The Secret Mother(33)

The whirr of cameras goes off behind her as they catch sight of me letting her in. She squeezes through the gap in the door and I slam it closed behind her, muffling the shouts from outside. Carly glances around before landing her gaze on me. I see her take in my dishevelled appearance, but to her credit she doesn’t pass comment. She’s beautifully turned out, as usual, in a navy wool dress, knee-length boots and a smart brown leather jacket.

‘I need coffee,’ I say. ‘We’ll go in the kitchen.’

She follows me down the hall and takes a seat at the kitchen table without being asked.

My one luxury is our Nespresso machine. I suppose I’d better offer her a drink, too, but it irks me to do so. She definitely doesn’t deserve one. ‘Coffee? Tea?’

‘A black coffee would be great,’ she says, rubbing her hands together to warm them.

I turn my back to her and make our drinks; the noise of the machine is too loud for us to have a conversation without raising our voices, so we wait. Once the coffees are ready, I turn back around and join her at the table.

‘This is like old times,’ she says. ‘Haven’t been over here in ages.’

‘So?’ I say, plonking her drink in front of her and taking a sip from mine. ‘What’s this information you’ve got?’

‘Well,’ she says, tilting her head and eyeing me over the top of her cup. ‘The thing is, there’s more to this story than I originally thought.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Carly, it’s not a “story”. It’s people’s lives, my life.’

‘Sure. Yeah, of course.’

I glare at her, trying to suppress the quivering anger suffusing my body. This self-important cow has contributed to one of the most terrifying and stressful weeks of my life, and she has the nerve to sit at my kitchen table all calm and composed like I’m making a big deal over nothing.

‘You know what I mean,’ she adds.

‘But do you know what I mean, Carly?’ I say, banging my mug down on the table, slopping hot coffee over my hand. ‘You obviously sold a story to the press that had nothing to do with facts, and everything to do with making a name for yourself. You implied that I was guilty of taking Harry purely because I was accused of doing a similar thing after my son died. But the thing is, I’m not guilty of anything. The police didn’t charge me. And yet you, in your ambitious, tawdry little world, you thought it was perfectly okay to sling mud, knowing it would stick and stink. Knowing my life would be made unbearable. But you didn’t care, you didn’t give a damn. You still don’t.’ My voice is quivering with anger.

Carly sips her coffee, unruffled, waiting for me to finish. This makes me want to yell at her even more, to elicit an apology, or even an acknowledgement, but she’s not biting.

‘Well?’ I say.

‘Look,’ she replies. ‘It’s just my job, Tessa. It’s not personal.’

‘That’s not an excuse! You’re a human being, aren’t you? You live across the road from me. You can see what your “job” has resulted in. Me being persecuted. Me almost losing my job. Not to mention the fact that Scott’s life is also being turned upside down by the press.’

‘He’s with someone else now, isn’t he?’ she says.

An image of Ellie’s doll-like face flashes up in my mind. In my head I’m screaming, but in reality I simply sigh, too exhausted to shout any more. ‘Just tell me what it is you want to say, and then I’d like you to leave.’

‘Okay.’ Carly steeples her fingers together, and I notice she’s wearing some really nice silver stacking rings. They look like the kind of jewellery I’d have worn if my life had turned out differently. ‘Like I said,’ she continues, ‘I think there’s more to this… situation than I thought.’

‘Like what?’

‘I’m not exactly sure what’s going on yet, but I don’t trust James Fisher.’

‘Harry’s father? Why not?’

‘I’ve got a friend who works on the local police switchboard,’ she says, ‘and he heard from someone on the Dorset switchboard that Fisher took four days to report his son’s disappearance. Four days. Don’t you think that’s odd?’

A friend on the inside? So that’s how Harry’s story was leaked. I should bloody well report Carly to someone.

Her face becomes more animated now. ‘Fisher’s reasons for not coming forward sooner are really shaky. I went down to Cranborne yesterday – that place is in the back of beyond. I thought I’d been teleported back in time fifty years.’

‘Cranborne?’ I interrupt. ‘Is that in Dorset?’

‘Yeah. It’s where Fisher and his son live,’ she says.

‘You went there? Why?’

‘I tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t speak to me. Wouldn’t even open the door. He won’t talk to any of the papers. He’s locked himself up in his house with Harry.’

‘Well,’ I say. ‘You can’t really blame him for that. It’s pretty intimidating having a load of press camped out on your doorstep.’

‘Point taken. But it still doesn’t explain why he left it so long to go to the police. I mean, think about it – your five-year-old son goes missing. You can’t find him. You search for maybe twenty minutes and then you start really freaking out and so you call the police. At a stretch, maybe it takes you an hour or two to call them. It certainly doesn’t take four days.’