Her Sister's Child

by Alison James

  Then she bursts into angry, exhausted tears.

  The following day, Saturday, she phones the local branch of Mothercare, gives them her credit card details and arranges for a wheeled carrycot to be delivered to the house that afternoon.

  One obvious problem is that she can’t just walk out of her front door and push the twins down Ranmoor Road. People will see her; questions will be asked. She is forced instead to drive a distance in the car, and then take them for a walk. This involves removing the body of the carrycot from its wheels, struggling to collapse the frame and loading both into the rear of the car. She doesn’t have car seats yet, and hasn’t quite resolved how she can fit them in the car without people noticing them. So for now the babies have to travel in the carrycot, with the rear seat belts lassoed around it in a makeshift restraint. And of course she has to time leaving the house with the carrycot for a rare moment when there are no neighbours within sight. All of which is so exhausting that by the time she parks up on the edge of Hampstead Heath early on Sunday morning, she barely has the energy or will to walk.

  But walk she does, her feet falling heavily in time to the grizzling of the babies, arranged top to toe. Eventually they fall quiet, and all she can hear is her own footsteps.

  A woman walking her dog comes over and peeps into the carrycot.

  ‘Oh, my goodness, twins! How old are they?’

  ‘Nine days,’ Marian replies, flatly.

  ‘And you’re out and about already? I wasn’t even out of hospital after five days when I had my two…’

  Marian forces a smile.

  ‘And a boy and a girl?’

  Marian nods.

  ‘Gosh, aren’t you lucky!’

  Lucky, Marian repeats to herself. I’m lucky. I’ve finally got the children I longed for all these years. She stares down at them, desperate to feel something – anything – other than overwhelming anxiety. If only she had Tom, she thinks. Tom would share the feeding, and bring her cups of tea, rock the babies while she took a shower, cook them both supper. That was the family life she had always pictured. Not doing it like this, alone. She has been too exhausted to mourn the collapse of her marriage, but now as she pictures her husband holding the twins, the tears course down her cheeks.

  Should she tell him about the babies anyway, feeding him the line about a specially fast-tracked adoption? Would that persuade him to return? Would it lure him away from the glamorous career girl Vanessa? Because she is convinced that she is why he has left, even though his note didn’t mention her.

  Then her thoughts turn to Lizzie Armitage. These are really Lizzie’s children. Maybe if she were to dry out, she could be a half-decent mother to them. Perhaps she should have had the chance to at least try, and fail. Because some women seem to have a knack with babies and small children. They just do. And she, Marian, does not appear to be one of them. For all she knows, Lizzie could be. Her younger sister is a bright, sensible girl. Her brother has a good job, by all accounts, and from what she’s heard, the Armitage parents are decent, hard-working people. They are the twins’ family. And a proper family is something she, Marian, will struggle to provide. Her parents are dead and her sister lives in New Zealand.

  As if reading her mind, first Saffron and then Noah begin to cry. Maybe they’re trying to tell me something, Marian thinks miserably. Her rational mind tells her this is nonsense, but she’s so wretchedly tired that her rational mind has become detached from the rest of her, and seems to be floating somewhere above her head like a balloon.

  The babies cry most of the way back to Muswell Hill, and she has to drive round and round the block until they are quiet enough for her to sneak them back into the house. Even then, she’s sure she sees the curtains twitching at number twenty-five. Marian feeds and changes them both, and Saffron settles for a while, but Noah screams and screams all afternoon, pulling his tiny knees up to his chest. He appears to have diarrhoea, constantly filling one nappy after another. She bathes him and finally gets him to sleep only to have Saffron start screaming for another feed. It’s two days since Marian has had the chance to wash herself, and she hasn’t eaten anything other than biscuits, crisps and apples since she brought the babies home.

  After another terrible night, during which she manages a total of one hour and forty minutes’ sleep, she makes a decision. She will make up some story about the babies needing to be checked over in hospital, or temporarily fostered, but the babies will have to go back. She’s going to take them back to Lizzie.

