Hushabye

by Celina Grace

Kate looked across the table. Anderton was sitting very still, his hands on the desk in front of him. She felt pinned to her chair by his eyes. Her heart began thumping so heavily she was surprised it wasn’t audible to the grim-faced man sat opposite her.

  “What do you mean, sir?” she said, cursing the feebleness of her voice. Why was she asking, anyway? She didn’t know what the answer was, but she was damn sure she wouldn’t like it.

  Anderton spoke quietly.

  “I knew you would find this case an emotive one, DS Redman, because you yourself had a baby taken from you at roughly Charlie Fullman’s age.”

  Kate said nothing for a moment. For a second, she thought she was going to be sick.

  Anderton was still speaking.

  “I’m sorry to remind you of what was no doubt a painful time for you, DS Redman, but I’m sure you can appreciate my concerns and more particularly now in the light of recent developments.”

  “He wasn’t taken away,” said Kate, hoarsely.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “My – the baby. He wasn’t taken away.”

  “No, that’s true. You gave him up for adoption, didn’t you?”

  Kate nodded, mutely, unable to speak. She wanted to ask, How did you know? but of course it would be in her notes, on her profile.

  Don’t cry, Kate. Don’t cry.

  Anderton was regarding her silently. She felt flayed, her skin raw and prickling with shock. This was the nightmare come to life, the thing she’d been dreading since that last meeting with the adoption agency twelve years ago. She wanted to get up and walk out of the office, but she couldn’t trust her legs.

  “It must have been very painful for you,” said Anderton eventually, quietly. Kate couldn’t even nod for fear of dislodging the tears that were trembling on the edge of her eyelids.

  “I don’t know if you’ve ever had counselling...” he said, watching her. She managed to shake her head, carefully. She couldn’t have stood any type of counselling – having to sit there and pull all those painful memories back out again, having to face up to what she’d done. Instead she’d kept those memories locked up in a box, somewhere deep inside of her. Covered over with dust and locked away.

  “Perhaps you should think about it,” Anderton said. He sat back in his chair, sighing a little. Kate turned her face up to the ceiling, blinking. Anderton went on. “I want you to go home now, DS Redman. Take the afternoon off. Calm down. Come back tomorrow, and we’ll start again.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Kate. She cleared her throat. “Thank you, sir.”

  She took a deep breath and got up. Anderton raised one finger to stop her.

  “One more outburst like that,” he said. “And you are off the case. Not just off the case, in fact, off the force. One more. Do I make myself clear?”

  Her tears had gone, and this time she managed to nod.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He swung round in his chair, dismissing her.

  “Off you go, then.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Kate closed and then locked the door behind her. She stood for a moment in the hallway of her flat, palms extended slightly, turned outward, trying to drink in the calm that normally descended when she returned home. She breathed in deeply, trying to block out Anderton’s words and the memories that those words conjured up.

  After five minutes, she realised it wasn’t going to be possible. Those words kept reverberating. You gave him up for adoption, didn’t you? You gave him up for adoption, didn’t you? Kate put her hands up to her face. She would not cry. She wasn’t a crier. She felt the tears brimming. She would not.

  She stumbled into the living room, lounge – what the fuck did it matter what she called it? Why was she trying to escape what she was, pretend her past didn’t matter, try and be something she wasn’t? That was proper cold, Kelly, it weren’t natural. Her own mother had said that about her. Was it true? She’d given her baby away. He was gone, taken away, as lost to her as Charlie was to Casey.

  No, not that. She’d signed him over. She’d allowed them to take him from her. She saw his face again, the face she saw whenever her defences were down. His little old-man face. He hadn’t looked anything like her, apart from his long fingers and his dark curls of hair. She could still remember, twelve years later, the sheer, grinding agony of the labour pains. How it felt as if she was splitting in two. The hoarseness of her voice a day later, from all the screaming. The ache, the misery of every muscle in her body having strained to push her boy out.

  Her boy. But he wasn’t, was he? At least Casey had had that, had had her Charlie for three months. What had Kelly had, for she was still Kelly then? Her birth name had gone with her baby. And what had she got to show for it? For a second, she saw the future and it was dark and empty.

