Odd Child Out Read online

  “We decided not to have more kids, because we’d started so young and we felt complete with Noah. By the time he was six or seven, and we were through those early years, life was great. We were happy, and frankly that felt like a triumph against the odds of having the unexpected pregnancy. We proved a lot of people wrong by sticking together! But then everything fell apart, right out of the blue. Fi’s parents died, within a few months of each other. She was totally destroyed for a long time, because she’d been so close to them. It took her ages to get back on her feet, and just when she had, the school contacted us to say that Noah had a nosebleed that they couldn’t get under control. That was the start of it. Numerous GP and hospital trips later, we had the official cancer diagnosis.”

  “How old was Noah then?”

  “He was eight.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  He inclines his head, raises his hands and drops them again. I wonder how often he and his wife have had to acknowledge other people’s reactions over the years. It can’t be easy.

  “Having cancer’s no life for a kid. By the time Noah was diagnosed, he was old enough to feel very deeply that it made him different from his friends. He was aware of all the things he was missing out on. He anticipated and dreaded his treatments. And now . . .”

  His voice cracks again and his hands tighten into fists. He looks up at the ceiling, as if he wishes he could find answers there. Woodley and I wait in silence, giving him time.

  “Now, just as we reached the place we’ve always dreaded—the end of it all, the thing we’ve tried to dodge for seven years—now this happens. But, you know, Noah’s tough. He’ll pull through. He has to. We have plans for the next couple of months.”

  He crashes back into the sofa cushions and runs his hands through his hair. He looks from one of us to the other, and his eye contact is searching and desperate.

  “Do you feel able to answer just a few more questions, Mr. Sadler? If not, we can speak at a later time.”

  He exhales heavily and makes an effort to adjust his posture so he looks more attentive. From the hallway, a clock ticks dully.

  “Let’s do it now. Anything that’ll help, though I’ve got to go back to the hospital soon. And please call me Ed. I can’t stand formality. It’s so pointless.”

  “I’d like to know anything you can tell me about the boys’ friendship,” I say.

  “They’re best friends. Absolutely thick as thieves. Abdi’s a fabulous kid, and he was a godsend when Noah started secondary school. Noah’d been out of the system for so long during treatment we were worried he wouldn’t fit in, but they made friends on the first day and they’ve been inseparable ever since.”

  It’s exactly what his wife predicted he would say.

  “Was sneaking out of the house the kind of behavior you might expect from either of them?”

  “I’m not home as much as I should be, so Fiona’s the expert on Noah, but personally I can’t think of anything they’re less likely to do. They’re nerdy boys. They go to chess competitions. They study together. They freak out if they don’t get merit cards on every bit of homework they do. So no, it was the last thing I’d have expected.”

  Something about the way he says this makes me think that Ed Sadler was the opposite type of boy, and still is as a man. I’m particularly interested in his take on this because I get the impression that Noah’s indulging in some mildly rebellious behavior is something that Ed Sadler might welcome, or certainly be open to acknowledging. He doesn’t seem to be as protective of Noah as his wife.

  Woodley chips in. “Your wife told us that she felt the friendship might not have been very healthy for Noah. Do you have a view on that?”

  He sighs.

  “This stuff is hard to talk about. Okay, look, here’s the thing: Fiona’s life has been dominated by Noah’s illness for years, and you can probably imagine how that might make her feel. She longs for ‘normal.’ She thought I encouraged Noah’s friendship with Abdi because of my own interests, and she resents that, because she would rather that Noah had made friends with a boy whose mother will have a coffee with her or share school runs with her. Be her friend. And between us, I think that’s colored Fiona’s opinion of Abdi. She’s never wholly approved of the friendship. I believe she’s wrong, I think Abdi’s a terrific friend for Noah, but you can understand how her feelings about her circumstances might have crept into her judgment of him. She’s been under unbelievable amounts of pressure for a very long time.”

