by Jane Holland
I stare at her, and wonder for the first time if it could be a couple behind Harry’s abduction. Hard to believe though. Surely one would get cold feet and give themselves up to the police in the end? But then I remember Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, their fierce loyalty to each other, and shudder.
Perhaps a couple is actually worse, if it leads to obsession.
Her aunt speaks at last. ‘Either way though,’ Kate says, her disapproving look aimed at me, ‘I don’t think it was a good idea to antagonise them. They’ve got our babies, remember? They could do anything they like to them.’ Her eyes fill with tears. ‘You know, out of revenge for what you said.’
‘I didn’t mean to say it,’ I tell them, feeling awful. ‘Honestly, it wasn’t rehearsed. It just came out.’
Jon loops his arm about my waist, as though in support of my statement. ‘What my wife means to say is that she’s very sorry. She was angry and scared. And because of that, she made a mistake.’
He looks round at them all, then settles on Jack Penrose’s face. Maybe he thinks he’s the leader, if there can be such a thing in this dubious club we’ve joined.
‘I’m sure you can understand that,’ he continues smoothly. ‘When somebody’s frightened, they often say things they regret afterwards. All those journalists, the cameras . . . It’s only human to be a little knocked off balance.’
Heather exclaims, ‘Absolutely,’ instantly sympathetic. She turns to me with a forgiving smile. ‘I felt the same when I did my appeal. If Kate hadn’t been there . . .’
Her aunt squeezes her shoulder and Heather falls silent.
‘It was quite an intimidating experience, I have to admit,’ Kate remarks. ‘But Heather and I got through it with a little careful preparation. It’s just a question of staying calm.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and wish Jon had not made it so obvious that I had not apologised before. It wasn’t very helpful, as they now look at me without much interest, as though my apology has lost all validity by not being given at once. ‘I’m not very good at being calm under pressure. I’ve always been a bit . . .’
‘Hare-brained,’ Jon supplies with a wry smile for their benefit when I hesitate, and Jack Penrose gives a grudging laugh.
‘I was going to say easily panicked,’ I mutter, but nobody is listening.
‘Well, I suppose that’s some kind of excuse,’ Serena Penrose is saying, and everyone looks at her instead, taking the attention off me. I should probably be relieved by Jon’s intervention, but instead I feel ridiculous and unimportant. Like a child who has misbehaved in the company of adults. ‘It was still potentially damaging though. As Kate here says, this sick person who’s taken our children can do whatever she likes to them. And we can’t lift a finger to stop her. So using a press conference to threaten her life is the very worst thing you could have done.’
Her husband adds deeply, ‘Look at what happened to that other poor boy.’
‘Charlie,’ his wife whispers.
‘That’s right, Charlie Pole. The remains they found in the field.’
My stomach clenches.
I’m going to hunt you down and kill you.
Jon is looking horrified. ‘God, yes. That was appalling. We saw it on the telly, but we didn’t know his name. The police wouldn’t tell us.’
I remember driving out there like a lunatic. The cold stretch of the fields, the sea in the distance, the mud, the creaking gate . . .
‘The Pole family want to keep things quiet while they arrange the funeral. The press have respected their privacy so far. Not sure how long that will last, of course. You know what those vultures are like. I expect it will be all over the papers in another day or two.’ Jack shakes his head. ‘But everyone knows locally, of course. Such a lovely young family, Cornish born and bred. And now they’ve lost their baby son.’
‘That’s right,’ his wife agrees. ‘And we don’t want to lose ours. You know what I’m saying?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say again.
Heather Mackie puts a hand on my arm. ‘Don’t worry,’ she says hesitantly, but I can see it’s costing her an effort to be kind to me. ‘Meghan, is it?’
I nod silently, on the verge of tears.
‘Let’s go and get a coffee together, Meghan. I don’t agree with what you said. But it’s done now, and there’s no point crying over spilt milk.’
