by Sam Hayes
‘My secretary. It’s her birthday.’
‘No one’s ever given me flowers before. I feel like it’s my birthday too.’ I didn’t count the ones Becco had sent me in Brighton and realised soon after I’d said it that I must have sounded strange. Everyone got flowers at some time.
We talked and he told me he was a lawyer. He said he’d been married before and his eyes dropped when he told me he was a widower. I didn’t ask how she’d died. He said he played squash and liked the movies and had a house in Fulham. He was normal. He paid the bill. He kissed me in the street.
Even though he tries not to show it, you can see that half of Baxter is missing. No one will ever replace Patrick.
He welcomes us and our holdalls, as if he knew all along that we were coming back, and makes us hot pancakes and syrup and insists we have seconds. He has scars down his neck but we don’t talk about the fire. Enough has been said in our letters.
‘I’ll never understand you, Erin.’ He musses my hair like my father should have done. ‘I’m going to send you back.You can’t run away any more. Your husband is a good man.’
‘He said things,’ I say like a pouting teenager. ‘About stuff he shouldn’t know. He’s been prying into my past.’
‘You’re married to him. You owe him.’ Baxter drizzles extra syrup on my pancakes. ‘Besides, he wasn’t prying. It was my fault. We were talking about you and I thought he knew and—’
‘He’ll divorce me anyway. Now that he knows what I was.’ Over the years, I’d told Baxter everything. He listened to my full story.
Nearly everything.
Ruby is beating away at the piano. She sings along to the tune she composed for Art.
‘I want you to call home to let Robert know you’re OK, stay here for a couple of days to calm down, and then go back to your life.’ Baxter is filled with sadness, I can tell. He’s thinking that either Robert or I could die in a fire, and he’s probably right. The blaze is already out of control.
I don’t call Robert to tell him we’re OK. Ruby and I trudge around the streets of Brighton, remembering. We sit on the shore like we did when we escaped the fire. Baxter’s flat has been restored but Patrick can’t be. I take Ruby to see his grave. We leave flowers from Baxter’s shop. I miss Robert. I miss my home. It’s the only place I’ve ever wanted to be. My past ensures it never will be.
It’s Baxter who tells me Ruby has left. He can’t sleep – he hears exploding glass and screams at night since the fire – and he has found Ruby’s hastily scrawled note on the kitchen counter.
‘All holidays come to an end. That’s the point of them. I’ve gone home to Dad. Ruby x.’
‘That’s it then,’ I say. ‘And I didn’t even write any postcards.’
Baxter fingers my shoulders as if my bones are the keys of his piano. He grinds at the knots of muscle that cling to my skeleton. ‘I have a feeling that Robert will understand why you did what you did. Tell him everything. Be so honest it hurts.’
It takes me most of the day to pluck up the courage. It’s like sweeping leaves on a windy day. My courage tumbles away on the first breathy gust of trouble.
By lunchtime, Ruby texts me to say she got home OK and that Robert wasn’t cross. I try to call her but her mobile phone diverts straight to the message service.
‘I’m coming home too, babe,’ I confide and hang up.
The train pulls in to Victoria Station just after 5 p.m. Knowing Ruby was safe with Robert, I didn’t leave Brighton until mid-afternoon. I took a walk on the beach with Baxter, slipped my arm round his fat girth while he played with my hair.
From the station, I take a taxi home.
The house smells of dirty laundry and stale food. Robert hasn’t emptied the bins. I see a crumpled packet of Marlboro on the counter and wonder who’s been smoking. I walk around the entire house, like a ghost searching for someone to haunt. The place is completely empty.
‘Rob?’ I call, in case he and Ruby are hiding. They’ll jump out at any minute with kazoos and balloons and party poppers.
Welcome home, darling.You are forgiven.
The thing is, I’ve forgotten what I’ve done wrong.
The house telephone rings, making me freeze. I stalk back into the kitchen, like a lioness pacing around injured prey. I hang back from the machine as it takes a message.
