Until You're Mine (40 page)

‘Sir, ma’am, we’re not sure if it was a domestic situation yet or what. There’s a pregnant woman with minor injuries upstairs. We can’t move her, she’s in advanced labour.’ The officer was panting as if he had just been involved in a scuffle. ‘It seems as though one woman went psycho, had a knife, was about to wreak all kinds of mayhem. I’m thinking she was disturbed by a friend or something because there’s another female in there who was handling the situation before we arrived. Not taken any statements yet but things are currently under control with no fatalities or serious injuries.’

‘Good. Thank you,’ Adam said dismissively.

They went into the property and took stock of what was going on. There were far too many people in there for Lorraine’s liking. She was at Adam’s side when a woman came down the stairs clutching at her shoulder. She stopped on the bottom step.

It was that nanny, Zoe whatever-her-name-was. There was blood on her clothing. Lorraine stared at her, and for a moment, their eyes locked. There was something about her, as if she was carrying a deep pain, and not just from the wound. And then Adam spoke.

‘You need to get that sorted,’ he said in that ridiculous manner again.

‘Yes, sir,’ she replied in a voice that was the same yet subtly different to when Lorraine had encountered her before. She was more authoritative now, as if she had shrugged off a false layer. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her police ID. ‘Undercover, in case you hadn’t already figured that one out.’ It was directed mainly at Lorraine, although her glance whipped to Adam. There was a certain getting-one-over tone to her voice.

Lorraine felt a tightening in her throat, looked over at Adam, and read his staunch poker face as a direct response – some kind of subtext perhaps – as if he’d known about Zoe all along, as if they’d shared a secret.

‘Adam?’ Lorraine said, as Zoe retreated to the living room. A paramedic followed her in, closing the door behind him. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ he said, without looking her in the eye. ‘But my first thought is that we’ve got ourselves another amateur Caesarean.’

‘No, Adam.
Her
. That woman. The nanny. You seem to . . . to know her all of a sudden.’ If she’d not been married to him for so long, she probably wouldn’t have picked up on it. Sometimes she thought she knew him better than he knew himself. ‘What undercover work is she doing?’

Adam positioned his hands on his hips, and Lorraine watched his eyes track around the comings and goings in the hallway. ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ he said unconvin-cingly.

‘But you do know her. I can tell.’ Lorraine was certain of this. What she really wanted to know is why he hadn’t told her when they’d encountered her before.

Adam shrugged. ‘You’re right. I do know her.’ Then he hurried up the stairs to join the two officers on the landing.

Lorraine waited a moment before following him, and then there was no chance to question her husband further because they were taken into a bedroom where the suspect had been detained. The shock of seeing Claudia Morgan-Brown handcuffed and being led by two officers from the bedroom blew everything else clean out of her mind.

*

For all of thirty seconds, Lorraine felt broody. She stared at the tiny mite bundled up in a white blanket and nestled safely in its mother’s arms. Its scrunched-up face peered out like a turtle’s head poking out of its shell, seeming to sense its mother was close, while its perfect little mouth lifted sideways at the slightest brush of her clothing or finger.

‘Boy or girl?’ Lorraine asked. She felt like a clumsy intruder in this most personal of moments. Judging by the way he was hovering by the door, she guessed Adam felt the same.

‘Another little girl,’ the man sitting beside the bed said. ‘I’m Clive,’ he added shakily. ‘I don’t know whether to celebrate or what. I get a dozen messages telling me the baby is on the way, then when I get here I find out that my wife has almost been killed. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Clive . . .’ the woman said.

Lorraine thought she looked drunk on her new baby. Either that or she was still in shock from the trauma. Lorraine remembered the sweet relief and aftermath of giving birth so well yet, oddly, it was a memory rarely called upon during the chaotic years of bringing up children. She suddenly felt guilty, as if she had discovered a dozen new photograph albums that she’d never bothered to look at.

The woman continued. ‘I can’t think about that right now, Clive, or I’ll lose it for certain. Let’s just focus on . . .’ She hesitated, staring down at her baby. ‘What will we call her?’ she asked with a smile.

‘Bloody lucky,’ Clive said.

Lorraine had been thinking exactly the same thing.

