The Dead Line

by Holly Watt

  And he’d looked surprised.

  ‘Of course they would.’

  ‘No,’ she said again. ‘They wouldn’t.’

  ‘So cynical.’ His hands were steady on the steering wheel. ‘Miranda, isn’t it? I’m Tom.’

  She’d known then: looking at the neatly cut hair, the hazel eyes, the carefully cleaned car. No one cleaned their car back then. No one. Cars a chaos of McDonald’s wrappers and Lucozade bottles and fumes of a hangover.

  Known that this might be foundations for happiness, at last. Maybe.

  He’d stayed. Her mother crying on his shoulder, the stink of gin in the air. After a day, it was as if he had been there for ever.

  But now the foundations were slipping away. It was never No; just I’m not ready yet.

  Unforgivable, really.

  If a man had done this . . . She knew.

  But I meant not yet. And it was only as I got closer . . .

  He’d waited, a kind man.

  But now . . .

  And one Sunday morning, it was No.

  20

  Casey sat on a train, gazing out of the window. She stared into the sitting rooms of a thousand houses, all the way down the railway track. These gardens were neat in the morning sun: a trampoline here, a cherry tree there. Casey shuddered as a single magpie hopped away from the onrush of the train.

  The train pulled into the station and Casey couldn’t breathe. Surrey, and he was everywhere.

  A brilliant mind, people had always said, smiling. And such charisma. They would remember meeting him, just once, twenty years ago.

  She remembered sitting on a knee, in front of a fireplace. Suit trousers and crisp white shirts. Clever grey eyes, dark hair and electric bursts of attention. Jigsaw puzzles, and a fizz of excitement when he arrived. The flat shrank around him. Her mother laughing, which she never did normally.

  Coming and going. Mainly going.

  He’s away for work, her mother would say, almost bravely.

  When she was older, he liked her mind. Quizzical, he said. Sharp. There was pride there, for a while.

  Too sharp, like him. He taught her chess. There were games, too. Treasure hunt, hide and seek. Murder in the dark.

  And then, one day, he left his book behind. The bookmark, a photograph.

  Three blonde children, sitting on a big navy sofa. On holiday, she guessed, by the shorts and swimsuits and tans. One boy waving a small tennis racket.

  Three golden faces, laughing with the confidence of love. Picture perfect, and safe. And she’d known, at once, that she was the other. That she was the secret. That she was the one who wasn’t real.

  These were the treasured three. The real family. The proper ones. And that made her the intruder.

  She listened at doors, after that. Put it together, bit by bit.

  He was a barrister. A QC, no less. Although she didn’t understand the initials, not then. Her mother, his pupil. An affair, many years ago. So normal. Almost mundane, really. But this time, a child.

  He hadn’t cut them loose, not completely. There was the flat. The flickering, flustering visits. A present, at Christmas. But not him. Never him. Not for Christmas. And her birthday present could be a week late, or two.

  There’d been a fight, in the end. Squalls over money, and a fading beauty, and he disappeared one summer day. She was seven, when he dissolved into that August morning. Pawn sacrifice, maybe. She wondered, later, if they had begun to bore him.

  Her mother hid her tears, sort of. Afterwards, there’d been others. Worse. Always the other woman, her mother.

  Only years later, she understood. Love refracted through a marriage. Somebody else’s. That was the only bearable sort of love.

  Peering at the eclipse, through the pinhole.

  Then another man, crueller, this one. My wife doesn’t understand me, it began. We never fuck, any more.

  One morning, a black eye.

  It’s nothing, darling.

  Frozen peas and silent sobs.

  She’d hunted him down, when she was thirteen. The man who had been her father. To here. This town.

  The house had been easy to find, down a road, studded with trees, a walk between each house. Sprawling expensively, with fake Tudor beams and bay windows lighting up a grey afternoon.

  It was just after Christmas. The road a forlorn Dunsinane, littered with pine trees, stripped of sparkle and forgotten.

  She followed the five of them from the house as they pottered to the high street, lazy Sunday, Weybridge respectable. Watched, from a distance the life that might have been hers.

