The Child Read online

  He says he fell for me immediately, but I think we both know he has romanticized the whole thing. The truth is that he was flattered at first by my interest in his lectures and then sympathetic to my struggles with essays and college life. He took me under his wing, the department’s problem child. Poor Paul. He didn’t have a clue what he was getting into.

  I began following him around the campus, sitting at the back of all his lectures, just so I could be near him. The students in my year picked up on it immediately, nudging each other when they spotted me, whispering their catty remarks.

  In the end, even Paul realized it was getting out of hand and tried to talk to me about my behavior, pointing out his professional responsibilities and urging me to find a boyfriend my own age. Sweet.

  “Emma,” he said. “I am old enough to be your father.”

  Jude would have said that that was the point if I’d told her. But I didn’t. My mother wasn’t part of my life back then. I didn’t have to tell anyone that I saw Paul as my safe harbor and I wasn’t about to let him go. He told me later it was my vulnerability that clinched it. He said I needed him more than any woman he’d ever known.

  So romantic. Not like our first clandestine date in a dingy curry house with loud wallpaper and sitar music to drown out our declarations of love. Paul almost had to shout.

  We had to wait until I’d finished my degree before we could go public, but everyone knew anyway. We kept the department in scandalized whispers for two terms and Paul suggested he apply for other jobs so we could have a fresh start together.

  “And we won’t mention how you were still a student when we fell in love,” he said. “Best not. Mea culpa but sleeping dogs and all that . . .”

  I’ve always thought that’s a funny saying. Let sleeping dogs lie. Because sleeping dogs always wake up eventually, don’t they?

  EIGHT

  Kate

  THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2012

  Peter, the laborer, rang the next morning, his voice hesitant, struggling to express himself in a foreign language.

  “Miss Waters?” he said. “I am Peter. John said you want to speak with me.”

  Kate gripped the phone a little tighter. She hadn’t thought he would actually get in touch.

  “Peter, thank you so much for calling. I know you must be so shocked by what happened.”

  “Yes, very shocked,” he said. “How do you know about me?”

  “Well, the police gave me some information about the investigation,” Kate said quickly. The man on the end of the phone was clearly nervous and she was anxious not to alarm him. It would be easier if they met. She could work her charms better face-to-face.

  “Look, it’s difficult to talk on the phone,” she said. “Difficult to talk about something as sensitive as this. Could we meet, Peter? I could come to you.”

  He hesitated. “Well, okay,” he said. “But just for a little time. I am staying with a friend just now. In Shepherd’s Bush. Can we meet there? In the café by the station, perhaps.”

  “Of course. I’m not that far from there. I can be there in half an hour, Peter. Is that okay?”

  Kate was already pulling her bag off the arm of her chair when Gordon Willis looked up. He earwigged every conversation. It was a given. And she’d mentioned the police. His jealously guarded patch.

  “What are you up to?” he said. “Something I should know about?”

  “No. Just a dead baby in Woolwich. It was in the Standard, Gordon,” she said, carefully underselling the story to head off any interference. The Crime Man was a renowned byline bandit, always looking for a chance to get his name on other people’s work.

  “Yeah, saw that,” he said. “Cops think it’s old—historic, probably.”

  “Well, I thought I’d have a look at it. Could be a good human interest story behind it.”

  “Girls’ stuff,” he said and resumed his crossword puzzle.

  • • •

  Peter had a Coke in front of him when Kate walked across to his table. He was stick thin and his skin was so pale she could see the veins beneath. He looked up as she approached, stood, and shook her hand. His was cold and she felt the tremble.

  “Thanks very much for seeing me, Peter. I really appreciate it,” she said warmly as they sat down. “I’m just trying to make sure I get my story right—for the baby’s sake.”

  It struck the right chord. His eyes filled with tears and he looked down at his lap.

  “It was so small. Almost not there at all in the dirt,” he said to his drink. “I didn’t know what I was looking at. Then I saw . . .”

  Kate memorized his words automatically, an intro already playing in her head.

  “What made you dig there?” she said, moving him on from his sticking point and opening up the conversation. “Tell me about that day.”

  Peter spoke haltingly, occasionally looking up, about how he’d been told to clear a route through the gardens for a digger.

  “It was a hard place to dig. There had been buildings a long time ago, John said, and concrete was left in the ground. Foundations. Underneath the gardens.

  “It was raining and I was slipping in the mud. I remember I was laughing with the digger driver because we both fell over. It was funny . . .” he said, then looked stricken at his flippancy.

  “It’s all right, Peter,” Kate said. “You’re not being disrespectful. It was what happened. It was funny at the time. You can’t change that.”

  The laborer nodded his thanks and leaned forwards onto his elbows to get to the climax of his story.

  “I was moving a big concrete pot and the driver went back to his cab to get ready to pass through the gap. And there it was. It was buried deep but I had made a hole when I dragged the flower pot. I put my hand down . . .”

  His voice failed and he started to cry into his red, cracked hands.

