by Dawn French
Today was important for lots of reasons. It was Florence’s first birthday, and the perfect time to remind the public what happened, to jog their memories, and hopefully restart the search. Anna agreed to stay at home this time, whilst he reignited the appeal for any information about the baby which could be useful. The police would no longer be involved unless there were to be a new lead; they’d ‘exhausted all avenues’, they’d regretfully told Anna and Julius.
Julius was in no way exhausted. He was racing to reacquaint everyone with the situation. He and his team had worked hard all year to make sure little Florence remained in everyone’s thoughts. Certainly the campaign was costly, both financially and emotionally. Anna was drained: she had appeared on every breakfast/mid-morning/afternoon/early-evening TV programme that would have her. Sometimes she was alone. Sometimes Julius accompanied her. They took the advice of the PR company they’d employed to guide them at every turn on …
what to wear
what to say
when to say it
Julius had decided to be with Anna when the coverage was ‘serious’, when it was a journalistic news-type programme. He made it clear she was best to do it alone when she would be talking to Lorraine or the Loose Women. He had little interest in those, despite the fact that the viewing figures might be miles higher. However much he wanted to find Florence, and he truly did, he knew how key it was to incorporate all this publicity into his ultimate goal. He didn’t wish for this to have happened, but since it had, he was determined to use every opportunity to let the public know him and trust him more. Allow them to believe in him.
Julius decided he didn’t want a re-run of the clumsy TV appeal they did on the day Florence disappeared. He had hardly spoken that day, and he’d found the police that were involved hugely irritating and incompetent.
Their year had been grim. He had hoped that Anna would emerge from her shock and sadness sooner, to be honest, to find some of the old fire in her belly, but she had remained fuggy, as if someone had buried her in the sand on the beach. Her head was visible, she was speaking, but her entire spirit was underground somewhere. She did a good impersonation of Anna when it was vital that she communicate – in front of cameras or to a journalist, for instance. She was beautiful, and perfectly eloquent. She told her remarkable story with confidence, poise and heart. She really did look and sound like Anna, but Julius knew the truth was she was absent from that public husk.
As far as Julius was concerned, and that’s all that mattered, today was vital in his effort to have ‘Clarke’s Law’ rolled out across the nation. CCTV would be standard in every maternity ward in every hospital across the entire nation. At last. His assistant beckoned him, he took a deep breath, adjusted his brave purple tie, and went to face the cameras.
Florence’s 1st Birthday: Anna
The day had a very different feeling for Anna. She stood in the corridor outside the Brunel Suite at the Crawford Hotel in Marylebone. She was shaking and sweating. She’d felt considerably wobbly all morning, anticipating this terrible moment, but this was it, the point of no return. On several occasions throughout the day, she had decided to ignore all her better instincts and let everything just be, the way she was used to. It would be easier like that, to simply ignore all the red flags and let life limp on imperfectly, but something had shifted within her.
It was no coincidence that it was Florence’s birthday today.
Something about the stark reality of that gave her courage. She slipped the plastic key into the slot … and watched the little light above it clunk from red to green. She heard the bolt slide in the door, she pushed it, and it opened into the suite where she knew Julius was inside with his lover.
The whole wretched year and everything awful about it had propelled her to this moment. Her year of guilt. ABOUT EVERYTHING.
Of course, a year ago everyone’s New Year had been interrupted and spoiled, and of course, Anna felt guilty about that. She had told and retold the short story of what had happened as far as she knew it. She heard herself endlessly repeat: ‘They must’ve snuck in when we were asleep …’ And the culpability stung her more each time she said it.
How the hell could anyone be so asleep that they don’t notice someone stealing their new baby? Especially if it was a group of people – the Romanians, which the police had implied was the most likely. How could several people enter that room silently, pick up a silent infant silently and then silently exit with not a soul clocking them? How could Julius have been as fast asleep as she was? She was tired, she deserved to be … she’d just given birth. BUT. YES.
She had been fast asleep.
That’s all she knew.
She was a bad mother, that much was indisputable, as far as she was concerned, however much her family and friends kept reassuring her otherwise. In that very reassurance, she sensed a huge dollop of the judgement she feared and which she so readily heaped upon herself. Especially from her mother.
‘Darling, you did everything a new mummy is supposed to do and then you were exhausted and you slept. You are supposed to sleep, otherwise you will have no strength for what’s ahead, for … motherhood.’
She had been saying stuff, the right sort of stuff. It would APPEAR to have no subtext as she spoke it, she was using motherly, comforting words and tone, yet all Anna heard was: ‘you were exhausted’, which was a massive fail (as she saw it) and ‘you slept’, which was worse. It was Latin for ‘you were negligent’. It wasn’t Latin; it was mumspeak.
