enforcers there. I’m always paranoid in that car park after we received that warning there.’

I could see Evie then, so clearly, ducking her head this way and that, her dark eyes flashing from side to side, to see if there were any spectators. It was the same look I had seen as a child, as I would follow her into some light mischief. Stealing a biscuit before dinnertime, coating Dad’s bed with itching powder she’d bought from a joke shop.

‘And there was no one there?’

‘Not a soul. If anything, it was too quiet. When I imagine what they must have thought when they saw me there, looking around me for witnesses.’ Evie shook her head as though she could expel the idea from her with the movement.

Evie had piled the shopping bags into the car as quickly as she could and then picked up Jakob.

He began screaming straightaway.

‘I’m sure I said, “There, there,” I’m sure I did. I’m sure I patted his back and jogged him on my shoulder a bit. You know, in the way that he likes. But I just wanted to get him into the car seat and drive away. It says, on the IPS, that I made no attempt to comfort him. No attempt. But I’m sure I did, I’m almost positive of it.’

‘Can you contest again?’

‘No. I thought that too. But they said that they had filmed me. They even showed it to me. You couldn’t see I wasn’t doing anything to calm him from the film.’

‘But still—’

‘It’s my word against theirs,’ Evie said. ‘I haven’t got a chance.’

She’d been wrestling a screaming Jakob into his car seat while he twisted and squirmed, when she’d heard the footsteps. She’d known right away what was happening.

‘I tried to be calm. I started blowing raspberries. I was manically blowing raspberries, singing songs. Anything that would distract him, stop him from crying. Making crazy faces. Sometimes that works. But his face was so screwed up by then, he was screaming so loudly, I don’t think he could see me, let alone hear me. Anyway, by then it was game over.

‘You know in a way, it wasn’t that bit that was the worst. It was all over so quickly. They gave me their piece of paper and then went back into a car that was parked nearby that had tinted windows. I couldn’t have seen that they were sitting in there—’

‘What, they were just there, lying in wait in the car park?’

‘Who knows?’ Evie shrugged despondently. She kicked at a piece of mud on the ground and a smear of the black dirt clung to the toe of her shoe. ‘It doesn’t matter, does it? Whether they were already there or whether they just happened to be there?’

‘I just mean does everyone know that they are everywhere like that? Hiding out behind tinted glass, spying on you? It’s like that couple we saw in the café.’

Evie shook her head. ‘It just doesn’t matter. I thought about that a bit afterwards too. Even if I had realised that that was what they were like, I’m not sure I could have changed anything. You can’t live your life like that, always imagining that someone is watching you.’

‘But do we have to do that now, though? Maybe we do?’

Evie sighed, and as she did, it was as though some force within her, the force that drove her forwards, the force that wrote out the tiny, intricate coloured notes to pass the induction, the force that had made her a mother, was finally expelled from her. The sun cast pink lines that ribboned across the sky, as its light fell away from where we were and the earth revolved us into darkness.

‘The worst thing was telling Seb,’ Evie said in a murmur. ‘I don’t think he will ever forgive me.’

‘No, I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘He looks at me differently now. Watch him tonight. He looks at me like… like he doesn’t want to see me.’

We fell silent as Thomas wandered down towards us holding two oversized glasses a little precariously. One was filled with the mellow amber of white wine and the other, something clear and fizzy. Thomas handed the wine to me and the other glass to Evie, who took it from him with a frown.

‘Did you want something else? Seb said—’

‘No, it’s fine.’ Evie took a sip as though