Little Face

by Sophie Hannah

  Of all the inconvenient people to love, I had to bloody go and choose him, she thought. Though it hadn’t been a choice, not really. Simon was nothing like anybody Charlie had ever met before. She would have found it impossible to lie to herself, to pretend that he was one of many similar fish in the sea. Who else would be nostalgic, as Simon had once told Charlie he was, for a time when there was a danger that, as a Catholic, he might be burned at the stake?

  ‘You want to be burnt?’ she’d asked, thinking he had to be taking the piss.

  ‘No, of course not,’ he’d said. ‘But in those days, beliefs meant something. They were seen as dangerous. Thoughts and ideas should matter, that’s all I’m saying. It’s right that people should be scared of them, that men should be willing to die for things. Nothing seems to matter to anyone any more.’ And Charlie had fought the urge to tell him how much he mattered to her.

  ‘I was relieved when Laura died,’ Vivienne broke the silence. That got Charlie’s attention. ‘Not happy, you understand, but relieved. It was a dream come true when Felix came to live with us. I don’t care if that sounds heartless. Although . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Some time after Laura’s death, I realised I had never asked her, directly, why she was so determined to keep me away from Felix. Now I’ll never know. She can’t have thought I’d harm him. I adore him.’ Vivienne frowned at her hands. Her mouth twitched, as if she were trying to stop herself from saying something. But it came out in spite of her efforts. ‘I wish, every day of my life, that I’d asked her. You know, in a funny sort of way, losing an enemy is as hard to bear as losing a loved one. You’re left with the same strong feelings you always had, but no-one to attach them to. It makes one feel . . . cheated, I suppose.’

  ‘I know this might not seem immediately relevant,’ Charlie began gently, ‘but there is one line of enquiry that might prove worthwhile . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ For the first time since the interview began there was hope in David Fancourt’s eyes.

  ‘Alice talked to DC Waterhouse about your father. I know you’re not in touch with him, but . . .’

  ‘What?’ Creases of disgust appeared all over his face. ‘She talked to him about . . . ?’

  Vivienne’s mouth pulled in tightly at the sides. She looked angry. ‘Why on earth would she be interested in Richard?’

  ‘I don’t know. Any ideas?’

  ‘None. She didn’t say anything about it to me.’ There was irritation in her voice. Charlie had the impression that Vivienne was not a woman who took kindly to being left out of the loop.

  ‘Do you know how we could contact Richard Fancourt?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry. I don’t remember him with much fondness, and I’d rather not talk about him.’

  Charlie nodded. A proud woman like Vivienne would not wish to be reminded of her life’s failures. Charlie felt that way about most of the men she’d been involved with: Dave Beadman, a sergeant from Child Protection, who, when the condom split, said, ‘Don’t worry, I know where the abortion clinic is. Been there before!’ Before him, an accountant, Kevin Mackie, who was, as he put it, ‘not into kissing’.

  Charlie had always mistrusted people who stayed chummy with their exes. It was unnatural, sick even, to tolerate the tepid, watered-down presence in your life of what was once love or lust, to save the detritus washed up after the wreckage of a romance and call it friendship. Simon was different. He was not Charlie’s ex. He’s my never-to-be, she thought sadly, and therefore much harder to get over.

  Failed relationships. They affected everything that came after them, like radioactive accidents. They poisoned the future. Which reminded her of something she had not yet covered, something that might explain, directly or indirectly, why Alice had vanished. ‘Why did you and Laura Cryer separate?’ she asked David Fancourt.

  17

  Monday September 29, 2003

  ‘He’s called her Mrs Tiggywinkle since the first moment he saw her. It’s more than a nickname. She was – is – Mrs Tiggywinkle. But this other baby, he calls her Little Face. He knows she isn’t Florence. And I heard him call himself “I” when he was talking to her in the night, when he didn’t know I was listening. If he was talking to Florence, he would have said “Daddy”.’ I know I should speak more slowly, that a less manic delivery would make me sound more rational, but I have waited so long to say all this. I can’t stop the words pouring out.

