A Thousand Small Explosions (29 page)

CHAPTER 90

ELLIE

The suite in London’s Soho Hotel was ready and waiting for Ellie as she entered through the sliding doors and was escorted up to the third floor by the duty manager.

She’d hurried inside the doors before the paparazzi photographers camped out the front looking for shots of the next Hollywood celebrity visitor could recognise her. Andrei walked ahead and Ellie was flanked by two of his team, all in the loop about her predicament with Tim. Ellie had declined Andrei’s offer to learn what Tim was hiding by force and she refused his demands to sever all ties with the unknown threat. Her dogged determination to get to the bottom of who he was without violence was her priority, although she did agree to carry a panic alarm when she was with Tim.

Once inside a plush modern suite, her PA Ula greeted her and took her jacket. Ellie removed her sunglasses, scanned the room and took a seat at a table opposite a woman and three men she didn’t recognise.

‘Ellie, this is Tracy Fenton and her team Jason, Ben and Jack,’ began Ula. ‘They are the people who have been looking into Tim’s background for us.’

Ellie had never met the team of private investigators her company had frequently employed to learn more about potential employees. Use of their services bent many privacy and information security laws but this particular investigation was the most important of them all.

‘Shall we get started?’ began Tracy matter-of-factly and opened coloured folders that lay on the table. Ellie was surprised by her appearance – considering how borderline legal her techniques were, she had a very unassuming, mumsy look about her. But she spoke with directness and efficiency.

‘Firstly, on behalf of my team I’d like to offer my sincerest apologies for dropping the ball first time around when we were looking into your partner. The timescale we were given to complete our work didn’t allow us to do a thorough enough job, but that’s no excuse. I can assure you personally it will not happen again.’

Ellie nodded but didn’t offer any outward signs that she forgave them their error.

‘Details about your fiancé are scant and it’s our opinion that he has buried himself very deeply,’ Tracy continued and already, Ellie felt her stomach knot and she dug her heels into the rug.

‘But let’s tell you what we know about him so far. Timothy Kelly, real name Matthew Ward, was born in St Neots, Cambridge to parents Samantha and Michael Ward.’

‘So his father wasn’t absent and they were married?’

‘Indeed they were,’ Tracy continued, and passed copies of a marriage certificate and birth certificate to Ellie across the table. ‘The couple had no further children. Matthew was educated in Cambridge until at least sixteen; an average student with mediocre GCSE results. But we cannot ascertain if he continued into further education or university. Meanwhile his parents divorced after twenty-six years of marriage, some eight years ago. Both went on to remarry, but his mother died two years ago in a house fire in Oundle, Northants. The official cause of death was smoke inhalation. The CV he provided you with for his job application at your company includes a selection of fictional businesses, none of which check out. And we cannot find any current record of employment.’

‘So for almost twenty years, he hasn’t existed?’ Ellie asked.

‘It appears that way. He has erased any trace of himself.’

‘And if he got the job he applied for with us, he must’ve known we’d find out his CV was faked?’

‘I’m sure he did.’

‘Which makes me think he never wanted the job and his sole purpose for applying for it was to turn up to an interview, look into a camera and mouth my name into it in the hope that one day I’d see it.’

‘My only guess is that he’s playing a long game. But for what purpose, I cannot say.’

Ellie shook her head. ‘And if you can’t find a current employer, then what’s he doing when he says he’s going to work each day?’

‘I can put together a team to follow him if that’s what you decide.’

Tracy opened a second folder and passed Ellie more printouts and photocopies.

‘Timothy Kelly appears to have made his first public appearance at his job interview with your company as we can find no record of him before that date. Everything we learned upon our first investigation was created, faked or manipulated. We have spoken to team mates in his five-a-side football squad and he joined them just over a year ago, but rarely attends social functions and none of them know much about him.’

‘Can we go back to his father? Is he still alive? Can I talk to him about his son?’

‘He is alive, but he’s been recently widowed from his second wife and he’s now living in a home for dementia patients in Galbraith, Scotland. According to the manager, he no longer makes much sense.’

‘And you haven’t been able to discover anything else about him, not even from the fingerprints, the DNA or the security camera shot of his face I gave you?’

‘Nothing, not even when we ran his picture though facial image recognition software. It’s like he’s only left behind a trail of crumbs leading in the direction he wanted you to follow.’

‘Fuck,’ she whispered and sat back in the chair. She felt her back and underarms perspire so she pressed her wrists into the leather of the arms to try to cool herself down. Everything she’d spent the last week fearing about her fiancé was coming true, only it was worse than she’d imagined. Tim wasn’t just her Match, he was also her enemy, although what he wanted from her, she didn’t yet know.

She suddenly became aware of the silence in the room and that everyone present was looking anywhere but at her. She felt foolish and humiliated and wondered if they’d all had a laugh at the gullible rich girl behind her back. She rose to her feet, slipped her sunglasses and jacket back on, thanked Tracy and her team and left, followed quickly by Ula and Andrei.

As the car drove back to her office through the mid-morning London traffic, Ellie’s sadness towards the inevitable end of her relationship with the man she’d expected to live the rest of her life with had given way for anger. She began to feel like someone who had been bereaved and cheated out of a future and was furious because of it. She had lost Tim and a stranger with an agenda had replaced him and she wanted to know why.

By the time her car had snaked its way through traffic across London Bridge and pulled up outside her office in The Shard building, Ellie had already begun to bark orders at Ula who furiously typed them into her iPad, including changing all the locks and security codes to Ellie’s home, organising a new mobile phone number and private email address, deleting all Tim’s text messages and photographs they’d taken together and erasing any contact there had ever been between them.

