by cass green
I find myself thinking of Ian, trying to imagine how this night would have played out had he really been here. But I can’t. It’s all too odd and unexpected. How would anyone deal with a situation like this? What is the right thing to do?
I decide to change tack.
‘What about the restaurant? Think you’ll go back?’
Angel snorts derisively. ‘What, you mean when we all go back to our lives and carry on as though nothing has happened?’ she says. Then, ‘Look, I know what you’re trying to do, Nina. Get me talking. Wear me down a bit.’
She pauses and scrapes her fingers into her hairline, pulling her hair away from her face so that for a moment she looks younger, exposed. Then, ‘I’ve already said: this is nothing personal. I’m sorry it had to be you who got caught up in this because you seem like a nice woman, albeit it a little …’ she frowns, casting about for the right word. I hold my breath as I wait for it to come.
‘… beaten down.’
I look away, feeling something soft bruise inside me. It’s unexpected, how much this verdict hurts, even from an unpleasant stranger such as Angel. Is that really the face that I present to the world? When I was in that restaurant earlier, in my new dress and sandals, did I exude the whiff of a reject? If so, no wonder the date got off to a bad start. I try to remember what I did with my face when Carl arrived. Whether I smiled as though I meant it. Because after all, I hadn’t meant it.
A wave of pure anger at Ian, of all people, surges from nowhere. I’ve had one identity for so long: wife and mother. I’m no longer a wife and it won’t be that long until Sam doesn’t need me any more. What will be left? Teaching Shakespeare to uninterested teens and then coming home to drink too much wine?
I try to quash the terrible sadness blossoming inside me.
‘I’m not beaten down,’ I say, ashamed of how much I want to cry. Then I can’t stop myself from adding, ‘After all, I’m not the one with bruises on my arms.’
I wait for the sweary storm to rain down on me. But Angel doesn’t respond straight away. Then, to my great surprise, she shrugs and says, ‘Fair enough,’ before leaning back in her chair and looking around the kitchen. ‘But it’s not what you think.’
I keep the words ‘They all say that’ inside my head.
Emboldened a little, I lean forward, hands open before me in a gesture I hope looks friendly, lacking hostility.
‘Look, Angel, what is it that you are intending to do with the baby?’ I say. ‘So many people will be looking for him. You must know that there is only one way this can end … with you getting into a lot of trouble.’
Angel has begun to shake her head slowly in response but I press on. ‘If you want to just leave, right now, you and Lucas, I will wait for a bit before calling someone. I promise you. I’ll let you both get away.’
When Angel turns her attention back towards me, her eyes have that strange blankness again. It’s unnerving, like she has tuned into some other frequency. I know I’ve lost her again.
‘Look, just leave it, alright?’ she snaps. ‘I’ve had enough of you yacking on. We’ll do what we do when we do it, OK?’ At this she pats her pocket, clearly indicating the gun, and I feel another flash of fear. Then she looks at Zach. When she speaks again her voice is even louder. ‘Don’t think for one minute that getting into a cosy little chat with me means I won’t do absolutely anything I have to do to protect my brother. Do you understand?’
I nod, tightly.
I understand perfectly.
18
Lucas
There are a series of school photos on the mantelpiece, which, like a speeded-up film, show the ageing process of a boy with dark hair and glasses. He goes from cute and gap-toothed in a red polo shirt, to someone in a blazer and tie, with serious dark eyes and a guarded expression.
Lucas tries to imagine this boy’s life, living here with his nice mum and dad (where is the husband anyway? Angel seems convinced no one else is coming) and the worst things in his life being issues like not being picked for the football A team, or … well, he doesn’t even know. What kind of thing did worry kids like him?
Hard to imagine this lad knowing right away when to get the ice pack from the freezer or when a cup of tea and some paracetamol would be enough.
He thinks about a parents’ evening when he was in, what, maybe Year Five?