‘Well put,’ her aunt says loudly, and even smiles at me and Jon in a restrained fashion. ‘I think a quick coffee is an excellent idea. Jack, Serena, will you join us?’ She pauses, glancing round at the others. ‘After all, nobody else can understand the hell we’re going through. So it makes sense for us to stick together.’
Chapter Twenty-One
I hear the slam of the front door early the next morning, and scramble out of bed and to the bedroom window just in time to see our car disappearing down the street.
Bewildered, I glance at the bedside clock.
07.10.
Stumbling downstairs, I find Jon’s briefcase and overcoat are both gone. He’s also taken the files and documents he was working on in the lounge last night. I open the front door pointlessly and peer out. The neatly shorn grass of our lawn is sparkling. The street is quiet, as it usually is at this hour. It is raining lightly, little dark speckles beginning to appear on paving stones and car windscreens, but the sun is shining at the same time.
Perhaps there will be a rainbow later.
He must have gone to the office early, I decide, and hope that by the time he returns from work this evening, he will be approachable again. Not the cold creature who dismissed me last night without any sign of love or affection.
Day four without Harry.
Whoever took him must have run out of medication by now.
The thought makes me despair.
I trudge back upstairs to the bathroom, but cannot find the energy for a shower. After a restless night, my hair needs brushing. Detangling, even. I stare at it helplessly, not sure where I left my comb.
I thought he was going to stay home from work until . . .
The faint sound of a telephone ringing makes me stop and listen. Not ours, of course, not loud enough. Next door’s, then. And being semi-detached, that means Treve and Camilla’s landline. Vaguely, I recall raised voices from last night, car headlights over the bedroom ceiling. I assumed they were having a row. But has something more serious happened, perhaps? I imagine a sick relative, a late-night mercy dash, and now more news, the phone ringing early before either of them has left for work.
The telephone stops ringing. I hear nothing more.
This is how sad my life has become, I think, gazing at myself in the bathroom mirror. Trapped in the house, living for other people’s phone calls.
I decide to get dressed for the day, not stay in my pyjamas on the assumption that nothing is going to happen. Then at least if my landline rings, or my mobile buzzes, and it’s news of Harry – good news, perhaps, that he has been found and is waiting for me – then I will be able to leave the house at once.
Today is the first day I do not bother with a nursing bra. I select one of my pregnancy bras instead, and am depressed to see that it fits, if a little tightly, the cups not quite big enough. Soon I will be able to wear my pre-pregnancy bras. The upside is that I can select a top that does not need to unbutton easily or is large enough to lift discreetly for feeding.
I wriggle into one of my old T-shirts, and consider myself in the mirror.
Not too bad.
Apart from my little pot-belly, you would never guess I have recently had a baby. Strange how easily that harassed, shuffling, earth-mother look can be shed, once the reason for it is gone.
As I am pulling my jeans on, I hear voices below in the street. I push the wardrobe door shut, and wander to the window.
It’s the gold Volvo again. Double-parked two doors down, someone at the wheel, the engine running. I can hear it, a low humming in the quiet morning.
I stare, my breath catching
in my throat.
The number plate.
But I cannot see it, not from this angle. There’s a hatchback in the way, parked on this side, facing the opposite way.
I run downstairs, throw open the front door, and charge outside barefoot.
It’s raining more heavily now, a spring shower that has left the path gleaming. I ignore the feel of slippery stone under my bare feet and fling myself out of the gate just in time to see the Volvo accelerating away down the street. Not with any particular urgency, but it’s already too late. The car is too far away for me to see the number plate. Not even a single letter or digit.
I run after it anyway, though it is pointless. Perhaps if the car stops . . .
The driver signals right as he or she slows for the crossroads ahead, and I wish for heavy traffic to keep them there a few moments, for engine trouble, a miracle. But I am not so lucky. I have only run a hundred yards towards it when the car turns slowly, methodically, towards the road out of town and disappears.
