Close My Eyes

by Sophie McKenzie

  ‘When did you destroy all the papers?’ I demand.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Art frowns. ‘Just after you looked at them last week.’

  I remember how, that evening, I’d gone downstairs to call Lucy O’Donnell and heard the office floorboards creaking as I crossed the hall, and how Art had denied he’d been up here.

  ‘You said you didn’t come up here again.’ My mind is careering around now. ‘What is this? Are you trying to make me think I’m going insane?’

  Art shakes his head. There’s a terrible sadness in his eyes. ‘Oh, Gen, listen to yourself, will you? I don’t think I did come up straightaway. I think it was later, so I didn’t lie. And I’m not suggesting you should go back to therapy because there’s anything properly wrong with you. It’s just because I care about you and you’ve obviously not been coping since that stupid woman and her lies.’

  ‘Her name was Lucy O’Donnell and she’s dead, Art.’ Despite my earlier intentions, the words shoot out of me. ‘The woman who told me about Beth is dead. She died last week, the day after I saw her, in a hit-and-run accident.’ I gasp, a sob welling inside me. Because I don’t think it was an accident, but I know Art will be as dismissive as he was earlier if I suggest Lucy was deliberately killed. I turn away from him, not wanting him to see my tears. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alone in my life.

  ‘That’s terrible,’ Art says, his hand stroking my arm. ‘But it’s got nothing to do with this, and you have to admit breaking into my cupboard is irrational, Gen. I’m only trying to help. Please.’

  I turn around and look into his eyes. He seems genuinely worried for me. I falter, seeing myself from his perspective.

  ‘I understand that it seems extreme,’ I say, as calmly as I can, ‘but I’m not being obsessive. I’m just trying to find out what really happened to Beth.’

  Art’s expression clouds, a terrible bitterness sweeping over his face. It’s in the hurt in his eyes and the curl of his lip, and in his voice as he speaks.

  ‘Beth died, Gen. You need to move on or—’ He stops, rubs his hand over his forehead.

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or it will kill us too. Us. Our relationship. Our marriage. Us.’ Art holds my gaze for a second. ‘Don’t you see what’s happening? Can you just stop for one second and think about how I feel. Beth was my daughter too.’

  I nod, suddenly ashamed of being selfish.

  Art pulls me towards him but I’m not quite ready to surrender entirely. I hold up the shredded bits of brochure between us. ‘You still shouldn’t have destroyed all the papers.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ Art acknowledges. ‘I’m sorry, Gen . . .’ His voice cracks. ‘I just don’t know how to help you any more.’

  I let him hold me. I feel numb. I can see how I look – spun out of control because of one woman’s outrageous claims. And yet I didn’t imagine the look of sincerity in Lucy O’Donnell’s eyes. And I haven’t imagined her death either.

  ‘Let’s go to bed.’

  I let Art lead me down to our bedroom. He fetches his things from the spare room, waits while I brush my teeth and get into the long T-shirt I wear at night, then he spoons me into his arms and holds me as he falls asleep.

  I lie awake for a while, listening to Art’s steady breathing, feeling the dead weight of his arm on my ribs. I’m hyper-aware of the Tapps letter and Rodriguez’s business card under the mattress below me. What would Art say if he knew I’d been calling both the funeral home and the Fair Angel private maternity hospital?

  Thinking about that empty shoebox upstairs keeps me wide awake. Art shouldn’t have shredded its entire contents. He says I’m being obsessive but what he did was extreme too. As I lie there, unsleeping, my anger builds. How dare Art make that decision to destroy everything? It was up to both of us to decide what to do.

  I lift his arm up and wriggle out from under the duvet. I stand, watching him breathing for a moment.

  If Art can act unilaterally, then so can I.

  His phone is on the bedside table. Without thinking, I snatch it up and go into the bathroom at the end of the corridor. I sit cross-legged on the edge of the bath, the phone in my trembling hand. I know the password. I also know that using it – and checking Art’s calls and emails – crosses a line I’ve never dreamed of crossing before, in all the years I’ve known him.

