On the other side of town, Adrienne Scott pulled her BMW into the small car park at the back of the Havannah Court Autism Centre and sat for a second after turning the engine off. She stared at the familiar bricks of the wall in front of her. It seemed she knew every uneven edge of them, but then she'd used this space a lot over the past four years. This was her space. On a Monday, Wednesday and Friday at any rate. Maybe using the same slot on each visit was her homage to autism, her own little need for regularity.
Her dark bob sank back into the headrest. She just needed a minute or two of peace before going inside. Ryan was her son and she loved him. She was sure she must love him on some level, but it was all just so damned hard when there was nothing but anxiety given in return. She was his mother; she'd grown him inside her and kept him safe, and he couldn't stand her touch. How could that be, she wondered for the millionth time since Ryan's diagnosis, even though she knew the question was pointless.
Not just her touch, she reminded herself. Any touch. But she was his mother. It should be different with her. The clock in the dashboard clicked on to ten o'clock, and she reluctantly got out of the car and headed inside, feeling so much older than her thirty-five years.
Signing in, she flashed a tight smile at Sylvia the receptionist, hoping to avoid conversation. No matter what the woman said it always made Adrienne feel guilty. She could hear the innocuous words coming out — 'How's work? Any exciting cases? Isn't it a lovely day? Have you got any plans for the summer? What a smart suit…' — but it was as if underneath each sentence was the whisper of 'Bad mother. You should have your child at home. Bad mother.'
Sylvia was still speaking when Adrienne turned her back on her. Adrienne didn't care. Most of the staff at the centre didn't like her, she was pretty sure of that. They thought she was cold; you didn't have to be a mind reader to see that. And maybe she was. Maybe the past six years had made her that way. Some people just weren't cut out to deal with children that were different. They had no right to judge her. After all, it was bad mothers like her that kept them in their jobs.
A dull ache of tension already creeping into her shoulders, she made her way along the familiar route to Ryan's room, trying not to look through any of the open doors as she went, but invariably unable to stop herself. This was her penance: one hour, three times a week. She may as well punish herself properly.
She passed 11-year-old Eleanor, whose long hair was always matted no matter how often it was brushed and who would for ever be known as the dribbling girl inside Adrienne's head. Turning the corner, she glanced into Michael's room, and sure enough he was still intent on trying to fit a square plastic shape into a round hole simply because the shape and the hole were the same bright red colour. Ryan's nurse, Ceri, had told her that Michael could sit for hours with that block in his hand, trying to squeeze it into the hole. Adrienne wondered if the child would ever see the irony. All these children were square pegs in round holes. How the nurses that worked here didn't end up shaking them out of sheer frustration she would never understand. But then, she was a bad mother. She hadn't been able to cope with Ryan for more than eighteen months.
Three doors down from her son's room, a little girl she didn't recognise stared at the wall and screamed as a nurse tried to wipe the snot that streamed down her face. Adrienne turned away in disgust, and the first edge of a headache throbbed loudly at the back of her skull. At least Ryan wasn't a screamer. Staring at the door she had to go through, she ran her manicured fingers through her sleek hair and wished she could raise more enthusiasm for seeing her beautiful son. No, Ryan didn't scream. Ryan was too busy singing. Constantly. All day. From waking to sleeping, barely pausing for breath between songs. Maybe if he'd just been quiet she could have coped. Maybe.
Through the doorway drifted a perfect imitation of Aled Jones's 'Walking In The Air'. Disc 1, track 4. Even she knew their order by heart now. Damn that ex-husband and his Classical Tracks CD that he'd played over and over in the car when Ryan was a baby. She hadn't even liked the music then. The too-familiar song slid past her eardrums and wormed its way towards the hammer of pain beating at the back of her skull, adding melody to its rhythm. And damn her baby's autistic memory storing every note and word in its banks until his body was developed enough to endlessly reproduce them.
As Adrienne stepped inside and grimaced a smile at Ceri, Ryan's tune didn't even waver.