by Sam Hayes
Before raw emotion gripped him completely, Robert’s composed lawyer side kicked in, taking control of his flailing senses, preventing him from ripping up the letters, yelling out in anger and marching down to the shop to confront Erin immediately.
Robert coolly read through some more letters. Reciprocal email addresses were mentioned and Erin talked of visiting an internet café to contact Baxter. Robert snorted as he noticed that they were web-based email addresses. No wonder, then, that he hadn’t found any suspicious messages on Erin’s computer. She’d been one step ahead there. And not all of the letters were dated, so it was difficult to fit them into any kind of order or to determine which was the most recent. But judging by what was being discussed, how this man was sympathising with Erin about Ruby’s troubles at school, and because some letters had been sent to Erin’s shop, Fresh As A Daisy, he was able to conclude without doubt that this relationship had continued since their marriage. Four or five minutes to go, he reminded himself.
Robert made a mental note of the address in Brighton and consigned the matter to a professional compartment in his mind, as he might for a client at work. He gathered all the cards and letters in the correct order and replaced them in the tin. He hesitated before locking it, staring hard at the collection of keepsakes Erin couldn’t bear to part with. He randomly pulled one of them from the bundle, the lawyer in him unwilling to pass over conclusive evidence. He snapped the lid shut, turned the key and replaced the box behind the drawer just as Erin called out that she was home.
Swiftly, he returned to his own study, stashed the stolen letter inside a file and opened up a couple of documents on his laptop.
‘I thought you might like this.’ Erin was suddenly behind Robert, passing him a glass of wine, sinking her fingers into his shoulders. He groaned, completely unable to sip his drink as his emotions battled over Erin. He hated her for being so deceitful yet his body adored the deep massage. ‘Why don’t you quit work now and come downstairs. I’ve got salmon for dinner.’
Against his better judgement, Robert allowed his body to loosen under her touch. With every stroke of her strong fingers delving into his overwrought muscles and tendons, he began to relax. Already he was starting to doubt his judgement. It was his Erin, for heaven’s sake. He loved her. He adored her. She wouldn’t betray him, would she? That he had doubted her integrity made him unable to take her touch without each stroke stirring his guilt. Erin was a good woman, who had struggled to survive as a single mother. Now she was working hard to build up her new business and raise Ruby as best she could. He sighed. He had surely read this all wrong.
Finally, as he greedily drank in Erin’s touch, Robert recalled the promise he had made to himself after Jenna died. He couldn’t let it happen again.
He turned to face Erin and pulled her face down to his. ‘Can the salmon wait for a while?’
Their kiss was long and slow, unlike any they had shared recently. Erin tasted of wine with a hint of toothpaste; smelled of herbs laced with shampoo. As she collapsed onto him, Robert couldn’t help it that Erin’s close-up face blurred and then briefly refocused into that of Jenna.
‘You’re all sweaty.’ She grinned, unbuttoning his shirt. ‘How about I scrub you clean in the shower?’
Robert allowed a brief smile to whip across his mouth, pushed as hard as he could to shift the notion that his wife was having an affair. He stared deep into Erin’s eyes – pale blue discs with a dreamy coating urging him to give in. He felt his body respond but checked it by standing up, easing Erin off his legs. Like a recovering alcoholic reaching for the bottle, Robert couldn’t fend off the doubt. He had seen the evidence.
‘I’ve got work to do. There’s a complicated case.’ He turned away, knowing that if he stared any longer into Erin’s eyes he would succumb. ‘I’m sorry.’ Robert shifted files around on his desk, pretending to search for something until she left the room. She banged the door so hard that Robert felt the anger shake through his feet and up into his heart.
He dropped down into his chair and retrieved the random letter that he had stolen from Erin’s tin. He skimmed through the scrawl as best he could but the impossible writing – it was Erin pouring out her feelings again as if her hand could barely cope with such a task – and the years of subsequent crumpling had ensured that reading the incomplete letter as a whole was virtually impossible. And it wasn’t addressed to anyone either.
‘. . . If you knew . . . safe at least . . . that tragic . . . my baby back . . .’