  She’d reached the sofa, and her face was buried in its cushions. Her nails sank into the fabric of the seat. She could see his little face in her mind’s eye, right there, pink and crumpled and with that fluffy, dark birth hair. With a gasp of pain, she realised she had no idea what colour his hair would be now. Was he even alive? She groaned into the cushion, mouth agape.

  After five minutes, she sat up. Grief battled against self consciousness. She knelt for a moment, wiping her eyes and hiding her face, as if there was someone else in the room, judging her.

  She drifted into the kitchen and switched on the kettle, automatically. Then, disregarding the cup and sachet of camomile tea that she’d prepared, she went into the hallway and looked up at the hatch in the ceiling.

  Twenty four minutes later, Kate levered open the dusty lid of the box she’d brought down from the attic. Her fingers shook as she put the box lid aside and lifted out the contents. For a moment, she was ashamed of the thick layer of dust that coated the lid of the box and then thought of how ridiculous that sounded. Even she didn’t dust her attic, for God’s sake.

  Here were the scan photos, encased in a twee little envelope with a cartoon picture on the front and a caption in scribbly font that said My Baby. He wasn’t, though, was he? He hadn’t really ever been hers. Kate drew in a breath that was dangerously close to a sob. She took out the first photo, taken at twelve weeks. Twelve weeks from conception and here was a photograph. Even now she found that incredible. Here he was, curled like a bud but still recognisably human. Arms extended, little legs, the unmistakeable bump of his nose and curve of his forehead. Here was the scan at twenty weeks, much more baby-like now. Little skeletal face turned towards the camera. Fingers, toes. He had one hand up to his cheek, as if sleeping. Had he been asleep? Kate remembered the sonographer prodding her swollen belly, trying to get him to move. He had moved, hadn’t he? She allowed herself to remember. Twenty weeks and he was a lively one, rolling and kicking and punching her from within.

  A teardrop fell onto the scan picture and Kate wiped it away gently. How had she got through nine months of pregnancy knowing that she would lose him? Don’t say that, don’t say lose him, as if it’s something that happened accidentally. As if it was nothing to do with you. You gave him away. Kate felt a kick in her belly again, as if a phantom baby was protesting within her. How had she gone through nine months of pregnancy without going mad?

  You’re more malleable when you’re young. You’re better able to take things. What you lack in wisdom, you make up for in shock absorption. You’re like a young tree; you can bend in the storm but you won’t break. Kate thought of Courtney, sixteen years old. If Courtney had a baby in the next year, Kate would be horrified. She was a child. As I was, she thought. As I was. What had he been thinking, that man in the pub? What had he been doing, seducing a child? Come off it, Kate. You loved being taken for someone older than yourself. All teenagers do. You knew what you were doing.

  She wiped her eyes and turned her attention back to the box. Here was the letter from the hospital, telling her of the miniscule risk of Down’s Syndrome for the baby. She’d paid for that test, it hadn’t been offered as a routine option. Of course it hadn’t,
she was only seventeen years old. Why had she paid for it, why had she cared, knowing she wouldn’t be keeping the baby anyway? Because she’d wanted to know. He hadn’t had Down’s Syndrome, anyway. He’d been perfect.

  She lifted out the last bundle of papers. These were all from the private adoption agency, all with that distinctive blue and orange logo on the headed paper. It was good quality paper, thick and creamy. Arranging adoptions was obviously a lucrative business. Why had she used a private agency? Because she’d thought that if you had money, you’d make a better parent? She had thought that. Kate cringed in shame. Stupid girl, stupid idiot.

  She looked again at the letters and wondered whether they’d meant the logo to look quite so much like a colourful embryo. Perhaps it was deliberate, reminding all the hopeful, would-be parents of what they couldn’t have. The fuckers. She could feel her teeth set in a something that wasn’t a grin. Kate felt as if that logo was burned into her retinas, something she’d be seeing every time she closed her eyes at night. She’d probably see it on her death bed. She skimmed through the papers, hesitating over the very last one, a sealed envelope. It was a copy of the letter she’d written to the baby, for him to open on his eighteenth birthday. If his adoptive parents gave it to him, that is. Perhaps they’d burned or torn it up and thrown it away. She picked it up and put it down again. She couldn’t read it, not yet. It was too painful.

