Emma's Baby (7 page)

'To work there for a while. Experience a different culture.'

'But what sort of job would you get? You don't speak Chinese.'

'I could learn, couldn't I?'

There was a pause.

'Do you think this is a good idea?' Emma's mother asked.

'Why wouldn't it be?'

'Well, you've only got back from that waitressing job in Sydney—'

'It wasn't just waitressing.' Emma gritted her teeth. 'I was in charge of all their PR work as well.'

'I know that, love. I know. All I'm saying is, shouldn't you try to get some proper experience or further qualification here before you head off again?
Build some networks? You'll find you have nothing to come back to.'

'And you know so much about the business world?'
Emma said coolly.

'Oh, Emma.' Her mother sighed. 'I can't say anything to you, give you any kind of advice.'

You should have done all that a long time ago,
Emma thought.

'When are you coming to visit in Bath?' her mother asked.

'Soon. Work's kind of busy at the moment.'

'You haven't been home for a while.'

'I will be soon,' Emma promised. 'Look, I've got to go now. I'm going out. I'm meeting someone at eight and I still have to get ready.'

'All right, love,' her mother said. 'Have a good evening. Stay in touch.'

They said their goodbyes and hung up. But it was a while before Emma took her hand from the phone.

I wish I could have the last few minutes back, she thought, as she often did after speaking to her mum.

One day this would be sorted out, once and for all.
Emma had it all in her head, all planned out. One day when she had a proper job, a job her mother would be proud of, she would visit Bath and she and her mother would sit down and talk. Really talk, and they would both say everything they wanted to say.
Emma would tell her mother how hurt she'd been as a child, never having been hugged or held, never brought anywhere by her mum, always left at her gran's. Her mother would explain why she'd been so cold. There must have been some reason. She would ask Emma's forgiveness, and because Emma was now so happy and successful, she would graciously agree to let bygones be bygones. She and her mother would hug each other, and Emma's bitterness would melt away and she would let herself be as close to her mum as she sometimes longed to be.

Because then she wouldn't be so angry any more.

Three days later, at work, she received a phone call.

'Is that you, Emma?' an elderly female voice asked.

'Yes?' Emma was confused. The voice, vaguely familiar, sounded out of place in the high-volume, frantic surroundings of the call centre.

'This is Mrs Cornes. Your next-door neighbour in
Bath.'

'Oh.'

And then Emma felt a slow, cold finger at her throat.
Why would Mrs Cornes be phoning her at work on a
Thursday afternoon?

'Emma, love.' Mrs Cornes' voice trembled. 'I'm sorry to have to tell you this. It's your mum.'

Sub-Arachnoid Haemorrhage, the post-mortem said.
Mrs Cornes had been worried when she hadn't seen
Emma's mother for a few days. She'd taken the spare key and called around to the house. In the hall, at the bottom of the stairs, lay Mrs Turner, her dark hair spread around her head. She'd been dead for more than forty-eight hours. On the train to Bath, lightheaded and frozen, Emma traced the tiny mark on her chin.

There were more people at the funeral than she had expected. Mrs Cornes must have mobilized the citizens of Bath. Neighbours, none of whom Emma really knew, all had kind things to say about her mother.
Afterwards, she spent a few days going through her mum's things to see what she wanted to keep or throw away. Mrs Cornes helped her. They didn't have much time; already there were new tenants waiting to move in to the house. There were mainly clothes, old letters, a few bits of jewellery. That was about it really. Her mum had left so little to show for her life.

In a frame on the mantelpiece, Emma found a photograph: herself, her mum and her gran, taken when Emma was about thirteen. Emma remembered the day. It had been her gran's birthday and a neighbour had taken the photo. Her mum and gran sat on the couch, side by side. Emma stood behind them, resting a hand on each of their shoulders. All of them were smiling, even her mum. Her gran showed no sign of the tumour that was already beginning to vanquish her right lung. Emma's mum looked young and fresh, wearing a rose-pink dress, so different from the grey tunic she wore to her job as a healthcare assistant at the nursing home. Her hair was loose, the same dark brown as Emma's. She had the same blue eyes.

