“How could you?” Ewan replied, his voice low and furious.
In answer, Olivia began to cry; perhaps he had inadvertently squeezed her. He stepped into the room and wedged her in a corner of the counter. Mollie took a step towards her, hesitated, and scooped her up.
She set about trying to calm her, though it was hopeless. Every molecule of air in the room was broken; nothing was neat and whole, and so Olivia wept. At the table, Ewan sat with his face in his hands, and Vanessa stood behind him, patting his shoulder. She had such small, pretty hands. At last she said to Mollie, “Could she be hungry?”
“I just fed her.” Stupid, she thought. We’re all upset. Why not Olivia?
“Still,” urged Vanessa, “it might be worth trying.”
Preparing the bottle, the small, exact ritual, did make Mollie feel a little better, and perhaps that betterness communicated itself to Olivia. After two or three adamant refusals, she seized the nipple; a few molecules knitted back together. Ewan and Vanessa went into the living room. Mollie could hear the low current of their voices but was curiously uninterested. Let the grown-ups talk.
One of her favourite childhood stories had been the tale of Thumbelina, who slept in half a walnut shell and padded from lily leaf to lily leaf. Now she tried to shrink herself into this room, this time. She smelled Olivia’s milky breath and was convinced that all would be well. Maybe there were things she and Ewan needed to discuss; of course there were. She must be careful not to take him for granted.
She raised Olivia to burp her and saw by her eyes that she was nearly asleep. For the first time since she left Mill of Fortune that morning, Mollie allowed herself to think about Chae: the sweeping emotion of seeing him, the deceptive lure of their conversation, the ease of their love-making, and the seeming impossibility of explaining to him what a heinous crime he had committed. Looking down at Olivia, still drowsily sucking, she wished she had introduced her to him. When he next visited London, she would.
“Is everything all right?” Ewan was in the doorway.
“She’s ready for bed. Perhaps she can use the sofa—we won’t hear her up in the attic—unless you two need to continue your conference.”
“No, no. That’s fine,” said Ewan. “I’ll get some blankets.”
He sounded more like himself. And I do too, thought Mollie, watching him leave the room. I’m tired from the drive. Goodness, nearly five hundred miles alone; no wonder I’m muddled. Within a couple of minutes he was back with blankets, a sheet, a pillow. They made a nest in one corner of the sofa and tucked Olivia in. Then there was nowhere for them to go save the kitchen.
“Do you have any booze?” Mollie asked. “I feel a drink would help.”
“I agree,” said Vanessa, with the first genuine warmth Mollie had heard her express.
“I’m sure I have something.” While the two women watched, Ewan opened various cupboards. He soon assembled a half bottle of cooking sherry, an unopened bottle of Chianti, a bottle of vermouth and another of gin, each a third full, and a dusty green bottle with two fingers of Scotch.
“What a haul,” Vanessa said. “I’ll have gin with a splash of vermouth. How about you, Mollie?”
“Would it be greedy to claim the last of the Scotch?”
“Not at all. Ewan?”
“Oh, whatever you’re having.”
Vanessa chivvied him into finding glasses and even ice cubes. Soon they were all three seated at the round table, with drinks before them. “Cheers,” Mollie said, raising her glass.
“Cheers,” Ewan and Vanessa echoed in subdued tones.
“Did you both come straight from work?” she asked. “You look so respectable.”
“Sort of,” said Vanessa.
Mollie heard a clicking sound; it was the clock above the cooker, jumping to the next minute. Outside, a car went by in the petalled street. She almost wished Olivia would start crying again. Ewan stood up, silently left the room, and returned with his briefcase. He took out his notebook and sat back down. Mollie saw him turn to a clean page. He wrote a couple of words. “Mollie,” he said, “we have to talk. You told me on the phone you’d given Olivia to the police.”
She stared at the table. There was the familiar polished grain that had witnessed so many of her teenage rows: failing Latin, staying out late with boys, spending her entire allowance on music and make-up. “Yes, well, they didn’t want her. No one wants her except me.”
“Wait a minute,” Ewan said. “Did you really go to the police station, or did you just think these things?”
