The Babysitter

by Phoebe Morgan

  Alex clears his throat. He wishes she’d put down the pink bear, it’s distracting.

  ‘Mrs Grant, do you think there is any chance that your friend Caroline was jealous of the fact that you had a child? That there was any part of her that wanted your child for her own?’

  FEARS GROW IN SEARCH FOR MISSING BABY EVE

  Suffolk Police are continuing to search for the whereabouts of missing one-year-old Eve Grant, who was last seen in Ipswich on the evening of 10th August, in the care of a family friend, Ms Caroline Harvey. Ms Harvey was killed on the night of the disappearance.

  ‘We are continuing to appeal to any and all members of the public who may have seen something on the night of the tenth,’ a spokesperson from Suffolk Police said. ‘Eve Grant was not yet walking by herself, therefore we need to rule out the possibility that she made her own way out of the flat. We are particularly interested in the hours of 6 to 9 p.m., in anyone who may have been seen in the vicinity of Woodmill Road, perhaps carrying something in their arms, an object or bundle, or putting such an object into a car. It is crucial that everyone casts their memories back to that night and if you did see anything unusual or suspicious, please call 0845 54 54 54 as soon as possible.’

  On Monday night, baby Eve’s parents, Jenny and Rick Grant, made an emotional appeal on BBC One, calling for whoever had taken their daughter to ‘please, bring her home’.

  Earlier this week a search of the Ipswich marina turned up nothing, and police continue to search the outskirts of Ipswich for a sighting of little Eve. Around two hundred people helped in a search of streets, farmland and woodland through the night and into this morning. Ports and airport staff have also been informed.

  The investigation into the death of Ms Harvey continues, with one man in his forties being held in custody.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Ipswich

  17th August

  DS Wildy

  ‘We’re going to have to let Callum Dillon go.’

  DCI McVey looks disappointed, an emotion that Alex hasn’t often seen cross her face in the years they have worked together. Triumphant, yes; angry, most definitely; scathing, one hundred per cent. But disappointed? No.

  The sight of it makes him feel worse.

  ‘We’ve held him long enough,’ he carries on, ‘without a confession or hard evidence, we can’t keep Callum Dillon in custody any longer than we already have. Unless something vital comes in within the next half hour, we’re stuck. His lawyer’s practically got a timer set.’

  ‘Fuck!’ The DCI gets to her feet, the more familiar expression of deep-seated annoyance replacing her disappointed look. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck. I hate the thought of him out there, roaming around. Jesus, it’d be like the Norfolk thing all over again if something happened. I don’t like him going back to Siobhan.’ She sighs. ‘Did the CCTV from Christchurch Road turn up anything yet?’

  Alex shakes his head.

  ‘Nope. Tom’s been going through it but it doesn’t cover the front of the Dillon house, it only goes up to the crossroads, because of the museum. We’ve been checking for sightings of the Dillon vehicle – a dark blue Audi, reg plate XE69 JBL, but again, we’d only see it if Callum was turning left out of his driveway. Caroline Harvey’s flat is a right turn, it’s the opposite direction. Odds are he walked.’

  He pauses. ‘Look, ma’am, do you think we’re barking up the wrong tree here? Rick Grant is convinced this is something to do with Caroline herself, with her wanting Eve – wanting a child of her own.’ He stops, trying to collect his thoughts. ‘And what if we’re wrong about Siobhan Dillon, Callum’s wife? She knew about the affair. She would’ve been angry, upset. She might’ve gone round there, to confront Caroline, and it got out of hand.’

  The DCI is frowning at him. ‘That’s all very well and good, if you say so, DS Wildy. But if that’s your new theory, explain to me where little Eve is now? Why Siobhan Dillon would want to harm a baby she doesn’t know?’

  Alex groans. ‘I don’t know.’

  The DCI sighs. ‘Speak to the French police again, will you? Make sure they searched Siobhan Dillon’s belongings along with everyone else’s.’

  ‘And Callum?’

