We had a nice evening, that first night in France. We had some wine, talked out on the balcony. I didn’t drink as much as my sister. I rose early the next morning, pretended I’d been at the patisserie in the village. The others were sleeping, hungover. I threw Callum’s suitcase into the verge, three miles away from Saint Juillet. The dummy, I dropped on my way back to the house. I kicked the earth around it a bit with my sandals, covered it in dust, but I’m not surprised the police found it. They were supposed to.
Then I sat back and waited for the doorbell to ring, for the police to come for Callum. I knew they would eventually, after all.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Ipswich
3rd September
DS Wildy
Two weeks later, Alex Wildy is at home with Joanne when the phone rings, the DCI’s name flashing up on the screen. They’re watching a sitcom together, the light, canned laughter washing over them both, Joanne’s feet tucked underneath Alex’s legs. He is – well, he wouldn’t say happy, the stress of the last few weeks have pretty much put paid to that – but he is content. Trying to be content anyway, safe in the knowledge that despite not having a body to bring closure to Eve Grant’s parents, they are at least confident that they have got the right man.
‘Wildy.’ Gillian McVey’s voice comes down the line, urgent and fast. ‘Can you get to the station, asap? There’s been a development in the Grant case.’
On the sofa next to him, Joanne’s expression is already changing to one of disappointment; she knows what an evening call from the DCI means, has got used to it over the years, the cut-short times together, the half-finished boxsets. It comes with the job, but that knowledge doesn’t make it any easier.
‘Will do,’ he says, and he’s already standing up, pulling on his jacket and grabbing the car keys, glad he hadn’t indulged in the beer Joanne had offered him earlier. She kisses him goodbye, and he promises her he’ll be home soon, before she knows it, but he can tell from her eyes that she doesn’t really believe him – he’s not sure he believes himself.
His heart is hammering as he makes the short drive to the station, pulling up haphazardly a few metres beyond his usual parking space, leaving a window rolled down in his haste to get inside.
It’s almost nine o’clock but the station is buzzing, a weird energy filling the room, and Alex makes his way over to where the DCI is standing, one hand on the phone pressed to her ear, the other on her hip. He catches her eye – she looks tired, but there’s a spark in her face that he hasn’t seen for months, not since the case last year where they got a last-minute confession in a particularly nasty domestic violence dispute.
A few seconds later, she puts down the phone after nodding twice with a crisp few words in French.
‘That was a hospital,’ she says slowly, ‘a hospital in rural France, Foundation Lenval. They’ve got a baby they think might be Eve.’
For a moment, time seems to stand still, and then everything moves into action – McVey is shouting instructions, Dave is frantically tapping at his computer, pulling up the location of the hospital, and Alex is questioning McVey, asking what, how, when.
‘It’s a remote hospital in rural France, nowhere near Rouen,’ McVey is saying. ‘I spoke to one of the nurses fifteen minutes ago, when I first rang you, and she was very upset. Said her husband had been on a business trip to Rouen and heard the locals talking about the case. Seems a child, a little girl, was brought into the hospital where she works on the 11th – two days after Eve went missing here – and that they’d all assumed it to be French. Dark hair, dark eyes, they think about one year old so not speaking yet, obviously. The child had evidence of water in her lungs, they’d been treating her over the last week or so but hadn’t put two and two together that it could be our Eve – her hair was dark, and she was left on the doorstep with a letter in French claiming she was a child named Delphine. Apparently there’s a domestic violence centre in the next town, they get a lot of babies left on the doorstep. It’s not uncommon, the nurse said, and whilst the search for Eve has been everywhere here, none of it was broadcast in France – not Jenny and Rick’s appeal, or our appeals for information – nothing. It all went out on the BBC and local news here. It wasn’t until this nurse’s husband mentioned it to her and she googled a photo of the baby that she alerted anyone.’
‘Jesus,’ Alex says, ‘do they really think it’s her?’
McVey shrugs. ‘They’re emailing through photos now – Dave, get ready for them will you?’
‘Here,’ Dave shouts, and the rest of them gather around him, like vultures to a corpse, only this time Alex is hoping against hope that this case is going to be different, that the baby on the screen will be Eve, that he will be able to go to Rick and Jenny Grant with the news they have been praying for, the news they all thought was never going to come.
