The Child Read Free Page A

it.
    ‘From his box of magic tricks,’ Carina had explained to Stern. The boy had evidently been given some normal birthday presents as well as the regression.
    ‘I think it was down there,’ Simon said excitedly, stepping forward.
    Following the direction of his outstretched arm, Stern shone his torch at the old stairwell. They could see only the entrance to the cellar now.
    ‘We can’t go down there, it’s too dangerous.’
    ‘Why not?’ the boy demanded, scrambling over a pile of loose bricks.
    ‘Stay here, sweetheart, it could all cave in.’ Carina sounded uncharacteristically anxious. During her brief affair with Robert Stern she’d been the soul of exuberance, almost as if she were trying to compensate for his permanent melancholy with a superabundance of
joie de vivre
. Now she was agitated, as if Simon were behaving like a disobedient dog let off the leash. He plodded on.
    ‘Look, we can get down there!’ he cried suddenly. The other two were still protesting when his curly head disappeared behind a reinforced concrete pillar.
    ‘Simon!’ called Carina. Stern blundered after them across the rubble-strewn floor, nearly twisting his ankle a couple of times and tearing his trousers on a rusty piece of wire. By the time he reached the entrance to the cellar, the boy had made his way down some twenty charred wooden stairs and turned a corner.
    ‘Come out of there at once!’ Stern shouted, immediately cursing his ill-considered choice of words. The memory triggered by them was worse than anything that could happen to him here, he realized.
    Come out of there, darling, please! I can help you …
    That wasn’t the only lie he’d called to Sophie through the locked bathroom door. In vain. They’d tried everything for four long years – every technique and form of treatment – until at last they received the longed-for phone call from the fertility clinic. Positive. Pregnant. On that day, over a decade ago, it seemed to him that a higher power had totally reoriented the compass needle of his life. It had suddenly pointed to happiness in its purest form, but only, alas, for as long as it took him to transform the ceiling of the new nursery into a night sky with stick-on fluorescent stars and go shopping for baby clothes with Sophie. Felix never wore them. He was cremated in the sleepsuit the nurses had dressed him in.
    ‘Simon?’ Carina called the boy’s name so loudly, it jolted him out of his dark reverie.
    Simon’s muffled voice came drifting up from below. ‘I think there’s something here!’
    Stern swore. He tested the first step with his foot. ‘It’s no use, I’ll have to go down there.’
    Those words, too, reminded him of the worst moment in his life. The moment when Sophie took refuge in the patients’ bathroom with their dead baby in her arms and wouldn’t give it up. ‘Sudden infant death syndrome’ was the diagnosis she refused to accept. Two days after giving birth.
    ‘I’m coming with you,’ said Carina.
    ‘Don’t be silly.’ Stern took another cautious step. The stairs had supported Simon. He would have to see whether they could support more than twice the boy’s weight. ‘We’ve only got one torch and someone’ll have to call for help if we aren’t back in a couple of minutes.’
    The rotten treads creaked at every step like the rigging of a ship. Stern wasn’t sure if his sense of balance was playing tricks, but the stairs seemed to sway more violently the lower he got.
    ‘Simon?’ He must have called the boy’s name at least five times, but the only response was a metallic clang some distance away. It sounded like someone hitting a central heating pipe with a spanner.
    Before long he was standing at the foot of the stairs. He looked around with his heart pounding. It was now so dark outside, he couldn’t even make out Carina’s silhouette at the top of the stairwell. He shone his torch over the underground chamber on his right. Two passages led off it, both