Stolen

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘Open the door,’ she yelled out. ‘My baby’s crying.’

  ‘It’s our baby,’ he corrected her. ‘And Fern has just picked her up to feed her. Go back to bed, it’s only six in the morning. I’ll bring you a cup of tea in a minute.’

  Lotte felt deflated. The crying had stopped, evidence she supposed that her baby was being fed, but somehow that didn’t quite stop the jangling of her nerves.

  Howard did bring her tea.

  ‘I want to see my baby,’ Lotte demanded.

  Howard put the tea down and went straight back to the stairs. ‘I told you, she’s our baby,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘This was what we agreed, and as soon as you’ve recovered from the birth we’ll be making plans to take her Stateside. Don’t make trouble, Lotte. You’ll only regret it.’

  During the following two days Lotte heard the baby crying a great deal and each time she felt agitated and worried that Fern wasn’t taking proper care of her. Howard brought food and drinks down to her but his replies when she asked for information were noncommittal and vague.

  ‘Babies do cry!’ he said in answer to her question about what was wrong. ‘Fern knows what she’s doing.’

  ‘Just let me come up and see her,’ Lotte begged him. ‘I’ll be satisfied if I can see her being looked after properly.’

  Howard refused. His excuse was that Fern had to bond with the baby and she didn’t need any distracting influences.

  Howard didn’t come back that evening with a hot drink as he normally did. Lotte had a feeling it was to remind her that they could stop feeding her altogether if she made a nuisance of herself.

  That night seemed endless. She was sore from the birth, bleeding profusely, and she wondered if she’d been torn in the delivery. She must have slept eventually because she woke from a dream where her body was swelling up like a balloon and she couldn’t turn over.

  She switched on the bedside light because she was scared and sweaty. It took a few moments to realize she really was swelling up; her breasts were twice their normal size, as hard as rocks, and she was feverish.

  When she heard the baby crying and Howard’s footsteps up in the kitchen, she called to him and said she wasn’t well.

  He told her to go back to bed and he’d come and see her later.

  Lotte must have cried hundreds of times since she’d been brought here as she realized Howard and Fern weren’t the kind, loving, very special people she’d believed them to be. But she had never cried the way she did then. She saw that she had no bargaining tools left; they’d got the baby, they had all the power. She was just a fool who had been so desperate to be loved that she’d fallen into their hands like a ripe apple.

  She hadn’t told anyone on the cruise where she was going when she left because she didn’t want their disapproval. That was so pathetic. If she was honest, even she knew that she was doing the wrong thing, so why did she do it? Masochism or lunacy?

  Fern came down just after ten, bringing a mug of tea for her. ‘Now, what is all this about not feeling well?’ she asked sharply. She was wearing a dressing gown, with no makeup and her hair just scragged back in a rough pony-tail. There were dark circles beneath her eyes and her complexion looked muddy. It was the first time Lotte had ever seen her looking frayed, old and tired.

  Lotte told her about her throbbing, swollen breasts and that she was sore down below and losing blood heavily.

  ‘Well, what do you expect?’ Fern said irritably. ‘Childbirth is a messy business. As for your breasts, that’s just the milk coming in, I’ll give you something to dry it up. All women feel upset on the fourth day, it’s connected with the milk. But you’ve got nothing to be upset about, just be glad you can rest. At least you haven’t got to feed and change the baby constantly.’

  ‘Let me come up and I’ll help you,’ Lotte offered eagerly.

  ‘I don’t want you near her,’ Fern said. ‘She’s mine now.’

  She left then, rushing up the stairs as if she couldn’t bear to breathe the same air a moment longer. Howard came down later with a box of Epsom salts and some painkillers. He said Lotte had to stir a couple of spoons of the salts into a glass of water and drink it down to get rid of the milk. The painkillers would take down her temperature.

  By ten that night her breasts were softer and she no longer felt feverish but she couldn’t stop crying. Strangely, she kept thinking about her mother, and wondering what sort of a delivery she’d had. Maybe it was a difficult one, and that was the reason she’d preferred Fleur? Yet Lotte hadn’t been aware Fleur was the favourite, not until she died.

