Little Face

by Sophie Hannah

  This was all news to Simon. He’d lost his temper only with those who deserved it. ‘So . . . what are you saying?’ he asked, feeling like an idiot. He should know more about this than Charlie. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ she snapped. ‘I didn’t want you to feel everyone had it in for you, though you seem to feel that way whatever happens. Look, I hoped I could get you to . . . moderate your behaviour. And you’ve been a lot better recently, which is why I don’t want this Alice Fancourt business to fuck that up. I promised Proust I’d keep you under control, so . . .’

  ‘So you’re going to start trying to control how I feel about people too?’ Simon was incensed. Charlie had got him out of trouble and kept it from him at the same time. He couldn’t think of anything more patronising. As if he were a child who couldn’t handle the harsh truth.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m only trying to help, okay? If I was about to fuck up, I’d want you to advise me not to. That’s what friends do.’ There was a tremor in her voice.

  Simon saw her hurt expression, panicked at the prospect of tears. ‘I’m sorry.’ He decided as he said it that perhaps he ought to be, perhaps he was. Charlie could appear thick-skinned, but Simon knew she often felt wounded and betrayed. As did he. Another thing they had in common, she’d have said.

  She stood up. ‘I’d better go. I might go to a club,’ she said pointedly.

  ‘Thanks for the book. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  Once she had gone, Simon sank into a chair, feeling dislocated, as if he had lost an important part of himself. He needed to think, to rewrite his life story in accordance with the new information Charlie had given him. Lies were lethal, however honourable the intentions of the liar. They deprived people of the opportunity to know the basic facts of their own lives.

  The impulse to flee, to start afresh somewhere far away, returned with all the allure of a new idea. It would be too easy not to turn up for work tomorrow. If only he trusted Charlie, anyone, to find Alice. But without him, the team wouldn’t do a thorough enough job, not by his standards. Not that Simon trusted himself particularly at the moment. Maybe he wasn’t as good at his job as he imagined. Maybe obedience and placidity counted for more than passion and intelligence in this shallow, superficial world.

  To find out, retrospectively, that most of his superior officers had been eager to get rid of him made Simon feel as if all his efforts were in vain. Might as well go and start kicking heads in right now. So what if the chronology was all wrong? It didn’t change how he felt. Tonight he would sleep badly.

  13

  Saturday September 27, 2003

  Vivienne and I are at the police station, in an interview room. It is one of the most unpleasant spaces I have ever been in, small and airless, about three metres square, with sickly green walls. As we walked in, our feet stuck to the grey linoleum. We had to peel them off after every step. The only window has bars on it, and all the chairs are screwed to the floor. The table in front of us is covered in cigarette burns. I breathe through my mouth to avoid inhaling the unpleasant smell, a mixture of urine, cigarettes and sweat.

  ‘What sort of awful place is this?’ says Vivienne. ‘This is a room for criminals. You’d have thought they’d know from looking at us that we aren’t criminals.’

  Vivienne certainly does not look like one. She is wearing a grey wool suit and grey suede court shoes. Her short silver hair is immaculate and her nails are trimmed and varnished, colourless as always. Anyone who didn’t know her would not be able to tell that she is in a state of extreme distress.

  Vivienne does not rant and sob and make a fuss. The more despondent she feels, the quieter and more composed she is. She sits and broods. She stares at the wall, and out of windows, her face revealing nothing, sinister in its stillness. Even for the benefit of her beloved Felix, she cannot pretend to be her usual animated self. She holds him tightly in her arms, as if afraid he too might vanish. I told her this morning that I thought Felix ought to go and stay with friends, but she said firmly, ‘Nobody is leaving this house.’

  She has always issued orders in this way, like a ruling force, confident of her absolute power. When David first took me home to meet her, I loved the way she laid down the law about which train I was to take back to London, what I must eat at the restaurant she took us to. It seemed to me then that friends offered polite suggestions before abandoning you to plough through your life alone, carrying the full weight of responsibility. They didn’t try too hard to meddle or force their views on you because, at some fundamental level, they didn’t care.

