by Fiona Barton
“A shower. I went for a shower. She was asleep,” Angela had stuttered.
The detective looked across at Nick. “What time did you and your son leave the hospital?” he said.
“Why do you keep asking the same questions?” Nick said. His voice was quieter now, his anger burning out. “Why?”
Inspector Rigby rubbed his hands on his knees. “We need to be sure we’re not missing anything here. You wouldn’t forgive us if we did.”
Angela had nodded. She wouldn’t have been able to forgive that.
“Mrs. Irving,” the inspector said, calling her back to the questions. “What would you say were your feelings for Alice?”
There was silence in the room apart from Angela’s ragged breathing.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said finally. “How did I feel about my baby? I loved her.”
“Loved?” the policeman said.
“Love her. Why are you trying to confuse me?” Angela said.
“And you, Mr. Irving? How did you feel about Alice?” Rigby said. Tone even. No drama.
Nick slumped into his chair. “The same. I’m sorry, Inspector. I am so tired; I can’t think straight.” His voice was flat and exhausted and Angela reached out to touch his hand.
The inspector cleared his throat, nervously. There’s more, she thought, gripping the sofa edge as though she was about to fall.
“I understand there have been problems in your marriage,” he ventured.
Angela looked up. “All marriages have problems,” she said and dropped Nick’s hand.
“What sort of problems have you been having?” DI Rigby asked gently.
“You had better ask Nick,” she said and closed her eyes.
She could hear her husband’s voice as if in another room, stumbling as he told how he had betrayed her.
“It was a mistake, Inspector,” he was saying. “A terrible mistake. A fling. It meant nothing.”
She realized he was using exactly the same words he’d used when she’d confronted him.
He’d stumbled then, too. He’d talked her round. Persuaded her they could repair the damage.
And she’d been too frightened of the alternative to say no. Their lives were so entwined; she couldn’t see a way to disentangle them. The loneliness of an existence without Nick yawned at her and she set about the task of burying her outrage and hurt. She never used the woman’s name, not even in her private thoughts. She was faceless—she’d never seen her and that helped—and nameless. A nobody who had tempted her idiot husband after a night’s drinking with the boys.
She would never have known if she hadn’t taken his jacket to the dry cleaners. Out of habit, she’d turned out the pockets and found part of an empty Durex packet.
“It was only once, Angie,” he’d wept. “I was drunk and stupid. Please forgive me. I love you and Patrick so much.”
“Let’s have another baby,” he’d whispered in bed a few weeks later. “You’d like that, Angie, wouldn’t you? It’ll bring us close again.”
And Alice was conceived. The sticking plaster for their marriage.
The trouble was she didn’t know if he’d done it before—or would carry on doing it. A leopard never changes its spots kept coming into her head when he got home late or popped out for an hour. But if he did it again, he was more careful.
Angela had opened her eyes as Nick came to the end of his confession. The inspector was sitting on the edge of his chair, weighing every word.
“Why didn’t you tell us about this earlier, Mr. Irving?”
“I couldn’t see it had anything to do with Alice,” Nick said.
“And the woman with whom you had the fling, as you call it?”
Angela closed her eyes again.
“Marian,” Nick said.
“Surname?”
“I never knew it,” he said. “I told you, it was a drunken mistake. She is nothing to do with us and our baby. Why are you asking this? Why are you digging all this up?”
“We need to know the full background, Mr. Irving,” the detective said. “We need to know everything.”
TWENTY-NINE
Kate
MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012
Len Rigby was gardening when Kate and Joe arrived at his house, on his knees, grubbing up the weeds and furtively flinging slugs into his neighbor’s privet hedge. He looked up blinking into the sun when he heard his name called.
“DI Rigby,” Kate said, leaning over the low brick wall.
“Who wants to know?” he growled, trying to heave himself upright with the help of a windowsill.
“Let me help you,” she said, already opening the wrought-iron gate to walk up the path. “I’m Kate Waters, from the Post.”
“Are you indeed?” he said, adding, “I can manage, thank you,” as she got nearer.
Kate ignored him and offered her hand.
“I’m hoping you can help me with one of your old cases, DI Rigby. I promise I won’t take up too much of your time.”
He laughed as he allowed himself to be steadied by Kate, adding: “Time is what I’ve got plenty of. I’ll get Mrs. Rigby to make us a drink.”
He led Kate and Joe through to the conservatory at the back of the house and disappeared to announce their presence to his wife.
“Now then, what do you want to ask me about?” he said as he lowered himself down into a rattan chair.
“Alice Irving,” Kate said. No point beating about the bush. DI Rigby was a straight-up-and-down bloke, she could see.
“Ah,” he said, taking a cup from his wife and placing it carefully on the matching side table. “Thanks, love.
“Baby Alice. Basingstoke Hospital. Vanished without trace. Never found,” he said, reeling back to 1970. “Very strange case,” he added.
“Strange how?” Kate asked.
