The Child(12)

“But it’s just after her birthday. That could be a sign,” she said.

“Angie,” he said, louder this time. “It will be more heartbreak if you get your hopes up. It’ll make you ill like before.”

She nodded. There’d been a body found in Staffordshire in 1999 and she’d been sure then that it was Alice. Had felt it in her bones. But it wasn’t. It turned out to be a boy—the child of some poor, sad woman who used smothering babies as a form of contraception. The police had found two others in the freezer.

“The police would’ve contacted us if there was any chance this was Alice. Wouldn’t they?” Nick said, finally using their daughter’s name.

“They’ve forgotten about her,” his wife said. They had. Everyone had. And they wanted her to forget, too, she knew. The police had got tired of her calls.

“We will get in touch as soon as we have news, Mrs. Irving,” the last officer she’d spoken to had said. He’d sounded bored and irritated and she knew she had become a nuisance caller. Angela hadn’t rung in since, and now, thirteen years on, she didn’t know who to call.

She folded the paper and pushed it down the side of the chair. She’d come and get it later.

“Shall I take you to Asda?” Nick said. “I can give you a hand with carrying the bags. Save your back.”

? ? ?

Angela didn’t manage to look at the story again until Nick had gone up to bed that night. She pulled it out of its hiding place and smoothed it with her hand. She let herself read it through two or three more times and then wrote down the name of the reporter in her diary and folded the story into a tiny square of paper. Maybe she’d ring this Kate Waters, she thought. Just to ask a few questions. Where would be the harm in that?





TEN


    Emma


SATURDAY, MARCH 24, 2012

I’ve created a Google Alert for the baby story. I know I said I wasn’t going to do anything about it, but I need to know what everyone else knows, don’t I? Just in case. To be prepared.

And this morning, I find the next installment in my inbox: “Who Is the Building Site Baby?”

A reporter has been poking around, making the story grow bigger, talking to the poor man who found the body. And the police. The police.

I can feel the drum of my heart making my fingers vibrate on the keyboard. Who else will she talk to? I write her name, Kate Waters, on a pad beside my computer and read the story over and over again.

When the phone rings I let it go to answerphone. But I hear Jude leave a message, her voice echoing up the stairwell from the machine in the hall, as if she’s in the house. As if we’re back in Howard Street and she’s calling me to get up for school.

I knew my mum would ring today. It’s my birthday—one of the days she gets in touch since we started talking again. It’s only been a couple of years since we had the big reunion and we are more like distant cousins now, feeling for common ground when we speak.

“Do you remember that terrible bathroom suite your grandmother had?” Jude will say, and I will chime in with, “Yes, thank God avocado went out of fashion.” And we’ll laugh and feel close for a few minutes. But it doesn’t hold us together, this “Do you remember?” game. Because too much is out of bounds.

So we ring each other on birthdays and at Christmas, that sort of thing. It’s a routine that allows us to stay in touch with the aid of a calendar, not our emotions.

The thing is, I have done without a mother for so long I find I don’t need her, and I’m sure Jude feels the same about me.

It’s bizarre, really. None of my relationships are quite like what other people’s are. My mum is like a cousin, my husband is like my dad, and my baby . . . Well, there is no baby. I can’t think about that now. Stop it.

Today, the sound of my mother’s voice makes me shiver. I wait until she stops speaking before I get up and go downstairs to listen to the message.

“Emma, it’s Jude,” she says. She never calls herself Mum. She made me call her Jude from when I was ten—“‘Mum’ is so aging, Em,” she said. “It’s much more grown-up to call me Jude, anyway.” I didn’t like it. It was as if she was ashamed I was her daughter, but I did it. To please her.

“Umm, are you there?” my mother’s voice says. “Pick up if you are. Umm, okay, just ringing to wish you happy birthday and see how things are. Umm, I need to talk to you, Emma. Please ring me . . .”

I need to talk to you. I sink down on a chair. She must have seen the stories. What does she know? I ask myself, almost automatically. It is a question I have tortured myself with for years.

? ? ?

I listen again. In case I’ve misheard. But I haven’t. Of course I haven’t. There is the same quaver in her voice as she searches for me. Are you there?

Am I? Am I here? I sit quietly, eyes closed, breathing deeply, trying to clear my mind. But when I open my eyes, the message light is still blinking. Winking at me as if it knows.

The phone suddenly bursts into life, its ring filling the hall, and I leap up from the chair as if to flee. But I pick up the receiver.

“Emma? It’s me,” Jude says. “Where were you earlier? I’ve been trying to get you . . .”

“Sorry. Busy with work.”