Lullaby

by Claire Seeber

  ‘Agnes?’ My voice faltered. I drew myself up to my full height. She wasn’t all that tall herself, I realised now, but in spike heels she had a great advantage. Strappy leather sandals so expensive I could practically hear their flesh mooing softly while being trotted across a lush emerald field to die humbly for Agnes. She looked across at me; she stopped; she tilted her head rather like a cockatoo.

  ‘You must be Jessica,’ she said, after a studied moment. She pushed her sunglasses up into her hair. ‘I wasn’t exactly expecting you here, I must say.’ Cool as a December day, as the snow plains that she hailed from—despite a degree of obvious exhaustion. I offered my hand as graciously as I could, but inside I shook like jelly. My rival, I thought uneasily, as she slid her own hand calmly towards me. Her skin was very cool and dry; I was sure mine was all clammy. I watched the porter fall over himself to take her trolley as she suggested a drink at the bar to me.

  We swayed on ridiculously uncomfortable high chairs. With impeccable but frosty manners, she ordered a Manhattan; I opted for water, then swapped to vodka at the last minute. My mind was scrabbling like a spider in a filling bath. I kept seeing her in bed with Mickey, him ripping off her flimsy underwear, their lithe bodies twined round each other. Pauline’s words came back to smack me in the face: ‘…they loved each other very much…destroying each other…’

  Agnes lit a cigarette without offering me one. ‘So, what’s up with Mickey? I heard he had an accident, no, but he is all right?’ She inhaled deeply.

  ‘He was attacked. Our son’s been—’ I tried not to choke on the words; I was determined not to cough as I breathed her smoke in. ‘—kidnapped,’ I managed eventually. I’d never said that word out loud before. I clenched my hands very tight between my knees.

  ‘My God!’ she said, paling. She looked properly shocked now at least. She tapped her ash very carefully into the ashtray. The vodka whacked straight up into my addled brain.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t really understand your message. I had a call from a policeman too some days ago. DI Silver? He is also coming to meet me here.’ She inhaled again. In my vodka blur I could see her and Silver now, writhing around. Agnes looked like she writhed. I shook my befuddled head sharply.

  ‘Are you okay? Is—’ For the first time, she hesitated. The way she talked was slightly odd, stilted even. ‘Is Mickey okay?’ She eyed me closely. Her irises were grey and flinty; like a cat’s. I hated cats—they always made me wheeze.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks. It’s my baby I’m worried about. And my husband, obviously.’ I emphasised the ‘my’.

  She shrugged her stylish shoulders. ‘Mickey, he’s a survivor, no? He will be okay, I think. I hope to God.’

  I bet you do.

  She sipped her drink, and I felt her check the clock behind me. Cold as ice, she was, and almost as brittle. Her nails were beautifully filed, but I noticed that her manicure was rather chipped. It was now or never.

  ‘Why have you been seeing him?’ I asked, with the utmost civility.

  This time it was her that almost choked; then the choke became a cough, a proper smoker’s rattle. When she had composed herself a little, she looked at me, and now she didn’t bother to hide her disdain.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Her perfectly plucked eyebrow curled into an elegant question mark.

  ‘You heard, I’m sure,’ I answered bluntly. ‘Why have you been in touch with Mickey again?’

  She was about to protest, but I cut her off. ‘I know you have, so don’t bother to deny it, please. Pauline told me.’

  Agnes smiled sardonically, running a finger round that beautifully glossed mouth. Inhaled, exhaled, like some old dragon. ‘Ah, Pauline. The dolly lesbian.’ Inhaled again. Then, ‘Do you really want to know?’

  ‘Yes, I do actually.’

  ‘Well, you should ask your husband perhaps.’

  ‘I can’t. He’s out cold in the hospital.’ She paled again. ‘That’s why I’m asking you.’

  ‘Out cold?’

  ‘Unconscious.’ Her eyes narrowed. I relented a little. ‘He’ll be okay.’

  She sized me up for a second. ‘It’s—been very hard, you know, Jessica. Can I call you that?’ It seemed like she was searching for words; she twirled her cocktail stirrer round and around her glass again. ‘When you have known love like mine and Mickey’s, it’s hard to not—how can I explain it? Not to pursue it, I guess.’

