Because of You

by Dawn French

  ‘It’s the police!’ she cried. ‘Oh Jesus …’

  In that critical moment, Quiet Isaac made his big decision. He jumped off the precipice. Without a word, he stood up with the swaddled baby still in his arms. He left the front room and raced down the hall into the kitchen, out of the door on to the fire escape and fled down the metal steps, across the yard and out through the back gate into the alley beyond. He was gone like a fox at sunrise.

  Hope was still buttoning up her blouse when the doorbell rang. She was in shock. Where had Isaac gone? For a moment she was rooted to the spot, uncertain of what to do.

  Then, suddenly and surely, she knew exactly what to do. She took a crucial deep breath and left her flat, down the communal stairs to the front door where she could see the unmistakeable outline of police officers through the glass. She opened it.

  ‘Hello, Ms Parker? I’m Police Constable Cheese. Deborah. This is Constable Taylor. May we come in?’

  ‘Er, yes, of course. Is everything all right? Nothing’s happened to Isaac, has it?’ Hope was alarmed. Not really alarmed. Cleverly fake alarmed. She was thinking fast.

  ‘Let’s just go inside, shall we?’ Debbie tried to be comforting as she and her colleague followed Hope back into the hallway, past the annoying bike and up the stairs to her flat.

  Hope stopped halfway up and turned around. ‘Please tell me if he’s OK. I can’t bear it. This has been the worst day of my life – please tell me if it just got even worser … it can’t …’ She slumped against the wall. She noted with interest that she actually DID feel a bit wobbly. Perhaps it was the stitches, perhaps it was the stress, but it wasn’t taking much skill to fake it. Debbie Cheese took her arm and guided her on up.

  ‘Don’t worry, come on,’ she reassured her.

  Once in the flat, Hope went into the kitchen straight away, mindful to keep them away from the front room where Minnie last was, just in case they might somehow know. Would they smell her? Surely not. But still. Hope’s heart was beating fast; she knew she had to keep her wits about her.

  The bag which had contained the concealed Minnie was still open on the table. Hope saw Debbie glance into it. Hope sat down at the tiny table, and immediately stood up again.

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea? Or something? Or … I don’t know what …?’ Hope offered, confused.

  ‘No, no, thank you,’ said Debbie. ‘We just want to ask you a few questions. There was an incident at the hospital this morning and you might have some information for us, or might have noticed something …?’

  ‘So, Isaac is safe?’

  ‘Sorry, who is Isaac?’

  ‘He’s my … boyfriend. OK, that’s fine, so long as he’s OK, it’s not about him.’

  ‘Where is he at the moment, then?’

  ‘He … drove me home and now he’s gone out to get some … things … and he’s taken some of the … baby stuff … to the charity shop … I just didn’t want it here, I can’t look at it …’ For a brief moment, Hope dipped back into the feelings she had been having in the early hours of that morning when she realized Minnie was gone. Since then, her heart had been on a roller coaster, but she could still remember where it started, with the tiny limp body. She conjured the picture in her mind and she started to weep for it all.

  Constable Debbie immediately sympathized: ‘Ms Parker, we know you experienced a trauma this morning, and I’m sorry to have to ask you these questions, but there’s a life at stake here …’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Hope enquired snottily through her waterfall of true tears.

  ‘A baby has been snatched from a room on the same ward where you were. Perhaps you could just fill me in on everything you saw when you left earlier … And if it’s all right with you, Constable Taylor will have a quick look around …?’

  ‘Yes, of course, go ahead,’ Hope replied with confidence. ‘God, how terrible … poor parents … I know how that feels … to lose a …’ Her voice faltered and trailed off.

  While Debbie carefully questioned Hope, and wrote everything down in a special little notebook, Constable Taylor had a thorough poke around the flat. He would find nothing suspicious; Hope knew that. After all, the baby had only been there for a short time. There was no evidence of her.

  Unbeknownst to Hope, and luckily for her, that very morning a family of Romanians had been visiting a new mother on the same floor. It was a big group, loud and unruly, and very happy to see their new addition.

