In the morning I woke quite early, before Louis even, a luxury these days. I had the strange feeling someone had been looking down at me, but I shook it off. Stiff from the sofa, I showered in the guest room so I didn’t wake Mickey up. I switched the radio on and it was tuned into one of those old hit stations, and I was humming along to a song that reminded me of Dad. ‘Nice legs, shame about the face,’ he used to shout out the window of that old Cortina at all the short-skirted girls we passed, if Mum wasn’t around; me and Robbie and Leigh screaming with laughter and ducking behind the seats when the flustered girls whipped round.
And when I stepped out of the shower, I felt revived. It was time to start things afresh, I felt optimistic and, wrapping myself in a huge white towel, I went back to check Louis—only he wasn’t in his cot. So I padded over to my bedroom, still dripping wet, to see if Mickey had put him in our bed, only they weren’t there either.
So then I called downstairs, and there was nothing, no answer, and I ran down, just as Jean was coming through the front door, and I said hello as I slammed into the kitchen, and the back door was swinging open. I stepped into the garden, shouting, ‘Mickey, where the bloody hell are you?’ but he didn’t answer, and the garden was empty, just Agnes’s bloody roses shedding their last tears, and I shivered in the September breeze as I realised Mickey had gone and taken Louis with him. And I was filled with fury, more angry than I’d ever been before, because wherever he’d taken him, Mickey knew I couldn’t cope with this, not now, not any more. It was a visceral pain now, like Louis had been ripped right out of me again, and I was panting with the effort of just staying calm.
I ran through the house still in my towel, and I saw that Mickey’s car wasn’t in the drive, and with a sinking heart I cried to Jean, ‘Did you see Mickey leave?’, but she shook her head and looked terrified again—and so was I, just like the bloody last time. Just like the bloody last time.
I threw on my clothes in seconds, began to dial Mickey’s mobile. Then I saw it sitting redundant on my dressing table.
‘Don’t do this to me, Mickey, don’t do this, please,’ I muttered, taking the stairs three at a time. But I had a feeling, I just had a feeling I knew where they’d be.
I floored it across the heath, turned the car through the great wrought-iron gates into Greenwich Park, parking near the bobble-headed Observatory, where we always joked we’d like to live. I set off at a jog across the grass, Henry VIII’s old stomping ground, wending my way beneath the chestnut trees, crunching over their spiky conker-shells littering the leafy ground.
I couldn’t see the statue from here—Mickey’s favourite in all London, apparently—an early Henry Moore, balanced on the top of the steep park hill. Finally, as I reached the longer grass, it came in sight—but the bench where Mickey liked to sit was still shielded from my view by an old couple doing Tai Chi under the watery sun.
And then I spotted a tall figure in the distance and my heart began to pound. It was Mickey, I was sure of it, it had to be, and in his arms—there in his arms, thank God, was Louis. Standing stock-still by the statue, they were looking down at London through the trees, gazing towards St Paul’s—towards the Tate, I realised with horrid irony. And I ran faster than I’d ever run before, and by the time I reached them I really couldn’t breathe.
‘Mickey.’ I was behind him now, panting, trying to catch my breath. He didn’t turn. ‘What are you doing here?’
Louis looked at me over his father’s shoulder and smiled, happily oblivious, his one tooth sticking up all pearly, but still Mickey didn’t speak.
‘We’re meant to be going this morning, aren’t we? Have you changed your mind?’ I panted, still gasping for air. ‘We don’t have to, I don’t care. Let’s stay at home.’ I was rambling with nerves. ‘It was your idea.’
And then he looked at me, finally turned and looked at me, and his lip went back wolfishly And something in his face made my stomach plunge, like a leaden weight, like a pendulum that won’t swing up again. A cold realisation was creeping slowly through me, icy in my veins.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ I whispered, and everything finally began to slot into place. ‘What is it?’ But I think I already knew. I stared at him, an utter stranger now. I’d been so stupid, so frantic with worry I hadn’t seen the truth.
Mickey was walking away from me, taking my son with him. He seemed so calm it was surreal.
