by Sam Hayes
FOURTEEN
Louisa cancelled her meeting in Birmingham, but only because it was Robert. Anyone else would have taken their place in her diary.
He was waiting at Euston Station, holding a half-drunk cup of coffee and looking as if he hadn’t washed or slept for two days. If it wasn’t for the designer sunglasses and Mercedes keys he was clutching, he would have looked like just another homeless person.
Louisa’s long stride scissored her between impatient passengers and she was soon standing beside Robert.
Their conversation the previous afternoon, when Robert had called her from the blustery Promenade in Brighton, had been short but intense enough for Louisa to know that this was more than Robert speculating about his wife’s honesty. This was history repeating itself.
Without begging or divulging any need other than business, he had coldly requested that they meet. He’d said that he wanted to hire her professionally.
‘So,’ she said in her usual crisp, uncomplicated voice. ‘Here we are.’
There was a pause, a shutting out of the station’s mid-morning noise, each of them noticing their hearts kick into the same rhythm before a brief embrace. Robert could hardly bear the brush of her thick hair on his cheek. She was wearing it loose today, the russet waves spilling on her shoulders. She smelled of raspberries.
‘Here we are.’ Robert laughed and looked away, turning on his heel and wiping his palm over his stubble. He knew he was a sight, even more so in Louisa’s fresh light. ‘My car’s downstairs. Shall we go?’
They both knew it was pointless talking about it until they were somewhere quiet, a place where their voices could cut cleanly through the summer humidity without either of them having to say pardon or frown or cup their ear. Robert only wanted to go through this once. Even the hooded interior of the Mercedes provided a less than suitable environment. Louisa moved a chiffon scarf from the passenger seat as she got in.
‘Erin’s?’
Robert nodded, half expecting her to smell it as if it was a leading clue in the investigation he was hoping she would agree to take on. How to present it to her so that she didn’t jump to conclusions, assume things were heading the same way as with Jenna, he didn’t know.
‘I wasn’t sure if you’d even answer my call.’ They both slipped on their sunglasses as Robert accelerated onto the street.
‘I nearly didn’t.’ She briefly touched his hand as it rested on the gearstick.
The wine bar was cool and dark, barely open, all the tables and chairs perfectly positioned. They didn’t want to eat, for which the waitress seemed thankful, and they sat on a leather settee at the rear of the premises. An air-conditioning unit buzzed overhead. They drank chilled house white.
‘I know what you’re thinking but you’re wrong.’ Robert put his glass on the marble-topped table and leaned his forearms on his knees. Louisa sat next to him, her pencil-slim legs crossed. Her cropped linen trousers rose up to expose her smooth knees.
‘You have to admit, Rob, that you’re an unusually suspicious person.’
‘And wasn’t I right about Jenna?’
‘That message on her phone proved nothing.’ Louisa sighed but it was lost in the hum of the air conditioning. Sucked up and recycled.
‘It proved she was meeting a man without my knowledge or—’
‘Does Erin know that you’re here with me?’
‘Of course not.’
Louisa shrugged, her palms wide and upturned. She reached for her wine. ‘Then she has as much reason to accuse you of having an affair with me as you had with Jenna.’
‘The difference is that we’re not having an affair, are we?’ He paused as their hearts realigned. Another early customer passed by on the way to the toilets. ‘Anyway, I don’t see what that’s got to do with me hiring you for a job. Are you willing to work for me or not?’ Robert took a long sip of his wine, chilling his lips, his thoughts.
‘Just like old times, eh?’ Louisa laughed. ‘Except I have a niggling feeling that it’s not documents that need serving or a missing person you want tracing.’
Robert hadn’t yet told her what Baxter King had said. Just that it was urgent, that he needed her. That they had to meet.
‘In a way, I do want you to locate a missing person. Someone I once knew. Thought I knew,’ he added. ‘I’m having trouble getting Ruby’s birth certificate—’
‘Yes, I know that, Rob. You already told me. I regularly use an agency that can run a nationwide search for Ruby’s details on pretty limited information. I expect you’ve just been in touch with the wrong register office or something silly. Next problem?’