  She thought then that if she did get out of this alive, she would try to make peace with her parents. But thinking about them only made her cry more, for they had never tried to contact her after she left home to go and work at the hotel and they hadn’t even written while she was working on the ship, so they wouldn’t care what she’d been through here.

  March came in with sunshine, but Lotte only knew that because late in the afternoon it hit the tiny window for about half an hour or so. But a shaft of sunshine was very welcome when she hadn’t seen more than a little square of grey sky for weeks. She found herself reaching out to touch the particles of dust in the beam. As a child she’d thought they were fairies and if you caught one you could make a wish.

  Her wish was just to know what was going on upstairs, for Howard always brought the meals now and they were growing sketchier by the day – sandwiches instead of a cooked meal, tinned soup in a mug, no fresh fruit or vegetables. She had to suppose this was because Fern was busy with the baby, but when she asked Howard how she was getting on he told her it was none of her business.

  But it was her business. Each time she heard her baby crying she still felt a jangling within her. She wanted to know when this ordeal was going to end for her, and when they were going back to the States. She wondered too if Fern had become disenchanted with having a baby of her own, and whether she and Howard might change their original plan to be parents and sell the baby to a desperate couple. She couldn’t work out whether that would be a lesser evil or a greater one.

  Lotte had recovered well from the birth. By the time the baby was four weeks old she’d stopped bleeding and was no longer sore. She spent an hour every day doing gentle exercises to make up for not being allowed out for walks or even upstairs.

  Listening at the door was the thing she spent most of her time doing. Fern had always kept her voice down before the baby was born, sounding calm and measured almost the whole time. But Lotte thought that maybe this was just for her benefit, to create an image of someone who never lost control, for she didn’t sound like that now.

  She screamed at Howard, about food, cleaning the baby’s bottles, that the house looked like a pig sty and there was washing needing to be done.

  In one respect it pleased Lotte that everything was unravelling for them, for maybe if Fern was having second thoughts about having a baby of her own, she might just hand her back to her real mother, or at least let her out to help. But even as she hoped for that miracle, she knew it was in vain. Fern wasn’t the kind to back down about anything.

  Lotte didn’t just listen at the door when they were rowing, she kept her ears pinned back constantly, hoping to find out what they were planning. Unfortunately she mostly only heard snippets of information because they would walk into the lounge or office out of earshot during their conversation. One such snippet was about registering the baby’s birth.

  ‘It’s normal for the hospital or a midwife present at a home birth to pass on details of the birth to the Registrar,’ Howard said. ‘If we say the baby was born at home without anyone present, they might be suspicious.’

  They moved away then and about five minutes passed before she heard Fern speak, her voice raised in anger.

  ‘Why didn’t you find out before that we only get forty-two days to do it?

  Lotte had often lost track of the date and even which day of the week it was during her pregnancy, but
she usually got her sense of time back when they gave her a newspaper to read, or let her watch television. She knew the date the baby was born was 20 February because Howard had a newspaper that morning, and from the day after she’d kept a kind of diary in a notebook. She jotted down how she was feeling each day, and anything else which happened, in the hope that if she ever got free it might be evidence against Fern and Howard.

  It was the end of March when Fern charged Howard with not finding out they had only forty-two days. Lotte did a quick calculation on her fingers and found it meant the birth must be registered by 9 April.

  Howard said something in reply but his voice was muffled. Then Fern yelled at him, ‘You should’ve worked all this out – what are we going to do now?’

  ‘Get a forged one, but that’s going to take longer,’ Howard snarled back at her. ‘Now get off my back, this is all your doing anyway.’

  Lotte gathered from this that Howard was nervous both about registering the birth and getting a passport for the baby. She knew from applying for her own passport to go on the cruise that they checked and double-checked every last thing. They were probably even more vigilant with parents who weren’t from the UK, what with people making fraudulent claims they had children just to get financial benefits.

