The Push

by Claire McGowan

  ‘I just want you to be happy,’ he said shyly. ‘It’s all I ever wanted.’

  ‘I know that. And I will be.’ She knew it was true. Perhaps not today, perhaps not for a long time – already she was dreading going home, and looking into the nursery with the beautiful Victorian nursing chair and the frieze of bunnies on the wall, and having to dismantle it – but one day, yes. One day, she would feel happy again.

  They turned back towards the house, and so they were perfectly positioned to see what took place on the balcony. It was Jeremy who made the first phone call to the police, at 3.04 p.m.

  Jax – one week earlier

  The problem with holidays from your life is that your life is still waiting when you get back. After a day I was booted from hospital and sent home to care for the baby they’d saved for me. We had to get a taxi, and I knew Aaron was worried about the cost.

  ‘What’s her name, then?’ Aaron had asked me again that morning, as I packed up to leave.

  ‘I don’t know. What do you like?’

  ‘I don’t know. Don’t you want to pick it?’

  ‘You’re her father. Do you want maybe Georgina?’

  He actually flinched. ‘I don’t . . .’

  ‘Or whatever. Fine.’

  And we’d travelled home in silence, the baby squalling in the car seat Aaron had brought for her, the harsh outside air touching her new-minted skin for the first time, so perfect it was an invitation for the world to put its mark on her. When we turned into the street, I thought: fuck it. I gave birth to her, I’ll choose her name. ‘I want to call her Hadley.’

  Aaron jolted out of his gloom. ‘Is that a name?’

  ‘Of course it is. Hemingway’s first wife was called Hadley.’

  His eyes flicked nervously.

  ‘Ernest Hemingway.’ Jesus, had I had a baby with someone who didn’t know who Hemingway was?

  ‘I know, yeah. Why that name though?’

  ‘I just always thought it was cool.’ A Hadley was a smart girl, a posh girl, someone brilliant and confident who the world would not screw over. I decided she needed all the help she could get, with parents like us.

  The driver pulled over at the house, and I might have asked Aaron in, might have suggested we start our lives as parents together, put the past behind us, try to heal the wounds, but my mother was standing on the doorstep, holding an enormous pink stuffed rabbit wearing a frilly pink tutu. ‘Oh God.’

  Aaron cleared his throat. ‘I’ll get out here. I’ll take the bus to the flat.’

  ‘But . . .’ Mum had seen him, how would I explain why Aaron was leaving? ‘What will I tell her?’

  ‘The truth, I guess.’

  I didn’t want to ask him what that was.

  Alison

  Getting a rush DNA result was such a pain in the arse, endless forms to fill in, budget items to shuffle, death stares from Colette. ‘You really think this is worth doing?’

  ‘Yes. If I’m right about who Nina was, and I can tie up one or two loose ends, I’m ready to make an arrest.’

  ‘For?’

  ‘Murder.’ Not that she entirely had the proof for that yet. If she was right about the DNA, that would be a start.

  Colette sighed, weighing it up. Alison looked round at the artwork on her walls, stick figures drawn by her children when they were small. They were now at Oxford and medical school, so they clearly hadn’t suffered too much from their mother working all hours. ‘Fine,’ Colette said eventually. ‘Send it off, and tie up whatever loose ends you mentioned. I don’t want loose. I want tighter than a nun’s chuff, understand? And if this is an accident after all – well, you and me will be having some words.’

  Later, as they waited for what seemed like hours, Diana sighed and leaned forward on the conference-room table, her dark hair slipping over her shoulder. ‘This case. Are we mad to dig into it so much? Maybe she did just fall, like.’

  ‘She didn’t.’ The temptation to close it was strong. An accident. Not a murder. File it away and move on. But Alison couldn’t stop picking at the mystery all the same. Why was everyone in this group hiding something? There was Monica and her daughter. They’d spoken to Sam Morris, a short, sweet-faced boy of fifteen, who’d confirmed that he and Chloe were, ‘kind of like, yeah, boyfriend and girlfriend’, but that she hadn’t so much as texted him since she went off sick, and he hadn’t been allowed to see her either. He seemed sad about this.

