by cass green
Early summer in the kitchen. Buttery yellow light.
The radio is playing ‘Hotel California’ by the Eagles. Marianne is up to her elbows in suds at the sink. Lucas is at the table, drawing, and he and Angel are waiting for the cakes to come out of the oven, barely able to hold their excitement. Lucas’s leg is jiggling under the table. It does this sometimes when his feelings want to spill out but it’s OK today. He won’t get smacked for fidgeting. He is away.
Angel is nagging about how long they are waiting. Marianne throws a bit of foam at her and tells her to ‘hold her horses’. This could be enough to send Angel into a tantrum on another day and for a moment he clenches inside, hoping she won’t spoil it. But Angel giggles, infected by the atmosphere, and he relaxes again. There won’t be any shouting today. No one will be hurt, or sad. He won’t get the horrible cold feeling in his stomach when things go bad.
Lucas is thinking about how they might decorate the cakes. His tongue pokes out the side of his mouth, as it does when he is concentrating. Angel teases him but he can’t really help it. It just pops out of its own accord.
He’s drawing a design in crayon, a smiley face with yellow hair and blue eyes. He hopes Marianne will recognize who it is. He could never make it as pretty as she is though.
She’s not like other mums. No one else looks like her. No one else’s mummy lets their child call them by their first name either, or sometimes lets them stay off school on a sunny day so they can go for a picnic.
Secretly, Lucas only wants to call her Mummy. But he can’t tell Angel this because she will say he is a big baby.
Angel starts to join in the singing in her funny tuneless voice. Marianne goes to her and then Lucas, taking their hands in her wet, soapy ones. Lucas giggles like a maniac. He can’t stop. He thinks he might pee. It’s almost unbearable, the happy feeling.
He’s eating the cakes now but he can’t really taste them so he crams more and more of them into his mouth. Something has shifted and everything feels cold.
With a queasy lurch Lucas comes to, his heart beating fast. His ribs hurt and when he goes to move into an upright position, he discovers new places that are sore too.
He can’t believe he actually dropped off, even though he still feels a deep exhaustion in his bones.
Alice.
She fills his head now. He squeezes his fists into his temples as if he can physically grind the memories away.
Alice in her leotard and that soft, fluffy cardigan that did up in a complicated way across her narrow ribcage. She always wore it to do her stretches. He would watch, from the garden, as he dug and weeded and cut grass, calmed by her movements, but a little frightened too about what he was doing. He had never seen anyone move as gracefully as her as she bowed and dipped, her limbs flowing through the air with a languidness that made it look as though she were in water.
Alice, lying on her back on the kitchen floor, arm bent at a strange angle, eyes sightless. Bright blood pooling from her stomach.
He’s dimly aware that the baby is crying again in the other room. The woman speaks to it in a high-pitched, sing-song tone, a bit panicky. He can’t see how that would calm anyone down.
He pulls a cushion onto his head, squashing it down to try and deaden the sound.
16
Nina
The baby starts to cry again, a piercing wail that increases the tension in the room even further. Angel mutters, ‘Fuck’s sake,’ and I rise quickly, ready to go to him, but she is faster.
She scoops him up and almost shoves him against her shoulder, her face sour. Every harsh pat she lands against the baby’s back sends a thrill of worry through me. I want to beg her to be gentle with him, yet I’m scared of winding her up even more. That sense of her being like an unexploded device seems even keener every time the baby cries. I find that I’m taking such short, stressed breaths that I’m almost panting and I force myself to try and calm down. I’m no good to anyone like this.
Lucas comes into the room then, hands raking his hair, his face scrunched.
‘Shit,’ he says, ‘I dropped off.’ He slumps back onto the sofa and looks ahead with a desolate expression. He seems unaware of the miserable sounds still coming from the infant.
‘The baby needs milk,’ I say, averting my eyes from him. I don’t want to look at him. Don’t want to think about what he might have done. ‘It won’t take long.’
