Lullaby

by Claire Seeber

  She was getting ready to leave, slotting her stereo into delicate little ears that poked through her plaits. She stared at me, then she turned the doll over and unzipped its back. A long, fat slab of something black, almost chocolate-like, poked out between cotton-wool stuffing.

  ‘A bit of blow for the boys, all right, nosey-parker? And you wanna keep your questions to yourself, ras. Know what I’m saying?’ She sucked her teeth again, and tucked her doll back in very carefully. Almost lovingly.

  Robbie propelled me to the door.

  ‘Come with me,’ I pleaded. ‘This is a hell-hole, Rob, and you know it.’ My eyes filled with tears, I grabbed his hand. It was very cold. ‘You don’t belong here. Come and stay with me if you want. Please don’t stay here. I could use the company, you know.’

  His eyes slid away from me. ‘I got some business to finish up,’ he said, very quietly. I felt the shame burning from his thin frame. But he wasn’t going to leave, he really wasn’t. He leant down and kissed my cheek. ‘I’ll call you, okay?’

  As I hurried back through the estate, biting my lip with anger and pain, the man with the pit-bull was still there; the poor little dog almost out of its mind with frustration. It hadn’t reached the rubber ring. It wasn’t ever going to.

  Deb was waiting for me at home like some clucky mother-hen. She pointed out that it was long past time to go to the police station, that I’d been ages, and I caught the chiding note that crept through her voice.

  ‘Are you my chaperone now?’ I asked tiredly, slumping in an armchair. I couldn’t bear to tell her about Robbie. I didn’t want anyone to know how far my brother had fallen.

  ‘No, of course not, Jessica, I’m just here to make sure you’re all right. I’m sorry.’ She pushed back her hair. ‘Do you—do you need some space?’

  Immediately I felt all mean. ‘I’m only joking, Deb,’ I said quickly. ‘I’m just so tired, and scared, and it’s still so bloody hot. It makes me ratty. I’m very grateful to you, honestly.’ I realised suddenly how much I’d already come to take her for granted, how little I knew about Deb’s own life. But she was reticent about it; not keen to share her personal views. I didn’t even know if she had a boyfriend.

  Her mobile phone rang. I was staring aimlessly out the window at the man who mowed the heath, making perfect circles with his big mower, when an urgency entered Deb’s voice. She hung up, straightened her collar in the mirror.

  ‘We’re late. The boss is a little—riled.’ I thought she was just nervous of upsetting Silver. They all seemed to idolise him, his team. Or maybe they just feared him. I hadn’t worked it out yet. Outside, the press was down to one disinterested bloke with a camera, a flask and a copy of the Mirror. They were bored already. Deb bundled me into the car in such a hurry that I realised something must have happened.

  ‘What’s wrong, Deb?’

  She shot me a rueful look. ‘It’s the Tate’s CCTV. There’s a glitch on the system apparently.’

  ‘A glitch?’

  ‘It skips ten minutes an hour. Unfortunately, the ten minutes must have been when Mickey left the building. There’s no trace of him on the tapes.’

  ‘Fantastic.’ We travelled the rest of the way in silence.

  At the station, I was whisked along to do my press-conference thing again. The fact that I’d seen Louis now made things both a little easier and a whole lot worse. I kept thinking of some other woman bustling round him, acting like he was all hers. I couldn’t focus on the faces merging before me, and I couldn’t seem to articulate my desperation. Silver was talking and then some moley-faced journalist with long, lank hair and hipster jeans stood up and introduced herself.

  ‘Lynn Werthers, Evening News. I’m so sorry for your loss. It must be terrible to join the numbers of bereaved parents that—’

  I sensed Deb frown beside me; Silver adjusted his tie minutely. My heart started galloping like a runaway horse.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Sorry, Ms Werthers,’ Silver cut across me curtly, placing his cool hand on top of mine on the table. ‘Bereaved is hardly the correct term in this instance—’

  The journalist goldfished for a minute before flushing bright red, the livid stain joining her moles like children’s dot-to-dot. She didn’t try to redeem herself; she sat down very hard. Despite myself, I clutched Silver’s hand like it was a lifeline. It was so hot, so stifling in the room I could practically smell the individual sweat of all these strangers, see it rising off them like steam, and panic was stamping through my brain now. Bereaved, the stampede spelt.

