Shadows in the Gaps

Chapter 1

Andrew Ashford never had a relationship with his father, his father wasn’t present when he was growing up. A drinker and strict disciplinarian, he worked a lot of the time and just never seemed to have an interest in his son up until his death when Andrew was 15 years old.

Growing up without a father figure in his life he always said to himself if he ever had a son or a daughter, things would be different. He wanted to make sure he was present and have a good relationship with his kids and give them the life he never had growing up.

He met Annie who would later become his wife when they turned 18. The pair were childhood sweethearts and saving up his paychecks, he bought a ring, proposed and they were married the following year.

They moved into their first rented property. It was a modest little two-bedroom flat on a council housing estate in the area of Madisen within the town of Braevarn in Scotland, a dreary built up area with blocks of flats as grey as the sky on most days. Typical Scottish town with good quiet areas as well as rough areas plagued with addiction and neglect.

He had a job in the local foundry from the age of 16 and he did as much hours as he could so that him and his new wife could live comfortably. It was a heavy job with long hours but always made time for his wife. They were a happy couple, and from the outside it looked like the perfect relationship. The only thing missing was a little one and people always asked when they would be making their family complete.

It wasn’t that they weren’t trying, it just didn’t seem to happen at that time. There was always that paranoia in the back of Andrews mind that he might not be able to impregnate Annie, but that’s all it was, paranoia. After his 20th Birthday he decided to try and join the local Fire Brigade and soon after he went for some tests, physical fitness and written exams but never met the criteria. He failed on the written exams and he never tried to retake the tests or apply ever again.

Annie often wondered why he didn’t try again and knew it was out of character for him to give up like that but he rarely spoke about it and she could tell he didn’t take it too well. Whether it was an impulsive decision and he just lost interest or he didn’t take failing too well was only known by himself and he never went into it with anyone.

Not long after that however he got the best news he could have ever hoped for. He had come home from work to find out Annie was expecting their first child. The couple were over the moon and things seemed to be finally coming together for them. By the 12 week point they found out at the gender scan she was having a boy and Andrew was overcome with jubilation and pride and couldn’t wait to meet his son.

They painted the spare room blue with characters from kid’s television shows stenciled onto the wall by the crib. Standing looking at the finished room, Andrew stood with the paint roller in one hand with his other arm around his wife, smiling, he knew their lives seemed to be perfect but things can only get better and when that bundle of joy makes his appearance, things will finally be complete.

The months seemed to steadily pass by elapsing like weeks and before they knew it they were over 7 months into the pregnancy. Andrew had taken the day off work to drive Annie to the clinic for a routine scan. The roads weren’t busy and the weather wasn’t bad for the time of year. The roads can be slippery for the start of November but this day was clear and dry with only high winds with a cold nip in the air.

He wasn’t a bad driver, he was careful and when Annie was in the car he was extra vigilant and took his time so much that even she commented on how he drove like an ‘old lady’ however he laughed it off and continued on at the same sluggish speed.

‘Can’t be too careful these days, its other drivers I worry about crashing into us’ he shrugged, turning to look at her and smiling, grabbing her hand.

As they reached the town Centre, being only a few minutes away from the clinic, they were both listening to a song on the radio. It was a song by an artist named ‘Willie Walker.’ Annie softly sang the lyrics looking out the window at the passing scenery, shops and crowds of people walking different directions. Andy never knew the song and wasn’t a fan. He wasn’t into that commercial pop music that was popular at the time, he was more into Rock and Indie type of bands, he was the type of guy who would never admit he liked a commercial song even if he secretly did.

Stopping at a junction he carefully turned left to go up Regions Street, the car humming along when in the fraction of what seemed to be a second there was a violent jolt, impact, metal shrieking, glass bursting into glittery sharp confetti. A man had lost consciousness in the car coming downhill towards them and hit them head on.

They never even seen it coming, it wasn’t a crash at high speed, but the smash had jerked Andy’s neck and thumped his forehead into the steering wheel. Confused and dazed Andy grabbed the side of his neck and turned his whole upper body as quickly and carefully as possible in a panic to see if his wife is okay and his unborn son.

‘Are you alright?!’