I busy my shrieking mind and shaking hands with getting the milk bottle and teat into the pan to boil again. Soon the kitchen is filled with two sounds only: the baby’s plaintive cries and the hard rattle of the plastic bottle against the pan.
Lucas gets to his feet and reaches for a half-eaten piece of bread and houmous that lies on the end of the table. He winces and touches his belly experimentally, watched as ever by Angel. I look away again. I can’t stop thinking about the words, ‘stabbed multiple times’ and ‘kidnap’. I wonder if he has made a call in the other room, setting out demands for the return of the child.
I try to focus on the right-now, staring at the bottle rattling in the pan, but all I can see in my mind’s eye is a young woman lying bleeding on the floor while her baby screams. I think again about the blood that had caked Lucas’s hands on his arrival. The victim must be – must have been – someone with money. Why else would the baby be kidnapped?
At last I can fill the hot, sterilized bottle with the pre-prepared milk and swish it around, hoping the warmth of the bottle will permeate the liquid inside. I fret briefly about whether to microwave it or not. Is it still too cold for him to drink? All this knowledge feels somehow beyond my reach. It’s like the early days of parenthood again, when we would look at the small bundle in his bouncy chair with something akin to terror. But then familiarity began to kick in and soon everything felt like second nature. It strikes me that the whole business of parenthood is a kind of loan. I’m too tired and upset to work out whether this is profound or the kind of naff thing you might see on a greetings card.
Anyway, the baby is too frantic for me to wait any longer.
‘Do you want to do this?’ I say to Angel and she gives a little shudder and says, ‘God, no,’ just as I hoped.
She holds him towards me like a bag of potatoes and I carefully take him into my arms. Making gentle soothing nonsense sounds, I sit on the sofa and position him into the crook of my arm. His lips enclose the teat and he gulps and slurps greedily, fathomless dark eyes trained on my face. I can both feel and hear the thin buzzing of air in the bottle as the milk leaves and the air enters. I really had forgotten how heavy small babies can be. My arm is quickly aching.
It doesn’t take long for him to drain the bottle. I lift him over my shoulder and rub his back in small circles. When the loud burp comes, I feel a sense of satisfaction. I’ve finally done the right things for this small, helpless person who has somehow come to be in my care.
In no time, he has dropped off to sleep.
I close my eyes, suddenly tearful at the thought that he has no mother. And to actually be there, as I presume he was, when she was murdered. Hopefully he is just too young for it to mean anything. Unless a mother’s safety is hard-wired into a baby’s brain somehow.
Glancing over, I see Angel and Lucas in deep conversation over by the sink. He seems to be refusing to do something because I catch an anguished ‘No, no,’ but Angel is emphatic, her large eyes wide and cheeks flushed.
She seems to be the brains of all this, if you can call it that. She constantly looks at her phone. Maybe she is waiting to discuss ransom.
Murder, kidnap, ransom. The words seem to clang inside my head like the pealing of a furiously rung bell. I cannot believe these concepts have become part of my life. Panic feels near again and I make myself take slow, deep breaths, counting to six as I do so. I can’t freak out. If I’m in control, there is more chance that they – those horrible people – will be too.
Carefully, I lay the baby down on my lap, head at my knees, his feet touching my sto
mach. I can feel the heat coming off him.
My mind buzzes. Must find a way to alert someone about what is going on here. But how?
Then I remember something and my head shoots up sharply, I can’t stop myself. But neither Angel nor Lucas is looking at me, thankfully.
I’ve always liked the thought of acting, but didn’t expect it to happen like this. I’m in charge of the school plays and that’s as far as it goes. Ian used to try and get me to join the local AmDram club, but I’m far too shy.
This, though, will require all my skills.
Come on, I think. Have to make this work.
I lower my head and let out a small groan. After a few moments, I sense eyes on me from across the room.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ says Angel finally.
I look up with a grimace.
‘It’s my stomach,’ I say quietly. ‘I don’t feel well.’
Angel regards me and then looks around the kitchen. ‘Are you going to throw up? D’you want a plastic bowl or something?’