  ‘Please,’ I interrupted another journalist who was asking for yet another description. I leant forward into the microphone, which made it screech. My voice cracked above the static. ‘Please, whoever you are, just give me back my son. Three days is long enough. He needs his mother. I need him. I can’t—I can’t live without him,’ and then I got up and ran out of the room too fast. I whacked my elbow on the door, so hard it jarred my teeth.

  Deb tried to calm me, to reassure me that things were really going well, honest. Waiting for Silver, her voice faded in and out as I nursed my throbbing arm. She told me that the phones had been red-hot; there were some promising leads. Eventually Silver appeared at the end of the corridor, drink-can in hand, with a young redhead in uniform. I willed him to hurry up as Deb droned on. Why the hell was he taking so long? The girl was simpering at him in a way that made my skin itch, rubbing her foot coyly down the back of her own leg. After a good few minutes, she wandered off and Silver strolled down to us.

  ‘Now, Jessica, I have a little question and I want you to answer it like the good lass I know you are.’

  Sometimes, you know, he was so cocksure, so sanguine, he made my blood boil.

  ‘I’ll do my best.’ Still, deep down, I craved his reassurance more than anyone’s when it came to my son. He was always so unflappable, and his motives seemed so—pure. Unlike most of the men in my life up to now.

  ‘Good. Deb told you about the CCTV cock-up. Unfortunately there’s no trace of Mickey or Louis leaving the building, although we can see you all arrive together.’ He swigged the end of his drink, then lobbed it in the bin. A feeling of foreboding was building in my chest. ‘But there are several images of you going in and out of the main entrance, alone.’

  ‘Several?’ I was confused.

  ‘In your original statement, you said you went outside just once.’

  ‘I did, that’s right.’

  ‘Well, on the tape it’s at least twice.’

  I shook my head like I was going mad. ‘It was just once, I swear.’

  He looked at me very hard. ‘And you’re quite sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m absolutely sure.’

  Deb shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. Silver rubbed his earlobe thoughtfully. ‘Right. Well, we’ll leave it at that, for now.’

  For now. I changed the subject to what I’d been waiting to ask.

  ‘Who are these people that say they’ve seen Louis?’

  I tried and failed to sound calm. He looked down at me, repeated much of what Deb had said. ‘I can’t tell you everything for operational reasons, you understand. But you mustn’t get too excited. There are a lot of crackpots out there. You do know that, don’t you, kiddo?’

  I slumped back in my chair despairingly. ‘First you lot spend days telling me to think positive about all the calls you’ve got, now you’re saying they’re all mad.’

  ‘I realise how frustrating you must be finding this. But it’s all good really, Jessica, what’s happening now. I know it’s hard to believe, but stick with us, okay, kiddo? We’re sorting the reconstruction as we speak.’

  I stared over his head; I felt the bloody tears begin to needle my tired eyes. God. Not again.

  ‘Deb, you need a break. Go home, get some rest.’ She started to protest but he waved her off. ‘I’ll get Jessica back. We need a chat anyway.’

  Ten minutes later and I was in his car again, the eternal passe
nger. He offered me a very shiny apple, which I declined. He bit into it hard. Juice hit the dashboard, splattered my arm with a strange intimacy. It was so hot outside that the heat shimmered above the road in glistening waves.

  ‘We’re making definite progress.’ He flicked the core out of the window. ‘And I do understand that all this waiting must be doing your head in.’

  ‘I just want to do something useful—but I don’t know what.’

  He looked down at me, the expression in his hazel eyes veiled. ‘Let me buy you a quick drink and we can talk about it.’

  ‘I should be seeing Mickey really,’ I said, but it was rather half-hearted.

  ‘Oh should you?’ he said levelly. Guilt suffused me yet again. I was drowning in the stuff. I guessed it was quite obvious by now that I was hardly playing Florence Nightingale.

  ‘I don’t—I’m not very good at hospitals,’ I muttered.

  ‘No, well, they’re not the most cheerful places usually.’

  There was a long pause. My hair tickled my face in the breeze. ‘It was—it’s just my dad, you see,’ I offered eventually.

  ‘I see,’ he said. A pause. ‘What happened to your dad?’

