Authors: Samantha Hayes
‘Carla had a few one-night stands. She were dead pleased about the baby when she found out,’ said Emma, who, Lorraine thought, would probably be the best source of information until they could speak with Carla herself. ‘She hasn’t had much luck with boyfriends and that. When she were in care—’
Emma received a sharp kick in the leg from Paul Davis.
‘Foster care?’ Adam asked.
‘It wasn’t nothing,’ Paul replied quickly. The nervous leg-jiggling started up again. ‘Sandy and me, well, we found it hard sometimes. We thought it best if Carla were looked after. She could be a difficult girl.’
Adam and Lorraine each made a mental note to contact Social Services. There’d be a case file, the usual miserable story of a family gone to the wreckers through lack of money, drugs, alcohol, laziness, violence, or a combination of those things. It might throw something up.
The ward sister came into the visitors’ room. Her face was expectant, her tone reserved. Everyone looked at her. ‘Carla’s on her way back from theatre. She’s stable. Things went as well as they could.’ She took a breath that seemed to suck all the air from the miserable room.
‘Things?’ Lorraine said, standing. Carla’s father also stood, and approached the nurse in a slightly aggressive way. Adam was immediately beside him, watching his every move.
‘It’s the baby, I’m afraid,’ she went on. ‘There was nothing they could do to save it.’
‘But Carla’s going to be OK?’ Paul said, grappling with his emotions.
‘There’s a good chance, yes,’ she replied.
Paul sobbed, stumbling back to the chair with Emma’s help. Lorraine beckoned to Adam and they left the visitors’ room together. They waited in the corridor and within ten minutes a pale young woman was trundled through to a side ward on a high-sided bed. The porters nodded at them as they watched the girl go past. She didn’t look much older than Grace. Unconscious, waif-like, hooked up to a drip and portable monitor, it was obvious there would be no talking to her that day.
‘I’ll wait,’ Adam said, glancing at his watch. ‘You go home. Grace will be back from school soon and she needs her mum.’ He squeezed her arm. Lorraine stared at his hand on her jacket before shrugging it off. ‘See if you can talk her round.’
On the drive back, she rang the unit for an update. DC Barrett told her that aside from a three-month suspended sentence for theft, Carla Davis was a heroin addict and her baby was already on Child Protection’s at-risk register. It would probably have been taken into care as soon as it was born.
Lorraine pulled up outside her house. She locked her car and went inside. ‘I’m home,’ she called out. As usual, there was no reply. She heard the faint thud of music coming from upstairs. Then louder giggles as a door opened and someone scampered across the landing, banging the bathroom door. Moments later there was more girlish laughter.
My beautiful daughters
, Lorraine thought proudly. A soft smile crept across her face as she draped her coat over the banister rail. Then her stomach knotted once more at the thought of it all.
THE DOOR IS
locked. I rattle it again to make sure I’m not mistaken.
Damn.
I want to kick it, punch it, get a crowbar, shove it between the brass knob and the frame and wrench until the wood splinters and cracks and falls away, allowing me in.
I glance at my watch. I don’t have much time. I need to find out about the family and how much money they have, how they function, who’s in control of what, who deals with the finances. Any snippets going will do. I want to build a picture of their past, their present, but not their future. I can guess what that holds. For now, I want a snapshot of their lives – the big picture as well as the minuscule one.
I crouch down and peer through the keyhole. I can see the front of James’s desk but that’s all. Last time I was in his study was to extract Noah from the green-leather captain’s chair behind the desk. He was begging Oscar to spin him round but his brother was standing in the doorway shaking his head and biting his bottom lip, crying that they weren’t allowed in there. ‘Come on, Noah,’ I said from behind Oscar, my arms spanning the doorway. It felt as if there was an invisible force-field protecting the entrance, but, while Oscar and I knew not to cross it, Noah didn’t care a hoot. What was it James had said, not long after I’d moved in?
It’s private in here
.
There must be a key somewhere. I glance around the hallway. There are several tables – a battered pine one on the way to the kitchen and an antique demi-lune piece set against the long wall leading to the staircase. A vase of fresh lilies adorns its semi-circular top, and there’s a drawer in the mahogany front. I open it. There are some receipts, some batteries rolling around, a lone glove and a couple of biros. There are also two keys on unlabelled plastic fobs. They don’t look like the sort that would fit the big old door to the study, and I’m right. When I try, they’re a hopeless match.