  He’s choosing his words very carefully. I consider how much he might have gained from Fiona’s apparently comprehensive devotion to Noah’s care: a large amount of freedom, certainly. It’s clear that Ed Sadler loves his son very much, but at no point has he described the burden of Noah’s care as something they undertake together. Nevertheless, I appreciate his forthrightness.

  “That’s a very honest answer.”

  “Where we’re at in life, I don’t think there’s any point in being opaque.”

  I can’t argue with that.

  “So, just to clarify, you saw nothing last night that would make you think that the boys might either have argued or be planning to sneak out of the house?”

  “I saw nothing. I don’t know why they did it—neither of us does. We’d had a good night. This exhibition has been in the works for years. It was a big moment for me professionally, and also for us as a family. We thought long and hard about canceling it when we got Noah’s prognosis, but he insisted we go ahead.”

  Tears slick his eyes once again, and he grinds his fists into his sockets as if he can rub them away.

  “Would you mind if we took a look at Noah’s room?” I ask. I want to get an idea of this boy outside of the grim picture I formed in the hospital.

  “Of course, yes.” He gets up quickly, as if he welcomes the distraction, and shows us up two flights of stairs.

  He lingers in the doorway as Woodley and I step into the room. “I’ll leave you to it,” he says. “Abdi kipped in here with him last night.”

  Once he’s gone I take an initial look around and make some immediate assessments. The first is the most obvious one: Noah Sadler’s room is undoubtedly testament to a privileged upbringing, until you notice the medical paraphernalia.

  Woodley and I open drawers and carefully look through the items on the desk. A model of a Bristol hot air balloon twists slowly in one corner as we work.

  Noah’s bed is rumpled and unmade, just as you’d expect if somebody had crept out at night. A pair of pajamas is discarded on the floor beside it. There’s a put-up bed in the corner that also looks slept in, but there are no bits and pieces lying around that might obviously belong to Abdi.

  “Perhaps he slept in another room,” Woodley says.

  He has a poke around in the en-suite bathroom. “There’s not even a toothbrush in here.”

  “Perhaps Abdi decided to leave and packed up his stuff and took it with him. They could have had a row. He could have stormed off and Noah went after him?”

  I’m thinking aloud, running through scenarios, trying to keep an open mind.

  “Could be. We should ask Mr. Sadler if he or his wife tidied up Abdi’s stuff.”

  “I very much doubt they’ve done that. Probably the last thing on their minds today.”

  “Fair point.” Woodley opens the closet, which is messy with Noah’s clothes. Shoes are stacked in a heap in the bottom of it. Just what I’d expect to see in a teenage bedroom.

  Only one thing really captures my attention. Above Noah’s bed, a series of drawings have been framed and hung on the wall. Every one depicts a road and its surroundings, and no two are alike. They’re intricate and meticulous. Each drawing must have taken hours to finish. They are all signed NS.

  I ask Ed Sadler about them when we get downstairs, and for the first time he displays a little embarrassment.

  “Noah’s in therapy,” he says. “At the hospital. To help him deal with his disease. It mostly involves talking, but art
therapy’s a component, too—they say it helps with self-expression—so Noah produces those drawings every once in a while. They’re about his journey through life, or something like that. Fi insists they go up on the wall, though I’m not sure how healthy that is, if I’m honest. I’m more of a ‘get on with it’ sort of person. The thought of talking about everything ad nauseam terrifies me.”

  It’s the attitude to therapy that I held before I was forced to take a different view and found myself sitting in a chair opposite Dr. Manelli twice a week for six months, in that dim room where the soft furnishings seem designed to absorb sorrow. But I don’t react to Ed Sadler’s embarrassment about his son’s therapy with the fervor of the converted, because for me the jury’s still out.

  “The therapist he sees is based at the hospital,” Ed adds. “Noah quite likes him, I think. He’s been seeing him for years now. His medical team say talking’s good for him, so, anyway.”