His teacher, a rather beautiful woman with a cloud of black hair called Miss Christou, had stared at Marianne before reassembling her features in a welcoming smile. It wasn’t the usual thing people did, reacting to her looks before seeing anything else about her. Not this time. It was the fact that Marianne had a long scarf all bunched around her neck, even though it was unseasonably warm for March. When she spoke, she only opened her mouth a tiny bit.
Miss Christou had wanted to talk to Marianne about Lucas’s quietness in class and his lack of engagement with his peers. Marianne had told his teacher they’d had a little bit of bad news at home – not true – and that things were beginning to settle down again. Lucas had stared at some chewing gum under the desk and tried to stop his leg from jiggling up and down. He didn’t want to meet his teacher’s eyes because he knew the pointlessly sympathetic look he would see there. It wasn’t as though she could do anything.
Before they left, Miss Christou had touched Marianne’s wrist and whispered something Lucas didn’t catch. Whatever it was had annoyed Marianne very much and she had stiffly thanked the teacher and then snapped at Lucas that it was time to go.
Now, he thinks Miss Christou said something like, ‘Help is out there if you need it,’ or given her the name of a shelter for battered women. He knows the humiliation of this would have almost trumped the pain in her neck and bruised jaw.
It would have been his last parents’ evening at that school. After that he was at Hadley Hall in a whole new circle of hell. Lying in his dormitory, listening to sniffs and farts and whispers from the other boys, he would wonder who was getting the ice packs ready now.
19
Nina
Zach is crying again, a plaintive, unhappy cry. I wish I had the skill, or familiarity with him, to understand what it signifies. Hunger? For breast milk perhaps, but surely not for formula milk. Isn’t that much more filling? Irritation pricks me and then I feel guilty. The poor little lamb. All he needs is his mum.
But I must be able to do something to help him.
I lift him and give his bottom a sniff but no, that isn’t the problem either. Trying to make soothing sounds I rub gentle circles into his back, feeling the delicate wings of his shoulder blades through the sleepsuit. The baby twists his head into my shoulder, giving short creaky gasps, and I breathe in his milky-biscuit scent. He’s so small but so dense and warm. He squidges his legs up high into his chest so I have to hold him a little tighter.
I’m exhausted.
A pale, violet-tinged light is filling the room now as the new day comes.
Angel has been silent for a few minutes, still engrossed in whatever was on her phone screen, but now she regards me and lights up a cigarette, smoke curling from the side of her mouth.
I can’t stop myself.
‘For God’s sake, Angel,’ I snap, ‘you can’t smoke a fag right next to a baby. Surely you know that?’
Angel swoops her eyes but gets up anyway and goes to the back door. She takes the key from her pocket and opens it, leaning half out. The air is cool now. Dawn can’t be far away. I try to imagine myself scooping up Zach and making a run for it.
But I’m too unfit. What if I tripped and fell? The baby could be seriously injured. And what if Angel really was prepared to use that gun? The fact is, I have absolutely no idea what is going on inside the heads of either of them. They could be capable of anything.
If I could only get my phone and call for help.
I think about the private message I sent to Nick Quinn. Looking at Twitter is probably the last thing he feels like right now, with his wife murdered and his baby kidnapped.
It was a stupid, pointless gesture.
I’ve been swaying gently on the spot while thinking and somehow this, combined with my palm circling the baby’s back, has quietened him again.
‘I think he might have a temperature,’ I say at literally the moment the idea comes to me. I hadn’t rehearsed the words. They just seemed to pop out of my mouth. ‘He’s a bit hot.’
Angel frowns and sucks on her cigarette before throwing it out the back door. She closes it again and locks it, carefully placing the key in her pocket again.
‘Let me,’ she says, coming closer. I recoil at the ashy smell of her so close to the baby. She places her bony hand over Zach’s head, cupping his scalp, as though this were the correct way to take a baby’s temperature.
‘Feels OK to me,’ she says with a shrug.
‘No,’ I say adamantly. ‘I think he might have a bit of a fever.’
Angel sits back at the table and regards me.
