I Spy

by Claire Kendal

  ‘I thought you said it was bad luck to buy baby things early. I was surprised you made those curtains. You said Peggy told you not to.’

  ‘Peggy thinks there’s a plague pit in our garden. Peggy has to buy twice as much salt as a normal person, because she’s always throwing it over her shoulder.’

  He gave me his slow smile and picked up an olive. ‘You really are relentless, you know.’

  I shook my head, and said what I knew he would take as a compliment. ‘Not as relentless as you.’

  London, Late March 2017

  We left St Ives at six on Friday morning and I slept for the entire journey. When I opened my eyes five hours later, Zac was driving into the hotel’s forecourt. He handed his keys to the valet, then came round to my side.

  Milly referred to Zac’s sports car as the Noddy car, though I had spared Zac this knowledge. The Noddy car was so low to the ground that I was grateful when Zac helped me out. It made him laugh, and he seemed so happy that I forgot everything for a minute and felt happy too. He put his hands on my bump and kissed me and said he was going to change the car for something bigger in plenty of time before the baby came. I pictured us in a bubble with our baby, a beautiful little family, but I blinked and the bubble floated away and burst, along with the impossible picture inside.

  We took a taxi to a cafe near the shop that I had told Zac I wanted to visit. I’d chosen it because I’d studied the building plans while I was in the library on Monday, looking for a place with a rear exit.

  Zac ordered a cooked breakfast of such heart-killing proportions it was staggering to think he was a cardiologist. He ate every bite of his fried eggs and mushrooms and tomatoes, his bacon and sausages, his fried bread and black pudding and baked beans, as well as several pieces of thickly buttered toast with marmalade. His pleasure in eating, his huge appetite, was another of the things I’d loved about him.

  I managed a cheese omelette, a few bites of toast, and a glass of orange juice. When we’d finished, Zac walked me to the shop and followed me in.

  He fingered a white babygrow with two pink rabbits embroidered on the chest. It was impossibly tiny. ‘Do you like this?’ He sounded shy, something I’d never heard before.

  ‘I do. She will too, since you chose it.’

  ‘You have great taste,’ the shop assistant told him. She was willowy and elegant and I felt like an elephant standing beside her.

  Zac looked so pleased with himself it made my heart hurt. I couldn’t forget that he was the father of my child, though I sometimes wished I could, however lovely he’d pretended to be the past four days. I reminded myself that this was only because of my absolute compliance with his every wish and command since Monday.

  Except for the sex. My compliance with that was not perfect. I pretended to be asleep, but he worked hard to wake me up, moving me over on the bed, probably because he was considering the camera angle. When my avoidance attempts failed, I thought of the woman from the hospital who complained about him. Did he film her too? Or try to? I thought also of Jane, and the likelihood that there was film of her as well. Maybe they had a fight about that, and it led to whatever happened in that Irish hotel.

  It wasn’t a problem I could solve alone. My best chance of protecting all of us was to extract a promise from Maxine that she would get me and my baby out of this mess and ensure those images reached a dead end. If I could pass on the information she wanted, she would be more likely to. I just wished I knew what the information actually was. And the true reason she wanted it so badly. I wouldn’t give up on pressing her, whatever she said about informants not being allowed to know the ins and outs of MI5’s motives and methods.

  The shop assistant turned to me. ‘How far along are you?’

  ‘Five and a half months.’ My hand floated to my bump.

  ‘You look gorgeous.’

  ‘She certainly does,’ Zac said.

  ‘That’s kind.’ I could feel myself blushing. ‘All pregnant women are beautiful.’

  ‘True. I love your dress, by the way,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you.’ It was a tight navy sweater dress.

  ‘And you have one adorable bump.’

  Zac smiled. ‘I need to go. I’ll leave you in safe hands.’ He kissed me goodbye, and I thought, fleetingly again, that we almost seemed normal. ‘Take a taxi back to the hotel.’

  ‘Of course.’ And I fully intended to, though not from that shop.

  I stood in the curtained window, still clutching the babygrow, peeking over the Moses basket that was displayed front and centre of the glass. The basket had an ivory-spotted cover of quilted voile, edged in lace. I watched Zac walk away in his designer suit and film-star sunglasses, the sun glinting on his scalp. He flagged down a taxi with decisive authority and jumped in.