That had been a good evening. They'd taken Gran to dinner at a restaurant. The three of them had drunk a bottle of wine. Emma took the photograph down and stared at it.
What was it all about, Mum? Did you want me? Did you love me?
She'd never know now. She wrapped the photo in a sheet of newspaper and put it into her bag.

Mrs Cornes saw her to the station to catch the train back to London.

'Who do you have up there, Emma?' Mrs Cornes was distressed. She had on the navy Sunday coat she'd worn for the funeral, buttoned up to the neck, with a patterned silk scarf underneath. In the harsh morning light, her lipstick, crookedly applied, was too pink for her face. She peered up at Emma.

'Your mum worried about you,' she said. 'All that travelling you'd been doing recently. Not putting down any roots. I hate to think of you not having someone you can depend on.'

'Joanne, the girl I live with, is a good friend,' Emma assured the kindly woman. 'She won't let me down.'

She went to shake Mrs Cornes' hand and somehow found that she
was hugging her instead. Mrs Cornes smelled of rosewater and scones. They
held each other tightly for a moment. The guard blew his whistle. Emma let
go of Mrs Cornes. She stepped away and walked through the barrier.

Emma was in the Grape one evening with Joanne, when Oliver came in. She hadn't seen or thought about him for a while. He was with friends, but left them to come over and speak to her.

'I heard about your mum,' he said. He stood in front of her, looking down. 'It's a tough thing to happen. If you need to talk to someone about it, I'm here.'

Whatever he saw in her that night made him decide to stay with her instead of going back to his friends.
He sat beside her for the rest of the evening. They drank a bottle of wine and talked about death, wondering what the point of everything was if it all came to nothing in the end.

'What's the point of beauty, even?' Emma asked in a low voice. 'My mum loved the sea. Especially in the evenings. She loved the sunsets in Cornwall.'

'Beauty is a myth,' Oliver said. 'The sea and the sun aren't beautiful. We're just programmed to think they are because they represent water and heat – the fuel we need to survive.'

The morbidness of the conversation suited Emma's mood. She didn't notice that Joanne had disappeared.
Tears filled her eyes at the waste of it all; the futility of her mum's short life.

Oliver held her hand.

'Come out with me,' he said. 'This weekend. A friend of mine
is in a band. They're doing a gig in Brixton.'

The gig was upstairs in a pub, somewhere in the maze of side streets between Clapham and Brixton.
Emma didn't make a massive effort to dress up for the evening. She wore her jeans and the reliable black top she'd got in the LK Bennett sale, with the shiny bits around the neckline. At the last minute, Joanne insisted she put on a pair of dangly jet earrings. But she wasn't really in a party mood. Her mum had just died. This was no date she was going out on. Oliver was being a friend.

A very handsome friend. He met her outside
Brixton tube station, looking very tall, wearing a blue shirt and dark wine velvet trousers, and Emma knew she was lost. The pub was on a corner, a spacious brick building with outsized windows and a large green canopy. Under the patio heaters, the wooden benches on the pavement were packed with people chatting and laughing. Inside, the pub was even more crowded. Emma followed Oliver up a narrow set of stairs. At the top, a very pretty blonde girl with a clipboard and a fluorescent wrist-stamper flung her arms around Oliver and showed him and Emma to a table with a good view of the stage. The stools were low and very close together. Every time Oliver leaned over to say something to Emma, the tips of his knees brushed against hers.

The music was a mixture of blues and jazz, some upbeat and lively, some slow and sad. The singer, a tall black girl with long, braided, blonde-dyed hair, was good enough that, at times, everyone fell silent to listen.

Oliver talked about his girlfriend.

'Sharmila and I have split up,' he told Emma over seafood chowder and Guinness. 'She had to move to
Edinburgh for work.'

'I'm sorry,' Emma said. 'You must miss her.'

'I do, a bit,' Oliver said. 'But she was always going to put her career first. I don't blame her. If there'd been anything real between us, I might have gone to
Edinburgh or she might have stayed here. But neither of us wanted to make the sacrifice.'