  ‘Well, we’ve no choice, have we? We have to let him out.’ She pauses. ‘But I want a car watching that house for the rest of the week. If Callum Dillon goes somewhere, we go too. I’m not letting him get away with anything else.’

  POLICE RELEASE MAN IN BABY EVE CASE

  Suffolk Police issued a short statement today to confirm that the man in his forties who has been questioned on suspicion of the murder of Caroline Harvey has been released without charge. Police are continuing to appeal to the public for any sightings of Eve Grant, who is one year old, and ask that members of the public remain vigilant at all times until the killer is caught. Anyone with further information pertaining to Caroline Harvey or her associates is also asked to call Suffolk Police at the earliest available opportunity.

  @JusticeWarrior2003: Jesus, they don’t know what they’re doing. Why let some lunatic back out onto the streets?

  @AndrewWhite: Probably a paedophile. Oh great, he’s out.

  @SuffolkBoy01: There’s too much focus on who killed Caroline. They need to be out looking for the baby #FindEve

  @Tasha16: @SuffolkBoy01, come on, mate, you know as well as I do that that baby is dead. And the police know too. That’s why they’re not even bothering to look for her. There’s no point.

  @SabahBeautyBlogs: Does anyone else think the TV exec guy is pretty hot? If I was his wife, I don’t think I’d kick him out of bed, even after all this! #IWould

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Ipswich

  17th August

  Siobhan

  They’ve sent over a family liaison officer following the search, which was actually about as intrusive as you could get, despite what DCI McVey said. She’s a woman called Yvonne with short black hair. She hovers around us all the time, keeps making endless cups of sugary sweet tea and offering Emma biscuits which my daughter doesn’t take.

  It’s as if we’ve been bereaved, which is ridiculous. The people they should be looking after are the Grant family. No one is grieving in this house – well, not yet, anyway. I am terrified of seeing Eve’s parents out on the street when I go to the shops – I don’t go anywhere else for fear that I will see her, the mother, her wide tearful eyes and her broken heart. I dreamed about her last night for the first time. The other other woman. What does she think of us? Does she believe Callum did it? I’m frightened too of the search party combing the area – part of me wants to join in but I know I wouldn’t be allowed. On the news they said they’re searching the beaches, and I know that means they’re looking for a body.

  They’ve said Callum can come home today, but I’ve told him point-blank that I don’t want to see him. The lawyers told us that it was the wrong move, that we needed to put a brave face on it, show the public a ‘united front’. Patrick O’Connell keeps phoning me, attempting to change my mind for Callum’s sake. My own solicitor, a smart, diminutive woman called Olivia Brady, seems to be in agreement. I hired her myself, on Maria’s advice, called her after my interview at the station. She specialises in family law too, has been telling me the ins and outs of what could happen if my husband goes to jail.

  ‘But I don’t want a united front,’ I said to them both, in a flash of honesty where I forgot my promise to Emma, my goal of keeping our family unit together. ‘My husband’s been sleeping around behind my back for however many months. I’m not feeling very united at all, to be honest.’

  Olivia smirked a bit at that, but I was deadly serious. Everyone knows now – the police have spoken to the women in my book group, verified that I was there. They all said exactly what I’d wanted them to. Some of them texted me afterwards, told me the police questions were intense, as if I too am a suspect, as if I too could be on trial. I didn’t reply to any of them – I’ve been trying to ignore my phone since we got bac
k from France, not wanting to see the faux concern in the messages from the uber-mothers; they’ll be desperate for gossip, the lot of them. I’ve told work that I need more leave, just for a few more days. Said I needed to be at home with my daughter, that I’d check in where I could.

  I can’t manage anything at the moment, not whilst this is going on. I wonder when it will stop, when my total and utter humiliation will finally be complete. Rosa, Callum’s cousin, phoned me last night, asking me if it was all true. I could hear her newborn baby crying in the background.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I kept saying to her, ‘I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know any more than you do.’

