Believing the Lie (84 page)

In his bedroom, Barbara saw that all of Angelina’s belongings were gone. She couldn’t have packed everything and taken it off in suitcases, so she must have shipped things on ahead with no one the wiser. This meant she’d known where she was going and, possibly, to whom. An important detail.

On the bed, a strongbox lay, its lid open and its contents dumped out. Barbara looked through all this, noting insurance papers, Azhar’s passport, a copy of his birth certificate, and a sealed envelope with
Will
written on the front in his neat cursive. As he had said, everything relating to Hadiyyah was missing, and this state of affairs was underscored by the little girl’s bedroom.

Her clothing was gone with the exception of her school uniform, which lay on the bed, spread out as if in mockery of tomorrow morning when Hadiyyah would not be there to don it. Also still there was her school rucksack, and inside her schoolwork was neatly placed within a three-ring binder. On her little desk, tucked beneath a window, her laptop was in position and sitting on top of it was a small stuffed giraffe that, Barbara knew, had been given to Hadiyyah by a good-hearted girl in Essex the previous year, in Balford-le-Nez on the pleasure pier. Hadiyyah, Barbara thought, would want that giraffe. She would want her laptop. She would want her school things. She would want—above everything else—her father.

She returned to the kitchen where Azhar sat, staring at nothing. She said to him, “Azhar, you’re her father. You have a claim upon her. She’s lived with you since she was born. You’ve a building full of people right here who’re going to testify to that. The police will ask them and they’ll say you’re the parent of record. Hadiyyah’s school will say that as well. Everyone—”

“My name is not on her birth certificate, Barbara. It never was. Angelina would not put it on. It was the price I paid for not divorcing my wife.”

Barbara swallowed. She took a moment. She forged ahead. “All right. We’ll work with that. It doesn’t matter. There are DNA tests. She’s half you, Azhar, and we’ll be able to prove it.”

“In what manner without her here? And what does it matter when she is with her mother? Angelina defies no law. She defies no court order. She does not fly in the face of what a judge has told her must be the way in which Hadiyyah is shared. She’s gone. She’s taken my daughter with her, and they are not returning.”

He looked at Barbara and his eyes were so pained that Barbara couldn’t hold his gaze. She said uselessly, “No, no. That’s not how it is.”

But he put his forehead against his upraised fists and he hit himself. Once, twice, and Barbara grabbed his arm. She said, “
Don’t
. We’ll find her. I swear we’ll find her. I’m going to phone now. I’m ringing some people. There are ways. There are means. She’s not lost to you and you must believe that.
Will
you believe it? Will you hang on?”

“I’ve nothing to hang on to,” he told her, “and I’ve less to hang on for.”

CHALK FARM
LONDON

Who could she blame? Barbara asked herself. Who on God’s bloody earth could she possibly blame? She had to blame someone because if she could not find a person to wear the mantle of guilt, she was going to have to blame herself. For being seduced, for being awed, for being stupid, for being—

It all came down to Isabelle Ardery, she decided. If the bloody superintendent hadn’t ordered, insisted, recommended strongly that Barbara alter her appearance, none of this would have happened
because Barbara wouldn’t have come to know Angelina Upman in the first place so she would have maintained a distance from her that might have allowed her to see and to understand…But what, really, did that matter because Angelina had intended to take her daughter away from the very first, hadn’t she, and
that
had been the argument Barbara had heard that day between Angelina and Azhar. It had been her threat and his reaction to her threat. Azhar had lost his temper, as any father might, in the face of her declaration that she would take away his child. But when Angelina had explained the cause of the argument to Barbara, Barbara had stood there in her little shop of deceit, and she’d bought up her lies, every one of them.

She didn’t want to leave Azhar alone, but she had no choice once she decided to make her phone call. She didn’t want to do it in his presence because she wasn’t sure of the outcome despite her words of assurance to the man. She said, “I want you to lie down, Azhar. I want you to try to rest. I’ll be back. I promise you. You wait here. I’ll be gone a little while because I have some phone calls to make and when I return, I’ll have a plan. But in the meantime I have to phone…Azhar, are you listening?
Can
you hear me?” She wanted to ring someone to come to him and to comfort him in some way, but she knew there was no one other than herself. All she could do was get him into his bedroom, cover him with a blanket, and promise she would return as soon as she could.

