by Holly Watt
‘Does it surprise you?’ asked Casey. ‘These surrogacy arrangements?’
‘Not really.’ Layla pursed her lips. ‘The Rohingya have always been seen as—’ She gestured vividly, dismissively. ‘It’s different here,’ she went on. ‘The women in this country, they’re treated like shit anyway. More than one in five Bangladeshi girls are married by the time they are fifteen, just for starters. When the Rohingya girls arrived in Bangladesh, a lot of them were married off as soon as they got here. It’s not like they had any choice. Very young girls, and old, old men, sometimes.’
‘At first, I didn’t understand why the gang didn’t just go and recruit these women,’ said Casey. ‘Just pay them a bit, make it easy. I didn’t understand why they had to go to all the trouble of kidnapping them. Hessa understood it, right from the start.’
‘It is what has happened for years with the Rohingya,’ said Layla, and Casey knew it was true.
By one calculation, 170,000 Rohingya were trafficked to Malaysia and Thailand in just three years even before the current crisis. Sold off like cattle, at $2,000 a head. A nice little business for the traffickers, coining $100 million a year. Mass graves were found in Thailand: those who wouldn’t follow the rules. Plenty more where they came from.
‘No,’ said Layla coolly. ‘These men would never go and negotiate with the Rohingya. They’d tell a few lies, and grab them. And who would stop them? No one.’
As the banqueting room doors flew open, Casey jerked to her feet. It was Raz, beaming widely. He stood there for a moment, enjoying his entrance.
How should I be? Casey had asked Miranda. I don’t know how to play this part.
Jubilant. Miranda’s smile was crooked. Ecstatic. Delirious. Don’t you know what happiness looks like, Casey?
Now Casey stood there for a second, unsure.
Her feet were clumsy. She took a step towards Raz, almost staggering.
‘Here.’ He hurried towards her. ‘Your daughter, Miss Emily! Mr Dominic. Your daughter is here.’
Casey collapsed back in her seat, her legs unable to hold her.
Ed was beside her, staring down at the tiny bundle as Raz deposited the baby in Casey’s arms, as if he were delivering a parcel.
‘She was born just an hour ago,’ said Raz, almost fatherly. ‘And she is perfect.’
Casey stared down. She was beautiful, this little girl, and almost unbelievably tiny. The baby opened her eyes, just for a second, and stared up at Casey blearily. The little eyes were that strange clear blue.
‘There were no problems,’ said Raz. ‘All was as it should be.’
The baby had a scattering of dark brown hair. Those eyes, thought Casey. Dominic’s eyes.
‘Hello, little one,’ she murmured.
Casey glanced up, over the baby’s head, and there was Ed, his eyes so solemn.
‘Poppy,’ he said, and there was a break in his voice. ‘Her name is Poppy.’
Flowers fluttering like pale pink silk . . .
Underneath the white blanket, someone had tucked the baby into a babygrow. Pink with blue spots: Mummy’s little princess.
The little girl kicked her legs, her fingers curling into tiny fists, and Emily’s face, crying with happiness, flashed before Casey’s eyes.
‘Bloody hell.’ Casey’s smile glittered. ‘Dominic! Our baby. Our child.’
Ed was staring at her.
We steal these moments, Casey thought. And by stealing them, we lose them for ever.
This baby, born of a lie, announced to a lie.
The old fairy, cursing over her cradle; a shadow, over her grave.
‘Emily, my darling.’
Ed was reaching towards her, wrapping his arms around Casey and the baby. And she was stretching up, finding his mouth for the kiss.
‘My love.’
He pulled back, just for a second, the rainbow eyes upon her. And then he kissed her, hard, and so familiar, yet unfamiliar.
‘A baby,’ she whispered.
‘Darling Emily.’
For a second, the name was a shock. He saw her startle, and jerked her closer.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Casey managed to beam at Raz. ‘I never believed that this would happen. Never.’
Emily’s smile, Emily’s words.
‘You miracle worker,’ she said.
He spread his hands wide. ‘For you.’
Hands, clenching. Flesh, tearing. The dark, becoming the world.
