Chapter 46 #2
“Eventually, she told William that the housemaid knew, and in a fit of anger, he sent the rest of the staff away, banishing them from the house for the foreseeable future. But at Elizabeth’s insistence, he kept the housemaid on. She knew their secret, after all. Maybe she could help them?
“William had noticed that Elizabeth had started to withdraw, to become depressed, and he was at a loss for how to fix it. He’d do anything for her. He couldn’t lose her. Not now. Not like this.
“Eventually, the doctor arrived and checked Elizabeth over. He used his own ultrasound machine and made a discovery that would shatter their world completely. It wasn’t one baby. It was two.
“Elizabeth cried. William shouted in frustration. And the doctor stayed quiet as he looked across the room at the housemaid who hid in the shadows.
“I can’t do it,” Elizabeth had wailed. “I can’t get rid of two babies. It doesn’t feel right.”
“I’ll do whatever you want me to do,” William pleaded, his only thought was with his tortured, pregnant wife.
“For days, they lived in turmoil and anguish, mourning the loss of the life they knew and loved. It’d never be the same again. Not now. Not after this.”
“Or could it be different?”
“You see, Elizabeth had always been a philanthropist, more daring in her outlook on life than William. And one night, she had an idea. Maybe this wasn’t the death sentence they thought it was.
Maybe it was an opportunity. A chance to test something in this world.
To research and establish an answer to the long-standing question of nature versus nurture.
The golden opportunity to leave a legacy, make a name for herself.
The legacy being that she’d find the answer to the question that had baffled generations before them.
She’d prove it with her own experiment. Oh, how na?ve she was.
“What if we kept one baby and gave the other away,” she’d suggested to William.
He’d listened to her idea, that one be raised with the wealth and opportunity they could provide, while the other languished in another world, a very different world to the one they knew.
One filled with poverty, deprivation, prejudice, hatred, and greed.
“Let’s see what happens as they grow older,” she went on. “Will they both achieve success? Will the poorer sibling flounder? Who knows?” she’d exclaimed with glee. She didn’t care about the impact it’d have. Her ideas made her feel free.
“William loved Elizabeth; he’d do anything she said.
But Elizabeth was a cold-hearted bitch to everyone else in her life, she only had love for William.
And he was so blinded by that love he didn’t care what the outcome of her outlandish idea would be.
She was happy again. She had a plan. That was all that mattered to him.
“So, they decided to put their idea into practice. Elizabeth would give birth to the babies at home, with the help of her housemaid, Alma, and the private doctor they had on their payroll. They’d keep the firstborn, and the second would be sent to the village to live with a childless couple that Alma knew.
A couple that had no idea about the test. They’d been promised a baby by an old family friend, and that’s all they cared about.
They didn’t ask any questions. They weren’t the type to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Their morals were non-existent, and they simply didn’t care.
“The woman had always wanted a baby, and she’d have done anything to get one.
At least this way, they didn’t have to abduct a child from their mother or procure a baby in some other nefarious way.
This one had quite literally fallen into their lap.
Alma knew them. She knew their desperation.
She also knew they weren’t the type of couple to cause trouble, make waves, or ask questions.
But Alma didn’t really know them. She didn’t know what kind of future lay ahead for the baby placed in their dubious care.
“On the night Elizabeth went into labour, Alma was on hand to assist in the delivery.
The doctor was called and paid off with a hefty sum of money to keep the news of the birth quiet.
They explained that they were only keeping one baby, and the fate of the other was none of his business.
Money talks, and the amount credited to his account for his silence was more than enough to stop his tongue from wagging.
“At twelve thirty-two in the morning, Alex Kingston was born and placed straight into the housemaid’s arms, as his birth mother screamed at the doctor to get the other one out. And William clung to his wife, only interested in her well-being.
“Twelve minutes later, at twelve forty-four, Arran Kingston arrived. Only that wasn’t to be his surname. No. He wasn’t destined to live with his birth family. Both the universe and Elizabeth and William had other plans. Twelve minutes meant the difference of a lifetime for him.