  Then she crossed the road to them. I’m so sorry, do you know the way . . .

  Just the right touch of innocent confusion.

  The blonde mother had been so kind. Pointing directions, gold bracelets clinking. A beautiful voice: now, are you sure you’ve got it?

  She watched the rings. A diamond glittering in the low winter sun, and a band of gold. Wealth and security, love and recognition. Honour, such an unfamiliar word. Everything she’d never had, in small golden circles.

  And just for a second, she’d shifted her gaze, and he’d known her for who she was. The other. The threat to everything. The smiling child who could shred all the tissue layers with just one tiny word.

  Daddy. Daddy. Daddy.

  And destroy all that perfectly flawed beauty.

  She held his stare just for a second, and then looked away. In his nightmares for ever.

  A brilliant mind, they said.

  Was I not enough?

  Thank you so much, she echoed the woman’s voice, so easily. Yes, I understand exactly. You’ve been most kind.

  The woman wasn’t watching for her husband’s grey eyes and careless smile. She didn’t see.

  And the secret one turned, and walked away, and understood mysteries, and power, and layers of knowledge, for the very first time.

  She kept the book, though. And the photograph of the three children, a big blue sofa. And the pack of cards, he’d taught her to count. There wasn’t much else.

  A few scrappy presents, which she laid out once a year, on an August morning.

  She’d monitored them, the three of them. Knew their names, and their schools, and their first jobs, several rungs up from the start of their careers.

  She was almost exactly the same age as the second child, a girl, and she wondered about the days and weeks, in between.

  She saw one of the daughters at a party, years later. Silver dress flowing to the ground. A girl who saw everyone else as walk-on characters in her life.

  She watched the confidence, built on the frailest of foundations, and sheltered only by ignorance.

  Sister, such an unfamiliar word.

  And Casey thought: I could break you. Because I know you. And it would only take a second.

  But she ducked away, so the girl wouldn’t see her, the spectre at the feast. She was the other girl, the mirrored girl, the girl who wasn’t there at all, not really.

  She used the twirl of the hair later, of course. Magpied that imperious happiness, for just a few minutes.

  And blazed with anger at the brilliant mind that made her a secret.

  21

  Casey walked out of the station, through the clatter of people and noise and Costa coffee. The Burton-Smiths lived just over a mile from the station, but Casey wanted to walk. She had looked up the house already, the particulars five years old. An exceptional location. One of the most desirable private roads. Superbly appointed.

  The road was wide. A few smaller houses here and there, but most had been flattened and rebuilt, sprawling as far as the plots would allow, with indoor swimming pools to the rear. Casey shuddered. It was the sort of road she only visited when a husband had battered his wife to death with a piece of gym equipment.

  The Burton-Smith house was empty though, behind the shiny black gates. Casey wandered up the street, glancing around. A silver Audi was grumbling as an Ocado van struggled through a three-point turn
. Most people drove, round here.

  But Emily walked. Casey soon saw her, walking down the street, eyes on the pavement. Her bulky navy coat was buttoned to the neck. She was carrying a big cotton shopping bag, and a bunch of tulips, buds tight shut. She looked tired, worried, fragile as a daisy chain.

  You don’t belong here either, thought Casey suddenly, a brief burst of sympathy.

  ‘Emily.’ Casey stepped into her path.

  Emily glanced up from the pavement, and flinched when she saw Casey.

  ‘Oh please,’ Emily whispered. ‘Please, no.’

  In a single movement, Casey had pulled out her phone.

  ‘Here.’ It was a photograph, sent through by Savannah.

  I went through my pictures, Savannah had typed. The girl in red on the left, that’s Romida.

  ‘Romida is thirteen,’ Casey said. ‘She was taken from the camps just a few weeks ago, so she isn’t the girl carrying your child. But we believe that your unborn daughter’s mother is being kept with her somewhere with a group of other women.’

  Your unborn daughter’s mother . . .