  I hesitate for a few long, silent seconds. I have no idea what I’m doing, just that, for all Art’s sincerity, there’s something, some shadow that lurks in the background, stopping me from being able to dismiss Lucy O’Donnell’s claim that Art let the doctor take Beth away.

  A dustbin lid clattering to the ground outside startles me. I can’t wait any longer. I have to find out what I can. I enter the password and click on the email icon. I flick through the entries – all work stuff. I turn to his texts but they’re all deleted. So are the voicemails. What about the call log? I have no idea what I’m looking for, but I scroll through the list of callers anyway. Most of them are identified . . . Kyle several times, Tris and Dan . . . other work people . . . Art’s accountant . . . plus names I recognize as clients. Interspersed with these are a few numbers without names attached. I scroll back further. There are calls from Morgan and Hen from last weekend, and from Hen the week before – the week when Lucy O’Donnell first turned up. More unrecognized callers. I take out my own phone and look at both Lorcan’s and Lucy O’Donnell’s numbers. Lorcan’s is on Art’s phone – just once, on the Sunday afternoon after the party. Well, that’s no surprise; I knew he called Art to go out for that drink. Lucy’s number is not showing on Art’s phone. Neither, when I check, are the numbers for the Fair Angel hospital or Tapps Funeral Services. I stop for a second, registering what this means: Art has not been in touch with anyone from the past – at least not on this phone.

  A dog barks outside. I glance into the corridor, straining my ears for the sound of Art getting out of bed, but the house is silent. Sweat beads on my forehead. I keep scrolling down the list, panic rising, swelling my throat. What am I doing? What if Art wakes up and finds me? What do I hope to find? What will it prove?

  I have no answers, but I keep looking anyway. It’s no good, these numbers mean nothing. They’re all just random, single callers that—Wait. There’s one number that keeps coming up. It’s a mobile number ending 865. Whoever owns that number has called Art every day for the past week. Yesterday they called twelve times.

  I quickly scribble the number down. Palms sweating, I tiptoe into the bedroom and put Art’s phone back where I found it. He’s still lying exactly as I left him, breathing steadily.

  I stare at the number. Who is calling Art so obsessively? For a second I want to wake him up and demand an answer, but that would mean confessing I’d snooped.

  If I ask Art he will make some excuse . . . find some way of making me look ridiculous for asking. I take a deep breath. There are three possibilities.

  Option one: the caller is an annoying client/someone trying to sell him something/a nut-job. I’m sure this is what Art would claim if I forced an answer out of him, though why he wouldn’t just block their number I don’t understand.

  Option two: Art’s having an affair and the caller is a woman entirely unrelated to Beth. Apart from the fact that I can’t seriously believe Art would be unfaithful, all the calls are from this number. Art has never called it back. Not once.

  Option three: the caller is connected with Beth. Perhaps he or she even knows where Beth is. No . . . no . . . This is total madness.

  Gritting my teeth, I snatch up my own phone. I make sure the call will be anonymous, then dial the number. I have no idea what I’m going to say if someone answers but I can’t bear not knowing any more.

  My palm feels clammy on the handset as the number rings.

  Oh, God, what am I doing?

  A recorded message, asking the caller to leave a message. Generic, giving only the phone number as identification. I hesitate for a second then switch off the phone just before
the beep.

  I feel sick as I tear up the piece of paper with the number on and flush it down the toilet. I shove my own phone in my handbag and get into bed again. I lie under the covers, Art now gently snoring beside me.

  I try to take stock. Lucy O’Donnell has died under suspicious circumstances. Art paid someone fifty grand just after Beth was stillborn. Someone is calling him repeatedly and he hasn’t told me about it. He and Hen think I’m becoming obsessed with finding Beth.

  There’s nothing concrete. Nothing solid to tell me what to think, one way or the other. None of my questions and enquiries and phone calls has led anywhere. In fact, everywhere I turn is a dead end. Which means I’m going to have to go further. Action has to be better than this, this vortex of suspicion and not-knowing.

  Next morning the telephone rouses me with a start. I can’t see the time but it’s light outside and Art is long gone.

