Surrogate – a psychological thriller (16 page)

My BlackBerry pinged on the kitchen counter with an incoming text. "It'll be the police," I said. Mole picked up the phone, paused and stood still. Something was wrong. I asked her what the matter was but she didn't say anything and, instead, handed the phone across. She looked as if the life was being sucked out of her, too.

"HOW MUCH IS YOUR CHILD WORTH?" said the text.

I stared at the phone incredulously. God, it must be from Alice. Mole and I looked up at each other. I felt massive relief that Alice was still alive, but on the other hand, this looked like some kind of ransom demand.

"Is it really from her?" I said. "I don't know what to say."

Mole took the phone back and studied the text again. "If it really is from her, she's playing games with us."

"So, Dad was right."

"What do you mean?"

"When I went to see him, he said she would need money eventually. We must call the police."

"For them to do what exactly? Let's not rush into anything. If she wants to play games, then let her wait."

"The police must have equipment. Surely they can find out where the text is coming from."

"I don't think it's as simple as that. In any case, Alice isn't stupid. You see that sort of thing on TV all the time. You don't think she would have thought of that already? No, we must see what her next move is."

We had waited months for this moment, and now Mole wanted to play mind games with our surrogate. I was perplexed. Whereas a man would just barge straight in, women have a much more subtle and devious way of dealing with each other.

"It's such a crazy question, how much is your baby worth?" Mole said. "Everything. Nothing." Pause. "Fuck her. We can have another baby, we can go through the procedure again. We can find another surrogate. This time we'll do it right." There was a cruel edge to her voice I hadn’t noticed before.

"Mole, we can't just ignore it. We have a responsibility to this child. If she wants money, then let's give her money."

In my mind's eye I saw a line of police searching woodland, a string of people tramping through frozen grass and then the dreadful discovery.

Mole started worrying a fingernail with her teeth. "You're right. We don't have any choice, do we?" Suddenly she pushed her chair away and stood up. "Christ, how did we get into this mess?" she said, pacing. "If we give her money, what's to stop her coming back for more? We're assuming that Alice has already had our baby. We don't know that, we don't know anything. For all we know she could have had an abortion. This is just blackmail."

"We have to text her back something. First, we need proof that our baby is alive. Mole, don’t you see? We could finally be with our baby." Before Mole could stop me, I typed "Show me a photo" and pressed send. We both stared at the BlackBerry on the pine table, willing it to ping. I reached across and we held hands. Somebody else's touch felt so good. Moments later the BlackBerry chimed.

There, lying on a blanket, her face scrunched and inscrutable, was what looked like a baby girl. Already I could discern my own features. She was clearly our baby. Mole put her hand to her mouth, and I put my arm around her. Together we were going to get through this, so help me God.

The phone pinged again. "HOW MUCH IS YOUR CHILD WORTH?"

Without saying anything to Mole, I texted back "£10,000" and pressed send.

"NOT ENOUGH"

Considering where Alice had come from, ten thousand pounds represented a bloody fortune. A grain of doubt entered my mind. Was there somebody behind Alice, telling her what to do? A boyfriend, perhaps. "Tell her twenty thousand pounds, and that's our final offer. If she doesn't accept, we'll go to the police," Mole said. I did what I was told. This time the wait was longer. Why is it that the longed-for text is the one that never arrives? We both grabbed for the phone when it pealed.

"NOT ENOUGH"

I reckoned I had about thirty thousand pounds in cash sitting in various current and deposit accounts. Beyond that, everything was tied up either in shares or the flat. Mole and I sat talking it though until after midnight. If Alice did not accept our final thirty-thousand-pound offer, then we really would go to the police. Hell, we were going to the police anyway once our baby was safe. This time it was Mole who sent the message.

We waited and waited, but Alice, if it really was her, did not reply. Eventually I'd had enough. I was done in. Because of everything I had been through that afternoon, I could barely stand up. I needed to close my eyes and get away from this nightmare. Even for a few hours.

Mole was undressing in the bedroom as I went to have a pee. Resting the BlackBerry on the cistern, I watched it intently while I unzipped my fly. The BlackBerry pinged again.

"I'LL TELL YOUR WIFE WE HAD AN AFFAIR UNLESS YOU PAY UP. DON'T THINK ABOUT GOING TO THE POLICE."

I pulled my zipper up, frightened that Mole had heard the incoming text. My forehead popped with sweat. Double-checking that I was alone, I deleted Alice's last text and replied, "How much do you want?"

Silence.

