Missing Me (11 page)

‘Oh.’ Now Natalia was frowning. ‘So . . . how . . . what’s your connection with Mr Baxter?’

Now what did I say? I took a deep breath. ‘The truth is, someone told me that a number of girls had gone missing and . . . and I got it into my head you were one of them. But you’re
obviously not a prisoner here so . . .’ I tailed off again.

Natalia bit her lip. She rested her hands on her swollen belly and stared at me. I got the strong impression she was trying to decide whether or not to tell me something. What was it? She was
dressed in leggings and a lilac top that draped artfully over her bump. Apart from the fact that she wore no make-up, she looked as expensively dressed as Esme. Certainly no kind of victim.

Allan had clearly got the whole thing wrong. I still didn’t understand what the name ‘Miriam’ meant, or why I’d seen other memory sticks with different ‘M’
numbers on them, but, as I stared at Natalia, I suddenly thought I saw the connection between her and Baxter. Something that made sense of everything.

‘Oh.’ My hand flew to my mouth. ‘Oh, it’s
his
baby, Mr Baxter’s.’ My face burned as I thought through the ramifications of this. Mr Baxter was having a
baby with a girl half his age, barely older than me – or Esme. It was revolting. I stood up, wishing I hadn’t come in. Now I had a great big secret to keep from my new friend.

‘Mr Baxter is
not
the father.’ Natalia’s face expressed genuine shock.

To my horror, her eyes filled with tears. She looked down at the floor and her voice wobbled as she spoke.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

I gulped. I
was
sorry for upsetting her, but I didn’t believe Baxter wasn’t the dad. I mean, what other explanation for her living in this nice flat so close to his house
could there be? Still, it was none of my business. I took a step towards the door.

‘Please don’t go,’ Natalia said shakily. ‘I haven’t talked to anyone for months . . . not properly . . .
please
.’ She looked up. The pain in her dark
brown eyes was so intense I could barely meet her gaze.

Now I felt confused again. Maybe she
was
telling the truth.

‘Does Mr Baxter own this flat?’ I said. ‘Does
he
know you’re here?’

‘Yes.’

‘But he isn’t the father?’

‘No,’ Natalia said with a sigh. ‘But he wants my baby.’

‘Sorry . . . I don’t understand,’ I said.

Natalia hesitated. I got the strong sense that she was fighting with herself again. That she knew talking to a total stranger was a terrible risk, but that she was so desperate she
couldn’t help herself.

‘If I tell you,’ she said softly, ‘will you promise to help me?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But what do you need help with?’ I looked around the sophisticated living room. ‘You don’t exactly look like you’re being badly
treated.’

‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘Mr Baxter provides food and clothes and a doctor comes every day to check I’m OK. But it’s time . . . it was time yesterday . . . for
the baby to come. That’s why they moved me here.’ She held my gaze, and the horror in her eyes was totally genuine. ‘And when the baby is born, Mr Baxter is going to take him
away. Forever.’

‘Slow down,’ I said. ‘Are you saying Mr Baxter is looking after you until your baby’s born – then he’s going to
take
him?’

Natalia nodded. ‘I saw it happen before, with other girls. Mr Baxter calls it the Miriam Project after some woman in the Bible. He takes the babies as soon as they’re born to give to
childless couples. I’m the twenty-first girl.’

Miriam 21. I stared at her, bewildered.
This
was the explanation behind Allan’s suspicions – a surrogacy business.

‘Baxter pays a doctor to check on us and there are several nurses who stay with us in shifts,’ Natalia went on. ‘I’m waiting for the next nurse now. She’ll be here
soon. You see, my baby was due yesterday, so he’ll . . . it won’t be long until he’s born now.’

I gasped, remembering the ‘due’ date on the memory stick file. I thought of the other sticks with their ‘M’ numbers.

‘You’re saying Mr Baxter has done this with twenty other girls?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’ Natalia clasped her hands together. ‘He picks on girls away from home, who don’t have jobs or money . . . girls with no family. He offered me ten thousand pounds
to do IVF for him . . . to get pregnant.’

‘So you agreed to give up your baby,’ I said. ‘You actually agreed to do it?’

‘Yes, because I was desperate. I was all alone and it was awful, so I said yes, because back then the baby was just an idea. But now I can feel him moving inside me. I . . . I can’t
bear the thought he’ll be taken away from me.’