A body, torn apart. And the screams, and the screams.
And all this, for someone else’s joy.
Casey pushed the screams away, quite deliberately. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said again.
Raz grinned down at her. ‘I will leave you now, in peace. I will be back with a passport for her soon. But she is a good girl, that one.’
He backed away, still smiling.
As Casey looked down, a wave of protectiveness washed over her. ‘We will get you home, little girl,’ she whispered. ‘We will get you home.’
And the baby opened her mouth, and started to cry.
44
It seemed to take ages to get to the hotel room, the lift creaking past the floors. The lift was small, Ed and Casey awkwardly close, Casey’s head full of the kiss that meant nothing.
The baby was mewling, a small arm escaped from her blanket. She was stronger than Casey had expected, the little limbs wrestling in the babygrow.
‘Shh.’ Casey bounced the baby up and down, struggling to support the small head. ‘Quiet, little one.’
Casey had read Emily’s instructions, and looked through the bags and bags of equipment. But back in the room, it was Ed who sorted out a bottle, and held the tiny baby, and tried to get her to feed. After a few squawks, she took the bottle trustingly, her eyes two slits of blue.
‘God.’ Casey stood flat against the wall. ‘How do people cope?’
He laughed up at her. ‘It’s not hard, you know. Just patience, and a little bit of love.’
‘Not’ – Casey was checking her phone – ‘my specialities.’
They were racing back, all of them except for Miranda. She’s here. All done. Come back.
Out in the city, Miranda was following Raz, her tuk-tuk slipping easily down the streets as the big Land Cruiser got tangled up in traffic. ‘I’ll be back when I can,’ she messaged.
Savannah was the first back to the hotel room.
‘I never even caught a glimpse of them,’ she grumbled. ‘I checked every person going in and out of that hospital. Never saw a thing. Hello, poppet. Aren’t you gorgeous?’
Casey had shown Savannah photographs of the men beforehand, and given her the Land Cruiser’s numberplate.
‘It was the longest shot,’ Casey apologised. ‘There are several hospitals around the city. And they may well not have taken her to a hospital anyway.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Savannah shrugged. ‘How is she?’
‘Ed just changed her nappy,’ said Casey. ‘I almost had to leave the room.’
‘Casey’ – Savannah was laughing – ‘you’re ridiculous.’
‘She’s very quiet,’ said Casey approvingly.
They all stared at the baby, a tiny technological miracle.
‘They often are,’ said Savannah drily. ‘For the first twenty-four hours. Then, God help you.’
‘Time for you’ – Ed picked up the baby – ‘to have a kip.’
Very carefully, he settled the baby in a tiny travel cot in the corner. ‘He’s a good one,’ Savannah winked at Casey, and Casey turned away, embarrassed, confused.
Layla bounded through the door, Hessa just behind her.
‘The Land Cruiser left the Sagorika factory just after eight this morning,’ Layla said briskly. ‘It turned west, and shot off fast. I followed, but I lost it as it turned onto the Dhaka Highway. All the windows were rolled down as it left the factory, before the air con kicked in. I am sure the baby wasn’t with them then.’
‘The Land Cruiser got to the
shipyard not long after that,’ said Hessa. ‘Layla texted me as soon as she lost sight of the car, so it must have come straight there. It stayed at the shipyard for almost two hours. I was starting to worry that there was another way out. But finally, it came out again, zooming off down the highway back to Chittagong.’
They were both elated, thrilled at chasing the car across the busy city. Hessa threw herself into a chair.
‘I tracked the Land Cruiser a long way back here,’ Hessa went on. ‘One of the huge trucks on the highway had gone over on its side, so the traffic was total chaos.’
All along that road, scrap from the ships was sold off piecemeal. Boilers, life-jackets, odd lengths of tubing, it was piled high and sold cheap.
‘So it looks like the Land Cruiser came straight to the hotel from the shipyard,’ Casey concluded. ‘The car would have had no time to go anywhere else. Hessa, could you see if the baby was in the back, after it left the shipyard?’
