Little Face

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘Where’s Alice?’ Simon said suddenly. ‘She’s somewhere in this house, right? Persuade her to come and talk to me. I won’t let Vivienne Fancourt touch her.’

  Briony looked away. ‘What about Florence?’ she said. ‘Alice said you didn’t believe her, that you refused to look for Florence. Vivienne’s obviously behind all that, you must realise that now.’

  ‘Where did Vivienne get the other baby from?’

  ‘I don’t know! Honestly. Neither does Alice.’ They stared at one another in silence. Then Briony sighed and said, ‘Look, please just find Florence, okay? This is all a bit too weird for me. Alice and I had planned everything. We knew there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of Vivienne being locked up for Laura’s murder, so Alice and Florence were going to escape. I was going to hide them for a while, until they found somewhere more secure. I’m not a bad actor – as you know. I could have convinced David, Vivienne, anyone that I had no idea where they were. And then, middle of last week, I get a frantic phone call from Alice saying Florence is missing, that someone’s swapped her with another baby! I feel as if I’m living in some kind of surreal parallel universe. What’s going on?’

  ‘But you still helped them escape, didn’t you? Alice and the baby?’

  ‘Any baby – any adult, for that matter – is better off out of that house of horrors.’ Briony shuddered. ‘Answer my question. You seem to know everything. Do you know where Florence is?’

  Simon considered it. Did he? Just because he was often right didn’t mean he was incapable of being wrong. You’re hardly the most objective judge, are you? ‘I think so.’

  ‘Is she safe?’

  ‘If I’m right, then yes. She’s safe.’

  A loud series of clanking noises came from down the hall. It sounded as if someone was playing dominoes with sheets of metal. Then there was a whooshing sound that stopped as suddenly as it had started. ‘Fuck!’ said Briony. ‘Sorry. Sounds like my boiler’s exploded.’

  A faint mewing began, growing steadily louder until it was a plaintive wail. At first Simon took it to be a cat. But not for long, not once he saw the trapped look on Briony Morris’s face.

  He stood up and walked in the direction that the crying was coming from, ignoring Briony’s shouts for him to wait. He pushed open the white wooden door at the end of the hall and found himself in the kitchen. In front of him was the malfunctioning boiler. In front of him, also, was a Moses basket with a baby in it. The baby from The Elms. She stopped crying when she saw him looking down at her. Simon had never held or spoken to a baby, so he turned away. There was a note on the kitchen table. It was short, but it told him enough.

  Briony ran into the room after him. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Here we all are, then. Fuck!’

  Simon pulled his mobile out of his pocket and phoned Charlie. ‘I’ve found them,’ he said, as soon as she answered. ‘The baby’s right here in front of me. Send some uniforms to collect her. And then meet me at Waterfront as soon as you can. Sooner.’

  41

  Friday October 10, 2003

  A numb calm descends on me as I enter the ladies’ changing room. The swimming pool is closed today because one of the boilers has broken and the water is too cold. In here it is also colder than usual, and quieter because the televisions are off. So are the lights, apart from the dim, square emergency lights in the corners.

  I hold the key to locker 131 in my hand. Ross, the man with the South African accent who showed me round a fortnight ago, gave it to me. He remembered me, from my first visit, remembered I was Vivienne’s daughter-in-law. He believed my lie about being sent by her. I noticed he was wearing a manager’s badge. Last time I saw him he was a membership adviser. At some point during my two weeks of torture, Ross has been promoted. It strikes me that we are more separate from our fellow human beings than we like to think. We all must walk past people every day whose outer skins hide raw, churning agonies that nobody could imagine.

  I am nervous, excited, almost giggly, knowing how close I am to finding something, finally, that I can use to prove what I have known for some time. But as I cross the room, my euphoria dissolves and I have a sense of my brain drifting out of and above my physical self. I feel detached as I open Vivienne’s locker, as if someone is pulling unseen strings to make me move. Seconds later, I find myself staring at a big white holdall, so bulky it barely fits the space.

