By Bread Alone

by Sarah-Kate Lynch

  Esme hit her head on a tiny little table as she fell to the floor. It wasn’t a faint so much as a collapse. She had lost a child before. She knew what it felt like. And it felt like this. Like being lost yourself. With no chance, ever, of being found.

  This time, though, she deserved it. And the pain was unbearable.

  Chapter 18

  The policeman who arrived in the gym manager’s office less than ten minutes later had trouble making sense out of what Esme was saying.

  Hysteria had her firmly in its grip and showed no signs of letting go.

  “We don’t have a car,” she sobbed. “And my son Teddy died two years ago.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” the policeman said. “But I’m going to have to ask you some questions.”

  Panic gripped every nook and cranny of Esme’s body. Her son had been taken while she had been acting like some two-bit hooker in a D-grade porn film. He was gone. She had lost both her sons. And yet again there was no one to blame but herself. Her heartbreak had taught her nothing.

  She trembled as she tried not to think of what else she was about to lose. It was about Rory, of course it was about Rory. But also, her own foolishness and treachery were about to be laid out on the table for all to see and try as she might she could not ignore this. Rory would end up in the papers as the little boy whose mother was having a secret rendezvous in a seedy hotel room while he was being—

  “Oh, God!” she cried, dissolving into more tears. The policeman squirmed uncomfortably in his chair and cleared his throat.

  “Mrs. Stack,” he said gently. “If you could just give me a few moments.”

  Esme tried to calm herself down. She was not helping Rory like this. She would talk to the policeman, help him find her little boy and then she would kill herself. She took a deep, wobbly breath.

  “I’m not even a proper Catholic,” she told him. Yet she knew her son—her only son, her only child—had been taken to punish her for almost cheating on Pog. She was wicked and it was what she deserved. But oh, not what he deserved!

  The policeman looked at her as though she had just said something terribly sensible and nodded.

  “Has Mrs. Stack seen a doctor?” he then asked the gym manager, a mother of two herself, who while furious that the day care had been so flagrantly abused with such dreadful results, could not help but sympathize with the distraught Esme. She shook her head.

  “I think it might be a wise idea,” the policeman said. “Would you mind arranging it?” He then turned back to Esme. “Now, Mrs. Stack. I know this is hard for you but it’s important we think very clearly. That we don’t jump to any conclusions. Is it at all possible that your husband arranged to have your son picked up?”

  Esme shook her head. “He doesn’t know,” she said. “I’m not even a member.” Her hands, trembling in her lap, started clawing at each other. “Who would do this?” she cried. “Who?”

  “Well, that’s what we have to try and think about,” the policeman said calmly. “But we should find out from Mr. Stack, just to make sure, that it was nothing to do with him. Most cases like this, Esme—can I call you Esme?—turn out to be little communication hiccups. You thought you were going to come back and pick Teddy up but your husband—”

  “Rory,” Esme corrected him, bleakly but loudly. “It’s Rory.” She was stuck in a deep, dark hole and she was never going to get out.

  “Of course,” the policeman said, feeling wretched. “Rory.” Teddy was the other son. This poor woman. He started to feel a lump in his throat. It might be a communication hiccup, but then it might be worse.

  “So if you would just like to ring him,” he said gently, “your husband?”

  Tears spilled down Esme’s cheeks. “I went to meet a friend,” she said, “at a hotel.”

  The policeman instantly understood. “I see,” he said, some of his sympathy draining away.

  “Rory was supposed to stay home but he had a cold and his grandfather was angry with me so I had to bring him,” blubbed Esme. “I came in here and saw the day care and, well, I thought there were rules,” she sobbed. “I thought only I could pick him up.”

  Even the policeman had to agree that should have been the case. That it had been a terrible mistake on the day-care supervisor’s part. She too was distraught and had been taken to a separate room for questioning and to try and give the police an Identikit picture of the kidnapper.

  “Young Felicity says your son seemed to know the man,” the policeman said, looking at his notebook. “A black man in his twenties.”

