Adam cleared his throat. ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying, but why would you attend antenatal classes when you’re not actually pregnant?’
‘You don’t know I’m not pregnant,’ Amanda snapped in defence. ‘You don’t know that at all.’
‘Sorry,’ Lorraine added on Adam’s behalf. ‘It’s just that we understand you’ve been attending the classes for some time now and haven’t actually ever been preg—’
‘You’ve been checking up on me? A woman’s been murdered and you’ve been finding out about me?’ Amanda began to shake. She splayed her fingers out over her conspicuously flat stomach.
‘It’s just routine. We need to talk to as many people as possible who knew Sally-Ann. I’m sure you under—’
‘What do you want me to say?’ she spat out. ‘That I killed her? Yeah, well that’s about as likely as me being preggers, I’d say.’ More tears followed.
Adam put down his cup. They’d both noticed Amanda’s accent had dropped several notches as if suddenly she didn’t belong on this pleasant middle-class estate but rather the council one a mile away.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, pulling a tissue from her pocket. ‘It’s just really upsetting news.’
‘You’ve had difficulty conceiving then?’ Lorraine asked. Or was it a statement? It didn’t come out with much empathy, either way.
‘Yes.’ Amanda blew her nose. She balled the tissue and looked up. ‘You got kids?’
Lorraine’s stomach swam, as it had the last couple of mornings when she woke up, remembering Grace and her ridiculous plans. ‘I have two.’
‘You?’ Amanda directed the same question at Adam.
‘Two also,’ he replied.
‘You’re lucky then. You don’t know what it feels like to want a baby so badly it’s an actual pain in your soul, a gaping hole in your very existence. It’s the true meaning of heartache.’ There was a pause as Amanda Simkins seemed to draw on a reserve of resignation and strength. She was evidently used to feeling this way; used to never giving up hope.
‘Did Sally-Ann ever mention anyone who might want to hurt her? Did she have any enemies that you know of?’
Amanda took time to think. Her eyes rolled upwards to stare at the ceiling then dragged down the pastel walls to the fireplace, over the polished coffee table, across the shiny floor and then back onto her lap where her fingers were nervously knitting an invisible garment. ‘If anyone was going to kill anyone then it’d be Liam taking a swing at Russ, or even . . .’ She trailed off. ‘Do you know about them?’ she asked, suddenly excited, as if she was the keeper of a great secret. ‘Sally-Ann confided in me.’
‘Go on,’ Lorraine coaxed. She was taking notes.
‘Russ has always loved Sally-Ann. He’s a weird one, all right, but his heart is in the right place. He and Sally-Ann went to school together, did the teen romance thing, and have been on and off ever since. She’s tried to get rid of him loads of times. Shit to a blanket, was what she told me.’
‘And Liam?’ Adam asked, trying to move things on. It was becoming clear that Amanda was the type to swathe herself in other people’s misfortunes to blanket her own. What was it Mary Knowles had said about her? A wormer-inner.
‘He was her teacher at the college,’ she said. ‘They had this really passionate affair. Clandestine meets late at night in the park, dirty weekends with Liam pretending to his wife that he was away on work conferences, secret gifts, everything. Sally-Ann phoned me once from the bed-and-breakfast place they were staying in. She said it was all fish, chips and shagging. No wonder she got preggers.’
Amanda said it as if ‘preggers’ was something you bought at a seaside shop. Lorraine thought it bore little relation to the serious business of creating another life.
‘Anyway, apparently Russ was crazy jealous. But then he found out some big secret about Liam and all hell broke loose.’
‘Secret?’ Lorraine said, feeling as if she was suddenly in a soap opera.
‘Apparently,’ Amanda said, drawing out the word, ‘Liam was having an affair with someone else as well as Sally-Ann. Russ told her about it, and she got really upset. She threatened to tell Liam’s wife.’
‘Do you know who the other-other woman was?’ Lorraine asked incredulously.
‘I know that she ran a class one evening a week at the college. Some jewellery design course or something.’ Amanda blew her nose. ‘Sally-Ann was grateful to Russ for warning her what Liam was like. Although you’d think she’d have realised.’
