by Amy Lloyd
‘They’re not here. They’ve been sent to a different police station.’
‘Why?’ Auntie Fay says, louder than she meant to.
‘I don’t know, love. I don’t know. Presumably they don’t want any of us talking to one another.’
‘This is absolutely ridiculous. Let me speak to the bloody solicitor.’
‘You can’t! I’m sorry, you can’t. He’s working on all this right now. Says we just have to sit tight. They have every right to keep us here for twenty-four hours.’
Auntie Fay gasps.
‘Then if they can’t charge her with anything, she can come home.’
‘They won’t be charging her because she hasn’t done anything. And will we be compensated for the humiliation of being taken from our home in the dead of night in a police car? How will they make up for the trauma they’ve caused a little girl and boy tonight?’
‘I know, love, I know.’ Uncle Paul sounds really tired. If I wasn’t pretending to sleep I would move so he could sit down and have a rest.
‘And while we’re going through all this, that predator is sleeping soundly in his house. How is that fair?’
There’s a long pause while Uncle Paul is thinking of an answer, I think.
‘Listen,’ he starts. ‘Listen,’ he says again.
‘What?’ Auntie Fay snaps after he doesn’t say anything. Then he sighs.
‘From what the solicitor has told me, it looks like Mr Sampson is dead.’
‘What?’
‘Apparently he’s hung himself.’
Auntie Fay gasps. ‘Well, if that isn’t a sign of a guilty conscience … It’s still terrible news. I don’t mean to sound …’
‘I know, love. It gets a bit more complicated.’
‘What now?’
‘Well, what started all … this … is that people who were on night watch outside his house heard screaming.’
‘His screaming?’
‘Children’s screaming.’
‘Good God. There were children in there?’
Uncle Paul sighs again.
‘They don’t think it was them, do they?’ Auntie Fay asks. I try to stay still.
‘Sean’s dad reported them missing around the same time as the call came to report the screaming from inside the house,’ Uncle Paul says. ‘They’ve put two and two together.’
‘And made five. What would they want to be going round his house for? You’ve seen her: she’s been terrified of Mr Sampson since the very beginning.’
‘I know, love.’
‘You can’t think they’re right. Surely you can’t believe this?’
‘I don’t know what to believe any more.’
I hear Auntie Fay crying but Uncle Paul doesn’t seem to go to her. I don’t hear him saying it’s OK or hear the swish of his hand on the fabric of her dress as he smooths her back. I can only hear Auntie Fay and her quiet sobs, like little hiccups. Then I feel my own tears leaking out so I turn over to face the back of the sofa. For a second Auntie Fay’s crying stops and the room gets even quieter before she starts again.
‘You go home, love,’ Uncle Paul whispers to her. ‘Ryan will be worrying. Go home, get as much rest as you can and come back fresh in the morning. I’m sure it’ll be fine.’
‘I can’t leave her. I can’t do it. Ryan will be fine. Angela doesn’t mind keeping him until morning. She’s probably beside herself waiting for more gossip.’
‘That doesn’t matter. Let her gossip. But Ryan will want to be home, with his mum. Why don’t you just take a break?’
‘No!’ Auntie Fay shouts. It’s so loud I jump and my skin goes all cold. ‘I’m bloody well staying here. Maybe you should go home, since you think your niece is stupid enough to go poking around that predator’s house.’
‘One of us should be with Ryan,’ Uncle Paul says.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Oh love, I didn’t mean anything. I just—’
‘Am I not a good mother because I care about what’s happening to her right now?’
‘That’s not what I was saying.’
‘It’s what you’re implying. Why don’t you go? You’re making everything worse. Just go. I will fix all of this.’
Uncle Paul doesn’t say anything before he leaves; I just hear the door click behind him and then Auntie Fay crying louder than before. I want to pretend to wake up and to ask her if she’s OK and give her a cuddle like she would if it was me. But I don’t think I can look at her because it will make me want to tell her the truth and then she will hate me. So I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember a story my mum used to tell me before I went to sleep, about a monkey who needed to cross the whole jungle to get back to his family, and all the animals who helped him on the way. I can’t remember it all, though, not properly. I can’t remember how he got home.