“You asked,” said Mollie, feeling herself go sullen. “You phoned them.”
Ewan sighed. “I meant to ask,” he said, “but in fact I didn’t. I started to stutter, and the policeman thought it was a joke and hung up. I don’t know what came over me; I talk on the phone all the time. Anyway, I apologise. I ought to have told you, but I was sure we were taking her back straight away.”
I was right, Mollie thought, briefly pleased with her own acumen. She wondered whether to mention the man who phoned from pubs and called her Mrs. Lafferty and “bitch.” But even as she phrased the thought, she knew such information would only make Ewan more insistent on handing Olivia over.
“I’m sorry, Mollie,” he said gently. “I understand you’re fond of her, but she has parents, a parent anyway. They’re the ones who have a right to her. It’s wrong for us to keep her.”
“Wrong?” she burst out. “How can you say that? The only reason I’m here, alive in the world, is because your parents adopted me. Was that wrong? My biological parents, whoever they were, didn’t give a toss about me. What would you say if they were to turn up, claiming their rights? If you didn’t want me to keep Olivia, you should never have brought her to Mill of Fortune. You gave her to me, and now you’re angry because I won’t give her back. Well, you can’t make me.”
“But Mollie,” said Vanessa, spreading her neat little hands on the table, “you can’t go around keeping lost babies. Her parents must miss her, and she them.”
“What do you know about it?” Mollie glared at Vanessa. Was this what Ewan liked, this porcelain doll? She took a sip of Scotch. “You’re the girl who got Ewan in trouble, aren’t you? You knew he fancied you, and you got him to spill his guts about some deal, and the next thing, he’s getting awkward phone calls.”
Here comes the silence again, she thought. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d said, but why should she be the only one accused of bad behaviour? She drank more Scotch, recklessly.
After a moment she sneaked a look at Ewan. His face was stricken, and she was suddenly appalled. “Ewan, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to blurt things out. I’m such an idiot. I know I should have gone to the police, but I couldn’t bear to. They’d just take her away and shove her in an orphanage. Or some ghastly people would be paid to adopt her.”
She paused to run a hand through her hair, tugging hard, and remembered the old sixth-form debate about just laws. She had sat at this very table, arguing with her father and quoting Martin Luther King. “What I’m doing is against the law,” she said firmly. “But it’s not wrong, and that’s what matters. Bad laws are meant to be broken.”
Vanessa stood up. “I’d better get going. This is all a bit out of my depth.” She turned to Mollie. “I’ve no idea what Ewan told you, but the truth is he was indiscreet with me and, unfortunately, I followed his example. The whole thing was an accident and will be sorted out by next week.”
“You sound like a company memo,” said Mollie, laughing. “Please, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. Don’t go yet. I love your suit. Ewan and I will do a better job of talking with you around. You’ll be our chairman, our mediator.”
Vanessa hesitated, then tentatively resumed her seat. Mollie was about to demonstrate her good resolutions by asking where she was from and what she did, when the phone rang. She saw Vanessa and Ewan exchange an anxious glance. He went to answer it in the living room. “Ewan Munro speaking,” Mollie heard
him say. Now she would have liked to listen, but beside her Vanessa was almost quivering with eagerness, and for both of them to eavesdrop was intolerable. “How are things going?” she said quietly. “I don’t know anything except that Ewan’s fond of you and there’s a bit of a mess.”
“There doesn’t have to be,” Vanessa said. “At least I don’t think so, if only Ewan would stop being such a goody-goody.”
“I’m sorry. We were terribly well brought up. Ewan really took it to heart, unlike Bridget and me. Is there some way I can help?”
“No.” She eyed Mollie more closely. “Well, maybe.”
“Tell me.”
They both paused, to make sure Ewan was still safely on the phone. In a soft voice, Vanessa explained that all she needed was for him to be a little absentminded. “He’d have no problem with anyone else, but it’s mixed up with the fact that he likes me. He doesn’t trust himself to behave well, so he’s determined to get us both in trouble. Perhaps if he realises you’re depending on him, you and Olivia, he can relax his scruples.”
“Are you in love with him?”