‘Give me my son, Mickey,’ I said quietly. I held my arms out for the baby. But Mickey kept moving; like a wild animal, he slunk just out of reach. ‘So,’ I said, and I moved too, ‘how long did you know for?’ I tried to catch his eye. ‘When did you realise, Mickey?’
The vital thing now was to keep my wits about me. I stalked him, keeping Louis in my sight the entire time. Mickey reached his bench, and then he sat, sort of settled on the edge, like he was contemplating flight. Louis was struggling slightly now, and grizzling a little, but his father reached in his pocket and dug out a broken biscuit. Louis grabbed it with chubby dimpled fingers, pacified for a while at least.
‘You’re going to have to tell me the truth sometime, Mickey, you know,’ I said quietly.
It was very quiet as I waited for his reply. A lone dog barked in the distance; a far-off helicopter chopped the air.
‘Yes,’ eventually he sighed, ‘I suppose I am.’ He ran his hand over Louis’s silky hair. ‘You know, I thought it’d be okay, we’d make it work, you and me, once Agnes was gone. Only then,’ he looked at me accusingly, ‘only then I saw how you looked at your man Silver the other week.’
‘What?’ Slowly, oh so very slowly, I was edging ever nearer. ‘Don’t try to blame me. This is about you and Agnes, isn’t it?’ Tentatively I sat down too, careful to keep to the opposite end of the bench. I daren’t make any sudden movements.
‘Was. Sure, it was about us.’ Another pause. His voice was very quiet now. ‘You know, I was shocked at how distraught you were.’
‘When?’
‘When Louis disappeared.’
I laughed incredulously. ‘What, you thought someone could steal my son away from me, and I wouldn’t care?’
‘Oh come on now, Jessica,’ he said harshly, staring down at the top of Louis’s swirly little head. The baby was nodding off. ‘You were hardly a natural mother, were you now?’
I was about to argue, but of course it was true; I hadn’t been. I’d had to dig extremely deep to uncover my maternal instincts, so shrouded in doubt and uncertainty they’d been. Mickey, on the other hand, had been besotted by Louis from the word go.
‘Maybe not at first,’ I admitted quietly. ‘But it’s different now. You know that.’
‘Yes,’ he said sadly, ‘yes, I do. Too late, I do.’
I looked down the hill. ‘So,’ I said warily. A girl in tight leggings jogged across my view. ‘So, when did you find out that it was Agnes? And why the fuck didn’t you do something about it?’
‘I did. But it wasn’t easy from that bloody hospital bed.’
A knife was twisting in my gut. ‘I loved you, Mickey. I believed in you.’
‘Did you?’ He turned and held my gaze. ‘I don’t think you ever really did.’ His expression was unfathomable. ‘I think you knew it wouldn’t work, if you’re honest with yourself.’
I was desperately trying to piece it all together. ‘You didn’t just see her once, did you?’ The words stuck in my craw. ‘Did you—were you sleeping with Agnes again?’
I couldn’t read his look.
‘God. The whole time we were together?’
He looked away.
‘Just bloody tell me, Mickey.’
‘No.’ He was quick, finally contrite. ‘No, I swear I wasn’t. It was only when you—when you were really pregnant, when you went off me, sure it was.’
‘Off you?’ My face scrunched in surprise. ‘I didn’t ever go off you. I just felt—odd. Self-conscious. And—’ I thought back to those days, of being huge, the weight, the pressure of my u
nborn child. Of feeling like I was about to split open down the middle, like a great ripe watermelon. I flushed. ‘And I was uncomfortable. I’m sure that was—that is quite normal. Not wanting to be touched all the time in pregnancy.’
‘But you know, sex was all we really had, Jess,’ he said softly, ‘it was the glue that held us together.’
‘Oh, was it?’ I retorted angrily. But deep down I knew he was probably right.
‘I’d say so.’
I reflected for a minute. ‘And so Agnes…?’ I prompted.
He was getting irritated. ‘We had a quick drink to sort out some property we’d owned. Ages ago, when you were still pregnant. I didn’t want to see her, but I had to get a signature, and then—well, one thing just led to another.’
Pauline’s words echoed fatally in my mind. He went on. ‘It wasn’t planned, Jessica. It just happened.’ He really wanted me to believe him, I could see that. ‘We couldn’t help it. We tried. I tried. I ended it again—I didn’t see her for a while after Louis was born.’
