‘I’ve made up the bed in the spare room,’ Lulu said, standing above the stranger with a towel in her arms and talking as if she was deaf. ‘Can I suggest you wash before you get into the bed? I’ll show you the bathroom.’
‘Sorry if I put you to any trouble,’ said the woman quietly. How thin she was, thought Julian.
‘You turn up unannounced on a Sunday evening. No trouble at all.’
‘Lulu,’ protested Julian.
Lulu held out the towel. ‘Please use this one.’ It was a cheap one they had brought back from a holiday in Ibiza before Teo was born. Amnesia Espuma: I was there. ‘The other towels are for family.’
The woman sat on the orange chair looking down at the polished wood floor, saying nothing, doing nothing. Lulu dropped the towel into her lap.
‘I’ll just go and check on Teo.’
When she’d gone, the woman looked up. ‘She doesn’t like me.’
‘She’s very protective, that’s all.’
‘Who’s Teo?’
Our son,’ said Julian.
The woman’s smile showed a few teeth that were mostly brown. ‘How old is he?’
‘Nineteen months.’
‘Can I see him?’
‘No,’ he said, too abruptly. Teo would be terrified of this strange woman, jaw lopsided, skin wrinkled and dark from spending too much time outside in all weathers, eyes pale with untreated cataracts.
‘I understand,’ she said.
‘Maybe in the morning.’ He was normally good in tricky situations. It was why he was so well paid by the design agency. He could analyse a problem and know where to allocate resources in order to solve it. But he felt lost now. ‘The thing is, you can’t just walk in here…’
‘Sorry,’ she muttered.
It was all she seemed to say. ‘I mean. What kind of mother does that?’
‘It’s difficult to explain.’
‘Maybe you should prove it. Yes. Prove it.’
The woman was still holding the mug of tea Julian had made her. It must be cold by now. She said nothing.
‘Tell me one thing about myself that only you would know.’
The woman frowned. ‘What kind of thing?’
‘I don’t know. I have a freckle on my left shoulder blade or something.’
‘Do you?’
‘No. That was just a hypothetical.’
‘You cried a lot.’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake.’
The woman looked up, startled at his sudden anger. Julian was wishing he had never let her in. It was like hard old scar tissue breaking, letting blood seep through.
‘If you were my mother, and for all I know you’re just some madwoman who’s walked in off the street…’
The woman seemed to shrink into the round chair as he raised his voice.
‘I mean. If you were. And I’m not saying you are…’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Did you ever even bloody once think about me, wherever you were hiding? Did you?’
And then Lulu was at the door. ‘Are you OK, darling?’ And when the woman had finally gone upstairs clutching her towel, she opened the window and lit Jo Malone basil-and-mandarin scented candles.
That night, lying beneath white linen, they lay listening for any movement from her room. ‘This is ridiculous,’ he said.
‘You go to sleep. I’ll stay awake.’
‘She’s not going to do anything.’
‘How do you know that? You said she was asking about Teo. If she so much as looks at him…’
His wife was lying with her back to him. He ran her hand slowly down the line of lumps of her spine. ‘What if he’s her grandson?’
‘Just because you want it to be true doesn’t mean that it is. People pretend to be other people. Did she say anything that even slightly proves that she’s your mother?’
‘No.’
‘There.’
‘But think about it. What if she actually is?’
The digital clock glowed red in the darkness: 2:07.
‘Did you know,’ she said, ‘there are teams of people in Israel who go through everything you’ve ever said on social media, every electronic record they can hack, and build up a file that knows everything about you. They know your date of birth, place of birth, your National Insurance number. They know where you buy your underpants. Anything. They put all this information together, and so anyone who buys it can pretend to be someone you should know, then they sell it on to gangs.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said.
‘I’m not being ridiculous.’ She wriggled away from him. ‘You’re the one who thinks… Your mother is almost certainly dead.’
‘Yes. Probably dead.’
‘And even if she was your mother, I for one wouldn’t want a woman like that to be Teo’s grandmother. But she’s not anyway.’
They lay apart from each other, in silence and the hours passed with neither of them sleeping, listening for the sound of movement from the spare room.
From somewhere far off came the beep-beep of a reversing lorry making deliveries.
