The Babysitter

by Phoebe Morgan

DS Wildy

  Rick Grant is sweating. Droplets of moisture dot his brow; they’ve had to give him a tissue because the sight of it is so uncomfortable. Alex Wildy watches as he dabs at the beads on his face, blows out his cheeks in a futile attempt to create a feeling of air in the stuffy interview room.

  He’s not as good-looking as his wife, but they make a believable pair – mid-thirties parents, perhaps slightly older than the average, pleased with themselves for having got on the property ladder, coupled up, produced a baby. A baby who is now nowhere to be found. There’s something about Rick that Alex doesn’t quite trust yet.

  Sitting opposite him, Alex sips from his water, grateful for the cool relief in his throat, thinks longingly of the back garden at home, of his wife Joanne setting out the barbecue. Beside him, Bolton coughs, a sign that he’s getting impatient, and Alex forces himself to ignore the summer heat, to focus on the task at hand.

  ‘Rick Grant,’ he says, ‘let’s get started, shall we?’

  Ipswich Police Station, Interview Room 3

  11.40 a.m.

  Present: DS Wildy, DS Bolton, Rick Grant

  DS Wildy: Mr Grant, you are aware we have been speaking with your wife this morning, and that you are now being questioned on the record as part of our inquiries into the disappearance of your daughter, Eve Grant.

  RG: Yes.

  DS Bolton: Mr Grant, what can you tell us about your wife’s relationship with Caroline Harvey, the woman found dead on August 10th?

  RG: [clears throat] They met at university, up in Leeds. Must have been around 2005, first year.

  DS Bolton: Where you were also a student at the time?

  RG: Yes, the three of us were. Jenny and Caroline were on the same course, they both studied art. They became friends in the first year, and then flatmates in our second year.

  DS Bolton: By which time you and Jenny were a couple?

  RG: [pause] Yes. But I don’t see how that is relevant. I want to find my little girl.

  DS Wildy: We understand, Mr Grant. There are officers out looking for Eve as we speak, and police are currently going door to door, questioning anyone in the neighbourhood who might have seen what happened on August 10th. But the more information we can gather from you the better. All of it will help us in piecing together the events of that night.

  RG: You think she’s dead, don’t you?

  DS Wildy: No one is saying that. There is a good chance that your daughter is alive.

  RG: Have you got any actual leads yet? Do you think Caroline’s boyfriend has got my daughter? Christ, if I could get my hands on him…I can’t stand that I’m just sitting here, when our little Eve could be chopped up somewhere. [puts head in hands].

  DS Wildy: Mr Grant, we are currently pursuing several lines of inquiry and I can guarantee you, we will leave no stone unturned when it comes to finding Eve. There is no evidence as yet that she has come to any harm.

  RG: You and I both know it’s only a matter of time. I’m not stupid, Detective. [sighs, sniffs]. God, this is all too much. My mother’s ill too, did you know that? My mother’s about to die and my daughter’s gone missing. I don’t know how much more I can deal with.

  DS Wildy: We’re very sorry to hear about your mother, Mr Grant.

  RG: Sorry. [pauses, collects himself, takes a deep breath and wipes sweat from his brow]. Is there anything else? I want to help. I’ll tell you whatever you need to know.

  DS Bolton: What was your own relationship to Caroline Harvey?

  RG: [hesitates] Erm, we were friends, I guess. I mean, she was Jenny’s friend, mainly, but we got on OK. We haven’t seen her that much since we got married, since Eve was born. [pause] I don’t think they were as close as they used to be. I didn’t know much about her – tell you the truth, I always felt a bit sorry for her. Never seemed to have a man. Her life struck me as a bit—

  DS Wildy: A bit what?

  RG: Empty. Yeah, I always thought her life was empty. I don’t think she and Jenny were really that good mates any more.

  DS Bolton: And yet she was the person you chose to leave your daughter with?

  RG: [pause] To be honest, I was a little surprised that Jenny wanted to. I’ve always thought Caroline was a bit—

  DS Bolton: A bit?

  RG: Unstable.

  Chapter Eleven

  14th August

  Southend Airport, 9.20 a.m.

