It was a fine autumn day and I could smell the sea on the air. I walked down to the car. I had left Billy lying on the sitting-room floor with the door shut. I took the buggy and piled the rest of the stuff on to it. Then I left a note inside the windscreen saying, ‘I am staying at Overstrand Cottage.’
Some time later I heard someone walking up the path. There was a loud knock on the door. My first instinct was to hide. Then I remembered the note I had left in the car. I left Billy on the sitting-room floor, shut that door and opened the front door. A big ginger-haired man in blue overalls and a neon jerkin stood there.
‘Hello. That your Volvo down the road?’
‘Yes.’
‘We’re going to cut up the tree and we need to bring our truck up to the tree. Could you reverse your car down the road? There’s space to park down there.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘So you were caught out in it last night.’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘Quite something eh?’
‘It certainly was.’
‘Well, I’ll be getting on.’
He retreated up the road. And I saw all the activity. People were out in their gardens, clearing broken branches and fences and gates. I found a broom in the kitchen and swept the shards of terracotta and soil from the broken pot on the path. I cannot afford to fall over. Then I walked down to the car. There were three workmen standing by the fallen tree.
As I passed the tree, the big ginger man said, ‘We’ll be a few hours with this. She was a big ’un, lots of logs. I’ll let you know when we’re done.’
‘Thank you.’
‘My pleasure.’ He grinned at me and looked over at the other men. There are always snooping eyes wherever you go. I reversed the car down the road, parked it and walked back to the cottage.
I put the radio on for the news and there was no mention of an abducted baby. All the stories were about last night’s storm. It had caused a swathe of destruction across southern England and many ancient trees had been lost. A panel of experts was mourning the impact this would have on the countryside.
It was impossible to rest. I have had very little contact with babies or even children in my life. I have no nieces or nephews. So I had no idea how much attention a baby demanded. Every time I sat down on the sofa Billy would crawl around the room and knock things over. He would start to cry. You cannot ignore the cry of a baby. I had read somewhere that human adults are programmed to respond to the cry of a human infant. There is something in their cry that challenges you. I did not know what to do to stop the crying. I offered him a rusk but he didn’t want it. His incessant crying was making me feel bad, as if it was triggering a deep unmet neediness in myself. I could feel pressure building in me. So I put him in the bedroom upstairs on the floor and shut the door and left him in there crying. I went downstairs, made myself some green tea and sat in the back garden. My arms and legs ached from the exertion of the night before and my right leg was bruised. I needed calm. I needed rest.
Finally I went upstairs again. He seemed to have cried himself out. He hiccoughed his last few sobs and fell asleep. I stretched out on the sofa.
It was a calm evening. The field that bordered the road was fringed with yellow wildflowers. Tall trees framed the field and the sun was setting behind them. These trees had withstood the storm. I grilled a plaice fillet and made a tomato salad. I put Billy into his buggy to feed him and he ate the fish without complaint. He seemed more interested in playing with the tomato than eating it. He rolled the pips between his fingers. I was ready for a bath and bed. I took him upstairs and laid him on the bed by the wall. I gave him two spoonfuls of Calpol and one bottle of milk. I put a wall of pillows along the middle so he could not roll off the bed, and closed the bedroom door. I ran myself a deep bath and rested my arms and legs in the warm water.
Kathy
OCTOBER
I heard more roof tiles falling last night, crashing on to the pavement and fragmenting into pieces. My sleep was filled with monstrous dreams, but sleep was better than the moment of waking and that first consciousness that my Billy was gone. The pain was actually physical, a cruel squeezing around my heart. Markus was not in the bed. I got up and went into the kitchen and the sky from the windows was palest blue and a deadly calm now prevailed.
Markus came in and said, ‘I’m going to make you some breakfast.’
He got eggs and coffee out of the fridge. The phone rang and it was Philip. His voice was embarrassed and gentler than I’ve ever heard it before.