‘Haven’t you got any of that stuff … whatjacallit, Calpol?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘My son doesn’t have that any more. He has paracetamol.’ It actually hurts to mention Sam. I want him separate from what’s happening here. I don’t even want to say his name aloud. ‘And anyway,’ I add, ‘I don’t think he’s even old enough for Calpol yet.’
Angel thinks for a minute. ‘What about crushing tablets up?’ she says, looking pleased with her idea. ‘Maybe you could put them in his milk?’
I feel my throat tighten. The potential for disaster, if these two were left in charge of the baby, is huge. I’m not even sure Angel actually means the things she says. But that makes her even more difficult, scarier, to deal with.
I take a breath, trying to stop myself from shouting at her. When I speak, my voice comes out clenched.
‘You could kill him doing something like that.’ My heartbeat starts to thud in my ears. ‘You mustn’t ever, ever give adult medicines to a baby.’
‘God, keep your hair on,’ says Angel, her expression mutinous. ‘It was only a suggestion.’ She pauses. ‘Anyway, he’s probably fine. We’re all a bit too hot, aren’t we?’
It’s true, but the temperature is more comfortable than it has been for weeks now, in the early hours of the morning, after the freshening rain. I decide to leave this for now. Maybe I’ve planted a seed that could bloom later.
If I have the nerve to take it further.
I turn away to sit on the sofa with Zach.
‘Well, I’m just giving you a heads-up, that’s all,’ I say. ‘I know from experience that when babies get sick, it’s very dynamic. They can go from right as rain to really poorly in no time.’
Angel eyes me as I position Zach in the crook of my elbow.
My eyes are gritty and sore from not having slept. My knees hurt from running earlier and my arms ache from the unaccustomed weight of the baby.
It seems Zach doesn’t like this change of position, because he starts to flail his arms and legs. A piercing cry of misery fills the air again and his bottom lip trembles with its force. Oh God, I’d completely forgotten what hard work small babies are. How you only ever get the giggling, gurgling, holding-toes times on television and films. I hadn’t remembered the grinding relentlessness of constant care for a defenceless human.
‘Shh, shh,’ I say, re-positioning him a little exasperatedly. ‘It’s OK, it’s OK, Zach.’
I freeze the second the word leaves my mouth. I think I might have got away with it but now Angel’s head is up and she turns, meerkat-like, towards me.
My face burns as I fuss with the baby and pretend I haven’t seen her. Then she is right there next to me, and I gasp in shock. She glares down, arms by her sides, fists clenched and pressed against her thighs as though struggling to control them.
‘What the fuck?’ Angel’s voice is shrill and loud over the baby’s screaming. ‘How do you know its name? I didn’t tell you. I didn’t even know its name.’
Fear and a strange anger wash over me all at once.
‘He!’ I say pointlessly. ‘Stop saying “it”. He’s a he. A person.’
Angel blinks, apparently wrong-footed for a moment. ‘I don’t care about that!’ she yells, making me instinctively pull the squirming baby boy closer. Zach seems to be shocked into silence by the shouting. I place him against my shoulder and whisper shh-ing sounds, feeling him pant quickly against my hand.
I make myself meet her hostile eyes with defiance.
‘I heard someone talking about it in the garage,’ I say, thinking quickly.
Angel holds my gaze for at least ten seconds before saying, ‘I don’t believe you.’
Lucas comes into the room now, rubbing red-rimmed eyes. His hair is tousled, and he looks very young for a moment. I think of Sam when he’s all rumpled by sleep and yet again I wish I could keep my son out of my thoughts. Just for tonight. Just until this, whatever this is, is over.
‘What’s going on?’ he says quietly.
‘I think she’s told someone,’ says Angel and Lucas’s eyes go wide.
‘What?’ he says, ‘Shit! Oh shit!’ He looks as though he might cry as he begins to cast his gaze around the room, like the answer to his predicament might be visible there.
My mind is whirring. If they bolt now, I might never have to see them again. I’d be free. But can I really let these two people leave, taking this helpless baby? No, not when they are so useless. Plus, Lucas might be a violent, dangerous man. Not to mention her.
