The Child

by Fiona Barton

  The woman looked at her carefully, weighing her up, and then pulled the door open.

  “It’s Miss. Come in then. Quickly. I don’t want to let all that dust in.” She led the way into her ground-floor flat, shifting a moth-eaten Jack Russell off the sofa, and nodded at Kate to sit down.

  “Sorry about Shorty. He’s shedding,” she said, brushing the hair off the cushion. “Which paper is it again?”

  “The Daily Post.”

  “Oh, I buy that one. That’s nice.”

  Kate relaxed. A reader. Home and dry.

  The two women chatted about the work going on just outside the window, raising their voices when a lorry thundered past, revving hard to get up the incline.

  Kate nodded her sympathy and gently led Miss Walker round to the subject of the building site grave.

  “I heard the workmen found a body where they’re working,” she said.

  The older woman closed her eyes. “Yes, a baby. What an awful thing.”

  “Awful,” Kate echoed and shook her head in sync with Miss Walker. “Poor man who found it. He won’t get over that for a while,” Kate said.

  “No,” Miss Walker agreed.

  “It makes me wonder about the mother,” Kate went on. “Who she was, I mean.”

  She’d put her notebook down beside her, signaling to Miss Walker that they were “just talking.”

  The woman was not as old as she’d first thought. About sixty, she guessed, but she looked worn down by life. There was something of the fairground about her. Bright colors distracting from a tired face. Kate noted the ginger patina of home-dyed hair and the makeup pooling in the creases of her eyelids.

  “Do you have children?” she asked.

  “No,” Miss Walker said. “No kids. Just Shorty and me. We keep each other company.”

  She stroked her pet in silence, the dog shivering with pleasure.

  “He’s a lovely dog,” Kate lied. She loathed dogs. She’d had too many confrontations on doorsteps with ravening beasts, snapping and lunging against their collars as their owners restrained them. They always said the same thing: “Don’t worry. They won’t bite.” But the look in the animals’ eyes said they would if they got the chance. This one was eyeing her up but she tried to ignore it.

  “Well, they don’t know when it was buried, do they?” Miss Walker said. “Could be hundreds of years old, I’ve heard. We might never know.”

  Kate hmmed and nodded, head on one side. Not what she wanted to hear.

  “When did you hear about it? You’re only over the road—you must notice everything,” she said.

  “I’m not some old busybody,” Miss Walker replied, her voice rising. “I don’t poke my nose in where it’s not wanted.”

  “’Course not,” Kate soothed. “But it must have been hard to miss the police cars and things. I know I’d have been dying to know what was going on if it happened across from my house.”

  The older woman was suitably mollified. “Well, I saw the police come, and later, one of the workmen, John, who runs the site, told me what they’d found. He was very upset. Terrible to find something like that. A horrible shock,” Miss Walker said. “I made him a sweet tea.”

  “That was nice of you,” Kate said. “Perhaps your friend John will know more about when the baby was buried. Maybe the police said something?”

  “I couldn’t say. John saw it, the baby, I mean. He said it was just tiny bones. Nothing else left. Terrible thing.”

  Kate picked up her notebook while Miss Walker went to make a cup of tea and wrote down the name of the workman and the quote about the tiny bones.

  Twenty minutes and a tea with two sugars later, she was walking down to the site office, a first-floor Portakabin in a stack, with a panoramic view over the mayhem.

  A stocky man in jeans cut her off at the door. “Can I help you?”

  “Hi, are you John? I’ve just been talking to Miss Walker down the road and she suggested I come to see you.”

  The foreman’s face softened slightly. “She’s a lovely woman. She used to be a model or something, you know. Long time ago, now, obviously. She walks past with her dog every day and has a chat. Sometimes she brings me a cake or something else nice. Must be a bit lonely for her with pretty much everyone else gone.”

  Kate nodded. “Must be,” she said. “Hard to be old these days, when everything is changing around you.”

  The chitchat had gone on long enough and Kate thought the foreman might make his excuses and leave.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Kate Waters.” And stuck out her hand to shake his. Difficult for people to be rude if they’ve shaken your hand.

  “John Davies,” he said back, automatically. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m a reporter, doing a piece on the body found on your building site,” Kate went on and the foreman started to turn away.

  “It must have been a terrible shock for you. You poor thing,” she added quickly.

  He turned back.

  “It was. Sorry to be rude but we’ve had the police coming and going on the site. Taping off their crime scene, stopping us working. The men are all spooked and we’re falling behind schedule.”

  “Must be a nightmare,” Kate said.

  “It is,” Davies agreed. “Look, I shouldn’t be talking to the press. The boss would have my balls if he knew.”

  Kate smiled at him. “I’ve got a boss like that. Come on, I’ll buy you a pint in the pub up the road—it’s lunchtime and it’s just for a bit of background. I don’t have to quote you.”

  Davies looked doubtful.

  “I just want to get to the bottom of who the baby is. Awful for a child to be buried without a name. Like some Victorian pauper.”

  “Okay. But just one drink,” he said and padlocked the site gates behind him.

  “Brilliant,” Kate said, turning on a full-beam smile.