‘Take all the time you need. We’re all thinking of you.’
Markus put a cup of coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs on the table in front of me and then sat down opposite me.
‘Eat something, Kathy.’
Then Nick called and I got to the phone before Markus. I had this feeling that Nick was on my side, perhaps because he has an open, kindly face and he has children of his own, as he told me last night.
‘We’ve been round to her flat. She’s gone away. I spoke to the caretaker. He saw her packing up the car yesterday; helped her carry her stuff to the car and said she had a lot of stuff with her. She told him she was going to the Lake District.’
‘The Lake District...?’
‘Yeah, that’s likely to be a cover story. We’ll check the area.’
‘I knew she was here.’
‘You were right. We also know the car she’s got, he was positive on that – a silver Volvo estate – though he didn’t know the registration number, said it wasn’t her usual car.’
‘No, she’s got a convertible, a dark green convertible.’
‘She told him it was being serviced. We can trace the convertible. See what she did with it. Anyway, we’re going to put out an all-ports warning at once.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We alert all ports and airports to look out for her. She won’t be able to leave the country. There’s something I need to discuss with you and Markus. We’re thinking of putting out an appeal for information. We’ll need a picture of Billy and your permission to do it. Can I come over this morning?’
‘Come over at once, please.’
I said to Markus, ‘She was here all the time. Nick is coming over.’
He looked wretched, his face was grey and unshaven and I felt nothing towards him.
He said, ‘Have you called your parents? And Jennie...? Perhaps she could come and stay here. You need your family around you.’
‘I need Billy. People died last night in that terrible storm and she was out there with Billy. He must be so scared. What did you do to make her hate me so much?’
Finally he said, ‘I left her.’
‘How did you leave her?’
‘I left her suddenly, without telling her where I was going. I had to, she was very possessive. She always wanted more from me.’
‘Weren’t you were supposed to be so happy?’ I said, pressing my sore place.
‘We were happy, at the beginning. It started to go wrong and finally I moved away. And she tracked me down. Heja never lets go.’
‘So she’s punishing you now by taking my baby.’
‘He’s my son too, my best boy.’
His voice broke then and I stared down at the table and would not look at him. He started to make another pot of coffee and he was fumbling with the pot and I wondered why because he was never clumsy. Was it possible that he was crying? You would think that this terrible fear and this awful hurt would have brought us together. It hasn’t. An unbridgeable chasm has opened up between us and I find I cannot trust him or anything he says.
Nick arrived and the three of us sat at the kitchen table.
‘She’s put her flat on the market so it looks like she’s not planning on coming back. I’ve got an officer going round to your magazine this morning, to talk to the boss...’
‘She planned it carefully, didn’t she?’ I said.
‘Looks like that.’
‘It wasn’t on
impulse?’
Markus stood up and started to walk up and down the kitchen. ‘Heja doesn’t do things on impulse,’ he said.
‘You should know,’ I snapped back.
Nick said quickly, ‘She did plan it but we will catch up with her. We know the model of the car and she won’t be able to leave the country. Could she have got a copy of your keys, Kathy?’
I looked at Nick. ‘My keys? Yes, it’s possible, I suppose. We worked together.’
‘Did you ever leave your keys anywhere she could get them?’
I tried to think if I had ever left my keys on the desk.
‘No, I don’t think so. They were always in my bag; she would have had to go through my bag.’
Nick nodded. ‘I think she got hold of them somehow and made copies. Our next step is to put out an appeal to the media. That’s what I wanted to talk to you both about.’
Markus said, ‘How does that work?’
‘I’ll need a recent photograph of Billy that we can give the media, and I need a picture of Heja Vanheinen too...’
‘You’ll name her?’ he asked.
‘Yes, we’ll name her and say that we need to speak to this woman in connection with the disappearance of Billy.’
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ Markus said. ‘It could tip her over the edge.’
Nick said nothing.
