The Custody Battle

He sees it all over again:
himself a boy of nine,
a prisoner in the lonely big house,
searching through the paperwork in the bedroom,
eventually finding the phone number hidden in a big white envelope at the bottom of a drawer.

Freedom. He planned to sneak out to the phone box opposite the sweetshop and call the number.
Then he froze.
He stood with the slip of paper in his hand, turning cold with fear.
The staircase creaked,

Footsteps came to a stop outside the bedroom door.

No!

The door burst opened and the woman who’d befriended his mother, only to destroy the family, darted across the room, snatching the sheet of paper out of his hand. You put all thoughts of contacting your father out of your mind, she said, smiling as she slowly ripped the paper in two. Your mother signed you over to us because you made her very, very ill.