The Push

by Claire McGowan

  Something at the back of my neck was screaming run, run, this is bad, but my brain was trying to rationalise it. She wanted me to break up with Aaron? Well, we were well on our way to that without her help. Or . . .

  ‘My cat,’ I blurted out. ‘The milk, the car . . . Christ, the emails! The mailing. Was that you?’

  Aaron looked confused. Nina tilted her head in my direction, irritated. ‘Imagine how you’d feel, if you found your son and he was shacked up with someone your age. Naturally I was a little . . . angry. Your office, they’re quite lax, aren’t they? It was easy to walk right in. You’d left your computer on, the spreadsheet open. It was too simple, really. You should talk to them about that.’

  I couldn’t believe this. ‘You took my cat! God, is she alright? You told people I was a paedophile!’

  ‘You may as well be. And of course she’s alright, I wouldn’t hurt an animal.’ She turned around, and I saw the blazing of her eyes – Aaron’s eyes – the wiry strength of her yoga-honed body. ‘Give me the baby, Jax. You don’t want her anyway. You’re not coping, are you? I know. I saw you in hospital.’ The figure standing over me in the dark. The feeling that I couldn’t move. Nina held her arms out. ‘I’ve been watching you for a long time, Jax, seeing what kind of mother you’d be. And today just proves it. You left her alone, in the sun, and someone took her. Give her to me. I’ll look after her, and Aaron.’ For a terrible moment, I was tempted. She would leave me alone, she would shoulder my burdens. I could go back to the Jax of two years ago, an independent woman with control of her bladder. ‘Give me her.’ Nina’s strong hands went around Hadley’s soft body. And I held on. Something primal had kicked in. My baby.

  ‘No! Get off me.’

  ‘You’re hurting her!’ Aaron shouted, and I didn’t know if he meant me or the baby. ‘Let me take her.’ His voice was shaking but I saw he was trying to sound calm.

  ‘I won’t hurt her, darling.’ Nina’s eyes were fixed on me. ‘I just want rid of this . . . pervert. I’d never hurt a little baby.’

  ‘Then let me take her.’ She hesitated, then let him take the baby, and his eyes met mine, trying to telegraph something, but I didn’t know what. I could no longer read him. Aaron took Hadley a few paces away, further from the edge of the balcony.

  My voice shook. Part of me still couldn’t process this, was insisting it was all a misunderstanding. People didn’t do things like this. ‘Nina, this is crazy. I’m not giving up my baby. You must know that.’

  ‘She’d be better off without you,’ said Nina easily. ‘They both would.’ And then she seized my upper arms and tried to force me over the edge.

  Jax – now

  ‘So she pushed you?’ asked Alison.

  ‘She tried to, yes. She thought – well, I think she was unhinged by losing Aaron all those years ago. I’m the same age as her. I think she thought – I don’t know, if she got rid of me she could have him back, and the baby too. A chance to start over.’

  Alison was nodding as if she was on my side. Was this a trap though? ‘So you fought back. Pushed her over.’

  ‘I . . .’ The moment went on and on. ‘No. I didn’t.’ But she had me. Someone must have done it. I weighed up all my bad options. Take the blame myself, go to prison for the rest of Hadley’s childhood. Or drop someone else in it. What was the right thing to do? I was a mother now, it wasn’t just about me. But was I a good one? Did I know how to soothe her, care for her, make things better? Not leave her in harm’s way? Was it true, what Nina had said, in that terrible moment under the blazing sun – would Hadley and Aaron be better off without me after all?

  ‘Well?’ she said. ‘What’s it going to be, Jax?’

  Alison

  ‘She confessed.’ Alison couldn’t help smiling as she bounded into the office.

  Diana’s groomed eyebrows shot up. ‘To the push?’

  ‘To everything.’

  ‘What did the boyfriend say? He backed it up?’

  ‘Nothing, so far. Want to come in with me?’ The feeling had begun to break over Alison, her favourite in the world – when the case was almost wrapped up, when the loose ends were all tied off for one glorious day – sometimes less, sometimes an hour was all you got – and the mystery was solved, justice would be done. Before the next murder or rape or burglary came in and it all started again.

