Crying Out Loud

TEN

‘How’s she been?’

‘Still asleep,’ said Diane.

Jamie was exactly where I’d left her. While on the table, the sofa and around the edge of the carpet were large, thick sheets of drawing paper covered in charcoal sketches of the baby.

‘Still life,’ I observed. ‘They’re great.’

‘Easy subject,’ Diane said. ‘Perfect artist’s model. Like the quiff.’ She referred to Jamie’s spike of dark hair.

Some of the drawings showed Jamie and the carry-seat, others were close-ups. One I particularly liked: a very simple head and shoulders sketch, three-quarter profile, caught her exact likeness. I asked Diane if I could have it.

‘To you, fifty quid,’ she joked. ‘Hang on.’ She grabbed a spray can, got the picture from the sofa and disappeared into the backyard. I sat down. I could hear her rattling the aerosol, then the sibilance of the spray. Jamie stirred, her face working, legs twitching.

Diane brought the drawing back; there was a smell like glue. ‘Fixative,’ she said, ‘to stop it smudging.’ She moved the sketches from the sofa and put them with my one on the table. ‘How was your meeting?’

Jamie opened her eyes and smacked her lips a couple of times. I reached down and stroked her cheek. ‘Not sure – need to think it through.’

Diane cocked her head, interested.

‘Remember the Charlie Carter murder? Man stabbed in his second home – in Thornsby.’

‘A builder?’ she checked.

‘Yeah, he did loft conversions. The man I’ve just been to see confessed to the crime: he was caught with Carter’s bank cards and the police could prove he was at the scene. But now he’s saying he’s innocent after all. And he’s looking for grounds to launch an appeal.’

‘So, what, you’re working for his defence lawyer?’ Diane knew more about my work than just about anyone, so she knew I often collect evidence and check statements for solicitors. Saves them the shoe leather.

‘No,’ I said, ‘not that simple.’ Jamie gave a little shriek and waved her fists about. ‘I was hired by the dead man’s lover who wants reassurance that the bloke behind bars should stay there.’

‘Never a dull moment,’ Diane smiled.

‘I’d better make tracks.’ I gestured at Jamie. ‘She’ll want feeding, then changing before long. Thanks for having her.’

I lifted the carry-seat and Jamie beamed at me. I caught sight of a crumb of something in her mouth and went to slip it out, running my finger along her gum. There was something hard, sharp. I peered closer, saw the translucent bluey bump, like a fragment of seashell. ‘Oh, wow, look.’ I turned to Diane. ‘Her first tooth!’

Diane was looking at me, not the baby. She shook her head.

‘What?’ I asked her.

She shrugged. ‘Don’t you think you’re getting a bit too involved?’

My face flushed with heat and I felt my pulse quicken. ‘No!’ I could hear how defensive I sounded. ‘It’s a milestone, that’s all. You wouldn’t understand.’

Diane regarded me steadily; it felt like a challenge.

I muttered something about having to go, and went.

Leaving the drawing behind.

I squabbled with the voices in my head all the way home and while I fed and changed Jamie. She was an engaging baby, pretty, reasonably settled given she’d been thrust into the care of strangers. What was I supposed to do? Keep her at arm’s length, deny her any warmth or affection because she’d only be here a few days?

By the time I got round to making my own lunch I was ravenous, and hadn’t resolved any of the edgy feelings that Diane’s comment had awoken.

While I stirred a couple of blocks of frozen spinach and some spring onions into boiling water, I sifted through my reactions – trying to unpick the reasons behind them.

It was fair to say having Jamie had made me think anew about my relationship with Ray. And her appearance in my life had made me a little broody but that was a fancy, like window shopping, rather than a powerful driving need. True, I felt quite close to the child but wouldn’t anyone who’d shared the isolation of broken nights and been the one she relied upon?

I’d seen some childcare guru on the telly who advocated keeping handling to a minimum, leaving babies alone apart from set feeding times, letting them cry if need be, in order to establish a fixed routine. She told stories of infants who slept for a straight ten hours at night, who never fussed or fretted. But that type of regime wasn’t my style. It seemed cold and inflexible. And I’d be incapable of ignoring a crying child.

Was I too involved? Would I miss Jamie when she went? I scooped a spoonful of miso paste, made from fermented soya beans, mashed it with a little water and added it to my soup, sprinkling chilli flakes on top. Yes, I’d miss her a bit, but I had plenty of other stuff going on: I had a life, a job, a child, a lover, a business. I wasn’t praying that Jamie would stay. I’d like to catch up on my sleep for starters. Realistically, even if her mother never returned, I wouldn’t be able to keep her indefinitely. At some point I would have to inform social services.

