‘They’re going to be here as soon as they can,’ said Christian. Then he left the room and Ruth heard him retching.
Her mother and father were near her. Someone put their arms around her. Ruth looked at her mother and wondered if her misery was like her own or if you never stopped being a mother. If somewhere deep inside she was saying that silent prayer of thanks that it wasn’t her child, that it wasn’t Ruth.
‘She won’t hurt him, darling,’ her mother said. ‘She’s mad, Mum. You saw her last night. She doesn’t have epilepsy. God knows what she’s got, but Hal is not safe with her.’
‘The police will find them. She can’t have got far.’
But of course she could already be on a ferry or in a plane. Ruth had no idea how organised she’d been. The thought made her go to the drawer where they kept the passports. Ruth didn’t feel sick when she saw Hal’s was missing, she felt like her insides had turned to slime and that they would seep out of her when they were ready.
The police arrived and Christian showed them into the sitting room. They looked so severe in their uniforms. A man and a woman.
‘She’s taken his passport,’ Ruth said as she followed them into the room.
One of the men held out his hand. ‘Mrs Donaldson, I’m DC Rogers and this is WPC Samuels.’
‘Please,’ said Ruth, ‘you’re wasting time. She’s had three hours already. They could be anywhere.’
WPC Samuels walked forward. ‘My name is Lisa. I know this is hard, Mrs Donaldson, but in order to find your son we need to ask you a few questions.’
That was when Ruth started to cry. They weren’t going to help her and somewhere out there Aggie had Hal.
DC Rogers was talking again, addressing Christian now, without sharing his name. ‘You said on the phone you think your nanny has left with your son without your permission. Are you sure she hasn’t just taken him to the park or somewhere?’
‘No, no,’ said Christian. ‘I’ve been awake since six-thirty. I thought they were asleep. She had some sort of breakdown last night. She said it was an epileptic fit, but we don’t think it was. We were going to ask her to leave.’ Ruth could hear the utter ridiculousness of his words.
But the policeman ignored his confusion. ‘Did she know this?’
‘Nothing was said, but she might have guessed.’
‘She’s odd,’ said Ruth. ‘I’ve known there’s something wrong with her for a while now, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.’
‘Odd, how?’ asked WPC Samuels. Ruth looked at Lisa and wondered if she had children and if she left them with odd people.
‘I don’t know. She was too perfect. Looking back, I’m wondering if anything she said was true.’
‘Can I look at her room?’ asked WPC Samuels. ‘It’s at the top of the house, the loft room, but she’s taken everything,’ said Christian, ‘I’ve checked. And most of Hal’s clothes have gone as well.’
‘And his passport,’ repeated Ruth.
As WPC Samuels left the room Ruth could hear her on her radio, her serious tones filling up the house.
‘Where did you employ her from?’ asked DC Rogers. ‘We need her full name, age, family history.’
‘We put an advert in The Lady,’ said Ruth. ‘I rang her referee and she couldn’t praise her enough. Her name is Agatha Hartard. She said she was estranged from her family.’
‘So you never met her parents? Did you ever see her passport? Are you sure that’s her name?’
Ruth looked at Christian and everything was removed. ‘Oh God,’ she said, holding her hand over her mouth to stop herself from falling out. ‘Oh God.’
Agatha had a plan. Of course she did. First they walked twenty minutes to Kilburn station where she had checked out the loos and worked out they could dye their hair and change in peace. Sure enough there was no one around and Hal was content to have himself changed dramatically without putting up any sort of fuss. She bagged everything in the bin bags she had taken and re-packed it in the knapsack, then she put them both into their new clothes. Looking into the misty mirror she could see the person she was becoming and she was pleased.
It was only seven thirty by the time they were standing on the platform waiting for the tube to Euston. Hal looked tired and she knew he was going to ask for a bottle soon. She would buy him a pain au chocolat at the station as a special treat for the train. She was also going to buy herself a latte, because that was the sort of woman she was.
Agatha thought they were probably still safe. Ruth had been tired and she hoped she might not have woken up yet. If she was awake she almost certainly wouldn’t have checked on Hal yet as it would be too precious to her to have a few moments sitting on her own or arguing with Christian. And they wouldn’t expect her to be up yet; they’d think she was still sleeping off her fit. It was odd to think she was epileptic, strange that she hadn’t known that about herself before now. But it was fine. When things settled down she’d go to a doctor and get a proper diagnosis and drugs to control it and then everything would be fine again. Everything was going to be fine.
The tube took them to the station just as it promised it would. They bought the coffee and the pastry and they stood under the big boards which flashed the names of all the places they could go. Agatha had already decided they would go to the coast and get on a ferry headed somewhere in Europe, but as she stood on the grimy concourse she realised that if that had been her plan they would have taken a tube to Victoria station, not Euston. Everyone knew that Victoria took you to the coast and Euston took you back, back to the heart of England. A spinning started in Agatha’s head as she tried to re-capture the last thirty minutes of her life, to see herself choosing this as her destination when she’d stepped onto the tube, but nothing came. She scanned the orange words formed out of nothing more than tiny squares piled on top of each other like children’s building blocks and knew why they were here. The next train going to Birmingham was leaving at 8.25, in ten minutes. Agatha pushed Hal’s buggy to the ticket counter and bought a one-way ticket. They were coming back, but not yet. They were going at the moment, going back to where she had come from. Going back to where it had all started. An odd fizzing was building up behind Agatha’s eyes, like someone had opened a can of coke in her skull. She had to get back and then it would be fine. Everything would be fine.