The images download, three of them. A little girl in a hospital cot, eyes tightly closed but face calm, a pink rosebud mouth formed into a little pout. A picture of her with her eyes open, looking straight at the camera, clad in a blue gown with the hospital logo emblazoned upon it. And a photo of the whiteboard clipped to the end of her cot, the writing in French: Baby Delphine, parents unknown. Her hair is dark, not the blonde angelic curls they’ve been looking for, but at the very crown of her head there is a lightness, a brighter shade coming through that is inconsistent with the rest of her hair.
‘It’s her,’ McVey says, and Alex feels a whoosh inside him, a flood of adrenaline that has him gripping the back of Dave’s chair, his knuckles white. The room is a cacophony of noise.
‘Thank God for that,’ Dave is saying, a smile breaking out on his face. ‘Jesus, that poor little girl. But it could’ve been so much worse.’
The words hang in the air; they all know how much worse it could have been.
‘I’m going to go straight out there myself,’ DCI McVey is saying, ‘I don’t want anything going wrong.’ She nods at Tom. ‘Can you book me onto the next flight to Rouen?’
Her eyes land on Alex, and her voice softens a bit. ‘Want to accompany me, Wildy?’
He thinks about it for a moment, then shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says, ‘I’m going to go tell the parents. I want to be there when they find out.’ He is caught up in the adrenaline, giddy with the good news. It’s not until he is on his feet, phone in hand to call Jenny Grant, that the thought hits him. It hits them all.
‘Wait,’ he says, ‘How did he get her out to France?’ He is thinking fast, staring at the images of Eve. The nurse was right; she does look French, the dark eyes, the hair. But not even Callum Dillon could have got a living baby on an aeroplane without anyone noticing.
The DCI is with him, her eyes locked onto his. The realisation hits them both at the same time. There is no way a living, breathing child could have got through airport security without them noticing, not without a passport. And the CCTV doesn’t lie – Siobhan, Callum and Emma went through to France alone.
‘He didn’t,’ she says slowly, ‘he didn’t do this, did he? Callum didn’t take Eve from that flat.’
‘No,’ says Alex at last, ‘no, I don’t think he did.’
Chapter Fifty-Six
Ipswich
3rd September
Siobhan
It’s September, the first day back at school, when they arrest my sister. The first I hear of it is her phone call from the station, and her voice is so different; reedy and small, so far from the confident way she usually speaks. Emma is in class, thank God.
I arrive at the station in my work clothes; I’d made the choice to go back into the office after everything died down, face the music as it were. It wasn’t as if I’d done anything wrong, except trust the wrong people.
DCI McVey was the one to greet me; we’ve developed a bit of a rapport, her and I, and I can’t say I dislike her any more. There’s something nice about her, sisterly.
She tells me Maria has admitted everything – the affair with my husband that
both of them worked so hard to conceal, the abduction of Eve to France, and the murder of Caroline Harvey.
‘When we told her there was no other way Eve could’ve got to France, she broke down,’ McVey says. ‘I think she’d been struggling with the weight of it, to be honest. Sometimes that happens, you know – people think they can live with themselves, but they can’t. Forensics found Eve’s DNA in her flat, too – we’d never searched it before. We’d never thought of Maria as a suspect.’ She purses her lips. ‘She’s a smart woman, your sister. She knows the game is up. If she pleads guilty, she’ll do less time.’
‘What will happen to Callum?’ I ask, and she tells me he’ll be released this afternoon without charge.
‘But it’s up to you if you want to have him home, Siobhan,’ she says, and I smile at her, shake my head. I’ve already filed for divorce, and it seems silly to go back now.
‘I’m so glad the baby’s OK,’ I tell her, and she nods, pats me on the arm.
‘She’s back with her parents now,’ she says softly, ‘they’re very lucky.’
‘Do you want to see your sister?’ she asks me, and I think about it for a moment.
‘No,’ I say eventually, ‘no, I don’t think I do.’
The DCI smiles, and I see something flit across her face – something like pride. I am learning, I think; I’m learning that not everybody in my life is worth my time.
