I’D rung Jane when we arrived back in London and found her on the way to the emergency room with Rosemary, who was burning with fever. She had called her mother, in Perth, and Q in Washington. Both had said they would come home, but it would take hours. Now I sat in the hospital corridor, my eyes glued wearily to the television bracketed to the wall. The volume was turned down low. The pictures were of Mike Darling’s house, the driveway empty of the large white vehicle that was usually parked there.
Jane and Rosemary had vanished into a room for tests. We had been there for hours. Jane, usually so utterly in charge, was like a lamb here, being sweet as pie to everyone, desperate for them to help her child. In my role as stand-in for Q, I had been her muscle, constantly reminding staff that we were waiting, making sure we weren’t forgotten.
I wanted to talk to Finney, but I’d had to turn off my mobile. I wanted to see the twins, but for now Jane was my priority. Baby Rosemary’s temperature was dangerously high by the time we got her to the hospital. She was no longer crying. She was floppy and quiet, and her skin was covered in purple blotches. A Dr. Yenz was checking now to eliminate meningitis as a possibility.
Jane reappeared with Rosemary in her arms. She gave me a wobbly smile.
“They think she’s fine,” she told me, “it’s just a virus. But we have to wait until her temperature comes down.”
So I sat with her while she tried to pull herself together, digging paper hankies from my bag so she could wipe her eyes. Jane had peeled off Rosemary’s hot outer clothes, and now the baby was lying on a blanket on her lap.
“This is so silly,” Jane said. “Q’s on a plane for nothing. Can you hold Rosemary while I go and ring him? Maybe I can still get hold of him.”
I held Rosemary on my lap while Jane disappeared. She came back a few minutes later, looking sober. “He hadn’t even set out to the airport. He’s been on air solidly since I called. . . . I thought he’d just have walked out. But I suppose he couldn’t. Still”—she breathed in—“at least he didn’t race off for nothing.”
All the time I was aware, in the margins, of the news pictures on the television. Q, doing a stand-upper in front of some huge public gathering in Washington, a great frown of worry on his face, as though he were worried about the state of the world, whereas in fact I knew that he was worried about the state of his child. Then pictures of HazPrep estate, a file photo of Melanie, then a picture of Mike Darling in uniform.
There were well-thumbed magazines in the room and a coffee machine in the corner. Once in a while a nurse came in to check Rosemary’s temperature.
“Her color’s nice and even now,” the nurse told us cheerfully, “she’s going to be fine.”
I worked my way through a stack of magazines. They seemed to be published on some other planet. I tried to bend my head around the diary of a catwalk model, but I couldn’t work out why the poor skinny thing had bothered to write it, let alone why anyone agreed to publish it. I peered at photos of the latest fashions. There was a great deal of oversize turquoise jewelry, worn with flamenco-style skirts. I glanced down to confirm what I was wearing. Jeans again, faded through wear rather than through design, raffishly threadbare at the knee. I looked briefly at the travel section, which featured Paris. I looked at my watch. If we’d stuck to our plan, we would only now be heading for the airport.
“I’m going outside for a minute to call Finney,” I told Jane, touching her shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”
Outside, there was a small garden, with a fountain that wasn’t working and a bench surrounded by flowers. I kicked off my shoes and rested my feet in the dry grass. The air was heavy. Another thunder storm was gathering. I was about to dial Finney’s number when he rang me.
He was at home. I could hear music in the background. I told him what was going on and that I would stay with Jane until Rosemary was allowed to go home.
“Is there any news of Darling?” I asked.
“There’s been a sighting or two, according to the TV,” Finney told me, “but there must be thousands of men in Nissan people carriers with baby seats in the back. His mother is up north, maybe he’s going up to see her. But look”—he lowered his voice—“there’s one thing. You were right. Fred Sevi has admitted to Coburn that he went out to HazPrep on the night of the tenth.”
“What happened?”