  Emily stared at the photograph. Romida was looking slightly away from the camera, excited and shy all at once. Her red dress was covered in roses, and her shawl – also red but with a different pattern – was wrapped around her head. The girl’s eyes were patient, and her mouth not quite used to smiling. Sitting on the floor of a makeshift playroom, she had one arm curled behind her, half hiding away. Next to Romida, her friend was more confident, beaming at the camera from beneath an orange headscarf. They had folded into each other, as teenage girls do, awkward with laughter.

  Emily looked up at Casey, and her eyes were full of tears.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘If I could undo it all . . .’

  ‘We need to find out who is snatching girls like Romida,’ said Casey. ‘I can’t do it without your help. We don’t know where they are being kept in Bangladesh, and who is in charge of it all out there.’

  ‘But I . . . I can’t . . .’

  ‘We know that Dr Greystone is probably the person managing things from London,’ Casey went on. ‘But we don’t know anything else.’

  Emily was staring at the photograph of Romida, the tulips dangling by her side.

  ‘As far as we know,’ Casey went on more gently, ‘nothing has happened to Romida yet. But it will, unless we can get to her, and stop it. You can keep her safe.’

  Two small boys cycled past slowly, plainly proud of their bright new bikes, their laughter echoing down the street.

  ‘You don’t understand.’ Emily was struggling to get the words out. ‘We’ve been counting down the days until we could go and pick up our baby. The hours, even. I look at the scan they sent us every five minutes. I love her. I love her, as if she were already here. I couldn’t bear it if anything went wrong . . . If I wasn’t there . . .’

  ‘We would be very careful,’ promised Casey. ‘We would bring her home to you, Emily. You wouldn’t lose your baby. But these are refugee girls. Girls, not women. Being forced to carry babies for foreigners. They are girls just like Romida. You must see that it’s unbearable. That it can’t go on.’

  ‘But this is my baby,’ Emily’s voice broke. ‘I know it’s awful, and I know I should be thinking something different, and I am so sorry about that. But I just can’t. I want my baby.’

  ‘Emily . . .’

  ‘Will she go the authorities?’ Emily asked. ‘Your colleague.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Casey. ‘She might.’

  ‘She will,’ Emily murmured. ‘I saw it. She was so angry.’

  Emily slumped, turning towards her house. Casey watched her go.

  As Emily reached the gates, wearily punching in the code, she paused.

  ‘I’ll always think of her now, won’t I?’ Emily said, without turning around. ‘That girl, Romida.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Casey said honestly. ‘But only you can stop Romida being hurt.’

  Emily turned towards Casey.

  ‘Do you know the name? Of the girl who is . . .’ Emily shrank away from the words. ‘The girl who is having our baby.’

  ‘No.’ Casey met her eye. ‘She’s just an anonymous girl, somewhere in Bangladesh. You never need to know a thing about her, if you don’t want. You can just pick up your baby, like a bunch of flowers.’

  Emily looked down at the tulips. She had crushed the stalks, Casey saw.

  ‘We used to be different, you know, Dominic and I.’

  In her mind, Casey flicked through the documents that Hessa had pulled together. The bright young artist. The good-looking husband, in advertising, highly successful. All backed up by a solid wall of family money behind them. Anything possible.

  ‘We used to have so much fun. But I wanted a family. Everyone wants a family, don’t they?’ Emily waved at the twee grandeur. ‘It’s ridiculous all this, I know. But I wanted it so much that I gave up everything else . . . And then we were stuck . . . Halfway to a dream.’

  Casey felt a sudden wave of fury at the beautiful woman, standing outside her desirable home.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Emily almost smiled. ‘Romida, stuck somewhere out in Bangladesh. Terrified, homeless, and in real danger. And then pathetic me, here. Complaining.’

  ‘A little.’ Casey let the anger flicker.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Emily. ‘But I can’t do it.’

  ‘Sleep on it.’

  ‘I won’t sleep.’

  22

  Emily called a day later, as Casey had known she would.

  ‘Meet me by the Round Pond? In Kensington Gardens?’