  He walked awkwardly beside her past Miss Walker’s and Kate waved to her new friend, standing watching at the kitchen window.

  SIX

  Kate

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2012

  The pub was already full of site workers, the sharp smell of wet cement mixing with last night’s beer slops, and she fought her way to the bar with a ten-pound note already waving in her hand.

  “White wine spritzer,” she ordered. “What are you drinking, John?”

  “Pint of bitter shandy, please.”

  The man behind the bar, his eyes hidden behind heavy rimmed spectacles, pushed the full glasses forwards and gave Kate a handful of change without a word.

  “He should get a refund from the charm school he went to,” she said, plonking the drinks down on a ring-stained table.

  “He’s all right,” John Davies said gruffly, taking the first long gulp of his pint. “His pub is next to go if the second phase is approved. Must be hard serving us, the forces of destruction.”

  “Yeah, must be. How long has the work been going on?”

  “Months. Feels like years.”

  Kate sipped her drink. The bastard had used lemonade instead of soda and its sweetness was setting her teeth on edge.

  “It sounds like hard work all round.”

  “And last week didn’t help. Awful thing.” Davies put down his glass and looked into its depths.

  “It must’ve been. Was it you who found the body?”

  “No, one of the laborers. Poor lad. He’s only nineteen. Been off ever since.”

  “What happened?”

  Davies emptied his glass.

  “I’ll get you another,” Kate said.

  When she returned, he was peeling the design off his beer mat, in a world of his own.

  “Peter was clearing rubble behind where the houses were so the machines could get in there,” Davies
said without looking up. “He was trying to move one of those old concrete urn things that they plant flowers in. He said he disturbed the ground shifting it back and forth. And he saw this little bone.

  “It was so small, he thought it was part of an animal and went to pick it up to see. But there was more. When he realized what it might be, he screamed. I thought he’d cut his leg off or something. Never heard a scream like it.”

  “He must have been so shocked. You all must,” Kate murmured encouragingly.

  Her companion nodded wearily. “He’s very religious, Peter. Eastern European, you know. Always going on about spirits and things. Anyway, I went and looked. It was so small. Looked like a bird. It’d been wrapped in something and there were bits of paper and plastic stuck to it. I called the police and they came out.”

  “Where was this?” Kate asked.

  “Behind the terrace we pulled down a couple of months ago. Big, run-down old houses—four floors some of them. Bedsits and flats. The whole terrace looked like it would fall down by itself if we hadn’t given it a shove.”

  He stood up. “Anyway, back to work. Thanks for the drink, miss. Remember, no quoting me.”

  She smiled and shook his hand. “Of course. Thanks for the chat, John. It’s been a big help. Do you think Peter would talk to me? I just want to check some details.”

  “Doubt it,” Davies said.

  “Look, could you give him my number in case he wants to contact me?” she said, offering her business card.

  Davies put the card in his trouser pocket and nodded his good-bye. The rest of the workers followed him out.

  Kate sat in the suddenly hushed bar and began writing up her notes. The peace and quiet didn’t last long; the pub landlord ambled over to collect the glasses and interrupted her thoughts.

  “Heard you were a reporter,” he said.

  She looked up at him and smiled. “Yes, I’m Kate, from the Daily Post,” she said.

  “Graham,” he said, suddenly matey now the lunchtime crowd had gone. “What are you reporting on, then?”

  “The baby’s body found on the building site.”

  Graham straddled the leatherette stool opposite her. “Oh. I see. Shocking thing. Burying a baby in the garden,” he said. “It makes you wonder what happened to the poor little thing. I mean, did someone murder it?”

  Kate put down her pen and looked at him. “Exactly what I thought,” she said. “Who could kill a baby? It doesn’t bear thinking about.”

  They sat for a moment in silence.

  “Did you know the people who lived in those houses?” Kate asked. “The police must be busy tracking them down.”

  “They’ll have a job. They were tenants mostly and they changed every five minutes,” he said. “The usual story: the owner didn’t live here—he had loads of property round here—rented out cheap. Those rooms were revolting inside. The sort of places people leave as soon as they can. Anyway, the baby wasn’t buried recently. A copper told me when he was asking around. It could have been put there forty or fifty years ago.”

  “Really? I wonder how they know that? Long before your time, then?”

  The pub landlord smiled, trying not to be flattered by the outrageous compliment. “Hardly,” he said. “Do you want another one of those?” He pointed to the sticky remains of the drink in Kate’s glass.

  “Thanks. Can I have a soda straight up this time? I’m driving.”

  He nodded and picked up the glass.

  “Anyway,” she added as she followed him back to the bar, nose to the trail, determined to keep his attention, “who was running the pub back then? In the seventies and eighties? They’d have known the people living in the street, wouldn’t they?”

  “Actually, it was my better half’s mum and dad,” he said. “We took over from them. Toni might be able to help, but she’s at work.”

  “Don’t worry, I can come back,” Kate said.

  SEVEN

  Emma

  THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2012

  It’s lunchtime and I’m still in bed, where Paul left me this morning. The happy pills are working their magic and I am beginning to feel comfortably numb so I force myself up. I can smell the stink of stale sheets on me so I stand in the shower until my fingertips start to prune, then pull on a loose jumper dress to hide my body.