I ate my broth with the last crust of home-made bread. When food prices had gone up we’d invested in a bread-making machine and never looked back. But the extra time the baby demanded had disrupted some of our everyday chores, like baking bread. I cleared my plates and got out the flour and yeast and seeds. I finally admitted to myself that my overreaction to Diane was because she’d put her finger on something I’d been trying to ignore. And rather than ’fess up and admit that the little girl had won me over and it would be a wrench when she went, I’d scrabbled to deny any such bond.

I took the baby round to the office with me, intent on working through my interview with Damien Beswick and making recommendations for Libby. It was chilly in the cellar room and I turned up the heating and switched on the table lamp. Before I started, I called Diane.

‘Hey,’ I said, ‘sorry if I was a bit prickly back then. Felt like you and Ray were ganging up on me.’

‘I don’t want to see you get hurt,’ she said.

‘I won’t. I can handle it. She’s a nice baby, but that’s all. Honestly. And I forgot the drawing.’

‘I’ll hang on to it for you.’

We said our goodbyes and I concentrated on the case. There were a number of items in Damien’s account that interested me or raised questions – though I couldn’t tell yet whether they had any bearing on establishing his guilt or innocence.

First, why had Charlie been in the cottage with the lights off but the door unlocked? If he’d gone for a sleep, surely he’d have locked up. If someone had been there before Damien (as he wanted me to believe) had that person switched off the lights when they were leaving? Why? A primal need to obscure what they’d done – in the same way that Damien had instinctively shut the door to hide the horror? After all, anyone coming to the cottage in the dark, like Libby, would be surprised to find the place in darkness. Leaving the lights on would actually make the place appear more normal, so attract less attention. As I mulled this over, I scribbled the gist of my ideas down in my notepad.

Damien had been uncomfortable when I asked him if he’d touched the body. What I’d been trying to find out was whether Charlie’s skin was cool to the touch – or warm. It would be in the police case notes; the pathologist called to the scene would have taken the temperature of the victim and estimated time of death. Maybe Geoff Sinclair would be able to remember? I made a note to phone him. Charlie couldn’t have been there for very long; he’d not left home till four.

The second thing that puzzled me was Damien’s description of Charlie’s car: how it had been ticking as the metal contracted, how the bonnet felt warm. Cars cool down pretty quickly anyway and it was November time so the temperatures would be lower; that suggested that Charlie had used it very shortly before his death, before Damien arrived.

Third was Damien’s ‘walker’. The passer-by with the rucksack. The only living soul that Damien admitted seeing from getting off the bus to climbing on board again later. Sinclair said the police had no knowledge of this character. But in the days after the murder, they would have crawled all over the village, interviewing anyone home or in the area that day and cross-referencing everybody’s accounts. Appeals had been made for witnesses: ‘Anyone who saw anything, no matter how small, no matter how insignificant or irrelevant it may seem, please let us know.’ And at that stage it would be another two weeks until Damien Beswick was apprehended.

So imagining this man existed, if he was an innocent bystander, he walked past the cottage on the very day that a brutal murder was carried out. He went home after his walk or whatever, had a shower, made his tea. The next day on the telly, or in the papers he read how close he was. Why not call it in? Maybe he didn’t notice Damien and so thought he had nothing to tell the enquiry. Maybe he got home that evening and changed for his holiday in New Zealand or wherever, and flew off and missed the brouhaha.

Or he kept quiet, lay low, because he wasn’t innocent, he hadn’t been up in the hills walking – he’d been killing Charlie. And he’d left the cottage moments before Damien arrived. Damien’s description was pretty vague but one detail that he had recalled without my prompting was that the man had been out of breath, panting, which would fit if you were hurrying away from a murder scene, though it would fit equally well if you were an energetic fell walker coming down the hills at the end of a hard day’s tramp. And he had been lugging a backpack with him.

If this was a suspect, what was his motive? Nothing was stolen apart from the wallet that Damien took. There weren’t any other suspects, unless… My mind darted back to the old business partner that Libby had mentioned: the alcoholic who bore a grudge even though he’d been the one dragging the firm to the edge of insolvency. I flicked through my notes: Nick Dryden. Had something happened that made him suddenly act many years after things had turned sour? Was there some personal crisis that had tipped him over the edge from angry drunk to homicidal maniac? How would he know where to find Charlie? Charlie wasn’t at home. Had Dryden been stalking him and followed him to the cottage? I shook my head at the image that conjured up: the little convoy setting out on a winter’s afternoon. Charlie in front heading for Thornsby and looking forward to seeing Libby; behind him Valerie driving Heather, the anxious wife looking for evidence to prove her suspicions, and after them Nick Dryden, out for blood.

I gave up on work. I would ring Sinclair the following day, see what he could tell me about the estimate for Charlie’s time of death, how warm the body was and if they had made any efforts to trace Nick Dryden and find out where he’d been the day Charlie was killed.