  Yet Lotte felt no glee that the Ramsdens’ plans were falling apart, for angry, worried people didn’t make good parents. What she did feel was white-hot hatred for the couple, and every time the baby cried she was afraid they were hurting her.

  It was during one of their many rows, when Lotte could hear the baby crying in the background, that she made up her mind to fight her way out of the basement.

  Ever since she got the knife she’d imagined many different ways of attacking them with it, but before the baby was born she hadn’t felt physically strong enough to overpower either Fern or Howard.

  Things were changing now, however. By the end of March and through April, Howard often went off leaving Fern alone with the baby, and Lotte knew she must be very tired, and probably not as sharp as she used to be. Besides, Lotte felt so angry and desperate now she thought she could take on anyone.

  ‘So did you attack one of them with the knife?’ Dale asked.

  Her friend’s voice so close to her startled Lotte. She’d been so immersed in what happened to her a few weeks earlier that she’d lost touch with the present, and it was a shock to find Dale lying there next to her and realize she’d been relating it all.

  ‘I stood up on the top step and waited for one of them to come,’ she said. ‘I must have stood there for over two hours, and during that time I could hear my baby crying. But the house was so quiet, too quiet. I realized they’d gone out and left the baby alone. Can you imagine how I felt about that? I was powerless and unable to comfort her. I imagined her choking, or suffocating under covers she’d pulled over her face. I was scared for myself too, because if they’d leave a baby alone, they’d be capable of leaving me down here to die of starvation as well.’

  Dale was horrified by how deeply disturbed her friend was by that memory: she was shaking and wild-eyed, her voice rasping with emotion. She took Lotte’s hand in hers and rubbed it between her hands, murmuring a reminder that she wasn’t alone now.

  ‘I went back down the stairs later,’ Lotte went on. ‘I was stiff with cold because they’d turned off the heating, so I had to get under the bedcovers to warm up. The hours went by so slowly, but still there was no sound of them upstairs. Six o’clock came and I’d had nothing to eat since a cup of tea and slice of toast at eight. I wasn’t concerned about my hunger, but I was about the baby’s – she was only ten weeks old and she needed a feed every four hours. But she wasn’t crying any more.

  ‘Then just as I thought all was lost I heard them come in the front door. So I was right, they had left the baby, and that made me savage, but I stayed quiet to listen, and I heard them say something about London.’

  Lotte turned her head towards Dale. ‘Can you believe anyone would go to London for the day and leave a small baby alone?

  ‘They were making coffee in the kitchen and I heard Fern laughing about something, and then she said, “God in heaven, the baby’s not crying!” I was just about to scream out, “Get up there, you bitch, and check if she’s OK,” but Howard said he would go. He even made a joke about how she’d be so hungry she’d need two bottles.’

  ‘You must have been beside yourself,’ Dale said in sympathy. ‘Was the baby all right?’

  ‘Well, that was just it,’ Lotte began and her eyes filled with tears. ‘I heard Howard walking up the stairs. You can hear that clearly in here. He seemed to be up there for ages, and I was standing up by the door holding my breath because I sensed something was seriously wrong. Then he came down, really slowly. He went into the kitchen and Fern asked why he hadn’t brought the baby down. He said, “I don’t know how to tell you this, honey, but she’s dead. I think it’s a crib death.” ’

  ‘She died! Oh my God no,’ Dale exclaimed in horror.

  ‘I’d had a sort of foreboding all day,’ Lotte sobbed. ‘Even when she was crying it was kind of weak, not the way she cried when she was born. It was very cold without the heating on, she could have pushed her covers off, and a new baby can’t wriggle back under them when it’s cold the way a puppy or kitten would do.’

  ‘So what did you do when you heard this?’ Dale asked.

  ‘I banged on the door and yelled at the top of my voice. Howard shouted back at me to shut up or else. He sounded like he’d enjoy an opportunity to beat the shit out of someone. So in the end I thought it would be better to just shut up and wait.’