  I shopped quickly, taken by surprise at the joy I felt in choosing baby clothes, despite the circumstances. I kept adding to the small pile of things near the till. The babygrow Zac picked out. A white cellular cot blanket rimmed with yellow daisies. A smocked swaddling wrap. A shawl with an embroidered fawn. A plain white nightdress with pale blue stitching. A peach merino-wool bobble hat.

  My phone was switched on, and password protected, though I had let Zac see me tap the code in to unlock it, certain he would look, invited or not. I switched the ringer to off and slid it into a stack of cashmere baby blankets. Because the battery was haemorrhaging again, I was sure he’d reinstalled the spyware and tracker.

  I bought the Moses basket from the window display, along with the other things. I arranged for it all to be delivered, but said that I would take the babygrow with me. When I saw that the assistant was distracted by a new customer, I asked to use their loo, which was in sight of the back door. As I’d hoped, a nearby panel indicated that the burglar alarm system wasn’t engaged during working hours. Ignoring a sign that said ‘staff only’ and another which warned that the door locked automatically from outside, I opened it and left.

  I cut from the alley to a street that ran parallel to the one with the baby shop. After several blocks, I flagged down a taxi. It took half an hour for the driver to reach the British Library. I went straight to Reader Registration to show my identification and proof of address and get my Reader Pass, then to the Newsroom’s Issue Desk.

  Twenty-five minutes later, I was sitting in the Reading Room, in front of a huge table made of smooth fake-wood. The article was spread on top of a white blotter pad. I took a deep breath, and read.

  Woman Beaten, Gardaí Called to Hotel in County Cork

  A man was cautioned for assault and spent the night in Garda cells after detectives were called to the Blackwater Hotel and Spa in the early hours of Saturday morning. An unnamed couple staying in the room next door heard the woman’s cries and notified the Garda.

  A spokesperson said: Gardaí were called to a hotel in County Cork at 01.33 hours on Saturday following reports of an altercation, and a victim with injuries to her face and body. A thirty-seven-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of common assault. A thirty-two-year-old woman required hospital treatment. The woman chose not to provide a statement, and the man was released without charge.

  The letters seemed to be floating off the page, turning in circles, sliding across the paper and mixing themselves up. I blinked several times, but that didn’t help. I squeezed my eyes closed for a full minute. When I opened them at last, the letters were finally still.

  The man and woman were the right ages, at the right place, on the right date. It had to be Zac and Jane, and to see this evidence that he’d hurt her so badly she required hospital treatment made me feel absolute despair.

  What I did next was a blur. I asked the librarian to make a hard copy of the article, and hardly counted the coins I dropped into her hand to pay for it. I bought a Harry Potter stationery set from their shop, grabbing the first suitable thing I laid my hands on. I scrawled Zac’s Yorkshire address on the inside of a card with a picture of the Marauder’s Map on its front, then stu
ffed it in a matching envelope that I addressed to Maxine at a Royal Mail Post Office Box, using the agreed name of Mary Greenwood. I slid the photocopied article in, too, before sealing it.

  I bought a stamp at a nearby newsagent’s and dropped the whole thing into the first postbox I passed on the busy Euston Road. I was too numb to think about what I was doing and too dazed to care. I saw a charity shop ten metres away, so I slipped in, placed the remainder of the Harry Potter stationery on the counter, and slipped out. Then I took a taxi to the hotel.

  Zac steamed towards me the instant I walked into the lobby. He didn’t say a word. Before I’d finished thanking the doorman, his arm was around me and he was hurrying me into the lift and down the hall to our room. He shoved me, roughly, onto the upholstered bench at the foot of the bed.

  ‘You’re going to hurt the baby.’ My words were a cry more than speech.

  ‘No. You’re going to hurt the baby.’ I could smell beer on his breath, and I was guessing that he’d had several with his medical friends. I tried to stand but he stopped me. ‘Don’t move.’

  ‘I need a glass of water. Please. You’ll need to get it, Zac, if you want me to stay here.’