Vanessa’s hair swung back and forth in denial. “He’s so proper I didn’t even realise he was in love with me, until this business. Actually I’m seeing someone in New York. I haven’t told Ewan yet. First it didn’t come up, and now it’s fraught with complications. Besides”—she gave Mollie a sheepish look—“I do like him.”
In the living room, Ewan was saying, “Certainly not.”
“I’ll do what I can,” said Mollie, “but you have to help out with Olivia. It’s no worse than what you’re doing.”
She smiled, and presently Vanessa smiled back. “All right. I’ll do what I can too.”
“ ’Bye,” came Ewan’s voice.
Simultaneously Vanessa asked if Mollie wanted another drink, and Mollie asked where she’d grown up.
“Not yet,” Mollie said.
“In Bath. My father runs a restaurant there. I go back whenever I can. It’s still the most beautiful town I know.”
“I feel like that about Edinburgh.”
They both turned as Ewan came through the door. Mollie noticed that his tie hung loose and his hands were clenched into fists. “M-m-m-m-” he started to say, like Olivia. He gave up the struggle and simply stood there.
When at last Ewan spoke, he asked for her keys. She gestured towards her bag, on the counter next to the toaster, and he took them out and put them in his inside pocket. He left the room, and Mollie heard him locking the front door. She wished desperately she were holding Olivia, but the swaying motion of the house had begun again and she did not trust her legs to carry her to the living room. Ewan returned. Still he did not sit down but remained standing as if only an upright position would enable him to deliver his difficult message.
“We’re going to Mill of Fortune tomorrow,” he said. “That was Chae on the phone. A man came for Olivia. Her real name is Grace, and he wants her back.”
“Chae?” she exploded. “You can’t trust him. Look at what he did to me with Leo. Why do you think I left? Of course there’s a man. But he doesn’t care about Olivia. He doesn’t love her, I can tell. It’s something else he’s after. Money. I bet it’s money, like you two.”
“So you knew about the man,” Ewan said.
“Yes, fuck him.” She was shaking, as well as the house. Who was this banker in a suit ordering her around? Only her little brother. Fuck him too. She heard something. Had Ewan spoken? Had the table? She examined each in turn. The sleek wood had grown oddly smug and duplicitous. As for Ewan, his face had a strange plastic sheen, and it came to Mollie that what she’d taken to be her brother’s intimate, revealing flesh was a mask. Who knew how he really looked?
Then Vanessa was standing over her, one cool hand on the back of her neck, saying, “Here, put your head down. Lower … that’s right. Everything’s going to be fine. Breathe deeply. One, two. There.”
Ewan had helped her up the stairs. Vanessa had carried Olivia. She had turned on the electric blanket, sent Ewan to make hot milk, and run Mollie a bath. Mollie had meekly, even pleasurably, submitted to their caretaking. By the time she was in bed between clean warm sheets, with Olivia beside her, everything was fine again. The bed lay solid and firm beneath her; the ceiling hung motionless above. She would talk to Ewan in the morning. Of course he couldn’t understand until she explained properly, but once she had, he would.
She woke to the sound of Olivia whimpering. Immediately other bewildering noises broke in upon her: the grind of brakes, several sharp toots of a horn, the washing-machine slurp of a taxi. Where am I? she wondered. Then as she climbed out of bed and reached for Olivia, she remembered she was at Ewan’s and felt safe. No dark countryside here. She carried the baby down the carpeted, silent stairs to the kitchen, where a small lamp was lit on the counter, and prepared a bottle.
In her sleepy state she made the milk a little too hot and had to hold the bottle under the cold tap before offering it to Olivia. But Olivia, who had roused her, ignored the milk. She lay in Mollie’s arms, tossing restlessly, her tiny fists clenched against unknown demons. “There,” Mollie whispered, “it’s all right, Olivia. I’m here. Wake up. Have some milk.”
Olivia frowned; her face, coppery in the dim light, darkened to blackberry. “Cunt,” she said.
Mollie screamed.
Olivia’s eyes were shiny little turds. Her lips peeled back over glistening toothless gums.
