Suddenly the door opened and a long shadow fell across my lap. I nearly jumped out of my skin. But it was just Deb, who stood there looking down at me, surrounded by files and folders and old diaries. I felt like a small child with my hand caught in the biscuit jar.
‘You okay?’ she asked, and I realised how dishevelled I must look, hot and sweaty from lugging boxes down from shelves, from rifling frenetically through Mickey’s private papers, searching for a sign.
‘I’m fine, thanks. Just looking for something,’ I said, trying not to sound guilty. I pushed my damp hair out of my eyes.
‘I’ll be off then. I’ll see you in the morning.’ She lingered for a moment, like she had something else to say. ‘Have faith, Jessica, won’t you?’
I snorted a bit like a horse. ‘Faith? You’re not getting all religious on me, are you, Deb?’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ she blushed. ‘I meant, in us. I know it must seem like ages but—look, we’re doing our very best, I swear.’
‘Well you shouldn’t, should you?’ I said.
‘I shouldn’t what?’ Her brow wrinkled.
‘Swear.’
‘I wasn’t—’
‘Oh ignore me. It’s the wine. I’m just being facetious.’
She smiled indulgently and stepped towards the door.
‘Deb?’ I said it quickly before she could turn round. ‘I do—I really appreciate you so much, Deb. I don’t know what I’d have done without you, really.’
We grinned at each other bashfully. ‘You’re welcome, Jess.’
‘Deb?’ I said slowly.
‘Yes?’
‘Silver—he’s a good cop, isn’t he? Do you think-will he find—’ The words caught in my throat.
She smiled. ‘He’s the best. I really do believe that, Jess. He really cares. He’ll find Louis for you, I know he will.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That’s what I thought.’ We left it at that.
I lay in bed, sleepless yet again—but I’d given up on pills for good. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Louis in another woman’s arms. I pulled the sheet over my head, and then, however hard I pushed it away, the scene with Silver in the hotel garden replayed time and time again. And I thought of how safe he made me feel. Like when you’re exhausted, and you finally lie down where you belong, you sink down and relax, and the relief, the prospect of rest is immense. That’s what nearly letting myself melt into Silver had been like. The prospect of rest at last.
I turned over, searching for a cool bit on my pillow; scribbled Silver’s name out in my brain; thought longingly of Louis. Suddenly I had an idea. One place I hadn’t looked. I sat bolt upright in bed; got up and padded out onto the landing.
‘Shirl?’ I tapped quietly on her door. Silence. I tapped harder.
A grunt. ‘Whassermatter?’
‘Shirl, listen, mate. I just—’ I stuck my head into the gloom. ‘I need a hand. Sorry, but would you mind?’
Eventually, she stumbled grumbling into the light, her afro as huge and hectic as a dandelion-clock ready to blow.
‘Can you help me get the ladder down? I need to get into the loft.’
‘Jessica, it’s—’ she squinted at her watch ‘—one in the morning. Can’t it wait?’
‘Not really, no.’ I was hopping from foot to foot now.
‘All right,’ she yawned vastly and her gold fillings glinted. ‘But you better not be expecting me to sit up in no loft. Once you’re up there, you’re on your own, you hear me now?’ Muttering, she stretched on tiptoe from the chair I held, and swung the ladder down.
‘I ain’t sitting in no loft in the middle of the night, not for no one. And don’t you come complaining about ghosts or some such nonsense. You’re on your own.’
‘I won’t, I promise.’
But, of course, she didn’t leave me. She lay with her head on a roll of old carpet and her long legs folded elegantly at the ankle, struggling to keep one eye open. Within minutes she was snoring gently while I went through all Mickey’s neatly stacked junk. To be honest, I was glad of her company. I’d never been in the attic before; Mickey had shoved a few bits and bobs belonging to Louis up here as he grew out of them. ‘For the next one,’ I’d said, rather apprehensively, from the landing, and Mickey had just smiled.
