The Accidental Mother (10 page)

Maria shrugged. “All right. You better tell me all you can about this Louis Gregory then, and I’d better track him down,” she said.

“Are you sure you’ll be able to?” Sophie asked her. “When the police and Social Services haven’t had any luck.”

“Amateurs, the lots of them,” Maria said, lighting up a cigarette and, seeing the look of longing in Sophie’s eyes, handing her one too. “I’ll find him, and quick too,” she said, blowing smoke out along with her words. “Don’t you worry about that, darling. I have
ways.
”

After Maria had gone, Sophie sat on the sofa and stared at the blank TV screen. It was amazing, she considered, how quickly humans adjusted to unusual situations. This was only the third night the girls had been sleeping in her bed and she had been lying awake on her sofa, yet this period of quiet reflection and despair had become almost routine.

At least she was doing something that would help the girls and help her, even if it was costing her fifty-five pounds an hour plus VAT and expenses. Once they had found Louis and brought him back to the United Kingdom, the girls would no longer be her responsibility. She would have done the right thing by Carrie and the right thing by them and the right thing all around, and she could go back to work in a nice new pair of shoes and everybody would be happy, especially Gillian. Except, of course, she’d be handing the girls over to a man they hardly knew, a man who had walked out on them without so much as a second thought.

“My God, I love him so much!” Carrie had said the night she rang Sophie to tell her that not only was she pregnant but she was getting married too. “He just looks at me with these incredible brown eyes, and—I’m not joking—he makes my knickers fizz!”

Sophie remembered that description exactly because fizzing knickers was not something she had ever had firsthand experience of at that point in her life and probably—if she was entirely honest—never had had since.

“You’re sure this is love, are you, and not just plain old lust?” Sophie had asked with typical caution. “I mean, are you sure you want to marry him? You hardly know him.”

Carrie had laughed. “Oh, Soph, how would you know the difference anyway? You’ve only ever lusted after people you can’t actually have. Besides, I know him, I know everything I need to know about him. He’s bloody gorgeous and he makes me laugh. And—I’m having his baby, I’m six weeks gone. When I told him, I was really worried that he’d just walk out on me and that would be the end of us, but he really wants us to have it, Soph. It was a risk, but I somehow knew he would. He grew up without a proper family. He really wants to give that to his children. It’s going to be wonderful. We are going to be wonderful. Trust me.”

Sophie had trusted Carrie, because for all of her impulsiveness and recklessness, she had this incredible determination to be happy, and Sophie had never heard her sound happier than at that moment. “If you’re sure, I’m happy for you, Carrie, I really am,” Sophie said, and she’d meant it.

“He’s a good man, Soph. Once you’ve got to know him, you’re going to really love him, I promise.”

Except, of course, Sophie had never got to know Louis; she’d barely even met him, because he’d left his wife and kids and run away.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Carrie?” Sophie said quietly into the half-light. “I would have been there for you, you know. Always, forever, whatever.” The three words sounded corny in the empty room, and Sophie felt the fragility of the friendship that had fallen apart without her even noticing, as if it were a spider’s web disintegrating in her hands.

Sophie wondered where Carrie was now. Not whether or not she was in Heaven or Hell, or even reintegrating in the marine ecosystem somewhere off the Cornish coast. She wondered where Carrie was inside her, because still, three days later, she had not cried for Carrie. She had hardly had time to feel sad, but even when she did, like now, the sadness was negligible. It wasn’t as if she had blocked it out with some grave and protective outer shell. It was more like if there was any sadness inside her at all, there were so many other layers between Sophie’s rational thoughts and the core of her missing and loving Carrie that she could barely touch them.

Sophie closed her eyes for a moment and tried hard to feel the grief. She willed herself to cry, but no tears came. Perhaps all of her feelings were muffled by layer after layer of indifferent insulation, because she could not remember the last time she had really felt anything. Except that wasn’t exactly true, Sophie admitted to herself. She could remember the last time. It was the day they’d cremated her dad.

Sophie shook her head to clear it. She didn’t want to think about her dad now. She needed to stay focused. When all the practicalities were sorted out, that would be when she’d start to feel Carrie’s death. She knew it would.

The edge of her bare foot touched something cold poking out from beneath the sofa. Using her toes to slide the object out, Sophie reached down and picked up a book. It was
Dr. Robert’s Complete Dog Training and Care Manual.
Sophie looked at the picture of a soppy red setter grinning ludicrously on the front cover and smiled. Only her mum would give her a dog manual to read for helpful child-rearing hints and tips. With nothing better to do, she flicked through the pages until she stopped at the chapter entitled “Puppy Psychology”; a subtitle that read “Puppies and Car Travel” caught her eye.