  Simon and I are in Chompers. As I rant, he eyes me awkwardly across a polished wooden table. He is nervous. He traces the grain of the wood with his index finger. Noise blasts out all around us – music, laughter, conversation – but I hear only the silence after I have spoken, Simon’s silence. His hair is clean, freshly combed. His denim shirt and black trousers look brand new, even if they do not go particularly well with each other or with his brown shoes. I don’t know why the ensemble doesn’t work, but the first thing I thought when he walked in was, ‘David wouldn’t be seen dead in that outfit.’ I find Simon’s bad dress sense endearing, almost reassuring.

  ‘I’m afraid that doesn’t prove anything,’ he says after a long pause. His voice is apologetic. ‘Plenty of parents give their children more than one nickname, or one replaces another. And for your husband to describe himself as “I” is normal as well. He might refer to himself as “Daddy” most of the time but “I” occasionally.’

  ‘I don’t know what I can say to convince you, then. If my word isn’t enough.’ I am numb with misery. He is not on my side. I can’t rely on him. I consider telling him what happened to me this morning, after my long, uncomfortable sleepless night. I had to beg for my clothes, to be allowed to use the bathroom. Eventually David unlocked my wardrobe and selected a dress he knew was too small for me, a horrible fitted green thing I haven’t worn for years. ‘You shouldn’t have let yourself get so fat while you were pregnant,’ he said.

  I was desperate to use the toilet. I did not have time to argue with him, so I squeezed awkwardly into the dress. Once I was in it, I felt an even greater pressure on my bladder. I might have lost control at any moment, and David knew it. He laughed at my helplessness. ‘It’s lucky you didn’t have a natural birth,’ he said. ‘Your pelvic floor muscles wouldn’t have been up to the task, would they?’ Eventually, he moved aside and let me leave the room. I ran to the bathroom, got there just in time.

  I cannot bring myself to tell Simon about David’s little tortures. I am not prepared to share my humiliation with him, only to hear him say that David’s cruelty does not prove Little Face isn’t Florence. I am still wearing the horrible green dress. David wouldn’t give me the key to my wardrobe, so I couldn’t get changed. Vivienne wouldn’t have believed me if I’d told her. She’d have believed David, when he said, as he would have, that I’d locked the wardrobe myself and lost the key, that I was going mad.

  Looking so awful in public makes me feel ashamed. I am sure Simon would pay more attention to what I’m saying if I were wearing clothes that fitted properly. But I am not, and Simon also believes David.

  ‘I find it hard knowing what to think,’ he says. ‘I’ve never met anyone like you before.’ His face is not exactly as I remembered it. I forgot, for example, how wide his lower jaw is, and that his bottom teeth are wonky, with some jutting out in front of others. I’d memorised his uneven nose, but forgotten the texture of his skin, the wide pores and slightly bumpy, roughened area around his mouth that makes him look weathered and tough.

  I ask him what he means.

  ‘Everything tells me I shouldn’t believe you . . .’

  ‘Sergeant Zailer, you mean,’ I said bitterly. I still have not forgiven her for the compassionless way she dealt with me at the police station.

  ‘Not just her. Everything. You’re asking us to believe that a stranger or strangers entered your house while your husband and daughter were sleeping, and swapped your daughter for another baby without your husband hearing anything. Why would anyone do that?’

  ‘I nev
er said it was a stranger!’

  ‘Or else your husband was involved somehow, and then deliberately destroyed all the pictures of Florence so that no-one could prove anything. But again, why?’

  I told him I had no idea, that just because an explanation was not immediately accessible, that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. Stating the obvious to someone who is supposed to be intelligent, who should know better, makes me want to scream with frustration.

  ‘No babies have been reported missing, and you’ve got a history of depression.’ Hearing my indignant gasp, he said, ‘I’m sorry. I know your parents had just died, but still, from our point of view, you count as someone with a history. The simplest explanation for all this is that you’re suffering from some sort of . . .’

  ‘Trauma-induced delusion?’ I finished his sentence for him. ‘But that’s not what you think, is it? However hard you try to believe that, you don’t. Which is why you’re here now.’ Perhaps if I tell him what he thinks, he will start to think it. I am desperate enough to try anything.