‘Erin, Erin . . .’ he sighed, allowing his head to drop back, his eyes to close. His wife had transformed into a puzzle. Too much of his life had been wasted on obsessing about Jenna and her every movement, not to mention the tragic result. He didn’t think he would survive if it happened again.
TWELVE
At the hospital they X-rayed my skull because I’d fallen, checked me for concussion and bandaged my head. I was heavily sedated for twenty-four hours and talked gibberish to the police officers as they interviewed me.
In those early hours – the most vital stage of the entire investigation, they said – I made no sense whatsoever. The kidnapper, I was told, was putting more distance between me and my baby with every second. I thought about this, in my chaotic mind, and it didn’t seem to mean anything. Then they informed me that Andy, my husband, was at his parents’ house, Sheila and Don’s. I remember wondering why he didn’t come to see me in hospital, remember wanting him to hold me, remember the vomit each time I was given a sip of water. Really, that first day was a blur.
The next evening, Natasha minus thirty hours, I was driven home by two police officers, PC Miranda Hobbs and Detective Inspector George Lumley. She was nice but he made eyes at me as if I was the worst mother in the world. PC Hobbs made tea for me and Lumley wired my telephone while I sat and watched, glancing at his broad, experienced back and then at the empty baby bouncer.
PC Hobbs stayed with me until her shift ended because Andy now couldn’t be located and they didn’t want to leave me alone. The policewoman regularly telephoned Sheila’s house but was simply told that Andy had disappeared.
Disappeared, I remember saying over and over until PC Miranda had to put a tea towel over my mouth to make me quiet. How can so many people disappear? But Andy was home by the next morning, dirty, drunk and sobbing in the doorway before falling to the floor. We cried together on the carpet while a fresh pair of police officers hovered over us, lunging for the telephone every time it rang. Over Andy’s shoulder, as we hung on to each other, I spotted Natasha’s hairbrush. She had a lot of hair from the day she was born, and would gurgle as I swept the soft baby brush across her scalp. I crawled across the floor and picked it up.
‘Don’t, love,’ Andy said.
I pushed the bristles to my nostrils and sucked in a faint whiff of Natasha. I plucked out a few wispy brown hairs. I still have them in an envelope. There’s nothing else left of my baby.
Sheila and Don arrived next, a couple of hours before the journalists that camped in the street. Sheila brought a casserole covered with tin foil. Don crushed me in his arms while Sheila stared at me, shaking her head, rubbing her boy Andy’s shoulders. I thought: you’re lucky. You still have your baby.
Sheila had never liked me, rather tolerated me for Andy’s sake. Not that he was anything special or much to be proud of, just a car mechanic. But Sheila cherished him and nothing was ever good enough for him, especially me, and now I had proved her right because I had lost her only grandchild.
Sheila took control. She sent the lady police officer, who was supposed to be looking after me, down to the corner shop to fetch one hundred tea bags, two pounds of sugar and six pints of milk. ‘There’ll be a lot of brewing these next few days. Best be prepared.’
Within minutes, Sheila had removed all trace of Natasha from the living room of our tiny terraced house. I watched her stuffing furry animals, bright plastic toys and a rag book into a bin liner. Most of the toys had never been tou
ched. Natasha was only two months old and could barely hold anything yet. Sheila dismantled the baby bouncer that Andy had bought from Mothercare. I’d hung a couple of mobiles above where Natasha used to lie when I changed her nappy but Sheila made quick work of plucking them off the ceiling.
Our lounge was soon transformed back into a grown-up domain. Not a trace of anything to do with babies remained. Natasha’s toy box was stashed in the loft, and Sheila rearranged the chairs in our tiny front room. Then she took down our fake Christmas tree and boughs of tinsel that I’d hung when Natasha suddenly ceased her bawling and slept greedily. Sheila left our decorations in the street for the dustmen to collect. ‘No more Christmas,’ she proclaimed, brushing her hands together.