Half an hour passed, and I had nothing to show for it but grimy hands and cobwebs in my hair. Finally, just about to give up, just as I felt that I was mad to have even begun, I came across something wrapped tightly in Mickey’s moth-eaten graduation gown, wedged into the corner. Eventually I freed it, falling backwards with a bang. My heart was racing again as I unwrapped it. It was a big smart folder, a leather affair, marked with a tiny A.F. in gold leaf. Agnes Finnegan. And God, how neat it was. My heart pounded as I flicked frantically through the inner leaves—but crashing disappointment quickly followed as I realised how very dull its contents actually were. Store-card bills from shops like Harvey Nichols and Selfridges. Some papers about pensions, and statements of a PEP that she’d cleared out. And finally, tucked in the back, a medical file. Indecipherable notes that I didn’t understand from a doctor in Harley Street. A glossy leaflet on how best to recuperate from an operation. Holed up in an expensive spa, by the looks of this. Frowning, I tucked it all back in its plastic sleeve. Then I shook Shirl gently awake, and followed her mad barnet back down the ladder to bed.
I woke at the crack of dawn again, permanently on Louis-time. In the kitchen I waited for the kettle to boil, staring vacantly at a bluebottle dead on its back beside the biscuit tin. He looked like he’d died mid-flight.
Blearily, I cleared a space at the table for my coffee cup, stacked up the letters, bills and magazines that lay everywhere. Mickey’s folder from his last shoot fell open, and I flicked idly through the sheets of contact prints. Little cottages on cliffs; an old glass lighthouse; a laughing couple walking hand-in-hand down a tiny country lane. I peered closer at the girl, tall and thin, blonde hair streaming behind her. The girl. My coffee went down with a bang, burning my hand. I blinked hard and looked again.
‘I don’t bloody believe it.’ I stared at the picture. There was no doubt about it. The girl with streaming hair. The woman from the Tate.
Hands trembling, I rang the ICU. They said Mickey was sleeping and refused to wake him, despite my pleas. Absolutely no visitors until nine; I knew the rules by now, surely? So I hunted for Pauline’s number. It just rang and rang. I left it five minutes, and called again. Eventually Freddie picked up, grumpy with sleep.
‘I don’t know where she is. She left her mobile last night. Try her bloody work. She’s snowed under already.’
But when I rang, the phones at Mickey’s office were still on divert. I looked at the clock; it was only seven. So I threw on my clothes and nicked the keys to Shirl’s old banger—left her a scrawled note, shoved the contacts folder into my bag, and drove up into town.
Soho was just awakening, lazy as the white-thighed girls who’d later adorn the doors of dim-lit clubs. I dumped the car and made my way to Mickey’s building on Wardour Street. Crossing past the strip-show on the corner, not open yet, I suddenly realised how uncomfortably close to General’s shop I was. His waxy face loomed huge in my mind and I felt a spasm of disgust; with vigour I stamped him out and buzzed Mickey’s office intercom. Nothing. No one answered. I cursed my impetuosity. As I turned away, I got a faceful of spray from the pavement-washing machine trundling up the road like a baby elephant.
‘God’s sake!’ I muttered, wiping my face.
‘Hello?’ A disembodied Geordie accent wafted suddenly from nowhere. Pauline.
‘It’s Jess. Can I have a quick word?’
She let me in, coffee in hand. Dishevelled and baggy-eyed, she looked like she’d just got in from a night on the town; all done up in some strange cowgirl ensemble, hair in little braids, seemingly still half-asleep. I was sure I could smell booze.
‘Can I get you a drink, pet?’ she asked, stifling a yawn as she led me ac
ross the big open-plan room. I passed the desk where I’d first sat as a design assistant and I thought with a lurch how things change. There was a blanket on the office sofa; the weight of a body still imprinted in the leather folds. I looked closely at her. Had she been sleeping here? Was that why Freddie had been so curt?
Pauline opened the green glass door to Mickey’s private office and ushered me through as I scrabbled in my bag for the folder—and then my heart was in my mouth. Propped against Mickey’s desk were huge boards of blown-up photos—and there, right at the front, larger than life, smiling enticingly from the doorway of a quaint thatched cottage, was that bloody woman.
‘Pauline, who the fuck is that girl?’
‘Sorry, who?’ She looked up from kicking the wedge under the door, slopping her coffee on the floor. She flushed beetroot when she saw who I meant.
‘Oh, you mean Claudia. They’re good, aren’t they? They’re still awaiting Mickey’s approval though.’
