Scanning through all the social-media profiles, a few things stood out. She wanted to look further into Aaron Cole. Why would someone his age be so private? Then there was the fact that Monica’s daughter Chloe Evans, who she still hadn’t interviewed, had posted prolifically online until about six months ago, when all her accounts had gone quiet. She hadn’t put up a single thing since then, which seemed odd to Alison. The girl had been ill, her mother said, but would that stop her going online? The other thing that struck her, looking over them, was that there was nothing online at all for Nina da Souza. She didn’t even have a Facebook account, she didn’t use email as far as Alison could see, and all the set-up for the group had been arranged via text, from a mobile number that was now out of service. It was so frustrating. If this was a murder case, she’d have been part of a team, and everyone would have been hauled in right away, before they had the chance to get their stories straight. So much time had already been lost, but she couldn’t do much more with just herself and Diana. She was pretty sure Diana still leaned towards the accident angle in any case.
‘Anything on the socials?’ Diana herself came over then, looking as glossy and neat as always. Was the shine on her hair something innate, Alison wondered, or did she just have a really good shampoo?
‘Maybe. I want to request further access to some of them.’ She was distrustful of Ed, and also of Jeremy, but perhaps that was just a class thing, a chip on her shoulder. And if Kelly Anderson had left by the time the fall took place, Jeremy also wasn’t there, since he’d driven her home. ‘Funny thing about Nina da Souza, she has no online presence. I can’t find her anywhere.’
‘You think that’s weird?’
‘Nowadays, yeah.’
‘Could be one of those off-grid people, you know. A low-techer. That would make sense, if she’s a hippy-dippy doula type.’
‘Yeah. But I’m thinking – what if it’s a made-up name?’
Diana was less sure. ‘She’d have had to do a DBS check to get that job, surely.’
‘Not necessarily. I mean, think about it. She’d no ID on her, no wallet, no phone even.’ Nina da Souza was a total mystery, in fact. They didn’t even know where she lived yet. ‘You found anything new?’
Diana shook her head. ‘Still chasing up forensics on those hairs, they’re so slow. You reckon it’s significant, the thing with Kelly Anderson at the barbecue?’
Alison frowned. ‘Can’t see how. She’d left before anything happened.’ But could two separate incidents really take place at the same quiet suburban party? How likely was that? ‘That’s it, nothing else?’
‘Well, you know we talked about seeing if anyone had a record.’
Alison pounced on that. ‘Did they?’
‘Not exactly. Squeaky clean in fact, except for one.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘On your desk there.’
Alison flipped open the file, made an emoji-face of surprise. ‘Always the quiet ones, isn’t it. Reckon it’s relevant?’
‘Honestly, no. But we should go and have a chat anyway.’
‘Was that really all?’ She’d hoped for something more. A violent offence of some kind, a little hint at the kind of person who might later push someone off a balcony.
‘Yeah, as far as convictions go. But Jax Culville, she was a witness in a big case about fifteen years ago. In fact she blew the whistle on the whole thing in the first place.’
‘What case was that?’ Alison was leafing through the endless pile of paperwork on her desk. New regs. Parking instructions. Pass-agg reminders about washing-up.
‘Mark Jarvis. Do you remember that one? He—’
‘I remember,’ Alison stopped her, a queasy feeling rising in her stomach. ‘I was seconded to CEOP a few years after that.’ An innocuous acronym for one of the hardest jobs there was – the Child Exploitation and Online Protection team.
Diana raised her neat eyebrows. ‘Yikes. I’ve managed to avoid it so far.’
‘Wise. So that was Jax? The girl who . . .’
‘Yeah. Want to hear something else that’s interesting? Mark Jarvis got out of prison three months ago. He’s living in a halfway house in Ealing. Fancy a trip out there?’
Alison eyed her paperwork pile. ‘Sure. It’s not like I have anything else to do just now.’
Diana gave a faint smile in acknowledgment of the irony. ‘Alright. You want to get some food in a bit? I’m on a late and I need to eat.’
