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Harry pulls out his phone, strides over to the sideboard. He picks up the photograph of Naomi, Cheryl and Tommy, puts it back.
‘Yes, hello, yes, police please.’ He leans forward, presses his fingertips against the top of the unit before putting the flat of his hand to his forehead. ‘Yes, hello. I need to report a… I think it’s a fraud… a serious financial fraud.’
As he talks, Harry wanders into the kitchen. When he returns, he shakes his head. ‘They’re saying they’ll send someone over when they can. It could be tomorrow. We’re all safe and well, so it’s not urgent apparently.’ He looks at Sam, his eyes troubled. ‘Do you… do you want a hot drink? A tea?’
Cheryl stands up. ‘Yes. Let’s make some tea. We could be here a while.’ She must make some sign to her husband, because a moment later, Sam finds himself alone in the living room. As the door to the kitchen closes, he hears Cheryl say in low, soft tones, ‘He won’t have anywhere to stay, will he, poor thing?’
His heart quickens. Blood rushes through his veins. Before he is aware of what he’s doing, he is on the stairs, then on the landing; he is scooping Tommy from his cot, shushing him, pressing his soft head into his neck, wrapping his thick fleece blanket around his precious little shoulders.Shh, little guy, it’s OK, it’s OK.
Creeping down the stairs now, one painstaking step at a time, lifting the latch, quietly, quietly –shh-shh-shh– opening the front door, silently, silently. From the kitchen, low voices reach him without the sense. Sam steals outside.
Cool air hits him. He runs to his grandmother’s car, pulse hammering in his temples. Another minute, Tommy is in the passenger seat, himself behind the wheel. He leans over and unwraps the blanket. Tommy is in his quilted sleep suit. He will be warm enough. Talking to him all the while, Sam rolls the blanket into a kind of pillow and tries to prop him up a little, then pulls the seat belt around him, under the crook of his arm.That’s OK. It’ll be OK.
Another second and he is starting the engine. Another and he is turning out of the cul-de-sac of yellow street lamps, dark sleeping houses, neat strips of lawn.
He drives, socks slipping a little on the pedals. To where, he has no idea.
In a lay-by somewhere along the A35, he stops the car. He is crying too much to see, sweating, unsure which is which as it runs over his chin, down his neck, into his shirt. He breathes in and out, in and out, sobs breaking, a high keening of panic and terror.
What now? What the hell happens now?
In the front seat, Tommy’s eyes are round.
‘Da-da,’ he says, and again Sam hears this high and terrible noise coming from his own mouth.
‘Yes,’ he whispers. ‘I’m your da-da. I’m your da-da, little man.’
CHAPTER 56
I was of course ignorant of all of this until later that night.
As for Cheryl and Harry, they are bewildered and confused, shocked and deeply dismayed. In the kitchen, they confer in low voices about what to do next, how to help this poor man, how to track down this morally bankrupt woman they believed to be their lovely nanny. Whether they will have to take her to court. What exactly is the nature of her crimes with regard to them. She has stolen everything from this man, this Sam, that much is obvious. Conned him into parting with everything he owns, into thinking he was a father, that she was a mother. My God. Doesn’t bear thinking about. They just can’t believe it. There is no way, no way they’d ever have—
The click of the front door. They stop talking. For a moment, their eyes meet.
‘Naomi?’ Harry calls out, his voice shaky with doubt.
Cheryl stares at him, her heart beating fast.
Is it Naomi, returned to explain the unexplainable?
Hearing nothing more, they open the kitchen door. Seeing no one in the living room, again their eyes meet in question. A pit of nausea has formed in Cheryl’s belly.
‘Sam?’ Harry strides across the room, throws open the door to the little square of hall. There is no one there. ‘Sam? Sam?’
In the house, silence. Total silence. Nerve endings tingling, Harry runs up the stairs. The nursery door is open.
He is already calling for his wife when he sees the cot is empty.
‘Cheryl! Cheryl!’ He leans over the banister and shouts down the stairs. ‘He’s taken Tommy! He’s taken him, oh my God, call the police, call 999, I’m going after him.’
This time, there is no delay. Ten minutes later, sirens wail. Harry has come back to the house, is holding his wife to him when the blue lights flash through the sitting-room window. A police officer is at the door with a woman, also in uniform, who tells them she is the family liaison officer and who offers tea, which they decline. They sit down on the sofa where moments ago they found out that their highly experienced childminder was conducting a long and very personal fraud, the motive for which appears to be money.
But when questioned, they have no description of Sam’s car. The cop, whose name is DC Jacobs, writes down the name Sam, but that is all Harry and Cheryl have. They don’t know if he’s from Bridport, no, sorry. He might be from Lyme Regis. He might be from anywhere. They’re so sorry. Cheryl thinks he did tell her his last name the one time she met him on the driveway, but no, she can’t… oh God, she can’t remember, think, Cheryl, think. No, it’s gone. So sorry.
Harry can describe him – he is blonde, like Harry himself, with blue eyes. He is tall, slim, fit-looking, with broad shoulders, muscly arms, perhaps from a gym. Thirty-ish. Softly spoken. Gentle in his way. Sensitive. But traumatised. They saw it in his face. His eyes looked crazy. Recently bereaved too, under violent circumstances. His grandmother was his primary carer growing up. Murdered, he said, yes, he definitely told them that. Only weeks ago. A close bond, that much was obvious. And he was very much in love with Naomi Harper. Was with her for years before. But Harry and Cheryl only moved here recently so they wouldn’t really know.
‘Wait a second,’ DC Jacobs says. ‘His grandmother was murdered, you said?’
