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‘Suzanne,’ Samantha whispers into the silent room. ‘Suzanne Lewis.’
She sinks onto the bed. In the photograph, Suzanne’s hair is darker. She is fuller in the face. But her thin shoulders are the same, her white knees protruding from her grey school skirt rather plump. She is pretty. She is attractive. This is not, has never been, about a jilted girlfriend. This is about something else – a teenage crush turned sour? That’s not enough, is it? Not nearly enough to sign up for a class halfway across the country, drive hundreds of miles, write poisonous poems, kidnap a living, breathing baby. Suzanne could have written notes and posted them if she’d wanted. She knew their address, used it to enrol. But that wasn’t enough for her. She must have wanted to progress from leaving the pages in the folder to delivering her handiwork personally, taking the intimidation up a notch each time. It’s so bloody extreme.
Peter said he left secondary teaching when his father died. He gave Samantha to understand that his wealth handed him a new opportunity, that his father dying was thereason for his career change.Tell them you hope to be published next year.This is his brand of truth. Tell someone something with enough conviction and they’ll either fill in the rest or forget to ask. Opportunities cannot have been rare for Peter Bridges, with his private education and his familial wealth and his beautiful, beautiful face. He would not have had to wait until his father died to change career. So isthiswhy he changed? These girls look no older than fifteen. They are children.
What to think, what to think. She is full of boiling water. Frantic thoughts bubble and pop to nothing. She has the same precipitous feeling as when he first asked her to come home with him, except now she is on the edge of an abyss. This dark hole is her partner’s past. The past life of her lover, the father of her child, the man who wants to marry her. This is Peter’s less artful history come back to haunt not just him but Emily and her too. It’s possible she and her daughter are but collateral damage in other harm done long, long ago. Peter is the bullseye, but the dart pierces where the dart lands, and so far he has not felt the slightest prick.
‘Bastard,’ she mutters. Abuser, she does not say.
She replaces the photographs exactly where they were. Visits the bathroom then makes her way back downstairs. What she really wants to do is turn the house upside down, looking if not for skeletons then at least for bones. She has become suddenly adept at piecing together half-told stories. And it would help her pass the agonising time waiting for Emily to come home.
‘Christine,’ she begins while still in the hallway. ‘There’s no need for you to stay if you’ve got other things to do. I mean, you must have finished your shift by now.’ She stops at the doorway, pats the door jamb, leans against it. ‘Really, I’ll be fine now. Peter’s on his way.’
‘Oh, it’s all right,’ Christine replies. ‘I’ll wait until they get here with little Emily. Or Peter, whoever arrives first.’
Later, then. It’s a waiting game now.
The police are first. Samantha has been trying to watch television in the snug but has not taken in a single scene. Christine knocks, opens the door.
‘Samantha, love,’ she says in a low, quiet voice. ‘They’re here.’
Samantha is out of her seat. She is running barefoot over the black-and-white floor of the hall, out onto the front path, into the cold, surreal night.
‘Emily!’ Her baby’s name is shrill in the chilly air.
A WPC gets out of the passenger side. The street lamp throws its vanilla light onto her cropped blonde hair, her skin pale as porcelain.
‘Samantha,’ she says, smiling. ‘Don’t worry, she’s fine. Your little girl is fine.’ She has a northern accent. Like Suzanne’s. She pulls open the back door of the patrol car. ‘We gave her some formula and she’s slept all the way home.’
Samantha’s throat blocks. A whimper escapes her. Her fingertips are cold against her mouth.
The WPC reaches in, pulls out the car seat. In it, Emily, asleep, as if nothing has happened.
Samantha’s legs fold beneath her. She collapses against Christine’s warm, solid form.
‘You see,’ Christine says softly, holding on to her. ‘Told you she’d be all right.’
‘Thank you,’ Samantha sobs into her hands. ‘Thank you all so much.’
Twenty-Six
The police have gone. In the firelight, Samantha feeds her little girl, weeping intermittently. On the coffee table is her laptop, which she pulls towards her. It’s awkward – her back is stiff from all the trauma – but she manages. On the back of the photograph was writtenSt Catherine’s. She googles St Catherine’s School, Ormskirk. Nothing comes up. She tries the same school, widens the search to Merseyside. Nothing. She googles Ormskirk, discovers it’s in Lancashire, not Merseyside, and tries again. Nothing. She tries the school together with Lancashire, gets a school in Edge Hill. It must be that one, though there is no useful information. She tries the school, the town and Peter’s name. The turn of the millennium. She herself was only a few years old. Again, nothing. No news reports, no scandal, no information.
Emily rolls away from the breast, sated. Samantha lies cuddled up beside her under a blanket on the sofa, stroking her soft head.
‘I’m not letting you out of my sight again,’ she whispers, pressing her lips to Emily’s button nose. ‘Oh my darling. My darling, darling girl.’
The deep roar of a car engine. She opens her eyes, hears the engine cut. Peter. She is still on the sofa, Emily asleep beside her. The rattle of a key in the lock.
‘Peter,’ she mumbles, blinking, rubbing at her eyes. Her mouth is dry and stale. Her face is sticky. Her shoulders are sore and stiff. When she sits upright, she has the impression of hot fluid draining down through her bones, through her arms and legs, out through her feet.
‘Sam.’ Peter is at the door of the living room. Another step and he is by her side, holding her hand, kissing her on the head, kissing Emily, who is still asleep. Samantha thought she’d done all her weeping, but she has not.
‘Don’t cry,’ he says. ‘Don’t cry, my love. It’s over. I’m here now. You’re safe.’
For several minutes, they cling to one another in silence, until Peter eases himself away.
‘Long drive,’ he says. ‘Need to use the little boys’ room.’