  When Vivienne dogmatically seized control of my life, I thought that she was treating me as she would a daughter. I mattered to her, a lot, otherwise why would she have bothered? And she was right about the train, right about the food. Vivienne is no fool. She made decisions for me that were better than the ones I would have made for myself. Within two months of meeting David, I had a more flattering hairstyle and clothes I loved and looked fantastic in but would never have dared to choose for myself.

  We have arrived at the police station in good time for Vivienne’s appointment. Vivienne explained who we were, and the man behind the front desk, a middle-aged officer in uniform, ushered us in here and told us to wait while he went to get the OIC for our case. Neither of us knew what he meant, whether to expect a person, a document or a committee.

  Vivienne is here to give her statement. I begged her to let me come with her. I find it too upsetting and frightening to be around David. But I am more nervous than I thought I would be. I have never been inside a police station before and I am not enjoying the experience. I feel as if, at any moment, I might be found guilty of something.

  The door opens and Simon comes in, followed by a tall, thin woman with a large bosom that looks as if it would fit better on somebody more buxom. Her lipstick is bright red and doesn’t suit her. She has short, dark brown hair and is wearing oval-shaped glasses with gold frames, a red jumper and a black skirt. She glances fleetingly at Vivienne, then leans against the wall and stares coldly at me. I feel frumpy in my cream, empire-waisted maternity dress. My stomach is still too big for normal clothes. The woman has a hard, mean look on her face and I instantly fear and dislike her. Simon blushes when his eyes meet mine. I am sure he hasn’t told his unfriendly colleague about the meeting the two of us have arranged for Monday afternoon. When I suggested that I should come to the police station, he very quickly said that was impossible. I have not told Vivienne either.

  Simon turns to Vivienne. ‘I’m Detective Constable Waterhouse,’ he says. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Zailer.’

  ‘Sergeant Zailer and I have met before,’ says Vivienne briskly. The speed with which she moves on tells me that this prior meeting must have been connected to Laura’s murder. ‘Now that you’re here, could you take us to a nicer room? This one leaves rather a lot to be desired.’

  ‘We don’t have any nicer rooms,’ says Sergeant Zailer, sitting down opposite us. There is only one chair on her side of the table, so Simon has to stand. ‘We have four interview rooms and they’re all like this. It’s a police station, not a hotel.’

  Vivienne purses her lips and sits up straighter in her chair.

  ‘DC Waterhouse? Would you care to give the two Mrs Fancourts an update on the case?’ Sergeant Zailer emphasizes this last word sarcastically.

  Simon clears his throat and shifts his weight from one foot to the other. He seems ill at ease. ‘No babies have been reported missing yesterday or today, or in the past two weeks,’ he says. ‘Also, we, er, we had a disappointing response from Culver Valley General Hospital. They didn’t have the, er, placenta or the umbilical cord. They only keep them for a couple of days. Unfortunately that means we’re unable to do a DNA comparison between the placenta and the baby . . .’

  ‘There was a woman in the hospital at the same time as me . . .’ I begin, but Vivienne has started to speak as well, and it is
her voice that everybody hears. I wonder if I ought to try again to tell them about Mandy. Vivienne’s presence stops me. I know what she would say: that Mandy was too stupid to plan anything as imaginative as a substitution of one baby for another. I have a little Vivienne in my head all the time, as if she’s fitted a representative of herself in my brain, one that reacts exactly as she would, even when she isn’t there.

  ‘You could take DNA samples from Alice and David and see if they’re the biological parents of the baby.’ I notice Vivienne’s wording. The baby, not Florence.

  ‘We could.’ Sergeant Zailer flashes us a cold-eyed smile. ‘But we’re not going to. If you want to pay for that, you’re welcome to arrange it yourself. It’d probably be a good deal quicker to do it that way, in fact. There is no case here, Mrs Fancourt. No baby is missing. We’ve spoken to your nearest neighbours and nobody saw anything suspicious. There’s no evidence that anything at all is amiss, apart from in the mind of your daughter-in-law. My detective here . . .’ – she pauses and looks pointedly at Simon – ‘. . . has been extremely thorough. He has contacted the hospital in pursuit of physical evidence in the form of a placenta or umbilical cord, but since neither is available . . . well, I’m afraid there’s not a lot more we can do. Even if they had been available . . . our lab is very busy with DNA analysis relating to serious crimes. It’s a question of resources, Mrs Fancourt, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate.’