I fumble my way through all the pockets of the coats hanging in the porch, and suddenly it all feels very underhand, as if I’m betraying their trust in me. My mouth goes dry, which is frankly ridiculous, and I’m reminded of being a kid desperately in need of money for the cinema or some sweets and scrounging off my parents by secretly checking their clothes for loose change. I always found a quid or two, always managed to just fit in with my mates somehow, appear like one of the gang even though I wasn’t. Considering everything, I was the lucky one.
I don’t find any keys. Just an assortment of tissues, half a packet of mints, a hair band, and a set of ear phones.
I think carefully as I rearrange all the coats. James would have been the one to lock the door before he left. It’s his study. But it would be impractical for him to take the key with him. Claudia is bound to need to go in there at some point while he’s away. What if there is a financial crisis, or a passport or birth certificate or other important document is required? I’m certain he keeps that sort of thing in there. He has filing cabinets. I’ve seen him poring over papers when the door’s not quite been shut late at night. He’d glance up from his desk, eyeing me as I walked past with piles of laundry or a sleepy boy in my arms. Only important things get kept in fireproof metal filing cabinets.
I conclude that the key will either be somewhere in this house or in Claudia’s possession. Earlier, after I returned to the house following my unexpected trip out this morning – what was I supposed to do after she hit a nerve so raw it took all my willpower not to cry out in pain? – Claudia had left for work. There was a note on the kitchen table.
I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. We can talk tonight. Love C.
No throw-away kiss like Cecelia would have used. Straight, neat handwriting slightly sloping to the left. What is it they say about that, those profilers who reckon they can tell everything about you by your scrawl? That it’s a sign of repression, of hidden emotions, of fear and withdrawal? I let out a little laugh and stuff the note in my pocket, thinking that kind of person sounds more like me than Claudia.
Upstairs in Claudia and James’s bedroom, I resume my search, listening for echoing remnants of words.
Here, darling, I’ll leave the key in my cufflink box . . . When you need it, the study key is in my bedside drawer . . . Remember, I’m hiding the key under my socks . . .
I hear none.
I stare at the bed made up with white linen. It’s huge. I’m reminded of Cecelia, of her lean body selfishly slicing up the bed. Marble-cold skin on crisp cotton sheets, her hair like a murder in the anaemic scene; me standing in the doorway, watching her, not knowing what to do with her misery.
I turn suddenly, catching my breath. There’s no one there. I close my eyes, take a moment to compose myself.
Everything is fine
.
I think carefully, slowly scanning the large bedroom. Vibrant peacock-print wallpaper adorns the chimney-breast wall, while the rest of the room is painted in a pale ochre that probably has a pretentious name. The massive bed, the centrepiece of the room, is carved mahogany with four shoulder-height posts. The bedding is perfectly arranged with vintage lace cushions that would, if I slept in here, get tossed on the floor.
I imagine James packing his holdall. I was surprised at how small it was but I suppose he has to travel light for life on a submarine. I think of him carefully placing starched shirts into the bag on top of crisp pressed trousers, all folded with military precision. They’ll be stowed in the most unlikely of compartments on board the vessel, while the men go about their work in cramped conditions. I see Claudia watching on as her husband prepares to leave, holding her beautiful burgeoning belly, a tear in her eye as she imagines giving birth alone. Does she even remember what he told her about the key’s whereabouts, or was she too upset about his looming departure?
Will I even find anything useful in the study anyway?
Quick as a fox, I’m rifling through every drawer in the room, trying not to mess up the contents. Wafts of sweet-smelling fabric softener fan off the clean clothes and underwear, but there’s no key. Without disturbing a thing, I look on the white-painted dressing table. I carefully lift the lids of a couple of china pots that contain earrings, safety pins, buttons and a couple of baby teeth. No key.
I hold my breath as I lift up each corner of the heavy king-size mattress, praying I’ll see a fob labelled ‘Study’. All I find is a magazine with Japanese writing on the cover and a tiny, virtually nude girl peering over the top of pink sunglasses. It looks old. It looks well used. James must have bought it on one of his overseas missions. I drop the mattress down, betting it’s not the only dirty thing he’s picked up in a foreign port.
