I have no intention of being around at Christmas to find out what kind of gift, if any, Claudia will bestow upon me. I’ll be long gone by then. I try to block out the destruction that will follow in my wake, the aftermath of my presence in the Morgan-Brown household.
‘She’ll be giving birth soon, won’t she,’ I say, wanting to find out exactly how much Jan knows about Claudia’s dates.
‘You say that,’ Jan says, taking a biscuit, still stalling her work, ‘but I thought she’d got another month to go, from what I’d worked out anyway.’
My heart flip-flops in my chest. This could change everything. More time is a blessing but could also be a curse. The longer I’m here, the more likely I am to get caught out. I need to know exactly when she’s due.
‘I could be wrong,’ Jan says dismissively. ‘Maths was never my strong point. But watch out, she’s going to be one of those possessive, overprotective mothers who likes to be in control of everything. Reckon you’ll have your work cut out with her more than you will the baby.’
‘How come?’ I notice the shake in my voice, but I don’t think Jan does.
‘Don’t get me wrong. I like Claudia. She just ain’t no Elizabeth. Put it this way, she’s had a lot of bad luck in her life when it comes to having babies. I think it’s made her bitter.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I pretend. ‘She seems so happy.’ I try not to think of Cecelia but can’t stop the fire of her hair, the depth of her wrath, the size of her disappointment and subsequent anger seeping into my mind.
‘She’s lost so many in the past, I think she’d just about given up conceiving.’ Jan nods knowingly and crosses her arms across her chest. ‘Miscarriages and stillbirths one after the other. Bang, bang, bang, all gone. She told me so.’ Her arms explode outwards as if to symbolise babies getting lost in the ether.
‘They’ve had a turbulent first few years of married life then.’
‘Oh no,’ Jan says. ‘She hasn’t lost any pregnancies with James. This was all before they were married.’
I can’t quite imagine Claudia pouring out her heart to the cleaner, but then perhaps the joy of finally carrying a baby to term made her want to shout it from the rooftops. I remember the box in the wardrobe and its heart-breaking contents. I feel even worse about what I’m going to do. I tell myself to remain detached and cold, or I’ll never follow through. Later, when Jan calls out that she’s leaving, singing out that she’ll be back tomorrow, I tap out a text to Cecelia. As ever, I delete it before I send.
*
Later still, in the school playground, I sidle up to Pip. The frozen yard is gradually filling up with gossip and hearsay as the mothers, and a few dads, gather to collect their children. Pip is chatting with several mums I don’t recognise. I want to ask her something about Claudia. It could make a difference.
‘Oh my goodness. Is she OK?’ Pip says, looking concerned after I explain briefly about the accident the other day. ‘You should have told me. Shall I come round later?’
‘She’s fine. She’s at work.’ I see the shock on Pip’s face. She clutches her bump in sympathy.
‘And you didn’t take her to hospital?’ Pip is incredulous.
‘It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Claudia refused to get checked out anyway.’ I don’t tell Pip that it was really my fear of the police becoming involved that prevented me from insisting she go to A&E. ‘I half expected it to induce labour, but it didn’t.’ I keep my tone light, as if it’s all nothing.
Pip doesn’t share my light-heartedness. ‘I’ll call her this evening,’ she says seriously, clearly annoyed with me.
‘She’d appreciate that, I’m sure.’ My mind’s been racing all day, since I found Claudia up in the attic last night. Ever since, I’ve had a nagging feeling that she wasn’t looking for a book as she said. And things had been moved in my room, I’m convinced of that. It’s second nature for me to notice such things. It makes me wonder if she suspects something. I’m desperate to find out from Pip if Claudia’s said anything about me, but I don’t know how to bring it up.
‘Here’s Lilly,’ I tell Pip as her little girl comes trotting out of school with a sopping painting rubbing against her leg.
‘I wish they’d let them dry first,’ Pip moans as Lilly flaps it about. The twins follow shortly after but neither of them is carrying a painting.
‘Don’t you guys have a picture to bring home?’ I wink at Pip, secretly thankful they don’t.
‘We did one together but got told off and had to sit in the corner all lesson,’ Noah says, almost proudly.