‘OK,’ she says, ‘since she’s admitted it, it won’t go to trial. So we won’t need to see you again, Siobhan, all being well. You and your daughter take care of yourselves. And stay strong.’
‘I will, Detective,’ I say, ‘I will.’
She nods, gestures behind me, and I see Callum being escorted down the corridor, his face haggard, a bruise above one eye, but in his normal clothes, his hands free of cuffs.
‘Siobhan,’ he says, and I look at him, this man I married, this man I trusted with my happiness for all of these years. The TV exec without a job. The father who has broken his daughter’s trust for the very last time – not even Emma can look past the affair with her own aunt, though she seems to blame Callum rather than Maria, about whom she has been silent and sad.
‘Looks like you’re a free man,’ I say, and he stares at me, his eyes hollow. He might be a free man, but he’s lost everything now, as a result of his greed.
I smile at him, pityingly, and make my way outside into the sunshine, where my daughter is waiting in the car. We go home together, and that night I hold her to me, safe in the knowledge that she is mine, now, for always. That night, I dream of our future, our life as mother and daughter. We will move away from here, somewhere new, a fresh start. We will tell each other everything, all of our secrets and fears and hopes and dreams. We will be as close as can be, two peas in a pod. Forever and ever. I know we will.
Epilogue
Five years later
11th January
Letter to inmate number 357284: Wilcox, M.
Dear Maria
I hope you’re OK and that prison life is bearable. Thank you for what you have done for me. I am grateful for it every single day.
I know now what my father was like, what sort of man he was. I know you didn’t mean to get mixed up with him, and I’m sorry that you did. I want you to know I don’t blame you for that. For any of it. Not after what you did for me.
I am at uni now, studying to be a lawyer. When I graduate, I am going to take on cases like ours. I want to make up for it, for what I have done. I want to get you out. I think of you every day.
I love you more than anyone in the world. Always.
Emma x
Acknowledgements
There are so many people involved in making a book and I’m grateful to every single person who has got me to this stage – my third book! I never thought I’d achieve my dream of being published so to be on book three feels like quite something. My agent, Camilla Bolton, for her unwavering belief in me and her brilliant ideas, my editor, Charlotte Mursell, who is a true star in every sense of the word – thank you both for supporting me and helping me to be a better writer with each book (one hopes…).
Thank you to Anna Sikorska for designing my favourite jacket yet, and to the wider team at HQ for doing such a wonderful job of getting my books into readers’ hands. Thank you to Lisa Milton, Georgina Green, Alexia Thomaidis, Hannah Sawyer, Lucy Richardson, Sarah Goodey – I feel so lucky to have such a great publishing team behind me. You’re the best.
Thanks as always to the extraordinary team at Darley Anderson, particularly Mary Derby, Kristina Egan and Georgia Fuller for selling my books into other territories, and to Roya Sarrafi-Gohar and Rosanna Bellingham. Thanks to the HarperCollins US and Canadian teams for getting behind my first two books and helping me build sales over there.
I’m very lucky to have such supportive family and friends around me – thank you to my brothers Owen and Fergus for helping me solve plot problems and only asking for a small cut of the royalties, my wonderful Mum for always believing in me, my Grandma and my Dad for always championing my books and telling other people about them too. Thank you to the Wildy family – Hugh, Linda, Katherine and Rob – for being so supportive of my books. And thank you to Alex, for telling everyone we meet to buy my novels, for not letting me get away with procrastination, and for being my partner in crime.
And last, but absolutely not least, thank you for reading this book. It always makes my day when I get messages from readers telling me they’ve enjoyed my work, and for everyone who has read my first two and this one too, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Authors would be nowhere without their readers, and I hope you all enjoyed The Babysitter. I would love to hear from you if you’ve read any of my books so please do get in touch if you’d like to using any of the methods below.
Instagram: @phoebeannmorgan
Facebook: @PhoebeMorganAuthor
Twitter: @Phoebe_A_Morgan
Website: www.phoebemorganauthor.com
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About the Publisher
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The Babysitter: From the author of digital bestsellers and psychological crime thrillers like The Girl Next Door comes the most gripping and addictive book of 2020! Page 26