At 2 a.m. Andy and I were woken from our fitful sleep by a phone call. Natasha minus thirty-eight hours. There had been a sighting. A van driver had been spotted with a crying baby at a motorway service station. An elderly couple, travelling south from their New Year break in Scotland, had noticed a man and screaming baby going into the gents’ toilets. They thought it odd but did nothing until they approached the Midlands and heard about the abduction on a local radio station. They called the police and that was it. Nothing more happened. The man was never located.
I hated knowing that Natasha had been seen screaming. She was screaming for me. Screaming, screaming all of the time for me as she stiffened and arced her body in uncontrollable wails.
They gave me some tablets at the hospital to dry up my milk. It didn’t work. My breasts were hard lumpy packages fighting against each other in my bra and it hurt to put my arms by my sides. In the bathroom, with PC Miranda back on duty and waiting outside the door, I leaned over the sink and let them drip. I thought, what a waste, all that milk going down the drain. The smell of it made me cry so then there were tears and milk in the basin, like a massive weeping of my body.
PC Miranda had to get help to shove the door open because I’d flopped down behind it. Together Miranda, Don and Andy pushed against the door and shifted my slack body across the bathroom carpet. Andy helped me to my feet and I began to laugh hysterically. I didn’t have my top on.
A few hours later there was another sighting. Hertfordshire Police had received two calls from motorists reporting a hitchhiker on the M1 southbound. A small figure, so bundled and hooded against the winter cold it was impossible to tell if it was male or female, was seen carrying a swaddled baby down the motorway slip road while thumbing a lift. PC Miranda held my hand as she told me that by the time Hertfordshire Police cruised up and down the motorway, the suspect had disappeared. But she smiled and warmed my frozen heart a little when she said that the surrounding fields and villages were being scoured and tracker dogs had been brought in. The police in neighbouring counties had been alerted too, and everything was being done and it wouldn’t be long now, PC Miranda said, swallowing, averting her eyes, wouldn’t be long now before there was more news.
‘Do you have children?’ I asked. Perhaps she’d got two, could spare one. She nodded.
‘He’s four. His grandma looks after him when I’m working.’
I’m glad PC Miranda didn’t lie about having a child. I needed doses of normality in my surreal existence, like sticky sweet medicine. I don’t know how I’d have got through those first few days without PC Miranda. Nowadays, I never see her.
Detective Inspector George Lumley returned to our house on Tuesday morning, Natasha minus three days, and said that he wanted us on the telly. His face was brown and wrinkled and he smelled of cigarette smoke. Even though I later learned he was only forty, he looked a lot older. He told us that from the evidence gathered so far, they had concluded that the snatching of Natasha was most likely a spur of the moment incident rather than a premeditated act and the perpetrator was, in all probability, becoming rather tired and fed up of a crying baby.
A number of cases, he reported to Andy and me as we sat miserably on our settee while he towered big and experienced in front of us, a number of cases conclude satisfactorily after a plea from the parents. Only a year previously, a toddler had been abducted from a nursery and subsequent to a tearful plea by the mother was found two days later in a McDonald’s restaurant, playing happily in the ball pit. I thought of Natasha dumped in a place no one would ever find her. Smothered, strangled.
‘Will you do it then? A press conference?’
Andy said we would.
I’ve got a new client today. She told me her name was Sarah when she telephoned but wouldn’t give me her last name or number. She sounded very young and very shy. I’m half expecting her not to show up but as I’m preparing the tea tray – I always offer my clients tea and a biscuit – there is a knock on my front door. I pull the elastic band out of my long hair, run my forefingers under each of my eyes and tuck in my blouse. When I open the door I see a young Asian girl of probably no more than fifteen.
‘Sarah?’
She nods and looks up and down the street before stepping into my small living room. She keeps swallowing, as if she is fighting against being sick. I don’t take my eyes off her but smile and tell her to sit. I always do it in the living room, the client in the armchair, me on the sofa, the tea tray a bridge of comfort between us.
They are always nervous the first time, until they realise that it doesn’t hurt and I am usually right. But I’m careful with what I tell them. I have a responsibility, a kind of cosmic accountability that if too much gets said, the balance sheet doesn’t add up.