  He lurched into the bathroom, keeping the door open and looking at me every few seconds, swaying so much I didn’t know how he managed to keep standing. I didn’t hear the tap running but there was a glass in his hand when he returned. He tripped over my bag, and saved himself from landing on the floor by grabbing the edge of the bed, the water spilling almost entirely, soaking his shirt. He was bent double and growling, while I looked on in horror, as if an enraged bear had stumbled into the room.

  A tiny black rectangle fell from his pocket into a small pool of water that the carpet hadn’t absorbed. The rectangle was about one and a half centimetres across, a centimetre tall, and no more than a millimetre thick. I was pretty certain it was one of those micro SD cards for storing and transferring data. He shoved the glass at me, then snatched the card from the carpet in what I could only describe as a panic. He was muttering and swearing, wiping the card on his trousers, alarmed that the key had got wet and might be corrupted. Everything he said was interspersed with multiple repetitions of fuck fuck fuck, and he was so drunk and furious and out of control he seemed barely conscious of the fact that he was speaking aloud.

  He blinked several times, then turned to me, swallowing hard. ‘Drink it.’

  I gulped down the few sips left in the glass. My fingers were white from clutching it so tightly. When I’d finished, he took the glass and hurled it at the wall. It shattered. Again, I started to get up and again he pushed me down. He crouched in front of me and put his hands on the velvet bench, beside each of my thighs, ready to stop me if I tried to get away.

  His face was fierce red. His words came like an explosion. ‘Where the fuck have you been and why the fuck is your phone off and still at the shop and not with you?’

  He was too angry to realise he’d slipped up – he knew the phone was at the shop through the spyware he’d put on it, which would tell him where it last pinged. ‘Have you been with someone else?’

  ‘No.’ My breath was shuddering, coming in gasps. ‘Of course not.’ A sob came from somewhere, and I realised it was me. I pictured Jane, cowering in the hotel in Ireland, screaming so her cries were heard through the walls. ‘You’re scaring me.’

  When he moved his hands to my shoulders, I saw that he had ripped away one of the buttons on the silver upholstery. ‘Stop that noise. You don’t need to be scared of me. You don’t need to cry. You’re being over-dramatic.’

  ‘Can you please calm down, Zac?’

  ‘You don’t tell me to calm down.’

  ‘It’s not good for the baby.’

  ‘You’re the one who isn’t good for the baby,’ he said.

  I pressed my eyes into the crook of an arm.

  ‘Look at me.’ He pulled my arm away. He knelt on the thick carpet at my feet, blocking me in. He nodded slowly. ‘You provoked me. What do you expect if you hide from me all day?’

  I played dumb. ‘I don’t understand.’ His hands moved onto my thighs, digging in. ‘Can you not hold me so tightly? I want to look in my bag.’

  He grabbed the bag from the floor and shoved it at me so hard I nearly toppled backwards. ‘Look, then.’ He watched as I did.

  ‘My phone isn’t here.’ My fear of him was so real that it coloured my performance of alarm and surprise, which felt strangely real too.

  ‘I’ve been calling you all afternoon. My pregnant girlfriend disappears in London and I’ve been fucking having a heart attack worrying about what might have happened to you.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I’d repeated those two words so many times I’d lost count. ‘It was an accident. I’d never mean to upset you. Please don’t be mad at me. I went for a walk, sat in the park, that’s all. It was a beautiful day.’ I was desperate for him to calm down, for him not to start shouting again, for him not to hurt me and the baby.

  ‘You don’t mean it. You’re trying to make the problem go away.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ I pulled his head towards me, kissed him, fought off my gagging reflex at the taste of beer on his mouth, realised that I used to find this alluring, and noticed for the first time I could remember that he didn’t respond.

  ‘Everyone around you is fucking terrified about what you’ll do next.’

  I whispered that it was pregnancy brain, I must have left the phone in the baby shop like he said, and we could ring them in the morning to ask them to send the phone along with the things that would be delivered on Monday.

  ‘Look.’ I pulled out the babygrow he chose. ‘I managed to remember the most important thing.’

  ‘It’s my baby. You don’t walk away whenever you choose.’ There was a pulse in his temple. His whole scalp seemed to move with it.

