‘I do not want any of those things, Peggy,’ I said. ‘I want my baby to be alive.’
She told me Father Bill could do a funeral, if I would like him to, and the church was raising money for a cuddle cot in my baby’s honour, and Zac would agree to anything I wanted and refuse whatever I didn’t.
Zac filled in forms, Peggy put them in front of me, and I signed without taking in a single word.
The nurses asked me what my baby’s name was. I remembered that Zac wanted to call her Alexandra Mary, after his grandmother, and I wanted to call her Charlotte, after Charlotte Brontë. I tried to say that her name was Charlotte, but the words would not come out.
One morning, I noticed something that I hadn’t absorbed before. On the wall of my little side room was a poster of a smiling mother propped in bed with her nightdress unbuttoned and her newborn baby held to her chest. Breast is Best, it said. I pointed to the poster. I couldn’t speak. A nurse moved towards it and I scrunched my eyes shut. When I opened them, the poster was gone.
Now The Choice
One year and eleven months later
* * *
Bath, Tuesday, 9 April 2019
I don’t drive far from Eliza’s before I pull over on one of the most peaceful streets in the city to try to calm down. It is a circle of Georgian houses surrounding a grass island with trees in the middle. This arrangement is supposed to represent the sun. Just a street away is a crescent of houses that mimics the shape of the moon. The stonework on these houses is decorated with serpents and acorns and sculptured roses, and I can hear birds chirping as I sit in my car.
My hands are shaking as I look through Alice’s identity documents. The first thing I come to is her birth certificate. Now I understand why her NHS records are so scanty. According to this, she was born in Montenegro. The certificate is in what I think must be Montenegrin, with an approved translation of the document into English, paperclipped to the original. The birth was registered when Alice was five days old, on 23 May. That was nine days after my own baby was born. Eliza Wilmot is named as the mother, and Zachary Hunter as the father.
The next thing in the pile is a photocopy of an Application to Register an Overseas Birth of a British Citizen. Eliza and Zac did this when Alice was a year old. The section about the Child’s Parents’ Marital Status shows that Eliza and Zac got married the week before they signed the form. There are copies of their own birth certificates, and one of their marriage certificate too.
There are three receipts. The first is for tracking the application to the Overseas Registration Unit in Milton Keynes. The second is for paying the registration fee. The third is for the purchase of four copies of the birth registration certificate, one of which is in the document wallet. To most people this would seem like overkill, but Zac knew from Jane what a mess citizenship could cause. It isn’t surprising that he and Eliza should take a great deal of trouble to document something so important for Alice, then keep it all in a fireproof box.
The last thing in the document wallet is a photocopy of Alice’s British passport, issued five weeks after the date on the certified registration. It seems they applied for the passport the first instant they could. Maybe Eliza has the actual passport with her, which is why she didn’t bother grabbing this folder of identity documents before she left. It makes me wonder if she is planning to leave the country with Alice.
I check the time on my phone. 11.15. I open my contacts and dial George. ‘It’s Holly,’ I say.
‘You used your real name.’
‘Yes.’ I circle Alice’s photocopied passport photo with my finger. ‘There isn’t much point in not using it now. Are you at work, George?’
‘You didn’t block your number.’
‘Again, would there be any point?’ Carefully, I slide the papers back into the wallet.
‘No,’ he says, after a slight delay.
‘But I didn’t want to.’ I press on the wallet’s snap closure. There is a pleasing click.
‘Good.’
‘I need to access some medical data.’ I turn the wallet upside down and lay it on the passenger seat. ‘Will you help me?’
‘I asked you to call if you needed anything – I meant that. I can meet you at my flat at twelve forty-five.’
A split second after ending the call, my phone rings again. It’s the care home. They say, as gently but firmly as such a thing can be said, that I should come as soon as possible.
I practically fly there, kissing my grandmother’s papery cheek, whispering in her ear that I love her and she’d better wake up soon and start complaining or I will stick her right next to my mother. But even this doesn’t make her respond.
