The Child(97)

“Sorry,” she said when she put it back to her ear. “Have you heard from her?”

“No, she’s vanished. Paul just called me to say he still can’t get hold of her. He thinks she’s turned off her phone.”

A dark curl of dread twisted itself round Jude’s heart.

“I need to know what’s been happening, Jude,” Harry insisted. “Paul won’t tell me.”

“Emma’s been to see the police, Harry. To tell them the baby in the garden of Howard Street was hers. That she was raped by Will and got pregnant,” Jude said, hardly believing what she was saying.

“Will?” Harry shouted down the phone. “Will Burnside? Are you serious?”

“Yes, I can’t believe it either,” Jude added.

“Oh my God,” Harry said.

“Did you know she’d had a baby, Harry?” Jude asked. “You two were thick as thieves. Did she tell you anything?”

“Not until much later. And then I got hold of the wrong end of the stick. She was trying to tell me, said she’d got pregnant, but I thought she’d had an abortion. I didn’t press her. Not like that reporter.”

“The reporter came here today, Harry. Do you want to speak to her? I’ve got her number,” Jude said, longing for someone else to take control of the situation.

“No, I don’t,” Harry snapped. “What gives them the right to meddle in people’s lives like this? How is this news? This is a personal tragedy, not some story for everyone to gawp at. Emma must be in pieces.”

There was a terrible, echoing silence. Jude listened to the static on the line. “Harry?” she said finally. “Are you still there?”

“Yes. I’m here. Can I come round? Now?”

“Yes,” Jude said. “And Harry, I’m going to ask Kate Waters to come, too. She’s very much a part of this and Emma seems to trust her, whatever you may think. She was the one she told . . .”

“Okay,” Harry said. “Give me half an hour.”

Jude called Kate immediately. She couldn’t think about anything but Emma. What was she doing? Where was she? What had she driven her to?

? ? ?

Kate arrived just after Harry had pulled up and buzzed Jude’s bell. When Jude walked out of the door, she could see that the reporter had pulled her jeans on under her nightie and put a coat on top in her haste to get on the road.

And Harry was talking frantically into her phone.

“It’s Emma,” she mouthed, and Jude took a deep breath to calm her fear about what was coming next.

“Emma, stay there. I’m coming to get you. Promise me you’ll stay there.”

When she hung up, Harry turned to Kate and said, “We’re going back to Howard Street. She’s gone to the building site.”

“How did she sound?” Kate said.

“How do you think?” Harry snapped.

The three women got into Kate’s car. London was almost empty; the normally congested roads rang with the sound of the engine, the streetlights bouncing off the road surface all round them, and they didn’t talk again until they pulled up outside the building site.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Kate asked.

“Not really, but I think you’d better. I might need backup,” Harry said.

They found Emma sitting on an upturned bucket in what had once been the garden, surrounded by heavy clay clods and lit by the security lights she’d triggered. She looked up when Harry called her name, but didn’t rise from her seat.

“I’ve been trying to think about what happened. Trying to make sense of it,” she said. “I thought I’d come back to where it began. With the baby . . .”

“I’ve been trying to persuade her to come away,” a woman’s voice came from the gloom.

“Barbara?” Kate said. And the older woman walked into the glow of the arc lamps.

“I saw the lights go on—I’m not sleeping well,” she said. “And John has been saying there have been problems on the site, with kids getting in, so I came over to see. And found her. Found Emma.”

Jude looked in disbelief at her old friend. “What are you doing here?” she said. It all felt like a strange dream.

“I moved back to Howard Street, Jude. After we’d lost touch.”

After you made a play for Will, Jude thought automatically, then stopped herself. That was what Will had said. But he had lied about everything, hadn’t he?

Harry had crouched down beside Emma and touched her arm.

“You’re cold, Emma,” she said. “We need to get you in the warm.”

“I live just across the road. We can go there,” Barbara said and Jude stiffened. She’d wanted to take Emma home with her, but it was out of her hands.

Emma let herself be led to the flat and sat beside a sleeping Shorty on the sofa. She looked numb, her eyes frozen with shock.

“Do you know everything?” she whispered to Harry.

“We don’t have to talk about it now, Emma,” Harry said.

“I tried to tell you once. That day when you turned up in the pub.”

“I remember. I didn’t listen, did I? I jumped to conclusions. I’m so sorry, Emma. But why didn’t you tell me at the time? When we were kids?”