Maddie was in full strop from the moment she came out of school. It’s never a good time of day – I know she’s often tired and hungry and cranky so I made allowances when she slung her lunch box under Jamie’s buggy and it flew open, spilling wrappers and a squashed up drink carton. And when she refused to put her coat on and walked home shivering, going blue around the gills.

I made them some toast and hot chocolate and thought things would improve. They scoffed it at the kitchen table, where Jamie was sitting in her seat.

‘Jamie’s got her first tooth,’ I told them.

‘Let’s see.’ Tom stood up and craned his neck, as I gently pulled Jamie’s lower lip down. Maddie refused to be impressed. Maddie was jealous. The first flush of interest in the baby had given way to feeling usurped.

‘Feel it with your finger,’ I suggested. He did and Jamie clamped her mouth shut.

‘She bit me!’ He didn’t know whether to be cross or delighted but I could tell he wasn’t hurt. ‘It’s sharp.’

Maddie went off to the living room and Tom peered at his finger for a moment, then ran after her.

‘Stop following me,’ I heard her snap.

‘I’m not. I just want to watch telly.’

‘Well, you can’t. You always talk,’ she said.

‘I do not!’ Tom protested.

‘Liar!’

Maddie wasn’t getting enough attention and behaving badly was a sure-fire way of attracting lots of it. Before it could get any heavier I intervened and they settled down in front of the box. But ten minutes later, while I was feeding Jamie, there was an almighty crash from the living room. I pulled the bottle out of her mouth and hurried to see what was going on.

The television was face down on the floor. Maddie looked flushed and guilty. Tom was crying.

‘He was in the way,’ Maddie said sulkily. ‘I told him to move.’

‘I was not,’ Tom shouted, furious with passion and his face dark, snot bubbling out of his nose. ‘She kept getting closer.’

Jamie began to cry.

‘She kept pushing me. She pushed me into the telly and-’

‘He pulled it down,’ Maddie said quickly.

‘It fell down!’ Tom screamed.

‘All right.’ I plonked the baby on the sofa and held up both my hands.

‘He’s trying to blame it on me,’ Maddie insisted.

‘Shush,’ I told her as I knelt and unplugged the television.

‘You always take his side,’ Maddie shouted now and ran upstairs. Tom was sobbing and Jamie was howling.

I moved and gave Tom a hug. He usually came off worse when the kids fell out. Maddie was more calculating, devious even, and Tom couldn’t bear the injustice. She’d engineer an argument or a fight and then try to seize the moral high ground. Being a year older, and a girl, also made her more articulate and she’d confuse him and trip him up with the way she put a spin on things. It wasn’t a trait I liked in my daughter and I guess, like many parents, there were times when I wondered whether I’d done anything to encourage it.

‘We’ll talk about it properly when you’ve both calmed down,’ I told Tom.

‘Is it broken?’ He took his arms from round my neck; his dark eyes were wide and soft and shiny with tears. He winced as Jamie’s cries reached glass-shattering pitch.

‘I don’t know. I’d better finish feeding Jamie and then I’ll have a look.’

He swiped at his face with both hands.

‘You go blow your nose,’ I said, ‘and stay away from Maddie for a bit.’

The crying had given Jamie hiccups and it took twice as long to feed her. She filled her nappy, again, and the contents were particularly virulent, probably to do with her teething. She didn’t show any signs of going to sleep once I’d wrested her into clean clothes, so I peeled a piece of carrot for her, large enough so she couldn’t choke on it, and gave her it to gnaw on. If the tooth was hurting her at all maybe it would help. She took to it straight away, making little droney sounds.

The telly was dead. When I plugged it in the stinky smell of burning plastic filled the room. Tom was in the playroom bashing together a pair of action men – probably imagining dispatching Maddie in various gruesome ways.

‘Now tell me what happened,’ I said, clearing a pile of wooden bricks and bits of plastic from the floor so I could sit down.

He clutched the dolls as he talked only making eye contact with me at crucial points. ‘We were watching Basil Brush and Maddie said I was in the way but I wasn’t. I moved a bit and then she sat in front of me and I couldn’t see anything and I sat closer and she tried to push me out of the way and I pushed her then I got up and she pushed me again. And I fell on the telly and then it fell down. I’m sorry, Sal.’

‘OK.’

Maddie was in her bed, hidden by the covers.

‘Maddie, sit up.’

She made me wait but did eventually emerge from the duvet, looking as defiant as she could.

‘Tell me what happened?’

‘I told you,’ she said. ‘Tom was in the way and he wouldn’t move. I couldn’t see. He kept doing it and then he knocked the telly off.’ She looked miserable but her jaw was set and her chin lowered so she was glowering at me.

‘And what did you do?’

‘Nothing,’ she said brusquely. She ground her teeth mutinously.

‘Maddie, tell me the truth.’