  Three days after the babies were born, Marian phoned in sick to work, claiming a bout of gastric flu. It’s now Monday morning and she’s been off since the previous Monday. Her colleagues will be expecting her back, so she will have to phone again and claim she’s still ill. She doesn’t want to speak to Angela, because Angela knows her well enough to sniff out the lie. Angela might ask awkward questions. So she asks for the extension of the head of department’s assistant, Sally.

  ‘Sally’s phone.’

  Christ. Marian recognises the voice straight away.

  ‘Who am I speaking to?’ she asks, though she knows.

  ‘It’s Angela Dixon… Marian, is that you? I was just passing Sally’s desk when her phone rang. She’s just popped to the Ladies.’

  Angela sounds so energetic, so upbeat. She sounds, in fact, like someone who has spent most of the night asleep in bed.

  ‘I was ringing to say that I’m no better,’ Marian said. At least she didn’t have to play-act sounding rough. ‘I’ll have to get a sick note from my GP,’ she fibbed.

  ‘Actually, Maz, I’m quite glad you phoned…’ Angela lowers her voice slightly. ‘Something absolutely terrible happened on Thursday. With one of your clients.’

  ‘Which one?’ Please don’t say it, please don’t say it.

  ‘Lizzie Armitage. The manager of the flats found her.’

  ‘Found her…?’ Marian’s voice is little more than a whisper.

  ‘Dead. In her bed. There’s going to be a post-mortem, but apparently it looked like she’d had some sort of haemorrhage. Apparently it happens quite often with alcoholics when they have a drinking binge.’

  ‘Oh. God.’

  ‘I know. Such a shame. She wasn’t all that old, was she? If she’d managed to get sober, she could have had her whole life ahead of her. She might even have had a family and stuff.’

  Marian’s voice box makes a strange sound, a sort of muffled groan.

  ‘You okay, Maz? I’ll try and find out when the funeral’s going to be, if you like?’

  ‘I’ve got to go.’ Marian covers her mouth with her hand. ‘I’m going to be sick.’

  When her phone buzzes with a text later, Marian thinks it might be from Angela with more details about Lizzie Armitage.

  It’s from Tom.

  On my way round. Need to pick up a few things, and also we should talk. T x

  32

  Paula

  ‘Get the door, will you?’ Wendy Armitage says wearily. ‘I can’t face it.’

  Paula opens the door of the flat to find yet another neighbour bearing yet another piece of ovenware covered in foil.

  ‘It’s Mrs Braithwaite,’ she calls to her mother. ‘She’s brought lasagne.’

  This is what happens, Paula is discovering, when somebody dies. People cook stuff and bring it round.

  ‘Tell her to come in,’ her mother calls back. Wendy likes Joyce Braithwaite, who’s a calm, sensible sort of woman. ‘And put the kettle on.’

  Paula makes yet another pot of tea. That’s something else that happens when a family member dies. You have to drink a lot of tea. In her case, it’s something to do with her hands, something to stave off the terrible sadness and sense of discomfiture she feels at her sister’s squalid end.

  Three of Wendy’s colleagues from the supermarket arrive next, then her cousin Gloria, and soon the small living room is packed with people.

  ‘What about the funeral, Wend?’ Gloria asks, passing around the plate
of shortbread biscuits that she brought. ‘When is it?’

  ‘Colin’s taking care of all the arrangements,’ Wendy says, her jaw clenched with tension. She’s finding it hard, Paula knows, to play the role of the grieving mother when most people know that she and Lizzie had been estranged for years. Most of the time she just sits, silently, and stares.

  ‘Can I go out?’ she asks.

  Wendy frowns. ‘Where to? I’m going to need help clearing up all this lot.’

  ‘It’s all right, let her go,’ says nice Mrs Braithwaite. ‘We’ll help you.’

  ‘I’m just going to Carly’s,’ says Paula. ‘I won’t be very long, I promise.’

  But she doesn’t go to Carly’s. She takes the bus to Wood Green police station. She has lied to the police, and that was wrong, but now she’s going to try and make amends.