*

She drove home alone. She was exhausted and emotionally drained. Adam had gone with the arresting officers to the station, and as she pulled up outside their house, he phoned with the news. Claudia Morgan-Brown had just confessed to the attacks on Sally-Ann Frith and Carla Davis. She would be formally interviewed tomorrow.

For a few moments, Lorraine sat quite still in the car. The world went on around her – traffic cruising slowly down the road, a mother pushing a pram with a giggling toddler trotting along at her side, a man on a bicycle stopping to talk to his mate, the road sweeper pushing his yellow humming machine – and all this regular activity somehow made her feel safe, perhaps only a grasp away from normal life.

Once the engine was cut, the heated air in the car cooled quickly. She got out and went inside, hating the thought of coming back to an empty house. Stella had been picked up by Kate’s mum, and Grace . . .

Oh, Grace
, Lorraine thought with a sorrowful clench in her heart.

Gone was the laughter and happy banter of her daughters as she came home weary from a day’s work, and lost were the fond jibes from Adam as they good-humouredly bickered their way through the evening in a flurry of hasty meals, catch-up, wine and, finally, exhaustion and sleep. She already missed the chaos of their normal family evenings. Instead, all she had to look forward to now were morose thoughts of how she’d let Grace down, of being a neglectful mother to both her girls, of having lost the love of her life, and, worst of all, of having lost her trust in Adam.

How could things ever be the same again?

She dumped her coat over the banister rail, chucked her keys on the hall table, and headed for the kitchen.

She stopped in the doorway. Grace was sitting at the table. Her school books were spread out in front of her.

Grace looked up slowly. Her eyes were heavy from lack of sleep, sadness, remorse.

‘Hello, Mum,’ she said.

‘Love,’ Lorraine replied, stepping forward. ‘You’re home.’ She shouldn’t have made the comment, she realised instantly. It sounded way too contrived.

Grace shrugged, fiddling with the page of a chemistry text book. ‘Yeah,’ was all she managed in reply.

Lorraine dumped her saggy leather handbag onto a kitchen chair. Had Matt finally managed to talk some sense into her or had she come back of her own accord?

‘Not that you care,’ Grace added, breaking the awkward silence. She shoved a couple of books across the table and leant back in her chair.

Lorraine could now see that she’d definitely been crying. No, not crying, exactly. That implied a mundane, everyday type of sadness that could be blown out into a tissue. This was more than that – a full-on sobbing, an expulsion from deep within her soul. The puffy red eyes and rivers of mascara that reached down to her jaw told a heart-breaking story.

‘Of course I bloody care, you silly girl.’ Lorraine sat down beside her. ‘I’ve done nothing else since the moment you were born.’

‘Then why are you and Dad always arguing? Why can’t you just be normal like other parents?’

Lorraine drew breath, wanting to jump in when Grace hesitated, but she bit her tongue.

‘Stella and I feel . . . we feel so forgotten and left out. In the evenings, you spend more time talking about bloody work instead of asking how we’re feeling. Have you even noticed that Stella got her ear pierced again?’

Lorraine just gave a little shake of her head. It hurt so much.

Grace stood up and went to the kitchen sink. She poured herself a glass of water and spun round to face her mother square on. ‘You’re so wrapped up in your own world. All you do is work, drink, and snipe at Dad. What’s he ever done to you, Mum? Jesus, you never even fucking smile any more. And then when there is a bit of drama, you still manage to carry on as if nothing has happened. I left
home
, I was about to quit
school
, Mum, get
married
, and you didn’t even care.’ Grace’s voice was strained with frustration.

Lorraine felt a welcome release inside as she noticed Grace use the past tense.

‘You really think I don’t care?’ She felt an unstable quiver between her words.

‘I don’t see how you can. You came round to Matt’s house to take me home but you just
left
me there. You never really wanted me back. You were glad I’d gone and—’

‘Enough!’ Lorraine said, standing up again.

Grace’s eyes widened.

‘You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. You and Stella are my life. I would literally lay down mine for you. But I also have a job to do, a very stressful and demanding one.’ She took a couple of paces towards Grace, who remained firmly fixed against the sink. A deep breath focused her. ‘And you’re right about Dad and I having some issues at the moment.’

There. She’d said it. How would she reply if Grace asked what those issues were?