  Siobhan

  They haven’t named Callum on the news. Not yet. I catch sight of screens in the airport as soon as we land, snippets of bulletins, but nothing that looks as though it mentions the murder of a woman in Suffolk, nothing that hints at my husband. A teenager has been knifed to death in Tottenham, the screen shows crime-scene tape flapping in the breeze. A political party has come under fire from one of their own, and a member of the royal family has been made a patron of a new charity. Her smile beams down on us. None of it is connected to whatever horror Callum is caught up in.

  Emma is glued to her phone, finally back in full signal now that we’re on English soil. I am wearing dark blue jeans and a sweat-stained top, without a bra. The material is beginning to chafe against my chest. I didn’t sleep last night, lay awake in the room Callum and I had shared. I hadn’t got out of my nightie all day, hadn’t seen the point. The three of us had watched as the clock ticked on, ignored the sunshine, the delights of France well and truly over. We rose this morning at 5 a.m. to get to Caen for the first flight home. My eyes itch and sting with tiredness, and my stomach growls with hunger. I haven’t eaten since a couple of cheese crackers last night that Maria forced on Emma and I. You’re setting a bad example for your daughter, Siobhan, she’d hissed at me, semi-kindly, and I’d made myself nibble on the edge of the cheese, the cracker turning to sawdust in my mouth.

  The airport in Southend is humming; after the quiet of the villa it feels surreal, as though someone has turned the volume up on a television set, inordinately loud, horribly bright. We are ushered into security, through a side gate, Emma, Maria and I. Our faces are bare; my daughter still has flecks of yellow sleepy dust in the corners of her eyes. Only Maria looks anything like her usual self; her dark hair is swept back neatly, her handbag, with only the essentials in, is over her arm. I have left the majority of my belongings at the villa, as requested. My arms feel empty and bare; I clutch my passport tightly, terrified of losing it.

  All around us there are holiday-makers; I catch sight of a large group of women, probably in their early twenties, older than Emma, all wearing bright pink. One of them has a sash draped across her shoulders, silver glittery letters spelling out the words Bride To Be. As I watch, they laugh, almost en masse, their hair spilling over their shoulders, their tipsy faces swimming with excitement even though it’s still early in the morning. I wonder where they’re headed: Malaga, probably, or Ibiza. Up early to make the most of the trip.

  The security guard tells Emma to relinquish her phone.

  She drops it into the tray and I see the tweets lining up, flashing on and on and on. The first thing I did when we landed was to google it – ‘Caroline Harvey Ipswich’ – but her name mustn’t have been released yet because no torrid news articles come up. We are scanned, because we are not normal, we are suspicious, suspicious by default. If Callum can be a murderer, any one of us could be guilty too. That is what they will think.

  Given the all-clear, we are ushered out of a side door, and immediately the cooler air hits me. I shiver a little, cold without the heat of France, and tell Emma to put her cardigan on.

  There are two police officers waiting, ready to take us home. Two men this time, and I almost weep with relief for the simple fact that I can understand what they are saying, in contrast to yesterday morning’s horror, and the antagonism of the French policewoman. One of them, the older of the two, has a Birmingham accent and he half smiles at us as he opens the car door. The three of us squash into the back, Emma in the middle, her warm body closer to mine than it’s been in days. I want to put my arm a
round her, pull her head onto my shoulder, cuddle her like I used to when she was little, but her body language is stiff, spiky.

  ‘When can we see Dad?’ Emma says abruptly, and I glance at Maria, unsure of what to say. I’m saved by the Brummie policeman.

  ‘Your dad is in police custody today,’ he says, almost cheerily, ‘they’ve taken him to Ipswich station. Our job now is to take you ladies home. All being well, you’ll be able to see him in the next few days.’ He exchanges a glance with his colleague as we pull away from the airport, out onto the roundabout. The British road signs whizz past us as we drive, heading towards Suffolk. Beside me, I see Maria reach for Emma’s hand, hold it gently in her own. My own hands remain clenched in my lap.

  ‘What night do they think this happened?’ I ask urgently, and the police officers exchange glances in the mirror.

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t discuss the case with you, Mrs Dillon,’ one of them says, and I fall silent, defeated, my thoughts spinning round and around like a washing machine of anxiety.