  I’ve put the tranquilizers back in the bathroom cabinet and closed the door on them. I hate the pills—they mean I’m failing. I’d like to put them in the bin, but what if I can’t cope without them?

  Maybe I’ll try to get a different sort of help this time—look beyond the chemical route. I almost laugh as I think it. It would mean talking, wouldn’t it? Telling someone my thoughts. Why I’m such a mess. What lies at the bottom of it all. It would mean brushing the loose dirt away and then excavating the thick clay packed deep around my memories.

  My mum, Jude, once suggested talking therapy—back when the Bad Days had only just begun—but I refused to get in the car when she tried to take me to see a therapist. There was a terrible scene in the street, with her screaming at me to get in and me bracing myself against the car door. God, was that me? The thing was, I knew then that silence was—is—the only option.

  I know I won’t do anything different now. It’s too late for that. I’ll just put it all away, take the pills until I get everything back under control, and get on with my work. Fill my life with other things to blot out the dread, like I normally do.

  My normal.

  Anyway, I’m going to go to the butcher’s to get some meat for Paul’s dinner—to make up for the burned offerings and frozen food. The word “meat” sticks in my head. Flesh and blood. And I want to throw up.

  Stop it, I tell myself, twisting the skin of my stomach through the dress.

  At the butcher’s, I can smell blood as soon as I enter the shop. Metallic and coating my throat. I can feel panic rising so I stand quietly in the queue practicing the breathing technique from yoga. In through the right nostril, out through the mouth. Or is it out through the left nostril?

  “Mrs. Simmonds,” the butcher says quite loudly. “What can I do for you today?”

  Startled out of my meditation, I blurt, “Er, steak, please. A sirloin steak.” I’ll have a salad, I think.

  He looks unimpressed.

  “Just the one? Eating alone tonight?” He laughs, all red faced under his stupid straw boater.

  I give him a look. Then try to laugh it off to show the other women in the shop that I’m in on the joke. But it sounds fake.

  “Yes, George Clooney’s let me down again,” I say.

  I shove the parcel in my carrier bag, pay the king’s ransom demanded, and go home to try to get some work done.

  • • •

  It’s five o’clock and Paul will be home soon. The thought makes me type faster. I’ll carry on for another hour, then resume domestic duties. Can’t stop yet. Must keep going. If I stop I’ll be back with the baby. Distract, distract, distract.

  I thank God for work most days. I got into editing about ten years ago. A good friend was working at a publishing house, and one weekend, when she was landed with an emergency rewrite, she asked me to help. I’d always written for myself—and at college—but this was sleeves-rolled-up writing, translating some fairly adolescent scribblings by a footballer into heart-wrenching prose. It appeared I had a talent and she got me more work.

  Today, I’m in the midst of a marriage breakup, navigating the sorrow, guilt, and relief of a young actress over her parting from her “childhood” husband and her optimism (misplaced, as it turned out) for her first “industry” marriage. I never meet the subjects. That’s the ghost writer’s job. If it’s a big star, they spend hours—sometimes weeks—with them, teasing out their stories and feelings. I’m not in that league. I’m more X Factor winners, that sort of thing. From what I gather, most
of it is based on cuttings about them from magazines and newspapers, and I tinker and polish until it reads like a fairy story. It’s never very satisfactory but when it’s a rush job for an unexpected news hook—death, scandal, success—it has to be done that way.

  It’s hard work and sometimes, when I’m sweating every word, I curse the millions of people who buy celebrity memoirs just to look at the photos.

  But it pays well enough and it’s my own money. Paul thinks the work is beneath my talents, but I can do it from home and I am anonymous.

  No one knows who Emma Simmonds is, even though my words are sold all over the world, in dozens of languages. My name never appears on the cover of the book. And that’s how I want it to stay. Paul says I ought to be acknowledged, but I just laugh.

  It always works. He’s got enough on his plate what with Dr. Beecham and his scheming. Paul is more worried than he lets on, and I try to boost his confidence. I tell him what a great teacher he is and how much his students love his classes.

  And when that doesn’t work, I tell him he saved my life when he took me on and that always makes him smile. I wonder if he is remembering those early days, in the 1990s, when I was trying to get my life together. I was too old and different from the other students to join in their games. And, there was Paul. I made a pitch for him in my first term, but it was only in my final year that he fell in love with me. It was complicated, him being my personal tutor, but that didn’t matter to me at the time. I thought Dr. Paul Simmonds had all the answers to my problems.

  He was twenty years older than me and wonderfully clever and funny in that dry, academic way. A bachelor, in un-ironed shirts and odd socks—and completely absorbed in his work.

  “You mesmerized me,” I tell him and he laughs.

  “Me? I couldn’t mesmerize anyone,” he says.

  But it’s true. When he talked about things, he could captivate you. Me anyway. And it felt like he was talking directly to me. His lectures on the psychology of Shakespeare’s tragic heroines were all about me. And I would sit there and feel that he understood me and my jumbled head. I actually thought he might be able to make me better. Poor Paul. What a responsibility.