“He’d already told the police that he’d tried ringing Melanie at around ten, but that the connection was terrible and they hung up. That fitted with the records for Melanie’s number, and because it seemed to fit it seems they didn’t look at the call log more closely at that point. Anyway, after the taxi driver came forward they checked the call records again, and this time they realized that although Sevi’s call went through a different transmitter from the one Melanie’s phone was logged on to, in fact the transmitter his phone was using covered the area surrounding HazPrep. So there was no way he could have been calling from the center of London. Sevi now admits that he left the party at Elephant and Castle after about half an hour and that he drove out to HazPrep again on the tenth, like he did the night before, and that he rang her from outside just before ten, and begged her to allow him in, or to come out. He said she refused again.”
“Why didn’t the guard see him like he did the night before?”
“Sevi says he pulled off the road about half a mile from the gatehouse. Says it was too humiliating to have the guard see him there a second night pleading with Melanie to come out.”
“Does Coburn believe him?” I asked.
“Hard to say. He hasn’t arrested him yet. Sevi says that once Melanie had refused to come out, he turned around and drove home.”
“I thought reception was bad.”
“Good enough for her to refuse . . .” He paused and then said heavily, “If you believe Sevi. The bare facts are that we know he called her from outside on the road, and that she left the building, and that she disappeared and he manufactured an alibi. It doesn’t look good.”
“Maybe that’s why he manufactured the alibi,” I said.
I promised to call him later, and thought about our conversation as I headed back to the waiting room. I don’t know why I felt I had to defend Sevi, except that Finney had so many times told me not to jump to conclusions, and now it seemed to me that he was doing just that. Perhaps I just had a guilty conscience. I had dismissed Stella’s allegations that Sevi had said he would kill Melanie. But now I was wondering whether I should have put pressure on Stella to go to the police.
Baby Rosemary’s temperature was coming down rapidly, and Jane was returning to combative normal.
“If we’re here, we might as well talk. I want to know why you’ve been avoiding me.”
“Avoiding you?” I was genuinely shocked. “Is that what you think?”
“You’ve scarcely come near us.” Her voice was accusatory, all the tension bursting out of her. “You haven’t even rung me. You were supposed to be the one who knew about all this stuff. You were the one who was going to tell me what to do. I was relying on you. I don’t know anyone else with babies. All my friends have five-year-olds.”
I stared at her, and slowly the truth of what she was saying dawned on me. I’d been so excited when Jane got pregnant. I’d as good as promised to go through childbirth for her. I tried to explain. The truth was I’d thought Jane could do anything, and I’d thought she had Q with her, which she didn’t, not really. I told her all this, and she looked mildly mollified.
As we talked, and I watched Jane with Rosemary, I saw how they had become part of each other. Jane was exhausted by sleeplessness, but she touched Rosemary and talked to her with an instinctive understanding of what she needed. I thought of Anita and sensed that in her there was a deeper problem. Perhaps it was a combination of the years of stress worrying about her husband at war and postnatal depression and Valium. But where Jane and Rosemary were an organic whole, Anita and Christopher seemed dislocated.
Eventually, an impossibly young doctor came and spoke to us. Rosemary’s temperature was back to normal, she could go home. He smiled at us sympathetically. He had not come across many parents in his short career. Had we been worried?
Jane’s mother arrived. She shook herself like a dog, then removed her head scarf and wrung it out, creating a pool on the floor.
“It’s pissing it down,” she said, her Perth accent even stronger than her daughter’s. She was even more imperious than Jane and fiercely protective of her only grandchild. She dismissed me, and I left ahead of them, leaving Jane to gather up her baby’s things.
I stepped out of the hospital into driving rain. The warmth had gone out of the air when the sun went down and the clouds broke. It was like stepping into a cold shower in a dark bathroom. I ran to the car, my head lowered into my collar, yanked open the door, and threw myself into the driver’s seat. About half a gallon of rain came in with me.