  Esme wept uncontrollably. What would this do to Pog? To lose his second son and his unfaithful wife in what would basically amount to a single phone call? It would kill him. And he was such a dear, sweet, gentle soul. She wanted him then, desperately, helplessly, stupidly. How cruel that the only person she wanted to reach for when she was in this kind of trouble was the person she had betrayed to get in it in the first place. But Pog was the rock she clung to, not perfect, yet safe and secure.

  Of course they suffered their own dysfunctions: What couple didn’t? She should have talked to him about Teddy, had known that all along, but as time went by it got harder, not easier, to bring up that lost and lonely name, and he had never talked to her, either. They were just two little lost peas bobbing about in a giant ocean of misery, each keeping an eye on the other to make sure they stayed on course, yet stopping just short of throwing a line in case it sucked them both underneath the surface. It was all they could do in those dark desperate days to put one foot in front of the other and keep breathing, in and out, in and out, these past two years, being parents, a son, a daughter-in-law, a granddaughter. Who had room for the added angst of dredging up the details, raking through the pain? Who could bear it? There was the fresh pain, too, of Granny Mac to consider and avoid. Esme should have reached for her husband these past few weeks, not pushed him away and instead resurrected her past.

  Sitting in the manager’s office, her son lost, her lover a fraud, her life in tatters, all Esme wanted was Pog. But he would not want her. Not after this. Her sordid, sad little secret had cost them everything.

  “We didn’t even do anything,” Esme sobbed wildly at the policeman. “It was a trick! Charlie set the whole bloody thing up.”

  The policeman, who was tired and slightly confused, perked up at this. “Charlie?” he repeated. “Are you referring to the kidnapper, Mrs. Stack? Is he known to you?”

  “Louis,” cried Esme. “In the hotel. We didn’t do anything. I don’t love him. I love Pog. I just wanted to come and get Rory and go home and live happily ever after. That’s finally what I wanted! I only just found out, what? Half an hour ago? And now what chance do I have? Do any of us have?”

  The policeman, who had soiled his own marital reputation not so long ago with a one-night stand on a boys’ weekend in Amsterdam, culminating in a nasty rash and some quick explaining a week later, cranked up his sympathy again. He could see that Esme was not your average careless caregiver. And he did not wish himself in her shoes.

  “I am sure it’s just a misunderstanding,” he said. “We all make mistakes, Esme. Could it have slipped your mind that you mentioned the day care to someone else?”

  “But I didn’t even know we were coming here,” Esme said. “We just came in to use the loo and then I saw the day care—” Her heart stopped. “Could someone have seen him in the changing rooms? I didn’t go in. People complain. He went in on his own. Oh please, please, please . . .”

  The policeman’s heart sank but he tried not to let her see it.

  “Well, the front desk will have a record of everyone who was here at the time so we shouldn’t have too much trouble tracking him down if that is the case,” he said. “Now, I know that in the circumstances it is a delicate matter and perhaps not the easiest thing for you to do but I am going to have to insist that you ring Mr. Stack.”

  More than two hours had passed since Rory had been snatched and still her perfectly blamele
ss husband was blissfully unaware. Esme knew the policeman was right.

  “I’ll go and check on the Identikit picture,” he said, and placing a kindly hand on Esme’s shoulder, he left her to it.

  The silence was unbearable. Esme’s mind flicked from one frightful scenario to the next. Where was Rory now? What was happening to him? Why did he go with this black man in his twenties, this driver? How could he know someone that she didn’t know herself?

  She refused to allow herself to dwell on where he might be and what might be happening to him. Her heart couldn’t bear the pain. It was all her fault. Her precious son was in the worst danger in which a four-year-old boy could possibly be. And why? Because his wretched, foolish, frivolous mother had wanted to recapture the pathetic drama of her long-lost youth.

  How could she call Pog? How could she tell him what she had done?

  She couldn’t. But she had to do something to help Rory. And she couldn’t do it on her own.

  Wiping her eyes, then her nose, Esme lifted the phone and slowly, shakily, dialed Alice’s work number. To her horror, Nose Hair himself picked up.

