The shrill ring of the phone made Annie jump. Closing the dishwasher, she made her way through to the hall and picked up the receiver.
‘Annie, it’s Derek. I need to speak to Terry. It’s an emergency.’
Annie frowned. ‘He’s not here. Can’t you get him on his mobile?’
‘Don’t you think I’ve tried that? Fuck!’
‘What the hell is the problem?’ Annie felt her stomach lurch. Derek was normally the calm one out of the Collinses.
‘It’s Neil. He’s back in the jail. The stupid bastard has killed a fucking polis in one of Terry’s pubs. The place is crawling with pigs. They’ve found counterfeit cash in the tills and dodgy booze in the stock room. You need to find him now.’
Annie felt sick. How stupid did Neil Collins have to be to do something like this? When Terry got a hold of him, the police would be the last thing Neil would have to worry about. Hanging up on Derek, Annie pulled her mobile phone out of her pocket and tried Terry but it went straight to voicemail. She tried Richie and even Lee Whitelaw because she knew that’s who he was with. All phones went straight to voicemail. Of course they did. No way to trace them when a murder was being committed. She wasn’t stupid. Annie didn’t bother leaving a message, she didn’t want to leave evidence of Terry’s knowledge of the counterfeit money or booze. The police could use what she said in those messages in court if things ever came to that. She really had become a gangsters moll, hadn’t she?
Annie paced the hall, back and forth. What the fuck was she supposed to do? She had no idea where Terry was or how long he was going to be. If the police had evidence of counterfeit money and booze on one of Terry’s premises, they would come looking for him. In the grander scheme of things, it was a miniscule problem but one they couldn’t afford to have. She would have to go out looking for him.
Grabbing the car keys for her Porsche, Annie left the house quickly and drove to the only place she thought she might find Terry. Lee Whitelaw’s flat.
Pulling up outside the luxury apartments, Annie got out of the car and took a deep breath. She wasn’t looking forward to telling him about Neil Collins. She knew how he would react and it was lucky for Neil that he was currently behind bars.
As Annie approached the main entrance, someone was on their way out and held the door open for her. Once in the lift, she tried to consider what to do if Terry wasn’t there. She would have to wait, and if Terry was away for hours, it might give her more time to work out how to explain things to him without him flying off the handle.
Stepping out of the lift, Annie made her way along the hall towards Lee’s apartment. Knocking on the door, she waited for an answer. When no one came, Annie tried the handle. The door opened and, stepping inside, she noticed a distinct metallic smell in the air. She recognised it right away. The night she killed Joe the same scent lingered in the air, on her clothes.
‘Lee? Terry are you here?’ Annie called gently. The smell of blood grew stronger as she moved through the flat. And for her to be able to smell it, there must be a lot. ‘Lee? Terry?’
Annie peered into the kitchen but there was nobody in there. Stopping, she stared at the lounge door. It was closed. Without hesitation, she pushed the door open and the smell was like walking into a brick wall. It hit her head on and she had to resist the urge to gag.
Standing by the lounge door, Annie took in the scene in front of her. Maisie was laid slumped on the sofa and looked badly beaten. But not just that. A needle lay next to her on the sofa, foil and a spoon on the floor. Annie could barely look at it. Barely look at her.
‘Oh shit! Maisie?’ she called, taking a step forward. There was no response. ‘Maisie, are you okay?’
Watching her chest with an intense gaze, Annie hoped she would see signs of life but it was hard to tell because she herself was shaking so much.
‘Fuck,’ Annie said as she reached into her pocket with trembling fingers to retrieve her phone. Finger hovering over the 9, Annie thought about what she would say to the police when a sound from the bedroom distracted her.
The baby. He was crying.
‘Shit,’ Annie said, shoving the phone back in her pocket. Following the sound, Annie pushed her way into the bedroom and glanced down at the baby in the crib. He was wide awake, eyes peering up at her. Just like Jack had not long before he died. Sudden infant death syndrome they’d called it. Not that the title made it easier. If anything it had made her feel worse. She couldn’t stop her baby boy from slipping away at just a few weeks old. He’d been healthy, her pregnancy normal. So why did he have to go? Staring down at Gareth now, her heart ached the same way it did that morning she lost Jack. Almost six months without him. In some ways it felt like a lifetime ago. She’d forgotten how he smelled, how soft his skin was and the little blonde hairs on his head, so fluffy and small.
Scooping him up into her arms, Annie couldn’t stop herself. Pulling him close, she inhaled his scent. He smelled exactly the same as her own baby boy. A sob began to build inside her then and all the emotion and pain from that morning came flooding back. But then baby Gareth stopped crying and closed his eyes, seeming to settle in her arms. This baby needed someone to care for him. Not just now, but for the rest of his life. Annie could give him that. That maternal instinct didn’t just go away after Jack died. It lingered, as strong as the day she found out she was going to have him. But she’d suppressed it, pushed it down deep into the pit of her stomach, even told Terry that she didn’t want children because she couldn’t face or admit the grief of losing a child.