  ‘Normally, in any other case like this, I wouldn’t be here.’ Simon’s expression was pained, as if he was disappointed in himself.

  ‘So what’s different?’ I demand, impatient. He is more interested in his own motivation than in Florence’s or my safety.

  ‘My instincts tell me to trust you,’ he says quietly, looking away. ‘But what does that mean? It’s a contradiction, isn’t it? It’s doing my head in, to be honest.’ He looked at me then, as if wanting encouragement of some kind.

  Finally, a sliver of hope. Maybe I can talk him round, persuade him to help me, no matter what sneery Sergeant Zailer says. ‘It’s like me and homeopathy,’ I tell him, forcing myself to sound calm. ‘I know the theories behind it and they sound like nonsense – you’d have to be a fool to believe that anything so outlandish could work. And yet it does. I’ve seen it work, time and time again. I trust it completely, even though logically it sounds like something I could never believe in.’

  ‘I went to see a homeopath once. Never went back.’ Simon studied the fingernails on his left hand.

  I don’t care I yell inside my head. This isn’t about you! Instead I say, ‘It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. The remedies can sometimes make your symptoms worse at first, which confuses a lot of people. And then there are bad homeopaths, who prescribe the wrong thing or don’t listen to you properly.’

  ‘Oh, Dennis was a good listener. It wasn’t him that was the problem, it was me. I got cold feet about talking to him. In the end I chickened out and never even told him why I’d come.’ Simon brings his story to an abrupt conclusion, saying, ‘It was a waste of time and it cost me forty quid.’

  I understand that I am not to ask any further questions. In his own stilted way he is trying to confide in me, but he will only go so far. Good. The sooner he shuts up, the sooner we can get back to Florence. I am about to ask if he will do something to help me, finally, when he says, ‘Do you like your job?’

  Who cares about my stupid, stupid job? ‘I used to. A lot.’

  ‘What’s changed?’

  ‘Going through this.’ I make an all-encompassing gesture with my hands. ‘Losing Florence. I don’t have the same unwaveringly positive view of people that I used to have. I’m afraid I might be too cynical now.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re cynical at all,’ said Simon. ‘I think you could help a lot of people.’ This, like a lot of what he has said, strikes me, suddenly, as peculiar. He talks as if he knows me well, when in fact this is only the third time we’ve met.

  I don’t want to help strangers, not any more. I want Simon to help me and Florence. Maybe cynical is the wrong word. Maybe selfish is what I have become. And my last thread of patience has just snapped. ‘Are you going to look for my daughter or not?’ The words slip out, sounding more accusatory than I want them to.

  ‘I’ve explained . . .’

  ‘I wanted to bring Little Face with me today. Did I tell you that? I wasn’t allowed.’ I am too exhausted to stop my resentments pouring out. My nerves feel as if they are rattling under my skin. ‘Alice, calm down . . .’

  ‘If David and Vivienne really believe Little Face is Florence, you’d think they’d want me to spend time with her, wouldn’t you? You’d think they’d see it as a good sign, that I wanted to take her out with me. Well, they didn’t! I was forbidden.’

  My disappointment was so acute, so piercing, I couldn’t contain it. I had so looked forward to being alone with Little Face. I had imagined myself slotting her car seat into the Volvo and setting off with her changing bag in the boot, packed full of nappies, wipes, milk and a spare babygro. She would probably fall asleep in the car. Tiny babies usually do. Every so often I would adjust the rearview mirror to try to catch a glimpse of her features – her thin, shell-coloured eyelids, her half-open mouth.

  ‘Vivienne said I was trying to substitute Little Face for Florence,’ I tell Simon, weeping. ‘She says it’s not a good idea for me to get too attached to her. She said letting me take her out was a risk. As if I’d hurt a defenceless baby!’

  ‘Alice, you’ve got to try to calm down, get some perspective on this,’ says Simon, patting my arm. Vivienne’s words were almost identical. Everyone is so good at sounding perfectly reasonable. Everyone except me.