Markus went on, ‘I just think it could make things worse, if she feels you are closing in on her...’
‘Why are you still trying to protect her?’ I burst out.
Nick said, ‘We think it’s worth doing. It’s important to get her picture out there because someone somewhere will have seen her. She’ll have to go out some time. I need you both to agree to this. Why don’t you discuss it alone? I’ll wait outside in my car.’
He walked out of the kitchen and closed the door behind him.
I’ve seen appeals like this for missing children on tele-vision and they have always made me shudder at the horror of a parent pleading for information about their lost child. And so often the child is already dead.
‘It will be terrible, just terrible, but we have to do it,’ I said.
Markus said angrily, ‘You are so wrong to think for a minute that I would shield her. I’m just scared this might provoke her.’
‘Nick is the expert and he said it would help us!’
‘He doesn’t know her.’
I said with great bitterness, ‘And only you do.’
‘Stop this, Kathy! You’ve been treating me like a criminal from the moment Billy was taken. My son is everything to me. I just want him back safe.’
‘Why didn’t you warn me she was mad? You said I was making a drama out of it!’
‘I didn’t think for a moment that—’
‘That she’d take Billy...?’ My voice was rising. ‘But she did. We have to help the police.’
‘Do you think they’ve thought this through at all? It’s what they always do. Just do what they always do. Even if it tips her over the edge...’
‘I trust Nick,’ I said.
‘You trust people too quickly.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘He may have got this wrong. I think it’s too risky.’
‘Of course it’s risky. That monstrous woman has stolen my son. What is she doing to him at this very moment?’ I screamed.
At first he said nothing, and then very quietly, ‘If you insist, I will agree, with grave reservations.’
‘Yes, go on, put all the responsibility on to me!’
‘Then follow my advice and say no. If we have any doubts at all, we don’t have to do this.’
‘I’m with Nick on this because he has no secret agenda.’
‘You can be a bitch sometimes, Kathy, a stupid bitch. Go and get your precious Nick.’
When Nick came back you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. He asked me if I knew where we could find a recent picture of Heja.
‘Maybe from Robert Mirzoeff,’ I said.
‘Who?’
‘Her boyfriend. He might have a picture.’
‘Have you got a number?’
‘Yes, he’s a psychoanalyst, he’s got a practice here.’ I got up wearily and found the card Robert had given me.
‘Good, we’ll follow that up at once. Robert Mirzoeff.’
Markus went into his workroom to get a picture of Billy and I followed him in there. Markus has taken hundreds of photos of Billy since he was born. He keeps them in albums and writes the date and place under every picture. He lifted the most recent album onto his drawing table and started to leaf through it.
He said in a low voice, ‘Do you want to help me pick one?’
I said, ‘You choose.’
I looked at the pictures of my baby and Markus pointed at one and I nodded. He took the photograph out carefully and handed it to Nick.
‘Thank you both. I’ll be in touch again soon.’
He left the flat then. I felt quite overcome and had to go and lie down on the bed in our room.
Some time later Markus came into the room and said, ‘We must tell Jennie and your parents now. We can’t let them find out about this on TV.’
‘Will you call Jennie? I can’t do it. Not my parents, not yet...’
‘Shall I ask her to come up?’
‘No, I... I can’t be around anyone at the moment.’
‘She’ll want to talk to you. She’ll want to help.’
‘Not now.’
Later, I left the flat and walked to St James’s Church in Spanish Place. Billy had been gone one whole day, twenty-four hours, and the world was a completely different place. The debris of the storm had been swept away. Everywhere there were signs of damage and two shops had had to board up their windows. I have known these streets for years and St James’s is the church my mother uses when she stays with me. I can’t phone my parents because it will become too real when I tell them. When I was a teenager my mum said she used to dread phone calls when I was out because phone calls only ever meant bad news.