  I pull it out, throw it down on one of the wooden benches and unzip it. A strong citrusy smell emerges, probably washing powder, and a faint trace of Vivienne’s favourite perfume, Madame Rochas. One by one, I remove from the bag a pair of trousers, a shirt, a pair of tights. Underwear, brilliant white. Beneath these I find a dry swimming costume and a make-up bag. Slowly, disappointment seeps into my mind, starting at the edges of my consciousness and moving inward. I cannot accept that I might be wrong. I turn the bag upside down and shake it out, more vigorously than I need to. I shake and shake, panting, beginning to panic. Nothing falls out.

  I hear a groan and realise it has come from my own mouth. My movements are out of control. I am crying. I hurl the eviscerated bag down on to the bench and collapse in a defeated heap on top of it. I feel a jab of sharp pain in my upper thigh, as if I have sat on something with a hard corner. And yet Vivienne’s holdall is empty. It is not possible that I missed anything.

  I stand up and examine the bag again, less hysterically this time. I notice, as I turn it over in my hands, that there is a large pocket along one side. Beneath the zip, there is a small, rectangular bulge. My heart begins to race. I cannot bear this for much longer. For the past two weeks, my spirit has been killed and brought back to life, killed and brought back to life. I have been jolted back and forth between hope and despair so often that it is hard to cling to any sense of reality.

  With fingers that feel floppy and useless, I unzip the side pocket of the holdall and pull out a small, fawn-coloured handbag, the strap of which has been cut away. There is a Gucci logo on the side of the bag. It’s Laura’s; I recognise it from her visit to my Ealing office. It is strange to see it in this context, years after Laura’s death, and stranger still to realise that I am shocked. Every time I prove to myself what I know, I can hardly believe it. Some small naïve part of me still thinks, ‘Surely not’.

  I unzip the bag and pull out a plastic wallet full of photos of Felix as a baby, then a beige lipstick called ‘crème caramel’ and a small red leather purse. A set of keys with a ‘Silsford Balti House’ key-ring. The small accessories of a life cut cruelly short. A wave of pain hits me and I have to sit down.

  ‘Hello, Alice,’ says a voice behind me.

  I spring to my feet, adrenaline piping through my body. Vivienne. ‘Get away from me!’ I shout. Mortal fear. I’ve heard the expression often, but I have never realised what it means. It is what I am feeling now. It’s worse than any other kind of fear. It is the paralysing terror that grips you in the seconds before you are killed. I want to disintegrate, give up, lie down on the floor and allow it to happen, because then at least the terror would stop.

  It is only the thought of Florence that pushes me back, back, towards the blue door at the far end of the changing room as Vivienne advances on me, smiling. I am holding Laura’s bag in my right hand, gripping it tight. Vivienne is holding nothing. I wonder where she is hiding whatever it is that she intends to use to kill me.

  ‘Where is my granddaughter? Where is Florence?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘Who’s the other baby? Who is Little Face? You were the one that swapped them, weren’t you? You wanted to keep Florence away from me. Just as Laura kept Felix away from me.’

  ‘You killed Laura!’

  ‘Where’s Florence, Alice?’

  ‘I don’t know. Ask David, he knows.’

  Vivienne shakes her head. She holds out a hand towards me. ‘Let’s go home,’ she says. ‘We’ll ask him together.’ I stagger backwards until I meet resistance. I have reached the door to the
pool area. As quickly as I can, I push it open with my back. Vivienne’s eyes widen with shock and anger as she works out what I intend to do, only seconds after I’ve worked it out myself. She isn’t quick enough. Once I’m on the other side, I slam the door shut behind me and lean against it, praying that this is the only way to get from the ladies’ changing room to the pool.

  I hear Vivienne’s palms, the same ones she takes to the beauty salon along the corridor once a week to have expensive creams rubbed into them, slap against the wood of the door. ‘Let me in, Alice. We need to talk. I’m not going to hurt you.’ I don’t answer. It would be a waste of energy. I need to use all my strength to keep the door between us closed. I feel pressure on the other side, and picture Vivienne pushing, using all her weight to shift me. Vivienne is lighter than me, but more powerful, thanks to the weights and machines on the floor above our heads. Her body has been put through hours of training, like the body of a soldier. The door inches open, bangs shut – tiny movements back and forth.