By the time the lift reached the lofty heights of the seventy-first floor, Ellie was mulling over how and when she would confront Tim about what she knew. Tonight, she decided, she would return to his home and with Andrei and his team’s assistance, she would learn the truth no matter what means were used to get it out of him.

Only the element of surprise had been taken away from her because as she closed the door to her office, Tim was sitting behind her desk, his feet resting on the top.

‘Hello Ells, I think it’s time we talked, isn’t it,’ he said, smiling broadly.

CHAPTER 91

AMANDA

Amanda stood rigidly at the foot of the drive at the home where she’d lived with Jenny for five months.

‘The door’s unlocked, you can go in,’ urged Lorraine, her Police Liaison Officer. ‘Just take your time.’

Amanda hesitated and glanced over her shoulder to check her sister Paula was still in the police car they’d arrived in. Paula had offered to go inside with her for support, but Amanda was too embarrassed to show her the home of the family she had chosen above her own following their emancipation.

Lorraine pushed the door and went inside first, before Amanda apprehensively followed. Together they paused in the hallway and Amanda’s eyes ran from the top to the bottom of the staircase where she’d fallen some five weeks earlier.

She remembered the events leading up to her accident, from meeting Richard’s ex-girlfriend Michelle and discovering that he was actually still alive, to being in the company of the man himself. She also recalled the argument which led to her falling down several stairs and cracking her head, then being shoved down more stairs by her baby’s grandmother.

              Amanda looked at the open doors leading to the rooms off the hallway and took a deep breath, covering her stomach with her arms. Where a baby bump had once protruded, there was now just loose skin and Amanda felt her caesarean stitches tug sharply each time she made a sudden movement.

She cherished the horizontal scar above her bikini line because it was the only physical proof she had that she and her baby boy had ever been together.  He’d been removed from her unconscious body and then stolen by her twisted in-laws before she’d had the opportunity to even catch sight of him. Each morning after showering, she wiped the steam from the full-length bathroom mirror and traced the red, raised scar tissue with her finger, imagining what her son might look like.

She regularly pumped her breasts to keep them lactating in preparation for the time she would be reunited with him and they could bond like other mothers did. However, she cursed her breast pump wishing it were her child clamped on to her nipple and not a plastic device.

Jenny’s house hadn’t been aired in the best part of a month and it was beginning to smell stale. Amanda gave the lounge, kitchen and dining room a cursory glance before following Lorraine up the staircase. She liked Lorraine, her softly spoken approach was at odds with her masculine appearance. Under different circumstances, she’d have tried her matchmaking skills with Lorraine and Amanda’s sister Kirstin.

Once Amanda had awoken from her induced coma and doctors took her concerns over her missing child seriously, the police had been contacted and had leaped into action. A warrant had been issued to search Jenny’s home and everything but her clothes and what she’d purchased for the baby had been left as they were. Emma’s apartment was empty too, as were their bank accounts. Along with the baby, mother and daughter had vanished into thin air.

              In the month following their disappearance and Amanda’s discharge from hospital, her worried family insisted she return to stay with them until her son was found. Her tragedy had rebuilt bridges without needing a word of apology from either side and they lavished her with their support as she anxiously awaited police updates. Together they prayed that either Jenny or Emma might develop a conscience and return the baby to her, but to date there had been no contact whatsoever.

              Amanda had run the full gamut of emotions. From anger towards the hospital for allowing her son to be placed into hands that had no business touching her child, to frustration at the police for failing to come up with any fresh leads. There had been some potential sightings of Jenny, Emma and the baby following her appeal in national newspapers and a televised press conference, but they’d turned out to be false alarms.

She was also frustrated with her post-op body for not allowing her to become more physically proactive in the search. And her still-tender wound and limited mobility had given her more time to dwell on the guilt she felt for failing to do the one thing a parent must do – protect their child. No matter how many times her family, Lorraine or doctors tried to convince her she was blameless, Amanda refused to believe them. It was her fault because she’d been chasing the impossible - the love of a man who could never love her in return - and she’d lost her baby because of it.

‘I want to go to their house and look around,’ Amanda had informed Lorraine after much internal deliberation. She wasn’t sure why, but it was something she felt compelled to do. Lorraine wasn’t as convinced as Amanda at how beneficial it would be to her healing, but Amanda persisted, threatening to go there alone if necessary. Eventually Lorraine relented and cleared it with her superiors.

Amanda remained in the doorway of Jenny’s bedroom. It didn’t appear much different to how it’d always been, with the exception of the empty clothes rails inside her open wardrobe doors and the equally empty drawers. She made her way into Richard’s room where she’d spent much of her time. Like Jenny’s room, it had been ransacked by police looking for clues. For a moment, it saddened her that her sanctuary and safe place had been soiled as part of a criminal investigation.

“Stay strong,” Amanda told herself, and balled her fists.

Her eyes made their way across the collage of photographs spread across Richard’s wall. Each snapshot of his life used to make her wish they’d found each other earlier. But from what his ex-girlfriend Michelle had revealed shortly before Amanda’s fall, Richard wasn’t the man of his Match’s dreams. He wasn’t the monogamous type and he had little desire to settle down and have a family of his own. He was a human being, not a fantasy, and he was flawed and she could see that now. However, it didn’t prevent her from wondering how her relationship with him might have played out had they been given a chance.

The photographs depicted Richard throughout the many stages of his life, from the man he became before fate intervened, back to his awkward teenage years and then to his childhood. As her eyes skimmed across them, Amanda went back to one in particular. Richard and Emma were still children, probably aged ten or so, and were photographed on oversized bikes outside a cottage surrounded by rolling green hills and woodland.

Suddenly Amanda felt like someone had awoken her with a slap across the face.

‘I know where my baby is!’ she said out loud and stared Lorraine dead in the eye. ‘I know where to find him.’