I sat there for a moment, listening to the rain pounding on the roof. Then I called Carol to tell her I was on my way home. The children had been in bed for hours and I told myself that I would take the day off tomorrow so that I could spend some time with them. I tried to call Finney. We were like young lovers, calling each other all the time. We would be texting each other before we knew it. His line was busy. I dropped my phone on my lap and put the key in the ignition.
As I was about to turn the key, there was movement from the backseat. Startled, I twisted round, and as I turned, a hand snaked in front of me and snatched my mobile phone from my lap. I cried out, but another hand came from behind and fixed itself over my mouth.
My heart pounded so hard that it threatened to explode through my ribs. I squirmed and hit out blindly behind me, trying to make contact, trying to dislodge the hand, all without success. I bit hard into leather and had the satisfaction of hearing a grunt of pain. The hand loosened, and I lunged for the door, but then he had me again, slamming my head back against the headrest.
“Don’t fuck with me,” he hissed. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure approach the car, a man in overalls, a hospital employee. I drew breath to scream, but then I felt the cold hard metal of a knife against the soft flesh under my chin.
“Drive,” he instructed. Shaking, my pulse racing, I clutched the steering wheel and tried to steady my feet on the pedals, pulling jerkily out of the parking bay.
He indicated with his hand which way I should go, and I complied, driving out of the main gates of the hospital, to the right and then turning left. He had lowered the knife, and it jabbed into my side. I could feel it slicing through the fibers of my clothing, scratching my skin, drawing blood. It filled my head with fear.
“Who are you?” I demanded. My voice was shaking, but I knew I must speak, knew I should engage him, distract him from his purpose. He didn’t answer, but I couldn’t bear to be silent. It made me feel better to hear my own voice.
“Who are you? What’s your name? Why are you doing this?”
With every question I could sense his irritation growing, but I knew he would not kill me here. There were too many people. Too many cars. We turned right, then right again, then left, and now the roads were emptier. I fell silent. At every junction, every set of lights, I was tortured with indecision. At every turn, I chose to obey. But now I knew I’d made a mistake. Better to have fought while there were people around. Better to have risked it. I thought of Hannah and William, asleep in bed. What had I done? We were on a small road, trees on one side and on the other side, below us, the Thames. Panic rose, my heart pounded, my throat constricted with terror. I had driven myself to my own grave.
He indicated that I should pull over by the side of the road. I stared, appalled, at the oily black waters that heaved gently at their banks, as though they were breathing. Raindrops pockmarked the surface. A body could fall from this car and tumble carelessly into those waters, and they would swallow it up and spit out the bones. I felt sick with fear. If I did not act, it would paralyze me.
I reached for the door handle, but he slammed down the lock. He took my head in his hands and yanked my head around to look at him, but I could see only the dull glimmer of his eyes. His face his hair, everything that could have identified him to me was covered in a balaclava. The car was dark, but I could feel his eyes and the grip of his fingers. The rest of his body, seemed to have no shape to it, melting into the darkness.
“Who are you?” I tried again, forcing my voice out. “Why are you doing this?”
But he wasn’t listening. I allowed myself to follow his eyes, and hope sprang up inside me. In this deserted place a young couple were walking toward us, along the path next to the river. They were sheltering under an umbrella, holding hands, swinging their arms, deep in conversation—so deep in conversation that they might not see us. The man glanced up toward us. Time slowed. I felt my attacker’s hand slip from my head, saw the same hand move to the lock of the door, covering it. I sensed him shift slightly away from me, I perceived that the focus of his attention had also shifted to these outsiders. The man looked down again, said something to the woman. I heard a small sigh of satisfaction from behind me. The tip of the knife still scratched my side.
My mind did not race so much as scream toward escape. In desperation I rallied what was left of my courage and leaned forward, grinding my teeth against the stab of pain from the knife in my side as I moved, and I flicked on the lights inside the car. In the same movement, even as I felt his hand on my shoulder, pulling me back, I shook him off, reached out again, turned on the car radio and twisted the dial, and music rang out, distorted by the volume. I saw the heads of both the man and the woman jerk upward, frowning, mystified as my car turned into a mobile nightclub. He grabbed at me.