‘Yeah, but who is she, Pauline?’
‘Don’t you remember her?’ She seemed surprised.
I shook my head again. ‘No, I don’t. She was at the Tate that day.’
‘That’s Claudia Bertorelli. Sorry, what day, pet? You’ve lost me.’
‘The day Louis disappeared.’
‘Oh.’ Pauline looked truly puzzled.
My heart was galloping. ‘Pauline, is Mickey—are this girl and Mickey—’ I couldn’t go on. It just got worse and worse.
‘What?’
‘Are they, you know—’ The words stuck in my clamping throat. ‘Do you know if he’s been—’
She laughed. She actually laughed.
‘Please, don’t laugh, Pauline.’ I twisted my bag-strap tight around my finger until the circulation stopped. ‘This is deadly serious.’
Immediately, she stopped; she put her hands up dramatically as if I might attack her. ‘All right, calm down, pet. It’s just—no they’re not—an item, if that’s what you meant.’
‘And how do you know? Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure, Jessica.’ She looked suddenly weary. ‘I’m sure because she doesn’t do men.’
‘She doesn’t—’ Her meaning filtered through my brain.
‘She’s my ex. Do you really not remember her?’
Vaguely, vaguely, something trickled into my overwrought head.
‘You’ve met Claudia, I’m sure you have. I was seeing her when you first came here. Before I met Freddie. Before you were with Mickey.’
‘Oh.’
So what the hell had she been doing at the Tate that day?
‘Mickey uses her a lot for his brochure work, you know. She hasn’t got the typical model look, she’s a bit more real, isn’t she? Very photogenic though.’
‘Right.’ I felt the backwash of an adrenaline slump. I sat heavily on the edge of Mickey’s desk. ‘Sorry, Pauline. I just—I found these photos this morning and I’ve been panicking.’ I held out the folder to Pauline and she took it. ‘This girl, well, she was in the Tate the day Louis disappeared. Really freaked me out for some reason. Only I didn’t know who she was. It makes sense now. Mickey said he’d bumped into someone from work and—and she said to me that I looked familiar. I’ve been trying to work out who she was all this time.’ I looked at her. ‘She’s a suspect, you know.’
Pauline laughed again, though she didn’t look particularly amused. ‘Claudia? Why, for God’s sake?’
I shrugged. ‘Because she was so into Louis, and then he—disappeared. Because she was—strange.’ Had she really been strange, though? Or was it my highly charged state, my exhaustion at the time that made it seem so?
‘Well, she probably was into Louis.’
My heart soared. ‘Yes, that’s what I—’
‘Claudia loves babies. She’s just had her own. About six months ago. Emily, I think she’s called.’
‘What?’ I didn’t follow. ‘Her own?’
Pauline sighed. ‘Jessica, pet, just because you like shagging women doesn’t mean you don’t like babies. Doesn’t mean you don’t want to be a mother.’
I thought of Freddie. ‘No, I guess not.’ I was truly embarrassed now.
‘In fact, it’s part of the reason me and her,’ she jerked her head at the smiling model, ‘it’s part of the reason I binned her off.’
I didn’t understand.
‘Why we split up, I mean. She was about to try to conceive with her mate Josh. I wanted to give us a chance first, you know, before babies—but she wouldn’t wait. Couldn’t wait, she said.’ Pauline walked to the door. ‘So you see, I doubt Claudia’s going round snatching babies, pet, what with her own wee bairn at home.’
‘No,’ I said foolishly, ‘no, I guess not.’ I thought of Silver, shuddered at having to tell him I’d made such a big mistake. ‘I suppose—oh God. I’d better let the police know who she is then. Have you got her details—her number or something?’
‘We don’t really talk, you know. It didn’t end on a good note.’
My face was pleading. She was gruff. ‘All right. Hang on. It’ll be on the photo-shoot call-sheet, I expect. Wait there.’
A few of Mickey’s staff were drifting slowly into the open-plan office now, deadlines obviously looming, flinging iPods and Independents on their desks, chatting cheerfully. The smell of coffee filled the air. Someone switched the radio on. I waved politely at the few faces I still knew, then turned my back on their inquisitive eyes. Stared at Claudia’s laughing face. Pauline came back with a number on a Post-it note.