  Mum’s been kept in the dark; Maria says the nurses are being very understanding. ‘We pay them enough,’ she said. ‘Though you ought to think about going to visit soon, S.’

  Emma’s furious with me. ‘Why won’t you let Dad come home?’ she screamed at me about an hour ago, her body convulsing with rage. Maria tried to calm her down, put her arms around her.

  ‘Dad is coming home, you’ll see,’ she said, but Emma carried on crying, screaming at me as though I were the devil incarnate. It began to scare me, the expression on her face; there was a wildness to it, a madness I hadn’t seen before in my little girl. In the end I left her alone for a while; she went up to her room and put music on, like she always does when she doesn’t want to talk to us any more.

  Maria and I stayed downstairs; I put the kettle on but Maria poured herself a vodka instead. We sat at the kitchen table, the table full of our family life – the odds and sods drawer stuffed with old phone chargers, pictures that Emma did when she was at primary school that somehow I can’t bear to throw away, discarded chapsticks that belong to me.

  I keep glancing at the door, as though I’m expecting Callum to walk in at any moment. It’s too hot in the house but I can’t open the windows; every time I do we can hear the press, who have somehow got wind of the fact that he might be home today and seem to have doubled in capacity in the last few hours.

  ‘It’s like being trapped,’ says Maria, ‘trapped in your own home.’ She pauses, takes a long sip of her drink. I don’t point out that we’re actually in my home, not hers. ‘Are you going to let him come back, S?’

  She’s watching me carefully and I shift a little in my chair, feeling my back sticky with sweat against the chair. The doorbell goes outside, the sound echoing through the house, and all of a sudden I feel defeated, as though there is no point in fighting it all. This is my life now.

  ‘Where else would he go?’ I say dully, and Maria nods thoughtfully.

  ‘Not as if he can stay at his mistress’s house, is it?’ she says, and despite everything I see the ghost of a smile on her face, a naughty smile, like the one she used to do when we were young. She’d do it when our mother’s back was turned, if we’d done something we shouldn’t have; her face would crack open into a little grin, showing her bright white teeth. I’d always been a little bit mesmerised by it, truth be told. I felt like she was letting me in on a secret every time she smiled. My mother didn’t like it – ‘Wipe that smile off your face’ she used to say, and we’d force ourselves to do straight faces, biting our lips to keep from bursting out laughing. I wasn’t very good at holding it for long; I usually cracked and my mother would shout at me, but Maria, she was better. It takes a lot to crack my sister.

  ‘Do you think he did do it, S?’ she asks suddenly, and I’m so wrong-footed by the question that my mind goes blank; the words won’t come.

  The doorbell rings again, more insistently this time, and Yvonne appears in the doorway to the kitchen, clutching a mug of tea and looking worried.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt you, Mrs Dillon, but I’ve had word that it’s your husband outside. He’s at the front door. I think we’d better let him in.’

  Maria looks horrified and a spike of panic rips through me; I hadn’t really expected him to turn up like this, not without due warning. I am not prepared to see him. Neither is Emma.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Maria says, ‘they’re not interested in me,’ and I watch as her tall, slim figure follows Yvonne out of the room, towards the hallway and the front door.

  ‘Emma,’ I say aloud, alone in the kitchen, and I hurry to the foot of the stairs, trying to make sense of the jumble that is my thoughts.

  She’s got the door to her bedroom shut and the music is playing; she probably hasn’t even heard the bell ring, or the sound of the vultures on the street. Carefully, I push it open, trying to rearrange my features into something resembling calm.

  ‘Emma?’

  She’s lying on the bed, staring straight up at the ceiling. The expression on her face is oddly blank and I feel a jolt of unease; her body looks odd, laid out like that, with nothing to distract her except the music.

  ‘Are you – are you OK?’ I say, and she doesn’t seem to register me at first, her eyes continue to look up at the pale cream ceiling, as though lost in a world that I cannot see.

  ‘Em?’