  ‘Mrs Loxley? This is Mr Tapps.’ The man’s voice is formal, his accent slightly affected. It’s the voice of a man not entirely comfortable in his own skin. ‘You left a message for me yesterday.’

  ‘Hi, er, thanks for calling back.’ I sit up in bed, trying to focus. I explain about Beth, about the cremation eight years ago. ‘It would have been just after June the eleventh. I just wanted to speak to whoever was involved. I mean whoever dealt with . . . our baby . . .’ As I speak, I get out of bed and wander to the window to draw back the curtains.

  ‘Ah.’ Mr Tapps pauses and, when he continues speaking, his voice is softer. ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Loxley, but I’m afraid I can’t help. I thought it might be this . . . sometimes, after the event, it seems to help people to speak to those involved.’

  ‘Do you remember . . .?’ I say. I’m still not properly awake so I push the window open and breathe the crisp morning air.

  ‘Of course,’ Mr Tapps says, and his voice is full of compassion. ‘I checked the records when my assistant said you were a client and . . . well, as I say, I’m terribly sorry, but for some reason there’s no record of who laid out your daughter’s body.’

  ‘No record?’ I’m wide awake now. A freezing cold wind whips into the room, rattling the window. It whistles in my ears. ‘But you remember her; you have records of the funeral?’

  ‘We have records of everything,’ Mr Tapps says smoothly. ‘When the body was received, when it was prepared . . . the funeral itself was carried out very quickly after that. All the dates and times are recorded, but not which of my staff was involved.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I’m really very sorry, Mrs Loxley. I’ve asked everyone who worked here then. No one remembers handling this particular . . . child. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘I see,’ I say again. Then an idea occurs. ‘What about the payment for the funeral? Do you have a record of who covered the costs?’ I’m hoping, for some reason, he’s going to say Dr Rodriguez, though it’s far more likely, and logical, that it was Art who handled the funeral payments.

  ‘We don’t charge for stillbirth funerals, Mrs Loxley,’ Mr Tapps says, a note of confusion creeping into his voice. ‘Standard practice.’

  ‘Oh, right, sorry.’ It’s another reminder of how disconnected from the real world I was at the time. ‘Well, thank you for your time.’

  I hang up, then close the window. I go back to bed and sit cross-legged on the covers, lost in my thoughts. Tapps is another blind alley. I put my head in my hands. The doctor who handled my C-section has vanished, the attending nurse has died and there’s no way of finding out who dealt with my supposedly stillborn baby.

  Is all that really a coincidence?

  I take out my phone. I can’t do this alone, but there’s no point calling Art . . . or Hen. She’s made it quite clear she doesn’t believe there’s any truth in Lucy O’Donnell’s claims. I could try one of my other friends, but when I imagine their faces as I explain my anxieties, all I can see is puzzlement and concern that I’m letting desperation take me over . . . that crazed hope is making me mad . . . that I’ve lost all sense of perspective. And then I think of Lorcan, that steady gaze. The way he empathized with my feelings over Beth. The way he sensed that my troubles were in some way connected with Art. I scroll to his number and call him.

  ‘Gen?’ He answers on the first ring. His voice is warm.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Hi.’ My voice cracks as I speak. ‘Before, you offered . . .’ I hesitate. Now I’m speaking to him, it seems too much to ask.

  ‘And I meant it,’ Lorcan says. ‘How can I help?’

  Lorcan arrives within the hour. I lead him into the kitchen, feeling guilty that I’m going behind Art’s back. Still, I’m not planning on telling Lorcan all my suspicions . . . and certainly not the ones about Art himself. So far, all he knows is that I need his help.

  He sits down opposite me at the kitchen table and fixes me with that intense look of his. There’s stubble on his chin and a tiny scar above one eye. He’s still gazing at me. Does he look this intently at everyone?

  I hope not. The thought is out before I can snatch it back.

  ‘This isn’t easy.’ I blow out my breath.

  Lorcan leans forward and smiles. ‘Relax,’ he says. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.’

