And Then She Ran

by Karen Clarke

  Patrick hadn’t needed to ask whether or not I planned to tell anyone he’d pushed his wife down the stairs. I never would, because now I knew for certain that I didn’t have to.

  And anyway, he wasn’t the one who pushed her.

  I was.

  Chapter 41

  I hadn’t intended to do it. I was sleep-deprived, brimming with hormones, furious that Elise didn’t seem to know what to do with Lily, angry with Patrick for bringing me to their home, for letting me believe she’d given up drinking – but angrier with myself for letting it happen.

  I was struggling to pretend I was her nanny, a substitute until Elise was sober enough, interested enough, to take care of my baby. It shocked me that I’d ever thought I didn’t want to be a mother. Now that Lily was there, so tiny and impossibly perfect, something had slotted into place. Already it was impossible to imagine my life without her. Being pregnant had felt all wrong, but everything I’d feared had fallen away once she was born. I wanted a baby to care for, to plan for. I wanted Lily.

  In those foggy days at Patrick and Elise’s expensive, three-storey, designer-decorated house, I tried telling myself it was my hormones, designed to make women love their babies, a trick to ensure they were looked after properly, making me feel that way. One night, I made up some formula and tried to give Lily a bottle, but she wouldn’t take it, thrashing her limbs, her cries like a blade across my heart. I’d given in and breastfed her again, tears streaming down my face as I realised how naïve, how utterly stupid I’d been to think this could ever work.

  Part of me was glad Elise wasn’t coping. I couldn’t bear to imagine what would have happened if she’d welcomed Lily with open arms and I’d never been allowed to see her again. Floods of panic surged through me whenever she was out of my sight, even though just keeping her alive seemed like a mammoth task. Patrick had immediately returned to work, and when he was out of the house and Elise had returned to bed, I treasured the time alone with my baby, even knowing I was making it harder to walk away.

  I asked Patrick one evening, when he came to take Lily to Elise, holding her like a parcel that might detonate, if he thought he might change his mind.

  ‘I could go, just slip out with the baby. No one would be any the wiser.’

  He looked at me with tired, bloodshot eyes. ‘Give it time, Grace, please, a bit more time. I know it’s not easy, for any of us, but Elise will get there, I know she will.’ I wasn’t sure even he believed it anymore, but things had gone too far for him to consider giving up. ‘Be patient.’

  I couldn’t. I started planning my escape that night. I would leave the country, but I needed a passport for Lily, which required a birth certificate. I knew she didn’t have one yet because Patrick was waiting for Elise to be ready, had mentioned it to her twice.

  Can’t you do it on your own?

  It’ll look odd if you’re not there, Elise. You’re supposed to be her mother.

  On the morning he went to his meeting, when Declan came to the house to pick him up and Elise had gone back to bed, I swaddled Lily in the carrier Patrick had bought for Elise to use, thinking that having the baby close would help them bond, and left a note in the kitchen. Taking the baby out for some fresh air.

  Sweating with panic, I got a cab to the department of health to register Lily’s birth – father unknown – then to the Midtown Station office for an emergency passport, using a photo of Lily I took on my phone. At the New York Library, Lily nestled in her carrier against my chest, adrenaline surging through my veins, I used the computer to look up the Welsh village where my aunt was a recluse. Fenbrith. It looked nice, not far from Conwy where my grandparents had lived, where my mother and aunt grew up. When I got back to the house, Elise was still in her room, the note in the kitchen unread. Maybe if I hadn’t heard her shouting at Patrick the following morning it would have all ended differently.

  ‘I don’t think I can love her, Patrick.’ Elise’s voice carried through the nursery wall. ‘I’ll always know she’s not really mine. It’s not the same as having my own baby.’ The self-pitying whine in her voice told me she’d been drinking again. Drunk, in charge of my baby.

  ‘Of course you will, just give it more time.’ The same thing he’d said to me.