  On my second try, she snaps out of it, her vision sliding over to meet my eyes. She sits up slightly, propping herself on her elbows. Taylor Swift’s voice fills up the room, too loud and at odds with the strange, stilted atmosphere between us.

  ‘Your dad’s here, he’s at the door,’ I say, and it’s as though a light switch goes off inside her brain – in an instant she is up, off the bed and past me, rushing out of the room and down the stairs, leaving the music blaring in her wake. She slips past my side like a ghost; I barely feel her presence.

  For a second after she’s vanished I stand there, feeling completely invisible. Then I ready myself to go downstairs and face my husband.

  He looks better than he did the last time I saw him, but still, the man in front of me now is not the same as the man I knew for fifteen years. It’s only been a few days but his expression is hardened, closed. Emma is clinging to him as though he is a life raft, her arms wrapped around his middle, the way she used to greet him when he came home from work, back when she was six years old. But she is sixteen now, and their bond remains the same. Unbreakable. I feel a splash of frustration – what more does he have to do to fall from grace in her eyes?

  Maria is standing by the door, talking to Yvonne. The front door is closed but through the window I catch sight of the reporters, a few of them smoking, no doubt stubbing out the butts on my doorstep. The sun is blazing through the windows, but inside the house it is dark; most of the curtains are closed.

  Callum and I stare at each other.

  ‘Come in then,’ I say eventually, my voice sounding wooden. ‘You’d better get away from the door.’ He steps towards me, and I can’t help it – a spasm of fear unfurls itself slowly in my chest.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Ipswich

  10th August: The night of the murder

  Caroline

  Eve has fallen asleep. I reach for her hair, very softly, my fingers stroking the blonde curls like lamb’s wool under my touch. Jenny gets to do this every night, I think to myself; she gets to hold Eve close and watch her grow, watch her change just a tiny bit every single day. I thought I’d do that when I was pregnant, get one of those apps that monitors the baby’s development. Your baby is the size of a walnut. Your baby is the size of a grapefruit. Little pictures on the screen.

  For a few weeks after our conversation in April, I thought Callum was going to change his mind. I was overly affectionate towards him, playing the role of girlfriend at every given opportunity, not making a fuss when he was late to meet me, cooking for him in my flat on nights when he told Siobhan he was working late. He hadn’t mentioned the baby since that first evening, and yet still, my deluded mind told me that things would change, that he would come to his senses, that once he began to see clearly, he would surely realise how brilliant this baby could be. It could bring us closer, I thought, it could legitimise what we had. I let myself imagine it – just for a minute – a world where I wouldn’t have to hide
Callum’s existence from my friends, where I wouldn’t have to think about his other life, and where I wouldn’t have to compete with his daughter for attention. We could get a place together, kit out a room for the baby – I’ve always thought yellow would be nice for a baby’s room – and cement our life together. He could see Emma whenever he wanted, and Siobhan – well, Siobhan would just fade into the background. Our roles would be reversed.

  One Monday, I went for a blood test at Ipswich Hospital. I was alone – of course – but my plan was to show Callum the result when I got back. I knew – I knew – that once he saw the official reality of what had happened, once he saw the reality of what we had made together, he would realise how much there was to be gained by us having this child. I wasn’t going to find out in advance whether it was a girl or a boy, I thought to myself on the way to the hospital; I wasn’t going to find out because I wanted it to be a surprise. Secretly, though, I had always longed for a girl – a little girl that would have my hair and his eyes. I’ve always liked the name Tabitha.

  ‘First time?’ the nurse said, drawing the blood, and I’d nodded, trying not to wince at the sharp sting of the needle.

  ‘Where’s Dad today?’ she said. She had a nice accent – Northern, comforting, and I warmed to her immediately.

  ‘Oh, he couldn’t make it,’ I said, and I thought I caught a flicker of pity cross her features so I quickly followed this up with a lie: ‘He’s picking me up afterwards, though. We’re going out for a nice dinner to celebrate!’