Mum’s a true believer and she wanted me brought up a Catholic. Dad let her take me to church because he respected her faith. I stopped going to church when I reached adulthood, except for Christmas and Easter, but it means so much to Mum. She wanted me to have Billy christened; she asked me to do it several times and I did nothing. I pushed the door of the church open and there was that familiar smell of incense and candle wax. I have always liked the Golden Lady statue on the side aisle and I walked up to her. She and the baby are both covered in gold leaf, except for her shoes, which are red. They both wear crowns and Mary is holding a sceptre and the baby is holding an orb and he’s a lovely chubby baby.
I sat down in a pew and I thought about Heja having the keys to my flat. She must have come to my flat and been around my things; maybe gone through my things. I had this intense revelation that for these last few months she’s been digging tunnels under every aspect of my life. There was that photograph of Eddie left where Markus would find it. Then I remembered my lost presentation notes and my bungled appearance before the board. She must have taken my notes. I shivered. That was months ago. She has caused real trouble between Philip and me and she has driven a wedge between Markus and me, and because of her actions I have been feeling shaky for months. Now the killer blow; she came to our flat when she knew we would be out at the launch and she took Billy. Her malevolence towards me is boundless.
I am no believer but I got up and knelt on the prayer stool in front of the Golden Lady and I prayed that I had made the right decision about the photographs and had not endangered my Billy.
Heja
OCTOBER
I woke early. Billy was asleep on the other side of the bed. I bent over him and listened to his breathing. It was calm and regular. His breath is pure. His skin is new. I thought of my dead brother Tomas then and of my mother, when she woke from the nursery floor after falling asleep that night he was ill. She would have got to
her knees and looked into his cot. He was pale, still breathing, and unresponsive. She knew at that moment just how ill he was. Then there was the panic and the rush to the hospital. He died suddenly. He did not have a slow death, like Tanya’s.
My death will creep up on me day after day, month after month, year after year, as it crept up on Tanya. I may have ten more years of dying ahead of me. First my legs will go. I will need a wheelchair. My arms will become weaker and weaker until I will not be able to turn the wheels. I will need a full-time nurse to wash me and dress me and feed me. Then my neck and my throat muscles will start to waste until I cannot swallow or breathe. Difficult to be noble when your body walls you in.
Solange did not want them to bury Tomas. When they told her he was dead she demanded to be left alone with him in the hospital room. They left her sitting there, holding her dead baby in her arms. Hours passed and she would not come out of the room, or let Tomas go. Rigor mortis had started to set in. There were purple livid patches on his body and he was cold and stiff. My father tried to take Tomas away from her. She clung to her son, screaming at him.
‘He just needs to be kept warm.’
Still she rocked him and whispered to him. In the end three nurses had to hold on to her while my father took the baby’s body from her frantic, clawlike fingers.
On the day of Tomas’s funeral she was in the secure unit of a mental hospital. She did not see the small coffin being lowered into the earth. How do I know this? My father did not tell me. He would feel it was a betrayal of Solange. I was a journalist and I found out the truth. I discovered that Solange Vanheinen, my mother, suffered an acute psychotic reaction to the death of her son. Billy is almost exactly the same age as Tomas was when he died. I looked at him and thought how different a living baby is from a dead one.
When he woke up I gave him a bath. It was difficult because he was slippery and wriggly and splashed his hands up and down. If it is your own child maybe you have reserves of patience that I did not have. Maybe you are hardwired to cope with the baby’s constant demands. I dried him and dressed him. The only way to do it is not to hurry. If you take time and let him roll and kick on the bed, it is easier. There was a knock on the door. I moved to the front window. I looked down onto the path. Wayne was standing there. His car was parked in the road. He stood there for a minute. I knew he would look up so I drew back. When I looked again his head was bent. He was writing something. He pushed something through the letterbox and walked away. I heard his car reverse and drive off up Cremers Drift.
The Lie of You: I Will Have What Is Mine Page 22