‘But nothing compares with your and Stella’s happiness. And I’m so very sorry if you feel I’ve been neglectful of that.’ Lorraine came closer and took Grace’s hands lightly in hers. ‘Do you know how it feels to have one of the people you love most in the world reject you in one swift blow, to have them walk out of your life with barely a backward glance?’

There was a moment when neither of them spoke, and then Grace burst into tears.

‘Oh, darling, my sweetheart, come here.’ Lorraine tucked her daughter inside her arms and pulled her close. She let her sob onto her shoulder for as long as she needed, rocking gently back and forth until most of the sadness and despair had come out.

‘I do know, Mum,’ Grace said, sniffing and reaching for a tissue. ‘I know exactly how that feels. And I did it to you and Dad. I’m so sorry.’ Her words were punctuated by hiccups and sniffs.

Lorraine frowned. ‘Matt?’ she asked, pretending not to know.

Grace nodded and blew her nose. ‘He dumped me this afternoon.’

‘I’m so sorry to hear that,’ Lorraine said. And she genuinely was sorry for Grace that their relationship had ended, although, given time, she reckoned they would be able to remain friends. And Matt had hoped the same, when he’d come round earlier to tell them about it.

‘Grace had been falling behind with her schoolwork for a while, Mrs Fisher . . . 
Detective
,’ he’d added coyly. ‘She’d been copying homework off friends and bluffing with teachers for ages. It was getting bad. Our relationship was really distracting for her. She said that . . . well, she said that she hated school and wanted to leave, that there was no point carrying on because she’d got so far behind with everything. I didn’t realise that us going out together had put such pressure on her. I don’t want to be responsible for ruining her life. I think there’s still time for her to catch up.’

‘I had no idea,’ Lorraine had replied, shocked that she’d not noticed any of this. ‘I always thought she was on top of her schoolwork.’

‘Well she’s not,’ Matt had said, shaking his head. ‘Then she told me that she wanted to get married and . . . and, oh God.’ He covered his face. ‘I should have said something sooner but I thought I was doing the right thing. I suppose I was flattered. By going along with her, I thought I was making it better for her. My mum’s so easy-going, she doesn’t mind who I have to stay at the house, and we didn’t exactly tell her about the getting married or leaving school bit.’

‘Go on, Matt.’ Lorraine had sensed Adam’s impatience as he stood behind her.

‘It kicked off a couple of weeks ago. Grace announced that she was going to leave school, and if we couldn’t live together and get married, then she was going to . . . she was going to, well, run away for good.’

Lorraine had taken a deep breath. ‘Matt, you’ve done exactly the right thing by telling us. Where is she now?’

‘At my house. Packing. If you must know, I’ve just ended our relationship. I told her to go home and go back to school.’

Frantic with worry, Lorraine had left a message on Grace’s voicemail, telling her to call immediately, that everything was going to be fine, that they loved her and she must come home.

And here she was now, shaking in her mother’s arms, fitting snugly inside the fold of her embrace. At first, Lorraine thought she was crying again, but when she gently tilted her daughter’s head back, she saw that Grace was actually laughing.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘You. Us. This.’ She wiped her nose again and tossed the tissue into the bin. ‘Our family. We’re a bunch of freaks, right?’ A nasal, snotty laugh again.

‘Definitely freaks. Freaking freaks,’ Lorraine added.

‘The freakiest freaks ever.’

‘Who’s a freak?’

They both turned. Stella was standing in the kitchen doorway with Adam looming behind her.

‘All of us,’ Grace told her younger sister, and they both burst out laughing. ‘Especially you.’

Lorraine glanced at Adam. His relief came in the form of a warm look above Stella and Grace’s heads as the sisters embraced.

Missed you, freak
, they heard Stella mumble.

I was hardly gone
came Grace’s reply.

Adam sidestepped round them and came over to Lorraine. ‘What a day,’ he said quietly in her ear. The feel of his breath on her neck made her shiver. She felt his leg against hers. It felt better. More
right
somehow. As if she’d only been an inch away from happiness all along.

*

‘So that’s that then. Grace is home. She’s going back to school. Drama over.’ Lorraine let out a huge sigh, one she felt she had been holding for most of her life, as she walked into the study.