Lorraine made notes. ‘A right royal mess then,’ she said with a sigh that only Adam knew the meaning of.
Amanda suddenly hunched into a bolus of shaking shoulders and snotty nose. Tears dropped from her face onto her lap and her arms cradled her head. The news about her friend hadn’t sunk in yet.
‘Is there someone we can call for you, to come and sit with you for a bit?’ Lorraine offered. ‘A friend, perhaps?’
Amanda’s head whipped up, and her expression was one of scorn rather than sadness. Her eyebrows had pulled together in a knotted V and her mouth had crinkled into a sharp sphincter of red. But it was her eyes that unsettled Lorraine the most. She had never seen such a venomous stare. ‘My only friend is dead.’
20
IT’S ALL STILL there – a ton of work piled up and waiting to distract me from James getting further and further away. When I finally make it into the office, much later than I’d intended, I feel as if someone has scooped out the contents of my huge middle and all that’s left is a vacuous womb full of sorrow. I hang up my coat, exhausted and bereft, and go straight to the toilet.
‘Hi,’ Tina says, without looking up from her computer, when I come back in. She’s typing madly, updating case files no doubt. ‘Thought you weren’t coming in today. Everything OK?’ I know she means it sympathetically, but she’s so immersed in the email she’s typing, it comes out rather cold.
‘Yeah . . .’ Mark replies absent-mindedly, not having even noticed my arrival. ‘Did you just hear my stomach rumbling? Seems like lunch was hours ago.’ His words are slowed by concentration as he leafs through a file. ‘I’m starving again.’
‘Claudia’s here, dumbo,’ Tina says to him. ‘I was talking to her, not you.’
Mark looks up. ‘Oh, hello,’ he says, realising he’s not been making much sense. ‘How are you?’
I nod. ‘Sorry I’m so late in. It’s not been the best day.’ I pick at my fingernails and manage a smile.
They’ve been through this with me many times before. Later, if there’s time, we’ll have Krispy Kreme doughnuts and make silly jokes about mermaids and secret beach holidays and what a great time James is having without me. They’ll ask why I don’t just retire and become a kept Navy wife, which I could be with some degree of style. I could lunch several times a week with friends from the tennis club I’d no doubt join, and sip freshly squeezed juice at the gym following a session with my personal trainer. I’d take classes in flower-arranging and watercolour painting, and host dinner parties that would be talked about for months afterwards. Plus the walls in my home would be a shrine to the latest up-and-coming artists because I’d be invited to all the best London gallery previews.
‘James went this morning,’ I say with a shrug, and they offer faces of sympathy and a cup of tea.
I settle at my desk, but instead of concentrating on work I wonder what Zoe and I will talk about when I get home. I’m certain I upset her earlier, the way she dashed out and banged the front door. I have no idea where she went. Will we sit silently in front of the television, perhaps each asking tentatively what the other wants to watch; are you warm enough, will it snow tomorrow, would you like a drink? Or will we chat incessantly about men, about her so-far-mysterious past, her recently failed relationship, our favourite movies and books, and all our hopes and dreams? What I need most tonight is company, human warmth, and consolation. It makes me wonder if I hired Zoe to look after the boys or me.
I groan as my comp
uter jumps to life. Time away from my desk has resulted in a crammed inbox. The last email to come in is marked urgent and says I have to attend court in ten days’ time as a witness. I skim-read the details. I feel nauseous. It’s the day of my antenatal class, if indeed I’m still pregnant then. I really don’t want to miss it.
I click on to the next message. ‘Oh Christ,’ I say out loud. ‘Mark, did you see the link to the story about the Fletcher case?’ It’s been copied to him too.
‘I’ve not checked for ten minutes.’ He clicks his mouse, reads and goes pale. We know it’s part of the job but when it happens, we take it personally. It’s a strike against our department, against us, narrowed down to whoever was responsible for another one slipping through the net we cast out as broadly, yet as precisely, as we can over our community.
‘That’s a dose of horrendous then,’ I say. One failed case cancels out a thousand success stories once the newspapers get hold of it.
‘It wasn’t our fault,’ Mark says. ‘There were no grounds to remove him at the time.’ He then tells me that he already knew this was going to break, that he hadn’t wanted to burden me with it. Does he think it will be easier when I finally have my baby?