‘It appears she did give you her correct name,’ said WPC Samuels. She hadn’t found anything in Agatha’s room and had just got off the phone to someone who was trying to find Hal. ‘That’s a good thing. If she’d been organised, if she had come into your family with the intention of stealing a child, she would have concealed her identity.’
‘She’s been with us for eight months,’ Ruth was saying somewhere outside Christian’s ability to listen.
‘Eight months is not long for a paedophile. They’re often prepared to put months into the planning it takes to abduct a child.’
‘A paedophile? You think that’s why she’s taken Hal?’ Christian tried to stop listening.
‘We have to look at every possibility, Mrs Donaldson. The fact that she gave you her correct name is very hopeful.’
Christian felt better when DC Rogers left. He imagined him screeching down alleys and knocking on doors, looking for his son. Also he felt freed of the policeman’s contempt; because what sort of people were they, him and Ruth, that they discarded their children this way? Can I go with you? Christian had asked. What he had really wanted to do was drive around the streets screaming his son’s name, but DC Rogers had told him it was vitally important they stayed where they were in case Aggie rang. She would be in an unstable state, he’d said, and she’d need everything to be normal. Other policemen and women came and went. Someone sat him and Ruth down and explained to them that they weren’t going to release any details to the media yet. They were worried about spooking her because she was unstable. The word ‘spooked’ made Christian think about ghosts.
They had distributed the photograph of Aggie and Hal
standing over the vegetable patch to the police nationwide. It was the only one Ruth had been able to find, although he’d wished to God she hadn’t. They looked so complicit, so young, so innocent, so right with their spades and the earth and the sun and their wide smiles. Police were being dispatched to every train station, ferry port and airport, and she would be caught if she tried to leave the country. Soon her image would be on every police database, even the bobby on the beat would be scanning faces.
An earnest young woman in plain clothes explained to them what might be wrong with Aggie and the possible outcomes. WPC Samuels made tea and faded into the background as they held onto each other and wept.
Eventually, after what seemed like years of waiting, WPC Samuels said, ‘We’ve traced her parents. They haven’t seen or heard from her for seven years, but not because of an estrangement.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Christian. ‘Where are they?’
‘A village called Tamworth, just outside Birmingham. A local sergeant is on her way there now. We’ll know more in about fifteen minutes.’
Christian stood up, leaving Ruth behind on the sofa. Every movement seemed too large to contain himself and anyone else. ‘Can I go? We could be there in what, three hours?’
‘There’s no point,’ said WPC Samuels. ‘If she’s there, we’ll have her in fifteen minutes. If they have any information, we’ll be straight onto it. But, Mr Donaldson, she hasn’t even spoken to them for seven years, it seems unlikely she’ll be making her way there. At the moment, it’s just a lead.’
‘But I can’t go on sitting here,’ shouted Christian. He felt Ruth’s hand pulling him down. He didn’t want to sit, so redundant and useless.
WPC Samuels came towards him and he realised she wasn’t going to let him leave. ‘This is where you’re needed, Mr Donaldson. Leave it to the police to get your son back.’
Ruth was crying again now, if she had ever stopped. ‘Please, Christian,’ she was saying, ‘please, just do as they say. Don’t get in their way.’
‘We’ll know more in a few minutes,’ said the WPC again. ‘They’ll let me know as soon as there are any developments.’
At Birmingham station the connection to Stoke usually came every twenty or so minutes. She’d taken the route often enough, the platform was imprinted on her brain. There were definitely more police than usual but Agatha knew how to handle it. She pushed the buggy confidently forward, holding her head high and using her legs to make her glide. She scanned the board boldly, pushing her large dark glasses into her hair so everyone could see her eyes. When Hal moaned she told Rupert not to be silly, he would see his granny soon. She felt the police looking at her and their eyes bored into her but they failed to see beyond her surface. They looked but then they glanced away and had their attention taken up by someone else. Because there was always another mother and child. There would always be more of those.
They stood on the platform and waited for the train and it was only then that Agatha admitted to herself where they were going. She was not taking Hal to give him to Harry. In fact Harry was not going to touch a hair on either of their heads. But she was taking Hal to show Harry. It was odd that until now she hadn’t realised they had the same name, even though Hal’s real name was not Henry or Harry, it was just Hal. But still it was nearly the same. And she had had them both inside her. Harry in the wrong way and Hal in the right way. She was going to show this to Harry. She was going to show him that, even though he had tried his best, he had not destroyed her. Far from it, she had gone on to give birth to the most wonderful boy who had ever lived. She had become the one thing that would protect her from Harry for the rest of her life. She had become a mother.
