“We don’t like to use that term here, Lauren. No one is crazy. Within these walls, we won’t have any of those stigmatised insults. I want you to know that you won’t be judged. Nothing is too unusual for you to talk about. It’s simply words, feelings, brought out here into this safe space so they can be dealt with. Don’t feel you have to hide things from me. I’m going to help you, and being truthful is the first step to recovery.”
Is she being truthful with me, though? she thought. Can I really say whatever I feel and still be safe? How can that be true? Here in my darkest heart, there are things I won’t even tell myself.
“It’s all my fault.”
“Do you think you’re to blame?”
“Yes. If I hadn’t left them, fallen asleep, she wouldn’t have taken them in the first place, would she?”
“Did you see the person who took them?”
“No. But I thought they said they’d caught her.” Did they say that? She was suddenly unsure. If they caught her, did she have the basket with the other babies with her? The memory was slipping away; she grasped at it. There they were by the river, and the stroller was there, returned like a miracle and she felt such joy in that moment before she looked into their eyes and knew the truth of it. There on the bridge, in the rain, it was Jo Harper, she said, we got her. And for a blissful second, she thought she was whole again. But it was already too late, the boys had already been changed.
The doctor made several long notes on her piece of paper. What is it, she thought, what did I say wrong? Lauren leaned forward to see what she was writing but the doctor tipped the clipboard so she couldn’t.
“What did you see when you looked at Morgan and Riley after they were found?”
Lauren shuddered at the memory. She’d looked into the stroller. What did she see?
“I saw the babies. Morgan and Riley.” It wasn’t them.
“Was there anything different about them, that made you think they weren’t your babies?”
Yes, she thought.
“No,” she said. “They looked the same; it was just that first second. I was wrong. I was mistaken.” Whatever’s inside them now, she thought, it’s not Morgan and Riley.
The doctor was writing, writing. What was she writing? Was Lauren saying the wrong thing?
“After what happened to you, and how it affected you, the police decided to refer you to us. Do you know why they would do that?”
Ah, she thought, now this is because I tried to push them into the river. They could have put me in prison for that, but they didn’t, because they think I’m mad. Instead, they’ve sent me here. So perhaps I still have a chance.
“I didn’t want to harm them. I know it was wrong to try to put them back in the water.”
“I hear that you didn’t want to harm them.”
“They’re still somebody’s babies. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Somebody’s babies?”
Shit
“My babies. I meant, they’re my babies. I thought they were the wrong ones for a minute, so I suppose I just … I don’t know. But I do know it was wrong to do that.”
They are not my babies, she thought. They are that woman’s, that horrible woman from the hospital, from the dream. Who wasn’t there. Was she? She must have been there, all along, because now she’s with the police. What is happening to me?
Doctor Summer bent forward to write on the paper on her clipboard. Eventually the pen stopped moving and she smiled at Lauren. Lauren felt very tired.
“We’re going to bring the babies here so that you can be with them.”
“OK. Good,” she said, thinking, no, don’t bring them here.
In trying to control her facial expression, to hide the panic she felt expanding in her chest, her eye began to twitch involuntarily and she pressed her fingertips to it to make it stop. I don’t want to see them, she thought. We need to find the real babies, my Morgan and my Riley. She’s put them inside the bodies of the other ones, the ones from the river. They won’t like being eels, being those fishy creatures. They won’t know how to swim, how to breathe underwater. And, if the woman who took them is with the police, they’ll be all alone. Lost, calling out for their mother.
The doctor was frowning at her. Lauren was sure she hadn’t spoken out loud. Almost completely sure.
I think she lives in the river, that woman.
Don’t say that. Did I say that?
The doctor put down her clipboard and leaned towards Lauren, her hands clasped together. “Let’s keep an open mind,” she said. “We’ll give you all the support you need—the staff here are very experienced with mums and babies. When the boys arrive we’ll make sure you’re all happy and we’ll go from there.”
Lauren swallowed. Her throat felt tight. She needed to keep it together, because she needed to get out of here as quickly as possible and put things right. There might be a deal to be made, with the woman, but she’d do anything. Anything except let it go on—anything except let her keep them. She intended to force the woman to change them back, and she would do whatever it took.
“Relax, Lauren. You’re safe here with us.”
The doctor placed a hand on top of both of hers, where she was gripping them tightly together in her lap. She tried to take long, slow breaths. The doctor spoke softly, and Lauren held her gaze, attempting to seem calm.
“I know that at the moment it’s difficult for you to tell the difference between what is real and what is a symptom of your illness.”
Lauren shook her head. Whatever they thought her illness was, she had to make the doctor think that there’d been a mistake, that she was well. Begging wouldn’t help. Healthy people didn’t beg. “No, I’m fine, I understand now.” Doctor Summer sat back, glanced at Lauren’s twitching leg. Lauren swiped a hand across her sweating forehead, then pressed down on her knee to stop it bouncing.
“That’s good. It sounds like we’re making progress.” As she got up she said, “You can go and wait in your room for a while. I’ll let you know when Patrick gets here with Morgan and Riley.”
“How long do I have to stay here?” said Lauren, thinking, how long until I can start looking for my boys?