‘You must believe me,’ I say, voice quivering a bit. ‘I didn’t speak to a soul. I overheard someone in the garage who—’
But I don’t get to finish the sentence because Angel says, ‘I left you alone in that bathroom, didn’t I? Fuck!’
She almost runs out of the room and then I hear the thud of her feet on the landing above. Lucas is staring at me, then I realize it is Zach who has his attention. His expression is odd – soft, perhaps? I feel a flicker of something hopeful. Then, yet again, I remember with a rush that Lucas may have brutally murdered Zach’s mother.
I try to suppress my disgust and fear when I appeal to him.
‘Lucas,’ I say quickly. ‘This is all wrong, you know this. You know that you can’t—’
‘Got you,’ says Angel, coming back into the room and holding up the iPad in triumph. ‘Bet you thought you were very clever, didn’t you?’ Her accent seems to slip now and then and a certain RP clippedness seeps through. I realize her regular accent is more Mockney than genuine. Why is she pretending? She doesn’t speak like her brother. It’s as if she is trying to be someone entirely different.
Angel sits down at the table and places the iPad in front of her.
‘PIN,’ she demands sharply. ‘Don’t fuck me about either. I’m not in the mood.’
Resignedly, I tell her the number to unlock the iPad. I haven’t the nerve for a standoff over it. Is there a way to recover a deleted tweet? What will they do when they find out I sent out a virtual distress beacon, albeit with not much chance of success?
Please don’t have replied, I think.
Although if he has, it will mean help is on its way. Maybe Angel and Lucas have asked for a ransom. Maybe, if the police came bursting into the room right now, Zach would get hurt. I swallow down my dread; my mouth is dry and my tongue feels thick.
Angel taps away and glances up at me, suspiciously. I can only wait, while Zach mewls miserably in my arms.
A few minutes later she looks up, a sly expression on her face.
‘Well?’ says Lucas, voice sharp with panic.
‘I don’t think she emailed anyone,’ says Angel. ‘I checked her deleted messages. I’ve looked on Twitter and Facebook too.’
I try to hide the flush of relief I feel that the deleted private message wasn’t visible. But I can’t help thinking that she knows something, all the same.
‘I told you,’ I say, stiffly, hoping I have managed the right degree of righteous indignation. Zach snuffles and twists into my neck as though trying to bur
row away from here. I know how he feels. ‘I heard someone in the garage talking about it,’ I say. ‘That’s all.’
‘If you’re lying …’ It’s perhaps the first time Lucas has spoken to me directly.
My cheeks flush treacherously but I make myself look into his toffee-coloured eyes.
‘I’m not lying,’ I say and quickly construct a scene in my mind. ‘I heard a conversation, that’s all. I just put two and two together.’ The other two remain silent, glaring at me and I feel a dropping sensation in my stomach that forces more words out of my mouth. ‘And anyway, there is no harm in me knowing that, is there? At least I know what to call the little mite now.’
I tip my chin defiantly, as they exchange glances.
‘Angel, I think we should go,’ says Lucas sharply. ‘Right now.’
Hope leaps in my chest.
‘Yes, why don’t you do that,’ I say hurriedly. ‘Leave Zach here and go. Just get away.’
Angel is looking at me with an odd, half-amused expression.
‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t think she did tell anyone. You wouldn’t endanger him, would you?’ she says, nodding towards Zach. ‘Especially not when you’re feeling so … broody.’
‘What does that mean?’ My breath huffs in noisy outrage for a few moments before I can continue. ‘I wouldn’t ever want a baby to be in danger. No decent human being would!’ And then I can’t stop myself from adding, ‘And I’m certainly not broody.’
‘No?’ says Angel and her eyes are bright with malice now. ‘But all this business with your ex is really getting to you, isn’t it?’
This brings an almost physical thud in the pit of my stomach.
‘What are you talking about?’ I say, but I know.
Angel turns the iPad round and I see Messenger is open to my exchange with Carmen. My cheeks burn. This feels like a personal invasion too far. It’s not that logical, but there it is. I’ve been threatened with a gun tonight, but having my weak places prodded and poked like this feels even worse.