  “Alice,” Esme whispered into the phone. “Alice.”

  “Not here,” Nose Hair barked. “But should you find her, please inform her I’m currently interviewing her replacement.” And he hung up in her ear.

  Esme stared, weeping, at the phone. Her brain was all muddled. Her thoughts were mashed together and she couldn’t separate one from the other. It was like fishing in dark and soupy waters. She poked around for thoughts that made sense but could find none. What should she do next? She couldn’t find the answer. And time was ticking away, taking Rory farther and farther from her.

  At this realization, she knew she could not wait any longer.

  She was in such trouble, they all were. And Pog needed to know.

  She picked up the phone again and, still weeping, punched in his work number. Mrs. Murphy answered almost straightaway.

  “Is Hugo there, please?” Esme asked, trying hard not to hyperventilate with fear.

  “I should be so lucky,” snapped his assistant. “Gets a phone call from London and hightails it down there quick smart,” she said. “Left me here to hold the fort entirely unaided, I might add. No respect, that’s what’s wrong with people these days. No respect.”

  “London?” Esme echoed. “Whatever for?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Mrs. Murphy said. “It’s not like he tells me anything. I’m just chief cook and bottle washer, me. Wouldn’t tell me if the building were burning down, I expect. But come time to photocopy plans for the new one and it’ll be muggins here who—”

  Esme hung up. She felt like a cartoon character who had been hit on the head. Birds tweeted around her. Sense could not get in. The door behind her opened and a tap on her shoulder alerted her to the return of the police officer, behind him the Identikit artist.

  “Ludkin here thinks he has a fairly good image,” the policeman said cheerfully. Felicity, it seemed, had taken a shine to the kidnapper, flirted with him by the sound of things, and while quite distraught and totally ashamed, had provided Ludkin with more than enough detail for a good likeness. Ludkin indeed looked pleased with himself as he sidestepped the policeman to show Esme his image.

  “Reckons he’s about six feet tall, just a bit taller than myself,” said Ludkin, who was five feet eight if he was lucky. “Quite well spoken, plainly dressed in clean, sport-style street clothes, and as you are aware, known to the victim.” He realized his gaffe immediately. “That is, known to your son.”

  But Esme was not listening to him. She was staring at the line drawing in front of her and it was staring back.

  The soup in her head suddenly started to clear as the straight lines and subtle shadings emerged from a stranger’s blur into a frighteningly familiar face.

  All was not lost. It had been a hiccup of some description.

  Esme’s tears dried as she burped out something approaching a laugh. She looked at the policeman, her eyes shining, and pointed at the picture.

  The kidnapper was someone she knew. And he was not a kidnapper. Nor was he a black man in his twenties—rather a coffee-colored boy of sixteen.

  It was Ridge.

  Ridge had taken Rory.

  Relief flooded through Esme like intravenous Valium. Rory was fine. He was with Ridge. Why, she couldn’t fathom, but she also knew that her little boy would be safe. There would be an explanation. The police could go home. So could she. So could Rory. So could Pog.

  Moments before, her life had lain in ruins at her ankles and now bits of it had risen up into the air, and although all were currently floating just out of her reach, she knew that if she could just grab them and join them all up together again, it would be all right. Everything would be all right.

  Esme allowed herself a further injection of guilt at the way her relief, while almost entirely over Rory, was yet tinged with traces of her Excelsior secret. Her marriage was not lost. Her secret was safe.

  The policeman understood all this and forgave her. Nobody wanted to think of a little kid being kidnapped by some nasty piece of work so the time wasted could not really be considered so.

  “So you know how to get hold of this Ridgeley, then?” he asked.

  Esme had not thought that far ahead, but at this snatched up the phone again and stabbed in Alice’s home number. It barely rang before she heard her friend’s anxious voice on the other end.

  “It’s Esme. Is Rory there?”

  “Yes,” Alice cried. “He’s fine. He’s absolutely fine. I mean I don’t know what the fuck is going on but Rory is fine, Esme.”