  ‘Put yourself in my position,’ Vivienne said. ‘You’re saying one thing, David’s saying another. I have to consider the possibility that you’re lying, Alice. Or that you’re . . . not well. Don’t look so hurt – you must be able to see that it’s a hypothesis that’s difficult for me to avoid. How can I allow you to take the baby out on your own? You must know from your own experience that even the tiniest of fears can grow and become all-consuming. I’d be sick with worry if I let that baby out of my sight.’

  ‘If she’s my baby, I should be able to take her wherever I want!’ I yell at Simon. I am aware of heads turning at other tables, but I don’t care. ‘Well? Shouldn’t I?’

  ‘When you’re a bit calmer, I’m sure . . .’

  ‘They’ll let me? No, they won’t! And I can’t take her anywhere unless they let me. They’d easily overpower me. Even Vivienne on her own is stronger than I am, thanks to the machines in this bloody, bloody . . . place!’ I wave my arms around. I hate everyone and everything. ‘She has to make all the decisions, every single one. The cot, nearly all of Florence’s clothes. She reserved a place for Florence at Stanley Sidgwick without even asking me what I thought about it!’

  ‘But . . . that’s insane. Already?’

  ‘Oh, yes! While I was pregnant, she did it. Not a minute to waste! You’ve got to register them before birth or they don’t stand a chance of getting a place. And there’s a five-year waiting list, as Vivienne never ever stops telling me. Silly me, thinking Florence could just . . . exist for a while, without any pressure to . . . achieve!’

  ‘You should try to calm down.’ Simon clears his throat. ‘David isn’t . . . hitting you or anything, is he?’

  ‘No! Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?’ David would never hit me. I almost say this. Then it strikes me that I have no idea what he is capable of. I don’t think he has either. He is not like Vivienne, whose ideas and actions, irrespective of whether one agrees with them or not, are based on rationality. With Vivienne there are rules, guarantees. There is consistency. She is like a dictator in charge of a country, or a Mafia boss. If you love and obey her, you can have every privilege imaginable.

  David is knocked over by waves of emotion that he can’t deal with, and lashes out in response. I can see now that even his withdrawal into himself after Laura died was a lashing-out of sorts. ‘I don’t want to talk about David,’ I tell Simon.

  He pats my arm again. The first time, I was grateful for the gesture. This time it is nowhere near enough. I need proper help.

  ‘Charlie . . . Sergeant Zailer told me what happened to his first wife.’

  His comment surprises me so much, I spill a bit of my glass o
f water.

  ‘What’s wrong? I’m sorry if I . . .’

  ‘No. No, it’s okay. I just wasn’t expecting you to mention it. I . . . please, can we change the subject?’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I feel a bit faint.’ He has caught me off guard. I will not talk about Laura’s death, not without time to prepare, to consider what I want to say. I have no doubt that anything I say to Simon will be relayed to Sergeant Zailer. It was a murder case, after all. And Sergeant Zailer does not have my best interests at heart, of that I am convinced.

  ‘Do you want more water? Would some fresh air help? I hope I haven’t been too blunt.’

  ‘No, I’m fine now. Really. I should go.’

  His mobile phone rings. As he pulls it out of his pocket, I wonder why mine hasn’t rung. It is odd that Vivienne has not phoned to check I am all right. I was in such a state before I left. While Simon talks to someone who, it appears from the conversation, is putting pressure on him to see them next Sunday, I reach into my handbag to find my phone, check I haven’t missed any calls.

  It isn’t there. I turn the bag upside down, empty its contents on to the table, my heartbeat crashing in my chest. I’m right. My phone is gone. It has been taken. Confiscated. I stand up, start to push all the other things back into the bag. I drop my keys on the floor several times, which makes me cry harder. Tears blur my vision until I can’t see anything. I fall back into my chair. Simon mutters into his phone that he had better go. ‘Here, let me help,’ he says. He begins to pack my things away. I am too upset to thank him. All over the restaurant, people are staring at us.

  ‘My phone was in my bag this morning. David’s taken it!’

  ‘Maybe you left it . . .’

  ‘No! I didn’t leave it anywhere! What’s it going to take for you to help me? What has to happen to me? Are you going to wait till I get killed, like Laura?’ I pick up my bag and run for the door, colliding with several tables on my way out. Eventually, I make it out on to the street. I don’t stop running. I have no idea where I am going.