Our house, he replied. Look. That’s the bath. That’s you and me. That’s the bed.
She had to bite back the tears. Other kids were building space rockets or gardens or trains. Max was building the only thing he knew.
This shitty prison.
And so she took him places in his imagination, described the blue of the sea by pointing to his blue socks, but told him the sea was a different blue, a brilliant blue, a beautiful shining blue, words that he didn’t understand but which reminded her of the world out there, of what she too was missing. She explained the coolness of the breeze by moistening his forehead and blowing on it, and the warmth of the sun by rubbing her hands until they were hot and placing them on his chest. All of it was a pale imitation of the real thing, but it was all she had.
She didn’t stop there; she told stories of magical palaces and boats and rivers where Max and she had wild adventures. Along the way they met heroic people with the names Grandpa Martin and Grandma Sandra and Uncle James and Aunty Anne and Chrissie and Fern. She told him how Chrissie was brave and loyal but could be grumpy and Fern was funny and clever but left things wherever she went. She told him how Uncle James was kind of grumpy but sweet and well-meaning, and how Aunty Anne was wise and Grandpa and Grandma were kind and loving, and how they loved him in particular. The stories ended with huge parties where there was every kind of food and all the toys a boy could wish for. She wondered what Max thought chocolate and jelly beans and burgers and milkshakes tasted like. She wondered whether he would ever find out.
She sat on the mattress and watched him play with the Duplo. Behind him, by the door, were two plates. Max had left half of the mashed potato and baked beans the man had brought; Maggie had barely touched hers.
‘OK, Max,’ she said. ‘Time for our exercises.’
She was worried he didn’t get enough activity – of course he didn’t, living in a cell – so for the last year or so she had been doing exercises with him. They began with jogging on the spot – he found that amusing – and then they dropped to the floor and did press-ups and sit-ups. Max’s press-ups mainly consisted of him raising his bottom in the air and then collapsing to the floor, but it was something. Maggie had found that, as the months went by, she could do more and more of them; now it was no trouble to do fifty at a stretch. She also did tricep dips and planks; she could hold the plank for over four minutes.
Maggie took off her T-shirt and shorts – it was always uncomfortably hot in the room, the air still and cloying; the only time there was any fresh air was when the man came and cooler air gusted in through the open door – and knelt on the floor. She dropped into the press-up position and did twenty press-ups, then held herself on her elbows.
‘OK, Max,’ she said. ‘Come and join me.’
Max toddled over. He was in a pair of dirty underpants – she tried to keep them clean, but it was hard with only soap and cold water – and lay on his belly next to her. On the back of the underpants was a Superman logo she’d drawn once, after telling him the story of how Superman had come from the planet Krypton to save people on Earth from their own folly. As she recounted the story she had been gripped by a powerful feeling that Superman would burst into the room and rescue them at any moment. He hadn’t, but for days she had been left with a vague sensation of hope.
Max levered himself up into the plank position. He was still some way off a four-minute plank. Once he had managed about twenty seconds, but this time it was closer to four seconds before his buttocks started to quiver with the effort. After a few more seconds his hips slowly lowered to the carpet.
‘Watch, Mummy,’ he said, looking up at her. ‘Watch what I can do.’
He started to wiggle his legs and arms and shake his head from side to side.
‘Wow,’ she said. She paused while she searched for an appropriate description of his gyrations. ‘You’re break-dancing!’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m being a snake. A snake doing yoga.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Of course.’ For a while they’d done some stretches she remembered from PE and she’d told him they were doing yoga, and it had obviously stuck with him.
He wiggled around for a while, a look of triumph on his face, then stood up and ran to Maggie. He jumped on her back and pressed his cheek to her skin.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Ride the horsey!’
Maggie twisted and bucked in an attempt to throw him off. It was a game they had played since he was very small. She had done it with Seb and Leo, but they had not enjoyed it nearly as much as Max. He shrieked with pleasure, laughing uncontrollably. It was a strange thing; despite the circumstances, he was a very happy child. Of course, he had no sense that he was missing out on anything, because he knew no different. In some ways it was the perfect set-up for a toddler: unfettered access to his mum and a guarantee of her undivided attention. Nonetheless, Seb and Leo had not been as happy as Max was. Seb was quiet, and prone to outbursts of crying. He’d been like that ever since he was born, sleeping fitfully and whimpering in his crib during the day. Leo was more like Max, but had a wild temper. From time to time, and without apparent reason, he would have screaming fits during which he was totally unreachable. He would hit her, and, if she tried to hold him, claw at her cheeks.
She had put it down to living in a tiny room, but then Max came along, and she wondered whether it was simply the way Seb and Leo were. Nature, not nurture. After all, if it was all down to circumstances, they should all have been the same – this was the perfect way to test. In normal life there were other things that could influence a child’s development, but not here. This was like a cruel experiment designed to examine how three children in the exact same environment turned out differently.
And Max, unlike the brothers he would never meet, was as happy as they came. Perhaps Seb and Leo got it from their dad – she hated even thinking of him as their father, but it was true, at least biologically – and Max took after someone else. He certainly had a look of her brother, the same fair hair and innocent, questioning blue eyes, the same goofy smile and easy laugh.
That was one of the things she regretted most, when she looked at her third son: that he would never meet his uncle, and that her brother, who had been a constant, daily irritation through her unfairly truncated teenage years, would never get to be the mentor to his nephew that he would, in her imagination, have become.
James would have loved him. He would have loved all three of her sons, with the same fierce, painful love that she did.
But Max was the only one she had left. He was the only one James would ever be able to love, and all she wanted in the entire universe was to save him so he could meet his uncle and have the life he deserved.
And she was going to.
Somehow.
When she had successfully bucked him off her back enough times to satisfy him, Maggie sat cross-legged on the floor. Max was on her lap, his legs around her waist. She had her hands on his hips; he was holding her forearms, running his fingers over the soft, fair hairs that grew there. They were new sometime in the last ten years; she didn’t know when they had started to grow, but she had not had them when she was fifteen.
A lot else had changed, too. Some of it – the hair on her forearms, the ache in her knees – were the result of time passing. Other stuff – the sallow skin, persistent cough, acne on her forehead – were from the lack of light and movement and good food. Others still – the heavier breasts, wider hips – were from the pregnancies.
It was one of the strangest