‘Thanks,’ I mumbled. ‘I’m sorry if–you must think I’m a fool.’
‘Hardly. Don’t be silly, pet. You must be bloody frantic.’ She squeezed my hand kindly. ‘Everyone’s a suspect, I guess, until you know they’re not.’
She walked me to the door, telling me that she’d been relieved by Mickey’s state when she’d visited him—she’d been so worried. Then she kissed me on the cheek, stinking of stale drink, and told me to take care. I felt discomfited by my former desperation.
‘And you—are you all right, Pauline?’
‘Oh aye, I’m grand, thanks, pet, just grand.’
But she looked like she might cry, and the lines around her eyes were deeper etched than ever before. She flicked her braids back defiantly, straightened her sheriff’s badge.
‘It’s just me and Freddie—we’re, you know. Going through a bad patch. The sailing holiday was meant to be a new start but, well, you get home and it’s still all the same, isn’t it? All that sea-sickness for nothing—and all this bloody relentless baby stuff.’ She gaped at me in sudden horror, her hand creeping to her mouth.
‘God, sorry, pet. I mean, between me and her. Her clock’s ticking so loud, you know.’ She pulled the door open, and the noise from the street trebled. ‘Trouble is, mine’s just not. Perpetual problem of mine, apparently.’
‘I’m sorry. I hope you sort it out.’
But as I got back into the car, something somewhere rang false. And Mickey was the only person who could tell me what it was.
I drove straight to the hospital, parked the car badly in a disabled space for want of any others, and ran into St Thomas’ like my bloody life depended on it. Through the yellowy corridors, up in the antiseptic-smelling lift, down the hall to ICU. I rang the bell frantically. Sister Kwame came to the door.
‘Mrs Finnegan,’ she began; I shot straight past her. His room was empty, the bed stripped. ‘Where is he?’ I was nearly shouting now.
‘Don’t fret, Mrs Finnegan.’ Her milky brown eyes held mine and calmed me with their will. ‘He’s on the ward, on the main ward now, downstairs. Out of Intensive Care for good. Such good news, yes?’
‘Where is it, Sister? The ward. I need to see him now.’
‘Is everything okay?’ She was frowning now, perturbed by my panic. ‘Is there some news of your baby?’
‘No,’ I shook my head vehemently, ‘there’s never any bloody news. I just need to see him—Mickey—now. Please
.’
‘Come, I take you,’ she said kindly, and she put her arm around me. ‘This is very stressful for you, yes? Poor Mrs Finnegan.’
I leant into her for a second without answering.
We tracked back the way I’d come, down in the lift, onto the fifth floor. Marcia Banes Ward was the last on the corridor; I was trying not to break into a run. We reached the door of this ward, and rang yet another bell. I felt like I was doing my social rounds, should be leaving cards for all those I called on.
The fat-faced nurse from the other night appeared. She was so large she shone; glossy skin pulled taut, housing fat that pushed beneath the surface and threatened to burst out. Sister Kwame gestured at me. ‘Deidre, Mrs Finnegan is looking for her husband. I told her you were taking good care of him.’
The fat nurse crinkled her brow—with some difficulty as her skin was stretched so tight. ‘Finnegan? From the ICU? Of course we will. When he arrives.’
It was Sister Kwame who frowned now. ‘But we released him this morning. He was brought down by the porter.’
‘Oh really?’ Shiny said. She strode Sumo-like to the nurses’ station and grabbed a chart, scanned the names. ‘I’ve only just come on. Probably some mix-up with the—ah, hang on a second.’ She counted down a column. ‘Finnegan, you said? Yes, we’ve definitely got a bed for him. Let me check with someone else.’
A young Asian nurse was crossing to the station, plump plait swinging, a roll of bandage in her hand.
‘Sunita, have you dealt with Mr Finnegan from ICU this morning?’
The girl considered for a minute, then shook her head, plait flicking snake-like across a bony shoulder. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell. Checked with Sally?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ The involuntary protest slipped from my lips. The nurses all looked up, across, then down again, ignoring me.
‘Sorry,’ I muttered self-consciously, ‘I just really need to see him.’
Lullaby Page 27