‘How considerate.’
He was talking to himself now. ‘And then—it all just fell back into place. I couldn’t keep away.’
The knife kept pushing deeper. ‘I thought—I thought you hated her?’ My voice cracked painfully.
‘Loved her so much I hated her too, I guess. Couldn’t—’ he looked at me, eyes hard and glassy, ‘couldn’t live without her, no matter how I tried.’
Swift jab to the soft bit of my belly. ‘And so you knew she was going to take Louis—’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ he snapped. ‘I may be a bastard, but I’m not that mad. Not that heartless. She planned it on her own.’ He was so intense, I saw his fingers turn white where he grasped the baby. ‘I swear she did.’
‘Oh, well. That’s a relief.’ I watched the jogging girl cross back the other way.
He shrugged. ‘It was like a—a sort of joke we had. We’d—you know. Run off with the baby, the two of us. I just never realised she’d take it seriously. I thought she was kind of—over the mother thing.’
‘A joke!’ I couldn’t believe he’d actually said it. ‘A fucking joke, Mickey? Stealing my son?’ I snarled, and stood, stepped towards him with arms outstretched. ‘Give me Louis, Mickey, just give him to me. I don’t care what you do, I really don’t. I just want my son back.’
But Mickey just sat, totally implacable, our sleeping baby cocooned tightly in his arms. ‘Not like a funny joke. I mean, like a kind of fantasy. You know—a daydream.’
‘Mickey,’ I said wearily, and I clutched the back of the bench for support, ‘you’re just making it all sound even worse.’
‘But,’ he looked at me intently, and he was stripped bare at last. Freed from his usual arrogance; the naked man beneath the haughty veneer. ‘I need to explain. I feel—well, I don’t feel good about it, Jessica. I’m a guilty man, so I am, I realise that.’
‘You don’t say! God, Mickey.’
‘What I mean, what I’m trying to say is—I guess I played down your love for Louis for Agnes’s benefit, I suppose. I just didn’t realise she’d take it all to heart.’
‘Mickey, I really don’t need to sit and reminisce with you about your and Agnes’s bloody pillow-talk, all right?’
‘But it wasn’t like that, I swear. It was—’ He looked at me, eyes manic, lips drained of colour. It dawned on me that he was holding out for sympathy. ‘Before it happened, she was already collapsing inside. She’d lost all hope, and—I was—I was frightened she’d do something stupid.’
‘Like steal a child?’ I glared at him.
‘Like kill herself. I was trying to make her feel better.’ The finality of his words shocked us both, I think. God, he looked sad. I thought of Agnes and the gun, the swiftness and the beauty in her last movements. A release. A gift for Mickey. She couldn’t give him a child, but she gave him her eternal protection. She left him her silence. With some effort, I pushed those awful final moments from my mind.
‘So?’
‘That day in the Tate, she just appeared.’
I thought about Mickey disappearing for a while as I ate his cake. What if I hadn’t been so greedy, I’d wondered a thousand times; what if I’d just stayed with him in that exhibition and not tried to be all art-loving and independent.
‘I had to promise to meet her—she was going to tell you everything. She was already hysterical when she turned up. So I slipped off with Louis. I thought you’d be ages looking at the pictures. I thought you’d—you know, just get a coffee and wait.’
I shook my head in utter disbelief.
‘I wasn’t thinking straight, I realise that. I just wanted to get her away from where you were before she made a scene. I went to meet her down by the river. We went to some dingy pub, she got me drunk. I think she might have put something in the whisky. I don’t know, I felt very odd. She kept going on and on at me to leave with her. Eventually I went to try to ring you outside, to tell you I was on my way back, but I couldn’t get an answer.’
‘You had my bloody phone, that’s why.’ Or she had, anyway.
‘Anyway, when I went back to get Louis, they’d both gone. I nearly had a heart attack.’
‘So why didn’t you get the police then?’
‘I thought I’d find her. I looked everywhere.’
I saw myself running round the Tate while Mickey hunted the streets so near to me. Louis’s frantic parents.
‘I had no idea that she’d really take him, that she’d just disappear.’
