by Karen Clarke
Maria had weighed the baby – eight pounds, I don’t know how you kept her hidden for as long as you did – and when she finally bustled out, tight-lipped, I cried until I thought I’d never stop.
‘I told Ana the truth then,’ I said, addressing my words to Lily. ‘I told Ana that the couple I was giving the baby to was Patrick and Elise. I knew she wouldn’t say anything, because she felt responsible for telling him about her in the first place.’
‘It’s so great that you didn’t need to go to the hospital,’ Patrick said when I called him on his burner phone, after Ana had left and I’d spent an hour gazing in awe at my baby, amazed that my body had produced such a perfect being. She was wrapped in the lemon-coloured blanket I’d bought, a little white hat covering her fine brown hair. ‘Clever girl,’ he added. ‘I’m so proud of you.’ He sounded happy, excited and I’d felt buoyed up – almost as if we were a normal couple welcoming our first child, except I’d delivered her myself and he’d been at home with his wife. ‘Elise can’t wait to see her. She’s so happy.’
I had twenty-four hours with Lily – her name was already there, as if it had been waiting for her to arrive – before taking a cab as instructed, feeling increasingly empty at the thought of handing her over. There was no formal agreement, I told myself. I could turn back. But I knew it wasn’t that simple, that Patrick would find a way to take her. I tried to convince myself that once the endorphins wore off, I’d be relieved I’d let her go.
He’d been awkward holding her, had even said, ‘Oh well, at least she’s got my hair and eyes,’ his breath misting between us, even though the car he’d turned up in was blasting out warm air. I hadn’t missed his look of disappointment that she wasn’t a boy, even though I’d told him right away. Maybe he hadn’t taken it in at the time.
‘You will get her checked out, won’t you?’ I said. ‘You know about vaccinations, but they won’t be for a while and she’ll need to be registered.’ None of these things had mattered to me before but were suddenly, vitally, important. ‘You will be careful with her, won’t you, Patrick?’
‘It’ll be fine, stop worrying.’ His chuckle had landed like a slap. Silly Grace. Probably hormonal, acting as though she’s the only female to ever have given birth. ‘Elise will know what to do.’
I had a powerful urge to snatch Lily back. ‘I want you to keep her name,’ I said, trying to hold back the tears that threatened. ‘It’s the only thing I’m asking.’
He didn’t look at me. ‘It’s an old woman’s name.’
‘Please, Patrick.’
‘I suppose it’s the least I can do.’
Hardly the endorsement I’d longed for. I suspected Elise would change it anyway.
‘He said he’d be in touch, that I wasn’t to worry.’ I didn’t dare glance at Declan or Morag. I can never thank you enough for this, Grace. Patrick had looked at me then, a ripple of concern on his brow in the dim light of the car. ‘We’re good? You won’t tell?’
‘He made it sound like a game.’ I recalled the sting of pain that he thought I might betray him. ‘I kept looking at the pack of nappies when I got back to the apartment. I just felt so … sad.’ My breasts, full of milk, had started leaking. I looked online, went out and bought a breast pump. ‘It seemed wasteful not to save my milk,’ I said. ‘I thought maybe if I kept it, I could tell Patrick, and Elise could use it instead of formula.’
I looked up to see Morag staring at her hands. Her face was very pale and I guessed she was remembering a similar situation with her little boy. Isaac.
‘I thought it would get easier, that once my milk had gone and the hormones settled, I’d go back to work and that would be that,’ I said. ‘But Patrick called in a panic the next day, said Elise wasn’t coping. She didn’t know what to do with the baby, she was out of her depth. He said I had to help, move in with them and help with the baby until Elise was ready.’
Even as I told Patrick I couldn’t disappear from my life, I knew I’d drop everything to be with Lily again. ‘He said I should tell everyone I was going away for a while, that I needed a break after having the baby. He said he’d pay me, anything I wanted, but it was never about money, I just wanted to see Lily. He didn’t want to tell Elise I was her mother. He said I would be a nanny, trained in dealing with newborns.’ I shook my head. ‘The next few days were a nightmare because it was obvious Elise didn’t know what to do and she was basically drinking as soon as she got up. He hadn’t told me that bit. I doubted that she’d ever given up.’