  ‘It just—it made me go a bit—you know. Funny about them. Spent so much time there when he—um, when he died.’ I rarely let myself dwell on this; a part of my life too painful to bear. ‘My mum couldn’t face it, you see. Used to make me go instead.’

  ‘Nice of her.’

  ‘Oh it wasn’t her fault really. She just couldn’t cope with him, you know, being so ill. And I didn’t mind. I was glad to have him on my own, I suppose. And he used to make me laugh so much. Doing impressions of the nurses.’ I smiled fondly at the thought.

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘About ten or eleven, I think.’

  ‘Bit young to be hospital-visiting on your own.’

  There’d been far worse things the three of us had had to do at that age. I shrugged. ‘Not really that young. Robbie used to come sometimes. And I loved my dad, you know. I hadn’t seen him for a while when he got sick. Lung cancer. Too many fags, you know.’

  Oh God, how much I’d loved that cheeky bloke. I pulled the sunshade down swiftly, fished around like I had something in my eye. The unshed tears made them look a strangely glassy green. Silver glanced briefly down at me. There was something irrefutably solid about this man. He made me feel safe in a way Mickey never did. No hidden angst of his own. None that was obvious to me, anyway.

  ‘Well, nice drive in all this heat, just what you need. Bit of fresh air, clear your head.’

  ‘I wish it would,’ I said wistfully. Waited a beat, forced myself to ask.

  ‘So, how many of these “crackpots” say they’ve seen my son?’

  Did he suddenly look a little less sure of himself? ‘They all say they’ve seen him. But the sightings that we’re taking seriously, that we’re acting on right now—well—’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Three.’

  I nearly choked. ‘Three! You are having a laugh.’

  ‘Three’s good, you—’ He caught himself mid-sentence.

  ‘You what?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ he finished rather lamely. ‘DC Kelly’s gone to interview them. Look, they’re all in the same area, which is a real positive. It’s about realism now, and a—well, a touch of optimism.’

  ‘Is that what they teach you at police academy?’

  He laughed, and I smiled listlessly. ‘Yeah, that’s right. Good old police academy.’ He turned the music down a bit.

  ‘So where are they?’ I said.

  ‘I can’t tell you yet. But I will soon, I promise.’

  ‘Can I meet them?’

  ‘Not until we’ve got something concrete, no. Just trust me, kiddo, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  Silver took me to a pretty old pub on a green about twenty minutes into Kent and bought me my second vodka of the day, and some crisps. Then he decided I should eat something more substantial, but I declined politely, so he ordered us something ‘to share’. Food still made me think of cardboard at every chew; my vodka slipped down much quicker than the Ploughman’s that eventually arrived, but under Silver’s watchful eye I tried to eat. He, on the other hand, just chewed his eternal gum and drank some diet drink.

  ‘Didn’t you fancy a pint?’ I felt myself wilting at every mouthful. A huge sheepdog slavered over my bare feet with a hot, lolling tongue.

  ‘Not while I’m on duty,’ he said rather tersely, and I looked up at him. He didn’t catch my eye. I resisted the urge to kneel down and bury my face in the dog’s soft back.

  ‘My kids’d love this place,’ Silver said, chucking a lump of cheese down for the dog. On the green a straggling band of ten-year-olds were playing a tempestuous game of rounders, overseen by a bossy little boy with freckles as hot as the day.

  ‘Kids? Plural?’

  ‘Yeah. Got three,’ he said, and something like remorse flitted across his face. He didn’t elaborate. I waited for a moment.

  ‘Will you—do you want to tell me about them?’

  ‘Some other time, kiddo.’ He chucked the dog some bread, which he pushed around with his great damp nose and then rejected. ‘I’ll just say, though, I do understand what it’s like to love a child. I really do.’

  I stared at the ground miserably. An ant was struggling to carry a crumb twice the size of his own tiny body. He was just about managing.

  ‘You know you asked about my dad,’ I said quietly, still watching the ant.

  ‘Yes.’ Silver didn’t push.

  ‘He was a nice man, really. He just couldn’t quite keep on the straight and narrow. He was—he did quite a bit of time.’

  ‘I guessed he might have done.’

  ‘He broke my mum’s heart in the end.’

  ‘What about your heart?’

  I looked up, surprised.

  ‘It sounds like you were very close.’