She was panting and clearly in pain, ‘Something is wrong with the baby’ she whispered trying to breathe the pain into control. ‘I need to get to the hospital’ whimpering as she withered on the passenger seat of the wreck.

A passerby had called an ambulance and came to the wreck to see if she could be of assistance and before long a crowd had gathered with the coming sound of sirens getting closer in the distance.

‘I think I’m in labor’ Annie said in a panic wincing in pain as the ambulances arrived and quickly got them into the back and rushed them to the nearest hospital which was only a five-minute drive from the town center. Andy kept calm and held her hand in the back of that ambulance trying his best to keep from panicking his wife, assuring her that the baby would be fine to ease the stress of the situation, even though he was petrified deep down for his unborn son.

They reached the hospital and time went by in a blur, Andrew was in his own bubble of shock and stress. The doctors slowed down the delivery with tocolytics to allow steroids to mature the baby’s lungs and enable a transfer to a specialist NICU.

Hours felt like an eternity but before he knew it his boy was here. Looking at him in his incubator, he had tears of joy in his eyes. Thinking how tiny his son was and thought worryingly about holding him on the count of how small and fragile he looked. The doctor assured them that Annie and the baby were doing just fine and after eight weeks the baby got to come home.

Arriving home as a family Andy was overcome with emotions, his life seemed to be complete and his journey into fatherhood had begun. He would often sit and stare at his son not quite believing that he was there as if in a dream state, glad that after that scare where he feared he could have lost him.

Andy soon returned to work at the foundry and Annie stayed at home with baby Alan, named after his grandfather on his mother’s side and the baby seemed healthy and rarely cried unless he was hungry. Life was good for the couple after the birth, Andy worked and came home to his little family and at that time they didn’t think anything could go wrong. Life was complete.

Andy was a tall stocky man, big from the heavy long hours of his job, with a short dark crew cut and always dressed in his jeans and his designer jumpers and jackets. He wasn’t a drinker and never took drugs and was always home to play with his son and be there for his wife. Annie was a short woman with shoulder length dirty blonde hair, an attractive woman with slender build who had already lost both her parents to cancer by the time she turned 20. She had Andy and baby Alan and that was her whole world. Their voids were filled and they felt as if nothing could go wrong.

As Alan grew bigger and was now crawling and exploring the world around him with his mouth, he was a very curious child but Annie had noticed he had an extremely bad temper. He would scream and thump his forehead into the ground with full force for the smallest of reasons and kept doing it as a toddler. Annie had asked the midwife if this was normal and asked if he could do damage to himself hitting his head and asked if there was anything she could do to stop this but she was assured that he would grow out of it and that it was just his temper. She was told to put him in his room to calm down.

Alan seemed to learn quickly, he went from taking his first steps to running around the house pointing to everything asking what things were and seemed a very normal child. He didn’t seem to have any problems apart from his horrendous temper which would often show if he never got his own way.

He loved going to the local football grounds with his dad to watch their team Braevarn AFC play every weekend and Alan loved to go and watch and spend the time with his dad who by this time was his hero. Alan looked up to his dad and followed and copied his every move almost. He used to love sitting on his dad’s shoulders so he could get a good view of the match and felt completely safe and content when he was with him.

Once Alan had started nursery his parents had noticed that although he was cleaver and seemed to learn relatively quickly, he didn’t seem to get on with other kids and often struggled to make friends or play with the rest of the kids in his class. He never wanted to share and usually sat on his own, observing the other children as if observing wildlife.

When he was alone in his room with his toys he was content. He was a small child for his age with piercing blue eyes and his mother’s dirty blonde hair with freckles across his nose but had a striking resemblance to his father. The same eyes, dimples and cheekbones. People often told his dad that he couldn’t deny that boy.

By age seven he seemed to be learning at the same rate as the other kids in his class but never seemed eager to learn, something was a bit off with him. He struggled to make friends and was often taken to the head teacher for fighting or damaging school property. Out in the playground he would stand with his back against the wall and watch the other kids running around chasing each other, playing tag or football as if he didn’t want anyone behind him.

He didn’t put in any effort with his school work but was very keen at drawing. He would spend hours at night in his room drawing and creating characters and seemed to have a real talent for his art. However, his teacher noticed that his drawings were violent in nature. Always depictions of people being killed with nothing colored in apart from the scarlet red blood on the white paper. His teacher had noticed that this was an ongoing thing with him so she decided to bring his parents in to show them his work.