I shake my head and lower my eyes. ‘It’s not that kind of upset,’ I say, in a small, ashamed voice. ‘I … I need to go to the toilet.’
Angel sighs and gives a small twist of her lips.
‘Right,’ she says, ‘come on then. I’ll have to come with you. Lucas, watch the baby.’
I reluctantly lift the sleeping child and hand him to Lucas, whose pale hands tremble as he takes him from me. I try not to look at his fingers, now scrubbed clean.
Angel and I climb the stairs in silence. When we get to the bathroom door, I gesture as though asking Angel to go in first.
‘Fuck off!’ says Angel. ‘I don’t want to watch you take a shit, thanks very much. I think it’s probably alright to do this on your own.’
She peers into the bathroom and gives it a cursory once-over and my heart stops for a moment. Then, miraculously, I am inside, alone.
Gently, I pull the small bolt across. It’s only been there for a few weeks, added because Sam had begun to complain lately that we had no bathroom lock. It’s so new it glides into place almost silently.
It’s a relatively new thing, this modesty. I still remember when he would run around the upstairs rooms after his bath, shouting, ‘Nudie! Nudie!’ at the top of his lungs. Then he would collapse in a heap in my arms, giggling, and I’d wrap the lanky, bony limbs in a fluffy towel and kiss his sweet-smelling neck. But now he is becoming self-conscious about his body, and even though he hasn’t hit puberty yet, it won’t be long until the metamorphosis into sullen teen begins, I know.
Inside the bathroom, I reach for the iPad under my dressing gown on the stool. I’d forgotten to turn it off earlier, but there’s still plenty of charge left.
What can you do online in an emergency? There’s no virtual 999 that I can see after a quick search. You can report a crime but when I load the Met Police page I see that it is not for anything urgent. There are about twenty questions and I have no time.
What to do? My mind is coming up blank. Facebook? Everyone would think I’d gone mad. And that might cause a friend to come over and put themselves in danger too.
I could email someone. But none of my friends are likely to spot emails that quickly. And Ian will be in holiday mode, so not checking.
Think, Nina.
I tap on Twitter and look up a local news site, quickly finding mentions of the crime at Foxbury.
Victim’s husband is the famous war correspondent Nick Quinn, I read on one tweet. He has asked for the public to pass on any leads about his missing baby son, Zach.
I know him. He was a familiar face for many years on the BBC, reporting from various conflict zones. I think he might have a new book out because I saw something in the paper the other day.
Zach. That’s the little mite’s name. For some reason, knowing this drenches me with sadness. I force myself to concentrate.
The sharp rap at the door makes me almost cry out.
‘Are you nearly done in there?’ Angel sounds impatient.
There’s no time …
‘I think so, sorry,’ I say. Hastily pulling down my shorts and knickers, I pee, simultaneously hunting for Quinn’s profile on Twitter, which I quickly find.
@NQuinnWarReporter
I tap out a private message. Even though he doesn’t follow me, it seems I can.
Your baby is here. I am also hostage, They have a gun.
I’m just typing out the address with panic-clumsy fingers as Angel bangs on the door again.
‘You’re very quiet in there. What are you doing?’ The door handle turns and Angel gives a bark of indignation as she discovers it is locked. ‘Hey, open this door right now!’
‘Sorry! Just coming!’
I shove the iPad into the bathroom cupboard and flush as Angel begins to pound on the door.
Washing my hands quickly I hastily unbolt the door. Angel almost falls through, face flushed and expression sour.
‘Why did you lock it? What were you doing in there?’ she says petulantly. I force myself to look her squarely in the eye.
‘You said yourself you didn’t want to watch me taking a shit, Angel.’
Angel studies me for a moment, makes a grumpy sound in her throat, and turns away.
‘Well, I hope you’ve got it out of your system now.’
‘Yes,’ I say quietly, ‘I think so.’
17
Nina
The baby is asleep, making the kind of grunty, snuffly sounds I remember from Sam’s early days.