  Colette was standing outside the other interview room, leaning back on her high heels, which Alison knew were Manolo Blahnik and not even bought in the sale. ‘Jax Culville confessed,’ Alison couldn’t help but boast.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I was going to talk to the boyfriend, see if he corroborates.’

  ‘Well, there’s a slight problem with that, Alison. He’s confessed too – says it was him that did it, not Jax.’

  After days of lies and obfuscations, here she was with two confessions on her hands. Alison slumped against the wall in the corridor, with its peeling paint and smell of old dust. Aaron Cole in one room, maintaining he had pushed Nina da Souza, aka Georgina Partington-Smith, aka his mother, in order to protect Jax and the baby. Jax Culville in the other, insisting she had struggled with Nina in self-defence, and Nina had gone over. Just when she thought she’d wrangled the case into submission, it had come back and knocked the legs from under her. ‘How can we break them?’

  ‘Send them both down,’ Diana shrugged. ‘Joint enterprise.’

  ‘They have a baby.’ She was inclined to save Jax – surely a woman with no history of violence would not have done this. Whereas Aaron had punched a wall, and learned moments before the fall that his long-lost mother was stalking him. But was she just biased, thinking of Jax having to give up her newborn, see her once a week at most, depending on what prison she ended up in?

  ‘Murder’s murder.’ Diana was not sympathetic. It wouldn’t be murder now, most likely – there was evidence of self-defence, of provocation. All the same, time would have to be served. She honestly didn’t know what to do, and so when the desk sergeant bustled up and said there was someone in reception for her, she was pleased. Put the decision off for a few minutes.

  Under the harsh lights of reception was a girl in school uniform, along with a noisy drunk singing a Katy Perry song. It was Chloe Evans, Monica Dunwood’s daughter.

  What the hell was she doing here? ‘Are you alright, Chloe?’

  ‘You have Jax and Aaron here, right – you arrested them?’

  ‘I can’t discuss that with you.’

  ‘Well, you have to.’ Chloe laid her hands, with bitten nails, on the counter. ‘They didn’t push her off, you see. It was me. I did it.’

  The day of – Chloe

  3.06 p.m.

  Chloe couldn’t stop crying. Someone was trying to take Isabella from her – Cathy, she saw. A group of people had gathered on the landing. Jax was staring at her, her own baby pressed tight to her chest. Aaron was staring over the balcony, where Nina had just fallen, plunging over as if into a swimming pool. Hazel had just come up the stairs, holding Arthur in a sling.

  ‘She fell! She . . . She fell!’

  ‘I know,’ said Cathy soothingly. ‘But won’t you give me the baby, sweetheart? Look, she’s frightened.’

  Chloe held Isabella tighter. ‘She’s fine!’

  Her mother was coming up the stairs now, eyes flashing. You stupid girl. ‘Chloe! What have you done?’

  Always assuming it was Chloe’s fault, everything that went wrong. Cathy said, ‘Chloe, won’t you give your sister to your mum?’

  Chloe couldn’t bear it any more. Monica didn’t even love Isabella. She’d locked her up in her room most of the day, and Chloe had seen the bottle of baby Calpol on the side and knew what that meant. She wasn’t stupid. She’d noticed that every other baby at this party had been crying and fussing and Isabella was quiet and floppy. ‘She’s not my sister!’ she burst out. ‘She didn’t give birth two weeks ago. Look at her! Can’t you see?’

  All eyes swivelled to Monica. Her stomach flat. Her bo
dy toned. ‘Chloe, you stupid girl, shut up!’ Monica shouted.

  ‘I won’t shut up.’ She held the baby close to her face, breathing her in. ‘She’s my baby. I had her, and Mum made me stay off school so she could pretend it was her. She put a pillow up her jumper! Look!’ And Chloe lifted her own baggy dress so they could see what was underneath, the scarring, the stretch marks, and the women there understood what it meant, because they had them too.

  All hell erupted then. But holding her daughter in her arms, being acknowledged as her mother at last, Chloe found that she didn’t even care. She’d move out, she’d manage somehow. She never had to see her mother again. And, oh, the freedom of finally knowing that.