  At least they are letting us go home. Maria hasn’t yet mentioned going back to her own flat, twenty minutes away in Woodbridge; an unspoken understanding between us that she will stay with me, for now at least, until we know what is going on.

  ‘We should telephone Mum,’ I say softly to her, in the back of the car, ‘or at least warn the nursing home. In case she sees something on the news.’

  Maria shakes her head. ‘There won’t be anything on the news, S, not at this stage. Not until he’s charged.’ She looks out of the car window; the motorway rushing past us, car after car, relentless and unstoppable. ‘I’ll call her later on anyway, see how she is.’ I nod. We both know our mother doesn’t know what day it is from one moment to the next, now, but if any news of this sort were to somehow permeate her consciousness, it would be terrible.

  One of the policemen switches on the radio, fiddles with it until he finds the football. Arsenal vs Man United. The commentator’s voice fills the car, and I force myself to take deep breaths, in and out, in and out as the motorway begins to give way to countryside, the flat, familiar planes of Suffolk starting to come into view. My phone lies on my lap, switched to silent. The messages pinged in as soon as we got back into signal; emails from the school about various fundraisers, a text from my friend Helen wanting to go for a drink next week, the usual nonsense in the mothers’ WhatsApp group. Emails from work that for now I can ignore: they all think I’m on holiday for at least another five days, and my contributions are limited anyway. It’s the mothers’ group that get to me the most. We’ve lived in Suffolk too long – the women I met when Emma was little still cling to me, only now the big drama is sixth-form applications rather than the primary school catchment madness. I don’t know how to talk to them about my marriage, about my daughter. None of them are going to understand this.

  ‘I’ll make up the spare room for you when we get back,’ I say to Maria, just for something to say, and my voice surprises me; it is flat and dull. One of the policemen turns round and offers Emma a KitKat, and she reaches for it, starts unpeeling the silver foil and shoving little pieces of it into her mouth.

  ‘It’s good for shock,’ the Brummie one says, and my own stomach grumbles with hunger. Someone on the radio scores a goal, and for a second the atmosphere in the car lightens as the policemen grin. Callum loves football; he always wanted a boy to take to the games. Years ago, when we were still trying for a second baby, we used to talk about it, a little boy, someone he could don in miniature football kit and bundle along to matches. A mini-Callum. But there again, I failed.

  By the time we reach Ipswich, we are all silent. The police officers are surprisingly kind, and I watch numbly as they remove our small amount of bags from the back – Maria’s coat and handbag, the bag containing all of our passports, and a rucksack containing the random things I had time to throw together this morning, the things I reasoned the police couldn’t expect us to leave without: our toothbrushes, my hairbrush, a couple of paperback books to zone out my thoughts on the aeroplane home. I imagine the villa now, eerily untouched, abandoned in the early hours of the morning, Maria’s empty car in the drive. A modern version of the Mary Celeste. Our arrival at the villa seems like decades ago now; the sense of relaxation I’d allowed myself to feel at the poolside seems ridiculous, something I didn’t deserve in the first place. Over before it began. As the police said, there was no reason for us to stay in France. It was here where it happened. It’s here where they need him.

  As we pull up outside the house, I keep my eyes resolutely down, refusing to look up at the windows of our neighbours. Have they heard? Do they know? I don’t feel ready to find out. The policemen leave us and I shiver, force myself to keep going, unlock the front door.

  Inside our house, Maria boils the kettle, the sound loud in our quiet kitchen. Everything is exactly as we left it: cups on the draining board that I didn’t get round to putting away before we left for France, a little pile of unopened mail sitting on the doormat. My eyes flick over the letters, as if there will be evidence of my husband’s wrongdoing tucked amongst the NatWest paraphernalia. The air feels stuffy, as though we have been away for weeks rather than mere days, and Emma and I set about opening windows, letting the fresh air into the house. My skin itches; I am desperate for a shower, but I know we don’t have long. In the next few days, the police will no doubt be here with a search warrant. The thought makes me sick to my stomach.

  The three of us convene with mugs of tea. Emma is the first to speak.

  ‘He didn’t do it,’ she says, her voice loud, pulsating with anger, as though being back on home turf has invigorated her. ‘He didn’t do it, Mum. He can’t have done, can he?’