By the time the gig was over, it was after one and the tubes had all stopped for the night. Oliver walked
Emma home to her flat in Clapham. One minute they were walking through streets lined with littered doorways and steel-shuttered shops, the next, as was often the way in London, they found themselves turning down much posher roads, with tall, sprawling houses surrounded by trees. Clapham Common, lit partly by streetlights, partly by the glow from the houses around the edges, looked black and leafy and romantic.
Emma probably wouldn't have cut through the park at this hour on her own, but with Oliver she felt safe. Her corner of London had never looked particularly beautiful to her before, but it did that night.

Especially when Oliver stopped her under a vast, old horse chestnut tree to kiss her.

This was it, then, this was the one. There was something so special about him. Emma had fallen under a spell. She'd read that in books, but thought it was just something people wrote. Now she knew what it meant. Everything about Oliver was magical, not quite human. His skin was so smooth and clean.
He didn't smell of sweat, even after a long day, like normal people, just of warmed cotton, as if he wasn't really there.

Emma heard all about Oliver's childhood: about the car crash, the aunt who'd made it plain she'd never wanted a child. Oliver had an older sister living in Birmingham whom he rarely saw. This shocked
Emma. How could a sister and brother lose touch like that? Her concern for Oliver made her forget her own unhappiness. She'd had her gran, at least, when she was young and her mum was . . . not herself. Oliver seemed to have had no one. She imagined him as the seven-year-old child he'd been, alone and frightened, and the thought of it almost broke her heart.

Oliver was always full of ideas for outings and exhibitions and music festivals. Over the next few weeks there were surfing trips to Cornwall, a weekend on Skye, the green river in Hampshire. He took her to a party in an underground tunnel in the Docklands where an unexploded bomb from the Second World
War was embedded right there in the wall. Emma was thrilled. Although it did occur to her to wonder why, if it was common knowledge that a live bomb was sitting directly under London, the authorities hadn't got around to doing something about it.

Oliver could be moody at times, but Emma didn't let that put her off. He worked hard, often spending weekends and nights at work, supervising the transfer of money to and from accounts all over the world.
Emma stayed in with him when he was tired and wanted to slump in front of the TV. This lowness was a part of him that other people didn't see.

'You're such a caring, genuine person,' he said to
Emma during one of these down times. 'Sharmila was colder, less giving. I'm a bit like that myself, I think.'

'No, you're not,' Emma reassured him. Then she hesitated. Was this a good time to bring up something she'd been thinking for a while? 'You know, you should try to see more of your sister.'

'Sasha? What for? We saw each other last
Christmas.'

'Well, you could see her at other times too,' Emma said. 'You should phone her. Spend some time together.'

Emma often fantasized about meeting Oliver's sister.
She would look a bit like Oliver, she thought, maybe with a sparkier personality. She and Emma would hit it off straight away. It was coming up to Christmas now. Emma and Sasha would go shopping together for Oliver's present, and Sasha would have them all to her house for dinner on Christmas Day.

Oliver was looking baffled. 'Well, she doesn't phone me. How often do you see
your
sister?'

'I haven't got one,' Emma said.

'Oh.' Oliver stared at the television. 'I'm sorry. You did say.'

'I wish I
did
have a sister,' Emma said. 'At the end of the day, your family are the people you can rely on the most.'

Oliver yawned.

'Well,' he said, 'Sasha's ten years older than me.
Married with three children. She's nice enough, but a bit, you know. Bourgeois. Never done anything with her life. I wouldn't know what to say to her.'

'Maybe I could call her?' Emma suggested. 'It might be easier that way. You know, woman to woman. We could organize dinner.'

'It's all right, Emma.' Oliver was polite. 'The thing is, you don't really know my family.'

When he phoned Emma the next time, he had some news for her. He hoped she hadn't got the wrong idea but he didn't want things to go too far between them.
Sharmila was moving back to London, and they were going to give things another go.

Emma would have been shocked except that she was already too shocked to get any worse. She had just realized that her period was nearly three weeks late.