Sophie shrugged. It was late, and she wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon. Maybe a page of two or puppy psychology would help unwind the tightly wound coil of her mind; half a mug of Baileys hadn’t worked. It was worth a go.

She was on paragraph two, wondering if you could buy worming tablets for children, when Artemis appeared from the kitchen window and strolled over. The cat took one look at the cover of the book and, Sophie could have sworn, wrinkled her pink nose in disgust before stalking out again in the general direction of the bedroom. Sophie smiled to herself; amazingly, Artemis had seemed to adjust to the girls being in there far more quickly than Sophie had. She had even caught Artemis sitting only three feet away from Bella that morning as Bella studiously attempted to draw her ear, sitting perfectly still as if she were trying to be extra helpful. Perhaps it was because all three females—Artemis, Izzy, and Bella—had something in common. They were all at least half feral.

“Cats and dogs and kids,” Sophie muttered to herself as she settled back onto the sofa with the book. “Basically the same principle.”

She turned to the chapter on antisocial behavior.

O
n Friday morning, Sophie was still hoping that Maria really was going to find Louis as quickly as she’d said she could and didn’t yet know that she would be deciding to keep the children much longer than the two weeks she had originally agreed to.

The morning began with Lisa sobbing on the other end of the phone, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Sophie. But you’ve got to come in. I can’t stop her. You won’t believe what she called me—” Sophie would believe it. She believed Eve capable of doing pretty much anything, but she had to admit she hadn’t expected her to stop circling and go in for the kill quite so soon.

“Where’s Cal? Pass me to Cal,” Sophie told Lisa, who put her through with a snuffle.

“What’s the deal, Cal?” Sophie asked him.

“Eve is in your office right now,” he said. “She got your leads file and your Rolodex. Somehow she’s got your PC password—” Sophie opened her mouth to holler, but hearing her sharp intake of breath, Cal cut her off before she could utter a word. “Don’t shout at me, I don’t know how she got it—because it definitely wouldn’t have been anything obvious like—oh, I don’t know—your
name
, would it?”

Sophie, who did suffer from a lack of imagination when it came to passwords, in fact pretty much anything, clamped her mouth shut.

“Anyway,” Cal continued quickly. “She says that Gillian has asked her to help you out by keeping on top of things while you are away, being all noble and saintly. I tried to stop her, but she said if I had a problem, speak to Gillian. Well, what could I do? If Gillian says it’s okay for her to be in there, then—it’s okay, right?”

“No, she’s using that as an excuse to raid my clients list and take credit for all of my ideas,” Sophie said matter-of-factly. She wouldn’t have done the same thing in Eve’s position, but she would have wished she had the balls and total lack of conscience to do it.

“Probably,” Cal said. “Lisa did try to stop her going in, but she called Lisa a…let me see, oh yes, a ‘fat blubbering pointless rusty old bike,’ and Lisa started to cry, and well, you can guess the rest.” Cal paused. “I think you’d better come down,” he said.

“I’m on my way,” Sophie said, and she hung up the phone. She looked at the girls, who had taken up their newly habitual position on the sofa in their pajamas watching a soap opera with expressions of fascinated horror.

“Right, spit spot, come on, girls—double-quick we’re going out.” The girls’ heads jerked in her direction as if they were puppies who’d been told it was walk time.

“Out! Out! Out!” Izzy hopped off the sofa with joy. “Oooh, good. Am I going to wear my fairy dress?”

Sophie shook her head; the fairy dress had gone in the garbage bin and was probably even now being buried in a concrete container in the middle of the North Sea.

“I know,” Sophie said, remembering something that the dog book had said about using distraction. “Let’s have a race. We’ll go and look in your suitcase, and whoever gets dressed the quickest wins a fabulous prize!” Both girls leaped up in anticipation, as if Sophie was about the throw a stick for them to fetch. “Ready, steady,
go
!” she shouted.

And that was how, twenty-seven minutes later, the three girls emerged from the flat blinking in the daylight, one dressed in jeans and a slightly grubby pink Calvin Klein T-shirt and fleece jacket (Sophie), one dressed as a ballerina-pirate fusion complete with eye patch and musical wand and topped off with a sweater and a poncho (Izzy), and one wearing a rainbow-striped hand-knitted sweater that was at least ten sizes too big for her and fell off one shoulder to reveal the graying lace of an aged T-shirt and came down to just below her knees, where her Angelina Ballerina Wellington boots began. All topped off by a lurid pink down jacket.

