The Child(100)

“Oh God, Andy. Emma is Alice, isn’t she?” Kate said, the idea bursting in on her.





EIGHTY-ONE


    Jude


WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 2012

DI Sinclair was on his way to Pinner.

Emma had called her in a panic. “He’s just rung, Jude, to make sure I’m home. I think he’s coming to take me away. To lock me up. I just wanted to tell you.”

“Why would they want to lock you up?” Jude had said. “Try to stay calm.”

“I buried the baby without telling anyone. They might think I killed it,” Emma had sobbed.

And Jude had run down the stairs to find a cab. She had to be with Emma now.

She’d arrived just after the detective. He looked exhausted. Nearly as exhausted as Paul looked. Emma had packed a small bag in readiness and was sitting holding her husband’s hand.

“I’m glad you are here, too, Ms. Massingham,” DI Sinclair said to Jude. “I called your home, but there was no answer. I need to talk to both you and Emma.”

“Why?” Emma said. “Jude didn’t know about the baby.”

“Not your baby, Emma,” he said. “Alice.”

? ? ?

Jude knew immediately it was all over. The detective’s face was set. There’d be no dancing round the facts. Or new lies. The truth could no longer be many things.

So she told the story of how she’d lost Charlie’s baby at five months. How she’d fallen, tripped over the cord of her hair dryer in the bedroom as she rushed to get ready for work, and crashed face-first onto the floor. There was no one there to help as she grasped her stomach and tried to will away the burning pain, and the blood, lots of blood. She went and sat on the toilet as waves of agony took over her body. She’d flushed away all that came out of her, unable to look into the bowl and acknowledge that her pregnancy was over. She’d rung work from the pay phone in the hallway of her rented flat and said she was ill.

“I was going to tell Charlie that night, when he rang,” she said. “But his first words were so loving, calling me his angel and asking about the baby. And I said: ‘We’re fine’ and the lie was told. There was no going back.”

Emma wouldn’t look at her but the detective held her gaze steadily.

“Go on, Ms. Massingham.”

“I decided to pretend to lose the baby later. After he’d promised to marry me. He should have married me, then none of this would have happened,” Jude said, but the detective’s expression didn’t alter.

“I made layers of padding out of an old foam-rubber cushion, adding layers and wearing bigger maternity clothes. I told Charlie on the phone about how my legs were aching. I think I believed I was still pregnant.”

“And your boyfriend? Didn’t he suspect anything?” DI Sinclair asked.

“He was a musician and away in Europe, on tour with his band. And the dates kept being extended so he didn’t see me for months.”

“What did you tell your friends and family, Ms. Massingham?” Andy Sinclair asked.

“My parents stopped talking to me when I told them I was having a baby. An illegitimate baby was too much for them to bear. What would they tell their friends at the golf club? But I kept on working—I needed the money—and when I got to seven months, I took maternity leave. I told them I had to leave early because my blood pressure was up and I’d been told to put my feet up for the baby’s sake. The girls at work were disappointed. They’d wanted to have a party for me . . .” Jude looked across at her daughter. What are you thinking, Emma?

She told the detective she’d rung the medical center to tell them she would be away, abroad with Charlie for a while. So no more antenatal appointments were necessary.

And she’d waited at home and tried to work out what she was going to do. She could still summon up the dulling panic that had invaded every moment as D-day approached. Charlie was coming home in two weeks, expecting to find her heavily pregnant, about to deliver their child. He’d know as soon as he held her, wouldn’t he? Wild ideas presented themselves in the middle of the night. She’d say it was a tumor and hadn’t wanted to tell him. He’d be too shocked to question it. Wouldn’t he? She’d say the baby had died. Too many questions and then he’d leave her.

“I couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving me. I had to give him a child.

“I went to Waterloo Station and caught the first train south that came up on the board. I was out of my mind, I didn’t know where I was going—I just needed to find a maternity hospital.”

She remembered that someone had stood up to give her a seat and she had smiled her thanks, lowering herself down like a pro.

“I got off at Basingstoke,” she said.

“Had you ever been there before?” DI Sinclair asked.

“No, I had to ask the way to the maternity hospital.” Jude took a deep breath and, in her head, walked back through the hospital doors.

She took the lift, avoiding eye contact with the other people crammed in with her. They had bunches of flowers, presents in baby and stork wrapping paper, held toddlers by the hand. They were excited, laughing. No one seemed to notice her.

But she realized she’d picked the wrong time. She needed to come at the end of visiting time, not the beginning. There were too many witnesses now. She left the hospital and sat in a nearby park for an hour, growing cold as the weak spring sun began to disappear.