‘No.’ Hessa was serious now. ‘Remember, the windows are tinted, so I couldn’t see into the car. But the baby must have been with them by then. They must have picked her up from the shipyard.’
‘It seems likely,’ Casey said. ‘Could the women possibly be on that site?’
‘There are lots of buildings on the little track leading down to the shipyard,’ said Hessa. ‘But they are just shacks for the workers.’
‘The way Shamshun described it, it can’t be a shack,’ said Casey.
She and Hessa had examined the shipyard online, zooming in and out. It was lush with greenery, this part of the coast, the little houses surrounded by trees, big pools of water here and there. The track off the main Bhatiari road led past some shacks and then down towards the entrance of the shipyard. At the entrance, the track forked. One branch meandered through the shipyard, towards the mudflats and past the big barns. The other track continued outside the perimeter fence, towards some more workers’ homes. The shipyard’s fence ran around a large area. Several acres, Casey estimated.
From space, they could see the narrow workers’ paths, out to the Tephi and the Beauvallet. To the left of the barns was the grey brick building Casey had seen from the fishing boat.
‘One of those buildings,’ Casey pointed. ‘There.’
As the others went out to find a restaurant, Casey drew a breath. Then she pushed the numbers on her phone.
‘Casey?’ The phone barely rang before Emily answered it.
‘We’ve got her, Emily,’ Casey said, and an almost animal noise came down the line. ‘She’s a lovely little girl.’
For a moment, Emily couldn’t speak.
‘Let me see her,’ Emily pleaded. ‘I need to . . .’
Casey angled the camera so that the tiny baby filled the screen. Poppy lay there, eyes closed, quite angelic, swaddled in a soft white wrap.
‘My baby.’ They were the only two words Emily could manage. ‘My baby, my baby, my baby.’
Casey could hear Dominic’s deeper tones somewhere in the background. She kept the camera pointed at tiny Poppy, listening as the tears flooded Emily’s voice.
The baby’s tiny arm jerked, almost a wave. She was lying on her side, a small comma. She looked alarmingly vulnerable lying there.
‘She’s a gorgeous baby,’ Casey said after a few minutes.
‘When . . .’ Emily struggled to speak. ‘When will you be back?’
‘As soon as possible,’ said Casey. ‘I’ll have someone check flights.’
‘Don’t make promises,’ Miranda had ordered. ‘We may be delayed.’
‘Please,’ said Emily. ‘Please, please hurry.’
‘We will,’ said Casey. ‘But it will take time, getting flights back from Chittagong.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Emily. ‘Is she eating a lot? Is she healthy?’
‘She seems very well,’ said Casey, thinking how oddly fitting it was that Emily should meet this baby – created by syringes and Petri dishes, pills and vials – through the toughened glass of a mobile phone. ‘She’s lovely, Emily. Beautiful.’
‘I never thought,’ Emily’s voice echoed down the line, ‘that this moment would come.’
45
Night had fallen when Ed, Casey and Hessa walked down the pier. Hessa had taken a tuk-tuk down to Sandwip earlier in the evening, and bought the small fishing boat from the boy outright.
‘He couldn’t believe it,’ she had reported. ‘He was delighted.’
While Hessa was out negotiating for the boat, the rest of them had moved a few streets away from the Jalico Hotel, to rooms in another dusty business hotel.
‘Best to be out of the way,’ said Casey, peering around the Grand Prince Motel. ‘Just in case they come looking.’
They had left just enough luggage in the Jalico to avoid raising suspicion among the staff.
‘Take care.’ Miranda had waved them off.
Now, the little boat bobbed on the tide as they approached, straining at its painter.
‘Let’s go.’
The fishing boat headed south, shapes looming out of the dark. They floated past the silhouettes of beached trawlers, cargo ships, even the odd oil rig. Ed was steering, trying to avoid the jetsam that clogged the water. A piece of plastic sheeting caught across the boat’s bows, and Casey dragged it crossly out of the way. Lights flickered here and there, on the shore, but the mudflats were silent. It was a still night, the water barely rippling.