“Are those wellies comfortable to walk in?” Sophie asked Bella, wondering what her chances were of a bus coming anytime in the next four hours.

Bella furrowed a brow at her. “I wasn’t thinking about comfort, Aunty Sophie. I was thinking about speed. I wanted to win the prize!”

Sophie admired her competitive spirit and felt a pang of guilt since technically there was no prize, but as they were all out of the house now, she supposed she could take the girls to the Broadgate branch of H+M right after she had been to the office and confronted the Lady Macbeth of party planning. “And I did win.”

“You didn’t win, I won!” Izzy shouted as they boarded the 149 bus.

“I won,” Bella shouted back.

“I won!” Izzy insisted.

“I won!” Bella repeated.

“I won!” Sophie shouted them both down so that they, the bus driver, and the six or so passengers already on the bottom deck of the bus stopped talking and looked at her. Sophie dropped some pound coins into the driver’s change tray and ripped the tickets off the machine. “I won,” she repeated as the bus lurched out of the stop and more or less threw all three of them into an empty seat. “I was dressed before either of you, so actually I’m the winner.” Sophie squeezed both the girls next to the window and jammed herself onto the end of the seat.

“But you can’t be the winner,” Bella protested. “You’re the grown-up, and anyway you already had your clothes on when you set the competition, so that doesn’t count.”

“’S not fair!” Izzy joined in. “Not fair, not fair!”

Sophie looked at both girls and bit her lip. She wanted to say to them that life isn’t fair and that it was about time they realized that, but it sounded exactly like the sort of thing Mrs. Stiles used to say to Carrie on a regular basis, and she knew Carrie would hate it being said to her children, even if, quite honestly, right now Sophie thought that Mrs. Stiles was right. But, she wasn’t heartless, just rather tired, so she said, “Okay, we’ll call it a three-way tie. We all win, okay? After I’ve sorted out work, we’ll all go and get a prize, okay?”

Izzy and Bella exchanged suspicious looks.

“’Spose,” Izzy said.

“I won,” Bella said but very quietly and mostly to herself, folding her arms across her chest, her shoulders slumping.

“Er, I think you’ll find I won,” Sophie said before she caught a woman looking scathingly at her and realized exactly what she was doing. Then she shut up.

Sophie stopped the girls in front of the office building in which McCarthy Hughes occupied the seventh and eighth floors. The children looked upward openmouthed.

“A giant’s house,” Izzy breathed, awestruck.

“It’s a skyscraper, thicko,” Bella said. “Giants’ houses are much bigger.” Sophie thought about the chapter on puppy psychology she’d read last night. Body language, it was all in the body language. You believe that you are in control and in charge, and
they
believe that you are control and in charge—or something like that. Show no fear, that was what the manual said, because they can feel it through the leash. So perhaps it was fortunate after all that it was probably illegal to make children wear leashes. She crouched down on the steps of the building and, putting a hand on each of the girls’ shoulders, looked them directly in the eye. “Now listen,” she said. “This is where I work. This is my job. It is very
very
important that while you are in this building you do exactly what I tell you. You don’t scream or run away or cause a flood or”—Sophie narrowed her eyes at Izzy—“attempt to fix anything just like Bob the Dentist—”

“Bob the Builder!” Izzy said, with a giggle.

“Whatever. Do you understand?” Sophie looked back at Bella, whose attention had drifted skyward once again, and pressed her palm gently down on the top of her head until she was looking in her eyes. “You don’t run about, you don’t touch anything, you don’t talk to anyone, because this is Aunty Sophie’s job and it is a very,
very
important job.”

Bella screwed up her mouth into a sideways knot. It was an expression that Sophie was beginning to learn usually preceded an impudent and often hard to answer question. She braced herself.

“What do you do for a job, Aunty Sophie?” Bella asked. “Are you a doctor, or a vet or a…” The girl searched for an occupation that could be appropriately described as very important. “Are you an astronaut?” she asked. Sophie sighed. There were a lot of people in the world who thought her job wasn’t very important, comparatively speaking, and couldn’t see why she allowed it to occupy 90 percent of her life that wasn’t taken up by sleep, but she hadn’t expected a six-year-old to jump on the bandwagon.

“I plan parties,” she said quickly, and added under her breath as she stood, “Really, really important ones.”