  ‘Emma,’ Maria says, giving her a warning look, ‘we don’t have all the information yet. We have to keep calm. Whatever happens, we need to stick together. As a family.’

  I manage to find my voice, as though dredging it up from a well. ‘Maria’s right,’ I say, ‘we’re all exhausted. Things will look clearer tomorrow.’ I pause. It is so hard, so very hard, to know what to say, but for now I know that my priority must be my daughter. My precious girl.

  ‘We all need to get some sleep,’ I say, ‘because the police are going to want to talk to us too. You know they are. And whatever Daddy did or didn’t do, he loves you very, very much.’ The words taste bitter on my tongue. Emma is sixteen, not six, but I don’t know how else to play this.

  Emma begins to cry for the first time since the doorbell rang in France; the tears trickle down her cheeks towards her mouth, dripping onto her chin. I take a step towards her and Maria does too, and then the three of us are holding each other, standing there in the kitchen, our arms tightly wrapped around one another, forming a wall against the rest of the world. I want to stay like this for the rest of the day, but Maria begins to bustle around, making something for us to eat, boiling the kettle for endless cups of tea, phoning Mum in the nursing home. I hear her talking to her, her voice low and sweet, and I know I should say hello too, but I’m so exhausted and really, what is the point when she can no longer even tell the two of us apart.

  Of course, I don’t sleep that night. I lie awake, staring up at the ceiling, alone in our huge double bed. It was nice to finally shower; I stood under the hot water for far too long, feeling it beat against the top of my head, wishing it could drown out the thoughts that are swirling round and around in my mind. I can’t stop picturing Callum at Ipswich Police Station – is he in a cell? Is he being questioned? Maria says they should let him have a phone call but the phone hasn’t rung yet. I wonder if the police will have told him that we’re back. I wonder if I ought to be researching lawyers for him, making his case to a solicitor, but I don’t have the energy. After all, I think, he has been lying to me for months. Years. Years and months and weeks and days and hours and minutes of lies. And I’ve let him.

  I wonder if they will question me too.

  Emma went up to her room ve
ry early on, claiming a headache and telling Maria and I that she wanted to be left alone. I thought about following her, but Maria told me to leave it. ‘Let her be for a bit, S,’ she said, ‘it’s been a very long day.’

  I stretch my limbs out in the bed, feeling the ache between my shoulder blades. Callum usually takes up so much space, but now I spread my arms wide, feel the soft rub of the sheets beneath my skin. We have been married for fifteen years; I am so used to being part of a couple that the sensation of being alone is odd. My mind can’t seem to reconcile the fact that he’s not brushing his teeth, he’s not crashed out in the spare room, he’s not finishing work in the studio outside. He’s in a police station, suspected of murder. The thought is so bizarre that for one awful, inappropriate moment I almost want to laugh.

  I reach for my phone. There is a text from one of the uber-mothers, something about a meeting next week, and a photo from Callum’s cousin Rosa containing a picture of her newborn baby. I cannot bear to reply to her, to tell her what has happened. It won’t be long before she finds out, after all.

  Although I know I need to rest, I pull up the Safari app and search again for anything that might tell me what on earth is going on. The brightness of the phone making my eyes hurt, I google ‘Ipswich murder August’ and hold my breath as it loads. I’m not really expecting there to be anything but this time the pages pop up, one after another, and my hands begin to tremble as my eyes scroll down the page. The headline jumps out at me, the words clear and nightmarish in black and white.

  WOMAN FOUND DEAD IN IPSWICH FLAT: BABY MISSING

  My heart flips over in my chest and I sit up straight, abandoning all thoughts of sleep. My hand scrabbles for the bedside lamp and I flick it on, the golden glow illuminating the bedroom. Baby missing?

  The first link I click on is the East Anglian Daily Times, our local paper covering Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. They love Callum, the TV exec – every so often they drum up some sort of feature on him, when there’s not much else going on – some piece about his latest project, a glossy photo of him smiling into the camera. They once did a piece on all of us, took photos inside our home, one of me and Callum together, grinning into the camera. They made me look like a housewife, only just stopped short of popping a pinny on me. Didn’t mention my own career at all.