One night we couldn’t stop laughing because our son appeared to be neighing like a horse. It hurts to remember this. All the good memories – and there are many of them – feel rinsed in dirty colours now, their innocent happiness tainted. Since Ian left I have been turning them over in my mind, endlessly asking myself whether I should have seen the signs of what was to come earlier.
My mind unhelpfully flips to a night a month or so before he told me about Laura. It was a Friday evening and Sam was on a sleepover. We were a bit tipsy on gin and tonics. I was cooking, and we were playing lots of the eighties indie music we bonded over in our early days. Ian had been quiet and sad lately, but he seemed happier that night. As I watched him singing tunelessly along to ‘In Between Days’ by The Cure, his eyes scrunched in bliss, I had felt such a sense of peace and rightness with the world. Now I think maybe he was picturing himself in bed with her the whole time. A fresh wave of pain assaults me and something else too. Anger. How dare he mess everything up.
This should be the least of my worries, right now, anyway. Ian seems far away, part of another life where I took the most basic things – like being safe – for granted.
The little boy – Zach, he’s called Zach – has his arms thrust out, bent at the elbows, his face turned away towards the back of the sofa. His chest rises and falls at speed. For a moment, I wonder what would happen if he became ill here. Would they allow him to go to hospital?
Lucas has retired to the sitting room again. I saw him as I’d passed, clenched into a comma shape on the sofa. His chin was tucked into his chest and I could see only his dark curls, his face hidden. He looked vulnerable like this, barely more than a teenager. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t capable of terrible things.
I go to the kettle yet again and fill it with water from the tap.
‘Do you want a hot drink?’ I say, flatly.
Angel says, ‘Do you have any vodka?’
I shake my head. ‘I have some gin,’ I say. ‘Or wine.’
‘Yeah, go on, I’ll have a gin,’ says Angel and then yawns luxuriously, her thin arms stretching above her head, so her bangles click together as they fall. When she speaks again her voice is restricted by the last vestiges of the yawn.
‘You got anything to go in it? Tonic?’
I clench the muscles in my jaw and silence the sarcastic response that forms in my mouth: Fevertree alright for you?
I’m too tired to work out whether giving Angel alcohol will make
things better or worse. I just pour the drink and make it neither weak nor generous. After adding tonic, I place the glass on the table in front of Angel, half expecting a request to come for ice and a slice. But Angel grabs it with a small grunt and takes a long drink, her eyes closed for a moment.
I make myself tea and watch her surreptitiously as she gets out her phone and scrolls through it, occasionally taking sips of her gin and tonic.
She is so striking, with her large eyes flicked with thick black liner and her strong Roman nose. The full lips, which she is currently chewing, her face suddenly tight and anxious about whatever she is reading on her screen.
I bring my cup of tea to the table and sit at the opposite end.
‘Dickhead,’ says Angel quietly, evidently to her phone. I sip my tea before replying.
‘Something wrong?’ I say carefully, aware how strange it is to be asking my jailor this question.
Angel looks up and I see, with surprise, that her eyes are glistening. She takes a savage gulp of the gin and then puts the glass back on the table before slapping her large hands flat before her. She wears a silver thumb ring that clacks against the wooden surface, loud as a gunshot in the quiet kitchen. We both flinch slightly at the sound and the baby jerks in his sleep, grunting a little before becoming still again.
Then I wait.
‘Just my fuckwit of a boyfriend,’ says Angel finally. ‘Ex, I mean.’
She lifts the glass again and drains the last of her drink. All her movements seem to have this jerky violence to them; she goes from perfect stillness to angry animation in a way that unsettles me.
But if I can get Angel to open up a little, surely it can only be a good thing?
‘Have you been together long?’ I ask gently and immediately regret it because Angel’s eyes seem to jolt back to mine, her nostrils flaring. Then her face seems to soften. She rubs it, two-handed, with a loud sigh of weariness.
‘Too fucking long,’ she says. ‘He’s an idiot.’ My gaze falls to her wrists, still hidden. Hard to imagine anyone intimidating Angel. But then she is still no match for a man’s strength.
