The Night Ferry

10

“New Boy” Dave hears my voice on the intercom and pauses for a moment before pressing the buzzer to unlock the front door. When I reach his flat the door is propped open. He is in the kitchen stirring paint.

“So you’re definitely selling.”

“Yep.”

“Any offers?”

“Not yet.”

There are two cups in the drainer and two cold tea bags solidifying in the sink, alongside a paint roller and a couple of brushes. The ceilings are to be a stowe white. I helped him choose the color. The walls are a misty green, cut back by 50 percent and the skirting boards and frames are full strength.

I follow Dave into the living room. His few pieces of furniture have been pushed to the center and covered in old sheets.

“How is Samira?” he asks.

The question is unexpected. Dave has never met her, but he will have seen the TV bulletins and read the papers.

“I’m worried about her. I’m worried about the twins.”

He fills the roller from the tray.

“Will you help me?”

“It’s not our case.”

“I might have found them. Please help me.”

Climbing the ladder he runs the roller across the ceiling creating long ribbons of paint.

“What does it matter, Dave? You’ve resigned. You’re leaving. My career is finished. It doesn’t matter what toes we tread on or who we piss off. There’s something wrong with this case. People are tiptoeing around it, playing softly softly, while the real culprits are shredding files and covering their tracks.”

The roller is gliding across the ceiling. I know he’s listening.

“You’re acting like these kids belong to you.”

I have to catch myself before my head snaps up. He looks down at me from the top of the ladder. Why do people keep questioning my motives? Eduardo de Souza, Barnaby, now Dave. Is it me who can’t see the truth? No, they’re wrong. I don’t want the twins for myself.

“I’m doing this because a friend of mine—my best friend—entrusted to me what she loved most, the most precious thing she had. I couldn’t save Cate and I couldn’t save Zala, but I can save the twins.”

There is a long silence. Only one of us feels uncomfortable. “New Boy” has always been defined more by what he dislikes than by what he likes. He doesn’t like cats, for instance, or hypocrites. He also loathes reality TV shows, Welsh rugby fans and tattooed women who scream at their kids in supermarkets. I can live with a man like that. His silences are another matter. He seems comfortable with them but I want to know what he’s thinking. Is he angry that I didn’t leave Amsterdam with him? Is he upset at how we left things? We both have questions. I want to know who answered the intercom last night, fresh from his shower.

I turn toward his bedroom. The door is open. I notice a suitcase against the wall and a blouse hanging on the back of the open door. I don’t realize I’m staring and I don’t notice Dave climb down the ladder and take the roller to the kitchen. He wraps it carefully in cling film, leaving it on the sink. Peeling off his shirt, he tosses it in a corner.

“Give me five minutes. I need to shower.” He scratches his unshaven chin. “Better make it ten.”

Two addresses: one just across the river in Barnes and the other in Finsbury Park, North London. The first address belongs to a couple whose names also appear on a waiting list at the New Life Adoption Center. The Finsbury Park address doesn’t appear on the files.

Sunday week ago—just after ten o’clock—both addresses received a call from a public phone in the locker room of the Twin Bridges Country Club in Surrey. Shawcroft was there when those calls were made.

It’s a hunch. It’s too many things happening at the same time to be coincidental. It’s worth a look.

Dave is dressed in light cords, a shirt and a leather jacket. “What do you want to do?”

“Check them out.”

“What about Forbes?”

“He won’t make this sort of leap. He might get there in the end by ticking off the boxes, methodically, mechanically, but what if we don’t have time for that?”

I picture the smallest twin, struggling to breathe. My own throat closes. She should be in hospital. We should have found her by now.

“OK, so you have two addresses. I still don’t know what you expect to do,” says Dave.

“Maybe I’m just going to knock on the front door and say, ‘Do you have twins that don’t belong to you?’ I can tell you what I won’t do. I won’t sit back and wait for them to disappear.”

Brown leaves swirl from a park onto the pavement and back to the grass, as if unwilling to cross the road. The temperature hasn’t strayed above single figures and the wind is driving it lower.

We’re parked in a typical street in Barnes: flanked by tall, gabled houses and plane trees that have been so savagely pruned they look almost deformed.

This is a stockbroker suburb, full of affluent middle-class families who move here for the schools and the parks and the proximity to the city. Despite the cold, half a dozen mothers or nannies are in the playground, watching over preschoolers who are dressed in so many clothes they look like junior Michelin Men.