“Well, there were no witnesses apart from the mother. In a busy hospital like that. I remember we talked to over a hundred people who were in the building that night—mums, visitors, nurses, cleaners, doctors, auxiliaries, maintenance men—but no one saw anything. So we only had the mother’s account to rely on for timings of when the baby disappeared. I always wondered about her. Angela. She was a bit of a cold fish and her husband had been playing away.”
“Really? I never read about that in the cuttings,” Kate said, leaning forwards.
“We never made it public,” he said, slurping his tea. “We kept it quiet while we checked out the husband—Nick, isn’t it?—but we never got anywhere. He and Angela both stuck to their testimony like glue. And, of course, there was never a body. Is that why you’re here? Has something new turned up?”
“Possibly,” Kate said carefully. “A baby’s skeleton has been found on a building site in Woolwich and I’m looking to see if there could be any connections.”
“Right. Woolwich,” he said, rolling the word round his mouth. “No, can’t think of any connection off the top of my head. Well, it has a military connection—the husband was in the army, you know. But all this is a lifetime ago, and at my age, I’m losing my marbles rapidly.”
“I’m sure that isn’t true,” Kate said and grinned at him.
“Well, I think I might still have some of the paperwork in my study—don’t tell the wife, I promised to clear all my police stuff out,” he said, grinning back. “Shall I have a look? Have you got time?”
“Definitely,” Kate said.
The study was all about cars. Photos of expensive bodywork, chrome detail, and racetracks were everywhere. Joe pointed at one and said, “That’s Goodwood, isn’t it?”
Len Rigby went over to examine it. “Yes, that’s it. Go every year to the Festival of Speed. Have you been?”
“Yes, my mum gets invited and I blag a ticket,” Joe said. “Love it.”
“We don’t want to t
ake up too much of the inspector’s time, do we?” Kate said pointedly to her sidekick.
“No, well. Let’s have a look at the stuff I kept on the Irvings,” the DI said and winked at Joe.
It was a slim file of handwritten notes and Kate lowered her expectations immediately.
“Right,” Rigby said. “What have we got?”
He leafed through quickly—too quickly for Kate’s liking—but stopped halfway through and pulled out two sheets.
“These were notes I wrote up after we found out about the husband’s affair,” he said. “Nick Irving said it was a fling and he didn’t know the woman’s full name when I questioned him in front of his wife. But he did. He rang me the next day and told me. He didn’t want Angela to know. We checked her out—the other woman—where’s her name? Marian Laidlaw. That’s her.”
Kate wrote it down, checking the spelling. “And what was she like?” she asked.
“My sergeant saw her. Says here she was a pleasant, decent woman of thirty-five. Older than Nick Irving but a nurse, like Angela. The fling had gone on a while, according to her. There’d been talk of Nick Irving leaving his wife but then it had ended. When Angela found out.”
“A nurse?” Kate said, her pulse quickening. “Bloody hell. Did she know Angela? Did she work at the Basingstoke Hospital?”
“No, sadly not,” the detective said. “We got all excited like you—thought we’d found ourselves a proper suspect—but Miss Laidlaw had a cast-iron alibi. She was on duty on a geriatric ward in Southampton—miles away and with dozens of witnesses. Another dead end.”
“Interesting, though,” Kate said.
“Len, dinner’s on the table,” his wife shouted through.
“Well, I think I’ve told you everything I know,” DI Rigby said.
“You’ve been brilliant,” Kate said and shook his hand firmly. “I don’t suppose I could borrow your notes for a couple of days? Promise I’ll return them . . .”
“Len!” The voice was more insistent now.
“Coming, love,” he called back. “You can photograph them, but I can’t let them go. And anything I’ve said you’ll only use as background? No quoting me. Understood?”
“You have my word,” she said and Joe started copying the pages on his phone.
THIRTY
Emma
MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012
I’ve got out my old diaries from the suitcase under the spare bed. It’s the first time in years I’ve looked at them, but the baby has made me want to check on how it all started. In case my mind has been playing tricks.
They’re cheap, thin exercise books filled with tiny writing. My teenage years. Funny how I divide my life into blocks of time. Like I was different people. I suppose I was. We all are.
When I read them now, I want to weep for her—for me—and the girl I might have been.
She was so young and innocent—nothing like thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds I see on the bus, shouting and swearing, frightening old ladies. Teenage Emma scribbled away about her life as if she were Jane Austen, recording the conversations and rivalries at school and home, observing the people around her. And occasionally, she described her feelings—like when she saw a boy in town she liked. She used words like “dreamy.” And that’s what they were, these boys, fodder for imagined romances and happy-ever-afters. Poor Emma. Outside her books and diaries, the world wasn’t like that, even if it looked like it for a bit.
Darrell Moore was her—my—first coup de foudre. She would probably have called it love at first sight. Whatever it was, it was devastating, literally. Not devastating, the opposite of awesome, as used on the news by people to describe minor events. But devastating as in overwhelming, savage, shattering. I couldn’t think straight.
The diary says we went for a walk—with hearts round the words—and I remember him stroking my hair, squeezing my shoulders, and putting his arm round me as we walked along the promenade that first time. I loved it. I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted him to touch every inch of my skin. He was so lovely, he took my breath away.