‘How come?’
‘He made me do it. I didn’t want to.’ Oscar is bordering on tears.
‘Did not!’ Noah snaps back.
‘Did too! Mummy, tell him to—’ Oscar looks mortified when he realises his mistake. I smile warmly, although him calling me Mummy only adds to my growing guilt.
Noah continues with the tale. ‘We did a painting of the bad man that cut out the lady’s baby.’
The cold prickles my eyes as they widen in shock. What do they mean? What do they know? They are only children. ‘That’s horrible,’ I say, trying to keep calm.
‘That’s boys for you,’ Pip says, ruffling Oscar’s hair. She turns to me and says quietly, ‘They could have overheard Claudia and me talking the other day. You know, about those poor women. And it’s been all over the news. You take notice of things like that in our condition.’ She takes Lilly’s hand and waves at me with the other. ‘Tell Claudia I’ll phone later.’
I nod, quite unable to speak. Everything is pressing down on me.
*
The boys are doing another painting. I told them to do a self-portrait as a present for their mum. Atonement, I figured, for their ghastly subject matter at school. I leave them in the kitchen, two hunched figures on an island of newspaper, while I dash up to my room. It hadn’t occurred to me before now to check my camera. I berate myself as I climb the stairs – for being distracted by Cecelia, for letting her interfere. How could I have been so stupid? From now on, the camera either lives on me or is hidden somewhere less obvious than the wardrobe.
Moments later I’m relieved to see that all the pictures are still on the camera’s storage card. I have no way of knowing if Claudia has been flicking through them. If she saw them, she’ll be trying to work out how I got into James’s study. She’ll be wondering when exactly I took them, and more importantly, why.
I select a photograph at random and zoom in closely. My mouth goes dry and my heart beats a crazy rhythm. What would Claudia have thought if she’d seen them – close-up snaps of that pregnant girl’s file? Carla Davis’s name is clearly printed at the top of the page. I imagine her confronting me, screaming at me for spying on their affairs, for delving into business that’s just not mine, demanding to know what I’ve done, what I’m going to do. I imagine myself running away. I imagine that poor girl mutilated, slashed, bleeding to death.
It’s more than I can stand. I tear down the stairs to the kitchen to find Claudia sitting between the boys. She’s admiring their portraits.
‘Zoe said we mustn’t paint murderers, Mummy,’ Noah says spitefully, glaring at me.
I’m standing in the doorway, panting as if I’ve just run for my life. The camera strap is still twisted around my knuckles.
‘And Zoe’s right, darling,’ Claudia says without taking her eyes off me. Her gaze switches between my camera and my face as if she’s looking for clues.
I have no idea if she knows.
30
LORRAINE WONDERED IF this was what it felt like to drown. Her senses tingled, reaching for earth, for air, trying to ground her in the familiar. It didn’t work. All she felt was a patchwork cacophony of riotous overload that made her want to end the interview before it had begun.
‘Would it be possible to turn off . . .’ Lorraine glanced around for the source of the din – or rather dins, as she heard not one or two but at least three layers of noise.
‘Sorry,’ the woman said. Her hands exploded into the air to accompany the theatrical grin. ‘But I do need my daily dose of the news and can’t live without Chopin while I’m working.’ She went deeper into the room – if that was possible, stuffed as full as it was – and removed an iPod from its dock. She chucked it onto the sofa and Lorraine felt as if it might never be seen again as it sank like a stone in quicksand beneath the cushions. Then the woman turned off a transistor radio. There was still a din. ‘I forgot I’d even put that on. Do you like death metal?’
‘I can’t say I’m a fan,’ Lorraine confessed. She thought she’d overheard Stella talking about it once, rather scornfully she was glad to recall. Finally, there was silence. ‘Can we sit down?’
‘Oh, oh!’ the woman said, apparently mortified she hadn’t already offered. She swept her eyes frantically around the room and, when they settled on a cluttered oval table, her arms went into action. In two deft arcs she’d cleared it, unperturbed by the mess now on the floor. ‘We can sit here. I’ll brew coffee.’ The woman virtually skipped and clapped her hands with excitement.