  ‘I’m not. I don’t want to walk away.’

  ‘Do you think I’d let you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you glad of that?’

  How could he think anyone would be glad to be a prisoner? The lie was absurd, but I still said it. ‘Yes.’

  He stood. ‘Rest.’ His hands were in fists. ‘Lie on your left side and get some oxygen and nutrients to the baby. I’m going to the bar. I’ll come and collect you for dinner.’ He glanced at the wardrobe and I followed his eyes. I hadn’t noticed the dress that was hanging from the moulding at the top. ‘Wear that. It was supposed to be a present. A surprise to make you happy.’

  ‘It’s beautiful. Thank you. I am happy.’ Did he buy a dress for Jane, and hang it on their hotel room wardrobe, before he attacked her? Did he accuse her of meeting someone else, as he did me?

  I tried to think beyond this. Did he have a reason for wanting us to be seen together at dinner, a happy couple on a weekend break of fun in London before their baby was born? I remembered his saying that my coming with him might help us both. Was I some kind of pretext for his being here? A cover story? This seemed the most likely explanation for his agreeing to take me.

  ‘You can show me how thankful you are later tonight.’ He jerked open the bedroom door, stepped from the room, and slammed it shut so hard the walls shook.

  I waited fifteen minutes, then levered myself off the bed. I squeezed myself out of the sweater dress and threw it on the floor. I slipped the smoky blue new one over my head. The bodice was lace, the sleeves were sheer, and the skirt was silk. A jewelled crystal belt was encrusted along the empire waist, making my bump look distinct and unquestionable. I glanced longingly at the ballet flats I’d worn all day. Instead, I slid my feet into the heeled gold sandals he’d arranged beneath the dress. His medically informed concern for my pregnancy had once again been defeated by his impulse to dress me like a doll.

  It was a hushed room, despite the fact that every full-grain leather chair in it was filled. This was not the kind of place where you stood and ordered your own drink. Attentive waiters glided among the tables before returning t
o the mahogany bar to murmur the guests’ choices of cocktail and champagne and whisky. When one of them headed towards me, I gave a slight no-thank-you shake of my head before stepping back. The man retreated instantly, practised at attending to the tiniest gesture.

  It didn’t take long for me to see what I was looking for. Zac, and a woman in the chair opposite him. They were both leaning intently towards each other. A shard of her light hair whipped briefly into view, though I couldn’t see her features because Zac was in the way. He started to move. Before he could swivel around, I stepped to the side of the door jamb, out of his sightline, then disappeared into the narrow back stairwell I’d discovered earlier. My attempted surveillance had been thwarted within a minute of it having begun.

  I was panting by the time I reached the second-floor landing, and wondering how I would make it all the way up to the fifth. I paused to catch my breath and allow a young woman in a blue housekeeping dress to pass.

  ‘Are you all right?’ One of her hands rose, as if she wanted to steady me, but she stopped herself.

  ‘Fine. Thank you.’

  ‘You know that there are lifts?’

  ‘Yes.’ I raised a hand to brush my hair out of my eyes.

  ‘And a nicer staircase, for guests?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I help you with anything? I’d be happy to see you to your room.’

  ‘No. Thank you.’ I began the ascent. I could feel her watching until the stairs twisted round at the next landing, and I was no longer in her view.

  I didn’t take my dress off, though I slipped my feet out of the shoes before I lowered myself onto the bed and rested on my left side. I would have chosen that position without Zac’s instruction. All the pregnancy books told you to do it. I arranged one pillow beneath my bump and another between my thighs and knees. I lay on top of the counterpane, but pulled Zac’s side of it over me, so it was like a single slice of bread folded in half with me as the filling in between.

  He didn’t hesitate to accuse me of secretly meeting someone else, but he did that very thing himself. And became violent – the broken glass was still in shards near the wall. I remembered the black micro card, and his muttering about a key. A key to what, I wondered. Could it be something from his medical meeting at University College Hospital? The video footage of women that he’d been taking covertly? Something else altogether? I wished he hadn’t noticed when it fell out. I wished I could have got hold of it. But he did. And I didn’t.