‘So, they’re saying we allowed him to starve to death,’ I say, in a way that implies I’m hardened to these things. The reality is quite different. I think back. Other members of the department were dealing with this case. He wasn’t on my load, although I did see him once when I was asked for a second opinion. I reported that there was no cause for concern. I remember seeing the baby’s food-stained clothing, his ruddy chapped cheeks – he was plump and putting on weight, goddammit. The teenage mother seemed in control and had a good support network – her own mother, an aunty, a partner all wanting to be involved. ‘We let him down,’ I whisper.
It never gets any easier.
There is silence as we all get on with our work, as we consign the child’s demise to the box in our minds reserved for such tragedies. What happens when it fills up, I wonder? What happens when there’s no more room for starving children, self-harming teenagers and alcoholic parents? An image of a white-tiled mental institute, endless therapy and a cocktail of medication to make it all better swoops through my mind. I’m being selfish – ridiculous – and that’s not what this job’s about. I screw up my eyes, but the person I see locked up, slamming her palms on the toughened glass windows, being wrapped up in a straitjacket begging them to let her out is me.
‘I have a meeting with Miranda,’ I say, reining in my thoughts. ‘Anyone else need to see her?’ My unrelated and frankly far too chipper question hovers limply in the dank atmosphere of our stuffy office. A small electric heater in the corner belts out crackling dry heat. We’re too cold without it yet all energy seems to evaporate when it’s switched on. The central heating thermostat’s broken, Mark discovered a month ago, and I daren’t put in a request for a repair when we get turned down for so many necessary items.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Tina says. She thinks I don’t see the glance she gives Mark, but I do. In return, he offers the tiniest of nods. Inwardly, I smile. I like it that they’re watching out for me.
‘Great,’ I say, glad of the company. ‘We’ll leave in twenty minutes. If there’s time, we can bring an obscene number of doughnuts back with us.’ I am enormously grateful for their concern, for the carbs we will sink our teeth into, for the countless cups of tea they put on my desk, for the way Mark helps me out to the car on these dark, icy afternoons, and for being ready to take over my work at a moment’s notice. It’s hard to admit, but I know it’s going to be the toughest time of my life.
*
‘So how’s it going with Mary Poppins?’ Tina asks.
We’re in her car. Even though I already know, I can instantly tell she doesn’t have kids: the footwells are devoid of sweet wrappers, comics and broken plastic toys, and the upholstery doesn’t have any chocolate smears or wee stains on it. It’s certainly nothing like the vomit-stained interior of my family car. And it suddenly seems such a foreign notion that I even drive a family car, a safe vehicle for the kids who aren’t mine, a space waiting for the baby seat, and I feel a little bit apprehensive again when I think of what it all really means, the responsibility I now have.
‘She seems fine,’ I tell Tina. Fine, I think shamefully. Is that all you can say about the woman who’s come to live in your house? ‘Though when I say fine,’ I add, so aware of my own fears they spill into speech, ‘I mean, you know, it’s a bit early to tell.’ I swallow.
‘Must be a bit weird, having some student type living with you.’ Tina brakes hard as the lights turn red. I lurch forward. The seatbelt pulls tight around me. ‘You OK?’
‘Yeah, fine,’ I say, releasing the strap from my stomach. ‘Actually, she’s not a student. She’s thirty-three and has loads of experience. She’s even done a Montessori course. Reckon that’ll sort Noah out.’ I laugh. Little Noah, my naughty one.
‘I’m so happy for you, Claudia,’ Tina says as we pull up at Willow Park Medical Centre. Some kids have scrubbed out the ‘ow’ and put a ‘y’ in its place. Tina chuckles.
‘Kids today haven’t got anything better to do,’ I say as we walk past the sign.
The waiting room is empty apart from one woman and a grizzling toddler. The whole place reeks of illness and despair. We go straight into Miranda’s office.
‘It’s all awful, isn’t it? Ghastly. Can’t believe it.’ For a moment I think Miranda’s talking about the defaced sign outside, but then I spot the spread-out newspaper with the face of a smiling woman under the headline ‘Police Still Baffled by Pregnant Woman Murder’. She folds up the newspaper when she sees me. I shudder and gently, inconspicuously, wrap my arms around my tummy. I try not to show it, but seeing this story upsets me greatly.