Dave watches the yummy mummies, while I watch the house, No. 85. Robert and Noelene Gallagher drive a Volvo Estate, pay their TV license fee on time and vote Liberal Democrat. I’m guessing, of course, but it strikes me as that sort of area, that sort of house.

Dave rakes his fingers through his lopsided bramble of hair. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Have you ever loved me?”

I didn’t see this coming.

“What makes you think I don’t love you now?”

“You’ve never said.”

“What do you mean?”

“You might have used the word, but not in a sentence with my name in it. You’ve never said, ‘I love you, Dave.’”

I think back, wanting to deny it, but he seems so sure. The nights we lay together with his arms around me, I felt so safe, so happy. Didn’t I ever tell him? I remember my philosophical debates and arguments about the nature of love and how debilitating it can be. Were they all internal? I was trying to talk myself out of loving him. I lost, but he had no way of knowing that.

I should tell him now. How? It’s going to sound contrived or forced. It’s too late. I can try to make excuses; I can blame my inability to have children but the truth is that I’m driving him away. There’s another woman living in his flat.

He’s doing it again—not saying anything. Waiting.

“You’re seeing someone,” I blurt out, making it sound like an accusation.

“What makes you say that?”

“I met her.”

He turns his whole body in the driver’s seat to face me, looking surprised rather than guilty.

“I came to see you yesterday. You weren’t home. She answered the intercom.”

“Jacquie?”

“I didn’t take down her name.” I sound so bloody jealous.

“My sister.”

“You don’t have a sister.”

“My sister-in-law. My brother’s wife, Jacquie.”

“They’re in San Diego.”

“They’re staying with me. Simon is my new business partner. I told you.”

Could this get any worse? “You must think I’m such an idiot,” I say. “I’m sorry. I mean, I’m not the jealous type, not usually. It’s just that after what happened in Amsterdam, when you didn’t call me and I didn’t call you, I just thought—it’s so stupid—that you’d found someone else who wasn’t so crippled, or troublesome or such hard work. Please don’t laugh at me.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m looking at that car.”

I follow his gaze. A Volvo Estate is parked near the front gate of No. 85. There is a sunshade on the nearside rear window and what looks like a baby seat.

Dave is giving me a way out. He’s like a chivalrous gentleman spreading his coat over a muddy puddle.

“I should check it out,” I say, opening the car door. “You stay here.”

Dave watches me leave. He knows I’m dodging the issue yet again. I have underestimated him. He’s smarter than I am. Nicer, too.

Crossing the street, I walk along the pavement, pausing at the Volvo and bending as if to tie my shoelaces. The windows are tinted but I can make out small handprints inside the glass and a Garfield sticker on the back window.

I glance across at Dave and make a knocking motion with my fist. He shakes his head. Ignoring the signal, I open the front gate and climb the steps to the house.

I press the buzzer. The front door opens a crack. A girl aged about five regards me very seriously. Her hands are stained with paint and a pink blot has dried on her forehead like a misplaced bindi.

“Hello, what’s your name?”

“Molly.”

“That’s a pretty name.”

“I know.”

“Is your mummy home?”

“She’s upstairs.”

I hear a yell from that direction. “If that’s the boiler man, the boiler is straight down the hall in the kitchen.”

“It’s not the boiler man,” I call back.

“It’s an Indian lady,” says Molly.

Mrs. Gallagher appears at the top of the stairs. In her early forties, she’s wearing a corduroy skirt with a wide belt slung low on her hips.

“I’m sorry to trouble you. My husband and I are moving into the street and I was hoping to ask about local schools and doctors, that sort of thing.”

I can see her mentally deciding what to do. It’s more than natural caution.

“What beautiful curls,” I say, stroking Molly’s hair.

“That’s what everyone says,” the youngster replies.

Why would someone who already has a child buy a baby?

“I’m rather busy at the moment,” says Mrs. Gallagher, brushing back her fringe.

“I understand completely. I’m sorry.” I turn to leave.

“Which place are you buying?” she asks, not wanting to be impolite.

“Oh, we’re not buying. Not yet. We’re renting No. 68.” I point down the street in the direction of a TO LET sign. We’ve moved from North London. My husband has a new job. We’re both working. But we want to start a family soon.”

Mrs. Gallagher is at the bottom of the stairs now. It’s too cold to leave the front door open. She either invites me inside or tells me to go.

“Now’s not the best time,” she says. “Perhaps if I had a phone number I could call you later.”

“Thank you very much.” I fumble for a pen. “Do you have a piece of paper?”

She looks on the radiator shelf. “I’ll get you one.”