  ‘I know.’ I hesitate again. ‘This woman came to see me,’ I stammer. ‘She says my baby was born alive . . . that the doctor stole her away . . .’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ Lorcan looks genuinely shocked. ‘But how could that happen? Is that even possible?’

  ‘It is, just about . . . I had a C-section and I was under general anaesthetic.’ I go on, explaining everything I’ve done and discovered in detail. The only thing I don’t mention is Lucy O’Donnell’s claim that Art was involved.

  He shakes his head, but more in wonderment than disbelief. ‘So do you really think that your baby could still be alive?’

  ‘Yes . . . well, I believe Lucy O’Donnell thought she was. But she can’t be, can she? I mean it’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Have you told the police?’

  ‘No . . . I don’t have any proof.’

  ‘What does Art say?’ I fall silent.

  Outside a police siren screeches in the distance. Lorcan is still watching me intently.

  ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Art thinks the whole thing’s mad.’

  ‘It probably is.’ I stare down at the raw, bitten skin around my fingernails. ‘I can’t go back to Lucy O’Donnell because she just died in a hit-and-run accident.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘I know. I think it looks really suspicious but there’s no proof of that, either.’ I show him the newspaper cutting. ‘I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know what to do. It all seems impossible. I mean, why would a doctor fake a baby’s death? Part of me wants to go to the hospital in Oxford where it all happened. I know my doctor doesn’t work there any more, but it’s the best place to start tracking him down. Then the next minute I’m thinking it all sounds so ridiculous . . .’ I sigh.

  ‘Well, you’re right about that.’ Lorcan leans back in his chair. He’s still staring at me. ‘And most people would say you’re only even considering that what you’ve been told might be true because you want it to be true – you want Beth to be alive.’

  I nod, held by his gaze.

  ‘Which is hell for you, because now you’re torn between doing something and worrying you’re crazy, and doing nothing and missing an opportunity – however slight – that your daughter might be out there somewhere.’ He pauses. ‘Right?’

  ‘Right,’ I say.

  ‘Okay.’ Lorcan gets up. ‘Then let’s go.’

  ‘What?’ I stand up too.

  ‘Let’s go to the hospital.’

  ‘Go to the . . .? Now? But it’s in Oxford,’ I say, shocked.

  ‘So?’

  ‘We can’t just turn up.’

  ‘Why not?’ Lorcan asks. ‘Whatever that office manager said, the hospital is bound to have a forwarding address for you
r Dr Rodriguez. It’ll be easier to get it off them if we talk to them in person. More persuasive.’

  ‘But what will we say?’

  ‘We can work it out on the way. My car’s outside. We can be there in an hour if we get going now.’

  I stare at him. My heart’s racing. ‘But . . . but I have to teach this afternoon.’

  Lorcan raises his eyebrows. ‘Then cancel,’ he says. ‘Tell them you’re sick.’

  I hesitate. I don’t like to do that – it’s dishonest and it leaves the Institute in the lurch, but the temptation is strong. Anyway, with my mind all over the place like it is, I wouldn’t be much use to my students.

  ‘Why are you helping me like this?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Lorcan shakes his head impatiently. ‘I’m not seeing Cal again until tomorrow. I’ve got no work . . . no auditions . . .’ He pauses. ‘Unless you don’t want me to come?’

  I stare at him. I feel almost delirious; scarily out of control.

  ‘It’ll take a bit of effort,’ Lorcan goes on. ‘And we’ll need a cover story. But we can sort that out on the way too. Come on.’ He’s already halfway to the door.

  ‘Wait.’

  He stops and turns. There’s something so powerful about his determination, so overwhelming, I can’t think straight for a second. Then my head clears.

  ‘D’you think it could be true, that Beth’s alive?’ There’s a sick feeling in my stomach. ‘Isn’t this all a bit reckless?’

  ‘So? I’m an actor. I’m allowed to do reckless things. And, yes, of course it’s possible. You never saw her body, did you?’

  ‘No, but, everything is stacked against it being true. It feels impossible.’

  ‘So what? You need to know, one way or the other.’ Lorcan smiles. ‘Anyway, sometimes I believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’