‘I know,’ Tina replies. ‘Diane’s mum actually knows her mum and . . .’ Tina trails off.
‘Do they know what happened yet?’ I ask.
Miranda shakes her head and sighs. ‘I don’t think so. The police were here the other day interviewing Sally-Ann’s doctor. They took her medical file.’ She sighs. ‘Did either of you hear the latest news on the radio?’ she asks tentatively. We frown, shake our heads. We didn’t have it on in the car. ‘It sounds as if it’s happened again.’ Miranda pulls a face and taps the newspaper.
‘Another death?’ I say, aghast.
Miranda nods. ‘Sounds as if it could be another pregnant woman. They didn’t release a name or many details. It was breaking news.’ She flicks the switch on the kettle and drops teabags in mugs. ‘Ghastly business.’
I feel the heat of both Miranda and Tina’s stares, as if it’s going to be me next and there’s nothing they can do to save me. ‘That’s just awful,’ I say, making no attempt to hide the quiver in my voice.
Miranda rubs my shoulder as she goes to get milk from the tiny counter-top fridge. Her starched navy outfit seems to scuttle around her office all by itself, as if there’s no body inside controlling it. If a sparrow were human, it would look like Miranda.
‘I heard that it was Sally-Ann’s lover that did it,’ Tina says with tabloid authority. She bites into a pink wafer biscuit. ‘Maybe this latest one was his lover too, and he did the same to her.’
‘The news bulletin said she’d been taken to hospital, so perhaps she’s still alive.’
Miranda passes round the mugs of tea.
‘Well I won’t be going out alone at night,’ Tina says pointlessly. ‘And neither should you.’ She directs this at me.
‘I certainly won’t,’ I say quietly, wishing James was at home.
We soon get down to business, poring over the medical file of a six-year-old whose teacher noticed bruising on her arms and back. Then there’s the Jimmy and Annie case, twins whose care barely falls inside the minimum standards we set out for them. My vision goes a little blurry and the first throb of a headache pulses inside my temple. I hear Tina and Miranda discussing neglect, nutritio
n and nurture as if they are everyday things you can buy from the market. What about me, I wonder, as my ears close off to their life-changing conversations? What about my parenting skills? How do they know I will be a good mother? Will I feed and adore my baby girl enough? Will I give her everything she needs? What if love just isn’t sufficient? I start to panic.
‘Claudia?’ I hear Tina saying, as if her voice is coming back into focus. ‘Your thoughts on this?’
‘Sorry,’ I say. I wipe my hands over my face. I’m sweating. I suddenly feel exhausted. ‘Sorry.’ I hang my head. I haven’t heard a word they were saying.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Miranda says intuitively. ‘What are you now, thirty-eight, thirty-nine weeks?’
‘She really shouldn’t,’ Tina echoes.
‘I’m fine. Just a bit . . .’ I don’t know what I am, exactly, so I don’t try to say it. All I know for sure is that I want to be home, safe within my own walls, with James and the boys; and then I’m thinking of Zoe and her tinkering in the kitchen in her long, baggy cardigan and I’m wondering what it is about her that unnerves me so, even though she’s shown our family nothing but kindness. ‘I think I need to take the rest of the day off.’
When I stand up, I feel dizzy. Tina rises with me and cups her arm beneath my elbow. I appreciate her concern. ‘We can do this tomorrow, can’t we, Miranda? I’ll drive you home, Claudia.’
By the look on Miranda’s face, I know that’s not possible. We can hardly ask the parents to wait until I feel better before they neglect their children. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll call someone.’ I take my phone from my bag. ‘Honestly, I’ll be fine. Tina can brief me first thing tomorrow.’ I walk out of Miranda’s oppressive office before her little sparrow talons can pull me back.
In the car park, sitting on a low wall beneath the tampered-with sign in the semi-darkness, I scroll through my address book. My heart quickens when I tap ‘Home’ and bangs fervently in my chest when she answers. Thankfully, she’s back from the school run.
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