by Lucy Lawrie
‘Yes – it always is.’
‘When’s the last time you used that key? If you’re anything like me, you never use the back garden.’
She had a point. Pip and I, wary after the dog-poo incident, hadn’t been out there since the summer.
‘He could have switched that key, and switched it back at his leisure. Any tenement back door key would look the same: those old-fashioned long brass keys.’
She was right. Miss Fortune’s, for example, would look exactly the same.
‘He’d need to get into the tenement stair first,’ I said weakly.
‘Probably switched that key too. Or he could easily get someone to buzz him into the stair, saying he was the postman or something.’
I was about to say that no, Steve wasn’t a conman who went around pretending to be a postman. He was an art tutor with a bit of a mixed-up past, who’d not been very forthcoming with me. But then I paused. Because somebody must have been responsible.
I turned to Molly, who’d put a sympathetic hand on my knee. ‘But why? Why would he want to do those things?’
She shook her head sadly. ‘Maybe he thought you’d lean on him, if you were frightened.’
Or if nobody believed me. If I thought I was going mad.
‘It could be a way of getting control over you,’ added Cleodie. ‘Maybe he’s just a damaged individual. The world’s full of them, hon.’
Damaged. I thought of him stroking my leg in the car, the catch in his breath as he laid me down on my bed. I thought of his face, balled up with emotion as he drove himself into me, harder and faster and harder and faster, as though it might obliterate something.
Come back to me. Just come back.
Then I thought of Miss Fortune, of Steve making arrangements for her care, sorting out her financial affairs, thinking about settlements from Renee so he could get her into a home. He’d been like a son to her. He might be – oh God, of course he would be – a beneficiary under her will.
I thought of him carefully measuring all the electric flexes in her flat. The kettle with scorch marks in the plastic from the gas hob.
Jody tutted. ‘Janey, hon, you look like you’re about to be sick. Honestly, it’s not worth getting upset over an obsolete man. I know! Let’s have a girl trip to Buttercraig Lodge.’
Oh please, not Buttercraig Lodge. This was Jody and Tom’s ‘project’ – a rot-riddled old house on top of a hill near Stirling. They’d been doing it up for a few years, splitting their time between there and their rented flat in Edinburgh. Last time at the coffee shop we’d had to ‘ooh’ and ‘ah’ over three photo albums of ‘work in progress’ pictures and I’d nearly lost the will to live.
‘Well?’ said Jody. ‘Pip’s staying at Murray’s next Friday night, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Come up on Friday, we’ll pamper ourselves all day, then you can stay overnight and we’ll all get squiffy! I know a fabby private chef and I’ll get her to come and make lunch and dinner for us. And there’s a lovely mobile beautician in the village who does treatments: we’ll all get manicures and pedicures.’ She looked at me, and added in a low, confidential tone, ‘Would you like a facial too, Janey?’
I smiled, wondering whether there was such a thing as an immobile beautician, but Jody mistook my expression for enthusiasm. ‘That’s sorted then.’
‘Does she use only organic products, though?’ asked Molly. ‘And products that are non-harmful to aquatic life?’
‘C’mon Janey,’ said Jody. ‘What do you say?’
I searched my mind for another excuse. Then stopped, and mentally surveyed my life. Without Steve, it looked pretty bleak, my diary stretching emptily into the future. And I didn’t even have the idea of Steve now, I realised. He’d melted away, somehow, over the last five minutes.
‘Aww, don’t worry, babe,’ said Jody. ‘We’ll brighten you up a wee bit and you’ll be beating them off with a stick. You’re a couple of face peels away from a whole new future.’
*
And so now here we were, sitting in the lounge at Buttercraig Lodge, sipping cocktails, waiting for the air punching to begin again.
Cleodie was looking round the room with an air of detachment, as though she might be mentally taking notes for her novel.
I shivered violently, sloshing my non-alcoholic Woo-woo down my top. It was freezing. Half of the upstairs windows were getting renovated – that is to say, were not actually there.