  There was Rahul, with his dodgy past, who clearly had gambling problems. There was Cathy and Hazel, some odd tension between them, and Cathy had perhaps lied about where she was during the fall and who had the baby. And the biggest liars of all, Jax Culville and her young partner, who were living apart but hadn’t said. Who hadn’t mentioned his visits to Nina da Souza’s flat. Who had also lied about where they were when Nina died.

  More questions. Why had the dead woman been working under an assumed name? Why had she nothing in her flat, apart from a hidden picture? What had happened to her son?

  Alison looked at the clock. ‘God, they’re taking their time.’ Just then, her phone beeped. She scanned it quickly, heart quickening. She’d been right. Of course she’d been right. But did he know? That was what she needed to know. ‘It’s true. And the hair analysis, they’ve done that too, about bloody time.’ She looked up, a huge smile spreading over her face despite herself. Bloody yes. ‘It’s hers. Like we thought.’ There it was, forensics, motive, opportunity. Finally, proof that this must have been a murder.

  Diana already had her phone out, nodding. ‘Are we going to make the arrest?’

  ‘Not yet. First we’re going to visit the others. Tie it all up nice and neatly.’

  Cathy Hargreaves was at home, of course, and there was no sign of Hazel, which was just as Alison had hoped. ‘Oh.’ The look of guilt that flashed over her face, it was like crack to Alison. They could never hide it, unless they were psychopaths, and you hardly ever came across those. ‘Is something wrong?’ She had the baby strapped to her again.

  ‘You tell us, Cathy. I’d like to know why you lied about where you were when the fall took place. You were upstairs, weren’t you? You must have been, since no one else mentioned seeing you in the garden or downstairs. And you didn’t have Arthur, Hazel had him.’

  She nodded slowly. ‘Alright. But – it’s not what you think. Come in.’

  When they were sitting at the table, with some more gross herbal tea, she began to talk, pacing up and down by the kettle.

  ‘The baby,’ said Cathy, with the air of someone letting go of a huge breath. ‘He’s not from a donor. I mean, we were going to try it, but I – around the same time I – there was this man we’d met at the clinic, him and his wife, and he and I . . . we started meeting for coffee.’ She saw the officers’ eyes widen. ‘I used to date men too – I mean, I’m not like Hazel is. Anyway, I was such a mess with all the fertility stuff, I called him just to talk, and. And . . . well. Things happened.’

  ‘Arthur is his son?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he knows?’

  ‘He worked it out, yes. He’s been asking to see Arthur. He and his wife, their treatment didn’t work.’

  ‘And what, Hazel found out at the barbecue?’

  ‘Yes. Now we’re just . . . well, she’s deciding what to do. She’s wanted this so long, you see – she tried herself with another partner and it didn’t work. And she always knew the baby would be from someone else, of course, that’s not the issue. It’s the cheating.’ She glanced up. ‘Will I get into trouble for lying?’

  ‘Depends on how much you cooperate. That’s everything, Cathy?’

  ‘That’s everything.’

  ‘And you saw who was on the balcony when the fall took place?’

  ‘I – yes, I was coming out of the upstairs bathroom just before it happened and I looked out there. It’s just opposite.’

  ‘And who was it?’

  Cathy had not wanted to say this. ‘I’m not totally sure, y
ou know. I didn’t see the actual . . . fall.’

  ‘We’d like to know all the same.’

  She sighed. ‘Nina, obviously. And Aaron, and Jax and the baby. That’s who was out there.’

  ‘Who’s next?’ Diana was smiling, riding on the exhilaration of this moment. It was all coming together, a coherent story finally appearing among all the lies.

  Alison started the engine. ‘Kelly Anderson, she was already home by the time it happened, and Jeremy drove her there. Anita, I think we can write her off too, she says she was outside waiting for him.’

  ‘And Cathy was lying for another reason.’

  ‘Right. Hazel, we’ll check up with her, but she was seen going up the stairs after the fall, and that was confirmed by Monica and also Aisha and Rahul, who were with her at the barbecue just before.’

  ‘We’re clearing Aisha and Rahul?’

  ‘I think we can with one more chat, yes.’