Friday, 22 September
Day Six

What . . . ?

Emma woke, clawing at something under her face. A cushion, rough and scratchy, dug hard into her cheek. She was lying on her side on the couch, her body jerking in time with her heart. She'd been dreaming. She had a vague awareness of a picture, a scene of some kind, dissolving into dots and flitting from her brain.

What was it that had awoken her so suddenly like that?

She held herself still and listened, but the flat was quiet. The only sound was the buzzing of the fridge from the kitchen. Emma raised herself on her elbow and gazed blearily around. Her mouth was dry. How long had she been asleep? The room had been bright when she'd decided to lie down for a while. Now there was just a grey gleam, high on the walls. The carpet was dotted with ground-in crumbs. A mug lay on its side under a chair.

The flat was cold and empty. Nobody here but her. The police
had packed up and left some time ago. They weren't looking for Ritchie any
more.

They hadn't said that straight out, of course.

'What Dr Stanford said won't affect the investigation in the slightest,' Lindsay had tried to claim.
'There's no evidence you've done anything wrong.'

But it was five days now since he'd disappeared.
Five days, and nothing! Not one single lead. The police might be going through the motions, but if their hearts weren't in it, Ritchie would not be found.
Lindsay was being patronizing, with her fake concern, and her insolent, cheerful face that said she put Emma and Ritchie out of her head the second she went home every evening to her boyfriend. Emma could see right through the act. Next thing they'd be arresting her for having done something to Ritchie. She didn't trust
Lindsay any more. She didn't trust anyone.

'I'd like some privacy,' Emma had said coldly to
Lindsay. 'If you've all finished searching my flat, I'd like you to leave.'

'Emma, I don't think—'

'I
said
I want you to leave. You can't stay if I don't want you to. I have a right to spend some time in peace in my own home.'

But after Lindsay had gone, the silence swelled, humming and crushing inwards at Emma's ears. She curled up on the couch and put a cushion over her head. She lay there, shivering, trying to think. She had to get her head together. She couldn't just stay here; she had to do something. If the police wouldn't help her, she'd have to find someone else who would. But who? Who in the world was there, who cared about
Ritchie as much as she did?

Nobody, was the answer to that question. Nobody at all.

She'd had phone calls, of course, once people had heard. The newspapers had finally got around to publishing the picture of Ritchie on his red truck, although never on the front page. Whenever the journalists mentioned the kidnapping, they always used the word 'alleged'. As in: 'The alleged abduction,' or: 'The mother of the child alleges that . . .'

And there was worse. Lindsay had warned Emma not to take anything she read too much to heart, but still, it was a shock to open the pages and see the horrible things that people she and Ritchie had never even met had written about them.

'The single mother is reported to have had difficulties coping . . .'

'After a fling with the child's father, whom she has not seen since . . .'

'Miss Turner claims to have left her small child in the care of a complete stranger in a chip shop while she . . .'

Emma couldn't read any more.

Emma's old supervisor from the call centre phoned, as did a couple of her ex co-workers. So did Claire
Burns, who was now living in Brighton. They all said how sorry they were, and how they hoped that
Ritchie would be found soon. But none of them knew
Ritchie. None of them had even met him.

Mrs Cornes, shocked and quavery, rang from Bath, sounding twenty years older and frailer than the last time Emma had spoken to her. She kept saying, 'Poor
Robbie. Poor little Robbie.' She offered to come to
London, but Emma knew she'd be better staying where she was. She managed to put her off by saying that Joanne was staying in the flat with her.

But Joanne wasn't. Joanne had made one phone call: 'Sorry to hear about Ritchie. Call me if you need anything.' She hadn't phoned a second time, though.
Hadn't called around. Clearly, ridiculous as it was, she hadn't forgiven Emma for the comments she'd made about Barry the last time they'd spoken.