  Also luckily for Hope, the inherent prejudice of some of the Met police meant that the focus of the investigation was on this group of gypsy people. Inspector Thripshaw was convinced they were guilty of kidnapping Florence. All of his energies were there; he had only sent Debbie to talk to Hope as a matter of formality, process and straightforward elimination. There was no strong suspicion; the police were mopping up every single avenue as quickly as they could before moving on to hone in on the Romanians, who had gone now, and were spread far and wide around the city, as was their wont. These two facts meant that Debbie Cheese was already on a losing wicket with Hope.

  Debbie was a solid police officer, however, and observant at all times, so she scanned everywhere as she spoke to Hope and she was on high alert for any clue Hope might reveal. The fact was there were no real clues; even the bag Florence had been carried in was seemingly perfectly normal and contained ordinary overnight stuff. Now, IF Debbie had decided to give that bag to a forensics team, she MIGHT’VE had a whole other DNA story … but she didn’t. She immediately warmed to and trusted Hope like everybody who met her, and she knew that Hope had been through an unthinkably terrible time losing her baby that very morning, so the last thing she wanted to do was add to that dreadful burden if she didn’t have to.

  Hope gave an apparently full account of leaving the hospital after saying goodbye to Fatu, and travelling easily and innocently down to the car park where Isaac was waiting. There were car park attendants on the exit gates who would verify any story, Debbie reminded her, which only served to relax Hope since she absolutely knew that they would not have seen anything suspicious.

  ‘Thank you for your help, Ms Parker.’ Kind Debbie, solidly inhabiting her uniform, wrapped up her questioning as she flicked shut her little black book. ‘And do feel free to call us if you think you remember anything at all, however small or insignificant, especially if it struck you as unusual. It may help us to put a picture together …’

  Constable Taylor had, meanwhile, looked in every room, in every cupboard and drawer; he’d even been down the fire escape where Isaac had fled with Minnie minutes before and he’d checked the yard, the bins, the old shed. Of course, he found absolutely nothing. He even poked his head into the dusty loft space. As he walked back into the kitchen, he gave Constable Debbie the nod that it was all checked, all clear, which she took as their cue to leave.

  ‘Will you be all right here on your own?’ she asked Hope.

  ‘Um, yes. Isaac will be back shortly, I’m sure. He won’t want to be long. We’re going to make soup and we have some people to call … Some of the family don’t even know yet … I can’t think of the right words …’

  Constable Debbie reached out and touched Hope’s hand. She might’ve been a police officer, but she was still a human, and a female one at that, who could empathize with Hope’s tangible sorrow. When their eyes met, the sad Hope that Debbie saw wasn’t a fabrication. Hope genuinely was a woman who had, not more than a few hours before, experienced a despair that was hardly bearable. That was the part of Hope which Debbie connected with. Hope knew it too, and didn’t mind that Debbie’s good heart was baited in such a way, because it was the truth. A truth. Not the whole truth, obviously.

  So it was that Constable Debbie Cheese left Hope’s flat convinced she had conducted a thorough check and consequently eliminated her from any ongoing investigation. Hope had never quite made it on to a list of suspects, and she certainly wouldn’t now.

  Hope was off the hook.

  It had been an
Oscar-worthy performance.

  She closed the door behind the police officers as they clumped down the poorly constructed stairs with the threadbare carpet. She rushed to the front room and, from behind the blind, watched them get in their car and go. She exhaled slowly.

  Now …

  Where was Isaac with her daughter?

  Where was her daughter Minnie?

  The Press

  Julius wished he had better clothes with him. He was tempted to get his secretary to pop to their house on her way to the hospital to pick up his tailored Paul Smith deep purple double-breasted suit, but changed his mind when, on second thoughts (which he rarely had), he remembered it was really a knock-’em-dead party suit. Shame, he thought, this might turn out to be a huge audience. Yep. Massive. But the purple is wrong for this. Better to look a bit dishevelled actually. More authentic. Yeah …

  With that thought, he pulled his shirt out of his trousers and undid a couple more buttons. He’d been in these same clothes since last night and he wasn’t the most fragrant he’d ever been. Still, more power to his elbow: it was definitely a credible look, and never before had Julius needed to appear as credible as at this very moment.

