Crying Out Loud

FOUR

That first night with baby Jamie was terrible. Enough time had elapsed since Maddie was born for the memories of looking after an infant to become smudged and hazy. And Maddie was my baby. This was a stranger and that added to my anxiety.

Even though Jamie slept for three hours after an eleven o’clock feed, I didn’t. As soon as I turned out the lights the worries crowded in on me. What if Ray was right? What if something happened to her while she was in my care? Cot death! I snapped my bedside light back on and checked that she was still lying on her back. The room was cool but I got out of bed and opened the window a little wider. Back between the covers, I turned the light off and tried to distract myself by concentrating on what I wanted to get out of my forthcoming meeting with convicted killer Damien Beswick.

I couldn’t hear Jamie breathing. Dread stole through me. I turned the light back on and crossed to the travel cot that I’d borrowed from the neighbours across the road. Peering closely at her chest, I held my own breath, as if stilling my body might magically animate hers. And it did. An almost imperceptible shift – so slight that I had to measure the movement by contrasting the motion of the popper on her Babygro with the static pattern of yellow ducks on the navy material of the cot.

Jamie jerked in her sleep, her arms flew akimbo and her eyelids fluttered open. Startled, I almost squealed as the kick of surprise shot a spike of adrenalin into my heart and sent tendrils of it snaking down my back.

It was ridiculous. She slept on, her eyelids slowly closing and her mouth moving in an imaginary suckle. But I was shot to pieces. Too tense to sleep, I sat up in bed and opened my book. But even the magic of Kate Atkinson couldn’t soothe my chattering mind. I’ll explain later. How much later? I had half expected the doorbell to ring while we were having tea. A friend or acquaintance to be standing there, apologizing for the melodrama, explaining how she’d been taken ill and had to get to A &E, or how her baby-minder had cried off and she was desperate for that interview.

But of all the excuses I could think of, nothing really seemed plausible. What would drive you to abandon your baby without explaining at the time? How long would it have taken to tell me what was going on? Another five minutes. Why so cloak and dagger? Ringing the bell and disappearing before I could see her. She’d had time to write a note, time to pack nappies and formula, so there had been some foresight.

Where was she now, the mother? Awake somewhere, fretting about her baby? Sick with anxiety, fearful that something might have gone wrong? Struggling with the enormous pain of separation? The baby was so small, so young and still at an age where it’s hard to separate mother from child: physically, emotionally still bound together. When Maddie was that tiny I’d been overtaken by a dark, panicky and crippling sense of looming disaster whenever she was away from me, even for an hour or so. Perhaps it’s a response hardwired into us to keep us caring for our young ones, or maybe I was a bit paranoid, or depressed, struggling on my own with a patchy support network and coping with my first baby. Whatever, I couldn’t imagine Jamie’s mother was resting easy tonight.

A dozen nappies; we’d already changed Jamie twice. At a rate of six a day there was enough for two days. Was that significant? Would her mother be back then? But there was only one change of clothes – which suggested she hadn’t planned to be gone so long.

The questions came at me all night long; a perpetual quiz with no answers. When I did drift off, just before three, Jamie woke up, crying for a feed. No doubt there are devices you can buy to keep a night bottle warm but we hadn’t got them. Instead I was forced to try mixing a bottle while I jiggled her on one arm and felt the cold steal round my ankles and my neck.

I fed her in bed. My eyes were dry and tired and I closed them as much as I could. She became dozy towards the end of the feed and I was tempted to just lay her back in the cot but her nappy felt heavy and damp and was starting to leak out of the edge on to her clothes. I winded her first, the air escaping in a watery gurgle. I wondered if her crying had woken Ray and wished he was here giving me some moral support. Highly unlikely given his objections to the whole enterprise.

Jamie complained when I wrested her out of her Babygro – not loudly but the night was silent and so every noise was magnified. It’s rare that things are so quiet in south Manchester, with the trains passing quarter of a mile away, the roads busy, aeroplanes in the day and, most of the year round, students having fun late into the night. But this night was still. The city slept. Even the wind was resting.

Nappy changed, I remembered the old trick of putting my fists through the Babygro and drawing it over hers. The jumpsuit was barely damp and would last till morning.

‘There we go.’ I lifted her up, her face level with mine. She smiled and for a moment there was a connection there, person to person; for a moment she wasn’t a puzzle or a burden or a cause for concern, but a little human being smiling at me.

‘Back to bed.’ I drew her close and moved to the cot. She convulsed once and threw up all down my neck.

And I tell you this – way more liquid came out than ever went in.

Night bled into day and by then Jamie was wearing a hastily adapted roll-neck T-shirt of Maddie’s in black and white stripes. Très chic. The kids got up at seven thirty and joined us in the kitchen, followed shortly by Ray.

‘Did you hear her?’ I asked him.

‘Loud and clear.’ He clattered around, pouring muesli and slicing bread. A small, irrational part of me resented the fact that he had left me to it. That he hadn’t sought me out and shown a bit of solidarity. But I understood the way he worked, too. Ray saw this as my problem; he thought I was handling it the wrong way so he would stand well clear, palms front, arms out to the side in a hands-off gesture and watch me sink or swim, eager for an ‘I-told-you-so’ opportunity.