  “Thank God,” Esme cried. “He’s okay,” she said to the policeman who, seeing the look of joy on her face, could not muster up a trace of annoyance. Sometimes, he thought, he bloody well liked his job.

  “Who’s that?” Alice asked. “Where are you, Esme?”

  “It’s the police,” Esme told her. “I’m at the gym with the police. We thought Rory had been kidnapped, Alice. I’ve been going out of my mind.”

  “Well, he was kidnapped,” interrupted the Identikit artist, who was peeved at barely being congratulated on his contribution to recent events.

  “Oh, Esme! They won’t press charges, will they?” Alice was panicking. “It will ruin his life and he only did it because—well, because he loves Rory so much and he’s just a bit screwed up and he would never, ever hurt a hair on his head, on anyone’s head and I know you probably need me to be your friend right now but honestly, I could kill you, Esme. I could just throttle you. Ridge has told me about the Frenchman. How could you? Behind Pog’s back. Behind all of our backs. I’m so angry, Esme. I know it’s been hard for you with Granny Mac and everything but it’s hard for all of us, Esme. And even harder now. Why didn’t you tell me? Oh, Esme, please don’t let them press charges. Please!”

  Her punishment, Esme realized, was far from over.

  “Ridge knows about Louis?” she asked, lowering her voice.

  “He saw you, Es. In Marylebone High Street, snogging. And then outside the hotel. He works right next door, I told you, didn’t I? At the bistro. He followed you to the gym. Oh, Esme, it’s not his fault. He’s just a confused kid. Please don’t ruin his life. He knows he did the wrong thing. He rang me as soon as Rory started asking for you.”

  With a downward beat of her heart, Esme realized that her own foolishness and treachery were not out of the woods just yet. Her little boy was safe, but she was not. And as for darling damaged Ridge: Of course she would protect him. From what, she didn’t know, but there were enough ruined lives in the offing as it was.

  “I won’t,” she said quietly. “I wouldn’t, Alice.”

  “Of course,” breathed her friend. “Of course. I just had to make sure. He shouldn’t have done it, Es. He knows that. He shouldn’t have done anything.”

  “Does Pog know?” Esme asked, knowing that her husband fleeing to London was unlikely, the way things were going, to b
e a coincidence. Silence.

  “He does,” Alice said eventually. “Ridge rang him first. I think he told him everything and then Pog called me. He assumed I must know what you were up to with Louis. I mean, you’ve never not told me anything ever before, Esme.” Alice started to cry. “I’m so sorry,” she wailed. “You and Pog always seemed so perfect, despite everything.” Esme was feeling sicker as every minute passed. “How could you do this?” her friend sobbed into the phone.

  “Nothing happened,” Esme intoned blankly. “With Louis. I bumped into him in town, the day Jemima saw me at the Orrery. We had lunch, twice, and I talked about Teddy and then nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. It was all a mistake.”

  We all make mistakes, the kind policeman had said to her. Yet hers felt bigger than most. And of what had she been guilty? Chasing dreams and being stupid. For that she had nearly lost her treasured son and would surely lose her husband.

  “Pog is on his way here,” Alice said. “You’d better come.”

  Esme nodded wordlessly and slid the phone back into its cradle, the policeman watching her as relief and happiness slid off her face into a puddle on the floor.

  “I’ll give you a lift,” he said, shaking his head and waving away a flustered doctor who had appeared at the door with the gym manager. “Probably best you avoid the tube after a day like today.”

  Esme stared at him blankly. She had forgotten his name, wasn’t sure if she ever knew it.

  “How can I face them?” she asked him, as though he could truly help her. “I’ve only gone and cocked up my whole life. I mean, it’s like some horrible nightmare only I know I am awake because my waistband is too tight and it’s digging into me and I can feel it. But is it normal to not know whether you are alive or dead?”

  The policeman, who had gotten up to leave, sighed and sat down again.

  “I thought I had it all under control,” Esme continued. “I thought I had found a way just to goddamn carry on and for nearly two years, I bloody well did. You know? I really bloody well did. Then Granny Mac goes and has another stroke. And then she gets pneumonia.”