‘Fuck it.’ I stop dead where I am, my feet wet, and look up, suddenly aware of the rain pelting down. I’m gasping, struggling to get my breath back; it must be months since I went to the gym. I bang the nearest gate with my fist, and it shudders under the blow. ‘Fuck it, fuck it.’
‘Hey,’ someone shouts at me from the doorway of the house. ‘Hey, don’t hit gate. Get lost, crazy bitch.’
It’s one of my neighbours, a strange shambling sort of man who never speaks to anyone. Except apparently now.
I look round at him. He’s standing on the doorstep, as barefoot as I am, but in a creased grey flannel dressing gown. He has a dark, shaggy beard with grey streaks in it and long hair that reaches his shoulders; his age is somewhere in his forties, at a guess. His hair is usually tied back, but he looks wilder than usual today. Probably because of the early hour, or perhaps because he has found some woman thumping his garden gate.
It may be the look in his eyes, or his dishevelled demeanour, but I imagine a man like this has a bottle of pills on his bedside table just like the ones Dr Shiva prescribed for me, only he takes his instead of throwing them in the bin.
‘Sorry,’ I say, only now realising where I am and what I am doing. I step back, raising my hands to indicate I have finished my attack on his gatepost. ‘Sorry.’
But he is not satisfied with an apology.
‘Get away from here, you crazy bitch,’ he tells me, spitting out the words, really getting himself wound up. His beard flaps as he shouts, the hairs long and straggling. I hear an accent that isn’t Cornish. Some kind of Eastern European lilt. He may even be Russian. ‘I see you with that baby.’
‘What?’
‘No baby today, huh? Maybe you too mad to have baby.’
You crazy bitch.
‘It was you,’ I say suddenly, staring at him. A moment of terrible revelation burns itself into the inside of my skull. ‘You’re the one.’
He only lives a hundred yards or so from us; he must have seen me out with Harry many times since we brought him home from the hospital, wheeling him up and down the street in the buggy.
‘What’s your name?’ I demand unsteadily, advancing on him down the garden path.
His eyes widen and he steps back inside his hallway. ‘I told you, go away, crazy bitch,’ he repeats, and starts to shut the door. ‘Get lost, I call police.’
I reach the door before he can close it, and push back. Hard, with all my strength. He’s not going to get away with this. ‘What’s your name? Let me in. I want to see inside your house. Who else lives there?’
‘Get lost, get lost, get lost,’ he begins to chant, his voice deep and panicked, and puts his shoulder to the door.
I lose the battle for the door, and it clicks shut in my face. He’s strong and well built, and I’m barefoot; I can’t even stick my foot in the gap. I hear him locking the door against me, bolting it too, top and bottom, then putting on a rattling chain.
Like Fort Knox.
The door has been painted black at some time in its history, but is very dusty and scratched now. The step is chipped too, and covered in leaf debris and bits of rubbish. The place has a general air of neglect; I wonder if he is a tenant rather than an owner. I can’t believe I have never looked at him properly before today, that he has been living here for months without me taking the smallest notice. But as I recall, he does not come out of the house very often, and when he does, it’s only to walk to the one-stop shop, probably for the cigarettes I see him smoking in his front garden sometimes, wearing a black cap, his neck wrapped in a red-and-black scarf against the cold, like a throwback to the Bolsheviks.
I bend and peer through the caged letterbox. But someone seems to have covered the cage on the other side with some dark cloth to stop people seeing into the hallway.
I shout through the letterbox, ‘I know it was you.’
‘Crazy bitch.’
‘I know it was you!’ I scream at him. ‘You’ve been watching us. You took my baby. And I’m going to tell the police.’
He says nothing more, but I hear him breathing harshly behind the door. Then he shuffles away and an internal door slams.
I hop across into his garden – plain concrete with a few overgrown pots – and rap on the front windows with my knuckles. The windows are filthy; it looks like nobody has cleaned them in years. I shout again, and bang on them with my fist; the glass shudders in the frame, just like the gate. I try to peer inside, cupping my hands against the glass, but the windows are so heavily curtained, I can see no gaps anywhere, and can hear nothing.