‘She’s been sleepy the past few days.’ Katarina’s voice is hushed. ‘She has taken no food, and very little water. Do you understand?’
‘I think so.’
‘The GP saw her this morning. She seems peaceful. It is, how do you say, a natural process? She is very tired.’
I hold my grandmother’s hand as gently I would an egg, because already it feels as fragile as a shell. ‘Is it another chest infection?’
‘That is what the doctor said, yes. We are giving her things to help with the breathlessness, and for pain. She is comfortable.’
‘Can we just let her sleep, then, as long as she isn’t distressed?’
‘I think that would be best.’
I look up at Katarina. ‘She is going to die soon, isn’t she? She isn’t going to wake up.’
‘I think that is probable.’
Katarina has arranged my grandmother’s white hair on the white pillow, and applied salve to keep her lips from drying out. She has dressed her in the lavender nightgown I bought for Christmas. ‘You are so good, Katarina,’ I say.
I climb onto the bed and lie beside my grandmother, my head next to hers. I tuck the sheets around her more carefully. The gesture triggers a memory of something my grandmother used to do when I was little. Every night after my bath, she would snuggle me into a towel that she’d warmed on the radiator. I drape my arm over her. She seems even more shrunken. I turn my eyes towards Katarina, who is standing on the other side of the bed, radiating sympathy and kindness. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say. ‘There’s something urgent I need to take care of but I don’t want to leave her. How can I?’
Katarina smiles. ‘Your grandmother knows you are with her. She knows this even if you are not in the room. You must live. She told me to tell you that. But you look puzzled, Helen. Am I not making sense with my English?’
I decide to believe Katarina, though I know she may be making this up to be kind. ‘Your English is beautiful.’ I give my grandmother a kiss, and another and another. I get halfway to the door, then run back to give her one more, knowing that it is likely to be the last.
George’s flat is as messy as ever. I think it must be that his head is too full and his life is too busy to be able to cope with cleaning, and this is a position I respect. George is calm in himself but chaotic all around, the reverse of Zac.
While George hurriedly transfers piles of clothes and paper and assorted objects from the sofa to the floor so I can sit, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror above his cluttered chimney piece. There is grass in my hair, which is straggling out of a rat’s nest ponytail. My cheeks are dusty, but with snail trail streaks that I think must be from tears. The bottom of my dress has ripped, so it dangles jaggedly beneath what used to be the hem.
‘Which is the real you?’ I ask him. ‘The spy or the man?’
‘Whichever you like best. Which is the real you? Now, or then?’
‘Both.’ As I say this very true thing, I see that there is no division between my past and my present, between who I was and who I now am, whatever my name may be.
‘Can I change my answer to “both” too?’ George is trying to stop the contents of an overstuffed carrier bag from spilling out. ‘I prefer that answer.’
Before we can say any more, there is the buzz of his doo
rbell. George doesn’t bother to ask who it is before he gives up on the bag and presses the button to let them into the building. A minute later, Maxine is in the room, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, her hair in a low knot at her neck, her face make-up free and so exposed it makes me blink.
The first words out of her mouth are, ‘George, get something to clean Holly’s leg.’
I follow their eyes to my knee, which is covered in dried blood that snakes down to my shoe. Zac had noticed it too, I remember.
As soon as George has disappeared into the bathroom, I say, ‘Are you MI5, Maxine, or GCHQ like George?’
‘MI5, but this is an area where the two agencies are providing mutual assistance. We’re more likely to get a result in this case by cooperating and pooling our collection efforts.’
The blood-red hate I felt for her has vanished. Martin is a more deserving target, but the impulse to hate or blame any of them has gone flat. ‘What do you want from me? You must want something, to be confiding in me after all this time.’
‘It’s not what we want from you. It’s what we can do for you.’
‘Really …’ I say, obviously unconvinced.
She allows herself a small smile. ‘We can help you back into your old life – your contact with Milly shows you can’t continue like this. Not to mention the fact that your set-up in Bath has fallen apart.’