‘I saw you.’ Declan’s voice startled me back to the living room at the cottage. ‘I came to the house to pick up Patrick. He had an important meeting downtown. He didn’t come out so I knocked and Elise answered the door. She was wearing a nightdress and looked terrible. I heard a baby crying, realised she wasn’t pregnant anymore. I said “Congratulations,” and when I saw you, I asked, “Who’s that?” and she said, “The nanny.” I was going to ask if the baby was a boy or a girl, because that’s what you do, but didn’t get a chance because she slammed the door in my face.’
I remembered that morning. Lily had been beside herself, red-faced and bawling, clearly starving. Patrick said she’d rejected the bottle Elise had tried to give her. I breastfed her, but she wouldn’t settle. I’d been pacing round, breasts aching, head thumping, hormones raging. I’d just seen Elise in the kitchen pouring vodka into a coffee mug before drinking it in one long swallow. It was 8.30 a.m.
Can’t you shut her up? she snapped when someone knocked on the door. My first impressions of Elise had not been good. Far from the recovering alcoholic desperate to be a mother I’d expected to meet as Patrick ushered me through the back door to the nursery they’d prepared, I was confronted with a sad-eyed woman who stank of booze, barely capable of looking after herself, never mind a baby. She was nothing like the striking, elegant figure, dark hair smoothed back in a chignon, that I’d seen in a photo online of her with Patrick at a charity event they’d attended with her parents a couple of years ago. While I understood Patrick’s desperation to let his wife have the one thing he was certain would ‘fix’ her, I knew in my gut that the moment had passed – had maybe passed the day she miscarried their child. She hadn’t even spoken to me, haunting the house like a ghost, spending most of the day in her bedroom with the door shut.
‘I can’t believe that was you,’ I said to Declan, thrown by the strangeness of us almost crossing paths. ‘I do remember Patrick saying, once, that he had a driver – someone he knew from way back – because he preferred to focus on work in the car while travelling, but I could barely remember what day it was that morning. I’d been up most of the night.’
Declan looked pensive. ‘When Patrick finally came out, I congratulated him on becoming a father and he looked annoyed and kind of harassed. He said no one was supposed to know, that I could probably see Elise was struggling. He kept fiddling with his tie. He told me they’d got a nanny in to help out for a while. I remember thinking there was no shame in having a nanny, but he asked me not to say anything. Her parents hadn’t met the child yet. He and Elise were waiting until she felt better before making announcements about the new arrival. I said I wouldn’t tell a soul. I mean, it was none of my business, but something felt a bit off and I didn’t know why.’ I was mesmerised, listening to his version of events. I could picture it so clearly, Patrick unusually ruffled in the back of the car – his sick wife and the mother of his baby living under the same roof – and Declan confused that his good wishes had been met with anger.
‘When I dropped him back later, he thanked me but said my services were no longer needed.’ He shook his head and rubbed a hand round his jaw. ‘I sat outside the house for a while and saw you leaving. You looked as if you were crying. I don’t know why, but I followed you. I saw you go to a restaurant called Julio’s. You went round the back, upstairs, and came out with a bag. I thought perhaps that’s where you’d lived before moving in with the Holdens to care for the baby.’
&
nbsp; ‘It was,’ I said, astonished that I’d had no idea my actions that day were being monitored. ‘I was the chef there. I ran the kitchen, lived in the apartment above.’ It was like talking about someone else’s life. ‘I’d gone back to get some things. I hated leaving Lily but had none of my stuff, I’d left in such a hurry.’
‘I saw you go back to their house.’
‘So, you were watching me, even then?’
‘I guess I was curious,’ he said. ‘No offence, but you didn’t look like the kind of nanny the Holdens would employ.’
‘He hated relying on me,’ I said grimly. ‘But he knew there was no other way with the state Elise was in, not when everyone was expecting her to appear with a baby in a few weeks’ time.’ I thought of the days and nights that followed, all blurring into one. The panic in Patrick’s eyes; how he didn’t like holding Lily; how he caught me breastfeeding and told me to stop, saying I should use formula or pump and freeze, so the baby didn’t get used to me. But my milk was there, waiting for her, and Elise wasn’t coping and I didn’t want to give Lily a bottle if I didn’t have to.