  When she drove up to the house, it was the same. A woman with a baby in her arms – Aisha. Rahul slumped on the sofa with his phone, off shift. She saw the look that went between them. ‘Can we have a word?’ I’m here for the truth, finally.

  Aisha nodded. ‘Come in.’

  The day of – Cathy

  3.02 p.m.

  It was a game, really. Until she texted Dan back, she wouldn’t get another shot of dopamine, sending her high as a kite. But once she did text him back, she lost the power, handed it back to him. She’d almost forgotten that this was how it was with men, a tug of war, not a sensible choice they made together. But as soon as she saw that Nina had arrived, sending cold blasts of fear down her legs, Cathy lost it – she had to text him. Now. ‘I need the loo,’ she said to Hazel. ‘Will you take him?’

  She passed over Arthur in his sling. As she watched his little face, the thought came – who does he look like? Would this happen every time she looked at her son, for the rest of his life? Peering for dark eyes and a cowlick of hair? Praying Hazel would not remember the couple they’d chatted to at the IVF unit? Then she remembered her phone was in the sling. ‘Oh, wait.’ She fumbled it out.

  Hazel watched her curiously. ‘Why do you need that for the loo?’

  ‘Oh! I said I’d text Mum, forgot.’

  She crossed the green lawn, aware that Hazel had noticed something that wasn’t right. Hazel was sharp. She had to be careful. She went to the bathroom upstairs, although the downstairs was in fact free, needing some space. She sat on the edge of the claw-foot bath, breathing hard. Was it worth it? Excitement felt so close to terror, like her brain couldn’t tell the difference. Why did it matter? Hazel knew Arthur’s father was some random man, did it matter which one? Of course it mattered. Her hands were sweaty and left marks on the screen. I want you to see him, she replied. Where and when?

  A delay. She waited, looking round at Monica’s pristine bathroom. Not even any toys or nappies or a baby bath. Not to mention the detritus of a teenage girl, spilled make-up and strips of hair-covered waxing paper. Perhaps Chloe had an en suite. As she waited, she let herself remember it, the terrible thing she had done and which, even worse, she couldn’t manage to regret. Because there was Arthur, and because it had been so good with Dan, that afternoon at his garden office, when Rachel and Hazel were at work, on an old red sofa with a blanket over it, his books and drawing table all around. It had been chilly in there, and he’d put his hands on her skin to warm her up. She’d been craving it ever since, like just one hit of a dangerous drug.

  A buzz. Cathy jumped, her heart rocketing into her chin. Same place. Tuesday 3pm?

  OK.

  I can’t wait, he said, and it was everything, everything that he’d said it. Delete this now. It was part of the beautiful pain of it, that messages could not be kept. She gorged on it a few times more, those three words. I can’t wait.

  The same place meant a coffee shop in the park in Beckenham, where they’d met the first time. It had been casual. Hey, it’s hard going through all this. If you want to get coffee sometime, I’m free during the day a lot. Dan was a freelance web designer. She said yes. No reason she couldn’t have male friends, Hazel had plenty, guys from work she held pint-drinking competitions with and earnest conversations about macros. But Cathy didn’t tell her, and when the day came, she found she was nervous, putting on mascara. They’d talked for four hours, until it grew dark and the cafe staff were putting the chairs on the tables to sweep up. That had been the start of it.

  Then of course, Cathy was pregnant, and Rachel, Dan’s wife, was not, and that made everything different. Dan had told her he didn’t want to try IVF again, that it was destroying their marriage, making sex all about procreation, or the lack of it, about failure, not about love. Cathy wondered if that was true, on some deep level. She’d always known she would need intervention to have a baby with Hazel. The fact that it had happened so easily with Dan, without even trying, seemed like a message.

  She needed to go back to the party. Her heart was soaring – she was going to see Dan! This week! Thank God, oh, thank God. Cathy went out, crossed the landing by the balcony. The bathroom was directly opposite the doors to the balcony, doors made of squeaky-clean glass. That meant Cathy saw who was out there. She saw what happened. She knew who did it.