  Kate reached across with a cheap napkin too thin and shiny to absorb anything. She touched his hand lightly. “Please don’t upset yourself, Peter. None of this is your fault. And perhaps the baby can be buried properly now.”

  Peter looked up. “That is what my priest said. That would be good.”

  “Was there anything with the body? Clothes, toys?” she asked, praying for more details to make the baby seem real for readers. People found it hard to care about skeletons, she’d learned.

  “No, I didn’t see anything. Some bits of paper. Small like confetti, my boss said. I couldn’t look after I pulled the first little bone out.”

  “It must have been terrible for you,” Kate said, sneaking a quick look at her watch as she picked up her tea. “How are you getting home? Can I put you in a cab?”

  Peter shook his head and stood up. “I prefer to walk, thank you. It helps clear my head.”

  • • •

  On her way back to the office, having paid the bill and checked the spelling of Peter’s surname, she wondered if she’d get the story in the paper. It would take some careful selling to the news desk. There wasn’t much to it yet—just a body and a sobbing workman. She’d write it and see what Terry said.

  The piece ran—down page, back of the book—the following Saturday. Kate had managed to squeeze five hundred words out of the bare facts, ramping up Peter’s tearful testimony with some color from Howard Street and an anodyne quote from the police about “continuing inquiries.” She ended it with a haunting question to get the readers involved. The subeditor had pinched it to use as the headline: “Who Is the Building Site Baby?”

  But Kate wasn’t happy with the story. A question as a headline was an admission of failure, as far as she was concerned. Meant you hadn’t nailed down the facts if you had to ask. She was sure there was more to get, but she needed the police forensics team to do their stuff to get a sniff of a follow-up.

  And she knew she needed to look for other stories to keep her n
ame in the paper so the Editor didn’t forget she existed.

  But she couldn’t get the image of the baby, wrapped in paper as if it were rubbish, out of her head.

  She wouldn’t let it go.

  NINE

  Angela

  SATURDAY, MARCH 24, 2012

  She didn’t really know why she’d picked up the paper. Nick had flicked straight to the sports pages when he’d brought it back from the garage that morning and then abandoned it on the table. Angela had her morning all planned—supermarket shop then a coffee with Louise on the way home—but she’d reached out and turned the pages of the paper while she waited for the washing machine to finish spinning. She wanted to put the washing straight into the dryer before she went out. She wasn’t even really reading, just looking at the photographs. But the word “baby” stopped her in her tracks.

  “Who Is the Building Site Baby?” the headline asked.

  She read on, her flesh prickling beneath her clothes. A baby’s body found. It was the word “found” that made her cry out. Nick came running through.

  “What is it, Angie?” he said. “What’s happened?”

  She couldn’t speak. She just thrust the paper at him, jabbing at the headline with her finger.

  He looked where she was pointing and Angela saw the weariness in his face as he took in what it meant.

  “Angie, love. This doesn’t mean anything. You know that, don’t you? We’ve been here too many times, haven’t we?”

  She refused to look at him and carried on reading and rereading the article. Memorizing it.

  “But it’s just after her birthday. That could be a sign,” she said.

  “Angie,” he said, louder this time. “It will be more heartbreak if you get your hopes up. It’ll make you ill like before.”

  She nodded. There’d been a body found in Staffordshire in 1999 and she’d been sure then that it was Alice. Had felt it in her bones. But it wasn’t. It turned out to be a boy—the child of some poor, sad woman who used smothering babies as a form of contraception. The police had found two others in the freezer.

  “The police would’ve contacted us if there was any chance this was Alice. Wouldn’t they?” Nick said, finally using their daughter’s name.

  “They’ve forgotten about her,” his wife said. They had. Everyone had. And they wanted her to forget, too, she knew. The police had got tired of her calls.

  “We will get in touch as soon as we have news, Mrs. Irving,” the last officer she’d spoken to had said. He’d sounded bored and irritated and she knew she had become a nuisance caller. Angela hadn’t rung in since, and now, thirteen years on, she didn’t know who to call.

  She folded the paper and pushed it down the side of the chair. She’d come and get it later.

  “Shall I take you to Asda?” Nick said. “I can give you a hand with carrying the bags. Save your back.”

  • • •

  Angela didn’t manage to look at the story again until Nick had gone up to bed that night. She pulled it out of its hiding place and smoothed it with her hand. She let herself read it through two or three more times and then wrote down the name of the reporter in her diary and folded the story into a tiny square of paper. Maybe she’d ring this Kate Waters, she thought. Just to ask a few questions. Where would be the harm in that?

  TEN

  Emma

  SATURDAY, MARCH 24, 2012

  I’ve created a Google Alert for the baby story. I know I said I wasn’t going to do anything about it, but I need to know what everyone else knows, don’t I? Just in case. To be prepared.

  And this morning, I find the next installment in my inbox: “Who Is the Building Site Baby?”

  A reporter has been poking around, making the story grow bigger, talking to the poor man who found the body. And the police. The police.

  I can feel the drum of my heart making my fingers vibrate on the keyboard. Who else will she talk to? I write her name, Kate Waters, on a pad beside my computer and read the story over and over again.

