Page 120 of The Stolen Child

‘Cruel?’ Lily cried out. ‘What you did was not only cruel – it was evil! You can’t expect to get away with that scot-free!’

‘You don’t understand. None of you do. I had to take Zach. I had to!’ Kimberly’s eyes were frantic as she looked at each of them. ‘I had to save him!’ She walked over to Jason and pulled at his shirt, desperately pleading with him to forgive her.

Jason pushed her aside and said, ‘We are done. I don’t want to hear it any more.’

Then Kimberly turned to Lily, and begged, ‘Please, Lily. I shouldn’t have taken Zach, but you would have too if you had been me back then. I had no choice.’

Lily was sick of hearing the same excuse over and over and batted her mother away.

But it was Sally who came to her old friend’s rescue, moving closer as she watched her quizzically.

‘What aren’t you telling us, Elsie?’ she asked softly. ‘What have you been hiding all these years?’

‘He died. And I couldn’t save him,’ she answered on a sob.

‘Who died?’ Sally asked.

Everyone moved closer to Kimberly, forming a circle around her as she finally revealed, ‘My baby brother.’

NOW

August 2023

Kimberly

Phibsborough, Dublin

Kimberly was sixty-eight years old. And for sixty-two of those years she’d worn many different masks, each one masquerading a different version of herself. But who she was now was her favourite. And she’d sworn to herself that she’d never go back to any of the previous versions of herself. Part of that promise was to deny her baby brother ever existed – always pushing away all thoughts of him when they crept up on her.

But today the masks were free-falling, and Kimberly couldn’t see a way to stop them. The life she’d worked so hard to curate for herself was crumbling away to nothing.

Her daughter’s face, and that of the man she’d loved for four decades, betrayed the truth – they thought she was an evil woman because of her actions that day in 1981. Her last throw of the dice was to reveal the original Elsie to them all.

‘He was only six months old. I adored him from the moment my mum brought him home from the hospital. I was his big sister, and I couldn’t wait to take care of him,’ Kimberly explained. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. ‘He smelled like talcum powder. His skin was so soft.’ She opened her eyes again. ‘I know everyone thinks their child is beautiful, but he really was. A mop of dark hair and big blue eyes.’

‘I never knew you had a brother,’ Lily said, her eyes widening.

‘That’s because I never talked about him.’

‘What was his name?’ Sally asked.

Kimberly sighed. ‘Robert. But I shortened that to Bertie by the end of his first day at home.’

‘You named Zach after your baby brother?’ Sally asked, incredulously.

Kimberly held her hands up to ward off everyone’s comments. She had to tell them what happened first.

‘I realised that there was something wrong with Mum pretty fast. She went into the hospital with her big bump, happy and smiling, loving and kind. But returned with Bertie, withdrawn and snappy. My dad had done a runner, a year after I was born, and I never knew who Bertie’s dad was, so we were on our own.’ Kimberly sighed, then added, ‘I had no choice but to take over.’

‘What age were you?’ Lily asked.

‘I’d just turned five.’

Kimberly closed her eyes again as she tried to remember Bertie’s face, and it came back crystal clear, but, try as she might, she couldn’t picture what she looked like back then. That image was grainy in her mind.

‘I loved taking care of Bertie. Bathing him, rocking him to sleep, giving him his bottle. He liked it when I sang to him.’ Kimberly softly began to sing, ‘You are my sunshine,’ stopping when a lump formed in her throat.

‘Oh, Mum,’ Lily whispered. ‘You used to sing that to me.’