“He has no legal claim over the twins.”
“And neither do you!”
“I know that, sir,” I whisper.
“If Samira Khan decides that she doesn’t want the babies, they will be taken into care and placed with foster parents.”
“I know. I’m not doing this for me.”
“Are you sure of that?”
It’s an accusation not a question. My motives are under fire again. Perhaps I’m deluding myself. I can’t afford to believe that. I won’t.
My mobile phone is vibrating in my pocket. I flip it open.
“I might have found her,” says Dave. “But there’s a problem.”
12
The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital is on the third floor above the delivery suites and maternity ward. Amid low lights, soft footsteps and the hum of machines there are fifteen high-domed incubators.
The unit manager is two paces ahead of me and Dave two paces behind. Our hands are washed with disinfectant and mobile phones have been turned off.
Passing the nearest crib, I look down. It appears to be empty except for a pink blanket and a teddy bear sitting in the corner. Then I notice an arm, no thicker than a fountain pen, emerge from beneath the blanket. Fingers curl and uncurl. Eyes remain shut. Tubes are squashed into a tiny nose, pushing rapid puffs of air into immature lungs.
The manager pauses and waits. Perhaps people do that a lot—stop, stare and pray. It’s only then that I notice the faces on the far side of the crib, distorted by the glass.
I look around. There are other parents sitting in the semidarkness, watching and waiting; talking in whispers. I wonder what they say to each other. Do they look at other cribs and wonder if that baby is stronger or sicker or more premature. Not all of the newborns can possibly survive. Do their parents secretly pray, “Save mine! Save mine!”
We have reached the far end of the NICU. Chairs beside the crib are empty. A nurse sits on a high stool at a control screen, monitoring the machines that monitor a child.
At the center of a plain white sheet is a baby girl, wearing just a nappy. She is smaller than I remember, yet compared to some of the premature babies in the NICU she is twice their size. Small pads are stuck to her chest, picking up her heartbeat and her breathing.
“Claudia was brought in last night,” explains the ward manager. “She has a serious lung infection. We’re giving her antibiotics and feeding her intravenously. The device on her leg is a blood gas monitor. It shines light through her skin to see how much oxygen is in her blood.”
“Is she going to be all right?”
She takes a moment to choose her words. The delay is enough to terrify me. “She’s stable. The next twenty-four hours are very important.”
“You called her Claudia.”
“That’s the name we were given.”
“Who gave it to you?”
“The woman who came in with her in the ambulance.”
“I need to see the admission form.”
“Of course. If you come to the office I’ll print you a copy.”
Dave is staring through the glass. I can almost see his lips moving, breathing as the baby breathes. Claudia has captured his attention, even though her eyes are fused shut by sleep.
“Do you mind if I stay for a while?” he asks, directing the question as much to me as to the ward manager. Every other patient in the unit has someone sitting alongside them. Claudia is alone. It doesn’t seem right to him.
Retracing our steps, I follow the manager to her office.
“I called Social Services this morning,” she says. “I didn’t expect the police.”
“What made you call?”
“I wasn’t happy with some of the answers we were getting. Claudia arrived just after midnight. At first the woman said she was the baby’s nanny. She gave the mother’s name as Cate Beaumont. Then she changed her story and said that Claudia had been adopted, but she couldn’t give me any details of the adoption agency.”
She hands me the admission form. Claudia’s date of birth is listed as Sunday, October 29. The mother’s name is written down as Cate Elizabeth Beaumont. The address is Cate’s fire-damaged house.
Why give Cate’s name? How did she even know about her?
“Where is this woman now?”
“One of our consultants wanted to talk to her. I guess she panicked.”
“She ran?”
“She made a phone call. Then she walked out.”
“What time was that?”
“About 6:00 a.m.”
“Do you know who she called?”
“No, but she used my phone.”
She points to her desk. The phone console is a command unit, with a memory of the most recently dialed numbers. A small LCD screen displays the call register. The ward manager identifies the number and I hit the redial button.