  ‘You’re a selfish asshole, Patrick Holden.’ Something crashed to the floor. ‘You only want it because it’s good for your campaign. You don’t know what it’s like to not be able to carry a child. You don’t get it. You could father a baby with someone else if you wanted to, but me?’ Her voice climbed the scale. ‘I’ll never have my own baby and you think you can make it OK by giving me one ready-made?’ It. She’d called my baby it. ‘It’s not the same, Patrick. I’ve tried, I really have, but I don’t think I can do it.’

  ‘Then try harder.’

  ‘Pity it’s not a boy.’ Her voice grew snide. ‘You’d be more hands-on then, wouldn’t you? A replacement for your poor dead brother. That’s what it’s really about, isn’t it?’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘It’s fine for you – you’re at work all the time. A baby’s just an accessory, a campaign winner to you.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Elise, pull yourself together.’

  Creeping out and peering round their bedroom door, I saw her fly at him with an animal-like roar. He grabbed her wrists and pushed her. She flew into the wall and he stalked towards her, hand raised. I froze, my memory scrambling back to my father in the kitchen the day he died. Elise cowered and his hand dropped. He straightened his tie. ‘Please make an effort, Elise. Your family is flying in next week. You don’t want them to see you like this.’

  In the nursery, Lily began to cry. I hurried to her, anger whipping through my veins as Patrick’s footsteps clattered down the stairs, followed by the front door slamming and the sound of Elise’s sobs. He hadn’t even bothered to check on Lily.

  When Elise came to the nursery a little later, she was pale but showered and dressed, though her jasmine-scented perfume barely masked the alcohol, or the coffee she must have drunk to disguise it. She hardly glanced at me in the rocking chair by the window where I’d been nursing Lily, trying to calm my racing heart.

  ‘You have to go,’ she said coldly. ‘If I’m going to do this, I can’t have help all the time. I need to do this on my own.’

  My heart was thumping. ‘You’re firing me?’

  ‘My husband will give you a good reference.’ Her watery blue eyes narrowed, as if bringing me properly into focus for the first time, taking in my lank, unwashed hair and tear-stained face, the shapeless dress straining around my post-pregnancy stomach and breasts; realising I looked nothing like a baby-care professional. ‘Give her to me.’

  She came over and roughly prised Lily from my arms. ‘I’ll go and warm up some milk,’ she said, leaving before I could respond, silky skirt swishing around her slim ankles.

  ‘Wait!’ I sprang up and ran after her, down to the kitchen. She was clutching Lily in one arm, opening the many cupboards, looking for a tin of formula. ‘She’s not hungry.’ I was almost weeping, fingers itching to snatch my baby back. ‘I just fed her.’

  Lily started to cry, her little face screwed up and red. Elise winced, as though the sound hurt her ears. ‘It’s not your call to make.’

  ‘Babies have a routine.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do, Grace.’ She tossed her curtain of hair, shifting Lily to her other arm like an annoying parcel. ‘It’s better for me to learn by trial and error.’

  Not with my baby it isn’t. ‘Please, Elise. Let me take her.’

  As Lily’s cries escalated, the sound insistent, a ripple of disbelieving fury crossed Elise’s face. ‘This is your fault, feeding her on demand.’ She jiggled my daughter with alarming ferocity. ‘Why won’t she stop crying?’

  ‘Let me take her up to the nursery while you make her a bottle.’ It was a suggestion borne of desperation, but Elise caved in and thrust my daughter at me.

 
; ‘She’ll never get used to me with you around.’ Her voice was thick with anger. ‘I want you out of here by the end of the day.’

  ‘You should discuss it with your husband first.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Elise advanced, her pale lips an angry slash, eyes burning with rage. She shoved me against the fridge, her fingers closing tightly around my throat. I tried to avert my face from a stale waft of coffee breath, and from the fury tightening her face.

  ‘Please, you’ll hurt the baby.’ My voice was constricted. She squeezed harder, then let go. I gulped in air, coughing as I checked Lily was unharmed. ‘You’re not fit to be her mother.’