On the way up the lift, Sophie had been planning several types of camouflage to get the children into the office unnoticed. Perhaps she could hide them under her coat, or maybe stick photocopy paper boxes on their heads and edge them along in the shadows. She stopped herself. She didn’t have to sneak the girls into the office. Children, unlike smoking, weren’t completely banned. Gillian’s nanny brought her two in every now and then, during school holidays, for example, and everyone would smile at them and ask them how school was. But Izzy and Bella weren’t like Gillian’s children. Compared with Gillian’s neatly combed and surprisingly sedate offspring, they were like half-wild savages who had previously been raised by wolves.

Miraculously, though, the open-plan part of the office was completely empty, and Sophie guessed that everybody was in Gillian’s huge office going over the week’s events, with Gillian sitting at the head of the table. Despite her conviction that she wasn’t doing anything wrong, Sophie hurried the girls toward her office, and once she had more or less thrown them safely through the door, she slammed it behind her and adjusted the venetian blinds on the interior windows so that no one could see in or out.

“Are you being chased by the feds?” Cal asked, twirling in her chair, looking her up and down. “You look terrible, by the way.”

Sophie looked around the office. “Where’s Lisa?” she said.

“In the meeting,” Cal said. “She said she couldn’t go in, because everyone would know that she had been crying, and I said, Well, yes, they would, Lisa, but everyone was used to that by now and she had to go in anyway even if she didn’t want to, as it is her job, and you can’t just back down from every challenge life throws at you, otherwise you’ll never get anywhere. Look at Liza Minnelli.” Cal smiled at the girls and winked. Both girls giggled. “And off she went like a trouper. I lent her your emergency mascara, which she put on over her old mascara, so ironically she actually she does look quite a lot like Liza Minnelli now.”

Sophie had to admit that Cal’s built-in inability ever to answer even a simple question without turning his response into a lengthy monologue did slightly affect her level of affection for him, especially when time was of the essence.

“So what’s the damage?” asked, walking around her desk and opening the drawers until she found her spare notebooks. She also took out two pens and a set of highlighter pens, and gave them to Bella. “Sit here in the corner on the floor and do me some lovely pictures, okay?”

Bella took the pens and sat reluctantly on the carpet. “What of?” she asked as Izzy plonked herself next to her.

“Anything,” Sophie said impatiently. “Draw the view.” Bella looked around her, assessing the view of desk legs, the bottom halves of two filing cabinets, and a wastepaper bin, a deep frown slotted between her brows.

“
I’m
drawing mermaids,” she said to Izzy, who shook her head.

“I’m drawing Arsey-miss,” Izzy said, and it took a moment for Sophie to realize she meant her cat and was not planning a self-portrait. She returned her attention to Cal, who reluctantly vacated her chair.

“Well?” she asked.

“Same as before—Eve has your Rolodex, your leads book, and your diary,” he repeated in a singsong voice, his eyes skyward. “She said Gillian told her to take them. Lisa could hardly contradict her, could she? And she couldn’t go marching into Gillian’s office asking her what she thought she was playing at, so after the briefest of struggles, we let her take them. What else could we do?” He gave a little shrug and examined his nails.

“Right,” Sophie said. She walked back to the internal office window and, prizing open a space between two blind slats, peered through it. Her colleagues were gradually filing back to their desks. She spotted Eve standing by Gillian’s office door talking and laughing with their boss as if they were best friends. “The meeting’s out. Lisa will be here in a minute. I want you and her to keep an eye on those two. Don’t let them out of your sight, okay?” she ordered.

Cal did not have time to answer before Lisa opened the door. “Thank fuck that’s over,” she said with feeling.

“You’re not supposed to say
fuck
in front of us.” Bella’s voice floated up from the other side of the desk a moment or two before her bangs and then eyes peered disapprovingly over the edge.

“Fuck,” Lisa said, jumping and then looking at Sophie. “Oh, f-flip. Sorry, Sophie.”

Sophie briefly assessed what Lisa was wearing—a pink button-down shirt—not Sophie’s usual style, but it would have to do.

“Never mind that now. Take your top off.”

Lisa looked alarmed. “I beg your pardon?” she said.

“I said, ‘Take your top off,’” Sophie said impatiently. “I’m not going in to see Eve and Gillian looking like this, am I? You lend me your shirt until I’ve sorted this out.” Sophie seemed confused by Lisa’s reluctance, and she peeled her T-shirt off over her head. “You can wear this, all right? Now hurry up.” Lisa took the less than fragrant T-shirt gingerly from Sophie’s hand and draped it over the back of a chair before unbuttoning her shirt and handing it to Sophie.