  When the phone rings I let it go to answerphone. But I hear Jude leave a message, her voice echoing up the stairwell from the machine in the hall, as if she’s in the house. As if we’re back in Howard Street and she’s calling me to get up for school.

  I knew my mum would ring today. It’s my birthday—one of the days she gets in touch since we started talking again. It’s only been a couple of years since we had the big reunion and we are more like distant cousins now, feeling for common ground when we speak.

  “Do you remember that terrible bathroom suite your grandmother had?” Jude will say, and I will chime in with, “Yes, thank God avocado went out of fashion.” And we’ll laugh and feel close for a few minutes. But it doesn’t hold us together, this “Do you remember?” game. Because too much is out of bounds.

  So we ring each other on birthdays and at Christmas, that sort of thing. It’s a routine that allows us to stay in touch with the aid of a calendar, not our emotions.

  The thing is, I have done without a mother for so long I find I don’t need her, and I’m sure Jude feels the same about me.

  It’s bizarre, really. None of my relationships are quite like what other people’s are. My mum is like a cousin, my husband is like my dad, and my baby . . . Well, there is no baby. I can’t think about that now. Stop it.

  Today, the sound of my mother’s voice makes me shiver. I wait until she stops speaking before I get up and go downstairs to listen to the message.

  “Emma, it’s Jude,” she says. She never calls herself Mum. She made me call her Jude from when I was ten—“‘Mum’ is so aging, Em,” she said. “It’s much more grown-up to call me Jude, anyway.” I didn’t like it. It was as if she was ashamed I was her daughter, but I did it. To please her.

  “Umm, are you there?” my mother’s voice says. “Pick up if you are. Umm, okay, just ringing to wish you happy birthday and see how things are. Umm, I need to talk to you, Emma. Please ring me . . .”

  I need to talk to you. I sink down on a chair. She must have seen the stories. What does she know? I ask myself, almost automatically. It is a question I have tortured myself with for years.

  • • •

  I listen again. In case I’ve misheard. But I haven’t. Of course I haven’t. There is the same quaver in her voice as she searches for me. Are you there?

  Am I? Am I here? I sit quietly, eyes closed, breathing deeply, trying to clear my mind. But when I open my eyes, the message light is still blinking. Winking at me as if it knows.

  The phone suddenly bursts into life, its ring filling the hall, and I leap up from the chair as if to flee. But I pick up the receiver.

  “Emma? It’s me,” Jude says. “Where were you earlier? I’ve been trying to get you . . .”

  “Sorry. Busy with work.”

  “On your birthday? I thought Paul might be taking you somewhere for lunch. Did he forget?”

  “He’s having to work this weekend, but we’re going to celebrate tonight.”

  “Good. Well, sorry I didn’t send a card. I forgot to post it. It’s sitting here on the desk. I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on . . . Anyway, how are you?”

  I pause, wrong-footed by this chitchat.

  “Er, so-so.”

  “Oh dear,” she murmurs.

  “How are you?” I ask. Keep to safe subjects. “How’s your hip?”

  “Er, aching,” she says. “I’m all right. Emma? Are you still there?”

  The tension in my throat is making me gag and I don’t speak for a second or two. I retreat to the secret place inside my head, where everything is known, where I am safe.

  “Yes,” I croak, eventually. And wait. I should say something, preempt it. Say, all casually, that I’ve seen they’ve dug up the body of a baby in our old street. Fancy that . . .

  But I’m
not sure I can have a pretend conversation about it. I might break down and cry. And she’d start asking questions. She used to put me to bed with a hot water bottle—her panacea for all that ailed me—when I was a teenager and say: “You are getting yourself all upset again, Emma. Have a little sleep and things will look better.”

  But of course they didn’t. It must have been terrible for her, having to cope with my moods, but she said a lot of teenagers went through the same thing. “Hormones. It’s all part of growing up,” she said. At first. But the excuses started to pall. And patience never was her virtue. I stopped crying when she stopped reacting. Tough love, she called it. It didn’t solve anything for either of us. I started shouting and breaking things instead. Until she threw me out.

  I try not to blame her. Not now—I might have done the same if I’d been the mother. But then . . .

  “There’s someone at the door, Jude,” I say suddenly, wrapping my fist in my sleeve and rapping on the table to support my lie. “Sorry, I’ll call you back later.”

  “Oh, Emma,” she says.

  “I’m expecting a parcel,” I say desperately, tangling myself in the fabrication.

  “Oh, go then,” she says. “I’ll call back.”

  I put down the phone and the relief makes me giddy. But I know I’ve only postponed the inevitable.

  The phone rings again five minutes later, and for a split second I consider not picking up. But I must. She’ll only keep ringing until she gets me.

  “Why don’t you come over?” Jude says, as if there has been no break in the conversation. “You’ve never seen my flat and it’s been months since we saw each other.”

  I react immediately. Guilt and shame—the Catholic twins and my Pavlovian response to my mother’s passive-aggressive parry.