  Anna had somehow dragged herself into the fresher clothes she had the foresight to pack, imagining there might have been a photo with them all together for Julius to hand to his PR team. They would’ve been standing on the front steps of the hospital, maybe even including a key midwife, perhaps Irish Sarah, in aesthetically pleasing ascending height order, and Anna would have had little Florence in her arms. For that purpose, she’d packed a seasonally jolly red jumper and well-cut Joseph trousers.

  It all felt completely incongruous now. Downright wrong, in fact, but Anna was in an altered state, and she was operating like a robot. Anything she did or said felt as if someone else was remote-controlling her. She answered questions, she washed, she dressed, she packed up ready to leave, all as instructed by the kind folks around her, all as if her head wasn’t a bucket full of screams.

  Anna had agreed to take part in the sizeable press announcement DI Thripshaw had arranged. She knew it gave her the best chance of getting Florence back. But as she was packing up her bag, she had no idea what she was going to say. She found herself unpacking the bag and packing it again three times. She realized that she was doing this in order to double-check that she hadn’t somehow forgotten she’d put Florence in there, somewhere at the bottom of the bag. She even looked in the zip-up inner side pockets. She found herself genuinely searching and half expecting to find the baby curled up there so that she could turn to them and pronounce, ‘Oh, there you are! Sorry, everyone, I totally forgot I’d already packed her away nice and safe. She’s snuggled in here, look at her, little hamster, all scrunched up …!’ and they would all laugh and do those big thank-God-for-that relieved eyes, and everyone would want to hold her so much, and she’d get tired and cry with her shakey bottom lip out and no one would mind in the least …

  ‘Anna, darling, we need to make a move. Follow me, and listen, I’ll do the talking, OK?’ Clearly, Julius regarded himself as hugely considerate as he passively bullied her into keeping quiet. Clearly, he had convinced himself that he was by far the better person for the job of confronting the press. And clearly, to an extent, that was true: he was indeed experienced, owing to his job. But Anna was actually the perfect person to speak to them. Because SHE WAS THE MOTHER.

  In a haze of half-awareness, she took his hand and followed him along the corridor and into the lift and along another corridor and into the anteroom. Through the door they could see a long table with microphones set up in front of a row of cameras, with various grumpy journalists waiting. This was after all 1 January; most of them were nursing very sore heads, and they really REALLY didn’t want to be here. Not even for the kidnapping of Julius Albert Lindon-Clarke’s brand-new baby. On any other day, they would’ve cravenly devoured this opportunity, but today, they didn’t like their jobs. At all.

  In the anteroom, DI Thripshaw briefed Anna and Julius on how he planned the conference to go.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Lindon-Clarke, we are all set up now. I’m not going to lie to you, this will be no walk in the cake, but if you follow my leader, I will kick off the preceedings, and then I will hand over to you—’

  ‘To me,’ Julius interjected quickly. He truly didn’t want Thripshaw to say much, since he appeared to put his foot in his mouth virtually every time he opened it.

  ‘Certainly, yes,’ Thripshaw agreed. ‘It’s best to keep it short, to the point, and heartfelt. Be yourselves and don’t be afraid to let them know how you really feel. It’s best to be fully honest. Now obviously there are a few of the tabloids out there, proper wolves in cheap clothing, but I will handle any off-pissed remarks. Either I will jump in or, if you give me the nod, Mr Lindon-Clarke, I will give them a shot across the bowels, don’t worry. Now then, are we ready?’

  With all confidence vastly reduced to virtually zero, the doleful group trooped in and sat in a sombre row with DI Thripshaw at one end, then Anna and Julius, then two other police officers who had been specifically targeting the Romanian community as part of a five-year investigation called Operation Roma.