Suddenly my heart aches for Claudia and I have a ridiculous desire to warn her about what I’m going to do.
I take a moment, a breather, although it feels a little like lingering in the lions’ den. Claudia could come home from work – perhaps in early labour, needing to fetch her hospital bag. Maybe James’s mission has been cancelled or rescheduled, or he’s had a change of heart about leaving Claudia alone for the birth of their baby. What if he has left the Navy in a fit of regret and is already home? Perhaps he’s silently taking the stairs two at a time and if I turned, if I twisted my head round just a little bit, I’d see the dark shadow of him in the doorway, watching me, reaching for the vase on the landing table, raising it high to bring down on my head.
I see pieces of china shattering around me as I slump to the carpet.
‘The gilet,’ I say, as if the imaginary blow has made me remember. When James locked his study last night, he was wearing beige chinos and a navy body warmer.
I go to his wardrobe. In the foxed mirrors I see myself looking eager, scared, as I swing both doors wide. Inside everything’s arranged neatly, as I would have expected. The scent of old wood and male cologne wafts around me as I bat my hands between the garments. Shirts to the left, then sweaters, and jackets to the right. Among the tweed and pinstripes, the cardigans and sweat tops, I see the gilet. It’s squashed in tight, and when I pull it out a brown zip-up cardigan falls off its hanger. I imagine James wearing it, sipping a brandy beside the fire, a newspaper spread out on his lap.
There are so many pockets. I shove my hand in each of them and am about to give up hope when my fingers stumble upon something cold, something metal, something that makes me think I’m a tiny step further forward.
Downstairs I slip the key into the lock. It slides in beautifully and the brass knob turns and gives.
My heart bruises in my chest. Someone is ringing the doorbell.
*
‘I thought we could walk to school together, to fetch the children,’ she says. Her face tells me she thinks it’s the idea of the century.
I stand there, dumb, wringing my hands.
I locked the study and pressed the key deep into my jeans pocket in immediate response to the bell. I made out her shape through the stained glass before I even opened the door – she was standing sideways so her massive bump wasn’t hard to miss – and my first thought was not to answer it, to let her ring again and again before she tramped sullenly off down the path. But that would raise suspicion with Claudia when they gossiped.
Where was she? What was she doing?
I can’t risk getting fired yet.
‘That would be lovely,’ I lie. I don’t like the way Pip has latched on to me, as if I’m a newer, younger version of her bump-buddy, available whenever suits her. Except I don’t have a bump. ‘I hadn’t realised it was that time already.’
Pip glances at her watch. ‘Quarter to three,’ she sings, but then leans forward with her hands on the outside wall. She blows out through pursed lips.
‘Oh, Pip. Do come in. I’m sorry. Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ she says, straightening at my invitation. A pregnant woman can get anything she wants – a seat on the bus, a foot rub, supper in bed, or worm her way into my business when she’s not wanted.
‘Time for tea?’ I offer when we are in the kitchen. She’s timed her arrival perfectly.
‘Thanks,’ she says, and then I’m clattering mugs and getting the milk from the fridge and not doing what I need to do in the study at all.
‘Look,’ Pip says eventually. I turn. The kettle judders on the Aga. ‘I actually came to talk to you about Claudia.’
I fight to keep from blushing, from twitching or breaking out in a sweat. ‘Oh?’ I take the kettle off the hotplate and close the lid. I slosh boiling water into the mugs. ‘Milk, sugar?’ I ask with my back to Pip.
‘Two, please,’ she replies. ‘Truth is, I’m a bit worried about her.’
I give her a mug of tea and sit beside her at the kitchen table when all I really want to do is run away. ‘Why?’
Pip sighs and thinks. ‘She seems different, unusually stressed. That’s hard for you to gauge, I suppose, given that you’ve not known her long and have nothing to compare it to.’
I pull a thoughtful face, as if I’m really trying to help. ‘It’s no wonder she’s stressed, though, is it? She’s probably got one of the most demanding jobs going, and I know for a fact there are a couple of really troublesome families in her caseload at the moment. And, of course, she’s eight and a half months pregnant.’ I take a sip of tea. ‘Plus James has just gone away. I know she has me to help, but having a virtual stranger move into your home must be quite . . . unsettling.’ I leave it at that, hoping that describing my presence as unsettling doesn’t make her suspicious.