Molly waits in the hallway, still holding the door. “Do you want to see one of my paintings?”

“I’d love to.”

“I’ll get one.” She dashes upstairs. Mrs. Gallagher is in the kitchen. She finds an old envelope and returns, looking for Molly.

“She’s gone upstairs to get one of her paintings,” I explain. “A budding artist.”

“She gets more paint on her clothes than on the paper.”

“I have a boyfriend like that.”

“I thought you said you were married.” She fixes me with a stare. There’s steel behind it.

“We’re engaged. We’ve been together so long It feels like we’re married.”

She doesn’t believe me. Molly yells from the top of the stairs.

“Mummy, Jasper is crying.”

“Oh, you have another one.”

Mrs. Gallagher reaches for the door. My foot is faster. My shoulder follows. I have no right to enter. I need a warrant or I need proper cause.

I’m at the bottom of the stairs. Mrs. Gallagher yells at me to get out. She grabs my arm. I shrug it away. Above the noise, behind it, in spite of it, I hear a baby crying.

Taking the stairs two at a time, I follow the sound. The first door I come to is the main bedroom. The second door is Molly’s room. She has set up a painting easel on an old sheet. I try a third door. Brightly colored fish spin slowly above a white cot. Within it, swaddled tightly, a baby is unhappy at creation.

Mrs. Gallagher pushes past me, scooping up the boy. “Get out of my house!”

“Is he yours, Mrs. Gallagher?”

“Yes.”

“Did you give birth to him?”

“Get out! Get out! I’ll call the police.”

“I am the police.”

Wordlessly, she shakes her head from side to side. The baby has gone quiet. Molly is tugging at her skirt.

Suddenly her shoulders sag and she seems to deflate in front of me, folding from the knees and then the waist. Still cradling the baby, refusing to let go, she lands in my arms and I maneuver her to a chair.

“We adopted him,” she whispers. “He’s ours.”

“He was never available for adoption. You know that.”

Mrs. Gallagher shakes her head. I look around the room. Where is she? The girl. My heart skips between beats. Slow then fast.

“There was a baby girl. A twin.”

She looks toward the cot. “He’s the only one.”

Worst case scenarios haunt me now. The baby girl was so small. She struggled to breathe. Please God, let her be safe!

Mrs. Gallagher has found a tissue in the sleeve of her cardigan. She blows her nose and sniffles. “We were told he wasn’t wanted. I swear I didn’t know—not about the missing twins. It wasn’t until I saw the TV news. Then I began to wonder…”

“Who gave him to you?”

“A man brought him.”

“What did he look like?”

“Mid-fifties, short hair—he had an Irish accent.”

“When?”

“The Sunday before last.” She wipes her eyes. “It came as a shock. We weren’t expecting him for another fortnight.”

“Who arranged the adoption?”

“Mr. Shawcroft said a teenage girl was pregnant with twins but couldn’t afford to look after both of them. She wanted to put one of them up for adoption. We could jump the queue for fifty thousand pounds.”

“You knew it was against the law.”

“Mr. Shawcroft said that twins couldn’t legally be split. We had to do everything in secret.”

“You pretended to be pregnant.”

“There wasn’t time.”

I look at Molly who is playing with a box of shells, arranging them in patterns.

“Is Molly…?” I don’t finish the question.

“She’s mine,” she says fiercely. “I couldn’t have any more. There were complications. Medical problems. They told us we were too old to adopt. My husband is fifty-five, you see.” She wipes her eyes. “I should phone him.”

I hear my name being called from downstairs. “New Boy” must have witnessed the doorstep confrontation. He couldn’t stay put.

“Up here.”

“Are you OK?”

“Yeah.”

He appears at the door, taking in the scene. Mrs. Gallagher. Molly. The baby.

“It’s one of the twins,” I say.

“One?”

“The boy.”

He peers into the cot. “Are you sure?”

I follow his gaze. It’s amazing how much a newborn can change in under ten days, but I’m sure.

“What about the girl?” he asks.

“She’s not here.”

Shawcroft made two phone calls from the golf club. The second was to the Finsbury Park address of a Mrs. Y. Moncrieffe, which doesn’t cross-reference with any of the names from the New Life Adoption Center files.

I can’t leave. I have to stay and talk to Forbes (and no doubt peel him off the ceiling).

“Can you check out the other address?”

Dave weighs up the implications and ramifications. He’s not worried about himself. I’m the one facing a disciplinary hearing. He kisses my cheek.

“You make it hard sometimes, you know that?”

“I know.”