‘Rob? You there, Rob?’ A pause and then, ‘Pick up if you’re there. Damn it, call me.’
The machine beeps and clicks. I’d recognise Den’s voice anywhere. So Robert’s not at the office. I comfort myself by imagining that he’s taken Ruby to see a movie and then for ice cream. A coming-home treat.
There is a laptop computer on my kitchen table. It’s not Robert’s. It has recently been used because it’s plugged into both the power point and the telephone point and a screensaver, made up of rotating pictures of a man I don’t recognise, swims across the screen. He’s nice looking. Someone’s husband.
I brush my finger across the touch pad and the man dissolves to Outlook Express. There is a rack of unfamiliar emails. For some reason – perhaps my unconscious eye glimpses it first – my heart quickens at the list of unread messages.
Without taking my eyes off the laptop screen, I slide a chair behind me and sit down. I don’t understand whose computer this is and why it is in my kitchen. I can only guess, my heart a caged animal, why my name is mentioned in the subject line of a message from someone called James Hammond.
To: Louisa van Holten
Subject: Maternity Test Results: Erin Knight
I double click on the message. There is no saliva in my mouth.
Hey Lou,
The tests ran OK. The results indicate that from the genetic material harvested there is less than a 0.1% chance that Erin Knight is the biological mother of Ruby Knight.
It’s pretty conclusive. She’s not the kid’s mother. Hope this helps rather than hinders your investigation and don’t forget, you owe me a drink.
Best,
James
I have to get away from this computer. I run to the bay window in the lounge and scan the street for Robert and Ruby walking home, drunk on ice cream, fizzy pop and a feel-good movie. Perhaps they’ve been bowling or shopping or eaten a hamburger and chips. I study each car cruising by in case they’ve been for a drive but no cars pull up into the empty space outside our house.
I want to smash that computer and burn it so its black plastic warps and bubbles and no one will ever know. I go back to it as if it’s a sleeping beast snuggled up with my past tucked in the crook of its arm. What it also holds is the key to my future.
Can I manage one last fight? I ask myself.
‘So let’s get this straight,’ I say to the machine. ‘You’re telling me that I’m not Ruby’s mother? That there’s someone else in this world better qualified than me to fill that role? That I’m only one-tenth of a per cent capable of being her mother?’ I slump down in the chair and sob. ‘If only you knew,’ I whisper to the computer, ‘you would have ditched that message in cyberspace.’
I don’t cry for long. It’s not my style. Quickly, I figure out that if it’s Louisa’s computer then she’s working for Robert. He’s hired an investigator, Louisa, to unpick me as if I’m a dirty old quilt. Louisa has obviously been in this house, my house, with Robert, trying to second-guess my moves, my motives, my plans.
Did they sleep together in our bed?
Louisa will soon be back for her computer and her emails and then they will continue with their cat-and-mouse games until they have me arrested and I will be tried for kidnapping.
I tap my fingernail on the edge of the keyboard. Louisa will read the email. She will bask in the thrill of having undone me completely before ever so gently telling Robert the bad news.
I’m sorry, Rob. Erin is definitely not Ruby’s mother. She has been lying to you.
She has been lying to herself, I think.
Then Louisa will comfort my husband, the only man who has ever truly
loved me, and wrap him up so swiftly in the beautiful complications of her own life that he won’t realise he’s switched wives. For him, it will be seamless. For her, she gets what I know she’s always wanted.
I stare at the list of emails. Three are from someone called Alexa Lane, another is from Amazon confirming an order, four look like spam messages, there is James Hammond’s message about the rest of my life and then there is one from someone called Willem van Holten. I double click it and read the blue text.
I quickly deduce that Willem is Louisa’s husband. I also deduce that she has recently told him she wants a divorce. This is his reply, begging her not to go, promising her the world, the children she wants, the return to England that she desires. Poor Willem, I think. Poor me. Louisa has freed herself just in time to claim Robert.
Recklessly, I delete the email and then erase it from the deleted items box. It’s nothing more than a moment of control over her life, like she is playing with mine, but it gives me an idea.