Hal sat on her lap on the train. They watched the countryside whipping past like a painting where the colours have all run together. Mostly Agatha let her eyes relax and blur, but occasionally she would latch on to something that became a memory before she was sure what she was seeing. They would be close to her parents, maybe Louise still lived nearby. But she wouldn’t be going to see them. At first she’d thought that she was going back to see them, but it had soon become obvious that this wasn’t the reason at all. That there was nothing to say to them any more. She could do without them.
Ruth watched WPC Samuels take the call and she tried to work out from the way her face pinched itself together what she might be hearing. But it was as useless as holding a letter up to the light to see who it might be from. She looked towards Christian but he had fallen in on himself. She thought they both might die if anything happened to Hal, but then she remembered Betty and realised they wouldn’t even be allowed to do that.
The policewoman finished her call and came to sit opposite them. Christian started to cry, which unnerved Ruth.
‘We haven’t found them,’ she began, ‘but her parents have shed some light on the situation. Agatha ran away from home on her sixteenth birthday, seven years ago and they haven’t heard from her since then. Apparently she stole some money and she’d been in trouble at school. The police were involved, her parents went on missing persons programmes, they even came to London and put up posters of her, but nothing. Then on her seventeenth birthday the father’s best friend killed himself. He left a note saying he couldn’t live without Agatha. It turned out that he’d been abusing her since she was nine. The police suspected that this Harry Collins had murdered Agatha, but they never found any evidence to support their theory. She hasn’t been in touch with them today.’
‘Oh my God.’ Ruth was dumbfounded, she couldn’t find words to describe how she felt.
‘He lived very nearby. Just the next village. The police are on their way to his old house now.’
‘Do you think she’s gone there?’
‘It’s a possibility. By taking Hal she’s done something with direct consequences. She’s going to want some reassurance.’
‘Can I speak to her mother?’ asked Ruth.
‘Why the hell would you want to do that?’ shouted Christian.
‘I don’t know,’ said Ruth. ‘I just do.’
WPC Samuels didn’t seem surprised, she’d seen it all before. Even in their most dreadful moment they failed to be unique. ‘I’d have to make a call,’ she said. She left the room and there was nothing to do but wait. Ruth thought she had spent her whole life waiting for the next thing, expecting things to be better in some indefinable way, but now she saw all the waiting for what it was. She was a queue dweller without vision.
‘The mother has agreed to speak to you,’ said WPC Samuels as she came back in. ‘I can put you through if you’re sure you want to speak to her.’
‘Please,’ said Ruth, holding out her hand. The ringing phone was given to her, all she had to do was place it to her ear. She felt the last remaining energy drain out of her body, as if she’d been shot and the blood was pooling round her feet. Christian put his arms around her and she let him hold her. He felt strong against her weakness.
‘Hello,’ said the woman on the other end.
‘Hello,’ said Ruth.
The woman started to cry. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. And Ruth realised she wasn’t going to learn anything from this. She was simply talking to another mother and it made her feel as empty as an arid lake.
‘It’s okay.’
‘We thought she was dead. I can’t believe . . . Agatha was working as your nanny?’
‘Yes.’
‘How was she? I mean, before . . . ’
Ruth wanted to be kind, but there was a madness to this which was circling Ruth, threatening to overtake her. ‘She was great. The kids loved her. You haven’t seen her for seven years?’
‘No. She left on her sixteenth birthday. I suppose the police have filled you in.’
‘Yes.’
‘We knew she had problems. She was a very strange child, very introverted. She was always lying or saying terrible things. But we didn’t realise why, we thought she was naughty.’ The woman’s voice caught and again Ruth wonde
red where this could lead. ‘Then when Harry died. God, the letter he wrote. He said that he and Agatha had become lovers when she was nine. He used that word. Lovers. Like she’d agreed to it.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘So am I. I’m sorry I let her down and I’m sorry Harry killed himself because I wish I could have had the pleasure of killing him.’
‘Do you think she might have gone there?’
‘I don’t know. She doesn’t know he’s dead. But why would she want to do that? I don’t understand any of this.’ There was a pause and then she said, ‘I don’t think she’ll hurt your boy. I think she’s got confused, the way she did when she was little. We saw a doctor once who said she was a fantasist. Do you know what that means?’
‘No.’
‘She makes up stories and then she can’t remember what’s real and what isn’t. That’s why we didn’t take her seriously when she lied.’ Agatha’s mother started to cry. ‘I’m so sorry. Do you know how sorry I am? I let her down. We let her down.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Ruth, suddenly feeling calm. ‘I hope she doesn’t hurt my son.’ She could not end up like this woman, but this was not something she could control. The future loomed over them like a monster, either to be endured or to be changed.
Agatha risked taking a taxi from the station to the village. Really though, it didn’t feel like a risk. She was starting to believe that a divine power was watching over them and she was going to be allowed to do whatever she needed. The driver talked about the heat and asked how her son was coping, which Agatha took as another celestial sign that everything was going to be fine.
‘How old is he?’ asked the taxi driver. ‘Just three,’ said Agatha. ‘We had his party yesterday. He loved it.’
‘And is today his grandparents’ turn then?’
‘My uncle’s, actually. I’ve always been very close to my uncle.’
Everything and Nothing Page 22