  The desk sergeant has white hair and a drooping moustache that makes him look like a walrus. ‘And how can I help you, young lady?’ He’s brisk, a little impatient when it’s eventually her turn to be called to the desk. There are still several other people waiting.

  ‘It’s about my sister. Lizzie Armitage. Elizabeth Armitage.’

  ‘And you are…?’

  ‘Paula Armitage.’

  ‘Address?’

  She gives it, and he writes it down, slowly, laboriously. ‘Is your sister missing?’

  Paula dips her head, feeling her lip tremble. ‘No. She’s dead. She died four days ago.’

  The man softens slightly. ‘I’m sorry to hear that… so, do you have a crime to report that relates to her death?’

  ‘It’s about her baby. She had a baby, but when they found her in the flat, they never said anything about what had happened to the baby.’

  ‘When you say “they” found her…?’

  ‘The police. The caretaker called the police and then they came and told us. Me and Mum.’

  ‘Hold on a minute… let me just go and speak to someone.’

  He returns a few minutes later. ‘I’ve spoken to the officer in charge of that case over in Tottenham CID, and apparently there was no report of a baby at the premises when your sister’s body was found. Was this child a boy or a girl?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know? How old was the child?’

  Paula calculates. ‘They would have been only a couple of days old.’

  ‘And who’s the father?’

  ‘He’s called Macca. I don’t know his full name.’

  Recognition dawns on the sergeant’s face. He turns the computer screen so that a mugshot is visible. ‘This him?’

  Paula nods.

  ‘Yes, we know young Macca. He’s had a few overnighters in our cells in recent years. If he’s the father, might he have taken the baby?’

  ‘I suppose so. But I don’t know where he is. I mean, he lived with Lizzie some of the time, but I don’t know where he was when he wasn’t with her.’

  The desk sergeant types something into his monitor. ‘Says on his record “No Fixed Abode”… Oh, no – wait a minute. His new lodgings are courtesy of Her Majesty at Wormwood Scrubs. Arrested for conspiracy to commit armed robbery on the eighteenth of July.’

  ‘That was the day the baby was born.’

  ‘So I think we can conclude it wasn’t him that took it. What about his family then? Do you know them? Might the baby be with a grandmother? An aunt?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how to find out.’

  The desk sergeant looks past her at the growing queue of people waiting to be helped. ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll ask the boys to keep an ear to the ground, and if they find out anything, we’ll be in touch. Okay?’

  Paul nods miserably and walks out onto the High Road, and heads towards the bus stop. A car horn honks, and she glances round to see Johnny Shepherd at the wheel of a sleek silver sports car.

  ‘Hop in, kid!’ he says with his usual brio. ‘I’ll give you a lift.’

  She climbs in, turning her head to look out of the window because she feels the tears coming again. She doesn’t have a handkerchief, and is forced to sniff to stop her nose running.

  ‘You okay, Paul?’ Johnny asks gently. He reaches into the glovebox for a tissue and hands it to her. ‘What’s up?’

  She thinks about telling him that her sister has just died, but she can’t really do so without having to answer a barrage of questions, and right now she’s not in the mood for talking about it. That’s all that anyone’s talked about for days – all the well-meaning neighbours, relatives and friends – how awful it is to drink yourself to death at the age of twenty-four.

  ‘Nothing,’ she says thickly. ‘I’m all right.’

  He studies her face in profile for a few seconds. ‘Well, if you’re sure.’ He pulls up outside her block of flats and waits for her to open the door and climb out. ‘But if you ever need anything, you just tell me, okay?’

  33

  Marian

  Marian returns her husband’s text immediately.

  What do you need to collect?

  Her phone starts flashing with an incoming call a few minutes later.

  ‘Look, I’m in the car now so I can’t text… I want to get my ski stuff and my old vinyls. They’re in the loft. And my cufflink box.’

  She closes the door of the sitting room behind her so that Saffron and Noah won’t be audible. ‘How long will you be?’