  I swallowed hard. ‘Yes, I suppose I was. We were. I think—no, I know I was his favourite. We had a sort of bond. I don’t know why really. It was just there. And—my mum hated that, you see.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’

  ‘He got a long sentence, the last time. Then he got sick. They let him out in the end.’ I felt my mouth go dry. ‘To—to, um, die. You know. In the hospital. And when he did die, my mum wasn’t there. She was—she was up at my school seeing my headmaster. I’d got in a bit of trouble, you know.’ Sticking up for hot-headed Robbie, I seemed to remember, who’d punched another kid in the playground for teasing him about his jailbird dad. I took a swig of drink. ‘And she never really forgave me for that, I think. For keeping her from my father, at the end.’

  The freckly boy slammed the ball way out across the green, to copious whoops and cheers. Silver clapped him heartily.

  ‘Good lad.’ Then he looked at me again. ‘Go on.’

  But I couldn’t really. I remembered crawling into my mother’s bed the night Dad had died. She’d let me lie beside her, she’d even held my hand as she smoked into the early hours, zonked out and coughing. I was so frightened that something would happen to her now, I clutched on tight until I finally fell asleep. I was late for school that day. The next night I’d attempted to climb in again—but she’d turned over, turned her back and told me to please go away, all right, love. I’d shuffled back to my bunk above Robbie; I’d never tried again.

  The ant had disappeared now.

  ‘You know, I just keep wondering,’ I pushed the sweating pickle round the plate, ‘what would drive someone to steal a baby?’

  He looked at me.

  ‘My baby,’ I repeated fiercely. ‘I mean, they must be mad. Mustn’t they?’

  ‘Not mad, I don’t think. More like desperate.’

  In silence, we both contemplated the possibilities, until Silver excused himself and went to pay the bill. I thought about the weeks after Louis’s birth and flinched. I drained my drink but I couldn’
t block the memories, the relentless bloody memories that were crushing me. Shouting at the screaming baby when he wouldn’t feed, terrified he’d starve; my bosom a flaming tennis-ball of fire, suffering from mastitis, desperate to stop the pain, afraid it’d harm my son if I did. My tears: the stream of endless, terrified tears; feeling there was no one to turn to, to ever tell me what to do, to assure me I was doing whatever I did do okay. Leigh occasionally turned up to see us, dispensed a bit of advice that I’d fall on like a starving woman, but she was done with babies by that time. And anyway, she didn’t really do boys. Too much trouble. She preferred her girls—and her beautician. My mum flew over once, but she spent most of the time wandering around, spaced-out, in awe of Mickey’s house, and shopping for things she couldn’t get in Spain. I dug the palms of my hands into my eyes. ‘A penny for them.’ Silver swiped his car-keys from the wooden table. I jumped.

  ‘You don’t want to know, I promise you.’

  He looked at me closely. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Just got a bit of a headache, that’s all.’ I trailed after him to the car.

  My bosom throbbed emptily; my guilt stalked me like a great black shadow. The kids on the green were screeching with laughter in the fading light. I didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The next morning, I finally gave in. The German psychotherapist had very shiny hair, that was the first thing I noticed. Coppery bright as a new penny coin, the light from the ceiling bounced off it. To shield my eyes against the gleam, I stared instead at the carved wooden Buddha sitting plumply in the corner, oddly out of place among the yellowing leaflets about HIV and stress.

  Actually she seemed quite nice, the therapist, quite genuine, but I wasn’t going to get sucked in. I was noncommittal, monosyllabic in the main. Mostly I was fascinated by her centre-parting—it was so straight. She managed to ascertain that no, I wasn’t really suicidal; no, I didn’t have a death wish; yes, I was just desperate for my son back. She said that four days of enforced separation from your child was bound to destroy anyone. Yes, I was suffering from the worst kind of guilt imaginable—the feeling I had failed my son-although of course I hadn’t, she hastened to add. That my postnatal depression had been quite normal, that thousands of women suffered from it, a lot of them untreated. That it didn’t mean I was a bad or unfit mother, or that I deserved this fate. I nodded blankly to show I understood all this, while she said that yes, it was quite natural in the circumstances to feel this way, and then she suggested, rather tentatively it seemed to me, that if I needed more medication I should give the pills to someone ‘responsible’ to hold on to for me.