  “We didn’t see anything belonging to Abdi in Noah’s room.”

  “That’s because his sister came round and collected his stuff this morning. Alvard, our housekeeper, was here.”

  Woodley and I leave him to get some rest. He seems to be just as broken as his wife.

  “I’d like to speak to the therapist,” I say as we drive back to HQ.

  “What about confidentiality issues?”

  “I think it’s worth a try, anyway. We’ve got nothing to lose.”

  On my way home that night, I stop to pick up some food. Mrs. Chin in my local Chinese place shouts my order at her husband as soon as she sees me pushing through the door: “One special fried rice for special detective!”

  I sit at one of her scrubbed and chipped red Formica tables while I wait for my order, thinking about the two families I’ve met, and how there’s mostly a consensus about the boys’ relationship, with the exception of Fiona Sadler. Experience has taught me not to ignore a mother’s intuition, but she’s not a mother in an ordinary situation. Word this evening from the hospital is that Noah Sadler’s condition remains stable and comfortable, so that at least is something.

  I check out the local rag that somebody’s left on the table. The fallout from last week’s anti-immigration march is still being discussed in an article that includes comments from many of the city’s bigwigs:

  Mayor Tony Harris issued a statement to say: “Bristol is an inclusive and diverse city. We pride ourselves on welcoming people of all faiths and backgrounds. If we had the powers to prevent the White Nation March from going ahead, we would certainly have exercised them.”

  The article goes on to describe the damage caused by the riots and the likely cost of repair to the city and to local business. Blame is firmly placed on what’s described as an “at best woeful, and at worst grossly incompetent” attempt by police to contain the situation. It’s not good for us.

  Mrs. Chin makes her usual comments about my singleton lifestyle when she hands me the food.

  “Not healthy for a handsome man to dine alone every night, Detective!”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Chin. I’m working on it.”

  She pops a fortune cookie into my bag of food.

  “Maybe this bring you luck in love!”

  “I’ll keep you posted.”

  As I unlock my bike and hang the bag on my handlebars for the last bit of my ride home, my phone rings. I check the caller display. There aren’t many people I’d be surprised to hear from, but this is certainly one of them.

  “Becky?”

  “Jim. I didn’t know if this number still worked.”

  “It’s been a long time.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m . . . why?”

  I’ve hardly seen my sister at all since she walked out of our family home, and then only at family occasions when my mother applied enough emotional blackmail to get us both there. Becky would come to those only if she was sure she could avoid our dad. The last time we saw each other was at his funeral. We meant to have a drink when I moved to Bristol, because she was already living here, but we never got around to it somehow.

  “I’m at your flat. I need a place to stay.”

  Five minutes later I find her sitting on the stoop, and I barely recognize her. She has long dirty blond dreadlocks with beads in them, and her cheekbones look sharp, her cheeks hollowed beneath them. One of her eyes is a bruised, swollen mess. When she sees me she gets up stiffly.

  “Please don’t say anything,” she says.

  I obey her instruction as I lock up my bike, open the front door, and beckon her in. She looks out of place in the elegant hallway of my building. I offer to carry the large rucksack she has with her, but she refuses. She hoists it onto her back and follows me up the stairs.

  She’s never been to my flat before, and I watch her take it in with her good eye. I split the special fried rice between two bowls and give her one. She eats very quickly. I notice that her fingers are dirty and she also has bruising on her collarbone.

  We both speak at the same time.

  “Are you going to tell me . . .”

  “Can I stay with you for a while?”

  On the last evening my sister and I lived in the same house, my father hit her, backhanded, and she fell against the wall of our kitchen. He put a lot of effort into that blow, so much that the spice rack fell off its hooks and hit the ground beside Becky. There was an explosion of different-colored herbs and powders. Our mother was keen on experimenting in the kitchen.

  I was eating fish fingers when he did it. My mother had gone out to the shed to get some ice cream out of our chest freezer for dessert. It took Becky a long time to get up, and when she did, she was dizzy.