‘Where will Baxter take him?’

Natalia sniffed. ‘If it’s the same as the others, he’ll take the baby as soon as he’s born. He’ll have a couple all lined up, ready to pay. My friend Lana told me
how it works: the couple get a baby just a few hours old without having to travel abroad or do mountains of paperwork. There’re official-looking documents that say it’s all legal, but
it’s not . . .’

I couldn’t believe it. I’d stumbled across the whole story that Allan had been investigating. For a second I imagined how pleased he was going to be when I told him what I’d
found out. That editor he was working for at
The Examiner
– Matthew Flint – would surely be impressed too. Maybe my efforts would even help me get some kind of work placement
there. No. I shook myself. It was selfish of me to focus on what I could get out of Natalia’s suffering. My main priority should be to help her.

‘So you agreed to carry a baby before you were pregnant, but now you’d give up all the money if you could keep your baby?’

‘Yes.’ Natalia looked around her. ‘I know this place is all designer and everything, but I’ve been forced to live in flats like this since I was four months
pregnant,’ she went on. ‘There was another girl with me for a while, Lana, but they took her away and she promised she would call me, but I haven’t heard a thing. I don’t
know what’s happened to her.’

A shiver snaked down my back. ‘Why don’t you just walk out?’ I said.

Natalia rolled up her leggings to reveal a thick black ankle bracelet on her left leg. ‘Baxter put a tracker on me. If I leave the house, he’ll know. He’ll find me. Then
he’ll take the baby anyway. Maybe . . . maybe worse.’

‘Worse?’

‘At first he said if I ran away or talked to anyone, I’d lose the baby and all my money, but now that I can’t get hold of Lana, I . . . I . . . think maybe he killed her for
trying to escape.’ Natalia leaned forward, her head in her hands. Tears leaked out from between her fingers. ‘I’m so scared. Whichever way I look, I’m
so
scared.’

I looked at her. My heart was beating fast. ‘Come on.’ I held out my hand. ‘I know someone who can help you.’

‘Who?’ Natalia peered up at me from between her fingers.

‘His name’s Allan Faraday. He’s . . . well, he’s actually my dad . . .’ The words sounded strange as I spoke them. ‘He’s the one who suspected Baxter
was doing something illegal.’

Natalia gulped. She suddenly seemed much younger than before. I felt older . . . responsible . . .

‘But . . . but . . . the tracker . . . Mr Baxter will know where I am.’

‘Allan will know what to do about that.’ As I spoke, I remembered Allan was out of the country until tomorrow. I hesitated.

‘I can’t,’ Natalia said. ‘I can’t leave here if he can trace me. Lana tried to do that. She didn’t get as far as the end of the road.’

‘OK.’ I thought fast. ‘I’ll call the police.’
Yes
. I should have thought of that in the first place. If Baxter was conning girls into giving up their babies,
he was clearly acting against the law. The police would rescue Natalia and arrest him.

But Natalia shook her head. ‘If Mr Baxter knows I’ve gone to the police, then he’ll come after me, take my baby
and
kill me.’

‘But the police will arrest him before he can do any of that,’ I insisted.

‘No.’ Natalia’s eyes welled with tears again. ‘Don’t you see, he’s kept himself out of anything illegal. Lana told me before she ran off. There’s no
money in his name. It’s all done through different accounts. It’d be years before the lawyers sorted it all out and in the mean time he’d be free to take revenge on me for talking
to the police.’

‘But we’ll explain what really happened,’ I insisted.

‘Don’t you see? Baxter has covered his tracks too well for that. There’s no proof. Everyone will think I’m just trying to put the blame on him, but the money
I
took will be easy to find,’ Natalia sobbed. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said before? There’s nothing illegal about surrogacy except accepting lots of money to do it. And
I’ve already taken thousands of pounds.
I’ll
be sent to jail before Mr Baxter even goes to trial. And then I’ll
never
see my baby.’ She dissolved into tears
again.

I stared at her, feeling helpless.

Natalia wiped her eyes. Her fingers trembled as they brushed over her cheek. I suddenly saw how completely and utterly terrified she was.

She looked up at me with a wan smile. ‘You should go,’ she said. ‘The nurse will be here soon.’

