Until You're Mine (27 page)

‘Is everything OK?’ she asked.

‘Is your son here?’ Lorraine said, still with her business voice on. She wanted the woman to have a moment of anxiety at at least a tenth of the level hers was at.

‘Matt? Yes. Why?’

Lorraine waited a beat, as long as she dared, before forcing a smile. ‘Good, then that must mean my daughter’s here too.’ It was then that Lorraine noticed the suitcases dumped on the hall floor – suitcases she recognised from home. Seeing actual evidence of Grace moving out made her feel sick.

‘Ahh,’ the woman said graciously. ‘You must be . . . please, do come in.’ She stepped aside. ‘I think they’re watching a movie. I’m just cooking—’

‘I’m sorry, she won’t be staying for dinner. I’ve come to collect her.’

Matt’s mother seemed perplexed but, despite Lorraine’s brusque manner, she kept annoyingly calm and pleasant. ‘I’ll get Grace. You probably want to talk.’ She went off down the corridor before Lorraine could protest that there wasn’t any talking to be done, that Grace was coming home now, and that was that.

Moments later Grace emerged into the hall, looking sullen. Lorraine suddenly felt intimidated by her own daughter. ‘What are you doing here?’ She had her slippers on and her arms were folded. She leant against the wall.

‘I’ve come to get you, love,’ Lorraine said as calmly as she could. Her mouth was dry.

‘No, Mum,’ Grace said. ‘I told you. I’m living with Matt now.’ Matt had appeared at her side and was leaning against her, his arm loosely slung around her hips. Matt’s mother completed the line-up – a wall of players on the opposing team. ‘We’re watching a film and Nancy’s cooking a curry.’ Grace looked fondly at Matt’s mother.

Nancy
, Lorraine thought sourly, half wanting to burst into tears.

‘Well, you’re not watching a film or eating curry any more. You’re coming home with me.’

‘No way. I’ve moved out and I’m living here now. You can’t stop me.’ Grace sighed, as if she didn’t quite believe what she was saying herself, but she stood her ground nonetheless. Matt moved in closer.

‘I think your mum’s just worried about you, Gracie,’ Nancy suggested.

Gracie!
Lorraine pressed down on the lid of her anger.

‘This is not like her, I’m afraid,’ she said to Nancy. ‘I’m so sorry to be disturbing you like this.’

‘Not at all,’ Nancy said kindly. ‘Grace is very welcome here.’

‘That’s most kind of you, but Grace, really, you have to come with me. Now.’ One final glare, one more purse of her lips, one more imploring look that she prayed her daughter would take to be the final word – but no. Grace simply smiled, turned her back, and walked off down the hall.

‘Sorry, Mum,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Matt and I are engaged. We’re living together now. That’s just the way it is. Bye.’ And she disappeared into the sitting room with Matt following her.

After a brief exchange with Nancy, Lorraine finally left without her daughter. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. Why had she given in so easily? Why hadn’t she done something? Dragged Grace off by the arm, yelled at her, handcuffed her! She felt bereft, angry as hell, a failure, and more frustrated than she’d ever been in her life. She drove home in a daze, utterly incredulous at what had just happened.

‘I’ve lost her,’ Lorraine said quietly, pulling up outside her house. ‘I’ve lost her to someone else.’

In comparison to the Barnes’s big detached place, their home looked shabby and slightly depressing. Before she went inside she pulled her phone from her bag and tapped out a text message to Grace:
We’ve got to talk. Please. X.

When she got inside, she found Adam in the living room hunched over his laptop.

‘What’s up?’ he said in response to Lorraine slamming the front door and hurling her coat on the stairs. ‘Where’s Grace?’

‘She’s left home.’

Adam stood and reached out an arm to Lorraine. She flinched and went through to the kitchen. This time she had no guilty feelings about picking up her half-finished glass of wine.

‘She’s at Matt’s. I went round to get her. She barely spoke to me and refuses to come home. I could have physically manhandled her but there would have been an almighty scene. I just don’t know . . .’ Lorraine felt the tears building up. ‘I just don’t know what to do. She’s gone. She’s bloody gone!’

‘Oh, Ray,’ Adam said, stepping towards her. She didn’t back away.

‘She’s ruining her life. What about her exams, university, all her dreams of a career?’