I return to the door.
‘Harry,’ I shout through the letterbox, and listen for a few minutes before calling his name again, though of course I know he’s a baby and cannot answer me. But perhaps if he is in the house, he will hear my voice and know that I’m nearby. Or perhaps if I wait here long enough, I will hear him cry, and then I could use one of the old plant pots to break in through one of these downstairs windows . . .
But there is nothing. No sound at all.
I straighten up, crying bitterly. The rain has stopped but my hair and clothes are soaked and I am shivering. I feel so helpless on my own; if only Jon had not gone into the office today.
Crazy bitch.
Anger floods me. I have to get home, call the police, let them know . . .
But when I run back to the house, I see Treve coming along the road wearing a black hooded pullover and jeans. He is carrying shopping bags from the local one-stop shop. His head is down, face hidden, hood still up against the rain, even though it stopped raining several minutes ago. He seems intent on his own business; he has not noticed me yet.
‘Treve,’ I say, running up to him before he reaches his own front gate. ‘Treve, I need you.’
He looks up then, a startled expression on his face. He was listening to music, I realise. He pulls an earplug out of one ear and stares at me. ‘Meghan?’
‘I think I’ve found him,’ I gasp, and then lean forward, trying to get my breath back. I want to sound at least vaguely coherent.
He pulls out the other earplug, then turns off his iPod, eyes narrowed on my face. ‘What?’
‘Just down the road here. Quick, will you help me?’
Briefly, I explain the situation while Treve listens, his gaze fixed on me. He does not protest or suggest I am mistaken, which is a relief, for even I am beginning to worry that I may have overreacted again. He takes a few minutes to put his shopping inside his house, then locks up again.
‘Camilla’s at work this morning,’ he explains, then shoots me a quick smile. ‘Do you think you should put some shoes on first?’
I glance down, taken aback, and only then realise that I’m still barefoot. ‘Oh God, yes. Sorry, you must think . . . I ran out without shoes, you see.’
I can see from his expression that he is concerned for my mental state, so decide not to explain about the Volvo. And now that I think about it, I can see how insane that would sound anyway
. Why would a child abductor come back to the place of the abduction and just double-park there in plain view? It makes no sense whatsoever.
‘Of course,’ he says, nodding. ‘Look, you pop inside and grab some shoes, then you can show me which house you mean.’
I hesitate.
‘I’ll keep an eye on the street,’ he reassures me. ‘Your Eastern European friend isn’t going anywhere. Or not without me spotting him.’
‘Thanks.’
I feel so much better with Treve on my side. But when I step into the empty house, I find myself hating the cold mockery of its silence more than ever. The front door was left wide open; I didn’t even pick up my keys on the way out. Anyone could have wandered in, helped themselves to my handbag, to our televisions and our audio system, even to my laptop, sitting on the side in the kitchen.
I check everything is still where I left it. Then, feeling foolish, I take the stairs two at a time to my bedroom, pull on some socks, wriggle my feet into my trainers, then kneel to lace them up.
Glancing at myself in the floor-length mirror, I’m horrified by my appearance. I treated that bearded man contemptuously because he looked so unkempt, like someone on the fringes of society. Yet my own hair is all over the place, damp fringe plastered to my forehead, my eyes wide, my face pale and strained without any make-up. My clothes are soaked, my T-shirt clinging to my skin in a way that is almost obscene.
I look frankly mad.
I drag off the wet T-shirt, and grab a pink sweatshirt instead, one of the ones I used to wear to the gym before I fell pregnant, and pull it over my damp bra. Using my fingers, I try to tidy my hair as best I can. Then I hesitate, and slick on some sugary pink lipstick as an afterthought.
I’m presentable again. Just about.
I hurry back downstairs, pick up my keys from the hall table, and find Treve waiting patiently by the gate, studying his smartphone with apparent absorption.