  Finally, she allowed herself to think about what had just taken place on the balcony, a few minutes before. She had seen the three people out there – Nina, the instructor woman, had hold of Jax by the shoulders. Chloe wasn’t sure what she was seeing – was she trying to help her, stop her falling? – but then she saw that no, Nina was trying to force Jax over the edge. The young hot guy was holding their baby close to his chest and trying to get his arm in between them. He saw Chloe standing there and shouted, ‘Help. Help me, she’s gone mad!’ So Chloe did. With Isabella pressed tight to her body, making two babies and four people on the small balcony space, she charged out and tried to help Aaron pull Nina’s hands off Jax. They only had one free arm each what with holding the babies, and Nina was strong, so strong, bracing her legs against the small ledge around the bottom of the balcony, where Monica kept pot plants and tea lights. Finally, Aaron managed to get her hands off Jax, and Jax slumped down, white and winded, but Nina was free, her hair blowing in a faint breeze, her eyes wild. Her gaze flicked to Aaron’s arms. She’s going for the baby! Chloe was never sure if she’d said it out loud or not, but she had seen what was going to happen, just like she was watching a film, and it wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair that people kept taking babies that weren’t theirs, like her mother coming into the hospital that day and taking Isabella and saying she was hers, and no one had even noticed or cared. It was all too much, and she hadn’t thought, she’d lunged forward at Nina, and . . . that was that.

  Alison

  ‘Chloe – you need to wait. We can’t talk to you like this.’ Alison was staring at the slight teenage girl in front of her, trembling in the cold air of the interview room. How old was she even? Fifteen? They hadn’t had time to find an appropriate adult or contact her mother, as she’d walked right up to them and started blurting out her story. Likely none of this would be admissible.

  ‘But I pushed Nina. I could see she was trying to take the baby or hurt the baby and she already tried to push Jax. I didn’t mean to do it, not really. I was just sick of people taking babies.’

  ‘What?’ Was she talking about Kelly and Hadley?

  ‘Like my mum. I mean my mum, taking Isabella.’

  Again, what? ‘Um . . . you’ll have to explain more about that, Chloe, but could you just wait until . . .’

  Chloe sat back in her chair. She seemed tired, but not afraid, just adrenalised, as people often are when the truth finally tears its way out of them. ‘Isabella. She isn’t my mum’s – I mean, come on, she’s forty-four and weighs eight stone, like she really just had a baby? She’s mine. Mum made me pretend, and to be honest I’m sick of it. I just pushed Nina, to save the baby.’ She looked at Alison, who was totally lost for words, eyes clear with youth. ‘So what happens now, do I, like, go to prison?’

  The day of – Monica

  3.08 p.m.

  Everything was ruined. Not only had her party been disrupted by that chavvy Kelly, taking a baby that wasn’t hers, for goodness’ sake, but she was enraged with Ed for showing people his disgusting collection. But even worse than that, she herself had been exposed as a liar and a fraud. As the mother of a slutty teenager, who’d got herself knocked up by some boy from a council estate.

  When Monica had first found out – too late to do anything about it, since Chloe had hidden her bump for months under those awful baggy jumpers she liked – she’d been thrown into turmoil. What would Ed say – he’d been reluctant enough to take on a stepdaughter, let alone a stepgrandchild. She’d had to use every trick in the book to get him to commit and he still wasn’t there. Adventurous sex, helping with his career, and above all, appearing perfect at all times. Having a pregnant teenage daughter was not perfect. If only she’d been the one who was pregnant, Ed would have had to marry her, and it would all have been ideal.

  That was what gave her the idea. Then it was just a matter of convincing Chloe, who was scared out of her wits anyway, and telling the school she had glandular fever and needed several months off. They’d asked for a doctor’s note, but Monica had stalled and stalled, claiming she’d posted it and it must have got lost, that the doctor hadn’t sent it. She’d move Chloe to a different school if she had to. It would be worth it, to be married again, and to a much richer man than Thomas, her ex. She’d told Chloe that Ed would put them out if he knew the truth. And with her feckless dad refusing to pay child support, what else could they do? No matter that Thomas was doing his best to support his daughter. Served him right for leaving and knocking up a twenty-something.