When I thought back, the weeks had taken on a nightmarish quality, the memories suffused with a charcoal haze. I only ever half-dozed, ears constantly pricked for Lily’s cry. I couldn’t read, or watch TV. I barely ate or showered, worried my baby would need me and I wouldn’t hear her. If Elise decided she wanted to spend some time with Lily, I had to go to my room, a hotel-like suite where her parents stayed when they visited.
‘They’re in Canada with her sister, so no chance of them popping in,’ Patrick said one night, passing the nursery on his way to see Elise. We were like ships in the night, as if now the baby was there and being attended to, he no longer had any interest in me as a person. I would sit rocking on the edge of the bed, cupping my painful breasts as I listened to my baby scream in another room, wondering how my life had been reduced to this, occasionally slipping down to the kitchen to grab food from the fridge, delivered by caterers because Elise didn’t cook and Patrick was too busy. He told me to make myself at home, but I’d never felt more like an interloper than in their oddly soulless house.
I tuned in to hear Declan speaking again. ‘In the end, I figured Patrick was stressed with everything going on – the campaign, the new baby, his wife being ill. I knew about her drinking,’ he said. ‘But I needed to find another job, was thinking about moving back to Ireland, so I put it to the back of my mind. Until I heard Elise had died.’
My head started buzzing. I shifted, adjusting Lily’s position, careful not to wake her. ‘You heard it on the news?’
He nodded. ‘I suppose with Patrick running for District Attorney and Elise’s parents being a big deal in publishing it warranted a good five minutes,’ he said. ‘I was shocked, I must admit. I called him.’
‘You called Patrick?’ My heart picked up pace.
‘He sounded in a really bad way.’ Declan’s face was furrowed with concentration. ‘I said I was sorry, asked if there was anything I could do. He said no. I said something about it being awful, the poor baby, something like that, and he said: “There’s no baby anymore.” I was confused. I asked him what he meant, but he said to leave it, to forget it.’ Declan frowned, reliving his bafflement. ‘I didn’t want to push him. I thought he must be in shock and then I thought, oh God, what if Elise was holding the baby when she fell and it died too? But I couldn’t understand why there was nothing on the news about it. I guessed they would have kept it quiet, that it was private, a family thing; they didn’t want the press raking over it.’ He sat back, then leant forward again. ‘Then I remembered the nanny and went to the restaurant and asked if you still lived there. The owner seemed pretty pissed off. He said you were flying to the UK with the baby and wouldn’t be back.’ He sat back. ‘The baby. The one Patrick had told me to forget.’
I straightened, easing the stiffness in my back. ‘Ana told me the other night that someone had been asking her uncle about me,’ I said. ‘That’s how I knew you’d followed me here.’
‘Look, I know it sounds bad but—’ he gave a baffled shake of his head ‘—I just couldn’t work it out. I got it into my head you must have kidnapped the baby, run off with her, and that was why Patrick had acted so strange. I thought maybe you had something on him, were blackmailing him, though I couldn’t think what it would be. He was so squeaky clean.’
‘Why would any of it matter to you?’
‘Patrick helped a good friend of mine from my army days.’ Declan’s gaze moved beyond me, looking into the past. ‘He’d got into trouble, was wrongly accused of drug-trafficking. Patrick represented him in court, made sure his name was cleared, and he did it free of charge. I’d flown over to support him and wanted to thank Patrick in person. I thought he was a great guy. He seemed genuine, you know?’ I did. ‘When I said I was staying a while and looking for work, he gave me a job as his driver.’
‘So, you felt like you owed him?’
‘Something like that, I suppose.’ Declan ran his hands over his face. ‘Anyway, it kind of made sense that he wouldn’t want a public fuss about the baby, but then I thought, what about Elise’s parents? The baby was their grandchild. Surely they’d want to know where she was if she’d been kidnapped? I couldn’t get my head around it.’ He drew in a breath. ‘It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, but I thought if you’d gone to the airport, I might find you, so I went straight there after I’d been to the restaurant.’ His exhalation ended on a quiet laugh. ‘I didn’t see you, so I got on the first plane to Heathrow. God knows what I thought I’d do when I got here, but you were on that plane.’
My mind was racing, struggling to catch up. ‘You were on the same flight?’
‘I know, it’s crazy. I felt like James Bond, or something. I thought maybe I’d confront you, take the baby back to her daddy, but … I knew there was more to it. You looked like a mother, but I couldn’t forget Elise saying you were the nanny. I thought …’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I don’t know what I thought. I decided if I got to know you, I’d find out what the hell was going on.’