39
Her: Now
I stare up into the dark windows of Dr Isherwood’s house, my tears drying cold on my cheeks, until I am so tired that I can barely stand any more. I go back into the park, which is dimly lit by the street lights which surround the square and by the full moon. When I find a bench I sit, then lie down, pulling my hood up over my head and tucking my arms tight around myself, using my bag as a pillow. Eventually I fall into something like sleep, cold to my bones and with the wood of the bench digging into my side.
I wake up because someone is shaking me. At first I can’t remember where I am or why I am so cold. I find myself looking into a face that is creased with deep wrinkles, surrounded by a mane of thick and wild hair. Frightened, I jolt upright, twisting away from the man who is leaning too close to my face.
‘It’s all right, love, it’s all right,’ the man says. ‘Just checking you’re OK. What’s a little thing like you doing sleeping out here by yourself?’
Confused, my teeth chattering in the cold morning air, I take in my surroundings and remember where I am. The man continues to talk but I have stopped listening. When I look at him closely I see that he is homeless. Behind him, in the back of the park, is a tent where he must sleep. I keep telling him I’m OK, that I was locked out, but he tries to give me money for a coffee. I open my bag and show him my Coke and my chocolate bars and eventually he seems satisfied that I am not in trouble and he leaves.
To try and warm myself up I start to walk around the park. It is one of those beautiful mornings, not cold enough for frost, but where everything is covered in a fine mist. It reminds me of getting up for school, the walk that Auntie Fay took me on, with Ryan walking far ahead of us, old enough to be embarrassed by our company. Eventually I was old enough to walk on my own, too, and Auntie Fay would wave me off at the front door. I would follow Ryan, but several feet behind him. Sometimes his friends would meet him and then I would have to walk even further behind.
I remember how the sky looked just like this in the months before Christmas, and how the atmosphere felt like it was building up to something. I remember going through the big school gates, the paintings on the windows of animals and flowers and things like umbrellas under a rainy cloud. I remember arriving alone and having no friends there to greet me. Sean was rarely there on time in the mornings, often not at all. So I would go into the cloakroom alone and hang up my coat on the hook with my name. I would wait in the classroom, sitting at the table in the seat I was assigned.
I would look out of the window and watch the school gates and every day at the same time I would see Liam’s and Luke’s mum, parking her car right in front of the entrance. She was allowed to do that because she had a special badge because of Luke. She would get out and open the doors and help Luke down from the car and she would hug him and hold his face in both her hands to kiss him on the forehead. Luke didn’t get embarrassed about this the way that Liam and the other boys and girls did. Luke would smile and smile and still be smiling even when he was on his own and walking into the school. No one ever made fun of Luke because everyone liked it when Luke smiled. All the rules changed
when it came to Luke. Sometimes it was hard to know what the rules were at all any more.
My phone buzzes in my hand. I see Dr Isherwood’s name and I worry that somehow she has seen me, that she knows I am here. I breathe deep and answer.
‘Are you OK?’ Dr Isherwood says. ‘I just got your email. What’s happened?’
‘Nothing,’ I reply, too quickly. So quickly I haven’t had a chance to think about what she’s saying. I don’t remember sending her an email.
‘I was worried about you,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get it sooner but I just woke up and haven’t had a chance to check my email until now. Typical. The one night I manage to sleep more than two consecutive hours and it’s the one night you need me. I’m so sorry. Tell me now, tell me what happened.’
‘Nothing,’ I say again. ‘I was just … really down. I’m sorry that I worried you.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ she says. ‘I always want you to talk to me when you’re feeling like this.’
There’s a noise from behind her and then I can hear the cry of a baby. I can sense Dr Isherwood being torn from me and my problems, back into her own world, her own problems.
