Whatever You Love (26 page)

I find Toni’s formality with us disconcerting, considering how close she got to us in the wake of us our losing Betty. I wonder if she thinks it is inappropriate for me to be with David so much immediately after Chloe’s disappearance but she was the one encouraging us to spend more time together, after all. I realise, with a flush of disappointment, that although she knows I am still bereaved, in her head she has moved on, to the next, more pressing thing. In that sense, she is just like everyone else. Everyone else has moved on in their heads, in one way or another. Only David and I are still stuck on Betty, only we understand how we always will be. David and I have not spoken of this.

It is only as we all rise from our chairs that the solemnity of the interview breaks down, a little. Rees hops from my lap and goes over to the television. David has been holding Harry on his shoulder but as he stands up, he passes him to me. He is a plump lump, Harry, soft and heavy and sweet-smelling, an easy baby, he seems to me. He smiles a lot. Automatically, I do that thing that all parents do when they are handed an infant, start to sway gently from side to side, even though Harry is quiet and not in need of pacifying.

David takes a step towards the television, where Rees is making faces in its blank grey screen. ‘Do you know why they have a television in here?’ he asks Rees.

Rees glances at Toni, who smiles at him. ‘Is it so that they can watch programmes when they are bored of people talking?’

David shakes his head. ‘It’s so that they can show people CCTV films, you know, those cameras that they have in shops so that if people steal something they are on the film.’

‘We waved at one!’ Rees shouts, thinking of a shop he and I visited the previous day, delighted to think that Toni and the other policeman might have seen him on television.

‘Yes, young man,’ says the male policeman, who has a northern accent, ‘and what some thieves don’t realise is that when they come in here and we ask them if they stole something, it’s no good them saying they didn’t because we’ve got it right here and can show them how we know.’

Rees is very impressed. Toni and the other officer smile at each other, pleased to have impressed him.

‘How did you know that?’ I ask David as I move Harry to the other shoulder so I can pick up my handbag from the table. ‘No, it’s okay.’

David has reached out his hands to take Harry but drops them when I shake my head. ‘Toni told me when I was in here before,’ he says, ‘after Betty, when we were talking about how to deal with the press. They were everywhere in town for a bit.’

The male officer has opened the door and Rees has charged off down the corridor. David follows him swiftly.

As Toni holds the door open for me, I say to her, ‘I didn’t realise David had been here before.’

‘He did a lot,’ she says, without looking at me. ‘He protected you, you know.’

I give her a look.

She throws the look back at me. ‘You know what the newspapers are like. One of them, unbelievable, he actually said to me, okay, we’ll lay off the mum if you can give us the dad.’

We follow the others out into the corridor. I shift Harry on my shoulder again and he gives a little grizzle. David, Rees and the other officer have disappeared around a corner but as I go to follow them, Toni puts a hand on my arm, lightly. ‘You know,’ she says casually, ‘I’m still your liaison officer too. If there was anything troubling you, about Betty I mean, you can still ask, I mean, if you were concerned about whether or not we’ll find him. I’m sure we will.’ She is looking at me.

‘You mean Ahmetaj?’

She nods, and as she does, Rees sticks his head round the corner, ‘Mum-
ee
!’

‘I’m coming,’ I call.

Toni is watching me in a way I cannot fathom.

*

David has parked his car on the street, directly outside the station. I buckle Harry into his seat – that’s one thing I haven’t forgotten how to do. As my fingers slip and click the metal into place, I think how comforting that small sound is, the sound that tells you your children are strapped in tight, safe. Rees is wriggling on his booster seat and I lean over Harry to pull his seatbelt across. As I do so, Harry arches his back, as much as he can do against the strap, grizzles more.

‘Is he hungry?’ I ask David as I sit down in the passenger seat.

‘No, tired,’ he says. ‘He woke up early. It would be good if he stayed awake until we got home though, so I can take him out in the buggy. If he falls asleep in the car then one of us will have to sit with him for an hour.’

I turn in my seat. ‘Rees, see if you can make Harry laugh.’

It is only a ten-minute drive to David’s bungalow and thanks to Rees making noises and me turning to tickle Harry’s feet, we keep him awake. David lifts him and takes him inside. Rees and I follow.

‘Daddy, play battleship with me!’ Rees shouts, jumping up and down, before he even has his shoes off.

‘In a minute,’ says David. ‘I’ve just got to take Harry for a walk to get him asleep in his buggy.’

Rees is crestfallen. He kicks the radiator.

‘I’ll take Harry out,’ I say.

‘No, it’s okay.’ David’s voice is exhausted. He hasn’t said anything about what Toni and the other officer told us – or, rather, how little they had to tell us – but I can tell from the way he speaks that he is only holding it together by going through the motions. I wonder how much he thinks of Chloe, if he has decided, inside his head, what has happened. I have been careful not to ask.

‘No, let me do it,’ I say. ‘Come on, it’s okay, you haven’t had Rees to yourself much, I don’t mind, honestly.’

David looks at me and says, ‘You’ll freeze.’