‘I’d noticed.’
‘And yes, since you mention it, there’s something you might be able to help us with, depending on whether they keep Zac. Your hold on him has clearly not diminished.’
‘You can’t seriously think he’ll be out any time soon?’
‘Doubtful. But we don’t need to talk details yet.’
‘We don’t need to talk details ever. I will never have anything to do with Zac again. I certainly won’t be asking him to put me on his prison visitors’ list.’
‘Let’s deal with what you need from us right now.’ She goes on. ‘George is a genius at getting us into the places we want to visit, and exiting with no trace.’
‘So I gather.’
George walks in, clutching a bottle of antiseptic and a handful of cotton wool. He kneels at my feet, dabbing my knee with antiseptic.
‘Thank you.’ My voice is so soft I am taken by surprise. When he’s finished, I say, ‘Can you get into some medical databases? I need to find a baby girl who was born in Montenegro – in Podgorica. The birthday is May eighteenth, 2017.’
‘I need the parents’ names, Holly.’ He sits in his desk chair. ‘By the way, I like saying your real name.’
‘So do I. The parents are Eliza Wilmot and Zachary Hunter.’
He is tapping away on the keyboard. ‘Would you two perhaps be more comfortable on the sofa? Maybe have a little chat together?’
‘Are you trying to say you’re not enjoying having us look over your shoulder, George?’ Maxine says.
‘No. Of course not. It is a pure delight to have you doing that.’
Maxine pulls me away. ‘You look on the verge of collapse. When did you last sleep?’
‘Last night.’
‘For about two minutes, I’m guessing. Lie down on the sofa. Close your eyes for two more. When you open them again, he may have found something.’
I curl up on my side with my back to the room. When I open my eyes again, it is to the smell of coffee. I sit up too quickly, so my head spins. ‘How long have I been asleep?’
Maxine puts a mug in my hand. ‘Twenty-five minutes.’
‘Anything?’ The mug is plain white, and chipped. The heat is comforting.
‘He’s found her.’
‘It was a private hospital.’ George is flipping between multiple windows, all of them in Serbian or Montenegrin. ‘Hunter wasn’t present for the birth, but his name is on the records.’
‘He was in the UK at the time.’ Maxine is speaking to George, but looking at me.
Something occurs to me. ‘Can you access any CCTV for the hospital during that period?’
‘The CCTV from all the main entrances is stored on secure servers in the cloud. I got in, but there’s a gap. Look.’ George switches screens and points to a long list of clickable date entries. ‘There’s nothing from the first of March until the thirtieth of June that year.’
‘That can’t be a coincidence.’ The coffee is too bitter to drink. ‘It’s the sort of thing you could do, George.’
‘Except that I didn’t,’ he says.
‘Not this time, anyway,’ Maxine says. The two of them look so pleased by this bit of spy humour I half-expect them to high-five each other.
I abandon the mug on the floor by the sofa. ‘Inside those four months of no footage there are dates that somebody didn’t want us to notice. We need to find them. When did Eliza return to the UK with Alice?’
‘Twenty-fifth of May. The baby was a week old,’ George says.
I tap my head, as if to help myself think. ‘Why didn’t Eliza tell Zac that Alice was his until she was several months old? Is it possible Alice wasn’t born in Montenegro? That Eliza and Zac made it look that way, somehow?’
‘That would be extremely difficult,’ Maxine says.
‘What about the doctor?’ I am rapping my fingers on George’s desk. ‘I want to try to talk to him. See if he remembers the birth.’
‘Her.’ George gently covers my hand with his, to still it. ‘I’ve made a note of her name but you’re not likely to get far. Patient confidentiality isn’t an exclusively British thing. Plus, do you speak Serbian? Montenegrin?’
‘No. But I’m guessing you do.’