A woman answers.
“Hello?”
“This is Queen Charlotte’s Hospital,” I say. “Someone called your home from this number early this morning.”
She doesn’t answer but in the silence I recognize a sound. I’ve heard it before—the squeak of wheels on parquetry floor.
I don’t have Ruiz’s photographic memory or his mother’s gifts for telling fortunes. I don’t even know if I have a particular methodology. I put facts together randomly. Sometimes leaping ahead or trying things out for size. It’s not very efficient and it can’t be taught but it works for me.
The woman speaks again. Nervously. “You must have the wrong number.”
It’s an officious voice, precise, not quite public school. I have heard it often enough, albeit a decade ago, berating her husband for coming home late smelling of shampoo and shower gel.
The line has gone dead. Ruth Elliot has hung up. Simultaneously, there is a knock on the door. A nurse smiles apologetically and whispers something to the ward manager, who looks at me.
“You asked about the woman who brought in Claudia. She didn’t run away. She’s downstairs in the cafeteria.”
A pressure pad opens the doors automatically. The cafeteria is small and bright with white-flecked tables to hide the crumbs. Trays are stacked near the doors. Steam rises from the warming pans.
A handful of nurses are picking up sandwiches and cups of tea—healthy options in a menu where everything else comes with chips.
Yvonne is squeezed into a booth, with her head resting on her forearms. For a moment I think she might be asleep, but her head lifts and she blinks at me wetly. A low moan escapes and she lowers her head. The pale brown of her scalp is visible where her gray hair has started to thin.
“What happened?”
“I did a foolish, foolish thing, cookie,” she says, talking into the crook of her arm. “I thought I could make her better, but she kept getting sicker and sicker.”
A shuddering breath vibrates through her frame. “I should have taken her to a doctor but Mr. and Mrs. Elliot said that nobody could ever know about Cate’s baby. They said people wanted to take Claudia away and give her to someone she don’t belong to. I don’t know why people would do something like that. Mr. and Mrs. Elliot didn’t explain it so good, not sufficient for me to understand, you know.”
She draws back, hoping I might comprehend. Her eyes are wet and crumbs have stuck to her cheek.
“I knew Cate weren’t having no baby,” she explains. “She didn’t have no baby inside her. I know when a woman is with child. I can see it in her eyes and on her skin. I can smell it. Sometimes I can even tell when a woman’s having another man’s baby, on account of the skin around her eyes, which is darker ’cos she’s frightened her husband might find out.
“I tried to say something to Mrs. Elliot but she called me crazy and laughed. She must have told young Cate ’cos she avoided me after that. She wouldn’t come to the house if I was working.”
Details shiver and shift, finding their places. Events are no longer figments or mysteries, no longer part
of my imagining. Barnaby knew I was in Amsterdam. And even before I mentioned Samira he knew she was having twins. He read Cate’s e-mails and began covering her tracks.
At first he probably intended to protect his precious reputation. Later he and his wife came up with another plan. They would finish what Cate started. Barnaby contacted Shawcroft with a message: “Cate and Felix are dead but the deal isn’t.”
Why would Shawcroft agree? He had to. Barnaby had the e-mails. He could go to the police and expose the illegal adoptions and baby broking. Blackmail is an ugly word. So is kidnapping.
At the funeral Barnaby told me he was going to fight for the twins. “I want both of them,” he said. I didn’t realize what he meant. He already had one—Claudia. He wanted the boy. And his tirade at the lawyer’s office and the scene at my house weren’t just for show. He was frightened that he might be denied, if not by Samira, then by me.
The Elliots swore Yvonne to secrecy. They charged her with looking after Claudia and hopefully her brother if they could unite the twins. If the scandal unraveled and Shawcroft was exposed, they could play the grieving parents, trying to protect their daughter’s precious legacy, their grandchildren.