‘It’s Erin.’ He sighed heavily. ‘She’s not being honest with me. The thing is, Ruby’s new school have called several times and sent notes home about returning Ruby’s enrolment papers. Erin’s done absolutely nothing about it.’
‘You said yourself that she was never keen for Ruby to go to the new school.’
‘Oh, but she was.’ Robert laughed incredulously. ‘It was Erin who sent off for the prospectus and made the appointment with the headmistress in the first place. It was only when the final, more official side of things needed wrapping up that she cooled right off. And even mentioning the school trip to Vienna is—’
‘Like banging your head against a brick wall.’
Robert noticed Louisa’s wedding ring, a plain gold band, glinting in the yellow lamplight. He nodded. ‘Exactly.’
‘The poor woman’s probably so wrapped up in running her business, not to mention her daughter’s troubles, that she’s simply overlooked what you call “the official side of things”.’
‘That’s why I got Tanya to sort out the passport for the trip. She fell at the first hurdle. No birth certificate.’
‘Rob, if I get this certificate for you, will it help? Will you let go?’ Louisa put a hand on his shoulder.
‘This time yesterday, I would have said yes, that getting the certificate would make me believe that over the years, Erin had lost her copy, been too busy to get another – even that she was an overprotective parent and that’s why she won’t let Ruby go to Vienna. I could have handled that.’ Robert reached for his wine glass. Louisa’s hand fell from his shoulder and he felt a cool patch where her warmth had been. ‘But now, in light of what I found out yesterday, I’m not sure about anything.’
Louisa flagged the waitress and they soon had a whole bottle of chilled wine sitting on the table. ‘You’d better tell me everything then,’ she sighed, trying not to sound as though she had heard it all before. She opened her leather folder, slid a silver pen from its holder and positioned her hand to write.
‘No judgement? No interruptions?’
Louisa nodded, her mass of hair falling forward. She tucked it behind her ears and unconsciously slipped the pen between her lips.
‘As I told you, I drove to Brighton yesterday. I’d gone to find a man named Baxter King because over the last few years he’s been communicating with Erin by letter and email. I found this out when I was looking in Erin’s office for Ruby’s birth certificate, in case she had an old copy that she’d forgotten about. In fact, it was Ruby herself who showed me where her mother kept such papers although I didn’t find much except an expired passport of Erin’s and these letters from Baxter King.
‘They showed him to be the proprietor of a flower shop in Brighton, King’s Flowers, and so I went to see him. The letters were quite suggestive in places. King expressed his deep love for Erin and how he missed her and that she should prepare the bed for when he comes to stay.’
‘Oh, Rob,’ Louisa whispered but he didn’t hear.
‘Anyway, it turns out that King’s clearly not involved with Erin romantically.’ Robert’s tone lifted and small laughter lines formed beside his tired eyes. ‘He’s gay.’
‘You see, there’s always an explanation for—’
‘You’ve not heard the good bit yet. Erin actually lived with King and his partner – who apparently died in
a fire – for a number of years and before that she lived in London. King caught her stealing his flowers, learned her sorry story, took pity on her and tucked her and Ruby under his arm. They were one, albeit unusual, happy family.’
‘And?’ Louisa said, having only jotted down a couple of notes so far. Robert finished his second glass of wine and poured another.
‘And,’ he continued, ‘it turns out that before her career in flower-stealing, Erin earned a living by opening her legs.’
He swiftly downed the third glass of wine and leaned back in the deep leather settee, draping his arms wide over the cushions. He levered an ankle onto his knee and stared sideways at Louisa, waiting for her reaction, waiting for her to tell him he was mistaken or paranoid or making something out of nothing.
Her words didn’t come. She sat stiffly, silver pen hovering over the paper, the tune of the air-conditioning unit and the chatter of more customers taking away the need for words. Finally, Robert added, ‘My wife was a prostitute, Louisa. A hooker. A whore. A call girl.’