Of course, deleting the message from James Hammond, the expert in genetics but not in love, it seems, would be a disaster. This is an email that Louisa has been waiting for. This is the email that will make or destroy my life. This is the only thread between Robert and me that hasn’t been snapped. I cannot delete this email.
No. I need to change it.
Now I am no expert when it comes to computers but I know there’s a simple way – not entirely foolproof but then who’s saying Louisa’s not a fool? – to mess with this email. I ring Baxter.
‘Hey, Bax,’ I say. He’s just shutting up shop. It’s a little after five thirty.
‘Are you at home?’ he asks, the quiver in his voice almost equal to that in mine.
‘I am,’ I reply, trying to sound bright. ‘I need a favour.’
I remind him of the time we had to rescue Ruby. She was ten. She’d been seeing a boy – seeing, I laugh – and she was totally besotted with everything about him from the way he walked, slightly lopsided with his jeans showing six inches of his underpants, to the way his hair concealed his huge brown eyes. Just like hers. Micky carried his books in a retro Adidas bag and at the end of maths, he asked her out. They went to see About A Boy and shared a bucket of warm, buttery popcorn.
‘You remember when that Micky kid dumped Ruby in an email?’
‘The knife is still in my heart.’ Baxter feels everything as if his skin is missing. ‘How can young love be so cruel?’ he asks no one.
‘You know we changed it and re-sent it so it looked like it had still come from Micky?’ Truth was, if we hadn’t been able to fiddle with the contents, I would have deleted the message. For a couple who had only enjoyed the cinema, Burger King and a walk along the beach with me fifty yards behind pretending not to know them, Micky’s method of dumping my daughter was a little harsh. His words would have ripped her in two.
‘I recall,’ Baxter said. ‘We made it so that she didn’t land with such a bump.’
‘That’s the one. Well, how did you do that?’ I position my fingers over the keys of Louisa’s laptop, keeping one ear on the front door and the other tuned in to Baxter’s voice.
‘Let me think. Well, first you need to click on the Tools menu and select the Accounts option. A separate window will open with all the email accounts listed.’ He paused and sighed. ‘Patrick showed me this when we wanted to play a practical joke on his previous lover.’
‘There’s only one account in the list,’ I say. ‘Does that matter?’
‘Not at all. And Erin?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m not going to ask why you’re doing this so please don’t tell me.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, meaning it.
‘Next you need to click on Properties to get the details of that account.’ He waits for me. ‘Now you need to change the name in the User Information to the person you want the email to appear to have come from.’
‘OK,’ I say, holding the phone with my shoulder. I type James Hammond where Louisa van Holten had been. Fleetingly, I think of Willem. ‘Now what?’
‘Click Apply and OK and then close the window.’
Then Baxter talks me through the next stage. I pull up the original email from James Hammond, click Forward, fill in Louisa’s own email address in the To field, remove the Fw: tag from the subject line, which would instantly spoil the result, and delete everything in the body of the email, which would again indicate that this wasn’t a virgin message.
‘Now you’re free to write what you want in the email, hit send and you’re done. But don’t forget to delete the original email well and truly or it will all be pointless. And you must change the name back to what it was in the Account settings. OK?’
We chat for a moment longer and I promise to call soon. He senses that, as yet, there is no news about the rest of my life.
I alter the message from James Hammond.
Hey Lou,
The tests ran OK. The results indicate that from the genetic material harvested there is more than a 99.9% chance that Erin Knight is the biological mother of Ruby Knight. It’s pretty conclusive. She’s definitely the kid’s mother. Hope this helps rather than hinders your investigation.
Best,
James
I take out the bit about Louisa owing James a drink. The less these two have to do with each other, the better. I send the email and delete the original. Then I put Louisa’s name back in her account settings.
Within minutes, a new email arrives from the ether from someone called James Hammond. It all relies upon Louisa and Robert not digging too deeply into the email’s true source.