  I wonder how Simon feels about being described as her detective. She didn’t even look at me when she suggested to Vivienne that I was mentally impaired. I can feel the beams of her hostility as they radiate across the table. She is busy and regards me and my ludicrous baby-swap story as a waste of her time, but I sense that it is more than that. She dislikes me personally.

  I tell my patients, or I used to, that the best way to deal with someone who is aggressive towards you is to follow the DESC script: describe, explain, strategies, consequences. You describe the unacceptable aspects of their behaviour and explain how they make you feel. Then you suggest strategies for change – normally, that they stop doing whatever it is that they are doing – and point out the positive consequences of such a change for all concerned.

  I do not think I will try the DESC script now.

  ‘Thank you for your suggestion,’ says Vivienne. ‘I certainly will organise a DNA test, to put my family’s minds at rest.’ There is no gratitude whatsoever in her voice.

  ‘Do I take it, then, that you also think the infant in your house is not Florence Fancourt?’ asks Sergeant Zailer.

  Since she returned from Florida, Vivienne has not said what she believes. She is observing me and David very closely. We both find it unsettling. She prefers asking questions to answering them. She always has. She fires them at you, one after another, and listens attentively to your replies. When I first met her, I was amazed and profoundly grateful to discover that no detail of my daily life, no thought or feeling I had, was too small to hold her interest. One doesn’t normally expect that sort of attention from anyone but a parent. Vivienne seemed determined to know everything there was to know about me. It was as if she were collecting facts for a future test. I was only too keen to help her in her mission. The more firmly the data of my existence was lodged in Vivienne’s sharp mind, the more real and substantial I felt. I have felt less concrete since I started to hide aspects of myself from her.

  ‘I only saw Florence once, on the day she was born,’ says Vivienne. ‘I then went to Florida with my grandson. When I got back yesterday, I had already spoken to Alice. I know that she believes the baby at The Elms is not her daughter, and I am inclined to take her seriously. The memory plays tricks, Sergeant Zailer, as I’m sure you know. A DNA test is the only way to resolve this.’ She appears calm, but inside she must feel the same churning, restless agitation that I feel, as if the contents of my head have been repeatedly stabbed at, mashed to a pulp. Yet here I sit, here Vivienne sits: polite, demure. We are both in disguise.

  ‘Does the baby at The Elms resemble the baby you saw in the hospital?’ Simon asks. His gentle tone provides a welcome contrast to his colleague’s brusqueness.

  ‘That’s irrelevant, detective,’ Sergeant Zailer snaps at him. ‘There’s no evidence of a crime having been committed here.’ She turns to him and mutters something that sounds like ‘. . . cuff it.’

  ‘She resembles her very closely, yes,’ Vivienne replies.

  ‘Of course she does!’ I blurt out. ‘I’ve never denied that.’

  ‘Would you like to deliver the other bad news, DC Waterhouse?’ Sergeant Zailer prompts. Simon doesn’t want to say it, whatever it is. She is forcing him to be horrible to us. ‘My detective is tongue-tied, so I’ll tell you myself. You gave us a camera film, Mrs Fancourt.’

  ‘Yes!’ I sit forward in my chair. Vivienne puts her hand on my arm.

  ‘It was damaged. Light contamination, we were told. None of the photos came out. Sorry.’ She doesn’t sound it.

  ‘What? No!’ I am on my feet. I want to slap Sergeant Zailer’s smug, snide, gloating face. She has no idea what it feels like to be me, doesn’t even try to put herself in my place. Somebody with so little empathy should not be allowed to do the job she does. ‘But . . . those were the first ever photos of Florence. Now I haven’t got . . . oh, God.’ I sit back down and squeeze my hands together in my lap, determined not to cry in front of this woman.