Neither of us slept much that night. We kept thrashing about, trying to get comfortable, praying for at least a few minutes of longed-for sleep. And even when I did sleep, it was no good: everything was jumbled up in my head – Alice moving through a crowded atrium, her jersey stretched tight over our baby, with people blocking my way as I tried to reach her. She kept ducking behind pillars, always right around the corner, just out of sight–

Something jerked my leg and I opened my eyes. It took me a moment to remember where I was. The ceiling was pulsing with red light, which, I dimly registered, meant that my BlackBerry had a message waiting. I reached across and stared at the text.

"A MILLION POUNDS"

Mole moved next to me, the warmth of her body pressing against mine. "Is it from her?" she mumbled, still half asleep.

"She wants a million pounds," I said, passing the phone across. It was so absurd, I wanted to laugh out loud.

Mole sat up in bed and looked at the text. "She's mad. We haven't got a million pounds. I say we go to the police."

Lying there in the dark, I ran figures through my head. If I cashed in my shares and increased the mortgage on the flat, then we could do it. Just. How much is your child worth? How much is your marriage worth, more like. I knew that Mole would leave me if she found out the truth. This way, there was a chance we could be with our baby for the first time and then I could explain, patiently and calmly, just how we had gotten into this mess. Surely Mole would understand. Everybody deserves just one more chance, don't they?

"We have, actually. If we cashed in everything, we could pay the ransom."

I sat at the kitchen table with the BlackBerry in my hand while Mole made coffee for the two of us. We both felt ghostly with lack of sleep. It took some convincing to get her to accept my plan. In the end, she agreed to my selling my shareholding in Berkshire RE and getting a bridging loan on our flat. Of course, I would have to tell my other directors what I was doing, and we would have to make an announcement to the City, but what choice did we have? Liquidating everything, we might just scrape together a million pounds. The irony was that the shares would be worth so much more in a few weeks' time when the Continual Life deal went through.

"I don't understand why you're so willing to give in," Mole said, pouring water into the coffee jug. "We could just offer half and see what she says. A million pounds. That's everything we own."

If only you knew the half of it, I thought. Because I love you and I want to hang on to my marriage. "That's the beauty of it," I said. "We'll bring in the police once we make sure our baby is safe. We'll know where Alice is then. We finally get to meet our child, and we won't have lost any money. Like you said, all we have now is a mobile phone number."

Mole finished stirring the coffee grounds. "Our daughter. I can't believe it. I'm going to finally hold her. I've been waiting for this moment for so long I'd given up hope."

I got up and put my arm around her shoulders. "Think of it as a short-term loan. The money's going to leave our account for a few days and then come back to us."

"I still think we should call the police."

"They'd tell us to stop. If we don't pay the ransom, there's no telling what she might do." I thought of the police line again, people beating the ground with sticks.

Finally the moment had come. I took a deep breath and texted, "Agreed. How do we get the money to you?"

We did not have to wait long for an answer.

"ACCOUNT # 513781100, SORT CODE 843942. YOU HAVE TWENTY FOUR HOURS."

Next, I texted Rupert Currie, telling him I needed to see him. Urgently.

Foresight Investment, the wealth-management company he worked for, had its offices just around the corner from Berkshire RE. Currie was waiting for me as the lift doors slid open. "Oy oy, you're up bright and early this morning," he said chummily. Then, "Blimey, matey, you don't look well. Are you all right?" I told him there was something I needed to talk about. In private. He led the way to a meeting room with opaque-glass walls and ordered some coffee. More coffee was the last thing I needed. My head was rattling with the stuff, burning holes into my brain. I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling glass window and looked down over the City's magisterial greyness. I wasn’t sure exactly where to begin.

"Remember I told you that I'd hired that private detective to find our baby, that the police weren't interested?"

Currie nodded. From the look on his face, he was bracing himself for something big.

"We didn't hear from him for months. A complete dead end. He called me up yesterday and said he needed to see me. He'd found out Alice's real name–"

"That's fantastic news."

"Wait, there's more. So he asks me to go and see him. Says there's something else he needs to tell me about. Something delicate. So I go round to his office yesterday afternoon. The police have cordoned off Oxford Street. Somebody threw petrol around his office and burned him alive. I was with him when he died. It was horrible, Rupert. The paramedics left us alone in the ambulance when one of them went to get help, and he had a massive heart attack right in front of me."

"Oh, Christ."

"Everything completely gutted. All his records destroyed."

"Bloody hell. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I am now. Then, when I got home last night, we had a message from Alice. Talk about everything happening at once. A ransom demand. She's holding our baby to ransom."

"What do the police say?"

"We haven't told them."

Beneath me ant-like office workers were scurrying to work. For everybody else this was the start of a normal working day, everybody apart from me, that is. I turned from the window.