The doctor sat down again, perched on the edge of the seat. “Let’s not think in terms of definite timescales at this point.”
“Can I leave? I mean, am I allowed to leave?”
“We’re going to help you, Lauren. We’re going to make sure you can be the best mother to those boys that you can be.”
On some level Lauren understood that this was a turning point. A threat was implied somehow, but she didn’t know the consequences one way or another. She had to play the game, even before she knew what the rules were. She managed to smile at the doctor, when she wanted to scream at her, let me go, let me go, before it’s too late.
“I understand,” she said.
“Good,” said the doctor, and she got up again and pulled out her keys to unlock the heavy door. Lauren would never get used to that sound, the deep clunk of the cylinder turning, the rattle of the key chains. The doctor left the door open, and Lauren thought for a moment she might be able to walk out on her own, unchaperoned, but Pauline came in after a second to take her back to her cell. The slow walk down the corridor felt like she was on her way to the gallows, a blank-faced attendant at her side. Lauren watched her own feet, trudging in the ugly black plastic clogs, but looked up when she heard the squeak of someone else’s clogs coming the other way. A woman was shuffling towards them, pushing a stroller containing a baby that was crying weakly. She too had a guard at her side, and kept her dulled eyes down until the very last moment. When she looked up at Lauren, the woman’s gaze in her sunken face was confused, and devoid of hope. Lauren wondered if that was how she looked, too.
Back in the bedroom, with its view of the grounds and the high fence in the distance, the guard and the prisoner sat in the armchairs.
“Shall I put the telly on?” asked Pauline.
Lauren nodded. Then, “Do you know how long Patrick will be with the babies?”
“Sorry, flower. I don’t. Shouldn’t be too long a wait, though. You must be looking forward to seeing them.”
Lauren pointed her face at Escape to the Country, and told herself to be calm, normal, like nothing was different. She felt a twitch in her cheek and rubbed at it, tried to control her breathing. She was afraid she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t have those things near to her, and pretend they were her own. She missed her boys so much.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Hope Park Estate had ancient stone pillars on each side of the entrance, but the blank metal security gate was an incongruous modern addition. Harper had driven Patrick and the twins from the hospital; his car was still at the riverside where he’d left it earlier. She drove up close to the intercom, reached out and pressed the buzzer under the blue and white NHS logo.
“Hello?” said a nasal voice, emitted from a grille.
“Detective Sergeant Joanna Harper, and Patrick Tranter. We’re here to see Lauren Tranter. The twins are with us. We’re expected.”
“Look at the camera, please,” said the unseen doorkeeper. Patrick leaned over so that the security procedure could be completed. The camera swivelled on its little stalk, pointing itself at their faces and making a digital shutter-sound to indicate that it had recorded their image. The gate juddered open at an agonising rate, revealing the leafy surrounds within, one centimetre at a time.
Three or four huge old oak trees stuck out of a lawn the size of a farmer’s field. The richly landscaped setting gave an illusion of easy affluence, but the electric gates and high perimeter fence, barely masked by low shrubs, told the real story. This was a place of refuge, for those in crisis, but it was also, effectively, a prison. As Harper drove towards the car park she could see people in twos and threes dotted about the grounds, pushing buggies or playing with babies in the shade. Each patient, without exception, was accompanied by a nurse in a white tunic.
The unit itself was a low, modern building—what Harper’s mother would have described as a monstrosity of concrete and glass. Nearby, what must once have been a grand country house made the new structure even uglier by comparison. The older building stood a short distance away, handsome but neglected, the paint on the double front door peeling, one or two panes in the leaded windows cracked or missing and replaced with sheets of ply. Encircling the old house was a metal fence, the type they used to fence off building sites, each panel held in place at the bottom by two concrete blocks. On the gabled roof, dark windows stood out like eyes.
Patrick crouched in the car park, struggling to reassemble the stroller. He wrestled the car seats away from the seatbelts in the back of the car and slotted them in place on the frame. As he worked, the boys regarded their hassled father with the same uncanny calmness they had possessed since the disappearance, though their hands occasionally waved in the air. They both made the sea-bird sound a few times, tossing it back and forth between them, copying each other.
When both boys were clipped in, Patrick leaned over the top twin, dressed in yellow.
“Where’s your smiles, Morgie?” He tickled the baby under the chin, rather self-consciously. “You got any smiles for Daddy? No?”
Briefly he bent to examine Riley, who lifted his eyes to meet his father’s with an expression as sombre as his brother’s.
“You too, huh? Well, I guess we’ve all had a long day.”
Wearily he pushed the stroller towards a big sign that said VISITORS THIS WAY. Harper followed on.
At the external door, another buzzer, and the same woman who had spoken through the intercom at the gate asked for their names again. They were let through the first door, which clicked itself locked behind them. Another locked glass door led through to the corridor, but for now they were trapped in the vestibule. A woman with grey hair and huge glasses appeared at a hatch, behind thick glass. She moved her lips but there was no sound.
“Can’t hear you,” said Patrick, tapping his ear to demonstrate.
