‘What is it?’ I said, and I clutched his arm inadvertently. I nearly choked on the words. I didn’t want to ever hear the answer, but I asked it anyway.
‘Don’t panic, Jess,’ he said. He’d never called me Jess before. ‘Don’t panic but I’ve got some news, and I’m not sure it’s very good. Let’s just sit down again.’
I held my ground. ‘Just tell me. I’m not a kid you know,’ but my hand was going sweaty where I grasped the fine cloth of his suit.
‘Apparently someone’s—a pushchair has been found. A pushchair and a bag,’ he added, almost reluctantly. ‘Can you describe yours to me please?’
‘Louis’s pushchair? Describe it again?’
‘Yes please, Jessica. If you don’t mind.’
‘It’s blue,’ I whispered stupidly. ‘Blue for a boy. It’s that make—’ but my mind was blank. I scrabbled for the name. ‘Like the racing cars.’
The other policeman joined DI Silver. ‘Was the bag you lost green?’
‘No!’ Relief flooded through me. ‘Not green. His bag’s bright red! That’s not mine then, thank God. My changing-bag’s bright red. With a—it’s got a big zip across the front.’
The other man muttered something in Silver’s ear.
‘Did you have a handbag, Mrs Finnegan, when you lost your son? Another bag that was with him?’
‘I didn’t lose my son,’ I corrected him, ‘someone took my son. Someone’s taken him.’ My head was spinning; I stumbled where I stood. I whispered, ‘Yes, I had a bag. A green bag.’
‘Leather? With lots of pockets and a—’ he looked at his notebook. ‘A platinum tag?’
I nodded miserably. A birthday present from Mickey. The most expensive item I’d ever owned; I’d been scared to even use it. ‘Have you found it?’
The policeman with the potbelly cleared his throat. ‘Looks like it, Mrs Finnegan. Not the red bag though. Just a green one. And a Maclaren pushchair.’ Maclaren. That was it.
‘Where?’ I asked quietly. My world was finally caving in. Finally and irrefutably it was collapsing round my ears.
The policeman shifted from one foot to the other, tight little belly straining against his cheap striped shirt. ‘On the river beach, down by Tower Bridge Pier.’
‘And—and Louis?’ I croaked, and my knees went weak. DI Silver held me up. Leigh had stopped laughing and ran to support my other arm.
‘There’s no sign of Louis, Jess,’ Silver said. ‘No sign at all. Which is a good sign, at this point.’
And I wavered for a moment. It was like being on a tightrope, high above a fatal drop. The way I looked at it right then was that there were two ways down. I could fall and go under forever: the obvious route perhaps, but it wouldn’t help my son. Or I could do what I eventually did. I steadied myself; with every ounce of strength I had left I pulled myself up tall and I decided right there and then that if they hadn’t found Louis, well then of course I would.
‘So you’ve got nothing to report except a soggy bag then?’ I said steadfastly, ‘so that’s okay then, isn’t it?’ and I walked away, past them, out of the door into the horribly beige hall, through the buzzers and the swing doors into the street.
*
I walked so fast that I lost myself in minutes. I didn’t know where I was going but I went there anyway. I just wanted to be alone, to get away from all the sympathy, to dodge the prying, over-anxious eyes that watched my every move. I needed to clear my head but it was so hard to focus. So I just walked; wondering every second if I was near my Louis. I looked through every window, peered into every car, stared at women with babies until they seemed unnerved; stared at the babies, willing them to be mine.
At one point some leather-faced builder shouted, ‘Cheer up, love, it might never happen,’ and I went right up to him, so close I could see the sweat glistening like dewdrops on the curly chest hairs above his vest, and I said right into his surprised face, ‘Yes, but you see, it already has,’ and he shut up pretty flipping fast. I walked and walked and walked until I felt like I was going to drop. And when I couldn’t walk any more, I found a cab and I went home.