I was still amazed and very grateful that he had agreed to look after her while I went to the prison.

‘Like the outfit.’ He nodded at Jamie’s stripes.

‘My new range,’ I said. ‘We need to get her some more clothes. She was sick over her spare set. They might have some in the charity shops.’

He gave a sigh. ‘Anything else?’

‘No, that’s all. If you can’t find any, text me and I’ll call somewhere on my way back.’ There was a Children’s World in Ancoats en route from the prison.

‘When’s your meeting?’ He buttered toast.

‘Nine thirty. I can take them first.’ I nodded at Maddie and Tom, who were trying to get Jamie to talk.

‘And when will you be back?’

I began to clear the table. ‘Say about one to be on the safe side. There’s often a lot of waiting about.’

I was fibbing, buying time so I could fit in a bit more work before taking over from Ray. It was fair to assume that he wouldn’t be prepared to look after the baby any more; he’d only agreed because it was an appointment I couldn’t reschedule. I’m a lousy liar so the table clearing meant I could avoid his eyes and mask any increase of colour in my cheeks.

‘I want to hold her,’ Maddie said.

‘Does she like Crispies?’ Tom asked Ray.

‘No, she’s too little. Just baby milk for now,’ Ray told him.

Jamie gave a gummy grin and Tom yelled with laughter.

‘You two: do your teeth and get your bags ready,’ I said.

‘When’s she going home?’ Maddie asked. ‘Can she stay the weekend?’

‘We’ll see.’

When the children had gone upstairs, Ray stooped and picked Jamie up. He ran his hand across her head, stroked her baby quiff then cradled her skull in his palm. I loved the sight of them like that: the baby so tiny next to him, his easy confidence as a carer; Ray’s dark curls, the stubble peppering his jaw, his moustache contrasting with the baby’s soft smooth skin.

‘What if the mother shows up while you’re out?’

‘Get her to call me.’ I thought again. ‘No, I can’t take my mobile in with me. Don’t let her leave without a good explanation. I want to know who she is and where the fire was. And it had better be good!’ I tried for jokey but he wasn’t amused. As for me, the night had taken its toll and I was becoming more edgy about the baby.

Driving towards Strangeways later that morning to see Damien Beswick, I reran my visit to his sister Chloe, almost a week earlier. She had been my first port of call once I’d agreed to look into the case for Libby.

Chloe worked on the tills at the big Asda supermarket in Wythenshawe but was at home when I called her on the phone to arrange a meeting. At first she seemed to think I was offering to run the campaign for her brother’s release. It took me a couple of goes to explain who I was and my role in it all. Chloe spoke quickly with a flat Mancunian accent, tinged with the cultural twang that the nation’s urban youth seemed to have copied wholesale from young black kids.

‘Yo better come ’n see us, then. Yo got the address?’

Leeson Close was on the council estate to the north of Wythenshawe Park. Taking the road which skirted the park, in the shade of the large forest trees, I spotted more signs of autumn. The silver birch leaves were already yellowing and the big bunch-of-five leaves on the chestnuts were curling and crisping. Many of the chestnuts were sick, their familiar conkers not developing and there was talk of a virus, like Dutch elm disease, at work. It was a still, bleak day. Clouds grey as dirty linen muffled the sky and the threat of rain hung brassy in the air.

Chloe’s house was a simple semi-detached, brick built, dating from the post-war years. It had been refurbished with double-glazed windows in stubby plastic frames and a new roof. The front garden was tarmacked and a lone black and white wagon wheel, like a prop from a pioneer western, leant against the front wall; the only adornment.

Chloe opened the door with a baby on one hip and a toddler at her side. She led me into the living room, placed the baby on a play mat and told the toddler, a little girl in pink tights and a purple dress, to watch the telly. A Charlie and Lola cartoon was on and the child settled happily on her tummy a few inches from the screen, her chin on her hands, angled up at the telly. It was a flat screen with a group of dodgy pixels at the left-hand side and a yellow cast to the colours.

The room was cool and sparsely furnished. A shiny sofa slumped against the back wall and there was a bamboo coffee table and in one corner a PVC box of toys.

The kitchen was off the sitting room and Chloe left the door open so she could hear the children. She didn’t offer me a drink, as most people would do, but sat and waited for me to talk.

Chloe had incredibly pale skin, almost translucent, and large pale ginger freckles across her forehead and cheeks. She wore thin black eyeliner which made her look hard, mean even, and pink frosted lipstick. Dressed in a close-fitting navy vest and trackie bottoms, with an open zip-up hoodie in red, she had painted her nails to match her lips but her fingers were stained nicotine yellow. A tattoo of a butterfly nestled in the hollow of her throat. She toyed with a throwaway lighter.

‘Tell me about Damien.’ An open-ended question to get her started.

‘He’s my half-brother: same dad, different mam. He came to live with us when he was about eleven. She’d gone off the rails, his mam.’

I looked at her for more.

‘Druggie.’ She shrugged. ‘She did some time. Damien never went back.’ She turned the lighter over and over, marking time to the story.

‘Is she still around?’