Then a kind of scrim seemed to cover Olivia’s face or Mollie’s eyes, to gather and thicken and disappear. Already Olivia was reaching for the bottle, and Ewan and Vanessa were standing in the doorway, both still dressed in their suits, asking if anything was the matter.
“No, no, nothing,” Mollie stumbled. Her hands were trembling, but whoever it was she held in her lap, she was not yet ready to surrender.
Chapter 16
Shortly after eleven Mollie returned upstairs with Olivia. A few minutes earlier her piercing scream had brought Ewan running to the kitchen, with Vanessa right behind him. In response to his anxious questions, Mollie claimed nothing was wrong; she was just startled. But the mere sight of her sitting at the kitchen table in her nightdress, wide-eyed, wild-haired, and muttering, was profoundly wrong. As he backed out of the room, Ewan recalled reading somewhere that Bedlam had once been one of the tourist attractions of London.
He and Vanessa sat down again in the flowery armchairs on either side of the living room fireplace. Music from a passing car rippled by. Upstairs, a toilet flushed. “This is one of the strangest nights of my life.” Vanessa sighed. “What exactly did Chae say?”
“He was at Mill of Fortune, and when he woke up this morning Mollie was gone and someone was pounding on the door. He opened it to find a man he’d never seen before, demanding a baby.”
“Was he Indian?”
“No, he was white and rather unpleasant. Chae had to pay him not to go to the police before we could bring Olivia back.” Suddenly Ewan remembered the curious phone call during his visit to Mill of Fortune; he described what he’d overheard to Vanessa. “Mollie was very odd about it. She came up with some bogus story about a farmer and the right-of-way. At the time I was sure she was lying, though I’d no idea why. Now I think that must have been Olivia’s father.” He reached up to remove the tie he had loosened earlier. “I should call her Grace,” he said, running the silk through his fingers. “It’s just so confusing.”
“But how could Mollie have done this?” Vanessa frowned. “I mean, I understand not wanting to hand a baby over to bureaucracy. But if she knew Grace’s father was searching for her, even if he is a nasty piece of work, then her behaviour makes no sense at all.”
“That’s what I’m just beginning to grasp,” Ewan exclaimed. “We’re not talking about sense. Last night at dinner, when you asked why I hadn’t taken Olivia to the police, there was some additional factor over and above the practical issues that I couldn’t quite get hold of. The real reason was Molli
e. From the moment I got into her car, she was scheming to keep Olivia. And, stupidly, I went along with it.”
“Don’t,” said Vanessa. “Nobody could’ve guessed the lengths she was prepared to go to.”
They moved on to the problem of how to get Olivia back to Mill of Fortune by seven the following evening. Clearly Mollie was not about to drive north again.
“We could fly,” Ewan said doubtfully. He had a vision of Mollie in the confined space of a plane, making some terrible scene.
“I’m not sure Mollie’s up to public transport,” Vanessa said. “Of any kind. Besides, you’d still have to get from Edinburgh. I wonder if maybe I should drive you. After all, we have her car.”
She looked at him questioningly, and as he looked back, it occurred to Ewan that at some point since they met at Heathrow, they had entered into a bargain, a quid pro quo, about Coyle. The mere thought gave him a clammy feeling; if Vanessa had intimated, even by a gesture, that such an arrangement existed, he could not have borne it. But she was perfect. She smoothed her skirt and assumed matters were settled. “Lucky I only had one drink,” she said. “I’ll go and fetch a change of clothes.”
“Isn’t it a bit late?”
“No, at this time of night I can get to Chiswick and back in under an hour. You might need support in the morning.”
She stood up, and Ewan did too. “Thank you,” he said, the tie dangling foolishly from his hands. “I don’t know how I’d manage without you.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ve never been to Scotland before. It’ll be fun.” The childishness that came over her when she was frightened had vanished; she was all businesslike efficiency. He handed her Mollie’s car keys and watched her clip down the front steps in her high heels and drive away without a second’s hesitation.
Alone, Ewan returned to his armchair. The chairs were another Edinburgh inheritance, and fleetingly he conjured up their true occupants: his parents, as he had so often seen them, sitting on either side of the fire, each deep in a book. Thank goodness they had not lived to see two of their three children behave badly.
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