She could only stare at him. She didn’t know. She didn’t know what had happened, but she had to say something. She had to think.
Think think think!
‘Maybe someone – maybe even Lewis himself – snatched Oliver and… and Evie tried to stop him.’
He just sat there watching her with his kind eyes.
‘Every minute could be crucial.’ She couldn’t stop the tears coming. ‘Oliver… is only eighteen months old.’ She could hardly get the words out.
She got to her feet. She couldn’t just sit here while Oliver could be anywhere, with anyone –
And Evie –
‘All right, Sarah.’ He didn’t get up. ‘Please sit down, and we’ll see what we’re going to do about all this. All right?’
‘No, actually, it’s not all right! Do you have children?’
He inclined his head. ‘I have two.’
‘How would you feel if they went missing, and then, instead of searching for them, the police handcuffed you and chucked you in the loony bin and stopped you doing anything to find them?’
He said nothing, just waited.
Sarah gulped air.
And suddenly it came to her! An explanation!
‘George might be involved. Evie’s ex-husband. George Benson. He’s always hated me. And he hated Evie too, in the end. He might have taken Oliver.’
‘Okay –’
‘He’s capable of it. He definitely is.’
‘Does he have a history of criminal behaviour?’
A history of criminal behaviour. George, with his conventional suits and conventional opinions; his desperation to conform. She and Evie had laughed their heads off when a parking ticket had precipitated one of his existential crises. The ticket was a mistake, he had tried to explain to them, over and over. And it had been – there’d been something wrong with the parking meter, and his appeal against the ticket had been upheld. Sarah used to wind him up about it, saying he’d got off on a technicality, and he’d go red in the face and start, yet again, on a long explanation about the defective meter.
‘Sarah?’
She blinked. ‘Yes.’
‘Does your sister’s ex-husband George have a history of criminal behaviour?’
‘Yes. Maybe. Evie probably wouldn’t have told me if he had. She often doesn’t tell me things…’ … if she thought they would upset Sarah. But she couldn’t say that. It would make her sound fragile and pathetic. ‘But what I do know is that George is selfish, and he can be cruel.’
She used to hear them through her bedroom wall in the London flat. Arguing, for hours at a time; George accusing Evie of facilitating Sarah’s problems, as if he knew the first thing about them.
‘He hates me,’ she repeated, walking to the window, staring out at the view of the lawn stretching to the road, staring out at the brightness even though it seared through her eyeballs and into her aching head, staring out at the light in the hope that it would cut through the fuzz and let her think. ‘He probably believes I stole Evie away from him, so now he’s stolen Oliver from me.’
‘And where would your GP fit into this?’
She turned away from the window.
‘I don’t know,’ she heard herself say, but way back in her head, as if her mouth were on the other side of her skull. ‘George probably paid him to have me sectioned.’
Silence. Then: ‘Sarah. Please, come and sit down.’
She knew that what she was saying about George sounded mad. Bizarre. Hugely unlikely, at the very least. It was hugely unlikely. He was expecting her to explain something she had no way of explaining, because she had no idea what had happened.
And then, through the pain, through the fug of the meds, a thought slammed to the front of her consciousness as if it had been catapulted into her head from outside. It was like when she couldn’t think of an answer in class, and she used to look over at Evie, and suddenly it was there in her head, the answer, like Evie had telepathically put it there –
I don’t have to explain it.
Of course she didn’t! All she needed to do was prove that Oliver existed. Which would be simple enough. She just needed Dr Laghari to do some basic checks.
She walked back to her chair and sat, interlocking her fingers in front of her stomach.
She took a long breath, but before she could say anything, Dr Laghari got in with: ‘Can you remember what happened when you were admitted here?’
Okay. Play along. She had to come across as rational and cooperative. ‘I remember… being confused. And upset, naturally, about Oliver.’
‘Do you remember being very agitated?’
‘Of course I was agitated. My son had just disappeared.’
‘That wasn’t the only thing that was troubling you, though, was it?’
‘Isn’t it enough?’
‘You were shouting at the nurses to leave you alone.’
And now she remembered.
‘Yes. Because I thought –’
He nodded encouragingly. ‘What did you think?’
She shook her head.
‘What did you think they were trying to do?’
‘My kidneys,’ she whispered.
Another gentle nod.
‘I thought they were trying to… to… take them.’
‘And why would the nurses want to take your kidneys?’
‘I thought they were trying to harvest them.’
‘Harvest them,’ he repeated neutrally. He obviously knew all this already, so why was he making her say it?
She rapped out: ‘I thought they were trying to harvest my organs and sell them to China. Which is nonsense, of course. I realise that. Obviously I was confused. I’m not any more. I’m not confused about Oliver.’
He nodded yet again. ‘I see from your notes that you’ve had a delusional episode before –’
‘That wasn’t my fault. It was the antidepressants.’
‘Sarah, no one is saying that any of this is your fault.’
Really?
But she needed to be calm. ‘You probably know I have agoraphobia and anxiety problems, and I get panic attacks. They’d put me on antidepressants in the hope they would help. This was about two years ago. But it was a disaster. The antidepressants caused – all sorts of issues. Apparently, in rare cases they can trigger delusional episodes, and that happened to me.’
‘That must have been very frightening.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re not taking antidepressants now?’
‘No, of course not.’
And then it struck her, what he was implying.
‘Are you saying I’ve had another – another delusional episode? Because of the organ-harvesting thing? Okay, maybe I’ve been confused…’ She stared at him, trying to make her fuzzy brain think this through. If they thought she was delusional, no wonder they didn’t believe her about Oliver. ‘If I have had another delusional episode,’ she said, slowly and clearly, ‘it must have been triggered by the stress of Oliver being missing.’ She swallowed. Her mouth was so dry, but there didn’t seem to be any water on offer. Presumably a glass, or even a plastic cup of water, was a potential projectile.
‘Agoraphobia, anxiety and panic attacks,’ Dr Laghari said, looking down at the file, ignoring, once again, the mention of Oliver. ‘Your agoraphobia is very severe, isn’t it?’