  Amazingly, Ed had not noticed. Monica had never let him see her naked in the light anyway, and the stuffing she wore around her waist was simply kept on at night. She’d slept in another room for most of the pregnancy, saying she was hot and uncomfortable. They had plenty of rooms. He’d been so proud of himself, knocking her up when she was forty-four and he was older. Strong lead in the pencil, eh? She’d had to pretend it was a surprise to her too, that she hadn’t noticed she was pregnant for a while – she’d hinted delicately that things were not as regular as they could be – and made sure he wasn’t at any medical appointments or the birth itself, which wasn’t hard since he was squeamish about women’s bodies and worked non-stop. It had gone perfectly. She had a pretty little girl to dress up and parade, and Chloe would be away to university in a few years anyway. Monica was even toying with making some new friends and knocking a few years off her age, since she had a little baby to back up her claims. The only difficult moment had been when Nina seemed to know. She’d leaned into Monica in that group session where they’d all been so rude about vaccines, touching her bump, and told her to be careful. That not everyone was so easily fooled.

  Now, standing at the top of her stairs, her hands sticky from cleaning up the melted cake (because stupid Ed had left the bloody fridge open!) she realised it was all ruined. These people she had met and brought to her home to be dazzled by her success, they would see her for what she was. Worse – Ed was coming up the stairs. ‘What the hell happened?’ He sounded stunned.

  It was only when Cathy said she had called an ambulance, that Monica remembered she had an even more pressing problem. Someone was dead in her garden, and pretty soon her entire life would be under scrutiny. She’d had a reason to get rid of Nina herself, hadn’t she?

  It was Hazel who spoke, quickly taking in the whole situation, that Chloe had pushed Nina over the balcony. ‘She was going to hurt Jax,’ Chloe kept saying. ‘She wanted to take the baby. I couldn’t let her do that.’

  Hazel said, ‘We need to decide what happened here. Cathy’s already called an ambulance, the police will come too.’

  Monica didn’t understand for a moment. Then she did, and she was surprised, because she hadn’t realised Hazel was also someone who understood the importance of how things looked. And, looking about her at the pale and shaken faces of her guests, she had a feeling she wasn’t the only one here with something to hide.

  Alison

  Alison and Diana sat in an empty interview room, across the table from each other. Neither spoke for a long moment, and then Diana flopped on to the table and let out a howl of frustration. ‘We were so close!’

  ‘I don’t know what to do. What do we do?’ Chloe Evans was claiming Isabella was actually her child – this would explain her ab
sence from school, and Monica’s lie about her wedding date, why she’d gone to such a downmarket antenatal group, where she wouldn’t see anyone she knew. It could easily be proven with a DNA test. Chloe had confessed to the push, but maintained it was done to protect baby Hadley and Jax, so she might get off with any charge. How to prove any of it? Only the people on the balcony could say what had happened, and they’d all lied to her already. And Chloe was a child, with rich parents, who could afford the lawyers. By the time Alison got a proper, admissible interview set up, she might have clammed up again.

  ‘Only thing we can do,’ said Diana. ‘Question them again. All of them. Tell them what Chloe’s said. Ask if it’s true.’

  Alison thought about dragging herself up from the chair, and walking out of the room, and starting all over again. ‘Would they really all do that though? Lie, cover it up just to protect Chloe? None of them had even met her before.’

  Diana thought about it. ‘They would, maybe, if they wanted to cover something up themselves. And to be fair, it was very convincing. Everyone thought it was just an accident.’

  Alison pushed herself to stand. ‘True. But they didn’t reckon on us.’

  Diana mustered up a smile. ‘That is very true. They didn’t.’

  One day later

  AISHA

  ‘That was the police on the phone. They’re closing the case.’ Aisha stood in the living room, watching Rahul as he held Hari, feeding him from a bottle. ‘Apparently there won’t be any charges brought.’ So maybe it was just a fall? Aisha had told the police everything she knew, that Jax and Aaron were on the balcony, and that was all she’d seen. The death had always seemed abstract to her, which she was vaguely ashamed of.

  ‘Oh? That’s . . . good.’

  ‘Yes.’