‘Listen,’ she says. I know that she wants to leave. ‘Shall we have a proper talk? Later on?’
‘On the phone?’
‘Or maybe you could come into the office? I have some patients this morning, but you could come in at around three o’clock?’
‘Sure,’ I say, disappointed. ‘I can come in at three.’
‘Great, great.’ Dr Isherwood’s voice becomes higher as the baby’s screams get louder in the background. ‘Well, I will see you then! Take care, bye!’
I don’t have time to say goodbye before she has hung up. In the quiet she leaves behind I listen for the sounds of the baby’s screams coming from inside the house, feeling so close yet so far away from Dr Isherwood and her secret life. All I can hear are the birds and the whisper of leaves moving in the wind. I put the phone away, knowing now that Sean was right, and that since I have my answer there is nothing for me to do but go home.
But as I leave the park and take one last look back at the house I see her, Dr Isherwood, in the doorway. I duck back inside the gates of the park. Dr Isherwood is outside her house but so is a younger woman who has long black hair tied in a bun. And she is the one holding the baby. A big baby, with too much dark hair, sticking its fingers into its mouth while it screams and screams.
Dr Isherwood is smoothing the baby’s head and talking really quickly, and the girl is smiling and bouncing the baby as Dr Isherwood kisses its head and presses the button on her car keys to unlock the doors of a dark silver BMW parked outside. I duck further back into the confines of the park and wait for the car to drive past and out of the cul-de-sac.
Then I am frozen. The girl has gone back into the house and closed the door but it feels impossible to leave. Who is she? Is she Dr Isherwood’s daughter and the baby her granddaughter? Maybe Dr Isherwood had her before she met me. If this is true then it means that nothing – really – has changed. Perhaps the daughter has moved back home for a while and so Dr Isherwood is just being kept awake by her baby. Maybe Sean got it wrong.
The door opens again and there is the girl and the baby in a pram. She closes the door behind her and pushes the buggy with the crying child inside it, walking briskly down the road.
As the girl rounds the corner I leave the park, following a safe distance behind, always hearing the baby shriek. I listen to the girl talking to the baby, trying to soothe her. It sounds like she has an accent but it’s impossible to be sure as she is only saying things like ‘There, there, baby’ and ‘Shh now, little one’.
We come to a small high street. It’s nicer than normal high streets and instead of pound shops and Greggses they have a deli and an independent café, and the storefronts match so that it all looks really pretty. The girl pushes open the café door and walks in backwards, pulling the pram over the step. I wait a couple of minutes, pretending to look in the window of the estate agent’s but really looking at the reflection of the café across the street to check the girl doesn’t come back out.
Then I cross and go into the café. Inside is warm and it doesn’t smell of grease and bacon but coffee and fresh bread. I look at the menu, which is full of weird things like toast with goat’s cheese and avocado and bagels with smoked salmon and cream cheese. And all the cakes cost more than three pounds fifty, even for really small ones. I take a look around and see the girl sitting near the back, waving a brightly coloured toy in front of the baby who cries but grabs for it anyway.
‘Just a pot of tea, please,’ I say. It is still really expensive, four pounds. I have to use almost all the loose change left in my purse and the guy behind the till seems annoyed as I count it out.
‘Where will you be sitting?’ he asks.
‘Over there.’ I point to the table next to the girl, and the barista hands me a wooden spoon with the number 8 painted on it in blue.
I take a magazine from the rack, a free local magazine that just has adverts and reviews for nearby restaurants and articles about people who live in the area who set up their own companies. I take a seat at the table and the girl looks towards me and smiles, so I smile back.
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘She has a bad mood today.’ The girl nods to the baby and shakes her head like she’s weary but she smiles all the time. Now it is impossible not to notice her accent. It is something European but I am not good with accents and so it could be anywhere. All I know is that she can’t be Dr Isherwood’s daughter and the thought sinks in my stomach like an anchor.
