From the Cradle

by Louise Voss

  OTHER TITLES BY LOUISE VOSS AND MARK EDWARDS

  Killing Cupid

  Catch Your Death

  All Fall Down

  Forward Slash

  OTHER TITLES BY MARK EDWARDS

  The Magpies

  What You Wish For

  Because She Loves Me

  OTHER TITLES BY LOUISE VOSS

  To Be Someone

  Are You My Mother?

  Lifesaver

  Games People Play

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2014 Louise Voss and Mark Edwards

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477825273

  ISBN-10: 1477825274

  Cover design by bürosüdo Munich, www.buerosued.de

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014940618

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Prologue

  It was an emotional nuclear explosion. A few seconds of innocent calm, perhaps a faint falling whizz, the silence as Patrick opened the front door and everything was too quiet … Knowing instantly that something was wrong, but not yet having a clue as to how much, how complete and irrevocable that wrongness was.

  It had been a particularly long day. Detective Inspector Patrick Lennon had been stuck in a windowless interview room for seven hours with an uncooperative drug-addled thug called Dean Kervin, who had a face like a potato that had been boiled several days earlier. Despite the fact that several witnesses and two CCTV cameras had seen Dean smash the window of the sporting goods outlet and beat the security guard to death, he was stubbornly denying it. All he kept repeating was ‘It wasn’t me. I wasn’t there.’

  Patrick had been desperate all day for some fresh air and a non-stewed coffee, but what was really keeping him going was the thought of walking back into his warm, baby-scented home, and the sticky embrace of his five-month-old daughter Bonnie. A glass of wine in one hand, Bonnie cradled in the crook of his other arm, then a Chinese takeaway in front of a movie with Gill, once Bonnie was fast asleep. He had almost laughed at the thought that such an image would be so welcoming. His teenage self would have ripped the piss out of him so mercilessly – wine and babies? A takeaway in front of the telly? Pathetic.

  No. Not pathetic. Happiness, security, the purity of family. What life was all about.

  The only spanner in the works on the domestic front was that Gill had been very down recently. Everyone knew it was hard, staying at home all day with a tiny baby, especially when you’d had a responsible and demanding career. Gill was a barrister, never happier than when she was tearing apart – eviscerating with words – some lowlife like potato-faced Dean. She did it with such aplomb. Patrick hoped she’d soon regain her spark. Sociable and friendly though she naturally was outside of court, the whole NCT cabal thing, gangs of breastfeeding mums taking over coffee shops and attending baby-music classes, just didn’t do it for her. She had tried, but every time came home complaining that if she had to listen to any more chat about mustardy nappies she would scream …

  Patrick smiled at the thought as he reversed their bronze Toyota Prius – something else that his teenage self would’ve had a word or two about – into the short driveway of their boxy little townhouse in West Molesey. When he was trying to impress people, he told them he lived ‘near Hampton Court’, whereas in truth West Molesey was a mile and a half away, the poor sibling of the much grander East Molesey with its conservation area and plethora of two-million-pound properties. He thought that he had never been so happy to be home. He had even stopped at Tesco Metro and bought a bottle of wine and a bunch of gerbera daisies, Gill’s favourites.

  Later, he’d wonder if he’d known it from the second his key turned in the lock, or if he’d imagined that he knew.

  What he did instantly pick up on, though, was the silence. They were surely at home, because the buggy was in the hallway, and all the lights were on. Had they just popped round to a neighbour’s? Unlikely. The neighbours in their little close had turned out, disappointingly, to be remarkably unfriendly, and Gill hadn’t made any friends in the immediate vicinity. Usually Radio 2 was blaring away, the TV showing CBeebies with the sound switched off. The tumble dryer churning, kettle boiling, the familiar noises of Gill clattering around in the kitchen, starting dinner for her and Patrick. There were none of these sounds.

  ‘Hello?’ Patrick called as he stepped inside and closed the front door behind him. ‘Gill?’

  Nothing. Patrick frowned. He took off his leather jacket, hung the car keys on the key rack in the cupboard by the door and put the flowers and wine carefully onto the hall floor. They must be out, he thought – then hesitated. Something told him that they weren’t out. Gooseflesh swept up and down his body, even though he had no reason at that stage to fear anything.

  ‘Gill, where are you?’ he repeated uneasily, and walked towards the back of the house, down the hall to the kitchen. As he passed the foot of the stairs, a movement made him jump out of his skin.

  Gill was sitting on the third stair, an expression on her face the like of which he had never seen on anyone in his life. Her usually pink face was waxy and drained, and her eyes were two dead pools of horror. She was clutching Bonnie’s favourite toy, a knitted Peppa Pig, and rocking soundlessly back and forth.