Pulling herself together, Annie glanced around the room as she looked for a blanket. Finding one, she wrapped him up carefully and placed him back in the crib, before moving out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. Bottles. She needed bottles and formula milk for him. Gathering up as much as she could after going through the kitchen cupboards, she shoved everything into a plastic bag, along with nappies and a pack of wipes.
Peering into the lounge, she saw that Maisie remained in the same position as she had been when Annie found her. Annie didn’t feel guilty. This was the right thing to do. That little boy deserved a mother who appreciated how lucky she was to have him, not some junkie teenager who would get off her face at any opportunity. If Annie left him there, and Maisie survived what had happened to her, then Gareth would only become like his family, like the kids on that bloody estate. If she left him here, and Maisie died, he’d grow up without a mother and still become a statistic. Annie could give him so much more than anyone else. He deserved a good mother and Annie had another chance of becoming what she’d always wanted to be.
Moving into the bedroom, she scooped Gareth into her arms and took a deep breath. This was it. If she did this, there was no going back. She couldn’t change her mind halfway through. There were too many adults in this little baby’s life who would let him down. She refused to be one of them.
Creeping out of the flat and into the communal hallway, Annie closed the door as quietly as possible, wiping the sleeve of her jacket across the handle.
‘Okay baby boy, it’s time to get you away from here,’ she whispered.
Exiting the building, Annie rushed across to the car and opened the boot, removed a series of blankets and packed the passenger foot well before placing baby Gareth on them. Then, she climbed in and drove back to Terry’s in the hope that neither the police nor Terry would be there. She needed clothes and money if she was going to make this work. All of those things were at Terry’s house.
The journey back was slower than normal, as Annie was driving much more carefully than she would normally. What if she was pulled over for a routine police check? Annie’s heart pumped in her chest. She couldn’t think like that right now. She had to focus on her plan, which was barely a plan at all.
Even though Annie had moved in with Terry just a little over two months earlier, she’d decided to keep the flat that she’d lived in when pregnant with Jack. She couldn’t face giving up the home she’d lived in with her baby boy, even if he’d only been with her for a few weeks. The encounter with the biological dad had been a one-night thing after a night out. She could barely remember what he’d looked like and she didn’t have a contact number for him, so he knew nothing of what happened. She’d been single throughout the pregnancy and managed to gather everything she’d needed for the baby arriving. So she still had baby clothes, nappies and an environment fit for a baby. She hadn’t been back at the flat since moving in with Terry and he knew nothing about it, nor Jack for that matter.
She felt guilty at the thought of leaving Terry without an explanation. But he was an adult and he didn’t have to rely on anyone to get him through each day. This baby did.
Terry would hate her for this, possibly even want to kill her like he thought he did with Kora. The thing was, Annie was smarter than Kora, understood Terry a lot more than she ever had. Annie knew the risks involved in what she was about to do. This wasn’t a selfish choice. It was entirely selfless. She was doing this for Gareth. She couldn’t help her own son, but she wasn’t going to fail a second time.
Pulling up outside Terry’s house, she was glad to see the place in darkness. Leaning down and kissing Gareth on the head as he lay contented by the low thrum of the engine, she said, ‘I’ll be back in a minute, baby boy. I promise.’
Annie rushed into the house and ran up the stairs, two at a time without bothering to turn any of the lights on. Pulling open the wardrobe doors, she dragged the suitcase out from inside and started chucking in as many clothes and shoes as would fit. Zipping the case closed, she stopped for a moment and took a breath as she stared down at the diamond on her finger. Pulling it off, she laid it on the bedside table and pulled the case along to Terry’s office.
That was when the guilt became unbearable but she couldn’t let it get in the way of what she needed to do. Annie pulled the frame away from the wall and typed the code into the safe. Sighing loudly in relief, she took the bags of cash out of the safe and closed it again. There was twenty grand inside the bags in total. That would be enough to get her started. Babies grew fast.
Pulling out her phone, Annie called a taxi to come for her at the house. She couldn’t take the car, if she did Terry would find her quickly. If she had any chance of being a mum then she had to leave it, she had to leave everything behind. One day she would pay Terry back, if she could. She didn’t want to steal from him. He’d been so good to her.
Annie deleted the call to the taxi company and left the phone on the arm of the couch in Terry’s office before going outside and taking Gareth out of the car. As she clutched him to her chest, she hoped that Terry wouldn’t show up before the taxi did. How would she explain having Gareth in her arms and twenty grand of Terry’s cash at her feet.
Thankfully the taxi pulled up outside the house and Annie climbed in, with the help of the driver, before telling him the address of her old flat.
Smiling down at Gareth, she kissed his head. Finally, she had her baby. She had her son.