The mobile beautician, a woman in her fifties with blue eyeliner and a frizzled eighties perm, had unfolded her treatment table in the middle of the lounge, its white towelling covering pristine for the first sacrificial victim.
‘We’re all girls together now,’ said Jody. ‘Apart from Vichard.’ She patted his head, and he crawled away under the beautician’s table, popping his head up through the face-hole.
‘You can get it all off your chest. Tell us about Steve. Oh, but wait! That’s the doorbell. That’ll be Molly.’
She appeared in the room a moment later, carrying a blue plastic potty, with Cam trotting behind her, naked from the waist down.
‘We’re getting on so well,’ she was saying to Jody. ‘He’s only had two accidents this morning. You don’t mind me bringing him, do you? It’s just we’re really trying to get on top of it this week. Janey! How are you feeling? I’ve brought a brilliant homeopathic remedy for you to try. Arsenic something or other.’
‘Great!’ Jody was glowing with happiness now. ‘We’ll get on with some proper men-bashing in a minute. I’ll be back in a sec.’
‘Oops,’ said Molly. ‘That’s Cam done a wee-wee. Well done, Cammie! Well done!’
‘Isn’t he supposed to do it in the potty?’ I asked.
‘It’s important to praise him anyway,’ said Molly. ‘So he doesn’t pick up any negative feedback surrounding the potty-training process. I’ll go and find a cloth.’
Before long I was lying on the table with cucumber slices over my eyes, having all my make-up sponged off with cotton wool pads. I heard my phone ring from the hallway.
Steve?
I squashed the thought.
‘Who’s not got their mobile switched off?’ asked Jody. ‘Tut tut. Is that you Janey?’
‘Er, yeah. Sorry.’
She sighed gustily. ‘Janey, you need a wee mantra, hon. Repeat after me. Come on girls, everyone. I do not need to speak to Steve.’
‘I do not need to speak to Steve,’ they intoned. I mumbled and moved my lips convincingly, like I used to in church with Granny when they were reciting prayers.
‘I do not need to know what Steve is thinking,’ went on Jody calmly.
‘I do not need to know what Steve is thinking.’ I could hear the mobile beautician repeating it too in her thick accent, a gust of garlic-scented breath reaching me where I lay.
‘What Steve is thinking is now none of my business.’ Jody’s intonation was light and almost musical now.
‘What Steve is thinking is now none of my business.’
Yes it bloody well is.
Jody paused, before finding further inspiration. ‘Steve breached my trust and broke into my home.’
‘Hang on. I never said that,’ I said. God, what would the mantra be if Jody knew the whole story?
Steve may have been planning to electrocute an old lady.
My phone rang again.
‘I’ll answer it,’ said Jody, darting into the hall.
‘No!’ I pulled myself upright on the table.
She came back in, holding the phone out. Her voice was quiet. ‘It’s the nursery.’
‘Miss Johnston.’ It took a second to recognise it as Mrs Paxton’s voice. She sounded different. ‘We’ve been trying to call you. There’s been an incident.’
‘What incident? Is Pip hurt?’
‘We’ve no reason to think that,’ she said carefully. I sank onto a chair. My legs seemed to know what was coming before I did. ‘The children were playing in the basement
area this morning. Jill was taking George to the toilet, and Hayley had to take another child inside because he was having an athsma attack.’
‘What about Pip?’ I managed.
‘There was a bit of a panic, because the athsma attack was quite serious. So the children were left alone for a few moments. Just a very few moments. But unfortunately nobody noticed Pip had gone until the end of playtime.’
‘Gone?’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Johnston. We don’t know where Pip is.’
44
Hattie
My heart lurched horribly when I heard the phone ring. I should’ve paid attention: my body knew to be on edge, even if my mind didn’t yet.
It was Mum, phoning from the car.
‘We’ve just left Harrowdean.’ She spoke like it was the ancient ancestral seat of the Marlowe family, not a spanking new gated mansion near Maidenhead paid for out of James’s 2006 bonus. I thought maybe I’d get an instructional speech about how hospitable James and Simone had been, but she was only thinking about the party.