‘The photo of Lily, was that really for your mum?’
Guilt crossed his face. ‘I had some crazy notion about calling Patrick again,’ he said. ‘Asking for the truth about the baby, telling him I could help. I thought if he came clean, I’d send him the photo, tell him I’d found his daughter and could bring her back, like some great bloody hero.’ He shook his head as though angry with himself. ‘I did send it to my mum, though. She really is obsessed with me settling down and having kids.’
‘But you didn’t send it to Patrick?’
Declan’s expression changed. ‘At the café on Snowdon, when I asked about him, you said he wasn’t a good person. It didn’t fit with what I knew about him, but it made me think. Something had made you feel that way. I wanted to know what it was.’
‘I’m not exactly a good person either.’ Shame burned my throat. ‘I agreed to the whole mad mess in the first place.’
‘Grace, did Patrick have something to do with Elise’s death?’ Declan said it as if I hadn’t spoken. Morag stiffened and I knew she’d been wondering the same thing. ‘Because if he did,’ Declan continued, ‘you know you should go to the police.’
‘He’s right.’ Morag’s voice was steely. ‘He can’t get away with it just because he let you leave with the baby.’
My breath felt trapped in my chest.
‘Grace, you can tell us.’ Declan bent forward and touched my foot in an oddly tender gesture. ‘Did Patrick kill his wife?’
Chapter 39
‘He didn’t kill her,’ I said. ‘Patrick’s not a murderer.’
Morag and Declan exchanged looks.
‘You don’t have to be frightened.’ Morag dropped from the stool to her knees, relaxing her tone. ‘He doesn’t know you’re here.’ She turned to Declan. ‘I’m assuming you haven’t told him you’ve been sneaking around after my niece.’
His cheeks reddene
d. ‘I promise I haven’t.’
‘OK. So, you can be honest, Grace.’
Tears were rising behind my eyes. ‘Patrick didn’t kill his wife, I promise.’ I lifted Lily and moved to sit with my back against the sofa. I could see Declan’s beaten-up boots but not his face, nor Morag’s. My top was twisted up around my waist and my arms felt leaden, but Lily was sleeping and I couldn’t bear to put her down. ‘When I said I was leaving and taking Lily with me, he tried to stop me.’ I wanted to get it over with now. ‘He said he needed her, that I had to stay because we had an agreement and what was he supposed to say to everyone expecting to meet the baby?’ I swallowed the sour taste of bile. The fire was still blazing but I was cold all over and shivered. ‘I knew by then that he didn’t love Lily at all. He only wanted her so he could save face, save his career, and so he didn’t have to tell the truth and be a lesser person in everyone’s eyes. I was so angry and upset. I told him if he didn’t let us go and leave us alone, I’d call the press and tell them we’d had an affair and that he’d tried to pass our baby off as his wife’s.’
I took a breath, bracing myself to say the worst part. ‘I said I’d tell the police he was angry because Elise wouldn’t divorce him and he pushed her down the stairs.’ I closed my eyes, face pulsing with mortification. I couldn’t bear to see the disappointment in their eyes. ‘I’m not proud of myself.’ My throat had dried. I swallowed hard. ‘Patrick wasn’t very nice to her at times. He regretted their marriage and he cheated on her with me. He’d pinned all his hopes on her being a mother. He thought it would change her, but people don’t change, not really. He was frustrated that she couldn’t recover. He raised his hand to her while I was there, but she could be cruel too. He said she threw a knife at him once. Hardly the right environment for raising a child.’
I took another breath. ‘She was ruining his future, I’m sure that’s the way he saw it. His career means more to him than anything, but he’s not a murderer. He puts murderers away. It would be abhorrent to him to kill someone, even in the heat of the moment.’ The words were running out of me like water. ‘I just thought if I threatened to throw out some suspicion about her death, about his reputation, imply he wasn’t the good guy everyone thought he was, he’d willingly let me go. Her father would have withdrawn his campaign funding for a start. Anyway, I was right because he told me to leave. When he asked what he was supposed to tell Elise’s family and their friends, I said he would think of something because he was good with words and—’ I swallowed again ‘—I guess that’s what he did.’