Yvonne accepted the heaviest burden. She couldn’t risk taking Claudia to a doctor. She tried her own remedies: running hot taps, filling the bathroom with steam, trying to help her breathe. She dosed her with droplets of paracetamol, rubbed her with warm flannels, lay awake beside her through the night, listening to her lungs fill with fluid.
Barnaby came to see the baby, his thumbs hitched in his belt and his feet splayed. He peered over the cot with a fixed smile, looking vaguely disappointed. Perhaps he wanted the boy—the healthy twin.
Meanwhile, Claudia grew sicker and Yvonne more desperate.
“I couldn’t take it anymore,” she whispers, lifting her gaze to the ceiling. “She was dying. Every time she coughed her body shook until she didn’t have the strength to cough. That’s when I called the ambulance.”
She blinks at me. “She’s going to die, isn’t she?”
“We don’t know that.”
“It’s going to be my fault. Arrest me. Lock me up. I deserve it.”
I want to stop her talking about death. “Who chose the name?”
“It’s Mrs. Elliot’s name.”
“Her first name is Ruth.”
“Her middle name. I know you don’t have much time for Mrs. Elliot but she’s harder on herself than she is on anyone else.”
What I feel most is resentment. Maybe that’s part of the process of grieving. Cate doesn’t feel as though she’s gone. I keep thinking that she’s just walked off in the middle of things and will come back presently and sort this mess out.
I have spent weeks delving into her life, investigating her movements and motives and I still don’t understand how she could have risked so much and endangered so many. I keep entertaining the hope that I’ll stumble upon the answer in some cache of her papers or a dusty bundle of letters. But I know it’s not going to happen. One half of the truth is lying upstairs, pinned like an insect to a glass display case. The other half is being looked after by Social Services.
It sounds preposterous but I’m still trying to justify Cate’s actions, trying to conjure up a friendship from the afterlife. She was an inept thief, a childless wife and a foolish dreamer. I don’t want to think about her anymore. She has spoiled her own memory.
“The police are going to need a statement,” I say.
Yvonne nods, wiping her cheeks.
She doesn’t stand as I leave. And although her face is turned to the window, I know she’s watching me.
“New Boy” Dave is still beside Claudia in the NICU, sitting forward on a chair, peering through the glass. We sit together. He takes my hand. I don’t know for how long. The clock on the wall doesn’t seem to change. Not even for a second. Perhaps that’s what happens in a place like this: time slows down. Every second is made to count.
You are a very lucky little girl, Claudia. Do you know why? You have two mothers. One of them you’ll never meet but that’s OK, I’ll tell you about her. She made some mistakes but I’m sure you won’t judge her too harshly. Your other mother is also very special. Young. Beautiful. Sad. Sometimes life can turn on the length of an eyelash, even one as small as yours.
The ward manager touches my shoulder. A police officer wants to talk to me on the phone.
Forbes sounds far away. “The Gallaghers have given a statement. I’m on my way to arrest Julian Shawcroft.”
“That’s good. I found the girl. She’s very sick.”
He doesn’t rant this time. “Who should we be talking to?”
“Barnaby Elliot and his wife, along with their housekeeper, Yvonne Moncrieffe.”
Behind me a door opens and I hear the sound of an electronic alarm. Through an observation window I notice curtains being drawn around Claudia’s crib.
The phone is no longer in my hand. Like everyone else I seem to be moving. I push through the curtains. Someone pushes me back and I stumble.
“What’s wrong? What are they doing?”
A doctor is issuing instructions. A hand covers Claudia’s face, holding a mask. A bag is squeezed and squeezed again. The mask is lifted briefly and a tube is slipped into her nose before being slowly fed into her lungs. White tape crosses her cheeks.
Dave has hold of my arm, trying to pull me away.
“What’s happening?”
“We have to wait outside.”
“They’re hurting her.”
“Let them do their job.”