‘Do you remember her at all?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. I was too young.’
‘You never talk about her.’
He tried to think. His mother must have held him, nursed him, but there was nothing there. A void. He had been too little. ‘Thing was, nobody talked about her. It’s not just me.’
But she was asleep next to him now.
He was awake when Radio 4 came on with the seven o’clock pips.
Lulu sat up and exclaimed, ‘Jesus.’
‘What?’
‘Teo. He’s usually up by now.’ She was out of bed, pulling on her gown. ‘Jesus bloody Christ, Julian.’
Julian followed her out of the door and watched her knock at the spare room door. No answer.
She flung it open and gasped: ‘She’s bloody gone.’
The bed was empty; the crumpled duvet lying on the floor.
‘Teo,’ Lulu cried, and ran down the corridor. Teo’s door had a picture of a giraffe on it, drawn by an artist friend of theirs; it was always open a crack so they could hear if he woke in the night. Lulu flung it wide.
‘Julian!’ she screamed and turned to him.
He pushed past her. With horror he saw the cot was empty.
‘Oh Christ Christ Christ.’
How could it happen? He had heard nothing all night. He hadn’t even thought he had fallen asleep, but he must have.
Lulu almost knocked him over shoving past him as she ran back down the corridor. She put her head round the bathroom door; it too was empty.
‘Call the police,’ she screamed.
As Julian ran back to the bedroom to unplug his iPhone from the charger on the bedside table, Lulu clattered downstairs.
The phone seemed to take for ever to wake up; his whole body shaking, he dialled 999.
‘Julian,’ came a voice from downstairs.
‘Hello? Emergency service operator. Which service do you require? Fire, police or ambulance?’
‘Julian!’
‘Hold on,’ said Julian to the woman on the phone. He followed his wife down the stairs.
She was standing at the living-room door. Raa Raa the Noisy Lion was on TV. Sitting on the floor, surrounded by cushions, sat Teo, eyes fixed on the screen. There was no one else in the room.
Julian dropped the phone, picked up the boy, warm and soft, feeling him squirming in his grip.
‘She’s gone,’ said Lulu.
‘Hello?’ said the phone. ‘Caller. Which service do you require?’
As he squeezed his son tight, the child began to cry, upset by the suddenness of his father’s arrival, the desperation of his hug.
‘I didn’t hear her,’ said Julian.
‘She must have got up… gone and taken Teo out of his cot. Then let herself out. She’s not anywhere in the house, I’ve looked everywhere.’
Teo’s grizzling turned into a full-voiced cry. The boy would be hungry.
‘Caller?’ said the phone.
Lulu bent and picked it up. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Just a stupid mistake.’ She rang off.
The boy’s Pull-Up nappy was heavy and damp. Julian went to fetch the changing mat, suddenly exhausted. He was supposed to be finishing an urgent job today. The agency designed high-end retail spaces. A major client had been unhappy with his latest work, demanding changes.
His world had been disturbed. The woman had taken the child out of his cot. Lulu had been right. Anything could have happened.
His wife watched him pulling the pyjama top off their son.
‘Good riddance,’ she said. ‘Don’t ever, ever, ever let her in here again.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It was just…’
She looked at her phone; there was a text message. ‘Oh Jesus. The bloody childminder,’ she said. ‘She’s got tonsillitis.’
‘Just… what if she was? That’s all. What if she was?’
‘Bloody, bloody hell.’
As her husband dealt with their child, she went into the kitchen to put the kettle on for coffee. An analyst at a Middle Eastern-owned bank, she didn’t have time for this kind of nonsense. She would have the locks changed, she thought. Maybe install a security camera outside the door.
It was only when she turned to open the fridge for the milk that she saw the note, written on the whiteboard in green marker.
The handwriting was surprisingly neat and straight, the letters evenly rounded.
I am sorry sorry I shouldn’t have come.
It was a mistake.
Goodbye.
PS You asked did I think about you I promise I thought about you every single day.
Staring at it, Lulu jumped when the kettle clicked off.
‘Lulu?’ he was calling from the other room. ‘Have you seen my bike helmet?’
With the sleeve of her dressing gown, she carefully wiped the board clean.