Now Luke
Now
Luke
In my experience, adoptee and birth parent reunions go wrong more often than they go right. Sometimes catastrophically.
Who Am I? The Adoptee’s Hidden Trauma by Joel Harris
My mother is installed for her fourth and final week of childcare, and I have to admit she’s pretty good at it. She has somehow managed to get Samuel sleeping in his cot at night, and here’s the thing – both Hannah and I love it.
‘The freedom,’ she’ll say, unbuttoning her pyjama top while I watch from the bed.
‘Exactly,’ I’ll agree as she leaps on top of me, covering my naked body with her own.
My mother has also got Samuel to wake later each morning – seven instead of six – by bolstering his diet (how many mashed bananas can one boy eat?) and by putting him to bed an hour later each night, which means we have more time with him. We will miss her when she goes.
On Friday, once the paper has been put to bed, there’s a leaving party for Hannah at Le Pont de la Tour. Champagne and lobster for the whole of the Culture team, subs included. She’ll come back slightly pissed and tearful and I intend to wait up for her, to soothe away any regrets about leaving. With Reborn poised to sign to us – a big meeting this morning should clinch it – I’m glad it’s her giving up work rather than me, but I do feel guilty about it. I offered to cut back on my days, but Hannah refused, as I knew she would.
‘Good luck,’ she says, kissing me goodbye at the door. ‘I know you’ll nail it.’
She looks irresistible in her black Joseph trouser suit and boots, her curly hair tamed temporarily, an unaccustomed stripe of lipstick on her lovely mouth.
‘Hannah?’ I say, and she turns around, door half open, light from the street pouring in.
‘You’re amazing,’ I say, and she laughs.
‘You’re a sentimental fool, and that’s what I like about you.’
I dress carefully for the meeting with Reborn in my dark-grey Kenzo suit with a white T-shirt and my Reeboks. I know Michael will be in a suit instead of his jeans, a ploy he uses both to impress and to disarm; I’ll do the same. My mother is in the kitchen with Samuel, preparing our supper while he sits beside her on the floor banging a saucepan with a wooden spoon. It’s been nice seeing the calm, unhurried way in which she parents a small child, so I can imagine myself at the same age. Always there’s the piercing that is Alice, the painful recall of her brilliance with our boy, but I tell myself it was complicated. It’s not over, just on ice, a fraught mother–son relationship that can be rebuilt at any time. And this is how I sleep at night.
The band arrive early, and they’ve dressed up for the occasion too, the boys in shirts, the girls in dresses. Steven Harris – thank you, God, spirit being or whoever you are – is away on business in LA. There are handshakes all round, no kisses or hugs, which underlines the sombreness of this meeting. But Michael is not the CEO of the biggest independent in the music business for nothing.
‘Great to have you here,’ he says, a small Mafioso figure in his black suit and shirt. ‘There’s breakfast in the meeting room; let’s get straight to it, shall we? And Janice?’ he adds to the receptionist as we pass. ‘Categorically no interruptions for the next two hours. Just take messages for us, please.’
The table is crammed with plates of croissants, pains au chocolat and Danish pastries. There’s a platter of beautifully chopped fruit: pineapples, peaches, a volcano of berries in its centre. None of this will be touched. Instead I pour everyone a coffee from the cafetière – pleased that my hands do not shake – and we begin.
I’ve been in this situation with Michael several times and I know that he doesn’t do small talk. He has zero tolerance for conversations about anything other than music.
‘I can’t tell you how glad we are that you are seriously considering signing to Spirit,’ he says. ‘You’ll know, of course, how passionate Luke is about your music, but the whole company, from distribution to the art department, is excited about your record. I know the decision will come down to money in the end and I wanted to assure you that we can come up with a significant deal.’
‘If I can jump straight in,’ Daniel says, ‘we’ve come to a decision.’
This is unexpected. My physiological response – heart banging, blood rushing – almost deafens me. I am straining to hear.
‘We’re going to sign to Spirit. We’re flattered by the interest from other labels, but you’re the best fit for us. We have a few conditions, though, and I’d like to set those out.’
My pulse is heart-attack fast as I listen to the band’s requirements – all of them reasonable – but I don’t really get beyond the first one.
‘We’d like Luke to A in fact that’s the whole reason we want to sign to you.’
I catch Michael’s eye and he smiles at me, minimally; he always was the master of understatement. But I can’t help myself. I jump up from the table and start hugging the band, one by one.
‘This is incredible news,’ I say. ‘There is literally nothing I would like more than to get involved with the next record. I’ve got so many ideas.’
Over the next couple of hours, we brainstorm the new album – hands down my favourite part of this job – and I have a suggestion for them. There’s a record player in the meeting room and I tell them I have something to play them. I feel a confusing mix of emotion taking Apparition out of my bag, knowing none of them will ever have heard it before. Proud, yes, but also wretched, sorrowful.
‘This band had short-lived success in the seventies,’ I say, flashing the album at them.
Bex says, ‘Oh my God, I love the cover. Is that an oil painting? Weird. I feel like I’ve seen that guy before; he looks familiar.’
‘Disciples were a rock band, but they sang ballads too, and the songwriting is sublime. There’s a track called “Cassiopeia” and you can hear the influences of the time; it sounds very seventies. But there’s also something about the song that stops you dead. And I’ve been trying to unpick what that is. Have a listen.’
I glance at their faces and I see that they are rapt, entranced, just as I was the first time I heard it. But mostly I’m communing with my dead father; I’m telling him, Jacob, I think we’ve got this. You and me together. Father and son.
‘Well done,’ Michael says, when we’ve seen the band off the premises a couple of hours later ‘This is totally down to you and your musical integrity. One of the reasons you’re so good at your job is because you understand about songwriting and you can talk to musicians about it. You’d be surprised how few A not crying, more of a demented wail, the howl of a mother whose child has died.
‘Gone? What does that mean? Who has gone? Samuel?’
My mother comes on the phone, also crying, and this, more than anything else, acts as a trigger warning. My mother is not a woman who cries.
‘Someone has taken Samuel from his cot. It happened when I was in the garden. I didn’t have the walkie-talkie thing, but the back door was open and I always hear him.’
‘Alice.’
‘It must be. She still had keys, didn’t she? No one else could have got in. And also he would have recognised her, so it wouldn’t have been a shock. I’m so sorry. Luke? Are you there?’
Am I? Not really. I am bent double, arms round my ribcage, searching, searching for my breath.
Alice has stolen my baby. And somehow, somewhere down deep inside me, I always knew this was going to happen.