Alison was taken aback. A social invitation, from the ice queen? Maybe she felt bad about blowing Alison off last night. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah. I was hoping you might know somewhere that doesn’t only sell bacon rolls or fried chicken.’
The team ran on such food, though Alison in her late thirties was starting to feel it. ‘Good luck with that around here, to be honest. I know a place we can try, though.’
‘Great.’ No mention of why she wanted to meet up, or what she wanted to discuss. ‘There’s one or two things I want to ask you.’
‘Alright.’
Diana left again, without saying anything else, leaving Alison puzzled. But then it wasn’t surprising. If you learned anything from this job, it was that everyone had secrets, everyone had something they didn’t want the world to know about. Even her. Her eyes were drawn to the only picture she’d been able to find of Nina da Souza, taken by Monica at that barbecue. An attractive, fit-looking woman, tanned, jingling with earrings and bracelets, dusty bare feet, a tattoo on her arm. They knew so little about this woman – they hadn’t even found her address so far, which seemed crazy, or if there was any next of kin to let them know her fate. Had she had secrets too? And if so, had one of them led someone to push her off the balcony that day, killing her outright?
The day of – Kelly
2.13 p.m.
She hadn’t meant to do it. She’d told herself it was going to be hard, all those babies, but it wasn’t the other mums’ fault that their babies had been OK and Kelly’s wasn’t. She would go and smile and be nice to them, act like a normal person, not one leaking crazy all over the place, leaving a trail behind her like a slug.
But seeing the baby, Cathy’s baby, so soon, had thrown her off. It was like going into one of those haunted houses that Ryan loved at Halloween, your heart hammering because you knew any second something could jump out at you. His huge wide eyes, his little hands, opening and closing on nothing. Kelly’s baby had been a boy too. Tom, she was going to call him, or Charlie. Something simple. Strong. Her dad’s name had been Charlie. He’d died of a heart attack when he was fifty-two. Too many fags and cans of Special Brew.
Cathy led her into the kitchen, making a fuss of her, like she was sick or something. She saw Anita in the garden, recognised a look in her, a barren look, a worn-out-with-sadness look, like you were sick of how unhappy you felt all the time, you just wanted to feel normal for a minute. Kelly knew in that moment that Anita’s baby had not come from America after all. Someone said something about there being a delay, the due date hadn’t been right or something like that, but no, she knew what had happened: the woman in America was going to keep her baby after all. It was hard to even blame her. Her eyes met Anita’s – the two of us, here, we don’t have babies – two people who didn’t belong. Monica barely said hello, too busy moaning that Ocado had sent the wrong kind of leaves for the salad or something. Kelly hadn’t even known you could get different salad leaves until she was twenty – basically you got iceberg and that was that. What was cavolo nero? It sounded exotic, something from a world Kelly wasn’t part of. She pulled at her hoody sleeves, self-conscious. It was hot, she realised. She hadn’t thought about the weather when getting dressed. Hadn’t been outside in a week. She’d just wanted to swaddle herself up against the world.
Her time at the party was confused, and weeks later she would still be trying to figure it out, work out why she’d done it. In the garden, Hazel was doing the barbecue, shoving Ed out of the way. His face was red. Rahul was near the end of the g
arden, doing something on his phone like always. Kelly had been a bit afraid of him since that day he’d mashed Ryan’s face into the wall. Aaron, the only person near her age, was holding a beer and talking to Jeremy, the two of them awkward. Kelly had no idea what to say to Jeremy. He always looked like he was writing an essay in his head. Then she was back inside, feeling dizzy and too hot. Jax came into the kitchen then, pushing aside the curtain. She had a baby in her arms too, and when she saw Kelly she looked guilty. Before that, she had looked worried. Something wasn’t right. ‘Oh! Hi, Kelly. Er . . . how are you?’
‘Is that your baby?’ Kelly looked at her hungrily, the little girl.
‘Oh yes. Hadley. Do you want to . . . You want to hold her?’ For a moment it seemed like everyone held their breath. But of course she wanted to. She held out her arms and the squashy little body was in them, so warm and soft, her skin like the velvet on a cushion Kelly’s mum had on her sofa. This could be mine, she thought, as she held the baby asleep against her. It nearly had been. Her baby had been perfectly formed, just not ready to come out. Small, but perfect. He was buried now. Under the ground, soil in his eyes.