  All of a sudden there is no resistance. I am pushing against nothing. Vivienne has stopped. I hear her sigh. ‘If you won’t let me through, I’ll just have to talk to you like this. And I’d rather we were face to face.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Very well. Alice, I’m not the devil incarnate that you seem to think I am. What choice did I have? Laura wouldn’t let me see my own grandson. Do you honestly believe I’d have harmed Felix? I adore that boy. Have I harmed him since she died, since he’s lived in my house? No. I dote on him. He has everything he could possibly want, and more love than any other child in the world. You know that, Alice.’

  I try not to hear her words, the reasoning of the dangerously, psychotically unreasonable. Her justification is horrific to listen to, like poison dripping into my ear. I press my body hard against the door. Vivienne could make a sudden lunge at any time. ‘Does David know you killed Laura?’

  ‘Of course not. I didn’t want you to know either. I’ve always tried to protect you and David from unpleasantness, you know that. And believe me, it was deeply unpleasant. Even that is an understatement. You’ve never stabbed another human being, so you can’t possibly know how horrible it is.’

  ‘You framed an innocent man!’

  A contemptuous snort. ‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d met him. I’d hardly call him innocent. You’re an innocent, Alice. You have no idea what people are capable of.’ She is pushing again. All my muscles ache with the effort of leaning. Opposite me is another blue door identical to this one. I could try to run through the men’s changing rooms and up to reception, but Vivienne would run faster. She would catch me. ‘The sensation of stabbing someone,’ she says, her tone wistful. ‘I wish I could forget what it felt like. You imagine it’s going to be easy, like slicing a chicken breast, but it isn’t. You can feel the texture of everything you’re cutting through – the bone, the skin, the muscle. Layers of resistance. And then the softness, once you get through all that. The pulp.’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘In retrospect, I think a gun might have been preferable, but where on earth was a person like me going to get a gun? I don’t exactly mix in those circles, do I? And I don’t know how to aim. No, a knife was the only option.’

  ‘You hid it in the crèche. Felix played there. How could you do that?’ Sweat pours off me. I can feel rivulets of make-up running down my face.

  ‘He knew nothing about it!’ Vivienne sounds indignant. ‘It didn’t affect him. A person in my position can’t afford to be sentimental.’

  ‘You’re a monster.’

  She sighs. ‘Alice, you of all people should know how pointless it is to be judgemental about these things. You have no idea how much pain that woman put me through. She paid for it, that’s all. I didn’t enjoy killing her. It was simply something that had to be done. And I’m the one who’s suffered since. Not her. Me! Wondering what I did wrong, why she disliked me so much. Now there can be no satisfactory resolution. Do you think I’m happy about that?’

  I move my feet slightly so that I am at a better angle. I close my eyes and try to visualise the straight line of my back and the straight line of the door, pressed together so tightly that not even a grain of sand could fit in between.

  ‘Laura didn’t die immediately,’ says Vivienne. Her voice sounds as if it is coming from much further away. I picture her sitting on one of the wooden benches. ‘She begged me not to let her die, to take her to the hospital.’

  ‘Stop it! I don’t want to know!’

  ‘It’s a bit late for that, dear. I tried to protect you from the truth, and you wouldn’t let me. You can’t hide from it now.’

  ‘You’re sick!’

  ‘I told her I couldn’t, of course. She promised she’d let me see Felix as often as I wanted to. She even offered to give him to me altogether. Anything, she said, if I didn’t let her die.’ A pause. ‘Don’t think I wasn’t tempted. No-one likes to watch another human being bleed to death. But I knew she couldn’t be trusted, you see. And she was a selfish woman. In her final moments, she didn’t call out Felix’s name, not once. All she said was “Please don’t let me die, please don’t let me die”, over and over. It was always me, me, me with Laura.’

  I am shaking, nauseous. I gag, and bile fills my throat. I cover my ears with my hands. I have to find a way to stop her, before she puts any more images in my head that, if I live through this, will make me frightened to be alone with my thoughts.