  My father turned his back on her to take a cut glass whiskey tumbler from the cupboard, and as he did, Becky left the kitchen silently and went upstairs to pack her things. She left a trail of spice red footsteps on the carpet.

  My father had just heard that Becky had been in one place when she’d told him she’d been in another.

  Not long after, as she dragged a suitcase out of the front door, I watched from the kitchen and made sure to finish my meal even though it had gone stone cold long ago. I was a good boy. I was terrified. I saw my mother stuff banknotes that she got from a tin in the larder into Becky’s pockets and try to lay a hand on her daughter’s cheek, only to be rebuffed. I saw her wash the Neapolitan ice cream down the sink because it had melted. My mum’s hands shook under the gushing water, and she ran the tap for a very long time.

  My father’s study door stayed shut that night, and for days afterward when he got back from work. A week later, he had the paprika-stained carpet replaced, overseeing the fitting of it personally, and the photographs of Becky that had been on the piano were removed on the same day. He never mentioned her again.

  Becky doesn’t talk the night she arrives at my flat. I give her my bedroom and lie on the sofa, telling myself it doesn’t matter that the springs are digging into my back, because I wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway.

  DAY 2

  I’m hot.

  Dad says, “Why would this happen?”

  “Most likely it’s an infection that’s developed very rapidly overnight. Our priority is to stabilize Noah’s temperature and then we’ll investigate the causes.”

  That’s the doctor speaking. He’s a doctor I haven’t met and I can’t see. His voice is higher-pitched than I would like. It grates. I hear lots of shoe shuffling and squeaking. I’ve become hyperaware of sound. I think there are a few people around my bedside.

  “We should see a temperature drop pretty fast. That’s the idea, anyway.”

  “It’s a lot of ice.”

  “We’ll keep it there for as long as we need to and replace it if necessary.”

  “Will he be able to feel this?”

  “I doubt it,” says the doctor, but to cover his bases he raises his voice and says, “Noah, we’re packing some ice around you because you’re running a very high temperature and we need to brin
g it down.”

  I want to say, “Please don’t.” I’m scared of the heat, but also of the cold. I don’t know if I can stand it.

  I still can’t speak, though, so I have to lie there and suck it up. A strange thing happens. I can’t physically feel the cold, but my brain reacts by taking me on a memory trip to places where I’ve felt cold before: a skiing holiday, an ice rink where I held on to a plastic penguin, the hospital bed I was in the time my temperature plummeted after a surgery and I got uncontrollable chills, and then, of course, the canal water.

  I remember how hard it was to move in the water, and the pull of the current. I remember feeling powerless, the way you feel when they dose your body so full of toxic drugs that you feel as if you’re as fragile as an eggshell.

  The stem cell transplant was the worst and hardest treatment I had, by miles. It destroys you, strips you out. My mouth was on fire for days because it was one giant ulcer, and the morphine made me itch all over and hallucinate small creatures in the corner of the room. It was also degrading. They had to feed me with a tube and sometimes wash me like a baby.

  It’s hard to look people in the eye after that.

  Abdi wasn’t allowed to visit me, because those are the rules when you have a stem cell transplant. Because the treatment destroys your immune system, you have to be isolated for a good while, to avoid being exposed to other people’s germs. It meant that by the time I got back to school I hadn’t seen him for weeks.

  I was really looking forward to seeing him again, so what happened was a shock.

  I asked Mum to drop me at school early, because Abdi always got there right at the beginning of the day. I found him at breakfast club, our usual meeting place.

  He was sitting with somebody else: a new boy. Abdi jumped up from his seat when he saw me and introduced us. The boy’s name was Imran Fletcher-Kapoor.

  I don’t think Abdi meant to shock me as badly as he did, but the truth is, he could have been a lot more sensitive. He gave me no warning at all, just dumped the fact that he’d made a new friend right on top of me.