  ‘Pursue it?’ I had a sudden image of Mickey running around our garden, chasing a laughing Agnes. I pushed my vodka away.

  ‘Yes, pursue. He won’t leave me alone.’

  My stomach hit the floor with an almighty thump. Then I looked at her, and something in the way she fidgeted very slightly made me question her honesty.

  ‘You’re lying,’ I challenged.

  ‘Oh yes? You think?’ She stood up. ‘I don’t want to talk to you now. I am sorry for you, but really, why have you come here? To rub my nose in it?’

  ‘Rub your nose in what?’

  ‘You have it all now, don’t you, Jessica? My man, my house. Leave it at that, okay?’

  ‘Agnes,’ I said wearily, ‘please, I don’t want to upset you. But I need to know the truth. About you and Mickey. I need to restore some order to the chaos that my life’s become. You must understand that? Please, finish your drink at least.’

  Reluctantly she sat down again, taking a careful sip of her vibrant cocktail. I felt her make a decision. ‘Okay I tell you the truth—and then you’ll go, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed.

  It was rather like a safety valve had flown off somewhere. ‘I have tried to leave him alone, I tell myself I must get on with my life, and I do for a while. But then I can’t help it, I need to speak with him. So I ring him. I say, look, you are married again. What about your new wife? Is it the same amount of love we had?’

  I refused to flinch. I pulled the vodka back to me, oh, what the hell, and gulped at it, holding the glass too tight until it made my old wound sore. The icy liquid trickled down my throat.

  ‘I have even changed my home number recently, you know, so if he did want to ring me, he couldn’t. So I didn’t wait by the phone all the time.’

  So that was why Silver couldn’t reach her at first. She was fiddling with an expensive-looking lighter; it bore an inscription that I couldn’t quite read. My stomach lurched, the vodka sloshed. I swallowed hard. ‘So why did you see him?’

  ‘When?’

  I did the calculations. ‘Last week. Sunday. Pauline said you were meant to be meeting.’

  She laughed huskily, but her eyes didn’t even start to smile. They were flat, cold. ‘I didn’t see him in the end. I stayed in New York. He rang me some days before and he said he was working. I think he only arranged it in the first place because he—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It is hard to be honest with you, Jessica, about my feelings. It’s very—private.’ She said my name like it made her feel quite sick.

  ‘Well, try,’ I suggested.

  She shrugged again. Her poise was faultless, but I sensed an anguish lurking somewhere deep. She looked away, over at a table of laughing City boys. One of them winked lasciviously at her, and she received it like a woman used to eternal attention, basking in their desire. She looked back at me. For a moment I thought there were tears in her grey cat eyes, but she blinked them away damn fast. I found myself almost smiling encouragingly.

  ‘Well, I guess, Mickey chose you—didn’t he? But, he knew—he felt—my sorrow, so we arranged that dinner when I last went into his office. Then he changes his mind. He wants to be the family man now, he says. He feels sorry for you.’ Any pity I’d felt for her dissolved entirely; my smile vanishing as my heart sank sickeningly ‘And so he cancelled it.’

  ‘Sorry for me?’ I echoed.

  ‘You had that—how do they call it? Postnatal depression, no?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  But she knew that I was lying; she looked utterly contemptuous. �
�I wouldn’t know, anyway. I don’t have kids.’

  I looked at the sheen of her, the sheer time-consuming perfection. ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘Not my thing at all,’ she purred, looking me up and down with subtle malevolence. I bit my tongue. What would you know about sacrifice, I wanted to ask, with your Prada clothes and your platinum credit cards. But I didn’t.

  ‘When did you arrange this dinner?’ I pushed. I just wanted the facts, and then I wanted to get the hell out of there.

  ‘I really don’t remember, Jessica. Some time when I was last working in London.’

  ‘Why did you go to see him originally?’

  ‘To sign some papers to sell a property we owned.’

  I glared at her. She stared back unabashed. ‘Oh, all right then. If you really want to know—to tell him we should still be together. And we should, you know. But he—I think he—doesn’t want another broken marriage, not again.’

  Oh, how magnanimous. I didn’t trust myself to speak immediately. She smoothed her chignon, her hair as crisp as it was in that old photo, and checked her jewel-encrusted watch. I fiddled with my own hair self-consciously, then wondered when I’d last shaved my exposed armpits, and clamped my arms to my side. I didn’t really get it, but she was so different from me there seemed little point starting with comparisons. I was sure that lighter said ‘Love forever, your Mickey’ on its side, but it was still the wrong way round to read properly.