‘Christ, Mickey.’
‘Oh, I know it might sound ridiculous now, Jessica,’ he said softly, ‘but when I was with Agnes, I would have done anything for her. She was suffering so much. She couldn’t come to terms with her fate at all.’ Louis muttered, shifted in his father’s arms. ‘I’m truly sorry, that you must believe.’
‘Why must I? You let some nutter run off with my child.’
‘I didn’t mean to. I got into that stupid fecking fight and that was it. I was so hyped-up, and I’d been nipping whisky with her, and then when she disappeared my bloody mobile ran out and eventually I went into that pub to use the phone. I was still trying to ring Agnes, and then I was going to ring the police, I swear, if I couldn’t reach her. I didn’t realise what had happened for days after I ended up in hospital.’
‘So you really lost your memory?’
He had the decency to look ashamed.
‘You bloody didn’t, did you?’
‘I did, initially I did, I swear,’ he said, ‘but eventually it started to come back. I was—you know, I had to play for time. I was trying to get Agnes to take the baby home to you; I thought it would be safer if I did it. Only once she had him she was truly besotted and I realised she wasn’t going to do that, whatever I said. I realised—she loved the baby more than me.’
‘Tragic for you,’ I said bitterly.
‘Yeah, well, everyone has their limit, don’t they, I guess.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘You should have come clean.’
‘I couldn’t. She—’
‘What?’ I whispered.
I could see he found it painful to say. ‘She—she threatened to hurt Louis if I turned her in. I didn’t think she’d ever actually go through with it—but I just couldn’t take the risk. You must see that.’
‘Christ.’ The very idea made me feel physically sick. ‘She was completely mad, wasn’t she?’
‘Not mad. Just desperate. And so I thought I’d have to get him back myself. I did try to warn you.’
‘A bit bloody late, Mickey. And, I don’t understand. The police kept saying she was abroad.’
‘She had two passports, Norwegian and British-two names. She must have travelled under Hohlt. They were looking for Agnes Finnegan.’
A lone leaf drifted down by my feet. I thought of something else. ‘And Maxine? I mean—it was all a bit—matey, wasn’t it?’
He had the good grace to look abashed. ‘Well—’
&nbs
p; ‘What?’
‘Maxine caught Agnes and me—’ He stopped.
‘What? Oh God, Mickey, don’t try to protect me now, for Christ’s sake. It’s a bit late to spare my feelings, don’t you think?’
‘I’m not proud of it, sure I’m not. Maxine caught Agnes and me in bed together at the house.’
Numbly, I stared ahead of me.
‘She was threatening to tell you, taking the moral high ground, you know, so Agnes bribed her instead. I didn’t realise that Maxine was in on Agnes’s plans. To be fair, I think she just thought Agnes was going to take Louis away for a few days. And the amount of money Agnes was offering—well, think about it. You know how desperate Maxine was to better herself. She wasn’t going to turn it down.’
She always had been grasping. ‘Especially if you played up my unreliability as a mother, hey, Mickey?’
‘I’m truly sorry about that.’ But his eyes were mad. ‘I must have mentioned it once to Agnes, and she obviously used it as ammunition.’
I shivered, slumping back on the bench. We sat in silence for some time, and he let me reach out my hand, gently smooth my son’s hair where the breeze had ruffled it. The church clock on the nearby hill struck nine. A raw-faced man with a brown Labrador raised his cap at me. Louis stirred a little; Mickey stared into space. He was gone forever; I knew that now. I’d already known it, deep down, a long time ago.
‘I’m truly sorry, Jessica.’ He broke through the silence, making me jump. ‘I—oh God, I know it’s a cliché. But I never meant to hurt you, really. I just wasn’t thinking when I was with Agnes. You always seemed so—so tough. Agnes was the vulnerable one.’
I thought of Agnes’s beauty, her apparent perfection. I thought of Agnes’s absolute misery.
‘When I realised what she’d done, when she rang me in the hospital to try to get me to come to her, I was still delirious. I said if she didn’t bring Louis straight back, I’d shop her—and then she made her threats. But at least she sent you that video, those photos.’ He looked almost imploring. ‘So you’d know he was alive.’
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