Adam sighed. ‘If Grace is determined to leave school and live with Matt, I’m afraid there’s not much we can do except support her. Before you know it, she’ll be eighteen and will do it anyway.’

She couldn’t believe what he was saying. It wasn’t long ago that he’d been in this very room roaring ‘Like hell it won’t!’ at his daughter. Looking back over the years, being a parent had been easier for him. A whole lot easier. Sure, Adam had done his share of nappy-changing and night feeds, but when it came to taking time off work – for maternity leave or illness – chasing a promotion or being delegated a major operation, it was she who had lost out. Even now, Adam was the detective in charge of the Frith/Davis investigations, the one considered first and foremost the best man –
man!
– for the job. Lorraine had never exactly burned her bra over such issues, her life was what it was and she was content enough, but she still felt sometimes the unfairness of their situations, and never more so than now.

‘Look,’ she said, realising she’d forgotten to stop off at the Chinese take-away, ‘I’m just saying that she’s acting rashly. We need to step in and avert a disaster that she’ll regret for the rest of her life.’

‘She thinks she’s in love. And maybe she is. Give her time and see what happens.’

‘She hasn’t
got
time. What about her exams? She needs good grades to get into university . . .’ Lorraine trailed off. It was pointless arguing with him. Besides, Stella had padded into the kitchen. She was wearing thick socks and one of Adam’s oversized cardigans.

‘I’m starving, Mum. And freezing cold.’

Adam plucked a menu off the notice board and picked up the phone. Stella automatically yelled the news that they were getting a Chinese upstairs to Grace, and then Lorraine had to take her by the shoulders and gently explain that her sister wasn’t at home and wasn’t likely to be any time soon, either.

*

‘You’d better tell me what it was you wanted to talk to me about earlier,’ Lorraine said to Adam later.

They’d both made a pact that they wouldn’t leave the house again that night, not unless something major broke. If the development he had mentioned on the phone earlier was case-changing, he’d have already said.

‘It was something I read in Carla Davis’s file.’

‘The one we picked up from the social worker’s house?’ Lorraine said.

Adam nodded. He stretched out on the old sofa. His shirt came untucked at the front, but Lorraine made a point of not looking. She knew he was fit, annoyingly so. Where her stomach had harboured two children and since been rather neglected, Adam’s was finely honed, exercised and healthily fed. She never usually felt self-conscious about how she looked but there was some kind of competition between them these days; it seemed that way to her, anyway. Fitness-wise, they were poles apart.

‘What about it?’

‘There was a note made that she’d been booked in for a termination when she was sixteen weeks pregnant. It was going to be done under general anaesthetic.’

‘I see.’ Lorraine wrapped her arms around her body.

‘But obviously Carla didn’t go through with it,’ Adam continued.

‘Do we know why she didn’t have the termination?’

‘Carla’s case worker wrote a note in the file simply stating that she’d changed her mind.’ Adam shrugged.

‘Either way, it ended the same,’ Lorraine said coldly.

‘Yes, but it’s really the only link we have between the two cases, apart from the similarities of the actual crimes, of course.’

Lorraine thought for a moment. ‘Both women had wanted terminations but didn’t go through with them.’ The only sound was the hiss of the living-flame gas fire. The connection was a start, she supposed, albeit a tenuous one. ‘What about the results of the second DNA sample they got from Carla’s flat?’ A hair – a different colour to Carla’s or her friend’s – had been found on a piece of Carla’s clothing and sent to the lab for analysis.

‘There’s a chance we could have a result as soon as tomorrow. The results from Sally-Ann’s bathroom should have been back by now but there was some kind of delay.’ Adam pulled a face. There was nothing new about lab results taking too long. He sat up and flicked on the ten o’clock news. ‘And we’re also waiting on Carla’s fingernail scrapings, though the quality was debatable. Watch this space, basically.’

Lorraine already knew this. She curled her feet beneath her and stared at her husband watching the news. She tried to understand him, to make sense of his attitude to Grace’s decision to leave home, and failed. And she convinced herself that if she allowed any more thoughts of Sally-Ann or Carla Davis or pregnancies or wayward teenagers to fill her head that night, she wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink. She stood up and said goodnight to Adam, praying that tomorrow would bring some different kind of news.