‘That’s OK,’ I say. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘This one, she always has a bad mood. Very difficult baby.’ Again she keeps smiling, her cheeks flushed. She is beautiful, more than most people. Her smile makes it really hard not to look at her too much. I look at the baby.
‘Is she yours?’ I ask. Then I wish I hadn’t because it is so obviously a weird question to ask. I realise it too late.
‘No!’ she says, laughing. ‘No, no baby for me. I am an au pair?’ She says it like a question that I am supposed to answer. She doesn’t seem to have noticed that I asked a strange question before.
‘OK,’ I say. I want to keep talking but I don’t know what to say. I try to think of things people ask others about their babies on TV and when I hear them in the supermarket. ‘How old is she?’
‘She is nine months,’ the girl says. ‘She is trouble. Aren’t you, Iris?’
Iris the baby responds with another agonised howl. The girl laughs.
‘Oh dear,’ she says. ‘So much sadness today.’
‘Is she always like this?’ I ask.
The girl finds this funny. ‘All the time, yes. All the time.’ She throws her hands in the air and makes a sound like Hooo, like she is exhausted, blowing the hair out of her face. The waiter brings my pot of tea and I ignore it, trying to figure out what to say next.
‘It must be hard work,’ I say.
‘Yes, yes. Is difficult baby. But the mother, she is so nice. So nice.’
‘The baby’s mother?’ I ask, my heart pounding.
‘Yes. She work too hard. The phone – always ringing. But she is so nice. How long she keep working, I don’t know. I hope she keep working so I can stay but I don’t know how long.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
‘At first she say she keep working part-time but now, difficult baby, she want to work less. Want to be home with baby, all the time.’ The girl laughs again. ‘Some mums, they find it hard, leaving baby. I like to stay and live with them but’ – the girl shrugs – ‘if Mum not working, she won’t keep me.’ She shakes her head and sighs.
The girl stops trying to placate Iris, who is sobbing quietly now, half-distracted by the colourful things that dangle in front of her in the pushchair. The girl starts to pick at her blueberry muffin.
I feel I should pour myself a cup of tea but my hands are shaking too vi
olently so I squeeze them between my knees to hide it. So Sean wasn’t lying. Dr Isherwood has a baby now. And she might not keep being a psychiatrist and then I won’t even see her any more. I try to stop the stinging in my eyes.
‘What will you do if the mum stops working?’ I ask the girl.
‘There are other families,’ she says, as if it’s nothing. ‘I just like this one more.’
I wish I could tell her that she is right, that Dr Isherwood is the best family she could hope for, but I have to pretend I don’t know this and so I just nod as though I understand.
‘What about the dad?’ I ask, nodding to baby Iris.
‘Oh,’ the girl says, like she’s just remembered something. ‘No, no dad. The mum, she adopt baby. Is why she’s so difficult, I think. No bonding, you know?’
I nod.
‘Is hard. Is hard work adopting baby. Iris, she never want Mum to leave. Always cry for Mum. Mum leaves; Iris, she think her mum never coming back.’
Iris is slowly falling asleep, her breath still coming in uneven huffs, but the tiredness is too hard to fight. The baby’s face glistens with snot and tears and dribble. The girl leans forward and wipes gently with a soft cloth.
‘Iris sleeps,’ the girl says. She puts her hands together like she is praying and looks to the ceiling. ‘Thank you, God!’ she says in a stage whisper. I force myself to laugh. Suddenly the café seems so much quieter. The absence of Iris’s cries seems as intrusive as the noise itself.
I want to ask the girl more, but I can’t think straight enough to work out how to ask it. Does Dr Isherwood love the baby? Doesn’t she get sick of Iris crying all the time? Has Dr Isherwood actually said she wants to quit her job? Does she think about me? Am I the reason she wants to quit? Am I too much work?
The girl starts to shift in her seat. I watch her as she looks from the table to the toilet door and back at Iris in the pram. Reluctantly, it seems, she gets up and starts to fuss with her bag, hanging it on the back of the pushchair.