She hurried to her bungalow to place the call. There was only one person she could think of who might be of help, who would be able to think clearly in this situation, and she rang his mobile.

Lynley said, “Yes? Barbara? Is that you?” over a tremendous roaring of noise and music in the background. Barbara felt a surge of gratitude and she said, “Sir, sir, yes. I need—”

He said, “Barbara, I can’t actually hear you. I’m going to have to—”

His voice was overwhelmed by the cheers of a crowd. Where in God’s name
was
he? she wondered. At a football game?

He said as if in answer, “I’m at the exhibition centre. Earl’s Court…” More cheers and roaring and Lynley saying to someone, “Charlie, has she gone out of bounds? My God, the woman’s
aggressive. Can you tell what’s happened?” Someone said something in reply and this was followed by Lynley’s laughter. Lynley laughing, Barbara realised, as she’d not heard him laugh since before last February, when it had seemed his laughter had died forever. He said into his mobile, “Roller derby, Barbara,” and she could barely hear him over the background noise although she managed to catch “…that woman from Cornwall” and she thought, Is he on a date? With a woman from Cornwall? What woman from Cornwall? And what is roller derby? And who is Charlie? Someone otherwise called Charlotte? He
couldn’t
mean Charlie Denton, could he? What on earth would Lynley be doing out and about with Charlie Denton?

She said, “Sir, sir…,” but it was hopeless.

Another roar from the crowd and he said to someone, “Is that a point?” and then to her, “Barbara, may I ring you back? I can’t hear a thing.”

She said, “Yes,” and she thought about texting him instead. But there he was in a moment of happiness and pleasure and how on earth could she tear him from it when the truth of the matter—as she bloody well knew despite her words to Azhar—was that there was nothing he could do? There was nothing anyone could do officially. Whatever happened next was going to have to happen in an extremely unofficial manner.

She ended the call. She stared at the phone. She thought of Hadiyyah. It had been only two years since Barbara had met her, but it did seem as if she’d known her the length of her very short life: a little dancing girl with flying plaits. It came to Barbara that Hadiyyah’s hair had been different the last few times she’d seen her and she wondered how much different it was going to become in the ensuing days.

How will she make you look? Barbara wondered. What will she tell you about your disguise? More, what will she tell you about where you’re going once it becomes clear there are no half siblings for you to meet at the end of your journey? And where will that journey take you? Into whose arms is your mother fleeing?

For this was the truth of the matter, and what could be done to stop it when Angelina Upman was only a mother who’d come to
claim her child, a mother who’d returned from “Canada” or wherever she’d been with whomever she’d been with, who was, of course, the very same person to whom she was running, some bloke who’d been seduced by her, just like Azhar, just like all of them, seduced into waiting instead of believing…
What
had Angelina done and where had she gone?

She had to get back to Azhar, but Barbara began to pace. Every black cab in London, she thought. Every mini cab, and there were thousands. Every bus and after that the CCTV films from the Chalk Farm Tube station. Then the railway stations. The Eurostar. After that the airports. Luton, Stansted, Gatwick, Heathrow. Every hotel. Every B & B. Every flat and every hidey-hole there was from the centre of London working out to the edges and then beyond. The Channel Islands. The Isle of Man. The inner and outer Hebrides. Europe itself. France, Spain, Italy, Portugal…

How long would it take to find a beautiful light-haired woman and her dark-haired little girl, a little girl who was going to want her father soon, who was going to manage—God in heaven, she
would
manage, wouldn’t she?—to get to a phone and to ring her father so that she could say, “Daddy, Daddy, Mummy doesn’t know I’m ringing and I want to come
home
…”

So do we wait for the call? Barbara asked herself. Do we set out to find her? Do we simply pray? Do we convince ourselves with any amount of lies that no harm is meant and no harm will be done because this is, after all, a mother who loves her child and who
knows
above all that Hadiyyah belongs with her father, because he’s given up everything to stand at her side and has, as a result, absolutely nothing without her?