Annie went into the school to meet his teacher, a tall thin woman in her late forties with short shoulder length dark hair and glasses. She seemed a nice woman but she appeared a bit concerned about Alan. She suggested that Annie take the boy to a child psychologist for an assessment for his behavior in school.

‘He is constantly fighting and hurting the other kids and has no interest to do his work in class. He just doesn’t take anything in.’ His teacher remarked and urged that Annie have him seen by a medical professional. Annie was angered and stunned by what she was told until the teacher brought out the violent drawings the child had drawn over the duration of the past couple of months. Seeing these she agreed to have him checked and left the school grounds disturbed and anxious.

She couldn’t wrap her head around what she was shown because despite his unruly behavior, tantrums and inability to make friends, she never realized just how bad things were in the child’s mind. When she got home she walked straight into Alan’s bedroom and looked around to see if he had drawn any pictures in his own time and it didn’t take her long to find them. In a big yellow box in the shape of a house with the bright red roof lid lifted off where he kept all his paper and stationary. She found multiple violent disturbing drawings. Not all however, there were other drawings of animals, cars and motorbikes. She took the horrid drawings of death and destruction to show Andrew when he came in from work.

Perhaps this was just a phase he was going through she thought but without hesitation she readily picked up the phone and called the number that the teacher had given her and made the appointment.

Andy and Annie sat the boy down and asked him about the drawings and his behavior at school and looking at the boy’s innocent angelic face and wide blue eyes, they didn’t notice anything off with him as at home he was always happy enough and content when he was by himself in his room. Sure he was a bit unruly at times, but what seven-year-old wasn’t? he wasn’t distant and didn’t show his parents any cause for concern at home and shrugged it off as a normal child with an overactive imagination.

At the appointment with the psychologist he spoke to the child at length and assured Annie and Andy that he was a cleaver and laid back child and told them that it was just a phase he was going through and that he would grow out of it. It was just curiosity.

Reassured they went on their way feeling glad and grateful for the assessment knowing that Alan was a normal little boy and they now had the knowledge there was nothing to be concerned about.

Time steadily passed and Alan seemed to grow up quickly but his parents couldn’t help but have concerns with his behavior at times. Something was just not right and his parents couldn’t pin point what it was. The boy was always getting into fights at or after school, his conduct in the class seemed to get worse and the parents just put it to juvenile delinquency and that he ‘would grow out of it’

When he was nine, Annie found out she was pregnant with another child and she and Andy were both over the moon. ‘Maybe this is what he needs, a little brother or sister’ Annie speculated. Thinking maybe it will help him come out of his shell being a big brother and Alan seemed to be excited about the thought of having a younger sibling and even he felt like his family would be complete.

Alan was still very short for his age, the other kids towering over him at school and it seemed he was stinted from his premature birth. He was cleaver and learned quickly with things he was interested in but the information he was not interested in never registered in his brain, it was as if no matter how much he tried, his brain wouldn’t take any of it in but with things he was engrossed in, it was as if he had a photographic memory.

Before the Ashford’s knew it, Annie had given birth to a baby girl. She was a healthy baby born the day after her due date and just like that Andy looked at his little family and felt as though life can’t get much better than this.

They named her Jillian and before long they were able to wrap her up and put her in her car seat and take her home. Andy had requested a swap to a bigger house and eventually swapped with an old couple a few streets away in the same area so that Alan could stay at the same school and by that summer they had moved into their new home. It was a three-bedroom flat, much bigger and more spacious for the family of four.

Summertime usually had a few weeks of blistering heat but a lot of the time there was overcast or rain, ‘Typical Scottish weather’ Andy used to say, they would get a handful of beautiful days scattered along the summer season with dull grey overcast days in between and it made the drab concrete jungle of Madisen look and feel wearisome.

Alan took to his baby sister and became very protective of her, often playing with her and carrying her around the house with him. His parents were glad to see him happy and proud to be a big brother but the troublesome nature in him was still there. Still getting into fights, acting out and misbehaving but with Jill he was careful, gentle and loving.