CHAPTER NINE
When I got back it all went very crazy. They were all there—Leigh, Silver, Deb—but they didn’t hear me come in because they were glued to the six o’clock news, to Mickey’s cherished enormous television where an immaculate presenter looked both doe-eyed and serious, and talked about ‘over twenty-four hours now’. Suddenly Louis’s little face flashed up on the screen, and he wasn’t smiling. Why hadn’t they picked a picture of him smiling, I wanted to know. I didn’t choose that photo, so who had? But then there I was, looking like some waif and stray, bedraggled and blotchy and absolutely stunned, like the proverbial rabbit in headlights. Beside me, the composed Silver looked horribly together. I should have brushed my hair, I thought illogically.
‘If only Mum could see me now,’ I joked, and they all turned round and started to fuss, and suddenly I didn’t feel very well, my head was about to float right off. Deb made me yet more tea. I didn’t even really like the stuff but I drank it like I knew it was my duty to, ate some digestives, and then I looked at Polaroids of the buggy that they’d found and my poor posh bag, and, with a sinking feeling, I knew there was no denying they were mine. I started to feel that bubble of hysteria again and so I made another joke.
‘Mickey will have a fit, you know. That bag cost a bomb,’ and then I caught Silver and Deb exchanging a look, and I said ‘What?’ again, and I wondered how much of this not-knowing I could take.
Deb said, ‘Mickey came round.’ But I didn’t like the tense she’d used, and I interrupted her before she could go on.
‘What do you mean “came” round?’
She replied, ‘He’s gone again.’
I stared at her until she rushed to correct herself.
‘Gone under, I mean. Unconscious. Sorry—I didn’t mean to scare you. Stupid of me. Sorry. He’s fine, apparently, but he’s out cold for now. Still, it’s a good sign, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’ I said limply. Nothing seemed good right now.
‘Mum rang,’ Leigh said, smoothing her straightened hair nervously. ‘I’ve told her the worst.’ A ridiculous expression, I thought. I pictured my sun-raddled mother on her Spanish phone, gold hoops swinging as she leant to light another fag, her little monkey face working to absorb the news.
‘How much worse could it get?’ I said, and then, ‘Don’t answer that. Is she coming back?’ I looked hopefully at Leigh, but she’d already turned away.
‘She said she’ll try to get a flight.’
That meant no, I knew; I felt my shoulders slump yet further. Then I noticed that Leigh was drinking wine. Mickey’s wine no doubt.
‘I’ll have a glass please,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ she said, blankly. Then, ‘Do you really think that’s a good idea?’
I quelled her with a single look, a death-stare that I perfected in my teens. I didn’t use it very often, certainly not on my big sister, but now it worked. She clacked out to the kitchen in her spiky heels.
Silver started on about formally identifying the buggy and the bag, which was empty by the time it was found, and going to the hospital, and I was just saying that presumably it was a good sign that the baby-bag was missing because it must still be with Louis, someone must be using it, when suddenly the telephone rang. The noise sliced through the humid air like a knife through softened butter, and everybody jumped. I waited for a moment, and then I realised that of course it was my house, my phone, I was the grown-up here, so I guessed that I should answer it. I picked it up carefully, Silver watching me intently, and I said ‘Hello’ like I’d had a lobotomy A familiar voice said hello back; a voice that had been silent for too long.
‘Just seen you on the telly, Jessie darling,’ and I nearly dropped the receiver right where I stood.
Leigh clacked back in, wine glass in hand, and mouthed, ‘Who is it?’ and I stared at her, not the death-stare this ti
me, and I said rather helplessly, ‘It’s Robbie,’ and she double-took, just like Stan Laurel would have done. She dropped the wine glass; it went slipping through her fake-tanned hand and smashed at our feet, one thousand shiny shards lying lethal in the evening sun.
*
On the heath outside my bedroom window a young family picnicked in the dying light. Their spaniel bounced round and round them in ever-shrinking circles, barking joyfully, while the mother laughed at something one of her children said, threw back her head like some old-fashioned movie star. Then her husband leant in to kiss her and I didn’t want to watch any more. The evening air was syrupy with heat, although the sun was nearly gone. Still damp from the shower, I pulled on an old red sundress that I’d had forever, shoved tissues in my bra to mop up the leaking milk, piled my dirty dark hair up on my head. Sister Kwame’s bottle called to me from the bedside cabinet. My hand hovered over it. Silver was waiting for me outside. Resolutely I picked up Louis’s photo instead. I sat on my bed clutching it, staring at him like I could conjure him back to reality by my sheer will.