  I become aware that I have lost sensation in one of my feet from pushing it against the floor too hard. I need to adjust my position. As I shift my body slightly, pressing my hands against my ears so hard that both sides of my jaw ache, I feel something slam into me. I cry out as I am thrown to the floor.

  When I look up, Vivienne is standing over me. She must have launched herself at the door from a distance. She has always had a talent for being able to guess the precise moment at which you are likely to weaken. She knew I wouldn’t be able to endure her gloating commentary on Laura’s death.

  I scramble to my feet and run, oblivious to where I am going. Too late, I realise I am heading for the pool. If I’d gone in the opposite direction, I might have had a chance of making it through the men’s changing rooms and up the stairs before Vivienne. ‘Give me Laura’s bag, Alice,’ she says. ‘Give it to me, pretend you never saw it, and we’ll say no more about this whole business.’

  She marches towards me, holding out her left hand. I cannot back away because the pool is right behind me, so I dart to one side. Vivienne grabs my arm. I try to wrench it free, but her grip is too strong. I am on the ground again. My arms flail above my head. I cannot hold on to the handbag. There is a small splash as it drops into the pool. I think of the photos of Felix, probably Laura’s favourites, the ones she wanted with her all the time. They will be ruined now.

  I try to roll away from Vivienne so that I can stand up, but she pushes me down on to my front and hauls me forward. I feel a sharp pain in my lower abdomen. My scar. I wince, imagining the wound opening, blood seeping out. The top half of my body dangles over the pool. I grip the stone surround with both hands. ‘Please! No!’ I sob, but my body has gone limp. I cannot hope or fight any more. I know I will lose. Nobody can win when Vivienne Fancourt is the opponent.

  ‘You’re a joke!’ I gasp. If I’m going to die, I might as well tell her what I really think of her. ‘You must know you’ll never get what you want. You’re desperate to be surrounded by a loving family, and you never will be!’

  ‘I already am. David and Felix adore me. So will Florence.’

  ‘You’ll never know who loves you and who’s only pretending to because they’re afraid of what you’ll do to them if they don’t. Or because you throw money and presents at them, and they’re too shallow and greedy to resist. Like David. He hates you! He told me, he really, really hates you! He wishes you were the one who’d left, not his dad!’

  Vivienne growls like an animal, hauls me forward again and
pushes my head down into the water. I feel myself plunging down into the bright blue cold. The water envelops my head, shoulders, chest. I feel as if my heart is going to burst out of my body. I try to pull my head up, but Vivienne forces it down again. Water fills my mouth, my lungs. I try to punch and kick, but I am jelly, I am liquid. I want it to be over, know it won’t be long.

  Now my whole body is in the pool. Vivienne’s hand is on my neck, keeping my head submerged. I see lots of colours, then darkness. Everything is slipping away. I will never see Florence again. I will never see my Little Face again – and she has been mine, if only fleetingly. Everything is shrinking: thoughts, words, regrets, even love. It’s over. It has all evaporated, is all evaporating even now.

  No more pressure. I am released, drifting. Is this what it feels like to be dead? I feel lots of hands on my legs and arms. How is Vivienne doing this? I open my eyes and cough. There are blurred figures above me. I am not in the water any more. A searing pain rips through my chest and throat and I cough up water.

  Someone is patting me on the back. I look up. It is Simon. I see other things too: Sergeant Zailer, putting handcuffs on Vivienne. A bald man watching, water dripping from the cuffs of his shirt and suit jacket. And Briony. ‘Florence,’ I whisper.

  ‘It’s okay,’ says Simon. ‘We’ve got her. She’s fine.’

  Somewhere in my mind, I feel a letting-go, something tight unravelling. I slump in his arms.

  42

  13/10/03, 9.30 am

  Simon stood in front of The Elms and stared at its façade. He couldn’t believe this was only the second time he’d been here. The place had been so significant in his thoughts over the past few weeks. But here it was, a symbol of nothing, just stone and wood and paint. Anyone might live here.