  ‘Now if that’s all, I’m really very tired, and I don’t have much time. And it is painful for me to see you, you must understand that?’

  For the first time, she smiled at me—and I saw why men might worship her. She leant towards me and, briefly, she touched my hand. In different circumstances I could have been captivated.

  ‘I am sorry for you really, about your baby. I mean, it’s terrible—but I guess he will be okay, no? I hope you see him soon. British police are very good, I think.’ With great deliberation she checked her watch again. ‘So—you know, I’m only here one night. I have a lot to fit in, meetings, you know.’ She sighed, stubbing her fag out. ‘And I guess I have to see this Silver too.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said stiffly. What else was there to say? ‘Well, thank you for meeting me.’ I sounded like a schoolgirl and I winced inside as she gestured for the bill. I started to dig round in my bag, but she waved me off. ‘Let me.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I was finishing my drink as her phone rang. She answered it, fussing at a small mark on her jacket shoulder. I could sense her growing annoyance, though she masked it pretty well.

  ‘Ahh, DI Silver. Yes, I am in the lobby bar. With a little friend of yours.’ If Silver caught me here, he’d have my guts for garters. I didn’t even want to begin the explanations. And for some reason I didn’t want him to see me beside the stunning Agnes. I leapt up. ‘Thanks for the drink,’ I stammered again, draining my glass; then I headed for the doors.

  ‘Good luck,’ I thought she called to my departing back, and I tried to smile as I shot out the door. She’d been so together, she was like some bloody ice maiden. So cold I felt like I’d got frostbite.

  As I waited for a cab, Silver’s car pulled up metres from where I stood. I saw him check himself in his mirror, straightening his tie, before flashing his badge at the valet. I tried to merge into the pillar, willing a cab to hurry up. I really didn’t want him to find me here. Silver swung his legs from his car. ‘Come on,’ I pleaded silently to the God of cabs, but Silver was still heading my way; surely he couldn’t miss me…A cab pulled up just in time. I had absolutely no idea where I was going now.

  ‘I hope you’re man enough to get her measure, Detective Inspector,’ I muttered, throwing myself onto the back seat.

  In the cab Robbie called me again, and this time I listened to what he was suggesting. I’d think about it, I said. The cabbie dropped me in nearby Soho and at the first café I came to, I chose a pavement-table and ordered coffee, strong black coffee, and a croissant. I needed to sober up; and I was more shaken by my encounter with Agnes than I wanted to admit. The faceless woman had become flesh—and too-flipping-perfect flesh at that.

  I felt like I’d just put my head in the washing machine, on the extra-fast spin-cycle. Perhaps I was being too hard on Robbie. After all, he was my little brother. Perhaps he really did care. Leigh was always bound to say that he was out of order. They’d never been close, and he’d really burnt his bridges with her when he’d vanished the last time. Leigh hadn’t forgiven him for nicking Mum’s engagement ring and Nana’s gold chains and her own bankbook; for disappearing from our lives without a trace. Leigh saw how much he hurt Mum, how once again we’d been left to pick up the pieces, and her anger had festered over the years he’d not been around.

  And I just couldn’t sit around and wait much longer. I felt like I was bouncing off the walls, and Silver’s team was losing my trust by the minute. It was days since that video arrived, and Louis seemed no nearer. I was running out of time; Louis was running out of time. If I didn’t find him soon he might forget me. Or worse. What if his captors got bored with him? What if he cried once too often? Or laughed once too often? What if they could never bear to part with him?

  Dusk was falling. The theatre crowd thronged the streets, the out-of-towners conspicuous in their best gear. Tight T-shirted sons and smiling, floral-clad mothers queued behind Australian tourists for the Abba musical opposite, while young girls glued to mobiles sashayed down the road, brown bellies swelling gently over low-slung skirts. I smothered the croissant with blackcurrant jam and forced it down, trying not to feel jealous of two handsome boys beside me, ordering Martinis, smiling into each other’s eyes.