He grabs a phone from his desk, dials, and speaks rapidly in a language that doesn’t sound remotely like any of the ones I know. He cuts off the call and shakes his head. ‘The doctor left a few days in advance of the Easter holidays with her family. Won’t return until the twenty-second of April.’
‘Fuck,’ I say.
‘And I thought you only spoke English,’ he says.
‘Very funny. When did Eliza go to Podgorica?’ I sip from a bottle of water that is somehow in my hand, without remembering how it got there.
George changes to yet another window. ‘She flew in on March twenty-first.’
‘Inside the dates with no CCTV.’ I am calculating. ‘So two months before Alice was born. Why not remain in the UK? Why make a deliberate decision to give birth in Montenegro? Have you found a record of where she was staying?’
‘Not so far.’
I come close to him, peer at the screen. ‘Can you bring up her medical notes?’
His index and middle finger are scrolling down the trackpad.
‘Is that Serbian?’ I say.
‘Yes. I’m no expert on maternity care, but it seems Eliza made one antenatal visit – it was a week before Alice was born.’
‘Just one medical appointment?’ I say. ‘And so late? Are you sure about that?’
‘There’s only one in the notes. They recorded her weight, tested her urine. There are measurements for the baby’s growth. Everything was normal.’
My stomach is tight, remembering how much I loved having those tests, but also remembering that last midwife appointment, when my bump measured on the small side of the normal range. I turn to Maxine. ‘One visit isn’t enough at that stage of pregnancy. Is it?’
Maxine puts her hand on my shoulder. Her voice is quiet, as if she is being forced against her will to talk about death with someone who is about to die. ‘It’s every two weeks after twenty-eight weeks, then every week in the last month. But …’
‘But what?’ My knees feel as if they are made of water, as if they can no longer hold my weight.
‘There’s something called confirmation bias. It’s when you make the evidence fit the story you want. Is that what you’re doing here?’
‘Don’t you see this is all off, Maxine? That something isn’t right?’
I cannot shake my instinct that my baby didn’t die, and they lied to me. I still can’t remember ever seeing her and
holding her and spending time with her, despite all of them telling me that I did. Did Zac somehow get her smuggled into Montenegro, then out again?
‘Holly?’ George puts a hand on my waist, as if he thinks I will buckle without support. ‘Do you need to sit down?’
I am trying to remember if I ever saw any paperwork to prove that my baby died. I have no recollection of any, but everything was a blur, then, and Zac dealt with all the forms.
I shake my head. ‘I’m tired, that’s all.’
I try so hard to re-live the feel of her tiny shape and weight in my arms, and her cold body, with no pink, hard like wood, hard like Jane’s body was. But no matter how I try, there is nothing. If it were true, surely there would be at least a faint shadow of a memory?
‘You’re shaking, Holly.’ Somehow, he has given me to Maxine, whose hand is on my arm. ‘Maxine, can you take her in the kitchen? Maybe find her something to eat?’
‘Your kitchen is disgusting, George,’ Maxine says. ‘You will probably poison us both.’
‘You go,’ I say to her. I am fed up with being told what to do. ‘I’ll be right there.’
Maxine gives me a look, but she sits me on the edge of George’s desk and I soon hear her opening the fridge, searching through cupboards, banging things onto the counters.
George reaches up, pushes a stray lock of hair from my face as I peer at the screen. ‘You okay?’
‘Yes. But look here: “1.6 metapa”.’ I point. ‘Is that Serbian for metres? Is it for Eliza’s height?’
He nods.
‘Is it some sort of mistake?’
‘No mistake, unless the doctor or nurse who wrote it down made it.’
‘Well, it’s wrong. Eliza has to be at least 1.7 metres – she’s four or five centimetres taller than I am.’
A new thought occurs to me. It is something that started in a tiny corner of my brain when I said that deleting the hospital’s CCTV from the cloud was the sort of thing George could do. Such an action is also in Frederick Veliko’s skill set. ‘Can you see if there’s any record of Jane Miller in Montenegro at the same time? Try Jacinda Molinero too.’
I Spy Page 29