I was so dazzled by Darrell that I almost forgot why I’d come to Brighton. We were on our way back to the station when I asked him if he knew where Charlie was.
He said he had no idea, hadn’t heard from him in years. Even joked about him becoming a stockbroker. I didn’t understand why it was funny when he said it—I didn’t know Charlie had been a musician when he met Jude. Darrell told me Charlie had written a song about her. About her eyes. My eyes, Darrell said, and he kissed me. I wrote in my diary that it was my first proper kiss. A sweet kiss.
He asked me to come and see him again. I wrote that I would’ve done anything he asked at that moment. And I would have. I was thirteen and had just been kissed for the first time. I couldn’t see anything wrong in it. I was in love.
But Harry reappeared, furious at being abandoned, and grabbed my arm to take me home.
I remember we walked away, me looking back as Harry frog-marched me off. Darrell stood in the middle of the pavement, surrounded by shoppers and holidaymakers, looking at me until we turned the corner and I burst into tears again.
Harry was telling me to pull myself together—I expect she was a bit frightened about the state I was in. She’d never seen me like that. I’d never been like that. Normally, I was the sensible one, soothing and calming her when she was upset or angry, but she was the nurse that day.
She went to the toilet on the train and got some loo roll to mop me up, but it was as if something had broken free inside me.
Harry thought I was crying because it’d been a disaster—she hadn’t seen the sweet kiss on the lips—and she tried to help by saying horrible things about Darrell.
“He smells,” she said. “Like stale bread. I don’t think he washes.”
I told her he didn’t know where my dad was and pretended to go to sleep so I wouldn’t have to talk.
Harry let it go—she got bored easily, luckily—and started talking about the man at the sweet stall who’d chatted her up.
He’d had horrible spots, but she got a free candy floss.
THIRTY-ONE
Jude
MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012
The kettle was boiling furiously—she’d forgotten to close the lid again—and she turned it off at the plug. She’d been like that all day, losing things, putting things in the wrong place. Her head was full of Will.
“For goodness’ sake,” she said loudly. “You’re too old to be getting in a state over a man.” And she laughed, light-headed with the feelings that were reemerging.
I wonder what he looks like now, she thought for the umpteenth time, smoothing her hair and holding her head high to stretch the creases in her neck.
She dialed Emma’s number for the tenth time and put the receiver down before it connected. She desperately wanted to talk to someone about Will but, after last week, she knew her daughter wouldn’t want to hear about it. But Emma was the only person who knew Will as she did. She’ll have got used to the idea by now, Jude told herself as she picked up the phone again.
“Emma, it’s me,” she said. “How is the work going?”
“Oh. Hello. I was going to ring you to thank you for lunch last week,” Emma said.
“I’m sorry I said that about you getting ill, Em,” Jude said. She needed to make the peace as quickly as possible so they could move on to Will.
“That’s okay,” Emma said, her voice lighter. “I’m sorry I was so moody. I’ve been a bit tired.”
“You’re probably working too hard. Anyway, it was good to see you. And to share my news.”
Emma’s silence was as loud as a clanging bell but Jude ignored it, chattering on determinedly about Will’s call, where she might meet her ex-boyfriend, what she might wear, what they might talk about.
When Jude finally drew breath, Emma
said, “I wonder what he looks like now.”
“I was just thinking the same thing, Em,” she’d gushed. “He was always so handsome, wasn’t he? We were all in love with him, weren’t we?”
“Umm, well, I wasn’t,” Emma said so quietly that Jude had to strain to hear her.
“What did you say?”
“I said I wasn’t,” Emma repeated, louder.
“Oh, Em, you were. You were always there, hanging on his every word. You even went to that party with him. Do you remember?”
She could see Emma, all eyes and jailbait legs, standing in the doorway of the kitchen, drawing Will’s attention away from her. Jude got in a huff about it sometimes and Will had laughed her out of her jealousy.
“Well, he certainly made a big impact on me,” Emma said. “He did that.”
“There you are,” Jude said.
“Any adult man would have done,” Emma said. “If you remember.”
“Oh God, let’s not go down the long-lost-daddy route, Em. Will was not your father.”
“No,” Emma said. “He wasn’t.”
She hesitated, and Jude waited for her to say it.
“And he made you throw me out when I was sixteen,” Emma said.
“He didn’t,” Jude snapped. “It was my own decision based on your behavior. You were impossible to live with and it was driving a wedge between us.”
“Between you and me or you and him?” Emma said.
“Both. You were trying to force him out with your lies and tantrums.”
“Lies?”
“Saying you’d seen him chatting up other women. Trying to destroy our relationship. You can’t deny it, Emma.”
“I’m not denying it. I did see him chatting up that woman down our street.”
Jude was furious all over again—with her daughter and herself.
“It was all perfectly innocent,” she hissed. “She denied it completely.”
“Well, she would, wouldn’t she?” Emma said.
“Look, I know I wasn’t the perfect mother, but you weren’t the perfect daughter, either.”