  With a thump, I realised how lonely I was, and it forced me into a decision. I made a phone call and then ordered more coffee. My eye was twitching, up and down like a jumping bean. Despite my exhaustion, I felt all rushy and hyper from the caffeine. I dug out my compact, checked my tired face. Behind me, a shadow crossed the little mirror, then my brother slunk into the seat beside me.

  ‘God, you made me jump! Don’t do that, Rob.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I’m already enough on edge.’

  ‘I said sorry.’ He re-lit his roll-up, spooned sugar into the espresso I’d ordered him. ‘He needs a grand.’ He was really twitchy, much less upbeat than this morning.

  ‘Nice to see you too. A thousand pounds? For what, exactly?’

  ‘That’s just what it costs.’

  ‘What, just for a bit of information?’

  He shrugged. His hand shook as he stirred his coffee. ‘I don’t set the price, Jess.’

  I stared at him, but he was looking at something over my shoulder. Then he slugged his coffee back in one.

  ‘Don’t you? Are you sure about that?’ A nasty thought inched slug-like through my head. ‘Robbie, were you at the hospital last night?’

  ‘What hospital?’ His stupid roll-up had gone out again.

  ‘Were you trying to see Mickey?’

  Robbie struck a match just as I grabbed his hand, burning my fingers. ‘Robbie, bloody look at me! This isn’t just some kind of blackmail, is it? Some money-making scheme? Do you know where Louis is?’

  His face was coated nastily with cold sweat again. Under the twinkling little lights of the bar-canopy, his normal pallor had a greenish tinge. His dark curls were greasy, the clothes he’d been in for days were quite filthy, the row of tiny silver hoops up his left ear tarnished and dull. When he finally looked me in the eye, his were filmy and glazed. He didn’t answer.

  ‘Robbie!’ Hope fluttered in my chest like a fledgling attempting its first flight. ‘Answer me, for God’s sake! Do you know where my baby is? Look,’ I grabbed his wrist again desperately, ‘I won’t be angry, I promise. Just tell me the truth.’

  He shook me off. ‘Of course I don’t know where the bloody baby is, Jess. Christ!’ Then he saw my face, and guilt crossed his. ‘Sorry, sorry. But you know what I mean. Of course I
haven’t seen Louis.’ He was still peering nervously over my shoulder. ‘I thought we’d been through all this. I’m your brother, Jess. Even I draw the line at some things.’ He attempted a joke, but he was so distracted he was making me feel even more anxious. I turned around, scanned the street behind me.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Well, what do you keep looking at then?’

  ‘Nothing, all right! I thought I saw someone I knew, that’s all. Just leave it, will you?’

  I sighed heavily. The bird in my chest crashed and burned.

  ‘I think we should get on with this.’ Robbie was on his feet already, dragging his heavy leather back over the skanky old T-shirt.

  ‘D’you know, I’m not sure any more,’ I said listlessly. I was exhausted, dirty and sweaty. I just wanted to go home and wash and think of a new way of finding my son. Robbie’s appearance hardly filled me with confidence for his scheme. I didn’t trust him any more; I was struggling again with the thought that I should ring Silver and shop my own brother right now.

  ‘Jess,’ his face was livid in the dusk light, his thin skin high with colour now. ‘Don’t mess me around, all right? I’ve set this up now, we’ve got to go and meet this bloke.’

  I stared at him. He must have sensed my discomfort, because he softened a bit. ‘Look, he might solve all your problems, Jessie. It’s worth a try, isn’t it?’ He was pleading now. I sighed. His downfall had always been his knack of persuasion.

  ‘I suppose I’ve got nothing left to lose.’ I fished out my last tenner. ‘I expect the coffee’s on me, is it?’

  Robbie’s sense of relief was unmistakable as he shepherded me through the crowds outside the café. All the time we walked, he kept glancing back. Then I caught his face, lit up by a streetlight, and I realised he actually looked scared. More than scared. He looked like he’d seen the dead.

  The shop, closed for the night, was on the corner of Berwick Street and a murky little alley, the kind that men piss down when they’ve had one too many—or when they’re just that type of man. A smell of putrid fish and fruit hung heavy in the air as I picked my way behind Robbie through squashed strawberries and mouldering cabbage leaves that squelched between my flip-flopped toes. Someone had dumped a tray of blackening avocados on the shop’s front step; in the humid night air they swarmed with tiny flies.