Boy in the Well by Douglas Lindsay

Author:Douglas Lindsay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Published: 2019-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

Maybe it’s the subject matter – which is obviously heartbreakingly sad – but we’re not seeing the same pugnacious Belle McIntosh of previous interviews. Like her wife before her, when presented with a fact that she has so far hidden from us, McIntosh retreats into an unnatural reserve. She could be hiding, of course, but here we are, dredging up the past, and were she to react by descending into a melancholy that has been locked away in a compartment in her head for decades, we could hardly blame her or suspect her of anything untoward.

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘you’re right. I lied.’

‘Tell me.’

She’s sitting down, all part of the air of defeat that haunts her. Just the mention of the death of her four-month-old baby had the same effect as punching her in the stomach. The shock, the eyes closed, the slump down into the chair by the table.

‘Tells itself, doesn’t it?’ she says. ‘Tale as old as time. Like Beauty and the Beast. Just more painful, that’s all.’

‘There are plenty of marriages that survive the loss of a child. Where the couple will try again, find a way to move on. What happened with you and Tom?’

‘Sure,’ she says, ‘generalise, that’s the way to go. Maybe people try again, maybe they don’t. Everyone’s different, and that was us. We were much too young to face up to that kind of thing. I mean, we were only married because I was pregnant in the first place, right? That’s how long ago it happened. It was still what you did back then. Then the boy died, and Tom was an asshole. I was on my own. Hey, I don’t know,’ she says, her voice still lacking that familiar bite, ‘maybe I should’ve just upped and got on with it. Ditched Tom, married someone else, had a tonne of kids. But . . . I couldn’t. I couldn’t forget him. William, that was his name. Did you know that? William . . . He was . . . I never saw him without a tube inserted in his nose, a line attached to his arm, a monitor on his chest. I never got to give him a proper cuddle. Not even when he was born. They knew there was something wrong with him in the womb, they gave me a Caesarean, then they whisked him away soon as they had their hands on him.’

Such a small voice, such pain. Yet, as the interviewing officer, you can’t give in to it. You can’t allow it to colour your judgement. Can’t allow yourself to be sucked in. It might be honest, it might not, but it doesn’t matter either way, you have to remain above it.

‘I don’t even have that memory. The feel of my son in my arms. Being able to wrap him up warm and make everything better. Why couldn’t I do that? Why wouldn’t they just let me do that? They didn’t save him, did they? All their medicine and their tubes and their expertise, all for nothing.

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