‘I am!’ she cried.

‘All of it.’

‘That is all of it.’

I worked very hard at not losing my temper with her. ‘I don’t think Tom got up and pulled the telly over on purpose; I think something happened between you first. Did you push Tom?’

‘He pushed me, too.’

‘So that’s a yes.’

She gave a little sigh and her shoulders slumped.

‘It’s important to tell the truth, Maddie. If Tom got told off, or you did, for something you hadn’t done, that wouldn’t be fair, would it?’

‘No.’ Her voice couldn’t get any smaller.

‘If Tom was in the way, what else could you have done?’

‘Got you.’

‘Yes. Because getting into a pushing competition means that the telly is broken and neither of you will be able to watch anything until we can afford to buy a new one. And that might be quite a while,’ I added, wanting her to understand that she’d suffer as a result.

Maddie’s face had gone blank now, as if she was trying to absent herself from the situation.

From downstairs Jamie gave a cry and Maddie groaned. ‘When’s she going home?’

‘I don’t know when Jamie’s going home,’ I answered her. ‘I know it’s not very easy having a baby here, is it?’ She didn’t say anything, so I carried on. ‘But the telly is broken and I think you should say sorry.’

‘Sorry,’ she said ungraciously and fell back flat on the bed. ‘Can you go now?’

And that was as good as it got.

Ray was furious about the telly but I persuaded him not to talk to the kids until he’d calmed down a bit. Yelling at them wouldn’t achieve much. ‘I think Maddie’s jealous of the baby,’ I said. ‘I think that’s why she was winding Tom up. And he was really upset – don’t be too hard on him.’

‘They can’t just get away with murder,’ he said. ‘What’s that going to cost? Two hundred quid? Three?’

I shrugged. ‘We don’t have to replace it immediately.’

‘Are we covered by accidental damage?’

‘Maybe, but the excess will be a couple of hundred to start with.’

He sighed. ‘So, I’ll have to watch the match at the pub,’ he complained.

I hadn’t given any thought to football – nothing new there. ‘When’s it start?’

‘Seven forty-five.’

‘We need formula,’ I said. ‘Can you hang on until I get back? She’s asleep now,’ I said, moving to pick up my purse, trying to get out of there before he started on again about Jamie and what I should or shouldn’t do.

‘Sal, it’s been four days-’

‘I can count.’ I pulled on my coat and left.

There’s a mini-market on the main road and I thought it was big enough to carry different brands of baby milk. People were still commuting home from work; it was dark already and foggy now. The mist diffused the street lights into fuzzy globes and car headlights picked out skeins of fog, like soft grey netting. The air was ripe with exhaust fumes and the smell of fat-frying from the chippie.

As I pushed the heavy shop door open, I met a woman coming out. She looked familiar from school, though I didn’t know her well. Her son had been in Tom’s class but had changed schools the previous year. She remembered me, though, and stepped back into the shop. ‘Sal? Jenny. How are you? Tom OK?’

‘Yes.’

I couldn’t ask after her boy as I’d forgotten his name but she went on regardless. ‘Piers still asks after him. We’ll have to get them together. Tom must come for tea sometime.’

‘Yes, he’d like that.’ I hoped, if it ever came to pass. ‘Does Piers like the new school?’

‘Loves it, thank God. And we’re near enough so he can walk.’ She hefted her bag of shopping from one hand to the other. ‘So, how’s Laura?’

‘Laura?’ Ray’s ex. The one he’d finished with in order to start his dalliance with me. I’d felt bad about it; I liked her but at least Ray had been honest and not tried to deceive anyone.

Jenny grinned. ‘Did she have a boy or a girl?’

‘Sorry?’ I said stupidly. My throat felt dry and my stomach lurched.

‘I saw her at the open-air theatre – Wythenshawe Park. We must have had the only dry day in March. She looked fit to pop. Didn’t get chance to talk.’

My mind was fracturing. I heard myself speak, sounding quite normal: ‘They split up, Ray and Laura. I’ve not seen her.’ Meanwhile I was doing sums in my head, seeing that it added up and a voice was shouting: Laura’s pregnant, Laura’s had a baby. Ray’s baby. Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod.

‘Oh, sorry, I’d no idea,’ Jenny said. ‘Can’t be easy for her.’

‘No.’ I wanted to push her out of the shop and shut her up.

‘Keep in touch.’ She nodded.

I mirrored her and stood back and watched her leave.

She reminds me of Tom, Ray had said about Jamie. My ears were buzzing, the strip light flickering above hurt my eyes and I felt sick and cold. The signature on the note: not Lisa or Lear but Laura. Oh, God.

The baby hadn’t been left for me, but for Ray. Jamie was Ray’s daughter. His and Laura’s. He was supposed to look after her, not me. It all fit.

And I began to shake.