  Patrick gasped, and grabbed her by the shoulders, half-hug, half-challenge. ‘Gill! Sweetheart, what’s the matter!’ He fell to his knees on the stairs in front of her and held her tightly, rocking with her. ‘What’s happened? Has someone died?’

  That was Patrick’s first thought – because if something had been wrong with Bonnie, Gill wouldn’t have been sitting on the stairs, she’d be sitting by the cot.

  Gill didn’t reply. She didn’t acknowledge him, or even seem to realize that he was there. ‘Talk to me, darling, what’s happened? Gill, please!’

  She seemed to Patrick to be h
alf her normal size, diminished by shock and this awful, inchoate grief.

  ‘Where’s Bonnie?’

  Gill immediately stopped rocking. Stopped breathing, clamped her mouth closed, those sensual lips that Patrick had fallen in love with before he even properly met her. She closed her eyes and tightened her fingers into Peppa Pig’s soft pink body.

  Then she started moaning. The sound grew in pitch and intensity from moan to groan to bellow and then, opening her mouth again, up into a roar of primal pain that bounced up the walls and sucked every shred of peace out of the house, forever.

  Patrick jumped up, a sob already escaping from his throat. ‘Oh my God. Gill, where is she? What’s happened? WHERE IS SHE?’

  He pushed his wife to one side and even though it had just been a light push, she toppled sideways and fell down the two remaining stairs to the floor, where she lay motionless, still making the same unearthly howling noise. He raced up the narrow staircase, legs like a marathon runner approaching the final mile, the breath jagged in his chest, and tore round the banister and into Bonnie’s tiny bedroom.

  At first he thought that there was a doll lying in her place in the cot; a strange, swollen, purple doll. He took a step into the room and realized that the doll was Bonnie. Her limbs were twisted into unnatural shapes and she had clear marks around her throat. Fingermarks.

  With a roar louder than his wife’s, Patrick released the side of the cot and bent over his lifeless daughter, gasping air into his lungs so that he could try and breathe it into her tiny still ones. With two gentle, shaking fingers he massaged her sternum, praying that he was doing it right, trying desperately to remember the correct steps from the baby CPR course that Gill had insisted they both attend in her pregnancy. Push, push, breathe. Push, push, breathe. Bonnie was still purple. She was still warm. That was good. Push, push, breathe. His tears dripped onto her closed eyelids.

  Push, push, breathe.

  He didn’t know how long he did it for. Time spun into a horrible vortex that seemed to be dragging him down further and further until finally there was the tiniest mew. Bonnie’s eyes opened a crack, and closed again. Her chest, not much bigger than a bag of sugar, heaved very slightly.

  Patrick flung himself backwards against the bedroom wall, hyperventilating and sobbing. He grabbed his mobile out of his back pocket, dialled 999, howled for an ambulance. Everything for the next half hour was a blur of movement; cradling Bonnie, rubbing her back to keep her baby breaths coming, wondering if she was brain damaged, crying, letting the ambulance men in, watching them clamp a tiny oxygen mask over his daughter’s face.

  It was while they were doing this that Patrick walked on shaky legs over to his wife, who was still curled in a foetal position on the hall floor, moaning and clutching Bonnie’s toy.

  He put his arms around her, lifted her up to a sitting position, cradled her close to him in the same way he had just done to his daughter. She smelled metallic, of fear and sweat. He picked a stray long brown hair off the shoulder of her sweater, and waited till his breath was regular enough to speak. He put his lips to her ear:

  ‘Gillian Louise Lennon, I am arresting you for the attempted murder of Bonnie Elizabeth Lennon. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say may be taken down and used as evidence in a court of law …’

  Chapter 1

  Helen – Day 1

  Eighteen months later

  ‘Hurry up, Hel!’

  Helen could hear Sean jangling his keys in the hall, no doubt checking his watch and tutting.

  ‘I’m nearly ready!’ Helen called back down the stairs from the bathroom, trying to keep her tone light. This was their first date night in weeks and she didn’t want it to start off on the wrong foot.

  Frankie was in the bath, playing with her bath toys, three brightly coloured water-squirting plastic vehicles. She squirted a long stream of water at Helen and giggled so hard that she lost her balance and slipped backwards under the bubbles. Helen lunged for her and hoisted her back up, holding her breath for the imminent cries, but Frankie just looked surprised and then, realizing she now had a Regency-style wig of bubbles on her head, laughed even harder. Helen laughed too, even though her vintage silk blouse now had a long wet streak down the front.

  ‘Come on, time to get out. Alice is going to read you a story. You promise to be a good girl for her?’