This is my fault. My mistake. If I had been stronger, fitter, faster, I would have saved Claudia from Pearl. She would have gone straight to hospital instead of being smuggled off the ferry. She would never have gone to Yvonne or caught a lung infection.
Thoughts like this plague me as I count down the minutes—fifteen of them, stretched and deformed by my imagination. The door swings open. A young doctor emerges.
“What happened?”
“The blood gas monitor triggered the alarm. Her oxygen levels had fallen too low. She’s too weak to breathe on her own so we’ve put her on a ventilator. We’ll help her breathe for a while and see how strong she is tomorrow.”
The sense of relief saps what energy I have left and I feel suddenly dizzy. My eyes are sticky and I can’t get rid of the coppery taste in my mouth. I still haven’t told Samira and already my heart has been shredded.
13
Sometimes London is a parody of itself. Today is like that. The sky is fat and heavy and the wind is cold, although not cold enough to snow. Ladbrokes is offering 3 to 1 on a white Christmas in London. All it takes is a single snowflake to fall on the rooftop of the Met Office.
The bail hearing is today. I’m wearing my court clothes: a red pencil skirt, cream blouse and a short jacket that is cut well enough to have an expensive label but has no label at all.
Shawcroft has been charged with people trafficking, forced pregnancy and offenses under the Child Protection Act. The penalty for trafficking alone is up to fourteen years. More charges are pending, as well as possible extradition to the Netherlands.
Samira is sitting on the bed watching me apply my makeup. An overcoat lies across her lap. She has been dressed for hours, after waking early and praying. She won’t have to give evidence until the trial, which could be a year away, but she wants to come along for today’s hearing.
“Shawcroft is still only a suspect,” I say. “Under our legal system a suspect is innocent until proven guilty.”
“But we know he is guilty.”
“Yes but a jury has to decide that after hearing all the evidence.”
“What is bail?”
“A judge will sometimes let a defendant out of prison just until the trial if he or she promises not to run away or approach any of the witnesses. As a way of guaranteeing this, the judge will ask for a large amount of money, which the defendant won’t get back if he breaks the
law or doesn’t show up for the trial.”
She looks astonished. “He will pay the judge money?”
“The money is like a security deposit.”
“A bribe.”
“No, not a bribe.”
“So you are saying Brother could pay money and get out of jail.”
“Well, yes, but it’s not what you think.”
The conversation keeps going round in circles. I’m not explaining it very well.
“I’m sure it won’t happen,” I reassure her. “He won’t be able to hurt anyone again.”
It has been three weeks since Claudia left hospital. I still worry about her—she seems so small compared to her brother—but the infection has gone and she’s putting on weight.
The twins have become tabloid celebrities, Baby X and Baby Y, without first names or surnames. The judge deciding custody has ordered DNA tests on the twins and medical reports from Amsterdam. Samira will have to prove she is their mother and then decide what she wants to do.
Despite being under investigation, Barnaby has maintained his campaign for custody, hiring and sacking lawyers on a weekly basis. During the first custody hearing, Judge Freyne threatened to jail him for contempt for continually interjecting and making accusations of bias.
I have had my own hearing to deal with—a disciplinary tribunal in front of three senior officers. I tendered my resignation on the first day. The chairman refused to accept it.
“I thought I was making it easier for them,” I told Ruiz.
“They can’t sack you and they don’t want to let you go,” he explained. “Imagine the headlines.”
“So what do they want?”
“To lock you away in an office somewhere—where you can’t cause any trouble.”
Samira adjusts her breast pads and buttons her blouse. Four times a day she expresses milk for the twins, which is couriered to the foster family. She gets to see them every afternoon for three hours under supervision. I have watched her carefully, looking for some sign that she is drawing closer to them. She feeds, bathes and nurses them, giving the impression that she is far more accomplished and comfortable with motherhood than I could ever imagine myself being. At the same time her movements are almost mechanical, as though she is doing what’s expected of her rather than what she wants.
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