“Get out!” I screamed at him, tearing his hand from my shoulder. “Get out now!”
The couple were hurrying toward us. My attacker made a noise that was part hiss of fury, part sob of frustration. Then, suddenly, he opened the door and levered himself out and away, breaking into a run. Shaking, I reached out and switched off the radio.
The couple approached the car at a jog. I wound down the window, and they bent over to talk to me. Had I been hurt? Was everything all right? Did I want to call the police? I calmed my breathing, but still my heart was pounding and my hands were shaking. I told them I would call the police myself, thanked them for their concern. I should have told them they had saved my life. Uncertainly, they moved on, occasionally looking back at me over their shoulders.
I wound up the window and gazed into my rearview mirror. Might he come back? I was still shaking, but I could not stay here.
I drove slowly past the couple, raising a hand in thanks, my eyes raking the darkness at the side of the road for my attacker. But if he was there, I did not see him. I drove in circles, I think, for some time. My brain wasn’t working, and I didn’t know this part of west London. All I wanted was to find a place where there were people and lights. And on a night like this, it wasn’t going to be easy.
At last I saw a supermarket car park. It was busy, well lit, people coming and going. I parked in one of the families-only spaces nearest the entrance, nearest the lights and the people. Oh, how I loved those people. I watched them for a moment in the glow of neon, no children at this time of night, mostly young men in T-shirts, running in through the rain with their car keys and wallet in their hands, then emerging with a plastic bag of pizzas and beer, hurrying back to their cars, heads still dipped against the rain.
I lifted my shirt. My side was bloodied, and I dug around for a packet of tissues and dabbed, shakily, at the wound. There was no one deep cut, but a series of small punctures and one nasty gash that must have happened when I leaned forward.
I rummaged around on the floor in the back to find my mobile phone where it had landed. My attacker had turned it off. As soon as I turned it on, it started to ring, and the sudden noise made me jump.
I tried to calm my breathing. I nearly wept when I heard Sal’s voice.
“At last,” he said. “Everybody’s trying to get hold of you.”
I closed my eyes, trying to calm the panic. Who could I trust?
“Robin? Are you still there?”
I grunted into the phone.
“Jacqui called.”
“Did you tell her where I was?”
“She said you’d turned off your mobile, and asked how could she get hold of you, so I told her if it was urgent, she could try calling the switchboard at the hospital. I’ve been fielding calls all day. Next time you turn off your mobile, you get yourself a secretary. Fred Sevi was trying to reach you, too. To tell you not to use the interview he gave you.”
“And you told him the same thing?”
“Right. I told him the same thing I told Jacqui. And, let me see, I wrote it down, an Alice Jackson. She has something to tell you about Anita.”
“About Anita?”
“That’s what I said.”
Behind me, I saw a tall man in dark clothing emerge from the car parked behind me, his head lowered as he walked toward my car.
“Gotta go, Sal.” I ended the call, switched on the ignition, and backed out of the parking bay. As I pulled out and drove away, I saw a woman approach the man who had alarmed me with his dark clothing. She ran to catch up with him then slipped her hand into his, and they headed into the supermarket.
My mobile rang again. I pulled off to the side of the road and answered, expecting Finney.
“Robin Ballantyne?” a voice asked. I shook my head. The voice was familiar, but it took me a moment to place it. I’d heard this voice angry and threatening and distressed, but now it was unnaturally calm.
“Is this Mike Darling?”
“I have something to give you,” he said. “It’s about Melanie.”
“Where are you?”
“That doesn’t matter. Go to the warehouse. . . . We can meet there.”
“No way”—my voice matched his for icy calm—“if you’re innocent, show me. Go home.”
“Go home,” he repeated, his voice full of confusion.
“If you’ve got nothing to hide, go home,” I said again. And I severed the connection.