‘Is everything ready for this evening?’
‘Yep. The caterers are here.’
‘How many are we catering for?’
I paused. ‘Er, I told them to cater for twenty.’
‘Twenty!’
‘We haven’t had too many RSVPs, Mum. I think a lot of people are away.’
‘Nonsense, Hattie. Please tell the caterers to double the numbers. What will it look like if we can’t feed our guests?’
‘I can’t tell them to double the numbers, Mum. They’ve already prepared the food, they’ve just brought it in from their van.’
‘From their van? The lobster thermidor?’ Her voice was shaking.
‘We didn’t go for the lobster thermidor in the end. Remember, Mum? We went for the miniature fish pies.’
‘Fish pies? But that’s entirely inappropriate. The Simpsons are coming.’ Clearly there was some reason why the Simpsons and fish pie combination was an abomination but I didn’t have time to fathom it just then.
‘Er, no, they’re not coming, Mum. They had another engagement.’
‘What engagement?’
‘Their granddaughter was singing in the school carol service.’
‘School carol service?’ She sounded old, then. Like one of those old people who can’t quite believe how far the world has gone to pot.
‘She had a solo or something. Listen, Mum, I have to go now. Lots to do. See you later.’
‘We’ll be there by five. Make sure it’s all sorted by then.’
I made my way up the stairs, threading fairy lights through the banisters and fixing them on with special fixings. I’m not sure what I was thinking about just at that point. I was probably hoping Mum would drink so much she’d forget about the menu. Or thinking how James would most likely settle down with the whisky decanter and get smashed too, with Simone spending most of the night checking her phone before disappearing upstairs.
So I was sitting on the stairs, between the first and second landing, fiddling with one of the fixings, when it happened. A shape, black as a raven’s wing, shearing down the edge of my peripheral vision. I whipped my head round just in time to see it drop out of my line of sight. But when I stood up to look down onto the floor of the hall below, there was nothing there but the tiles, swimming in my vision as if they’d lost their solid substance and turned to water.
I told myself it was a migraine and went to my room to find my pills.
Janey
Murray was talking now. He was on the end of the phone but he seemed far away, his words strange and drawn out. He’d told me that he was at the nursery, but he could’ve been talking from another planet. Or was it me on another planet? A strange, underwater world where nothing was quite reaching me.
I looked around myself. Yes, this was happening. Cleodie was driving my car. We were driving from Stirling back to Edinburgh because Pip was missing.
Missing.
‘Janey,’ Murray was saying.
Jaaaaayyyyneeeeee . . .
‘Are you listening? I know it’s hard to take in. But they’re not sure whether Pip was taken or whether he somehow managed to open the gate and wandered off. But one of the pre-school children said he saw Pip leaving with a woman. He described her as a “granny” with a long black coat. You’d better talk to the police.’
I almost laughed with relief. ‘Mutti! That must have been Mutti. Remember she wore that black coat with silver buttons to the parents’ evening? Did she think she was collecting Pip today?’
‘No, Janey,’ he said gently. ‘Gretel and Mutti are in Glasgow today for a charity lunch.’
‘It is,’ I insisted. ‘It’s bloody Mutti. Tell the police to find her. Now, Murray.’
‘You’re not making sense.’
‘It’s Mutti.’ My voice broke up in my desperation for it to be true. ‘Who else could it be? Who else would take him?’
‘Janey? The police want to talk to you now. I’m handing you over.’
I nodded.
Detective Sergeant somebody. I tried to answer the questions. To concentrate on what he was saying. Something about any relevant information . . . circulating descriptions . . . CCTV operatives.
I looked across at Cleodie and out of the window at the road signs going past. Yes, this was happening.
He was saying something about dog handlers now. And an item of clothing.
‘Mutti,’ I croaked. ‘I think Mutti’s taken him. Please . . .’