Aisha came into the room then, holding her baby. Also a boy. Also beautiful, with a cap of dark hair already. She looked worried too, Kelly thought. It was as if her loss had given her super powers, like she could see what everyone was feeling beneath the surface. ‘Kelly, I was looking for you. I’m so sorry for what happened. Did you . . . give him a name?’
The question she wanted people to ask. She opened her mouth, found a sob there, swallowed it. ‘Charlie.’
‘That’s lovely. This is Hari – H-A-R-I, that is.’
Someone else came in then, and Aisha moved to let them past. It was a teenage girl carrying a baby dressed in pink frills. Kelly was confused for a moment, she thought maybe the girl was someone they’d got to replace her in the group, an even younger mum. Then Monica said, ‘This is Isabella. Oh, and my other daughter, Chloe.’ And just like that there were four babies in the room, Hari draped over Aisha’s shoulder, Arthur in a sling on Cathy’s front, Isabella being held by the teenage girl, and in Kelly’s own arms, Hadley. Not her own. But a baby all the same. Kelly handed her back, before it got too hard.
She hadn’t meant to do it. But after an hour or so at the party, drinking pink fizzy wine because she could now and it had been six months since she’d had a drink, and her tolerance was shot but she needed something to get through this, she’d seen Hadley on her own in the garden. She was in a bouncy chair and wearing little jeans and a yellow T-shirt. Kelly liked that. If she’d had a girl she wouldn’t have dressed them all in pink. Let them be whoever they wanted, like. No one was with Hadley. Kelly stood and looked around for Jax, for Aaron, but there was no sign of them. The baby was alone. A bee buzzed near her, around the bush of pink flowers. Kelly didn’t know what they were called.
‘Are you OK, sweetheart?’ Hadley looked up at her, eyes unfocussed. She must be scared. Her mummy and daddy had left her. Then Kelly was stooping, picking her up, and no one seemed to notice. ‘Let’s go and see the roses, baby.’ And she just walked down the back of the garden, out the gate and into the park, and it was as easy as that.
Jax – six weeks earlier
I blinked my eyes several times, unsure if what I was seeing was real. But it was. Nina sat at the head of the circle – if a circle can have a head – and brandished the plastic doll-baby with rolling eyes. She was busy shoving its head through what I could only describe as a knitted vagina. I wondered who had knitted it and why, if there was an instruction book of body parts out there waiting to be rendered in wool.
‘So you see,’ Nina instructed, ‘it’s a fairly brutal process. Your vagina doesn’t have the stretchiness of this wool, mums, so you may get some tearing or rupturing.’
Tearing. Rupturing. Those weren’t words I wanted to associate with my most intimate parts. I glanced at Aaron in terror and he stroked my arm without taking his eyes off Nina, like the good student he was determined to be. To protect myself, I drifted off into the same thoughts I’d been having ever since Claudia came to my door. Thoughts about what I’d done back then, and why.
Over the years, I had thought a lot about why Mark paid me that initial burst of attention, which so blinded me, which caused me to behave the way I did, which in turn led to so many other things falling apart. At first, I told myself he did genuinely like me, even when it became clear I was not exactly his type.
Later, I realised it was all calculating, that this kind of person is so very good at what they do, even if they don’t consciously think about it. I was a young member of staff, easily led, with no experience of actually applying the safeguarding rules I had been taught. With no knowledge of how you should push back against your own fear, your ingrained politeness, your respect for authority. Your bedazzlement with older men who bought champagne and used fountain pens. It was such things they hid behind. I was naive and I had access to the teenagers who needed our services, children really. That was my appeal for him. It became obvious as soon as I went to his flat that night.