  Frankie nodded vigorously, sending bubbles flying around the steamy bathroom. Helen was privately slightly bemused by her three-year-old daughter’s devotion to her surly teenage half-sister. Alice had the sort of grudge against humanity that made Pol Pot seem positively benevolent and, worse, since she’d started dating Larry, there was more than a faint whiff of booze around her. Alice’s beautiful caramel-coloured skin was permanently caked beneath a thick layer of dark foundation to hide spots that were barely visible to start with, and her soft black curls had taken on a limp defeated appearance.

  ‘Teenagers,’ Sean often said, definitively. ‘They’re all the same.’

  But were they really? Helen wondered. She lifted Frankie out of the bath, with the towel twisted in front of her body to form a tight handle so she could lift her without touching her – a favourite game. She giggled again as Helen set her down on the bathmat and hugged her wet body close. Her almost-black hair was plastered in spikes to her head, and her brown eyes laughed as she hugged Helen back. Like Alice, Frankie had caramel skin, a shade lighter than Helen’s. Sean was the only Caucasian in the family, something that confused people when they learned that the two girls were half sisters – as if it did not compute that a white man could choose not one but two black women as mothers to his children.

  For a second Helen thought of those two other sets of parents, both within three miles of their own house, who no longer heard their babies giggle, could no longer feel their dense fragrant warmth in their arms. It was unspeakable. For the dozenth time she felt anxious about leaving Frankie with Alice.

  ‘HELEN!’ bellowed Sean from the front door. ‘They’ll have given away our reservation if you don’t get a move on! Let Alice do it – Alice, can you go up and take over, please?’

  Helen had already persuaded Frankie into her Dry-Nite pull-ups and brushed cotton pyjamas. She was rubbing her daughter’s hair dry and helping her clean her tiny teeth by the time Alice finally dragged herself away from her beloved iPad and the endless supply of humorous YouTube videos and old episodes of The Big Bang Theory which was all she ever seemed to watch.

  Frankie’s face lit up when she saw her big sister. ‘Ali! You read my story, yeah?’

  ‘Alright, trouble. Come on, let’s go and choose a book. Only one, mind, and no fuss when it’s finished.’

  Frankie wriggled off Helen’s lap and dragged Alice away towards her room.

  ‘Alice?’ Helen called, unbuttoning her shirt to change it for a dry one. ‘If you let the cat out the back door, make sure you—’

  ‘—lock it again straight away. I know, Helen. Chill out! I’m not stupid.’

  ‘We won’t be late back, no later than about half ten anyway. Have you got revision to do?’

  ‘Nah. Only Drama left, and I don’t need to revise for that. It’s a practical.’

  ‘Call us if anything at all doesn’t – well – seem right.’

  It sounded crazy. Alice had babysat loads of times in the past year or two – but it was only in the past month that two small children had been abducted in the area … Alice rolled her eyes to indicate that she held the same opinion – that it did sound crazy.

  ‘Um – one more thing … Larry’s not coming over, is he?’

  Alice squared up to her, with Frankie still clinging on. ‘So what if he is? Don’t you trust me to look after Frankie properly?’

  Helen took off the damp shirt and hung it on the heated towel rail, turning back to Alice in her bra. Alice looked contemptuously up and down at her body. The look was enough to make the most confident woman wither. Helen wasn’t as slim or pert as she
had been before Frankie, her belly softer, gravity and pregnancy having launched a twin assault on her figure.

  ‘It’s not that. Of course I do. And I don’t dislike him, Alice. I just think that on a school night … Plus you know your dad doesn’t like him being here when we’re out.’ She braced herself for the fight, but to her surprise, Alice conceded.

  ‘He’s not coming round, so don’t get your knickers in a twist.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘STORY, Ali!’ Frankie reminded her, kicking her thin legs against Alice’s hips.

  ‘Stop it, squirt,’ she grumbled, and carried her away.

  ‘Hurry up!’

  ‘Oh Sean, for God’s sake, I’m coming, OK?’

  Just as soon as she’d kissed Frankie goodnight.

  Later, in the restaurant, both their moods had mellowed after a bottle of silky Merlot, and a very nice coq au vin.

  ‘This is lovely,’ Helen said.

  ‘It certainly is, my sweet,’ Sean agreed, in his comedy Del-Boy voice. ‘Mange tout, mange tout.’

  She laughed, and studied him affectionately. ‘You’ve been saying that for years.’

  ‘Ah but it never gets old, does it? Unlike me.’ He rubbed ruefully at his bald head, now kept shaven to draw attention away from the large hairless spot at the crown. The stubble made a small scratchy sound under his fingers. Sean had great cheekbones, but a slightly unfortunate cone-shaped skull. He didn’t look bad with a shaved head, but Helen had to admit he’d looked better with hair.