Robert watched as her expression toggled through various forms of shock, although none of them seemed appropriate. Already, having unloaded the heavy information, Robert’s breathing became easier and his thoughts stirred in the sump of his mind. Sharing this news with Louisa, he hoped, was a safeguard against it all happening again.
‘Whoa,’ she finally said. ‘That’s a pretty serious allegation to make about your wife. Do you think it’s true?’ Louisa reached for her wine.
Robert shrugged. ‘If I say yes, you’ll tell me I’m being paranoid. If I say no, which is probably what any sane person would do if they wanted to preserve their marriage, then I’m going to wonder forever what else she’s hiding.’
‘She mightn’t be hiding anything.’
‘See? I knew you’d say that.’ Robert pushed his fingers through his already messed hair. Dark and unruly, without styling, it made him appear like a rock star ten years past his prime.
‘OK, let’s say Erin was a prostitute, that she did earn her living that way. As a single mother struggling to bring up a young child, she probably didn’t have a choice.’
Suddenly, Robert wished he had met Erin a decade before, even before Ruby had been born. Then he would have had a chance of saving her and being Ruby’s real father. ‘So you’re saying that all young mothers should turn to prostitution to support their kids?’
‘Of course not, Rob, but in this case, maybe that’s what happened. She was obviously desperate. And by the sound of it, she was desperate enough to eventually break away from such a life when she went to live in Brighton and took up stealing instead.’
Robert pulled a face that implied he considered that scenario possible but it quickly transformed into one that looked as if he had slammed his finger in the car door. ‘What about Ruby?’ he asked, as if Louisa had all the answers. ‘Do you think she knows what her mother did for a living?’
Louisa shook her head impatiently and fished her ringing phone from her bag. She glanced at the caller ID, sighed and then switched off the phone without answering. Robert liked it that she considered him more important than whoever was calling. ‘Who knows? It depends on how old the kid was at the time.’
‘King said Ruby was young, only three, I think, when Erin came to Brighton. She wouldn’t have understood exactly but she would have picked up feelings, vibes. God, she was probably in the house while it went on.’ Then Robert went pale as the realisation struck him, pretty much at the same time as Louisa thought of it too. It was she who voiced their shared suspicion.
‘Don’t think like that, Rob. It’s hardly Ruby’s fault, is it? She’s your daughter now, and her father, whoever he was, probably doesn’t even know he has a daughter.’
‘Yup, he paid his fifty quid, got what he wanted and delivered Ruby deep inside Erin.’ Robert let out a pained moan that caused several customers to look over. He leaned forward, head between his knees, feeling sick. How could he ever look at his stepdaughter again without seeing her as the by-product of some long-forgotten, easy transaction? How could he ever touch his wife again without wondering how many men had gone there before? He stood and started towards the gents. ‘I need your help, Louisa, to get to the bottom of this without trashing another marriage. I want to hire you full-time, professionally, until this mess is sorted out.’
As he strode to the toilet, leaving Louisa pondering his demand, he wondered how committed she would actually be to helping him save his marriage. He also considered: was hiring Louisa, knowing her do-whatever-it-takes work ethic as he did, any more moral than Erin selling her body? He believed it was.
When he returned, Louisa said, ‘I’ll need a place to stay, a car, access to the internet, five hundred pounds up front plus another thousand to cover the job I’ll have to cancel.’ She removed her dark-rimmed glasses, uncovering her unnaturally green eyes so that Robert had no option but to agree.
An hour later, Robert checked Louisa into a hotel, watching her runner’s legs stride the patterned carpet of the foyer as she telephoned her previous hotel and arranged to have her luggage sent to London. He didn’t think he should accompany her to her room but, as she was talking on her mobile and he didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye, he continued to walk by her side. He glanced at his watch. He wouldn’t be missed yet.