“The housemaid placed Alex into a crib beside Elizabeth, then after the doctor had cleaned him up, she picked up Arran. Carefully, she wrapped him in a blue blanket, that he still owns to this day, and took him out of the house. Neither Elizabeth nor William even glanced at their second child that night. He didn’t exist to them.
“Alma couldn’t drive, and the Kingston’s, who were in the warm with their newborn son, had insisted no one else should see them.
So, in the darkness, Alma walked with the baby boy in her arms into the local town.
Once there, she went to the home of Aimee and Ray Dulcett, knocked on the door, and when Ray opened it, she placed the baby into his arms and walked away without saying a word.
“Nature versus nurture, that’s what they’d said. But as the years went on, they forgot about Arran and the test. Elizabeth was known for getting bored easily. I guess she grew bored of waiting for the results she wanted. After a while, she simply didn’t care.
“She was never the mother she could have been to Alex. He was shipped off to boarding school the second he was old enough. But she was no mother at all to Arran. She didn’t even see him, only getting the occasional update from Alma; which she chose to ignore.
William followed his wife’s lead. He only cared for her.
“The staff, that had all been banished before the news broke, came back to work. As far as they were concerned, Elizabeth had given birth to a beautiful baby boy in their absence. Only Alma knew the truth, and she’d take that secret to the grave because, just like William, she loved Elizabeth.
Had done for years. She’d have done anything for her.
“And how do I know all this, you’re probably asking yourself.
Because Alma was my friend. She told me everything.
And I think, in a way, she felt guilty at the part she played.
Because there wasn’t just poverty and deprivation in my childhood.
There were drugs and alcohol, gambling and fighting, raised voices and violence on a sickening scale.
Violence directed at me. Because I was a mouth to feed that they couldn’t afford.
I was a boy who needed direction that they didn’t want to give.
I was time-consuming, an annoyance that grew bigger as I grew older.
They loved me as a baby, but that love didn’t last. Not when reality set in.
“Through my early years, I didn’t know I was adopted.
If you could call what happened to me an adoption.
It was more like abandonment. As a teenager, I was wild, feral, and angry with the world.
I turned to drugs and alcohol, gambling and fighting, just like them.
I guess the nature versus nurture question was an easy one to answer.
I’d had no nurturing, so nature took over.
But not the nature of my ancestors, no. The nature of one who has to learn to survive in the jungle of life.
“I did what I had to do to get by. I stole from others; I didn’t care. Humanity? What was that? I didn’t feel it; and no one had ever felt it for me. Compassion was a foreign word, a foreign feeling. To me, it was an alien concept. I had no empathy; I felt hollow inside... until I discovered art.
“Creating art let me escape the world I hated and dulled the voices in my head for a little while. At first, it started as graffiti on the walls of the town, using leftover cans I found scattered on the floor. If I was lucky, I’d catch an artist in full flow and beat him black and blue for his spray paints, steal them, and leave him for dead.
I didn’t care. I needed to create at all costs.
But there was no real flair to my work, not yet.
It’d take time to practise and hone my craft.
“I broke into stores and stole art supplies. I also broke into houses and took my anger out on the people sleeping inside. People who slept peacefully in warm houses and comfortable beds. With quiet minds and happy lives. I was an angry man, angry at the world.
“And then, I met my brother, Alex.
“One morning, he’d walked into the drug house I was squatting in, and when I saw his face, I thought I was still tripping from the night before.
He had the same green eyes, the same smile, the same everything as me, only he looked healthy, tanned, and fitter.
He was the better version of myself. The one I could have been.
“But when he said the name, ‘Arran’, and waited for me to respond, I didn’t. I glared back at him and growled, ‘fuck off’. He saw the worst version of himself in me. Emaciated, addicted, a man so close to death’s door he could’ve opened it at any time and walked right through.