  Why had she kept all of this? Was it because she was afraid to throw away official papers? Did she worry about forgetting? She almost laughed at that, a thin, gaspy wheeze. As if she would ever forget. I know why I’ve kept them, she thought. It’s because I knew one day I’d have to do this. Look through them. Face up to what I’ve done.

  She put the papers back into the box, neatly, and shut the lid, returning that blue and orange logo to darkness. Then she opened it and took them out again, unable to leave them alone. She went and made herself that camomile tea, but she didn’t drink it. She held it to her chest and sat on the sofa and wept, for her lost baby, for her seventeen-year-old self. For all the mistakes she’d made, the regrets of the past and her fears for the future. Wept open-mouthed, tears dropping onto her legs, onto the papers on her lap, marking those official words.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “You all right?” said Olbeck, the next morning, noting Kate’s red eyes.

  “I’ve got a cold,” said Kate. She sniffed. “I’ll be fine.”

  “What did Anderton want?”

  “Nothing.”

  He gave her a wry look. “Really?”

  Kate swung her chair away. “I don’t really want to talk about it, Mark. Sorry.”

  “All right. Hey, don’t worry, we’ve all been there. He does this, you know, if you stuff up. Don’t take it personally.”

  Kate turned back to him. “Fine, I won’t. Can we leave it now?”

  Olbeck raised his hands above his head in a “don’t shoot” gesture.

  “Leaving it right now.” He paused. “Anyway, Anderton wants us to double check alibis for the night of Gemma’s death. I’m doing Saheed, but I can do Rebecca Thingy as well if you like.”

  Kate hesitated. If she took on Rebecca’s, it would mean another drive down to Cudston Magna. Could she bear to be in the car by herself for an hour, trapped with her own thoughts? Olbeck was looking at her. She battled with herself and then her conscience won.

  “It’s all right, I’ll do hers,” she said, getting up and reaching for her car keys.

  It was a beautiful day, the first sunshine for a long time. As Kate waited at a traffic light, she looked at the hedgerow by the car window and saw the first, tiny green buds unfurling. Spring is coming. She felt a little bit better than she had done. One day, this will all be in the distant past, she thought, and perhaps it won’t hurt quite as much as it does now. Twelve years was nothing, it was the blink of an eye. Then it caught her again: her tiny baby boy was now a twelve year old. She caught her breath and blinked hard against the tears, stretching her eyes wide to stop them falling.

  The car behind hooted and she realised the lights had changed.

  The Georgian manor looked just as imposing as it had the first time. Kate realised as she pulled up outside and parked the car that she hadn’t rung ahead to announce her arrival. What was the matter with her? You’re losing it, she chastised herself. She took a moment to compose herself, sitting behind the steering wheel, smoothing her hair back with one hand.

  She rang the doorbell once, waited five minutes, and then rang again. Nobody was home. What a waste of a journey... She was just turning to go back down the steps to her car when the door opened, slowly and hesitantly. Brigadier D’Arcy-Warner stood on the threshold, blinking and peering at her rather like a mole peering out of a burrow.

  Kate got out her warrant card.

  “Is your daughter in, Mr D’Arcy-Warner?” As she said it, she was suddenly conscious that she’d used the wrong title. “My apologies, um, Brigadier. Is Rebecca in?”

  “Rebecca?” said the Brigadier in a puzzled tone.

  “Yes, your daughter. Is she here?”

  “No,” said the Brigadier, after a long moment. He pulled the door open a bit wider. “Do come in, my dear. I’ll make you a cup of tea. Do you like tea?”

  “Oh no, that’s…” Kate realised he’d turned away, leaving the door open. She hesitated for a second and then followed him into the hallway.

