The Choice - Alex Lake

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       Saturday, 7 March 2020

      Look at him. I mean, just look. Baggy, out-of-date jeans with brown leather brogues that have not seen shoe polish in years, shirt untucked over his spreading stomach. It’s pathetic. No effort at all. Shabby. Second rate.

       I’m doing nothing wrong. He deserves everything he gets.

       Out he climbs, his car – not washed, of course – parked on the road outside under a flickering streetlamp. He pauses, checking over his shoulder that everything is all right.

      It’s OK, he thinks, everything’s fine. He looks at the car. The kids are arguing in the back seat. One of them puts the interior light on, then off, then on again.

      He hesitates outside the local shop. He’s about to go back and tell them, Stop it, you’ll break the light, but he pushes the door open and steps out of the early spring dark and into the shop.

       He can leave them there, for a few minutes. The car’s unlocked – he doesn’t want the alarm to go off – but no harm will come to them. He won’t be in the shop long enough. His three-year-old daughter is buckled into a car seat, so she’s going nowhere. His five-year-old middle son is erratic and wilful, but he won’t get out of the car. He’ll be too scared, and if he tries his big brother – all of seven years old – will stop him. He’s sensible; a typical, rule-following first child.

       So they’ll stay in the car. Safe.

       Brother, brother, sister.

       Daughter, son, son.

       The lights of his life, no doubt. Annoying, at times, and hard work, but he loves them. He and his wife are blessed. Their children are the most important things in the world to them.

       Yet he leaves them in a car on the road, unattended.

       It’s not illegal. He probably knows that. He’s probably checked. The law allows you to leave children in a car provided there is no undue risk.

       Which is exactly the point.

       He thinks the risk is acceptable, so small as to be easily dismissed. He won’t be long, the kids won’t get out of the car and they can’t start it as he has the keys.

       There are other sources of danger, of course – a runaway truck careering into the parked car and crushing it. An earthquake opening up a rift in the road underneath the car. A flash flood washing it and his children away.

       All as near to impossible as makes no difference.

      So he is right. The risk is small.

      It is safe to leave them in the car for a few minutes while he goes into the shop. After all, what’s the alternative? Get them all out, chase them around? And then there’s the virus: it’s hit Italy and Spain hard, and it could be the same here. People are nervous; they don’t want their kids running around in a shop, picking things up and touching door handles and counter tops. He would have to corral them, which would turn a quick stop into an expedition.

       At least that’s the excuse he makes. The excuse a lot of parents make. In fact, it would not make it into an expedition. It would just make it take five minutes longer, which, when you think what might happen if you leave them alone and unprotected, is not all that much of a price to pay.

       But never mind. It is very improbable anything will happen to them. The odds are vanishingly small.

       It’s one in a million that the kids are in danger.

       And that’s the thing. It might be a one in a million chance, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

       It means it’ll happen one time out of a million.

       One time in a million there will be a stranger out there with bad intentions.

       But who? Who would it be?

      He’ll be asking that question for a long time.

       Matt

      1

      Matt Westbrook stepped into the shop. It was one of the last of its kind – an independent local shop stocking a mixture of groceries, alcohol, newspapers, magazines and basic home cleaning and maintenance supplies – and he was the only customer.

      He was only there because it was open and it was on his way home and Annabelle had texted to say they needed milk, coffee, bread, pasta, and beer or wine – and, if they had any, toilet paper and disinfecting wipes – and could he stop and get them on his way home with the kids?

      Which was fine. She was recovering from a cold and didn’t need to go out on a chilly night. He could pick up the stuff and do a big shop the next day at the supermarket. He wouldn’t bother with the wine, though – they were trying for another baby, so she was off the booze and he didn’t much feel like drinking alone.

      They had three already, which was quite a handful, but he had managed to persuade her to add one more. Norman, seven, was named after her late father, a physics teacher and one of the most creative and inspiring people Matt had ever met. Keith – named after the Rolling Stone, if anyone asked – had come next, followed by Molly. Each kid had brought with them worse morning sickness and harder labours: Norman was nine pounds, Keith ten, and Molly eleven. As far as Annabelle was concerned, that was nature’s way of telling them to stop at three, but the years passed and the memories faded and, after a while, she had agreed to try for another.

      His friends thought he was crazy, but he liked having kids. It was chaotic and busy, for sure, but he enjoyed it. More than that: he loved it. At work he daydreamed of sitting on the couch watching a movie with the three of them snuggled up to him and Annabelle, or of coming home and reading them a book.

      And even though Norman was only seven he felt the time slipping away. He couldn’t bear the thought there were only eleven years to go until he left for university or a career or whatever came his way, to be followed swiftly by Keith and Molly.

      The first seven years had vanished in the blink of an eye, so eleven more was nothing. He wasn’t ready for it, and the only way to stop it was to have more kids. Five, maybe, or six.

      Annabelle might have something to say about that, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

      He looked out of the shop window at the car. The doors were still closed. The front doors were unlocked, but the rear doors were child-locked so, even if they tried, the kids wouldn’t be able to get out. They’d have to climb into the front and go out that way, which was unlikely.

      Still, he’d be as quick as he could. He didn’t need a police officer walking past and seeing them and questioning where their mum or dad was. He was pretty sure it wasn’t against the law to leave them there but he still didn’t want to discuss whether it was good parenting or not to do so.

      He grabbed a basket and moved around the shop. Milk, skimmed. A block of Irish cheddar cheese. A bag of pasta – fusilli, he noted, whatever that was. Coffee, not a brand he recognized and probably awful, but it would have to do. Bread, brown, unsliced – they had surprisingly good loaves here – and a warm baguette. He paused at the wine shelf. Maybe he would have a glass after all. Red, perhaps. It was cold, the nights drawing in. He picked up a bottle of Cabernet. That would do.

      The checkout was at the far end of the shop. He carried his basket over and put it down.

      ‘All right, mate.’ The man behind the counter was in his fifties and had a Liverpool accent. ‘Got everything you wanted?’

      ‘Yes,

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