  ‘Who do you think you are, talking to me like you know me?’ Fast as lightning, she grabbed a crystal tumbler on the worktop. I barely had time to duck before it sailed past my head and hit the doorframe. The sound of it shattering on the tiles was an assault on my eardrums. I stared in shock and disbelief at the mess. ‘What the hell?’ I glanced at Lily again, encircled in my arms. ‘Don’t you care that you could have hurt her?’

  ‘You’d love that, wouldn’t you?’ Elise’s chest rose and fell beneath her thin sweater. It had dropped from one shoulder, revealing her bony collarbone. ‘Don’t bother reporting back to Patrick; he won’t believe you.’ I doubted that was true, but didn’t dare say so.

  She stormed past, turning in the hallway, red patches on her pale cheeks. ‘Clear up that mess, make her a bottle and bring her to me.’

  I wept quietly as I crouched to sweep the glass into the corner with my hand, Lily – silent now – pressed to my chest. I sensed Elise watching but didn’t look round, pausing only when I noticed blood, dripping from a stinging cut on my thumb.

  When I’d finished, a badly applied plaster covering my cut, I found Elise in the bedroom, staring out of the window overlooking the quiet street. She’d fastened her hair up and pulled a white bathrobe over her clothes, though the temperature in the house was close to tropical.

  I dragged my eyes from the rumpled bed she shared with Patrick – though I’d caught him coming out of a room down the corridor the previous morning, looking as if he hadn’t slept.

  ‘I should get her a pacifier for when she cries.’ Elise’s voice was neutral, as though nothing had happened. I noticed a half-empty glass of clear liquid on the nightstand and wondered whether it was vodka. ‘Where’s the formula?’ she said when she turned, seeing only Lily cradled in my arms.

  My fingers fluttered to my throat. I could still feel the imprint of her fingers. ‘I’m not leaving her with you.’ The thought of handing my baby to a woman who would never love her even a quarter as much as I did was too much to bear. I wanted to scream: I’m her mother, can’t you see? I’m not her nanny. Your husband DID father a baby with another woman. ME. But I had to be careful. I had no idea how she would react after hurling the glass at my head. As far as Patrick was concerned, I was still happy to be lending a hand, waiting to rush back to my old life, go back to working at the restaurant – an idea that now seemed as ludicrous as launching into space.

  ‘She’s not very well; that’s why she keeps crying,’ I said instead, deciding I would wait until Patrick and Elise were sleeping that night and go. The sooner I was away from here the better. He could tell his wife whatever he wanted. ‘Let me get her settled and I’ll bring her to you when she’s calm.’

  ‘Just let me hold her for a while.’

  ‘No.’

  Propelled by my refusal, Elise rushed towards me once more. I backed onto the landing, my feet sinking into the deep pile of the carpet. She came after me, tugging the hem of my cardigan as I reached the top of the stairs.

  ‘Give her to me, now.’ Her face was colourless, her eyes wide and blank. There wasn’t an ounce of compassion in her, I realised. ‘She’s my baby.’

  ‘I heard you telling Patrick you didn’t think you could love her.’

  ‘Eavesdropping, were you?’ She looked me up and down. ‘Where did he find you anyway?’ A crease appeared between her thin eyebrows. ‘Are you one of his charity cases? Someone he thought deserved a second chance at life?’ Her tone was puzzled and slightly mocking. I wondered whether it was the drink talking – she was swaying lightly as she spoke, one hand reaching for the banister post. Maybe she’d always been like this, or had drastically changed since Patrick met her. Maybe she’d have been a different person if she’d been able to have her own baby. I almost felt sorry for her, then remembered she’d said: You only want it to boost your campaign.

  It. Not her.

  ‘She shouldn’t be with someone who doesn’t love her.’ I held Lily with one arm, holding out the other as Elise sprang forward as if to rip her from me.

  ‘You’re talking like you think she isn’t mine.’ Her long dark hair slipped out of the clip she’d fastened it up with and drooped across her face. ‘Give me my baby.’

  ‘No.’

  As I turned, ready to run, she grasped my sleeve and pulled violently so I was forced to spin round and face her. For a moment, we were eye-to-eye. She clutched at me before I pulled away, causing her to totter. Her back was to the staircase. Surprise crossed her features as she realised there was nothing to grab on to and only space behind her.

