The Child(49)

“Of course, of course. Thank you so much for telling me. I don’t know what to say. Please come. What time do you want to come?” she said, falling over the words.

“I’ll be with you at nine thirty, if that’s okay,” he said. “I’m glad the waiting is over for you. I will see you tomorrow morning.”

Kate’s feet were still dancing when Angela put the phone down.

“Well done, Angela. You did so well,” Kate said. “Tell me everything he said.”

Angela looked at her, hollow eyed, the initial euphoria of getting the news draining away rapidly.

“My baby is dead,” she said.





THIRTY-EIGHT


    Emma


WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012

I hear the news on the radio. The newsreader with the posh voice, Charlotte someone, says that a missing baby has been found after decades, and I freeze. On a building site in Woolwich, she says. A baby called Alice Irving, she says. Taken from a hospital in 1970. And I stare at the radio. This is all wrong. The baby has a name. And a mother.

There’s a clip of the mother, saying how relieved and devastated she is. I stand listening in the kitchen and crying with Mrs. Irving. I’m as relieved as she is. But for different reasons.

Nobody will be coming to my door. No reckoning. Not yet.

Later, when I go to buy a pint of milk at the corner shop, I see the headlines in the papers and buy the one with the exclusive interview with Alice Irving’s mother. I try to read it as I walk home, but I keep stumbling and bumping into garden walls so I put it under my arm in the end. Don’t want to look like a madwoman.

At home I read every word, poring over the details, reading some bits out loud. I can’t quite take it in, but I feel a sort of euphoria rising in me. Maybe everything is going to be all right.





THIRTY-NINE


    Jude


WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012

She heard the news on the radio as she waited for the kettle to boil. She was only half-listening as she wrote a shopping list in her head, but the words “Alice Irving” stopped her at natural yogurt. She turned up the volume until it shrieked in her ears and her neighbor thumped on the wall.





FORTY


    Kate


WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012

Simon the Editor stopped at her desk as soon as he arrived that morning.

“Well, you must be pleased with yourself, Kate,” he said, grinning his yellow smile. “Great interview and most-read story online.”

She grinned back at him, happy to be back in the sunlit uplands of the Editor’s favor.

“And you,” Simon said, turning to the hovering figure at his elbow, “your first front-page byline.”

Joe looked like he might burst with pride. Kate had given him an additional reporting credit—his name in italics at the end of the story where it turned to page four and five—but the back bench had bumped his name up to join Kate’s on the front. She’d ground her teeth over it when she’d checked the page proof, but she understood. Joe Jackson was the Editor’s golden child.

“Right, what’s today’s story, then?” Simon asked. “What are the police saying? Any leads on who took her?”

Joe looked like a rabbit in the headlights.

“We’re talking to the cops, Simon,” Kate said.

“And we’ve got a second bite at the Angela Irving interview. Life without Alice,” Terry called across as he stood to join the impromptu news conference.

“Sounds good,” the Editor said and walked off.

Joe looked at Kate and beamed. “Thank you for giving me a byline, Kate,” he said. “I really didn’t do much.”

She grunted. Then relented. “You did a good job, Joe. Now let’s stop the backslapping and find out what happened to baby Alice.”

? ? ?

DI Sinclair was not a happy bunny when she called him.

“Did Mrs. Irving ring you yesterday, Miss Waters?” he asked. “Your story was completely premature. I’ve only just got the file.”

“I called her, DI Sinclair. We’d already done a story with her and I knew the results were due yesterday.”

“Did you ask her to ring me?”

“DI Sinclair, do you really think a woman who has waited forty-odd years to find her child needs telling? Angela Irving was desperate to know.”

“Yes, okay. I just wasn’t ready and the press office has been inundated.”

Kate’s mouth twitched, but she stopped herself from smirking. He’d be able to hear it in her voice.

“It’s a big story, DI Sinclair. Anyway,” she said, moving things out of the danger zone. “What is next? Are you setting up a murder inquiry?”

“Not necessarily. We don’t know how the baby died yet. We may never know. We haven’t got much to work with and the forensic team is only just starting on the other material from the scene. We’ll know more in the next few days.”

“So you don’t know when it was buried?”

“Not yet. Investigation ongoing.”

“Okay, and when are you talking to Mrs. Irving?”

Kate knew he’d already been to the house but wanted the officer to feel he was in control of some information.