God, how she wanted Lynley to be there. He would know what to do. He would know what to say. He would listen to the entire anguished tale and he would have the right words of hope to give to Azhar, the words she herself couldn’t muster because she hadn’t the skill. She hadn’t the heart. But still she had to do something, say something, find something, because if she didn’t, what sort of friend was she to a man in agony? And if she couldn’t find the words or develop a plan, was she in truth a friend at all?

It was nearly ten o’clock when Barbara finally went to her bungalow’s small bathroom. Lynley had not yet rung her back, but she knew he would. He would not fail her because DI Lynley did not fail people. That was not who he was. So he would ring as soon as he was able, and Barbara believed this—she clung to this—because she had to believe something and there was nothing else left to believe and she certainly didn’t believe in herself.

In the bathroom she turned on the shower and waited for the water to heat. She was shivering, not from the cold, for the electric fire had finally warmed the bungalow, but rather from something else far more insidious and more deeply felt than frigid temperature against one’s skin. She looked at herself in the mirror as the steam began to seep from the shower. She studied the person she had become at the behest of others. She thought of the steps that had to be taken to find Hadiyyah and to return the little girl to her father. The steps were many, but Barbara knew the first one.

She went to the kitchen for a pair of scissors, a nice sharp pair that sheared easily through the bones of chickens although she’d never used them for that or, as it happened, for anything else. But they were perfect for the need she had now.

She returned to the bathroom, where she shed her clothes.

She adjusted the temperature of the water.

She stepped into the shower.

There, she began to hack off her hair.

September 6, 2010
Whidbey Island, Washington

As an American writing a series set in the UK, I am continually in the debt of people in England who willingly help me in the early stages of my research. For this novel, I’m extremely grateful to the staff and owners of Gilpin Lodge in Cumbria who provided me a lovely safe haven from which to launch my exploration into the countryside that became the backdrop for this novel. The Queen’s Guide to the Sands—Cedric Robinson—was a generous and invaluable source of information on Morecambe Bay, having spent all of his life living on the bay and most of his life guiding people across its perilous expanse at low tide. Mr. Robinson’s wife, Olive, graciously welcomed me into their eight-hundred-year-old cottage and allowed me to pick her brains as well as those of her husband during my time in Cumbria. The ever resourceful Swati Gamble of Hodder and Stoughton once again proved that, armed with the Internet and a telephone, nothing is impossible for her.

In the United States, Bill Solberg and Stan Harris helped me in matters pertaining to lakeside life, and a chance encounter with Joanne Herman in the San Francisco greenroom of a Sunday morning talk show put me in possession of her book
Transgender Explained
for Those Who Are Not.
Caroline Cossey’s book
My Story
elucidated better than anything the pain and confusion of gender dysphoria and the prejudice one faces having made the decision to do something about it.

I’m grateful for the support of my husband, Thomas McCabe; for the always cheerful presence of my personal assistant, Charlene Coe; and for the readings of early drafts of this novel done by my longtime cold reader, Susan Berner, and by Debbie Cavanaugh. My professional life is made smoother through the efforts of my literary agent, Robert Gottlieb of Trident Media Group, as well as my British publishing team of Sue Fletcher, Martin Nield, and Karen Geary at Hodder and Stoughton. With this novel, I join a new American publishing team at Dutton, and I’m grateful for the confidence in my work expressed by my editor and publisher, Brian Tart.

Finally, to my readers who are interested in Cumbria and its crowning jewel—the Lake District—all of the places in this novel are real, as is the case in all my books. I have merely picked them up and moved them when necessary. Ireleth Hall stands in for Levens Hall, the home of Hal and Susan Bagot; the Faircloughs’ boathouse can actually be found in Fell Foot Park; Arnside House stands in for Blackwell, the Arts and Crafts beauty on the shore of Lake Windermere; Bryan Beck farm grew from an Elizabethan manor house called Townend; and Bassenthwaite village became Bryanbarrow village, complete with ducks. Playing God with locations such as these is part of the pleasure of writing fiction.