FIFTEEN
It’s cold; so cold that my baby and I have become one, wrapped up together in my dirty parka. I press her face into my neck and feel her tiny breaths on my skin. She smells milky and sweet, her eyes wide with wonder as we run. We’re running away, charging dangerously across the ice-glazed supermarket car park, escaping down the high street, pin-balling through the Saturday shopping crowds and down Holt’s Alley to a warren of terraced houses beyond. That should do it; keep them off my scent. I kiss my baby’s head through her little woollen hat.
‘Don’t worry, chickie. Mummy won’t let them catch us.’
I haven’t a clue where we’re going. But it’s been such a cold morning of effort, a winter-blue, throat-burning escape, that I’m now exhausted and need somewhere warm to settle and feed my baby. We head for the train station because I know there’s a café on platform two and a train would be a good thing to get on, to take us away.
I stop running and catch my breath in a brisk walk. I’m simply not capable of charging through town with the weight of my baby pressed to my front. I only gave birth a week ago and my insides still feel loose, my breasts way too heavy with milk to keep running, even though I know we have to if we are to survive this.
In the baby magazines, it said that new mums should take it easy and get friends and relatives to do the running around. Here I am, running, running and probably drawing more attention to myself by doing that anyway. I’m not going to let them catch me. She’s my baby. All mine now.
I have named her for her deep red lips. Ruby. Apparently, you forget quickly, about the birth – nature’s trick to ensure a repeat performance – but I can still remember every detail. What I’m finding hard to recall and put into order are the days that followed.
Mother and Father didn’t return from their New Year celebrations at Uncle Gustaw and Aunt Anna’s house until the sun had burst well above the horizon. I woke, perhaps from the rays touching my eyelids or perhaps from the merriment that haemorrhaged through the front door (New Year is the only time my mother is ever merry), and for a moment I forgot all about the night’s happenings.
It was only when I felt something wriggling in the crook of my body that I realised my baby wasn’t inside me any more. She had wormed her way down under the covers in an attempt to be back in my womb again or perhaps she was burrowing for my nipple. Instinctively, I drew her up to my breast where she knew exactly what to do and after a dozen agonizing sucks, my baby slept peacefully.
We have reached the train station. I have only been on a train twice before. Once when I was ten and we went to London to visit Father’s cousin, who had recently arrived from a
village just south of Warsaw, and the second time, well, that was when we went to Broadstairs for a holiday but came home after two days because Mother saw Father touching a maid’s tits on the landing of our guest house.
I go into the railway station café and sit down at a table, adjusting Ruby so that she lies on my knee no more obtrusively than a small cloth bag half hidden under my coat. I feel in my pocket for the money. Two twenty-pound notes and some silver. It was all Mother had in her purse; the remains of the housekeeping.
I carry Ruby to the counter and buy a hot chocolate and a bar of Dairy Milk. Ruby is being such a good baby, tucked under my arm and still fast asleep, that the café woman doesn’t even notice I have a baby. Surely, if she’d seen, she would lean forward and coo and talk in a high-pitched voice. All she does is slam my change onto the counter and turn to the person waiting behind me. I am not special to her.
Back at my table, I sip my hot chocolate and study the timetable that someone has left lying in a pool of spilled tea. Trains to London go every half hour. The next one is in twelve minutes and I shall be on it.
Mother didn’t knock on my door until well after midday, when she left my usual lunch tray on the landing. I could barely get up out of my wet nest on the floor, but hunger drove me on all fours to get the food. No one knew I had pushed out my baby. I ate like a wolf and slipped the tray back outside my bedroom door, as I would normally do. Then I slept again. I don’t remember for how long. Ruby was thankfully silent, barely aware she was alive and quite content to suckle or sleep.
I’m standing on the platform now, close to the edge. A train rushes through the station, three feet from Ruby and me, drenching us in debris and excitement. We will soon be on our way. A garbled announcement tells me that the train to London is next. I don’t know what we will do when we get there, except be safe, anonymous.
No one will know that I am running away from my parents – parents who ordered my baby to be given up for adoption. No one will care about us in London and that, I know, is why we will be safe.