IT WAS FUNNY
how James and I met. It was the most unlikely of circumstances, though such meetings happen to me every week of my working life. Except that James wasn’t your typical father-under-investigation and I hadn’t expected to fall in love with the man whose sons I’d been sent to assess.

Had I known the full circumstances, I’d probably never have bothered visiting the suburban property in the first place. The babies were being cared for perfectly adequately. And I’d certainly never have felt the tingle of envy as I’d driven down the tree-lined road searching for the correct house. It was pretty much the street of my dreams – beautiful homes stuffed full of comfort and love and parents who doted on each other and, most of all, brimming with happy children.

Any one of the grand period properties would have done – Victorian red-brick detached places with huge sash windows and monkey puzzle trees in curved front gardens, or white rendered Georgian residences with multi-paned windows reflecting the serene street scene as I drove past. It was the complete opposite to my modest flat. I appreciated my home, even in all its magnolia loneliness, but it wasn’t like this.

Someone’s minted
, I remember thinking as I pulled into the in-and-out drive of the property I’d been sent to. The homes I usually visited to do my assessments possessed nothing like the grandeur of this home. Of course, I wasn’t naive enough to think that money equals well-cared-for children. Rich parents are just as able to neglect their offspring. You just don’t see it as much. Or perhaps no one dares report them.

I walked up to the front door, with no clue that three months later I would be moving in to this very home. I stood in the grand portico, clutching a thin, pristine file for twin baby boys named Oscar and Noah because their mother had died. It had been a whole week and their father was unreachable. Since we’d been informed the father was in the military, it was a routine visit to check on the family’s plan to care for the babies. Back then I didn’t understand why the father had gone away and left a sick wife. Now I realise he had no choice.

‘Please, come in,’ the woman who opened the door said resignedly. She was thoroughly elegant and stick-thin with not-quite-grey hair pulled back into a loose chignon. A pink cardigan hung off her bony shoulders. She told me her name was Margot and encouraged me further inside. The place reeked of grief but she fought it off with a dignity that made her seem cold yet utterly brave. The facts were heart-breaking. Her daughter had just died of pancreatic cancer. There was no one else to care for the baby twins except her. Her son-in-law was in the Navy and on a top-secret mission. The Navy refused to jeopardise national security by informing him of the news or anyone else of his whereabouts. He would simply have to wait until he got home to learn of his wife’s death. ‘It’s not as if Elizabeth and James weren’t prepared for the inevitable,’ Margot told me. ‘They just didn’t realise it would be this soon. The pregnancy finished her off, if you ask me.’

That rang a few alarm bells with me. As their main carer now, did she resent the babies?

We were in the kitchen and she was at the back door, wedging it open with a black patent pump. She lit a slim cigar. ‘I don’t do this near them, if that’s what you’re wondering.’

‘Smoking’s always a concern,’ I said as compassionately as I could. She’d just lost her daughter. I thought a cigar – I’d never seen a woman smoke one before – was forgivable.

‘They didn’t find out about the cancer until she was pregnant. She refused to terminate. After they were born, she began chemotherapy. They said she’d have a year, maybe two, with the boys.’ Margot blew out in a grey sigh that swirled right back into the kitchen on a warm breeze. Sheets were snapping on the line outside. It was one of those rare summer days that refused to be spoilt even by talk of death. ‘But they were wrong. I suppose now a part of her lives on.’

‘How old was she?’ I asked. I didn’t know what else to say.

‘Thirty-two,’ she replied. ‘You’ll want to see the twins.’ Margot held the half-finished cigar under the cold tap then tossed it in the bin. ‘They’re taking a nap but we can stir them. It’s time for their bottles soon.’

‘I’d love to meet them,’ I told her.

I left the file and my handbag on the kitchen table and followed Margot up the stairs. The house was grand but retained a homely, slightly shabby feel. I remember noticing the heavily patterned carpet on the stairs – a crimson and navy Axminster, I later learnt – and it was well worn at the front of the treads from decades of use. The brass stair rods were tarnished and a couple were missing. I soon had them replaced and polished, but the carpet remains. I changed a few other things after I moved in, mostly the colour of a wall here or a pair of curtains there, but I didn’t want to erase the feel of the place completely. That would have been hard on James.