by A J McDine
As Bill slumped against the bonnet of the Range Rover, a second figure appeared from the shadows. A slight figure in leggings and a baggy hoody. The hood may have been up, obscuring her face, but I knew in my gut it was Niamh. She marched up to Bill and held out a hand. Bill shook his head and said something, his face puckered in a frown.
Niamh rose onto the balls of her feet and made sweeping gestures with her arms, plainly remonstrating with him. I edged closer to the window but couldn’t catch even a whisper of her words through the strengthened safety glass. All I could do was watch.
Bill took his hands out of his pockets and clenched his fists, and for one awful moment I thought he was going to lash out at her. But she stepped right up to him and jabbed his chest with her finger. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a thick wad of notes. I held my breath as he thrust them at her, before turning on his heels and tramping back to the driver’s door. Niamh stepped neatly out of the way as the Range Rover jerked forwards then turned tail and sped off towards the main road, leaving the industrial estate in darkness.
My heart was crashing in my chest as I tried to make sense of what I’d seen. Bill had known Niamh was here. He’d driven here to see her, and he’d given her money. A lot of money, by the look of it. Because he felt sorry for her? Then the answer popped into my head. Niamh had kidnapped Immy and Bill was handing over the ransom money for her safe return. Is that what I’d seen? I stared blindly out of the window as I thought it through, but again, something didn’t ring true. If Niamh had kidnapped Immy, surely she would have come to us with her demands?
Not if she thought the police were at the house. It would be too risky. Maybe she’d decided it was safer to approach Bill. And Bill would have come up with a way of finding the money because he was Immy’s godfather and our oldest friend. It made perfect sense, the more I thought about it. He’d given Niamh the money and was now on his way to pick Immy up from wherever it was Niamh had been keeping her. Bill, the hero of the hour, would bring Immy home to us.
Home. That’s where I should be, not playing detective in this dank warehouse. I needed to be home when Bill walked up the front path with Immy in his arms. I turned and hurried towards the back door.
‘Cleo,’ said a disembodied voice, and I jumped a foot in the air.
‘Niamh!’
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.
I fought an overpowering impulse to flee. ‘I… I was looking for you.’
‘Well, you’ve found me.’ She stepped forwards, shielding her eyes from the light of my phone. ‘Can you turn that feckin’ thing off?’
‘Not until you tell me where Immy is.’
‘Immy?’
‘Where are you keeping her?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Because if you’ve so much as harmed a hair on her head, so help me God, I’ll -’
‘Cleo!’ The surprise in her voice had turned to frustration, and she waved her arms around the empty warehouse. ‘Immy isn’t here.’
‘But you kidnapped her from our garden on Sunday and you’ve been holding her hostage ever since. How much ransom money did Bill pay you? Five grand, ten? Because if that was all, you were short-changed. I would have given everything I owned to have her home. Everything.’
‘You think I kidnapped my own daughter?’
‘She’s not your daughter,’ I hissed. ‘You relinquished any rights the day you gave her to us.’
‘I did what I thought was best for her. I trusted you to look after her. And now you’re telling me she’s missing?’
‘Don’t play games with me, Niamh.’ I spat the word out, and she flinched. ‘Has Bill gone to fetch her?’
‘Bill?’
‘You’ve got what you wanted. Just tell me where she is!’
At that, Niamh pulled off her hood. My hand flew to my mouth as I took in her shorn head and gaunt face. The tattoo that crept up her neck and the piercings that studded her ears, nose and lip. The haunted expression in her eyes. It was one thing to see a blurry black and white custody photo. It was another to see her in real life.
‘I got what I wanted, did I?’ she said with bitterness. ‘That’s funny, that is, because I can’t ever remember wanting to be raped.’
I couldn’t look her in the eye. ‘Is this… is this all because of what happened in Corfu?’
She was silent.
‘You know I would have helped you. Things didn’t have to get this bad.’
‘Yeah, well, I thought I could tough it out. But I’m all right now. I’m going home.’
‘Tracey told me.’
Her eyes widened. ‘You’ve been to the squat?’
‘I was looking for Immy. Please, Niamh, tell me where she is.’
‘I don’t know where she is,’ she said, pulling her hood back up and loping towards the staff room.
‘So why did Bill give you all that money?’ I cried.
She turned and faced me, her hands clenched at her sides. ‘You can’t figure it out?’ She shook her head. ‘I thought you were cleverer than that, Cleo. You disappoint me.’
‘What do you mean?’
Her mouth curved into a crooked smile. ‘Why don’t you ask Bill?’
Chapter Thirty-Three
I stumbled across the field towards the car, not caring about the trail I was leaving through the farmer’s crop or that the spiky wheat heads were ripping my legs to shreds. The need to be back in time to see Bill bring Immy home was all-consuming, pushing everything else out of my head.
I reached the gate and hauled myself over it, my legs as weak as saplings. I fumbled in my back pocket for the car keys, dropping them in a clump of nettles at my feet.
‘Shit!’ I thrust my hand in and felt around for the fob, wincing as the nettles stung my hand and wrist like a swarm of maddened wasps. Eventually I found it, breathing out as the central locking clicked open.