  Emily was waiting as Casey walked up. It was cold today, with a shiver in the air. Emily wore an elegant black coat, long and flowing, that caught the wind and billowed. The swans drifted in slow circles, under the solemn watch of Kensington Palace.

  ‘Hello,’ said Emily.

  ‘Hello.’

  They stared at each other for a second.

  ‘I have no idea’ – Emily had to unclench her jaw to speak – ‘what to do.’

  Casey was silent. Emily kept her eyes on the swans, turning in their graceful swirls as the wind whisked across the water.

  ‘Has your colleague’ – Emily struggled with the words – ‘gone to the authorities yet?’

  ‘No,’ said Casey, watching Emily relax, just slightly. ‘Not yet.’

  The tension returned. ‘But she will?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Miranda had spun in angry laps around the office, whirling past Business, Sport, Production. These people. These fucking people.

  ‘On the way here,’ Emily said, ‘up on the train, I thought I would know what to do. At one station, I was going to tell you to do your worst. Bloody call whoever you’ll call. Get on with it. But then at the next station, that girl, Romida’ – Emily hesitated over the name – ‘would be there. It was as if she were just waiting on the platform. I can’t get away from her.’

  A small child scooted up to the pond, and began throwing bread for the ducks. Raucously cheerful, they crowded round.

  ‘Romida,’ Emily said again, turning the syllables over in her mouth. ‘Romida.’

  The little girl was throwing the bread with an intense concentration. Wide eyes and freckles, she was neatly buttoned into her tiny red coat. Green mittens on a string dangled from her sleeves. Emily’s eyes followed her hungrily.

  Emily pulled out a photograph, shoving it blindly at Casey.

  ‘They sent us that, you know. The clinic.’

  Casey looked at the photograph. A young Rohingya woman, standing in front of a pale-blue painted wall, a shy smile on her face. To her left, there was a poster: a grinning child in the arms of a beaming nurse, with some stern advice about vaccinations. To the right, a Doppler machine sat on a white steel filing cabinet. A neat bed, crisp sheets, was partly hidden by bright curtains.

  The room looked immaculate, cosy.

  ‘They send us r
egular scans,’ said Emily. ‘They look after these girls, you know.’

  ‘What is her name? That girl.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Emily looked back at the swans. ‘They never . . . But Dr Greystone said he can provide all the documentation we need from the Harley Street clinic . . . All the . . .’

  Her words drifted into silence. Greystone, the man who must be forging pages of documents to allow the babies to slip into the British system.

  ‘I can’t sleep.’ Emily cleared her throat. ‘Dominic said to forget you ever came. That you wouldn’t just tell the police. That you would find another way to do this story. He said that what you’re doing is just as bad, in its own way.’

  He probably wasn’t wrong, thought Casey. But aloud she replied: ‘We have a duty to report things to the police. When we know that something terrible is happening. We can’t just walk away.’

  Emily flinched, tugging the belt around her waist tighter.

  ‘Why us?’ she said. ‘Your colleague could have picked anyone walking into that waiting room. Why did it have to be us?’ The words trailed into a silence. ‘I know what you think of me,’ she said again. ‘You despise me, I imagine. But you don’t know what it is like.’

  Emily had turned away from Casey, was looking across the green stretches of the park.

  ‘No. I don’t know what it’s like.’ Casey waited. ‘But I do want to understand. If you’ll be a source on this story, I promise the Post will protect you. We’d anonymise your story, keep your secrets.’

  That everyday trade: protection for knowledge, knowledge for power. Sources close to, good friends of.

  ‘This wasn’t even our first try at surrogacy, you know.’ There was a defiance in Emily’s narrow shoulders. ‘After all the Clomid, and the rounds and rounds of IVF, we found a surrogate in England. It took years to find her. Not many people will . . . We had all the agreements written up, everything signed and done. We paid the surrogate as much as we could under the rules, which isn’t very much in England. Just expenses. But still. I couldn’t believe that it was happening. At last. At last. I was so excited. I dreamed about this baby every night. She was in my dreams. She was in my head. I knew her.’