The awful thing about knowing your family so well is that you read them and know intuitively when they are faking it. Anna’s ‘Ma’ was half-mother, half-weapon, and Anna’s childhood had been a masterclass in building personal armour in order to protect herself against the constant barrage of judgemental batterings Ma unleashed with little to no warning. The whole family had learnt how to walk on eggshells around her. No attacks were ever physical, all were emotional, and supremely bruising, so even in a rare moment like that, where Ma didn’t seem to be overtly punishing her – in fact, quite the opposite – that’s precisely how it felt to Anna. Ma would never be able to comfort her, because Anna didn’t believe the sympathy was authentic. Ma was the queen of blame. Everything bad that happened was someone else’s fault. Everything good that happened was her doing. It made the rules simple, at least. It was tidy. And terrifying.
It was so sad because Anna couldn’t trust any kindness coming from Ma, and it compounded her already behemoth-sized guilt. That day, the ultimate proof had been when Ma said publicly, ‘Do you need a cuddle?’ It was an Exocet missile of strangeness that exploded inside Anna. It was a performance Ma was giving, and it was impossible to stop it. Even Pa sat quietly behind her, rolling his eyes, knowing he was powerless in the face of her sheer fakery. This was how Ma convinced unfamiliars that she was thoughtful, motherly. She imitated the sweetness of others she’d witnessed, without any real, genuine feelings. She was an emotional chameleon.
The fake sympathy had made Anna cringe. She was weary and had none of her usual filters operating, and zero strength, so in response to her mother’s offer, she found herself saying, ‘Um, I don’t think so, no, not after thirty-five years, ta.’
And that was it. She had lit the fuse. BAM! Pa quickly bundled Ma out and home to Surrey, leaving Julius open-mouthed at Anna’s unusual audacity. They could hear Ma’s irritated burblings as she was being packed into the car outside. Anna closed her eyes and exhaled. That had been a long time coming. Right then, she couldn’t give a flying toss; she didn’t want to handle any further drama. It was already at topple-level, and it was time to speak up.
Anna ordinarily preferred a quiet life. That’s why she’d remained with Julius. She didn’t want the noise of the inevitable rows she would surely have to have if she took issue with all of his many shortcomings. It was easier, quieter, to support him in his career, but keep her own head down. However, when necessary, Anna could stand tall, because Anna most certainly had a backbone
. She had had to push on through her shyness and her anxiety this whole year in order to keep the search for Florence alive. She might have doubted herself fairly often, but she WOULD be heard.
So. Now. Entering this hotel room, Anna’s opinion would be heard, and her resolve would not fail her. She was a year mightier, equipped with a simmering rage, and ready to confront difficult stuff.
As she stood just inside the door, she could hear the sound of them both laughing in that silly way that is so butt-clenchingly humiliating, unless you are one of the couple wound up in the gooey giddiness of it all, the game of giggle and flatter and coy that we all play when a relationship is fresh and exciting and we’re pretending to be irresistible and cute. It had been an age since she’d made those noises with him. She couldn’t imagine ever doing it again; it would be unthinkably mortifying.
Did she really want to see what she saw next? No. Did she need to? Yes. She knew that, unless she laid eyes on him in this very moment, he would fabricate endless lies to disprove it, as per usual. He was slippery as hell.
The curtains were closed, and daylight was seeping into the room around the edges of them. There was just enough glow to see the rude sight of a naked girl’s back and bottom as she jiggled about preposterously on top of a prone and gormless Julius. For a short, cringing moment, they didn’t realize Anna was there. All three shared the same fuggy adulterous air. Anna had tried to avoid thinking about images like this when she was suspicious of his fidelity in the past, but here it was, right in front of her, confirming all of her tortured imaginings.
It was worse, actually, because this was so very crude. Whenever she dared to think about any scene between Julius and his lover it would be candlelit and romantically perfect. This was much more sordid. A beige bore of a suite, with a creepy musky aroma. Nothing in there was the perfect she’d imagined, including the people, although she had to concede that the young woman seemed bendy – yes, more flexible, definitely, than Anna – and she had small wings tattooed on her back. That was an unwelcome intimacy Anna would never forget. She knew instantly that, just as she’d guessed, this was the ‘personal trainer’, the liberal Dane she’d been told about. The person Julius generously attributed his weight loss to … no lie there.
‘Boo,’ Anna said. Softly.
The Dane screamed and quickly clambered off Julius, grabbing the duvet around her as she scrambled to the furthest reaches of the bed, just as Julius also tried to grab part of the duvet to cover himself. It struck Anna as ludicrous – whom was he shy in front of? Both women were familiar with his nethers.
Unfortunately.
‘For Christ’s sake, Anna!’ he yelled. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Visiting?’
The Dane was mumbling ‘Oh my God’ repeatedly. Julius stumbled off the bed, and losing his tiny tug of war with the Dane over ownership of the duvet, he compromised by covering his rapidly wilting penis with his hands, like a footballer between the penalty and the net.
‘Look, this isn’t me … isn’t the me you know …’ he blurted.
‘Right,’ said Anna. ‘Looks like you … but sort of redder …?’
‘No, you know what I mean. I’m not this man.’
‘Yes, I think you are.’