The journey home was a blur and before I knew it, I was walking up to the house and turning the key in the lock. The hallway was in darkness.
‘Stuart?’ I called.
‘In here,’ came a muffled voice from the front room. I pushed the door open. Stuart was slumped on the sofa in the dark, nursing a bottle of beer.
‘Have you heard from Bill?’ I said.
He frowned. ‘Not since yesterday. Why?’
‘I think he’s got Immy.’
He sat up suddenly, and a spray of beer sloshed out of the bottle onto the cream carpet. In normal times, I’d have berated him for being careless and fetched a cloth to wipe it up. These weren’t normal times.
‘I’ve just seen him with Niamh,’ I said.
‘I thought you were at work?’
I switched on a side lamp and sat on the coffee table in front of him. His eyes never left my face as I described my trip to the warehouse, the arrival of Bill’s Range Rover and his heated exchange with our old au pair. ‘Don’t you see?’ I said. ‘She kidnapped Immy and Bill was handing over the ransom money. Now he’s gone to fetch Immy so he can bring her home.’
But Stuart was already shaking his head. ‘Niamh wouldn’t kidnap her own daughter.’
‘You can’t know that!’
‘You said you spoke to her afterwards. Did she admit it?’
‘Not in so many words. But she wouldn’t, would she? For all she knew, I could have been recording the conversation on my phone.’
‘It sounds far-fetched to me. Even if you’re right and Niamh took Immy, she would have contacted us asking for money, not Bill.’
‘Not if she thought there was a chance the police would find out. She’d have known our house would have been swarming with them. Much safer to approach Bill.’
‘So why didn’t he tell us?’
‘Maybe he didn’t want to get our hopes up.’
‘I’ll phone him.’
‘Put him on speakerphone,’ I instructed.
A muscle in his jaw twitched, but he did as I asked. A
ll at once a ring tone filled the room. Then Bill’s voice. ‘This is Bill Harrison, co-director of FoodWrapped. If you’d like to leave a message, you know what to do.’
‘Bill, it’s Stu. Call me when you pick this up, yeah?’ Stuart ended the call and looked at me. ‘I’ll try Mel.’
He hit her number before I could stop him.
‘Stu?’ Her voice was breathless. I tapped my foot against the floor.
‘Cleo’s here with me,’ he blurted. ‘Is Bill there?’
‘No. Why?’
I shook my head and mouthed, ‘Don’t tell her.’
He nodded. ‘Where is he?’
‘It’s quiz night at the pub. He’ll be there till last orders, either celebrating a win or drowning his sorrows. You know Bill.’
‘I do. No worries. It’s not urgent. I’ll catch up with him tomorrow. Night Mel.’ Stuart ended the call and balanced the phone on his knee. ‘We should phone Sam Bennett.’
I shook my head. ‘Not until we hear from Bill. We can’t do anything that could compromise Immy’s safety. The minute she’s home, yes. But not yet.’
Stuart eyed me as he took a long draught of beer. ‘And what about Niamh? Are you going to tell the police you’ve spoken to her?’
I hesitated. If I’d wanted to turn her in, I’d have phoned them the minute I’d left the warehouse, and I hadn’t. ‘Let’s wait until we’ve spoken to Bill. As long as Immy’s safe, I don’t care what happens to Niamh. She can piss off back to Ireland or rot in hell as far as I’m concerned.’
By tacit agreement, we stayed in the front room and waited for Bill to bring Immy home. Stuart stretched out on the sofa and dozed. Occasionally he would wake with a start, look wildly around the room and then fall asleep again. I wrapped myself in a throw, curled up in the armchair and gazed out of the window until slivers of dawn pierced the night sky.
At six o’clock, Stuart pulled himself to his feet and tramped out of the room, reappearing a few minutes later with two mugs of tea. ‘Where is he, then?’ he asked, handing me a mug.
‘I don’t know.’ My conviction had wavered as the hours ticked by. Maybe I’d misread the situation, jumped to the wrong conclusions. But I couldn’t think of another reason Bill might hand Niamh thousands of pounds in cash outside a deserted warehouse in the middle of the night.
‘Perhaps he kept Immy at theirs last night because he didn’t want to wake us,’ I said with more certainty than I felt.
Stuart snorted. ‘You don’t think Mel might have told us?’
I ran my hands through my hair. ‘I don’t know what to think, all right? I don’t have all the answers.’
‘Makes a fucking change.’ Stuart slammed his mug on the coffee table and strode over to the window. The back of his crumpled T-shirt was stuck to his back and sweat stains darkened his armpits. He peered down the street and stiffened.
‘What is it?’
He swivelled around to face me. ‘The police are here.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
AFTER CORFU
FOUR YEARS EARLIER
A couple of days after I broached the possibility that we adopt Niamh’s baby, Stuart came and found me, a wide smile on his face.
‘I think we should do it,’ he said.
I blinked. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely, one hundred percent. I’ve been feeling there’s something missing for a while, and last night I realised what it is. We never intended Nate to be an only child. Another baby would complete our family.’
‘Shall we tell Niamh?’