  ‘We need to call an ambulance.’ Hazel, who had come up the stairs in response to the screaming, was good at this sort of thing, crises. She’d been in the army as a younger woman and Cathy often thought she would thrive in an apocalypse-type situation. ‘My phone’s out of battery. Give me yours?’ She held out her hand. And Cathy froze. The last message from Dan had not been deleted yet, in all the confusion. But she could not refuse to hand it over, not when she’d gone out on the balcony and seen Nina’s arm hanging over the edge of the rockery down below, and a trickle of red blood running down it.

  Hazel saw the hesitation, the phone right there in Cathy’s hand, and in that split second, everything between them was ruined. She could hardly remember what happened after that. Cathy dialled 999 herself, at 3.07 p.m., and it felt so strange to say the words she’d heard on TV so many times, to explain that someone had fallen from a balcony – she knew she’d put it that way, fallen, because the call operator had read it back to her – and she asked Hazel what the address was, and Hazel had told her, and that was the last time she spoke to Cathy all day.

  The day of – Jax

  10.13 a.m.

  I had spent the two weeks since Hadley’s birth in the grip of terror – it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I wasn’t meant to hide in the bathroom for a few seconds longer while she howled in her cot. I wasn’t supposed to fantasise about being at work, behind a peaceful desk with a gently ringing phone far in the distance. I was supposed to love every moment of this, a baby at my age. I was supposed to lie adoringly in bed with her, and take artfully arranged Facebook shots declaring how lucky I was to have my beautiful, funny little girl. Could children be funny at two weeks old? Was it normal now to praise your kids publicly? The best my mother had ever said about me was that I wasn’t too much trouble. Now it was non-stop boasting, leaving the rest of us feeling crap about our mothering skills. I stood over her cot and watched her move, hands groping blindly, eyes scrunched up as if she hated the world. Did I not love her? I went to pick her up, press her satin skin to mine, and she howled. Did she not love me?

  I had no sense of time, falling asleep and waking to a thin grey light, hearing the howls of the baby in my ears even when she wasn’t crying, like tinnitus. Aaron had to go back to work after two weeks, so he wouldn’t be around during the day to help me. I was not coping. We both knew it. I hadn’t been dressed in days, and I spent most of my waking hours in tears, leaking milk and saltwater and blood and one or two other things as well. At night Aaron went back to his own place, some horrible little studio, to sleep apart from me.

  One day – could have been morning, could have been evening – Aaron came into the bedroom. I was wrestling the baby on to my nipple. Wasn’t s
he supposed to want this? Not arch her back and make a noise like a lawnmower? ‘Er,’ he said. That was how he started talking to me now, with a nervous throat-clear, like I was Alexa or something.

  ‘What?’ I raised my voice over her cries.

  ‘This party today.’

  ‘What party?’

  ‘Monica. She’s having a barbecue, remember?’

  ‘Oh Jesus, really? That’s going ahead?’

  ‘Yeah. To get all the babies together. Everyone’s had theirs now.’

  The idea of going to a party seemed absurd. So did the idea of getting out of bed, showering, and putting on clothes. ‘Are you serious? I can hardly move.’

  He hovered there. ‘Jax. I’m worried about you.’

  Jax, not babe. Maybe he’d never call me that again. And using my mother’s phrase, I’m worried about you. I sniped back, ‘Been chatting to Mum, have you?’ A pause. He actually had! Things must be bad. ‘Maybe if you helped me more, I’d be better.’

  ‘What can I do? I can’t feed her. I’m doing her bath, dressing her.’

  ‘Yes, and then she craps herself four more times during the day.’

  ‘I can’t help that,’ he said quietly.

  ‘You could have not moved out and left me.’

  He didn’t say anything, just looked at me in a way that took in my milk and snot-encrusted nightie, my wild hair and puffy eyes, the stink of me, of sweat and sour dairy. The way I’d told him to leave the hospital, just when I needed him most. Fine. He had a point. ‘Alright, Christ, we’ll go to the party if you want, play happy families. It’ll just be Monica trying to get one up on us with her home-made tzatziki or whatever.’ I bet Monica was busy right now coordinating Instagram shots, not a drop of bodily fluid in sight. But I agreed to it.

  Lunchtime came, or so the clocks told me. We went to the barbecue.

  The day of – Aisha

  3.11 p.m.