‘Nah. She went down south, someplace. No one knows how to find her. She dun’t know he’s inside, prob’ly dun’t care. Damien breathes trouble – he’s no sense. Not wicked just… dense, innit.’

I kept my face straight at the ‘innit’, though it always sounded such a parody to me after being lampooned by so many comedians. Would Maddie start using it when she reached her teens? Or the equivalent slang for her time? No doubt.

‘We had the police round day an’ night. Robbin’, dealin’, burglary, possession. Gets to the point where my dad kicks him out for good.’

As a character reference it was pretty damning. ‘How long ago?’

She watched the lighter, took a breath and calculated. ‘Six years. He was fifteen, I was twelve.’ Which made her eighteen now – and the mother of two.

‘Damien was getting well out of order. And there was the little ones: I’ve twin sisters. And me mam – she’s had enough of him.’

There was a clunking sound, a hiss of static; the light went off and the sound of the telly cut out. The toddler began to cry.

‘All right, babes,’ Chloe yelled out, ‘just the lecky. We’ll go to the shop in a bit, yeah?’ She turned to me, her face flat and drained of emotion. ‘Fiver doesn’t last five minutes in this thing.’

‘They reckon it’s the most expensive way to pay,’ I said.

‘They’re right there, innit.’

‘So Damien was already well known to the police?’ I said. ‘And did he get into more trouble?’

‘All the time, ’cos of the drugs. But low level, you know? Least till last year but by then he was using a lot of coke and it wasn’t doing him any good. If he could only have kicked that…’ She left the sentence unfinished.

‘And when he confessed to the murder?’ I asked her.

She shook her head. ‘I din’t believe it. He’s not a hard man. He’s never been done for assault, let alone aggravated.’ I knew the jargon – ‘aggravated’ meant a weapon was involved. ‘Damien never got into fights. Too busy fighting himself.’

‘How d’you mean?’

She picked up the lighter and tapped it against her palm. ‘He’s his own worst enemy. He lives in some fairy land half the time, innit. Living it large, showing off, giving it the gab, kidding himself that he’s the man and things are fine. People buy into it, then they find out it’s make-believe and they get mad. Next thing he’s a headcase, crying like a baby and it’s the end of the world. He’s got mental problems.’ She glanced across at me. ‘He reckons the drugs help, but they just make it worse.’

I was impressed at the sketch she conjured up. She’d obviously thought about her brother, considered his behaviour and her analysis was unflinching.

‘Why would he confess if he hadn’t done it?’

She rolled the wheel on the lighter; the flint sparked but no flame caught.

‘I don’t…’ She broke off, considering how to explain it to me. ‘It’s just the sort of thing he’d do.’

‘But it must have been plausible for the police, for the judge, to accept his plea.’

She locked eyes with me, an edge of resentment hardening hers. ‘He’s a good liar,’ she said baldly. ‘That’s what I’m sayin’, innit. He mixes it up: what’s true, what’s not.’

‘So you never believed it, not even when he was sentenced?’

‘No way.’ Her mouth flattened a firm line.

‘And since?’

‘I’m the only one who visits,’ she said. ‘The rest, they’ve no time for him. Mostly we talk about other stuff but then one day, he’s been in about a month, he’s all quiet and he says he didn’t kill Mr Carter and it’s a mistake and he only confessed because he was scared and he was rattling…’

‘Rattling?’ What did she mean?

‘Withdrawal. So he said yeah he done it and then it was hard to go back.’

I must have seemed sceptical because she sat back and looked away in a gesture of thinly veiled frustration. ‘Don’t take my word,’ she said, ‘go see him.’

‘I will. Chloe, you wrote to Libby Hill – what about the Carter family?’

‘Yeah, them an’ all. I went to the lawyer but she was no use. Just said I was wasting my time and there was no new evidence.’

‘Did the Carters get in touch?’

‘Nah.’ She shook her head, resignation on her face. ‘Guess they don’t wanna know.’

We swapped details so she could arrange to get me on the list for a prison visit and the toddler wandered into the kitchen and climbed on to Chloe’s lap. The child’s face was flushed, her eyes large and drowsy. She laid her head against her mother’s chest. Chloe picked a soother out of the raffia tray on the table, sucked it clean and slipped it in the little girl’s mouth. ‘There y’are.’

‘Nap time.’ I smiled.

‘Thank God,’ said Chloe. ‘She’s been up since four – teething.’

‘I can see myself out.’ I got to my feet.

She nodded. ‘When you see him, don’t let him muck you about. He’s a bit ADHD, you know.’ Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: unable to concentrate, unable to sit still, disruptive; an increasing diagnosis among both kids and adults, many of whom were tranquilized to settle their behaviour. It was common knowledge that food additives played a part; I wondered what they fed people like Damien in prison.

‘Just don’t let him arse you about,’ she said.

I smiled. ‘OK, I’ll do my best.’

I wondered if Damien Beswick had any idea what Chloe was trying to do for him. Against all the odds, knowing his flaws, she was sticking up for him, believing in him. It seemed she was the only person in the world who did. Whether that belief was justified was a completely different matter. And it was my job to start snooping around and find out.