"There's another complication. She'll tell Mole that we had an affair unless I pay up or if we go to the police."

"She’s obviously a bunny boiler, mate. What makes you think Mole would believe her?"

"Alice told me she never went through with the procedure."

"And you believe her?"

"The clinic said the same thing. If Mole checks, the clinic will confirm that it was a natural pregnancy."

Currie swore and slumped in his chair. "How much does she want?"

"One million pounds."

Currie chuckled and shook his head. "She's having a giraffe. You don't have that kind of money."

I placed both hands down on the table. I had never been so deadly earnest in my life. "This isn't about how much my daughter is worth. This is about my marriage. I am not going to let one stupid mistake fuck up the rest of my life."

Currie raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay I get it. I'm sorry I laughed. What do you want to do? I looked at your file. Even if you sell your Berkshire RE shares, that's only going to net you about four hundred thousand."

"I want a bridging loan on the flat. That should cover the rest. It's mortgage free. Once Alice is under arrest, then I get my money back."

"How do you know that? She could send the money anywhere."

"Look, Rupert, that's a risk I have to take. I'm a desperate man. Say we do call in the police and something goes wrong, well, I don't think ... I don't think I could live with myself."

"What's to stop her telling Mole even if the police do arrest her?"

"I haven't thought that far ahead. If Mole wants to walk away because of one stupid mistake" – I shrugged – "then there's not a lot I can do to stop her. First, I need to reunite my family."

"It'll be expensive. This kind of money doesn't come cheap." Currie telephoned his assistant and told her to get hold of a mortgage-provider pal. "They're not your normal building society," he said, covering the phone. "Really, they're money lenders. Equity-release loans. Oh hello, Gary? It's Rupert Currie at Foresight. Yeah, yeah good match, wasn't it? Listen, matey, I've got somebody with me–"

Currie chatted back and forth, and I turned back to the window. Somewhere in this vast country of sixty million people, Alice Adams was out there. Waiting. I felt a kind of roving, hand-wringing despair about my situation. The clock was ticking away, counting down the hours until Alice's deadline. I glanced over my shoulder and Currie was laughing ("I love you so much I want to suck your cock") and scribbling figures on a notepad, giving me the thumbs-up as he put the phone down. "He says he'll do it. Providing all the paperwork is in order. He'll take a charge over your flat, assuming you're the sole owner. He also wants to see two years' worth of company accounts. I told him we need the money fast. Be warned, though, the interest rate's high. This is more like one of those payday loans."

I felt an overwhelming rush of gratitude. For the first time, it felt as if our daughter was within touching distance. "I'll sign anything," I said. "Just tell me what to do."

Somebody once said that battlefields are always strewn with bits of paper. Our kitchen table became a war campaign that afternoon as Mole and I pored over my financial records. The table was covered with documents as we assembled what was needed. A motorcycle courier was waiting downstairs to take the papers to Currie. I kept glancing at the clock, seeing the minutes ticking away. We had less than two hours before the end of the working day. And if we didn't get the deal closed by six o'clock, we could kiss our baby girl goodbye. Selling the shares was the easy part. It was raising the loan on the flat that would take time. And time was our most precious commodity; there was never enough time.

We had a gruesome few hours waiting for the money to come through. Mole paced the floor. Most of all I remember the ticking of the clock and the pitiless click of Mole's heels.

Finally, an email pinged telling us the money was there. For one brief moment, a few seconds at least, I was a cash millionaire, or as much as you can be when everything has been reduced to pixelated ones and zeroes.

Picking up my BlackBerry again, I texted Alice telling her the money had been transferred. We both stared at the phone, willing it to come to life.

"TN17 2FS. COME ALONE."

"It's a postcode," Mole said. "It could be anywhere. Let's put it in the satnav and see where she is." She held me in her arms and looked at me carefully. "We should have called the police. For all we know, she could have been the one who firebombed Wynn’s office. Or slashed the tyres on our car? There’s no telling what she might do next. What if she's got some boyfriend who's put her up to this? He might have a gun or something."

I did my best to seem manly and protective, giving Mole a confidence I didn't really feel. "Look, she just wants her money and to get out. I’m sure of it. She doesn't want to be encumbered with our baby."

Mole followed me into the hall, where I slung on my waterproof jacket. We hugged and kissed, and I told her the next time I saw her I would be holding our baby girl.

The postcode turned out to be an address in the Kent countryside, on the outskirts of a village. I pictured a remote cottage where Alice had laid low as she got bigger with our baby. Then a trip to the cottage hospital as contractions began. Somebody must have accompanied her there, though, a local midwife, perhaps. She cannot have planned this alone; somebody must have been helping her. Perhaps Mole was right, and I was about to come face to face with a sawn-off shotgun. Oh stop being so lurid, I thought, this is a simple financial exchange; yeah, just like you thought hiring a surrogate would be, and look how that turned out.