  Thripshaw took the lead. ‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen – mainly gentlemen I see – and welcome to two thousand with a thud. As you may be aware, we are here to investigate the snatching of a newborn baby girl early this morning from this very hospital. Mr Lindon-Clarke, the father, will speak first, and I would ask you to be sensitive, please, folks: Mrs Lindon-Clarke here has been through a hedge backwards this morning, as I’m sure you will appreciate – all of us know the extent of the bondage between a mother and child is huge. Mr Lindon-Clarke …?’

  Julius resisted rolling his eyes and pulled the microphone towards him on the table. For the first time since Florence had gone missing, he reached out to Anna and put his big hand on hers. She was already in a strange numb place where nothing made sense, and this unusual action compounded the surreality of it all.

  He started to speak; there was a tremble in his voice. Was it real? ‘My wife and I are understandably devastated at the loss of our precious first-born daughter, Florence – of course we are – and we are relying on this city’s magnificent police force to find her. We have every faith that, with the help of the morally upright citizens we know are out there, we will get that vital lead we need, and we will bring little Florence home …’

  Anna watched him speak. She knew he was certainly doing that because his mouth was moving, but she had very little idea what he was saying. It suddenly struck her that she wanted, more than anything, more than ever, to be dead. Then, at least, all expectation of feeling would cease, and she could sink into a seabed of gloopy thick sorrow without being watched or judged, which is what she felt was happening. She was concentrating hard on trying to breathe. It wasn’t easy because her lungs and throat had calcified with shock.

  ‘This tragedy only serves to highlight an issue we have been discussing for almost a decade now,’ Julius continued, ‘which is the obvious lack of security in hospitals. I have long been an advocate of CCTV on EVERY corridor, in EVERY lift and certainly in all reception areas and car parks.’

  This was news to Julius’s longstanding PA, who leant against the wall as she reeled with the sophistry.

  ‘Perhaps if such a system had been in place in this very hospital on this very morning, my own daughter wouldn’t be missing right now. It’s time to put this matter back at the top of the agenda …’

  Anna watched on as Julius slid comfortably into his familiar political territory, using this prime but inappropriate opportunity to bang a pet drum.

  Even DI Thripshaw could see this wasn’t good, and he interrupted Julius: ‘Yes, thank you, Mr Lindon-Clarke. Perhaps Mrs Lindon-Clarke would like to second that emulsion with her own words …?’

  ‘No,’ said Julius, irritated by the intervention just as he was preparing to take flight.

  Thrip
shaw could see that the journos were glazing over while Julius was speaking, and that was the last thing he wanted. He needed this to be impactful. He needed to make sure a heart and soul was seen by the cameras. Neither was present in Julius.

  ‘Yes,’ he said firmly, ‘I think so … Mrs Lindon-Clarke?’ He indicated for Anna to take the microphone. She didn’t move, so Thripshaw pushed it towards her, and gestured that the floor was hers.

  Anna looked down at her hands, which she noticed were clenched tight, whitening the knuckles; then she looked at the microphone and up at the waiting journalists, poised with their notebooks and pens … She slowly leant forward, and spoke quietly.

  ‘Someone has ripped my heart out of me. Please give her back … or I can’t live. Don’t hurt her, don’t hurt my heart … please …’ And with that, Anna could no longer stem the tide of torment she was holding back. Speaking out and admitting how she felt, putting her anguish into the air like that, burst the dam. She put her hands to her face to hide the tears that came gushing out of her, but the force of her suppressed despair was too powerful to stop. In any other circumstance, she would have been mortified to be blubbing so openly in public. She was famously emotionally restrained. Not this sad morning, 1 January 2000, the day her life fell apart. On this day, she had nothing to lose. She’d already lost it.

  As Julius went to put his arm around her, she batted him away as if he were fire she was fending off. She didn’t want to feel the burn of his touch, or anyone’s touch unless it was Florence. She longed for the beautiful soft flesh on flesh with her, the flesh of her flesh. She wanted it so badly that she physically hurt.

  Julius was embarrassed that his effort to comfort his wife had been so publicly rebuffed. The journalists were definitely scribbling now, and he could feel the zooms of the cameras. This was tabloid gold. Their relationship laid bare with such intimate awkwardness at this extraordinary moment.