A speaker crackled into life, the same voice they’d heard outside, with the same grating nasal squeak, slightly fuzzy and not quite in synch with the woman’s mouth. “Forgot the button,” she said, smiling. “Sorry. Here are your badges.”
Under the hatch, a tray popped open and Harper peered inside. There were two name badges that said VISITOR. She handed one to Patrick.
“Are either of you carrying any weapons?” asked the woman, looking at Harper.
“No,” said Harper and Patrick together.
“Any drugs, prescription or otherwise?”
“Um, paracetamol,” said Harper. “Does that count?”
“Yes. Are they in the bag?”
“Yes.”
“Can you put them in the tray, please. What about in the stroller?”
“Only the changing bag,” said Patrick. “Nappies, you know. That kind of thing.”
The woman grimaced, as if nappies and that kind of thing could easily constitute contraband.
“Can you leave the bag, please, sir? I need to check it. Just pop it in the tray. And both of you, your phones, wallets and keys if you don’t mind. You can collect them on the way out.”
After everything was loaded into the tray the inner door buzzed and clicked to indicate it was unlocked.
In the corridor, the receptionist said, “I’ve a note here from Doctor Summer. She wants to see you, Mr Tranter, before you take the boys to see Lauren.”
Harper waited while Patrick spoke to the psychiatrist. She’d offered to watch the boys but was secretly glad when he said he’d take them in with him—the way they stared was beginning to unnerve her. She was on the verge of asking if they’d always done that or if it was a new thing, but the question seemed inappropriate, under the circumstances.
After a few minutes, a buzzer sounded somewhere further down the corridor and a nurse, a woman in her forties with lots of thick dark hair piled above a pleasing face, emerged from behind a heavy door. Big eyes and high cheekbones, she could have been a model in her youth. She marched smartly past where Harper sat and knocked on the door of the counselling room into which the doctor had taken Patrick and the twins.
“I’ll take you down,” she said, holding the door open for Patrick to come out with the stroller. He got its wide wheels stuck a few times before succeeding.
Doctor Summer followed Patrick into the corridor. As the door to the therapy room was closed and locked behind them by the nurse, the doctor peered at each boy in turn, giving them a little squeeze.
“They’re so chilled, aren’t they?” she said. “Such good boys.”
Then she smiled and started to walk away.
“Aren’t you coming, too?” said Patrick to the doctor.
“No, but I’ll be watching.” She nodded towards the CCTV camera mounted next to the smoke alarm in the ceiling, “and there will be two nurses there with you, for support if it’s needed.”
Patrick watched her walk away, his wide-eyed expression that of a lost little boy.
“Do you want me there?” asked Harper, and he nodded.
As she followed the nurse, the father and the stroller down the long, wide corridor Harper noticed the art—huge canvases, each of them covered with rectangles of primary colours in different formations. The white walls and the large paintings made it feel a bit like a gallery. There was a stillness here, too, a sense that etiquette required a certain kind of reverence, and that all behaviour was being judged and examined, and found wanting.
A little further on something in one of the rooms hit the wall with a force that made the frames of the screwed-on art rattle.
“Jesus,” said Patrick, “is that …” He looked in desperation at Harper, seeming to ask, it’s not Lauren, is it?
“No, no, nothing to worry about,” said the nurse, lifting her radio handset from her belt and holding it to her lips. “Room seven, assistance please,” she said brightly, and smiled at Harp
er as she caught her eye. Something slammed against the wall again, harder this time, and two nurses appeared, running up the corridor, keys jangling, shouldering their way into the cell.
“What was that?” asked Patrick.
“Here we are,” said the nurse, as they arrived at a door marked Room Eleven. She knocked on it, then opened the hatch and peered through. The sound of keys in the lock from inside, and the door swung inwards, to reveal another nurse, not nearly as friendly. “Lauren?” called the nurse. “There’s someone here to see you, sweetheart.”
Lauren sat in a chair next to the window. She looked small, wary, hunched up. Her legs were splattered with dried mud from the riverbank. The nurse who had got up to open the door sat down next to Lauren, but lightly, as if ready to leap up again. Lauren raised her eyes.
“Oh,” she said, pointing at the stroller, “oh, no. I thought I could do it, but it’s too soon.”
She stood up out of her seat and tried to back away, pressing herself into the bars on the window, crossing her arms over her body, eyes large and scared. Patrick took a step inside the room.
“Honey,” he said, “what’s wrong?”
“No, Patrick, please, take them away,” she said, “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“But Lauren,” said Patrick, as she started to shake her head and repeat “no, no, no,” getting louder, and the nurse in the room formed a human barrier, taking up all the space between him and his wife.
“Let’s try again later, shall we?” said Lauren’s nurse to Patrick’s, as together they walked him backwards out of the door and the nurse inside shut it, hard. The locks turned loudly in the silence of the corridor.
In the stroller, the babies seemed startled, but then their little faces screwed up and they started to cry.
“Oh, don’t cry, shh,” he said to them, and wiggled the stroller back and forth. They didn’t stop. It was almost mechanical; insistent and relentless. Each of them filled the gaps where the other breathed, creating a continuous, ululating shriek at the frequency of a band saw going through metal.
Little Darlings Page 17