Karen, Emma's oldest friend from Bath called, and that meant a lot. Karen had travelled to Australia with
Emma and Joanne after they'd all finished their finals.
The three of them had shared a tatty, sunny house off the seafront at Bondi Beach. Emma missed Karen very much. She'd been a good friend – in the light of things, a much better friend than Joanne had ever been. In uni, it had been Karen and Emma against the world, best mates since they'd been eleven years old in school. Joanne, new from Middlesbrough and not knowing a soul, had been put in the room next to
Karen's in their halls of residence. Emma and Karen had found her there one evening, crying her eyes out, saying she was lonely and hated Bristol and was going to drop out of her course and go home. Soft-hearted
Karen had insisted she join them for a pizza to rethink her decision. Once Joanne had recovered, she'd turned out to be a good laugh, always up for a night out, and they'd all ended up staying friends.

But while three of them, had gone together to
Sydney for a year of sun and fun, only two of them had come home again. Karen had stayed behind to move with Conor, her new Australian boyfriend, to
Melbourne. She was settled there for ever now. She and Conor had just got engaged. Karen accidentally let this information slip during her phone call to
Emma, and then became tearful and couldn't stop apologizing. In the end, Emma couldn't wait to get off the phone.

The worst phone call of all was the one from Oliver.
The police had tracked him down in Malaysia. It seemed he was living there now. It was the first time he and Emma had spoken since before Ritchie had been born, apart from the single email Oliver had sent from Thailand when Ritchie was about six months old. In the email, Oliver had said he felt guilty about the way things had turned out and hoped they were doing OK. At the end of it, he'd written: 'You gave me no say or choice in this.' He had never met his son.

'How awful for you,' he said now on the phone, sounding genuinely distressed. 'Really awful. You must be going through hell.'

'It might be nothing compared to what Ritchie's going through,' Emma reminded him.

'Don't say that. He's my son too.'

Emma cried quietly into her sleeve. How much hearing something like that from Oliver would have meant to her at any time during the past thirteen months.

'The police interviewed me,' Oliver said. 'They were able to do it over the phone. They said it's unlikely for now that I'll need to come to England.'

Emma said nothing.

'That's not to say I won't come if you want me to,'
Oliver said. He paused. 'I saw all those things they wrote in the papers. About whether you were looking after him properly. But of course, that doesn't mean anything. I know more than to believe half of what these people say. If you want me to come, then I will.
I'd have to arrange things, obviously, but under the circumstances . . .'

Emma wiped her nose with her sleeve.

She said, 'You don't need to come.'

'Are you sure? Because if there's anything—'

'You don't need to come.'

She put the phone down. Strange – all those feelings
she'd once had for him. There'd been a time when she'd have done absolutely
anything for him. Anything at all. She felt nothing for him now. He was wasting
her time, taking up the line, when someone more important might be trying
to get through with news of Ritchie.

All of those people who'd called. And not one of them had really known Ritchie, or cared about him, or could be of any use to him now. How had this happened? How had she let him down so badly? How had she got them both into this friendless, loveless position?

Emma shifted, twisting her face into the seat
.

So easy, so very easy, to let go of the people you'd once thought were so important. And so very, very hard to replace them.

She continued to lie there. It was still too early in the evening for the central heating to come back on.
She was wearing a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. Her arms were starting to go numb. Her fleece was draped over her legs; she didn't have the energy to pull it up.
The sun went in behind a cloud. The room, never bright anyway, dimmed further as the sky darkened.
A shadow closed over the couch.

Emma knew before she heard the voice that she'd been expecting it.

'You've failed,' the voice said.

A deep, dry voice; neither male nor female. Each word was clearly pronounced. It came from the corner, from somewhere in behind the television.

Emma had heard that voice before.

'You lost him,' the voice said. 'You've failed.'

'I know,' Emma wept. 'I know.'

It hurt, it hurt so much; and she had to do something, but she was so exhausted, so heavy, like something was pressing on her, stopping her from getting up. A chill in her hands and feet, spreading up her limbs. Ice in her heart. She closed her eyes. Please, she thought. Please.

And then, for several merciful hours, she didn't think anything
else.

And now.

What was it that had woken her? It was important, she had a definite feeling it was. Something about the flat? No. Something she'd been dreaming? That triggered a faint niggle. What had it been? Something to do with . . .