‘Right.’ I tried to pull my thoughts together. ‘So . . . so if I could find some way of getting the tracker off you here, so Baxter won’t know you’ve left,
that’s the only chance of you getting away from him. No police. No lawyers. Just escape.’

‘Yes, but you’d need proper equipment to do it, and . . . and there’s nothing in the whole flat I can use.’ Her voice cracked. ‘It’s hopeless. There’s
no scissors, no sharp knives – not that they’d be strong enough – this plastic is tough.’ She paused, clearly trying to calm herself. ‘Anyway, even if I could buy some
time by getting rid of the tracker, I’d need more money than I can get my hands on to get out of the country.’

‘OK,’ I said. I thought it through. Surely Allan would help me, if I could just get hold of him. ‘What if I could bring tools to get the tracker off
and
some money? What
if I came back tomorrow with all that?’

Natalia stared uncertainly at me. ‘Would you really go that far to help me? I don’t understand. Why would you do all that? You don’t know me.’

I shrugged, feeling awkward. To be honest, I didn’t really know the answer to that question. All I knew was that Natalia needed help and that Allan and I appeared to be the only ones who
could help her.

‘What time will your nurse leave in the morning?’ I asked.

‘Ten am,’ Natalia said. ‘There’s an hour’s gap between shifts at the moment. It used to be longer, but now the baby’s due . . .’ She looked at me
hopefully, her tears glistening on her cheeks. ‘Will you really come back? Will you really help get me out?’

‘Yes.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I promise.’

‘Thank you.’ Natalia gripped my hand and squeezed it tight. ‘Thank you.’

I said goodbye and stumbled down the steps of the apartment building and out onto the pavement. The sun was still shining, low in the sky. I looked up and down the street. No sign of
Natalia’s nurse. There was only one other person on the road – a shapeless figure with a cap pulled low over his face, half hidden by a tree further along the street. He looked kind of
out of place – suspicious even – but I wasn’t worried. He was staring in the opposite direction and didn’t seem to have noticed me.

I walked along the street, my stomach churning with anxiety.

Why had I gone inside? What had I been thinking? And what on earth had I done, promising to help like that? Part of me just wanted to run away and pretend I’d never heard of Miriam 21 or
found that memory stick or visited Natalia. But how could I? The poor girl was trapped and terrified.

I
had
to get hold of Allan. He would surely know what to do. I dug my hand into my pocket, took out my phone and called him. He still wasn’t answering and I didn’t want to
leave a message about something so important, so I rang off without speaking. I was nearly at the end of Burnside Road – just a couple of minutes from the tube station.

Suppose I couldn’t get hold of Allan before tomorrow morning? What would I do? Somehow I still had to help Natalia. I thought of Lauren – less pregnant, but just as attached to her
baby – and how meanly I’d reacted when she made her announcement. Maybe helping Natalia was a way of making up for being selfish with Lauren.

I turned the corner and headed for the High Street. Money didn’t have to be a problem. Annie kept some emergency cash in a jar in the kitchen – only a hundred pounds or so, but it
would at least help Natalia get out of London. But how could I get rid of that tracker? That was the priority. Yes. Unless I could find some way of removing it, Natalia would be as trapped as
ever.

A shiver ran down my spine. I had the sudden sense I was being watched. I glanced over my shoulder. The guy in the cap was walking a few metres behind me. Was he following me? I shook myself.
Surely I was just being paranoid.

I turned onto the next road. I was close to the High Street now. I looked around. Jeez, he was still there.

I sped up. Glanced backwards again. The man was speeding up too, his face hidden under his cap. Panic swirled inside me. I broke into a run. Faster. I was almost at the High Street. Footsteps
pounded behind me. He was following. Chasing me.

And then I felt his hand on my shoulder. I opened my mouth to scream as he spun me round.

We were face to face.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he said.

It was Wolf.

The scream died in my throat as I gazed into his eyes. He looked totally bewildered, his forehead creased with a frown.

‘What are you doing here?’ he repeated, taking off his cap.

‘Nothing,’ I stammered. ‘I’m not doing anything.’

Wolf shook his head. ‘You were snooping about in Mr Baxter’s office for a start, then you acted all weird afterwards. And then you said you were going straight to the tube, but you
came here instead.’ His eyes bored into me.