Lullaby (43 page)

‘But you know, sex was all we really had, Jess,’ he said softly, ‘it was the glue that held us together.’

‘Oh, was it?’ I retorted angrily. But deep down I knew he was probably right.

‘I’d say so.’

I reflected for a minute. ‘And so Agnes…?’ I prompted.

He was getting irritated. ‘We had a quick drink to sort out some property we’d owned. Ages ago, when you were still pregnant. I didn’t want to see her, but I had to get a signature, and then—well, one thing just led to another.’

Pauline’s words echoed fatally in my mind. He went
on. ‘It wasn’t planned, Jessica. It just happened.’ He really wanted me to believe him, I could see that. ‘We couldn’t help it. We tried. I tried. I ended it again—I didn’t see her for a while after Louis was born.’

‘How considerate.’

He was talking to himself now. ‘And then—it all just fell back into place. I couldn’t keep away.’

The knife kept pushing deeper. ‘I thought—I thought you hated her?’ My voice cracked painfully.

‘Loved her so much I hated her too, I guess. Couldn’t—’ he looked at me, eyes hard and glassy, ‘couldn’t live without her, no matter how I tried.’

Swift jab to the soft bit of my belly. ‘And so you knew she was going to take Louis—’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ he snapped. ‘I may be a bastard, but I’m not that mad. Not that heartless. She planned it on her own.’ He was so intense, I saw his fingers turn white where he grasped the baby. ‘I swear she did.’

‘Oh, well. That’s a relief.’ I watched the jogging girl cross back the other way.

He shrugged. ‘It was like a—a sort of joke we had. We’d—you know. Run off with the baby, the two of us. I just never realised she’d take it seriously. I thought she was kind of—over the mother thing.’

‘A joke!’ I couldn’t believe he’d actually said it. ‘A fucking joke, Mickey? Stealing my son?’ I snarled, and stood, stepped towards him with arms outstretched. ‘Give me Louis, Mickey, just give him to me. I don’t care what you do, I really don’t. I just want my son back.’

But Mickey just sat, totally implacable, our sleeping
baby cocooned tightly in his arms. ‘Not like a funny joke. I mean, like a kind of fantasy. You know—a daydream.’

‘Mickey,’ I said wearily, and I clutched the back of the bench for support, ‘you’re just making it all sound even worse.’

‘But,’ he looked at me intently, and he was stripped bare at last. Freed from his usual arrogance; the naked man beneath the haughty veneer. ‘I need to explain. I feel—well, I don’t feel good about it, Jessica. I’m a guilty man, so I am, I realise that.’

‘You don’t say! God, Mickey.’

‘What I mean, what I’m trying to say is—I guess I played down your love for Louis for Agnes’s benefit, I suppose. I just didn’t realise she’d take it all to heart.’

‘Mickey, I really don’t need to sit and reminisce with you about your and Agnes’s bloody pillow-talk, all right?’

‘But it wasn’t like that, I swear. It was—’ He looked at me, eyes manic, lips drained of colour. It dawned on me that he was holding out for sympathy. ‘Before it happened, she was already collapsing inside. She’d lost all hope, and—I was—I was frightened she’d do something stupid.’

‘Like steal a child?’ I glared at him.

‘Like kill herself. I was trying to make her feel better.’ The finality of his words shocked us both, I think. God, he looked sad. I thought of Agnes and the gun, the swiftness and the beauty in her last movements. A release. A gift for Mickey. She couldn’t give him a child, but she gave him her eternal protection. She left him her silence. With some effort, I pushed those awful final moments from my mind.

‘So?’

‘That day in the Tate, she just appeared.’

I thought about Mickey disappearing for a while as I ate his cake. What if I hadn’t been so greedy, I’d wondered a thousand times; what if I’d just stayed with him in that exhibition and not tried to be all art-loving and independent.

‘I had to promise to meet her—she was going to tell you everything. She was already hysterical when she turned up. So I slipped off with Louis. I thought you’d be ages looking at the pictures. I thought you’d—you know, just get a coffee and wait.’

I shook my head in utter disbelief.

‘I wasn’t thinking straight, I realise that. I just wanted to get her away from where you were before she made a scene. I went to meet her down by the river. We went to some dingy pub, she got me drunk. I think she might have put something in the whisky. I don’t know, I felt very odd. She kept going on and on at me to leave with her. Eventually I went to try to ring you outside, to tell you I was on my way back, but I couldn’t get an answer.’

‘You had my bloody phone, that’s why.’ Or she had, anyway.

‘Anyway, when I went back to get Louis, they’d both gone. I nearly had a heart attack.’

