This Is My Child. Lucy Gordon

now, one that she liked. She made it plain that her babyminding days were in the past.

      “Then I’ll look after him by myself. I’ll get a flat—”

      “Oh, yes, a flat—in some ghastly high-rise block with an elevator that never works and the stairs littered with syringes, living off welfare payments that aren’t enough. You say you love him. Is that the life you want for him?”

      Dumbly Melanie shook her head while tears began to roll down her cheeks, and she held onto her child more tightly than ever. She hadn’t yielded at once, but the euphoria of the first few days was insidiously being replaced by postpartum depression.

      In the blackness that seemed to swirl around her after that, only one thing remained constant, and that was her love for Peter. She breast-fed him, pouring out her adoration as she poured out her milk, clinging to the hope that something would happen to let her keep her baby.

      But it didn’t. Instead there was the constant verbal battering from her family, always on the same theme, “If you loved him you’d give him up—a child needs two parents—a better life—if you loved him you’d give him up.”

      At last, distraught, deep in depression, barely knowing what she was doing, she signed the papers and said goodbye to her child. For six months the conviction of doing the right thing supported her. And then, with brutal timing, the clouds lifted from her brain on the day after the adoption was finalized by the court, and with dreadful clarity she saw what she’d done.

      The separation from her baby was an agony that wouldn’t heal. Her desperate pleas to be told where he was were met with bland official statements about confidentiality. All the legal processes had been completed. It was too late for her to change her mind.

      Her last hope was a friend who worked for the council and who broke all the rules to give her the names, Mr. and Mrs. Haverill, and an address. Frantically she raced to their house to plead with them, only to find that Giles Haverill had already left the country to start a new firm in Australia, as part of the business empire he ran for his father. His wife, Zena, was in the middle of final packing. If Melanie had hoped to find an understanding maternal heart, she was bitterly disappointed. Zena Haverill was a strong-featured young woman with a cold voice, who had no intention of giving up what she considered hers.

      “There are other babies,” Melanie pleaded.

      “Other babies? My dear girl, do you know how hard it is to get a baby these days? Now I’ve got David, there’s no way I’m going to give him back.”

      “His name’s Peter.”

      “Giles, my husband, prefers David, after his own father. He’s a very rich man, you know. David will have the best of everything, and I daresay he’ll be better off than with an unmarried and—if you’ll pardon my saying so—rather unstable young woman. Look, I’ll lay it on the line because I’m tired of arguing. I can’t have children myself, and David is exactly what Giles wants.”

      “Giles—Giles,” Melanie raged. “You don’t say that you want him.”

      “There’s no need to discuss this,” Zena Haverill said coolly, and something in her voice told Melanie the terrible truth.

      “You don’t want him, do you?” she accused. “Your husband wants an heir, that’s all it is. You don’t love him.”

      “I see nothing to be gained by hysteria. David will have every advantage.”

      “But he won’t have a mother who loves him,” Melanie screamed. “Oh, God! Oh, God!”

      Zena regarded her dispassionately. “The welfare worker told me you gave up David because you wanted to play in a rock band. I can only say that if this performance is anything to go by you should have been an actress. However, it doesn’t move me, you know.”

      “Rock band?” Melanie echoed, dazed. “I don’t know what you mean. I may have mentioned to her that I once thought of something like that, but I didn’t give Peter up because of it. I don’t care about a career now. I just want my baby.”

      “My baby,” Zena said calmly. “Mine and my husband’s. Now I think you’d better go.”

      She’d pleaded for one last sight of Peter, a chance to say goodbye, but Zena had been like flint.

      “He hasn’t seen you for months. You’d only disturb him. Besides,” she added belatedly, “he isn’t here.”

      “He is, I can hear him.”

      She ran out of the room, up the stairs toward the sound of a baby’s crying. In her distraught state it seemed that Peter was calling to her. But she never got to him. A nurse came out of a room at the end of the corridor, closed it firmly behind her and stood with her back to it.

      “Peter,” Melanie screamed. “Peter.”

      Then Zena caught up with her, and together she and the nurse wrestled her downstairs into the hall.

      “I suggest you leave now before I call the police and charge you with attempted kidnapping,” Zena said breathlessly.

      She’d stumbled out of the house, tears streaming down her cheeks. As the front door was slammed shut, she turned and screamed, “He’s my baby. I’ll get him back, whatever I have to do.”

      But the next day Zena had gone to Australia, taking Peter with her.

      Melanie had tried to put the past behind her and plan for a career. She’d been a talented pianist and for a while she had played keyboard with a rock band that had some modest success. Men pursued her, attracted as much by her haunting air of melancholy as by her gentle beauty. But she had nothing to give them. The trauma she’d been through had frozen her, until now she was sure she would never fall in love. Only one kind of feeling still lived in her, and it was one she couldn’t acknowledge. Each year she celebrated Peter’s birthday with a breaking heart, and each night she prayed for a miracle.

      At last the rock band broke up. Melanie was growing weary of the futility of the life and she left music completely to take business courses. She joined a temping agency and took a succession of jobs until at last she was hired for a month by Ayleswood School, a select, fee-paying establishment, whose secretary was off sick. And there she found her miracle, in the school records.

      His name was David Haverill, son of Giles and Zena Haverill, and his address was the very same house where she’d confronted Zena. There could be no doubt. The family had returned from Australia, and now her child was here, within a few yards of her.

      When her first transports of joy had calmed, she began to search for him slowly, careful not to attract attention. There were three boys who were possible. None of them had her features, or Oliver’s, but they were fair haired, like herself. She’d cherished dreams of an instant thunderbolt of recognition, but it didn’t happen that way.

      It happened through stealing.

      She’d come into the anteroom of the headmistress’s office one afternoon to find one of the “possibles” there. He was sitting on the edge of a seat, his face set in a mask that might have concealed defiance or indifference or just plain misery. “Hello,” Melanie said cautiously. “I’ve got some files for Mrs. Grady. Do you know if she’s in there?”

      He stared at her for a long moment before nodding. “She told me to wait here,” he said at last.

      “I’m Melanie. What’s your name?’

      “David.”

      Her heart began to hammer. “David Haverill?” she asked breathlessly.

      He nodded again. He seemed strangely listless for a boy of eight.

      “Are you here because you’re in trouble?” she asked gently.

      For the first time, he raised his head and looked at her directly. His nod was almost imperceptible and his eyes were wary.

      “Well,