‘So what’s your real name?’ I ask. ‘Tea?’ I pour her a cup anyway because it seems that two questions have overloaded the girl and she remains silent. Only after I have taken a few sips and half a digestive does she speak.
‘If you were that good, you’d know.’
Her eyes are black globes but there’s no lustre in them. She’s a troubled girl. I know that much from her phone call and, anyway, most people who come to see me have problems. ‘You’ll waste most of your session if you make me guess.’
‘Just call me Sarah.’ Sarah bows her head and locks her fingers together. The backs of her hands have the residue of beautiful henna tattoos. Her nails are painted cerise.
‘What would you like to know then, Sarah?’ I haven’t decided what to use yet. Tarot? The crystal ball? What does she suit? Maybe the runes, or should I take a look at her palms?
She sits perfectly still, staring at her fingers, her long dark hair falling across her face. She’s like this for about four or five minutes then she pulls her head up, as if a great weight is attached to her forehead, and she stares at me with huge cinnamon eyes.
‘I’m pregnant and I want to know if it’s a boy or a girl because if it’s a boy then Father won’t kill me so much.’ She sucks in a lungful of air because saying those words has winded her. ‘He’ll hate me but he won’t kill me.’
I don’t miss a beat. I’m used to it now, hearing about babies. It’s been thirteen years, after all. Life goes on. Other people get pregnant. Other babies have died since mine. I’m not news any more.
‘Then it’s a boy,’ I say, having to suck in air too because now I’m being a counsellor not a psychic and that’s something I never do. Damn this Sarah girl. ‘Does your mother know?’
Sarah’s head drops again. ‘She’s dead.’
‘Let’s ask her what she thinks about all this then.’
‘No, no!’ Sarah falls off her chair onto her knees and covers her face with her hands. ‘The shame,’ she wails over and over.
‘But if she’s dead . . .’ I was going to say, then does it matter, but for Sarah of course it matters. Her mother’s dead and she’s pregnant.
‘How old are you?’
‘Fifteen.’
Two years older than Natasha then.
‘When did your mother die?’
‘When she gave birth to me.’ Sarah wipes her face on her sleeve and sits down again. ‘Why are you asking me all these questions? Are you a fraud? You should know.’
‘I o
nly know what comes to me, Sarah.’ Now it’s my turn to get on my knees. I take her left hand and turn it over. She has six child lines, three of them jagged and broken. I take a risk and place my hand on her belly. Just by the feel of her I can tell she’s probably nearly six months gone. Easy to hide under loose summer clothes and her trim young body carries the bump well. But I can feel the baby inside; know instantly it’s a girl.
‘It’s definitely a boy.’ I have to turn away as Sarah’s face loses some of the pain she walked in with.
‘Really?’ She holds her belly and smiles. ‘If I tell Father that I will name the baby after him, then in time he may forgive me. But I will not be able to marry Farhad, as he had planned. No boy will want me now.’
I take my tarot pack, shuffle and hand Sarah the cards. ‘Cut them.’ Anything to break up this psychiatric consultation. When she’s done, I lay five cards out in a cross beside the tea tray. Death, the Fool, the Prince of Cups, the three of Swords and Strength. It comes to me in a flash, without the cards.
‘You love him, don’t you?’
Sarah nods, her cinnamon eyes syrup-coated.
‘But he’s white and your father won’t allow you to see anyone but the boy he has arranged for you to marry?’
She nods again. I’m angry at myself because this is too easy. I’m not telling her fortune, I’m being her mother. I offer her a biscuit.
‘What do the cards mean? I’m scared that death is there.’ Sarah points to the array, showering biscuit crumbs over the Fool.
‘Death? He’s nothing to be scared of. He means new beginnings too, you know. Or perhaps the death of everything you’ve known in your life so far.’
The press conference was arranged for the next day at a hotel in the centre of Northampton. The speed of everything amazed me. Within hours of the announcement, reporters and TV cameramen converged from all over the country on my home town. It took me the next twenty-four hours just to wash and dress. My limbs were filled with wet sand and my will to even move around the house was weighted with lead. I couldn’t believe that all these people had come just to see me.