  It is almost unbearable to think that I will never see those pictures, not even once. The one David took of me with my cheek pressed against Florence’s. Me kissing the top of her head. David with Florence’s fingers curled round his thumb. Florence bent over the midwife’s knee with a comical yawn on her face, during a burping session. A close-up of the sign that dangled from her glass cot in the hospital: a pink elephant holding a bottle of champagne, with the words ‘female infant of Alice Fancourt’ written in blue biro on its stomach.

  I shut these things out of my mind before they destroy me.

  ‘This is very peculiar.’ Vivienne frowns. ‘I took some photographs of Florence myself, with my new digital camera, on the day she was born.’

  ‘And?’ asks Simon quickly. Sergeant Zailer looks resolutely uninterested.

  ‘The same thing. While I was in Florida, I noticed that all of them had been deleted. They simply weren’t there any more. I couldn’t understand it – all my other photographs were still there. It was only the ones of Florence that had vanished.’

  ‘What?’ She is telling me this for the first time now, in front of two police officers. Why didn’t she mention it as soon as I told her Florence was missing? Was it because David was also there?

  I bought Vivienne the digital camera for her birthday. She is usually resistant to anything she regards as modern, but she wanted to take the best possible photographs of her new grandchild. I still have a vivid picture in my mind of her frowning at the manual, too proud to admit she was daunted by its many instructions, determined not to be defeated by new technology. She refused to accept help from David, even though he could have saved her a lot of time.

  When Vivienne was a child, her parents used to tell her that there was nothing she couldn’t do. She believed them. ‘That is how you instil confidence in a person,’ she told me.

  ‘This is impossible,’ she mutters now, lost for a moment in her own thoughts.

  ‘Now will you admit something funny is going on?’ I demand. ‘Come on, what are the odds of two sets of photos being wrecked accidentally? This is evidence!’ I plead with the sergeant. ‘Two films, both ruined, and they just happen to be the only photos of Florence ever taken!’

  The sergeant sighs. ‘It appears that way to you. But I’m afraid it’s not what any police officer or court of law would regard as proof.’

  ‘Cheryl Dixon, my midwife, believes me,’ I say tearfully.

  ‘I’ve read her statement. She said she wasn’t sure, couldn’t say either way. She sees dozens of babies everyday. If I were you, Mrs Fancourt, I’d m
ake an appointment with your GP and see what he can do for you. We know about your history of depression . . .’

  ‘Don’t make out that’s got anything to do with this! My parents had just died. That was grief, not depression!’

  ‘You were prescribed prozac,’ says Sergeant Zailer with exaggerated patience. ‘Maybe you need some sort of medication now. Post-natal depression is a very common complaint and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, it affects . . .’

  ‘One moment, please, Sergeant.’ Vivienne’s interruptions are so polite, they make the original speaker appear rude for not having stopped in time. ‘Alice is right about the photographs. It is simply impossible that the same thing should happen to both of our cameras. It has never happened to any camera of mine before.’

  ‘Nor mine,’ I say. I feel like a coward, hiding behind the swagger of a braver, more powerful protector.

  Sergeant Zailer’s nostrils flare and her lips move slightly as she stifles a yawn. ‘Coincidences happen.’ She shrugs. ‘It’s not enough for us to use as the basis for an investigation, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Is that also your opinion, Detective Constable Waterhouse?’ asks Vivienne.

  A good question. Simon is trying not to let his expression give anything away.

  ‘Mrs Fancourt, I’m the senior officer here, and I say there’s no case. Now, you can give DC Waterhouse your statement, if it’ll make you happy, but I’m afraid that’ll have to be the end of it. I’m sure you’ll agree, we’ve been more than patient with this whole matter . . .’

  ‘I do not agree, Sergeant Zailer.’ Vivienne stands up. She reminds me of a cabinet minister, about to demolish her opposition. I am glad to have her on my side. ‘On the contrary. I’ve never seen anyone in more of a hurry. You were in a hurry the last time we met, as I recall. You are a woman who would rather do lots of things badly, in order to be able to tick off more items on your list, than do fewer things properly. I’m sorry that you are Detective Constable Waterhouse’s boss. We would all be better off if it were the other way round. Now, I’d like the name of your boss, so that I can write a letter of complaint.’