I had extracted and carefully hoarded information about his life, both from Mark and from gossip around the office. I was not the only young woman working there who had looked at him and at Claudia, once beautiful but now ageing, and wondered if there might not be an opening of some kind for me. With the pregnancy, she began staying at their country house, only coming to London for meetings and doctors’ appointments. Mark, hard worker that he was, stayed at the ‘pied-à-terre’, a flat in Belgravia that I now realise must have been worth close to three million even then. Apparently, this kind of arrangement was common. Paying for two homes. A husband in the city four nights a week, a wife alone in the country. It astonished me.
It was easy to find where Mark lived; his address was on the work database, and in any case bandied about the office for whenever we needed to courier papers for his signature. One night, instead of booking a bike messenger as I’d been told to by Veronica, I simply got on the Tube and went there myself. I’d stayed late in the office, knowing that Mark put in long hours and might not be home early. I was the last one sitting at my desk, drawing admiring looks from my boss as she went, and irritated ones from my colleagues. As I strolled down the street to the Tube, it was already cold, a breath of winter in the air. Excitement quickened my steps, and I forced myself to slow down, savour it. I had slept with only two boys before, one a university boyfriend who never cut his toenails, one an internet date so nervous he could barely look me in the face. This would be different. Mark’s flat was near the expensive shops of Bond Street, which were still open as I passed, lit up and scented, exuding the promise of a better life, one where I’d wear designer clothes and have opinions about perfume and never set foot in a Primark again. I had put on my best underwear, but even that was only from H & M, cheap nylon lace over turquoise satin.
I rang the brass bell of his block of flats and he buzzed me up without speaking – he must have been expecting a food delivery, or else he got callers so often it meant nothing. When he opened the door I was in the process of arranging myself sexily against the wall; an effect that was something like an ungainly flamingo.
‘Jax!’
‘I hope you don’t mind. I thought I’d bring the documents myself.’
He wore an open shirt and his suit trousers, stockinged feet. I quailed for a minute – he looked old, and tired. Did I really want to do this? ‘Usually they bike them.’
This wasn’t right. He was meant to be pleased to see me. ‘I couldn’t get one,’ I lied.
‘Well, OK, come in. I have a lot on tonight – in fact I thought you were my pad thai.’
‘I love Thai,’ I said, on the strength of one green curry at college.
Mark was polite. It was another of his defences, his shields, a way to hide who he really was. It took me a long time, too long really, to stop equating good manners with decency. ‘Oh. Well, I’m sure we can stretch
it out. Do come in for a bit. I must finish off some work later, though.’
I dismissed that. Later we’d be feeding each other strawberries, and I’d be lying against his strong chest in his bed, and he’d be saying, Claudia, she doesn’t understand me, but you . . . and things like that. I had said them to myself, imagining them, making them real, until I almost felt it was inevitable.
His flat was expensively neutral, little sign of habitation except for his papers and laptop on the coffee table, his shoes on the floor and his tie cast over a cushion. I had a vague idea we could use that. I’d let him tie me up, I’d say I loved it. That was what sexy girls did. ‘Sit down if you like. It’s rather a mess.’ I remember that the TV was off, but the red light on it flashed, as if it was on standby, an angry blinking eye. I remember I had the vague feeling of walking in on something, but I did not have the experience, the instincts, to realise that I should have left then.
‘Excuse me a moment,’ said Mark. ‘I just have to . . . Keep an eye out for the food, will you.’ And he went into the next room. I assumed he was making a call, but there was no sound of voices. It was just me, and the switched-off TV, and the pile of boring work documents, and Mark’s laptop, left slightly ajar . . .
‘Babe.’ Aaron nudged me, and I saw that Nina was looking at me.
‘If we’re all listening.’ Her blue eyes swept around us. ‘Now we’re going to learn about labour, your different pain options, all the things that can go wrong.’
I felt myself tense up between the legs. I was desperately worried about labour – after all, whatever I’d done to my mother on the way out, it meant she’d never had another child, and clearly, never forgiven me. What if it was the same for me? I was quite fond of my vagina. What if the baby tore me to shreds, like I’d read about happened to some women, so they never recovered? Aaron definitely wouldn’t want to have sex with me then, and my mother’s dire predictions might come true after all.
The Push Page 15