Lorraine refused the drink. She felt slightly sorry for the poor creature but also a tiny bit wary. There was a link between her and Sally-Ann Frith although she wasn’t particularly hopeful that the interview would buy her any useful leads. Still, it had to be done.
‘No, really, I’m fine,’ she reiterated, but the woman had already disappeared into the kitchen alcove of the bedsit and was rummaging among the detritus for cups. Lorraine leant against the wall, now loath to sit down if she didn’t have to. The woman clearly wasn’t going to be still any time soon so she’d just have to ask her questions while she busied about. ‘What’s your last name, Cecelia?’
She turned and stared at Lorraine as if she’d asked her to undress. Her wayward hair danced in the shaft of sunlight that strained in through the stained-glass circular window above the sink. ‘Paige,’ she said quietly. ‘I am Cecelia Paige.’ A nod confirmed this, and then she stuck her head in a tiny refrigerator, muttering about the milk being off.
‘And how long have you known Liam Rider?’
Again, another turn and pause. Her stillness suggested she was incapable of making coffee and talking at the same time. ‘Liam,’ she said, almost as if she’d never heard of him. ‘I know him through my college work.’
‘Yes, I’m aware of that. But I’d like to know how long you’ve been acquainted with him.’
‘Acquainted acquainted or just . . . acquainted?’
‘Either,’ Lorraine replied.
‘I’ve been teaching my course at the college for a little over a year. You get to know faces, see people around . . . staff room, canteen, library, in the car park. That kind of thing.’ Cecelia removed the top from the milk and sniffed. Her nose wrinkled. ‘I first saw Liam in the photocopying room. It was jammed.’ She put the lid on the milk and shook it vigorously. ‘I unjammed it for him.’ She held the plastic bottle up to the light and nodded approval. ‘By kicking it,’ she whispered. ‘You know how it is. We got chatting. Got friendly.’
‘You knew . . . know that Liam Rider is married.’
‘Of course. I wouldn’t want a single one.’
Lorraine’s heart instinctively pushed harder than normal against her chest. ‘And why would that be?’ Was that Adam’s floozy’s reasoning, she wondered?
‘Because all I wanted was a little bit of sperm, not a whole man.’
She prayed that hadn’t been the floozy’s line of thought. The idea of Grace and Stella having half brothers and sisters was . . . well, she didn’t know what it was as she’d only just considered the idea but it wasn’t feeling good so far.
‘Couldn’t you have gone to a sperm bank for that?’
‘I could have,’ Cecelia replied. ‘Although that gets very expensive after a while.’ Tarry black coffee dripped from a machine into a glass jug. Lorraine willed it to drip slowly so she didn’t have to drink any. ‘But this is – was – more personal. And it was fun while it lasted. Don’t worry, we didn’t have sex exactly.’
Lorraine didn’t reply to that. She certainly wasn’t worried whether they’d had sex or not, although Russ Goodall’s allegation suggested they’d been up to something. ‘Do you know anyone called Sally-Ann Frith?’
‘Of course,’ Cecelia said, as if everyone did. ‘Bitch,’ she added.
‘Oh?’ Lorraine’s heart quickened again.
‘Well, of course she was a bitch. She was Liam’s other bit on the side. And, to make matters worse, the stupid cow was actually pregnant.’ She took a moment to calm herself, Lorraine noted, as if things were getting too intense for her liking. Her self-control was impressive. ‘Anyway, my involvement with Liam was emotional as much as anything,’ Cecelia added. ‘The feelings for a physical relationship just weren’t there for me, even though he’s sort of attractive. And he’s a good deal older than me. But when he told me he’d read maths at Cambridge, I knew he was the one. It was a long time ago, admittedly, but it shows he must be clever. And I wanted good-looking, clever sperm.’ She sighed.
‘He didn’t study at Cambridge, love,’ Lorraine said, entirely unable to help the air-punch that took place inside her head. And she hadn’t thought him that attractive, either. ‘Because of . . . of everything, we’ve been over him thoroughly. He got his accountancy qualifications at Uxbridge Polytechnic in nineteen eighty-three. He’s been divorced twice. I’m not sure he’s very clever at all.’