  ‘How long did you wait, Lotte?’ Dale looked fearfully at her.

  ‘Five days, without food and just cold water to drink.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Scott woke as David put a mug of tea for him on the floor beside the sofa. He rubbed his eyes, stretched out his legs and felt rather surprised he’d slept so well when the sofa was a foot too short for him.

  He glanced at his watch. It was just after seven, and raining heavily, yet David was already washed, shaved and dressed. But dark circles beneath his eyes suggested he hadn’t slept much. ‘So where to today?’ Scott asked, guessing David had spent much of the night planning the day ahead.

  ‘I think we should start a house-to-house,’ David replied, sitting down on the other sofa. ‘The shops, garages and the pubs too. If Simon and Adam will take Bosham and Fishbourne on the far side of the harbour, we could check out Birdham and Itchenor on this side.’

  Scott sat up to drink his tea. The rain was lashing against the window and it wasn’t an inviting proposition to be out in it. ‘I didn’t think to bring a coat,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got a spare one you can borrow. But I doubt the rain will last all day.’

  They drank their tea in companionable silence. Scott hadn’t noticed much about the house the previous evening, but he saw now that the lounge was quite spartan, with two brown leather sofas, a TV and sound system on a low sideboard, no ornaments or feminine touches. But that seemed odd as the walls were painted a pale peach and the patterned curtains toned perfectly.

  ‘Did you used to live here with a girl?’ he asked curiously.

  ‘Yes, a while back,’ David said with a sigh, perching on a footstool. ‘It was a big mistake – she was a high-flying career girl.’

  ‘What was wrong with that?’ Scott asked.

  ‘I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with a woman who cared more about sales projections and profit margins than having a family.’

  ‘I can’t say I’ve ever given having a family much thought,’ Scott said with a grin. ‘Or getting married for that matter. Just happy to pootle along having a good time, I guess.’

  ‘It was only living with someone dynamic like Rose that made me realize I’m quite an old-fashioned kind of guy,’ David smiled. ‘I actually want to be a hunter-gatherer.’

  Scott threw off his blanket. ‘Well, I
’d better get up then so we can go out hunting for the girls.’

  They met up with Simon and Adam for breakfast, as arranged, in a café on the A27 near Apuldram. Scott noticed that Simon looked as if he hadn’t slept much either, but then he thought of Lotte as a sister and he felt he’d let her down by not making the flat more secure.

  No one had spoken about how it would be if the girls were found dead, yet Scott knew it was foremost in all their minds. He supposed they were all afraid to voice that fear, in case to speak of death was to invite it in.

  It was interesting that they had all accepted David as their leader even though he’d only known Lotte for such a short time. He certainly hadn’t pushed for it; he just naturally had that quality to take the helm. The man was direct, quietly confident, with no pomposity at all. Scott though that perhaps that came from being one of eight; after all, you must have to learn from an early age to hold your own or lose your identity, yet also be flexible. But however he got how he was, Scott liked him.

  ‘So what d’you want us to do today, boss?’ Adam asked.

  David half smiled at the title, but made no comment. ‘Go to as many houses as possible, do the shops, pubs, garages, anywhere where people go regularly. Try to stimulate their memories.’

  ‘How?’ Simon asked.

  ‘Use your imagination!’ David exclaimed, as if Simon’s question was a daft one. ‘First show them the snap of the girls looking like models, and stress we fear they might be killed if they aren’t found soon. That will get their interest, and then you can show them the snap of Lotte where she looks sad and frumpy. Remind them about her being found on the beach and that there was evidence she’d had a baby recently. A lost baby touches everyone and they might remember seeing Lotte while she was pregnant. The more impression you make on each person you speak to, the more you stir their emotions, the more likely they are to remember something which could be useful.’

  The men split up after they’d finished their breakfast and arranged to meet at six that evening to compare notes. David said if one of them got lucky, to ring and tell the other group, and to phone the police immediately for their help.