Then I remember something that Robert once told me about a client he was defending. The judge was having a hard time believing his client was homeless, favouring the appeal of the congruent prosecutor from the outset. The defendant had bought a suit from Oxfam to impress the judge. Next day, Robert told his client not to shave and to wear ripped jeans and an old T-shirt. He won the case.
‘People believe what they see,’ Robert said.
Praying he’s right, I leave the computer and go upstairs to unpack.
THIRTY-THREE
Robert opened the door of Cheryl’s house and ushered Louisa and Ruby inside. He glanced nervously up and down the street before going inside himself, ruffling his hair with his fingers. He felt he was about to drop off the edge of the world.
‘Cheryl’s house, I take it?’ Louisa asked.
Robert silenced her with a finger over his mouth. They were breaking and entering but with a key; they were intruders who wanted to give, not steal. They had come to mend Cheryl’s heart.
The three of them stood in the small square of living room, Louisa waiting for Robert to do something and Ruby frowning and sighing at the nuisance of it all.
‘Cheryl?’ Robert called out. ‘Are you home? I’ve got your handbag.’
‘So much for being quiet,’ Louisa muttered.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ Robert continued but Louisa was already holding a strip of photographs in a silver frame.
‘Look,’ she said. Robert peered over her shoulder. ‘Who is she?’
Robert shrugged. He saw a pretty Asian girl and she was pregnant. The pictures were more of her bump than her. He glanced out of the window. Still sunny in the street but twilight in Cheryl’s world.
‘Wait here,’ Robert instructed and silently thanked Louisa as he saw her take hold of Ruby’s hand for comfort. He walked towards the back of the house and stopped, noticing that Louisa and Ruby were right behind him. ‘Listen. Do you hear it?’
‘Someone’s crying,’ Louisa whispered.
‘No, they’re singing,’ Ruby said. Robert cocked his head and closed his eyes to listen.
‘Upstairs?’ Louisa suggested.
Robert nodded and began the procession up the steep staircase. Louisa held tightly onto Ruby’s hand.
The haunting noise grew louder, like a tomcat staking his claim on an alley at night. There were no windows
on the tiny landing and Robert had to wait for his pupils to adjust before he could see anything.
Suddenly, he was on his knees, crawling across the floor to a shadow in the corner. Someone was huddled there, humming a broken song and sucking back snot and tears. The air vibrated with the tune.
‘Cheryl,’ Robert said. ‘What’s happened?’ His voice was thick and clogged and his heart pounded. He hadn’t expected this.
Louisa turned on the light and everyone screwed up their eyes. For a second, no one could see anything at all.
Robert stifled the gasp lodged in his throat but Louisa couldn’t hold hers back. The woman was rolled up into a ball on the carpet and the sight of her made their eyes widen and their mouths go dry. Her face was a scrunched map of slime and fear and her back curled like that of a foetus. She shifted rhythmically to a looping song, rocking back and forth as she sang. In a second, Robert was there, lifting the matted curtain of hair from her face. The woman was completely unaware of her visitors. All she knew was her own misery.
‘Louisa, what’s happening?’ Ruby whispered. Robert looked up and saw Louisa mouth, ‘It’s OK,’ even though he knew it wasn’t.
‘Cheryl, listen to me. It’s Robert Knight. We met at the pub.’ He tried to lift her but she was a sack of wet feathers. Louisa stepped in to help but Robert put up his hand to stop her. He didn’t want to overwhelm Cheryl. ‘Will you come downstairs? I’ll make you a cup of tea.’
Cheryl slowly lifted her head, as if the weight of her grief would barely allow it, and dragged her eyes first to Robert, then to Louisa and finally to Ruby. She clearly wasn’t focusing, her mind was fixed somewhere far from reality. Her lips still formed the outline of a fractured lullaby, an occasional clogged syllable. Every part of her shook.
Suddenly, Cheryl was on her feet – an alert fox sniffing the morning air. Her eyes were liquorice, glinting, searching but still not seeing properly.
‘Where’s my baby?’ she snarled. ‘What have you done with my baby?’