I passed few cars that night as I plunged deeper into the Kent countryside. Occasionally I saw red tail lights up ahead as the Porsche swooped along the narrow country road. The dashboard provided the only light. Soon I would be holding my child for the first time, and that was the only thing that mattered.

The satnav told me to turn off at the next slip road. Menacing hedgerows crowded the country lane, and the car entered some kind of tunnel of trees whose thick branches almost choked off the moonlight.

Finally the car came to the outskirts of a village. I drove past ugly sixties’ bungalows beside a football pitch. The satnav told me to drive on through the main street, taking a lane off to one side. The car juddered over a cattle grid, leading me to what I guessed was a farm. The track stretched on for what felt like forever. It was so dark that even my headlights seemed dim. I tried to swallow, but my mouth had gone quite dry.

"You have arrived at your destination," the satnav told me.

I pulled up outside a pair of semi-detached red-brick farm-workers’ cottages. Lights were on in the right-hand house. So, this was the moment. I swallowed again, trying to lubricate my mouth. Here goes, I thought. My car door closed with a reassuring thunk. The garden gate clanged shut as I walked up the path and rapped on the door. Somebody was definitely moving about inside.

The woman who answered reminded me of the housekeeper in
Tom and Jerry
. She was obese. Dressed in a sleeveless nylon nightie, her naked arms resembled enormous hams. She also seemed to be trailing some kind of saline drip.

"Yes, how can I help?" she said, looking at me carefully.

I stepped backward off her front step. "I'm looking for somebody who lives here. Alice Adams."

"Nobody here by that name." She jerked her head to the next house. "Young girl with a baby? You want next door." Pause. "Her name's not Alice, though, it's Helen."

"Yes, that'll be her. Thank you so much. Sorry to have bothered you."

So, she was calling herself Helen again, was she? I was so excited that I was already halfway down the path when the woman called out, "You won't find her there, though. She left about an hour ago. I heard her car."

My heart sank. To have come this far and still be denied, it was so bitterly unfair. "I'll leave a note," I said, raising my hand in farewell. It slowly dawned on me that I had willingly given Alice or Helen or whatever her name was a million pounds without really knowing whether my baby was alive or not. My insides knotted with apprehension.

The next-door cottage was completely dark. All the lights were off, and the curtains were drawn. Gingerly I picked my way over a flower bed and peered through a gap in the curtains. Nothing. This whole trip had been a waste of time.

What on earth was I going to tell Mole about the money?

My BlackBerry was blinking like an angry mosquito when I got back in the car. I felt tearful with frustration. My little girl had come so close, and now Alice could be anywhere with my money and my daughter. That was assuming that she hadn't been aborted already. Stop it, you cannot think like that.

"CHANGE OF PLAN. YOUR BABY IS IN A CAR ON THE THIRD FLOOR OF WHITE CROSS CAR PARK, TUNBRIDGE WELLS. KEYS UNDER WHEEL."

It took about forty minutes to drive to the suburban town. Mole said later that Alice must have known we would call the police once we had our daughter. What she needed was a head start. The satnav tracked inexorably towards my destination, a seventies’ town-centre car park. I took a ticket from the battered orange dispenser, and my wheel clipped the tight cement ramp upward as I circled up, all the while scanning for the car containing my daughter.

Finally, I swung round onto the third floor. There, parked at the far end of the cement bay, was a solitary Peugeot hatchback. It had to be the car, it just had to be.

Walking towards the car, my breath steamed and my clothes felt like tissue paper. My God, it was so cold. Then I heard it, a muffled crying coming from inside. I broke into a run. What kind of woman would leave a baby to freeze to death on a night like this?

There, strapped into a car seat, was a baby.

She was bawling, her little face twisted with unhappiness. My heart was pounding so fast, I thought it was going to burst through my chest. "I'll get you out of there," I said aloud. Sure enough, the keys were wedged under the wheel on the driver's side. I kept fumbling with the lock, desperate to get to my daughter. Pulling the passenger door open, I unbuckled her and, lifting her up for the first time, I could smell that heavenly new baby smell and felt an overwhelming rush of love and protectiveness. Beyond this car park, everyday life was going on. People coming home from work or cooking their evening meal, but for me everything had changed. It was if the world had tipped on its axis and then righted itself. Holding her infinitely precious head, I cradled our baby girl back to the car. Finally I gave way to my feelings and I found myself racked with sobs. Our nightmare was finally over.