‘But I don’t want to be, Anna. This means nothing …’
‘Rude,’ replied Anna, indicating the Dane and, ironically, feeling sorry for her having to hear him dismiss her so readily.
As the Dane rose from the bed, gathering some clothes and making a swift beeline to the bathroom, Anna might have empathized more if she hadn’t muttered ‘… in our room’, in a frustrated way, as if this was putting her out somehow.
‘In my life!’ Anna responded to her back as the angel wings speeded up her exit.
‘Anna, please, don’t think anything of this …’
‘Put your Y-fronts on, Julius, do us all a favour.’ As she took up a senatorial position in a beige armchair in the ‘seating’ part of the suite, Anna felt decisive. She wasn’t going to move until there was some sort of resolution.
She realized that her heart was beating very fast, and her breaths were shallow, but she was determined to remain calm. This was her ambush and she needed to own it.
Julius clambered into his Calvin Kleins and a hotel dressing gown and sat down opposite her, repeatedly rubbing his face vigorously, as if that would rid him of the shame. She could see he was thinking fast, his mind racing through all the possible consequences of this hideous situation.
‘Please, darling …’ was his first après-pants attempt at conciliation.
‘I’m not your darling any more, Julius. You don’t get others to bounce around on top of you if you have a genuine darling … you just don’t.’
‘This is just a silly moment, Anna. You know what I’m like – I’m a sucker for some flattery and that’s what she did …’
‘Right. She flattered you?’
‘Yes. Told me … stuff …’
‘Like how clever and handsome you are?’
‘Yes. No. You know the kind of stuff …’
‘I don’t, Julius. I really don’t know what someone would have to say to make you think, Oh right, yeah, what I ought to do next is put this in you and risk my whole marriage …’
‘Stop it, Anna, that’s unnecessary.’
‘Please don’t lecture me about what’s unnecessary. It’s our missing daughter’s first birthday, and I thought you were busy making sure we find her. All THIS is what’s unnecessary, frankly.’
‘I’ve been an idiot. I admit that.’
‘Aww, well done,’ Anna responded patronizingly, ‘some culpability, finally.’
‘She … she …’ He was fumbling about trying to find a new home for all his blame.
‘She what …? What did SHE do …?’
‘She … wore white trousers. Tight white trousers.’
That floored Anna. She looked at him aghast.
The Dane heard this last feeble comment on her way back out of the bathroom, wearing said white leggings. ‘What?’ she spluttered.
‘Come and sit down, please. We need to sort this out.’ Anna gestured to the only other seat available, which was on the small sofa, meaning the Dane had to shoogle up close to the panted and ridiculous Julius. She compromised and perched on the arm of the sofa reluctantly. Anna had fully expected her to take flight and escape, but there was something about Anna’s reasonable tone that encouraged the other woman to stay. For now.
Anna found herself distracted by the white trousers. What was it about them that he found so irresistible? She very much didn’t want to be thinking about them at all, but couldn’t avert her eyes from them. The Dane had great legs – was it that? Anna, with all her insecurities, did at least know that she herself had a couple of fine pins. It occurred to her that she didn’t in fact own a pair of white trousers herself. Maybe she needed to rectify that? Why didn’t she have any white trousers? Could it be that they looked a bit … cheap … trashy, even? Why was she thinking that? The Dane was neither, quite the opposite, but … the white trousers … sort of were. Is THAT what he liked about them?
Stop fixating on the white trousers!
Anna felt like a headmistress opposite two naughty children in her office. It was clear that it was for her to chair this strange moment, although, in truth, it ought to be different. By rights, they should be begging her forgiveness.
‘Please can you open the curtains, Julius.’ Anna deliberately used his full, formal name.
He meekly complied, but as he rose and went over to the window, his dressing gown flapped open and up, at which point Anna noticed that in the hurry he’d put his pants on back to front. The pee gusset was on his arse. His considerably smaller arse. Anna had the surprising sudden realization that she had preferred him when his arse was more considerable, that this over-exercised and dieted reduced arse was boney and ageing … and vaguely feminine.
Stop fixating on the arse!
A
nna had a fleeting, collusive eye-lock with the Dane where she could have sworn she detected a shared embarrassment about the pitiful sight of this twat with his literal knickers in a literal twist …
‘So, listen, we need to be grown up about this. Julius, do you love … her?’ Anna ventured into dangerous territory with zero hesitation.
He was stumped. The lids were off all his boxes, and everything he had hitherto compartmentalized was mingling in a way he’d never intended. She knew that this was an impossible question for the adulterer to answer. He was so unfamiliar with speaking the truth. It would stick in his craw.
‘Well …?’ said the Dane, impatiently.
‘Umm. I love YOU, Anna,’ he said quietly.
‘Pardon?’ Anna had heard him perfectly well, but wanted him to have to repeat it louder.
‘You heard me,’ he said with a tinge of irritation.
Anna stayed silent. Boomingly silent. He was forced to speak. Eventually …
‘I love you, Anna.’
‘Only me?’
‘Jesus, why are you making this so hard?’