Something about lines of inquiry. Following up all leads . . .
I thought of how I’d watched Pip wake up this morning, his eyes wide and luminous from the instant they opened. He’d held out his arms to be lifted, relaxing his little pyjama-clad body onto the contours of mine as I carried him through to the kitchen. I thought of his demand for ‘milky’ murmured into my ear with a gust of sweet, sleepy breath, his absolute trust that I’d meet all of his needs as they presented themselves.
It struck me then that I should lock them down, those moments. Fix them into my memory so they couldn’t slip away. They might be the last ones. I tried to remember dropping him off at nursery, the exact moment when I’d kissed him, when I’d turned round to wave goodbye, and found I couldn’t.
I couldn’t.
Had I, then? Had I dropped him off at all? Had I been in such an absent-minded hurry this morning, thinking about driving to Stirling, that I’d rushed out of the flat and simply left him there in the hall, bewildered in his coat and boots? Or had I left him standing on the pavement as I’d shoved money into the parking machine near the nursery, and just driven off without taking him in?
No. Because he had been at nursery. The policeman had said so. He’d been there, and he’d been playing until . . .
Pinpricks of light were bursting into my vision.
Then Steve’s voice: Stop fighting. Let yourself float to the top.
I couldn’t float. I couldn’t. But one thought did, bursting to the surface in a bright clear bubble. Something from Emil’s letter:
Please also stay out of the vicinity of Little Goslings Nursery.
And then Steve’s words:
She likes to go on walks around the city: visiting her old haunts, remembering the old days, I suppose.
I forced my lips and tongue around the words. ‘It might be Esme Fortune.’
They prescribed the meds after she attacked that poor man.
‘She’s off the meds now.’ It came rushing out. ‘He told me. She’s off the meds. Please find him. God, please find him.’
The policeman had to ask me three times before I registered what he was saying:
‘Do you have an address?’
Hattie
I got Janey’s text and realised what all the butterflies had been for.
‘Pip’s gone missing from nursery.’
I texted back: ‘WHAT??’
‘Cleodie is driving me back. It might just be Miss Fortune.’
Wh
at might just be Miss Fortune?
I dialled Janey’s number. She told me that she needed to keep the phone line clear.
‘I want to help. Please Janey, how can I help? What can I do?’
‘Just stay there. I’ll phone you if I need anything.’ And then, in a voice that sounded like she was twelve: ‘Try and have an inkling, Hattie.’
Janey
Murray phoned me back. It could have been a minute later or twenty.
‘They’ve tried Miss Fortune’s flat. They rang the buzzer and got a neighbour to let them into the stair so they could check round the back, but there was nobody in. They’re trying to get her carers on the phone, but there’s some possibility she may be away. The neighbour said that her son was round yesterday. He mentioned something about a trip away, cancelling the usual carers.’
‘Her son? She doesn’t have a son.’
‘Fuck, Janey.’ I heard his voice crack for the first time. He was on the verge of tears. ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.’
His panic, somehow, calmed me. It didn’t matter if he fell apart. I was Pip’s best chance. I was.
Keep floating.
As we drove south, a thought kept intruding through the blur.
Norway.
If Miss Fortune had him, where would she have taken him? I tried not to think of cold, grey swirling water as we drove over the Forth Road Bridge. I tried not to think of canals.
Fjords.
Stupid. How would an ancient, demented woman smuggle a toddler out of the country to the Norwegian fjords?
Argenteuil . . . blossom . . .
And suddenly I realised. The evening-class fliers I’d seen in the nursery, with their little Monet thumbnail: a line of trees along the Seine, the shadows cutting across the water. ‘A Riot of Light’. Miss Fortune would’ve left them there. It would have been one of the ‘little jobs’ Steve had given her.
I could see her face in my mind now – that knowing snarl when I’d got my fingering wrong or forgotten the name of some key composer – and my childhood terror flared up, as real as it had ever been. It was as though she’d led me to him. Right into his arms. Into his trap.