  As her hands flew out to grasp at me, her fingers caught the side of Lily’s face. I grabbed her wrist, twisted it away and pushed hard. Elise lost her footing. As if in slow motion she went sliding, crashing, tumbling head first down the stairs, landing with a dull thud on the marble floor in the hallway.

  I stared in shock as she lay there, expecting her to get up and charge at me again. When she didn’t move, I slowly descended the stairs as if in a dream, Lily squeezed against me. When I reached the bottom step, Elise’s eyes travelled to mine. She made a noise deep in her throat. With Lily tight to my chest and the sound of my heart pounding in my ears, I ran panting with fright to the phone in the hallway and picked up the handset, resting it on the table so I could press 911. My finger shook as it hovered over the 9. I jabbed it, then ran back to see blood seeping from under Elise’s head. The life was fading from her eyes. With a terrified gasp, I hurried back to the phone and pressed the final 1.

  ‘What’s your emergency?’

  Patrick returned then, his appearance shocking in the stark white hallway. Maybe he’d thought of Lily and wanted to check she was OK, or – more likely – he’d come back to plead with his wife once more. I never got the chance to ask. He took in the sight of Elise on the floor and turned, wide-eyed, to see me with the phone in my hand and Lily in the crook of my arm. When I shook my head, a look that said: It’s over smoothed out his features. A lightning flash of relief crossed his face before he ran to her. And he was right. It was over. Case closed as he might have said, if he hadn’t been digging deep to find some grief for the tragic death of his wife. All I had to do was wait for the ambulance to take her away before telling him I was leaving with Lily and wouldn’t be back.

  *

  As I deleted Patrick’s number, I saw a text from Mum. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. I love you XX

  I love you too XX. It felt good to put it in words. I was looking forward to seeing her again, and for Lily to get to know her grandma. Smiling, I rose from the bench, pushing my phone in my pocket. The sun had emerged, bathing the church in a golden light so it looked like something from a fairy tale. It felt like a sign; permission to push down the memory of Elise for good, to seal her inside the space where my father had lain for so long, where she would stay buried forever.

  ‘Lovely morning.’ It was Biddy, holding the hand of a little boy with a crown of dark curls, carrying a bag of bread crusts. ‘Got the morning off,’ she said, smiling down at him. ‘Thought I’d take my grandson to feed the ducks.’

  ‘Good idea. I used to love feeding the ducks when I was a little girl.’ And Lily would one day, too.

  ‘I hear you’re helping out at the pub on Saturday night?’

  I returned her smile. ‘That’s right
.’

  ‘Bit of a come-down isn’t it?’

  I supposed it seemed that way to outsiders, from being a New York chef with a promising future to this, but it felt more like the real me; looking after Lily, staying with my aunt and working at the local pub. Building friendships. Getting to know Declan if he decided to stay. ‘Actually, it’s perfect,’ I said. ‘I hope you’ll come in for something to eat.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’ Her smile broadened. ‘Give my love to your aunt.’

  ‘I will.’ I waved, then turned to make my way back to the café in the warm spring sunshine, where Declan and Morag were waiting with my beautiful, precious daughter. My darling Lily. My family.

  Gripped by And Then She Ran? Don’t miss Your Life For Mine, another absolutely gripping page-turner from Karen Clarke. Available now!

  Click here if you’re in the US

  Click here if you’re in the UK

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Your Life For Mine …

  Prologue

  After all the planning, I suppose it’s natural to be looking forward to what’s coming with a mix of apprehension and pleasure. Mostly pleasure, to be honest. The planning has been so meticulous, I haven’t left room for anything to go wrong. I’ve been careful and patient – more than I’d ever have believed possible.

  Knowing you’re in London today, swanning about without a care in the world, simply brought home the fact that now – finally – is the perfect time to execute my plan to create maximum suffering. It’s been a long wait, but that means the reward will be sweeter.

  Time to get started.