‘So why didn’t you get the police then?’

‘I thought I’d find her. I looked everywhere.’

I saw myself running round the Tate while Mickey hunted the streets so near to me. Louis’s frantic parents.

‘I had no idea that she’d really take him, that she’d just disappear.’

‘Christ, Mickey.’

‘Oh, I know it might sound ridiculous now, Jessica,’ he said softly, ‘but when I was with Agnes, I would have done anything for her. She was suffering so much. She couldn’t come to terms with her fate at all.’ Louis muttered, shifted in his father’s arms. ‘I’m truly sorry, that you must believe.’

‘Why must I? You let some nutter run off with my child.’

‘I didn’t mean to. I got into that stupid fecking fight and that was it. I was so hyped-up, and I’d been nipping whisky with her, and then when she disappeared my bloody mobile ran out and eventually I went into that pub to use the phone. I was still trying to ring Agnes, and then I
was
going to ring the police, I swear, if I couldn’t reach her. I didn’t realise what had happened for days after I ended up in hospital.’

‘So you really lost your memory?’

He had the decency to look ashamed.

‘You bloody didn’t, did you?’

‘I did, initially I did, I swear,’ he said, ‘but eventually it started to come back. I was—you know, I had to play for time. I was trying to get Agnes to take the baby home to you; I thought it would be safer if I did it. Only once she had him she was truly besotted and I realised she wasn’t going to do that, whatever I said. I realised—she loved the baby more than me.’

‘Tragic for you,’ I said bitterly.

‘Yeah, well, everyone has their limit, don’t they, I guess.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘You should have come clean.’

‘I couldn’t. She—’

‘What?’ I whispered.

I could see he found it painful to say. ‘She—she threatened to hurt Louis if I turned her in. I didn’t think she’d ever actually go through with it—but I just couldn’t take the risk. You must see that.’

‘Christ.’ The very idea made me feel physically sick. ‘She was completely mad, wasn’t she?’

‘Not mad. Just desperate. And so I thought I’d have to get him back myself. I did try to warn you.’

‘A bit bloody late, Mickey. And, I don’t understand. The police kept saying she was abroad.’

‘She had two passports, Norwegian and British-two names. She must have travelled under Hohlt. They were looking for Agnes Finnegan.’

A lone leaf drifted down by my feet. I thought of something else. ‘And Maxine? I mean—it was all a bit—matey, wasn’t it?’

He had the good grace to look abashed. ‘Well—’

‘What?’

‘Maxine caught Agnes and me—’ He stopped.

‘What? Oh God, Mickey, don’t try to protect me now, for Christ’s sake. It’s a bit late to spare my feelings, don’t you think?’

‘I’m not proud of it, sure I’m not. Maxine caught Agnes and me in bed together at the house.’

Numbly, I stared ahead of me.

‘She was threatening to tell you, taking the moral high ground, you know, so Agnes bribed her instead. I didn’t realise that Maxine was in on Agnes’s plans. To be fair, I think she just thought Agnes was going to
take Louis away for a few days. And the amount of money Agnes was offering—well, think about it. You know how desperate Maxine was to better herself. She wasn’t going to turn it down.’

She always had been grasping. ‘Especially if you played up my unreliability as a mother, hey, Mickey?’

‘I’m truly sorry about that.’ But his eyes were mad. ‘I must have mentioned it once to Agnes, and she obviously used it as ammunition.’

I shivered, slumping back on the bench. We sat in silence for some time, and he let me reach out my hand, gently smooth my son’s hair where the breeze had ruffled it. The church clock on the nearby hill struck nine. A raw-faced man with a brown Labrador raised his cap at me. Louis stirred a little; Mickey stared into space. He was gone forever; I knew that now. I’d already known it, deep down, a long time ago.

‘I’m truly sorry, Jessica.’ He broke through the silence, making me jump. ‘I—oh God, I know it’s a cliché. But I never meant to hurt you, really. I just wasn’t thinking when I was with Agnes. You always seemed so—so tough. Agnes was the vulnerable one.’

I thought of Agnes’s beauty, her apparent perfection. I thought of Agnes’s absolute misery.

‘When I realised what she’d done, when she rang me in the hospital to try to get me to come to her, I was still delirious. I said if she didn’t bring Louis straight back, I’d shop her—and then she made her threats. But at least she sent you that video, those photos.’ He looked almost imploring. ‘So you’d know he was alive.’

‘Big of her.’ I was still trying to absorb what he’d said. ‘Tough? Why does everyone keep calling me tough?’

‘You’re a survivor, that’s why. I knew that when I met you. You never said—you never talked about how you felt. You never said you loved me. Agnes—well, she wore her heart on her sleeve.’