  The Brigadier plodded slowly across the black and white tiles towards a door at the far end of the hall. As Kate hesitated, he turned back.

  “Come here, my dear.”

  Kate walked across the acres of tiling until she was level with him. He stood, peering at her in the dimness.

  “Are you a friend of Rebecca’s?”

  “I’m a police officer, sir. Is Rebecca here?”

  The Brigadier’s bushy eyebrows went up. “A policeman, eh? Have you come about the burglary?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  The Brigadier indicated another door on the right of the corridor. “There’s been a burglary,” he said. “In the study. Have you come about that?”

  Kate hesitated for a second.

  “Could you show me, sir?”

  The Brigadier led her to a small, wood-panelled study. A desk stood by a window, with drawers akimbo and papers scattered over the surface and drifted onto the floor.

  “It’s here,” said the Brigadier. He regarded the mess for a moment. “I think it was a burglary. It may have been me. I get in a mess sometimes.”

  Kate sighed inwardly.

  “Sir, can you be more specific? Has there actually been a burglary?”

  “No,” said the Brigadier, sadly. Another mass of paper slipped from the desk to the floor. “It must have been when I was looking for something. It’s hard to remember things, sometimes. You’ll know that, when you get to my age.”

  “Yes,” said Kate, remembering what Rebecca had said. He has dementia. Did he really, though, or was he just old and forgetful? Would he remember whether his daughter had been with him on the night of Gemma’s death? Was it even worth asking? Perhaps I’ll be like that when I’m his age and then I’ll be happy not to remember everything.

  She opened her mouth to ask the question, but the Brigadier had already started walking towards the door.

  “You stay here, my dear,” he said. “I’ll bring you your tea. I can do that.”

  Kate began a sentence and then thought better of it. Was he even able to find the kitchen? Where were the live-in carers, the home-helps that Rebecca had mentioned on their first visit? She saw no point in hanging around waiting for the Brigadier to remember how to boil a kettle, but she decided to wait for a moment. He closed the door of the study behind him, leaving Kate in the room.

  She stood for a moment and then went to the chair by the desk, moving a mass of papers from the seat to the floor. What a mess. She looked out of the window at a little flowerbed and a slice of lawn. What must it have been like to grow up here? She sat
back against the chair, allowing her eyes to drift from the window to the surface of the desk, from the open drawers to the piles of paper on the floor. Then she froze.

  There was the logo, the blue and orange logo. The curled, embryonic shape. The logo she’d seen last night, on the paper from the adoption agency. There it was, on a letter on the floor, peeking out from underneath a pile of other letters. Kate leant down, her heart thumping. She knew she hadn’t been mistaken, but peering closer confirmed it. It was the same logo. It was a letter from the same adoption agency. She twitched at it and saw the salutation, Dear Ms. D’Arcy-Warner...

  “Here you go, my dear,” said the Brigadier, crashing open the door. Kate jumped and sat upright. He came into the room, balancing a cup on a saucer.

  “Tea for you,” he said proudly. Kate took it, barely able to mutter her thanks. It was stone cold.

  *

  “Olbeck, it’s me. I need you to get onto the Wenlove Agency. It’s an adoption agency, Wenlove Agency, W-E-N-L-O-V-E. Talk to the MD, ask about Rebecca D’Arcy-Warner. It’s urgent.”

  “What the hell? What’s happened?”

  “Just talk to them. Actually don’t, just get me the number. I’ll be back in twenty minutes, and I need to talk to them.”

  Twenty minutes was pushing it, but Kate put her foot down. Damn the speed limits. She wished Olbeck was here, driving, so she could have time to think. What did it mean? Did it mean anything? She remembered Rebecca sitting opposite her, very upright, clasping her ringless fingers together. I’m not very maternal, I’m afraid. Had she had a child adopted? Kate slid to a stop at a red light, cursing the delay. Should she pull over and call the agency, right now? No, she needed to be in the office. Come on, come on. The light changed and she shot forward.

  Back at the office, she appraised Olbeck of the situation.

  “But how did you know it was the Wenlove’s logo?” he asked.

  Kate had been dreading this bit.