  He hasn’t told her where he’s staying, and she doesn’t dare ask in case the answer is something she can’t face.

  ‘About ten minutes or so.’

  Not very long at all. She considers letting him see the twins, telling him that she’s going ahead with adoption, with or without him. Maybe the reality of them will persuade him to return after all. But if he refuses to come back, then he might still have questions about how the ‘adoption’ has gone ahead so suddenly and with so little bureaucratic input. Also, she looks absolutely terrible. Her hair is greasy, her clothes are grubby and she smells stale. If he were to think she’s not coping as a single parent – and what other conclusion could he possibly reach – he might report her to someone. One of her colleagues, perhaps.

  No, the babies are going to have to be well out of sight. She considers putting them in the back of the car. But a neighbour or passer-by might see them and raise the alarm. Then it comes to her, prompted by the call from Tom. They need to get the loft open anyway, so she’ll put them up there and bring down Tom’s vinyls at the same time. It’ll only be for a few minutes; they won’t come to any harm.

  Marian shoves nappies, muslins and all the other baby paraphernalia behind the sofa, and hides the bottles, formula and sterilising equipment in the cupboard under the sink in the kitchen. Then she lifts Saffron carefully into Noah’s basket, and lugs it awkwardly up the loft ladder. Fortunately, they’re both asleep and stay asleep, despite all the movement.

  Up in the loft, the air is thick with dust, and it’s stuffy. Marian places the basket carefully at the far end of the space, then drags Tom’s box of vinyls to the loft hatch. It’s very heavy and she struggles to get it down the ladder. Her face and hands are covered with dust and her hair is damp with sweat, but she manages to drag the box down onto the landing and retract the ladder.

  Because she will have to leave the hatch open to allow air to circulate, she realises she can’t have Tom going upstairs. She fetches the bag containing his ski equipment from the spare room, puts his leather cuff link box in it, and carries the bag downstairs with the box of records, arriving in the hall just as the doorbell rings.

  As soon as she sees Tom, her heart lurches, despite her exhaustion. His handsome face is well-rested, and he has the beginnings of a tan, as though he has been sitting outside in a garden somewhere. She wants him back. She needs him back.

  ‘Sorry,’ Marian says, indicating her dishevelled appearance. ‘It’s filthy up in the loft.’

  ‘You should have let me go up there.’ Tom recoils from her slightly. ‘There was no ne
ed for you to do it.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she says, quickly. ‘I wanted to see what was up there, anyway. Would you like some tea? Coffee?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Only you said we needed to talk.’

  Tom sighs. ‘I suppose we should,’ he agrees, without enthusiasm.

  They go into the kitchen and Tom sits down while Marian sets the kettle to boil, visually sweeping the room for any remaining baby equipment. There’s an empty feeding bottle on the draining board, and she quickly puts it into the dishwasher. Then as she turns to take the mugs from the dresser she spots a flash of pink out of the corner of her eye: Saffron’s blanket, which must have fallen somehow when she was lifting her into her brother’s basket. She scoops it up and with one seamless movement pushes it out of sight behind the back of the dresser.

  ‘You look tired,’ Tom observes, when she eventually sits down with a pot of tea and two mugs.

  ‘I’ve not exactly been sleeping well.’ She drops her chin, self-conscious about her filthy hair and grey skin. ‘A lot on my mind, you know?’

  Tom opens his mouth to speak, but she cuts him off, blurting out in a rush: ‘They’ve found us twins to adopt. Newborn babies. A boy and a girl.’

  Despite her decision not to mention Saffron and Noah, she feels now that she has to. That offering a ready-made family is her only hope of hanging on to him. He’s never going to come back for her alone. Just look at her, for God’s sake.

  He smiles sadly, and places his hand briefly over hers. ‘Marrie, you must know that’s not a possibility.’

  ‘But you said you needed to think things over. I thought—’

  ‘I’m with someone else.’

  She stares at him. ‘Vanessa,’ she says, flatly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you living with her?’

  He nods. ‘In her flat, yes.’

  ‘So you and I… we’re never going to be a family?’