Lifesaver by Louise Voss Read Free Book Online

can’t.’
    Without me having to tell her why I was so afraid, she understood. ‘Is he still healthy?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes. But what if…’
    ‘We’re so alike, you and I,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly what I would worry about, if I were you. It’s the what-ifs that’ll get you every time.’
    ‘I want to know him so badly. But I don’t want him to know who I am. And his dad didn’t give their home address, just the college where he’s a tutor. He teaches art classes, adult education.. What would you do, if you were me?’
    There was silence while Lil thought for a moment. ‘Gillingsbury’s not that far. Since you aren’t working at the moment, why not go down there and ask for a meeting with the father, pretend that you want to enrol in whatever art class it is that he offers. Obviously he’s not going to start talking about his little boy there and then, but you could—what is it called these days? Suss it out ? Maybe ask him where he lives? Oh, I don’t know. I’ve always rather fancied playing detective.’
    I laughed. ‘That’s a terrible idea, but thanks anyway,’ I said. ‘And besides, I’ve got that audition tomorrow. Who knows, I might be back in work soon.’
    We didn’t talk about Max after that, although I felt a lot better for having told Lil about him. It was as if he’d become a real little boy to me now, having Lil’s magic breath blown into the sketchy frail body I imagined, like Gepetto animating Pinocchio.
    ‘Break a leg, darling,’ said Lil at the end of our conversation, and once again, I felt so relieved to have her back in my life.

    ‘We’ll let you know,’ said the director the next afternoon, after I’d made a fairly poor attempt at a west country accent, reading several pages of script for my screen test. I wasn’t optimistic about my chances. Despite Lil’s good-luck wishes, I’d found it hard to concentrate, although I wasn’t sure if it was because I was out of practice, worried about Vicky, or—the most likely reason—because my head was filled with images of Max, like a grainy cine-film spooling through my mind when I ought to have been concentrating on the script.
    They were cliched images, I knew: in my imagination, Max wore a cowboy hat and fired a cap gun. He had freckles, like the Milky Bar Kid, although I gave him ginger hair instead of a blond thatch. Even though he wasn’t yet five, he had an otherworldly wisdom about him. He appreciated life. He wasn’t a bit whingy like Crystal, (who moaned that her ‘calflings’ hurt if she had to walk more than ten yards. Vicky had to pretend to time her with the second hand of her watch to get her to walk anywhere: ‘Right, from here to that lamp-post: Go!’ and Crystal would then sprint off, leg pains miraculously vanished). In my imagination, Max never griped or behaved like a prima-donna. He was so used to pain during his two years of invasive treatments, I assumed, that he didn’t have anything left to complain about.
    Yes, OK, I knew this was unlikely. It was another reason that I really ought to meet him, I thought, so I could dispel these fantasies. Kids were kids. They all moaned; none of them were perfect. I wished Adam had put a photograph in the letter, so at least I wouldn’t have had to imagine what Max looked like.
    I was shocked at how badly I wanted to meet him. I could feel the longing in my empty womb; and it felt like negative space; a hungry space defined by my body surrounding it, like Giacometti’s wiry sculptures of people with holes in their middles. Or like the redundancy of my hands without a buggy’s handlebars to push.
    Either way, it seemed a lot more important than a stupid audition.

    I was in bed before Ken got home that night, worn out with the unaccustomed commute into London and the stress of the audition. It was a hot evening, and the bed had rapidly lost its initial appealing coolness. The duvet was pressing against me, so I stuck my leg out of the side,