Cecelia shrugged. ‘His sperm must have died anyway because it didn’t work.’
‘Work?’
‘Well she didn’t get pregnant, did she?’
Lorraine watched as Cecelia swilled out two mugs and set them on the table with the coffee jug and the bottle of sour milk. She put a packet of sugar on the table with an encrusted spoon sticking out.
‘Let’s sit. I’m more of an afternoon tea person myself.’ Cecelia smoothed down her jade dress before lowering herself carefully into a pink-painted wooden chair. Lorraine found herself doing as she was told while Cecelia poured the coffee. ‘Milk?’ she said, bottle poised.
‘Black for me,’ Lorraine insisted, swiping the cup away. She was damn well going to have to drink this and wanted to keep as much extra bacteria out of it as possible. ‘Who didn’t get pregnant with Liam’s sperm?’ she asked. This was not the conversation she’d imagined having this morning. And, while all indications pointed to Cecelia being slightly unhinged, Lorraine couldn’t decide if it was simply long-amassed quirks of creativity at play in her psyche, or something more sinister.
‘Heather, silly. She must have done it wrong. I showed her what to do.’
‘Who’s Heather?’
At this, Cecelia wilted into the chair. Her body seemed to deflate beneath her dress. ‘Heather moved out,’ she said sullenly. ‘She left me.’
‘She was living here?’ Lorraine wondered how even a mouse could live alongside Cecelia. If the clutter didn’t squeeze out the other person then Cecelia’s personality would.
‘Obviously . . . if she moved out.’
Lorraine was certain there were tears in Cecelia’s eyes although she did seem to have a general misty aura about her, as if she was glistening with dew or had been rubbed with exotic balm. She let her continue.
‘I can barely live without her. Do you know what it’s like to lose the person you love most in the world?’
Lorraine wanted to say she’d actually just found out, but kept quiet. If she was going to confide in anyone, it certainly wouldn’t be Cecelia.
‘The thing is,’ Cecelia continued, ‘I saw it coming a long time ago, even before Heather did, if I’m honest. Things were getting . . . strained between us. Being honest again, I think my desire for a baby wore her down. Out of the two of us, she’s never really wanted children, you see. Me, I was virtually born wanting one. Now I’m alone, I’ll never get one, will I?’
Lorraine took a moment to assess what she’d just said but was left with a
bizarre image of an infant caring for an infant and, like Cecelia herself, it just didn’t add up.
‘It’s hard when there isn’t a man, if you see what I mean,’ Cecelia said. Lorraine nodded that she understood. It wasn’t all that unusual these days. ‘You have to think of other ways to have a baby. Families aren’t all mum, dad and two point four children any more, you know.’
‘Quite,’ Lorraine replied.
‘Anyway, Heather is utterly selfless and wanted to help me all she could after my operation last year.’ Cecelia paused and sipped her coffee. Lorraine noticed her cheeks flush briefly with a shade of crimson that clashed with her hair. ‘I’d always had terrible women’s troubles, which eventually led to a full hysterectomy. I thought I was going to die. It explained why I’d never got pregnant. No chance now.’ She’d whispered the words women’s troubles.
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Cecelia,’ Lorraine said genuinely. She wasn’t sure her medical history was crucial or appropriate but pressed on all the same. ‘So Heather volunteered to carry your baby for you?’
‘Yes. She said we could use her womb. I’d already spent so much money on sperm samples for myself but, after my operation, I had to give up. Heather was so kind. We couldn’t afford to keep paying for the expensive and select sperm of doctors and professors so Heather decided to . . .’ Cecelia hesitated, uneasy with what she was about to say. ‘Well, Heather decided to go it alone to get a baby, if you see what I mean. She told me she’d do what she had to.’
‘I see,’ Lorraine replied, when she didn’t at all. ‘What did she have in mind exactly?’
‘Look, it went against everything she believes in, everything she stands for, but she was doing it for me, right?’ A small sob left Cecelia’s throat as if it had been caught there for months. ‘Is doing it for me,’ she added.
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