Finally, there she was: the huge shape of the Tephi, slumped in the mud. Ed slowed the outboard motor to a purr. He steered the little fishing boat in between the Tephi, with her brave red stripe, and the remains of the Beauvallet.
As the boat bottomed out on the beach, Casey was out, splashing through the water.
‘Casey,’ Ed whispered. ‘Wait.’
Hessa followed Casey over the side, grabbing the painter and hauling the boat up the mud. A few feet above the shoreline, a large chunk of metal lay half-buried in the mud, and they tied up the little boat.
The ships lolled there, just visible in the dark, awkward as swans on land. The Beauvallet had lain in the mud much longer than the Tephi, Casey saw.
This old cruise ship must have been over a thousand feet long once, but massive gas-torches had sliced the Beauvallet’s steel hull like a cake a few hundred feet back from her bow. More than half the ship was gone, only splinters of steel left on the beach.
So far, the workers had left the front third of the cruise ship almost untouched. Here and there, parts of her hull had been stripped of steel, leaving gaping holes in her sides, but she was still recognisable as an elegant old ship.
As Casey looked up from the shoreline, the remains of the Beauvallet were a strange marine doll’s house. Sliced from top to bottom, side to side, her cabins were hacked open like some fantastical anatomy lesson. From the muddy beach, Casey could see her cabins, deck after deck of them, with only half a room remaining on each level. Half a floor, and half a wall, and half a balcony, jagging into nothing. Casey could even see curtains in the remains of some of the cabins, an advent calendar on Christmas Eve.
For a second, the old photographs of a blitzed London flashed across Casey’s mind. A scattering of Londoners in a black and white dawn, stunned by a house half-standing, and a whole life gone. She remembered sepia curtains blowing awkwardly in the breeze, a table and chairs perched above a cliff of rubble.
‘Poor old thing,’ Hessa said.
Casey looked up at the darkness of the beach, the broken shapes of metal, and felt a shudder of dread.
She raised her chin. ‘Let’s go.’
Only one light shone in the shipyard, sending a sad half-beam over the mud. A warm breeze drifted in from the sea. As Casey peered up at the barns, clouds blew across the moon, and it darkened abruptly. She pushed away a shiver, superstition tightening her throat.
Anything might be here.
One step.
Be brave.
Another step.
A whisper back to the others:
‘It’s fine.’
The silence wrapped around her. Chunks of steel had been laid in a rough row up towards the shipyard. A makeshift path, scrambling towards the barns.
I have to try.
A breeze was blowing up from the south. A bird screamed overhead, and Casey jumped, the shudder clawing down her spine. That fear, so familiar.
She could sense Ed and Hessa behind her as she crept along, a pulse pounding in her throat. Her blood fizzed, and she almost laughed aloud. Is this how I live? Why this? Why here?
Another step, and she slipped in the mud, slamming face down into the ground to lie stunned for a second, knees bruised, eyes dizzy. The sea was a quiet splash in the distance, the endless dark above.
All I had, I gave to Romida . . .
You have to try.
‘Casey?’ Hessa’s whisper, urgent in the dark.
‘I’m fine.’
Casey forced herself to her feet, and they crept forward again.
A door banged somewhere. Who was that?
Another step. And another. Some animal whipped away, just in front of her, and her scream almost burst into the air.
But I’m alive.
Another step.
So alive.
Finally, she could sense the barns just ahead, a darker shape in the night. A last few steps, her hands in front of her face, and she touched the cold corrugated iron.
Everything was still. Casey felt her way along the barn wall. There were gaps here and there. Cracks, where the iron had peeled away from the timbers. Finally, a big wooden door.
Maybe.
A panic like vertigo: I can’t.
You have to try.
Casey held her breath and pushed gently at the door. It swung open, lighter than she expected, creaking loudly.
‘Casey.’ An angry hiss.
She ignored Ed, stepping forward and peering across the barn in the faintest of hint of light.
Tables and benches. Piles of machinery, shrouded by darkness. Odd pieces of steel dumped here and there.
And two shapes on the floor.
Casey forced herself to breathe. Two men, asleep. Workers? Guards?