‘I loved you, Mickey. Oh God, how much I loved you. I just never said it because—we weren’t like that. Because I—I was frightened, I suppose. Because-because I’m tough.’ In the distance, Canary Wharf blinked at me. The sun danced on the red-brown trees that swayed gently down the hill, and he seemed genuinely surprised. I thought briefly of Silver. Perhaps none of us are as innocent as we’d like others to believe.

‘I didn’t know,’ he said quietly.

‘You chose not to know.’

‘That’s not true. You’re quite a closed book, you know.’

‘Not that closed. So, did you never—’ I swallowed hard ‘—was it all, like, pretend with me then?’

‘God, no.’ He looked at me again. ‘Jessica, when I met you I was in a really bad place. But I couldn’t keep my hands off you. You and that petticoat.’ He tried to smile at me.

‘Please, Mickey, don’t. Just don’t.’ It broke my heart to even think of it.

‘You do know that much.’

I didn’t speak. I couldn’t.

‘Don’t you?’ he persisted, almost angry now. ‘It’s just—I met you too soon after Agnes.’

‘Yeah, well,’ and the pain that had been festering began to rise, ‘that’s quite apparent now.’

‘I just mean that if it had been different—later, if you hadn’t got pregnant so quickly, it—it might have worked.’

The straw that broke the camel’s back. ‘Don’t do me any favours.’ I’d had enough, as a horrible thought occurred to me. ‘And what about Robbie, Mickey?’ I stood up now. ‘Did he just get in everyone’s way too?’

Louis’s head fell back, heavy with sleep. His father cradled it back onto his shoulder as he stood too, pleading with me now.

‘You have to believe me, your man there had nothing to do with me. I never even met him. Him and Maxine—well, Christ knows what was going on—but that was between them. Nothing to do with me or—or Agnes.’

‘Oh, you know that, do you? For God’s sake, Mickey, it was you who told me not to trust her. So why should you?’

‘I just know that death wasn’t what it was all about. It was only ever about Louis.’

‘Oh, right. So what about that almighty whack on the head she gave me?’

‘I don’t know, Jessica, but I’m sure she wasn’t trying to kill you. Just wanted to stop you. She’d truly lost it by then. I think she was looking for Louis’s passport. She must have heard us on the phone, and she knew I’d tell you the truth. She was trying to stop you hearing.’

I paced away from the bench. My world was still like Alice’s Wonderland. Growing and shrinking, shrinking and growing.

‘And that woman in the Tate? The model, Claudia? Was that really just a coincidence?’

He shrugged. ‘Sure it was. We’d been talking about Hopper on the photo-shoot, and Claudia was intrigued. I did tell you I’d seen someone from work, I’m sure I did.’ He looked down at Louis then with such love. ‘Look, do you think—I hoped there might be a chance we could—’ He was beseeching; Mickey, who was never humble.

Swiftly, I cut him off. ‘What—a chance for us? Don’t be so fucking stupid. Just give me Louis, Mickey.’ I pushed my hair back off my face, sweaty with fear. ‘It’s over. You must realise that. I want my son back—right now.’

Mickey moved quickly—but I followed him. I’d fight him tooth and nail for my son; I’d kill him first, this madman I didn’t know. He stood on the edge of the hill, staring down, and I steeled myself. He looked at Louis, waking in his arms, grumbling away. What did others see? The perfect portrait of a happy little family, enjoying the last of the September sun.

‘Don’t even think about it, Mickey.’

He hesitated. My gut said he surely loved Louis too much to do what he could now do, but his position was so precarious, teetering on the edge of the grassy hill, a virtual precipice. He was desperate and, if he gave Louis up, ultimately alone now. Adrenaline and fear were coursing through my exhausted body, sorrow following not far behind. I held out my arms, tried to keep them steady.

‘You owe me this much, Mickey, surely,’ I said softly.
He looked at me then, and his dark eyes filled with tears.

‘What will you do?’ he whispered.

‘I don’t know. I’ll think about it. I need some time to take all this in.’

‘I am so sorry, Jessica. I would have got him back for you, you know. I swear I would. I wouldn’t have let her keep him.’

I stretched my arms out further, and Louis swung back towards me in Mickey’s grasp. The baby was about to wail, I could sense him building up to it; his bottom lip was trembling. And then, slowly, sadly, with absolute tragedy scored into his thin face, Mickey relinquished his priceless cargo into my shaking arms. Our fingers touched as I took the baby, and the pain it caused him was solid in the air—but I couldn’t think of Mickey any more. It was my time now, my time with Louis.