Antonia.

Jesus!

Emma shoved the cushion away and sat up.

Antonia! She remembered now. The thing that had flashed into her mind on the balcony the day that man – Rafe? – had brought over her bag. Something then had made her think of Antonia, and now, finally, it had clicked in her head and she knew what it was.

Clear as day, she saw Antonia again in the café with
Ritchie. Saw her lips move as she murmured into her mobile phone.

'
Bird rack
,' she'd thought Antonia was saying.

But she hadn't been saying 'Bird Rack' at all.

She'd been saying, 'Bergerac.'

Emma's heart hammered.
Now
she knew why she'd thought of Antonia that day. 'Bergerac' was the name of a detective programme her mum used to watch on
TV when Emma was a child. On the balcony, Emma had been saying something to that man – Rafe somebody
– about hiring a private detective. And that was the exact moment Antonia had come slithering into her mind.

Bergerac! The way Antonia had pronounced the
'g' – the way a French person would say it. Even though Emma hadn't been able to hear most of what she was saying, she'd caught that 'g'. Recognized the accent without even knowing it at the time. Her subconscious, at least, had picked it up. And had responded by showing her that picture of her mum, watching telly all those years ago in front of the fire.

Emma got up off the couch. She wrapped her fleece around her and began to walk up and down the room. OK. OK. Think about this. Suppose 'Bergerac'
was
what Antonia had said. What could she have meant by it? She'd hardly been sitting there discussing
1980s cop dramas on the phone, in a grimy chip shop in Whitechapel, with a strange toddler by her side.
Emma concentrated, trying to recall the expression on Antonia's face. What she'd been saying was important. The more Emma thought about it now, the more she was certain. Antonia had jumped a mile when Emma had come up behind her with the tray. She hadn't wanted Emma to hear what she was saying. If she'd been plotting something, did that mean it definitely
was
her who had taken Ritchie? Or was Emma remembering things now that had never happened at all?

BZZZT. BZZZT.

The intercom! Emma almost tripped over the leg of a chair. At the same time, a wave of dizziness rolled over her. She must have got up off the couch too quickly.
She ignored it, hurrying to press the button. Whoever it was might be something to do with Ritchie. Even as she thought it, she braced herself for disappointment.

It was probably just another journalist. She'd stopped letting them up to the flat, ever since a sneery-faced woman in a red skirt suit had asked her if she could prove that Oliver was Ritchie's father, while behind her, her colleague used Gribbit's foot to clean his camera lens.

The other person it could be was Mrs Alcarez, the
Filipino nurse who lived next door. Emma hardly knew the woman but she was constantly accosting the police in the lifts, asking them if they'd found
Ritchie yet.

But the voice on the intercom was none of these.

'Emma Turner?' a man's voice said.

'Yes?'

'I'm sorry to bother you. This is Rafe Townsend.'

Rafe Townsend. Rafe Townsend! The man who'd been on her balcony. Emma was too astonished to respond. She'd been thinking about him only a couple of minutes ago.

'I brought your bags back to your flat,' Rafe was explaining. 'Last Monday.'

Emma said, 'I know who you are.'

Before she knew what she was doing, she'd pressed the switch on the intercom to let him in. Then she clicked her tongue against her teeth. What had she done that for? What the hell was this Rafe person doing, calling over here again?

When, a minute or two later, she heard his knock on the door of the flat, she was tempted to ignore it.

She was still dizzy from getting up off the couch. Then she sighed and went to open the door. In the hallway stood the tallish dark-haired man she recognized from the last time. He had the same beaten-up rucksack slung over his shoulder. His face was flushed, from exercise or the cold, and his hair stuck up in little spikes of drying sweat.

'I hope I'm not intruding,' Rafe said, peering at her in a worried way.

'Can I help you?' Emma asked. His face was beginning to blur. The dizziness was getting worse.

'I was cycling past,' Rafe said, 'and I just . . .' His eyes moved down. His voice faltered. '. . . wanted to see how you were.'