‘No time like the present.’
We trooped down to the front room where Niamh was sitting cross-legged on the floor helping Nate lay out his Duplo train set.
‘Niamh?’ I said. ‘Have you got a minute?’
She followed us into the kitchen and as we sat around the table, the air felt heavy with expectation. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I’ve talked to Stuart about your suggestion, and he agrees. We would like to help you out by adopting the baby.’
Niamh closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her concave stomach. ‘Thank God,’ she whispered. Then she looked from me to Stuart and back again. ‘Thank you.’
Stuart reached for my hand and squeezed it. He looked the happiest I’d seen him for a long time, and a tiny part of me wondered why.
If we thought adopting Niamh’s baby would be simple, we were wrong. I knew from internet searches private adoptions were illegal in the UK, and a quick look at the county council’s official adoption website revealed the countless hoops we would have to jump through to formally adopt a child.
‘You have to attend an information event before you fill in the initial inquiry form,’ I told Stuart in bed that night, my MacBook perched on my lap. I scrolled down the website. ‘Then you have a phone call with a member of the adoption team and meet an adoption worker, and that’s before you even get to the first stage!’
‘How long does that take?’
‘The first stage? Um, let’s see. Up to two months. And the second stage takes four months. Then you have to go before an adoption panel and pass that before they match you with a child. The baby will have been born by then!’
‘And I don’t suppose you can dictate which baby you want to adopt,’ Stuart said. ‘You know what bureaucrats are like, they’re so bloody minded they’d probably offer us a spotty thirteen-year-old kid to spite us.’
I grimaced. ‘God forbid. Why do they have to make everything so bloody complicated? It’s simple. Niamh wants us to adopt her baby, we want to adopt her baby. So why can’t we just do it?’
Stuart was silent for a moment, then looked sidelong at me. ‘There could be another way,’ he said slowly.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Niamh doesn’t know who the dad is, so I’m assuming she was planning to leave that section blank on the birth certificate.’
‘I guess.’
‘What if… what if she put me down as the baby’s father?’
I whipped around to face him so abruptly my laptop fell to the floor with a crash. ‘What?’
‘She can’t put you as the mother because she’s clearly the one having the baby. But if no one knows who the father is, who’s to say it isn’t me? And if I’m on the birth certificate, I’m the baby’s legal parent. We wouldn’t need to adopt the baby because it would be mine, anyway.’
I drew my knees up to my chest and considered Stuart’s proposition, the implications running through my head as I examined it from every angle. He was right. If he was on the birth certificate as the father, no one could stop the baby from living with us.
‘Well?’ he asked.
‘I can’t work out if it’s insane or brilliant.’
He smirked. ‘It’s insanely brilliant.’
‘Niamh would have to agree,’ I warned him. ‘And she would have to give us her word that she was abandoning all claims to the baby. Otherwise there’s nothing to stop her changing her mind and taking it back one day. Can we trust her not to do that?’
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ he said, throwing off the duvet.
‘Stu, it’s nearly midnight!’ I cried, taken aback by the blazing fervour in his eyes. ‘You can’t ask her now. You’ll have to wait till tomorrow.’
Niamh’s reaction was unequivocal. We may as well have been opening the pearly gates to heaven and ushering her inside.
‘It’s a brilliant idea!’ she cried. ‘You’re so clever.’
Blushing, Stuart said, ‘What will you do after the birth? Do you want to carry on as our au pair, looking after Nate and the baby?’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ she said.
‘But you’ll want to be involved in the baby’s life?’ he asked.
‘I think that would be a mistake, don’t you?’
I breathed an inward sigh of relief. ‘I agree. A clean break would be best all round. Will you go home to Ireland?’
She smiled shyly. ‘What I’d love to do is train
to become a children’s nurse. The University of Greenwich has a great course. I was thinking of applying.’
‘Good for you,’ I said, impressed. I paused, not wanting to burst the bubble, but knowing I had to ask the question. ‘What if you change your mind? What if you decide you want the baby after all?’
‘But I won’t.’
‘Not now, maybe. Maybe not even in two or three years’ time. But what about when you’re older and settled in a relationship. How do we know you won’t change your mind then?’
‘I’ll sign something if it’ll give you peace of mind.’
‘You want me to draw up a contract to say the baby is legally ours?’
She didn’t hesitate. ‘I do.’
I wasted no time in trawling the internet for sample adoption agreements and drafted a contract in which Niamh agreed to pass all parental responsibilities to Stuart and me.
I hadn’t a clue if it would be legally binding in a court of law - the contracts I’d cannibalised had all been from the US, not the UK - but it went some way towards dispelling my fears.
The day Niamh signed the agreement, I handed her a buff-coloured envelope.
‘What’s this?’ she asked.
‘A little gift from us.’
She ripped it open and her eyes widened. ‘Five thousand pounds? I can’t take this!’
‘You can, and you will. And there’ll be another cheque when the baby’s born.’
‘I’m not doing this for the money. You’re helping me out. I can’t keep this baby, not after what happened.’
Our eyes met. ‘I know. Think of it as a thank you. A fresh start. A gift to help fund your nursing degree.’