I slid into Silver’s car beside him; he was taking me to see Mickey. The roads were clear although the heath outside The Hare and Billet was packed with evening drinkers, laughing, flirting, ambling around the dehydrated pond that a lone duck floated on. Who were all these people living their lives so casually while mine collapsed?
Silver leant down and switched the police radio off, flicked the car stereo on. I hadn’t seen him in his shirtsleeves before and it unnerved me. He looked unfinished somehow. A mournful Billie Holiday sang of her lost love, and I raised an eyebrow at the policeman.
‘Wouldn’t have had you down as a blues man myself.’ I opened the window as far as it would go, my hair whipping my face in the sudden breeze.
‘Really? What have you got me down as?’
I spat a curl from my dry mouth and considered him. ‘I suppose you’re a bit old to be an indie kid.’
He snorted. ‘Just because I was born somewhere near Manchester doesn’t mean I’m into Oasis.’
‘Not really what I’d call indie, mate,’ I said. ‘That’s a bit behind the times. But then you are Old Bill, I guess.’ I nudged the police radio. ‘Won’t you get in trouble if you don’t have that on? What if someone finds Louis?’
He shrugged. ‘They’ll ring if they need me. I wanted to have a talk. Uninterrupted.’
‘Oh.’ I shivered despite the heat. ‘That sounds ominous.’
He shrugged again. ‘Not really. Just hard to get you on your own.’
‘Why would you want to get me on my own?’
‘What I meant was, you seem a little cagey.’
‘Cagey?’
‘Yep.’
‘Are you insinuating something again, DI Silver?’
‘I don’t know. Am I?’ he replied pleasantly. God! He actually made me feel quite violent. Not trusting myself to respond, a sticky pause ensued. He drove with one hand on the wheel, the other propped idly on the window. Like a dying man I gulped in the air that skimmed the open window. We left Blackheath behind, dropped down from the genteel oasis my husband had brought me to, down to Deptford and New Cross. The badlands, Mickey always called them, with a dry laugh, much more like Belfast, much more like where I’d grown up than where we lived these days.
A woman in a navy people-carrier pulled up alongside us, her older children squabbling across the baby in the back. Was Louis in a car like that? I began to watch every car intently, just in case we passed him. I was drifting off to Louis when Silver broke back into my muddled head.
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but I get the feeling that things might have been a little—’ he paused ‘—strained between you and Mr Finnegan?’
‘Oh you do, do you?’ He’d wrong-footed me again. ‘I didn’t realise marriage guidance was part of the service.’
‘It’s not. It was just an observation.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s a rubbish one.’ I folded my arms tight across my painful chest.
‘Look, I’m just doing my job, Mrs Finn— Jessica. You don’t mind if I call you Jessica?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I have to know anything at all that might have an impact on Louis’s disappearance.’ He swore softly as a van cut us up. ‘You must see that, surely?’
Something about this man’s smooth confidence brought out the very worst in me. ‘Yes, I do see that.’
‘So if you can be as honest as you can, it’s really helpful. And it won’t go further than me, I swear.’
‘How very reassuring.’
I got the benefit of his full smile then. His teeth were so ludicrously white it was like being caught in the blazing sun.
‘Have you had those done?’ I couldn’t help myself.
‘What?’
‘Your teeth?’
Something new lurked behind the tightened smile. ‘On a copper’s wage? Hardly. Just good genes, kiddo.’ Another pause. He looked at me expectantly. I grimaced back politely.
‘So, you and your old man then,’ he eventually prompted.
‘What about us?’
‘Tell me about it, please.’
‘I must say, DI Silver—’
‘Joe.’
‘I must say, DI Silver, I’m not really sure why you think things were strained between me and Mickey, given that ever since you’ve known us, he’s been out cold.’
‘Well yes, there is that,’ he agreed mildly. ‘So why don’t you tell me how it really was then?’
‘Was?’
‘Sorry. Is.’
We stopped at a red light. Stony-faced, I looked away from him. ‘It’s bloody-well fine, thanks very much. Absolutely fine.’
‘When did you meet?’
‘Early last year.’
‘Where?’
‘I did some work for him. He’s got his own company. Graphics.’
‘Doing well, judging by the trappings.’ He pulled off with a jolt. Was I a trapping?
‘He does all right.’
‘And so you, you’re a designer? An artist?’
‘Hardly an artist, unfortunately, much as I’d like to be. I was an assistant. He was—I was going to train. I was studying back then. When I got pregnant, though, Mickey thought I should stay home with Louis.’ With a nasty squeeze of guilt, I remembered how resentful I’d been at first about giving up my barely-begun career for motherhood. How when the real depression set in I begged to be allowed back to work. It had seemed so much safer than having full care of my own child.
He changed tack without warning. ‘So it was a whirlwind romance?’
I laughed despite myself. ‘What is this—Mills and Boon? Christ, Silver, Billie Holiday and happy endings! Next you’ll be asking if he got down on one knee.’
‘Well, did he?’
‘No, he didn’t.’ I could have sworn he was racing the car in the next lane.
‘Lust, then?’
I twisted round to him as far as my seatbelt allowed. ‘Excuse me, but what’s this got to do with Louis? I don’t mean to be rude, but what bloody business is it of yours?’
‘Language, Jess!’
‘-ica.’
‘What?’
‘Jess-ica. No one calls me Jess except my nearest and dearest.’
‘Mickey then?’
‘Mickey what?’
‘Calls you Jess?’
‘Maybe. Sometimes.’ Mickey never called me Jess, ever. ‘And maybe it was lust,’ I rattled on, ‘in fact it was. Definitely lust. Pure, unadulterated X-rated stuff. You know the sort of thing I’m sure.’
More to the point, I’d been seven months pregnant when we got married. The big wedding day I’d always dreamed of had been quite the opposite; it had been tiny and rushed without any family there, the fantasy dress a dreadful maternity affair. Intimate, Mickey said, kissing the top of my head; beautiful, he said, gently stroking my bump. The best bit was reaching the fancy hotel that night, a place called Blakes in Kensington, all very hushed and subtl
e. The present Mickey had bought me was waiting in our suite, beautifully wrapped—the Emin sketch I’d admired on that first evening in Cork Street. I’d been overwhelmed. It was the start of a new life, he said, for both of us. For the three of us, kissing my bump through my satin dress. I shivered with distress at the memory.
‘And now, please can we not talk about this any more.’
He glanced at me, and rather tiredly sighed. ‘This isn’t for my own ends, Jessica. I’m trying to help you. It’s all perfectly normal procedure. I’m just trying to find your son. I have to say,’ indicating right, checking his mirrors zealously, ‘I don’t really get your reluctance to tell me things, I’m afraid.’
I took a deep breath. ‘It’s—well, it’s—’
‘What?’
‘I just find it a bit hard, that’s all.’
‘That’s quite obvious.’
‘Because it’s my private life, I guess.’ I was trying, honestly I was.
‘Yeah, I appreciate that. But it’s also your son.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ I was so plugged up, so used to erecting barriers, so frightened of the police from old. How could I explain my reticence to this stranger? I watched the ugly shop facades flash by. A streetlight pinged on. I’d never caught that moment before.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said quietly. ‘I just—I’ve got a bit of a thing about coppers.’
‘Not a good thing, I presume?’
‘No, not a good thing. A pretty bad thing really.’
‘And I don’t suppose you want to expand on that?’
‘Not really. Not right now, if you don’t mind. I’m, you know, still dealing with it.’ I was only just realising that—despite it being over ten years ago.
‘It’s just that if you’re too clammed up, Jessica, it might come across as a little—odd.’ ‘What do you mean, “odd”?’
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