It makes me smile. He always used to do that in the early days, notice what I was wearing, worry about me being cold – his gallantry, it outlived his love. He’s right, though. I am wearing a denim jacket. There was a glimmer of sun when I left the house that morning and I was overly optimistic.

‘Here,’ says David. He turns and lifts a coat from the row of hooks on the wall. It is one of Chloe’s. It is a waterproof but a very smart, stylish one, not at all sporty, made of a deep blue fabric with a shimmer to it. It is lined with fleece and has a high collar with a fake fur trim. I feel as much as see how expensive it must have been, as soon as I put it on. I am a little taller than Chloe but we are the same build. It fits just fine. It’s very snug.

Harry is howling openly now, thrashing in his buggy. David tucks a blanket round him and says, ‘He’ll be out cold by the time you get to the path.’ He has not taken a proper look at me wearing Chloe’s coat.

‘I’ll walk around a bit to make sure.’

*

Pushing the buggy, I take a tour of the estate. It is blank and neat and empty, and I think again of how strange these new places are, as if they house new people, with no secrets, no lives. The road slopes away, downhill, from David and Chloe’s place. No cars pass by and there are few cars on the dark tarmac fore- courts. Everyone is at work, or school, it is the middle of the day. Harry’s howls quickly diminish to snuffles and sighs. As David predicted, he is out quickly. I wonder if we should have changed his nappy first.

*

I walk around for about fifteen minutes, then head back up the rise to the bungalow. I am a few feet away from the door when it happens. Behind me, a car door slams hard but there is nothing unusual in that and I don’t turn. As I lift my hand to ring the doorbell, there is the sound of footsteps skittering up the path behind me but I have no more than a second or two to register the unusual haste of them when there is a heavy thump upon my shoulder. I bend, letting out a shocked cry, but whatever sound I make is drowned by a high-pitched shriek. I turn with my arm raised to protect myself and see a woman in her sixties, shorter than I am and with tight, curly hair and glasses. I only get a glimpse of her face, mouth open, contorted with rage, before I have to turn sideways again to protect myself. She is raining blows on my arm and shoulder and letting out shrieks of inarticulate fury. Her fists are clenched – a blow strikes the side of my head and I stagger back against the door, momentarily afraid I will fall. Between her inarticulate cries she begins to say, ‘You… you…
you
!’

The front door opens and David is upon us. He gets between me and the woman and uses an arm to lever her backwards, away from me. Her fists are still flailing and she is still shouting inarticulately. Baby Harry is sleeping through it all.

‘Edith!’ David is shouting. ‘Edith, stop it!’ Then, firmly, with depth, the kind of shout that warns of physical reprisal: ‘Stop it now!’

She stops and falls back a step or two, her breath heaving inside her small frame. As I straighten, I see that her glasses are crooked. My hair is awry across my face and I clear it back with one hand, tuck it behind my ear, and stare at the woman who is still beside herself, spitting with fury. ‘How dare you!’ she shouts, looking me up and down. ‘You, of all people.’

I glance behind me to make sure that Rees has not come outside and is safely indoors, out of earshot. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ I say, with a clear note of aggression in my tone. I don’t take kindly to being attacked. David may have come to my rescue, but I want this madwoman to know that without the element of surprise she wouldn’t have got the better of me.

‘I’m Chloe’s
mother
,’ she spits. ‘And don’t you dare use language to me.’ She turns to David, ‘In my daughter’s
coat
, with my daughter’s
baby
!’

David draws himself up to his full height. ‘Edith, I asked Laura to take Harry out in the buggy so he could fall asleep. I wanted some time alone with my other son. I asked her, all right? It was cold and she didn’t have a coat so I gave her Chloe’s. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known you were going to be coming round. I know it must have given you a shock but that’s no excuse for attacking Laura.’

The woman’s face is still twisted with bitterness. ‘You’re as bad as she is. Don’t you care? Chloe said you were a hard bastard and look how you’ve shipped
her
in to take over. Where’s my daughter? Why aren’t you out looking for her? You know what the police are saying, don’t you? They think she’s killed herself!’ And at this, the woman collapses. She puts a hand out, waves it a little and then manages to find the fence. Her other hand is on her stomach as she bends, trying to catch her breath, making a gasping sound, a kind of dry sob, ‘Oh…’ she says, ‘Oh…’

The anger has drained from me now. In its place, there is something hollow. This woman has lost her daughter. I look at David but he is staring at his mother-in-law. I slip Chloe’s coat from my shoulders. What was I thinking of, wearing her coat? I fold it over my arm. I can’t wait to be rid of the thing. ‘Do you want to come in, have a cup of tea?’ I say feebly, the inadequacy and stupidity of the suggestion painfully apparent even as I am making it; the number of cups of tea I was offered after Betty.

The woman straightens herself and wipes roughly at her face with her sleeve, then takes off her glasses and folds them. She does not answer me, merely gives me a glare of contempt. Then she turns and walks unsteadily back down the path. Halfway back to her car, she stops, then turns back. She looks at David and says, ‘I’ll come back to see my grandson when he’s awake.’ She looks at me. ‘And when
she’s
gone.’

The car is parked at an angle, one wheel up on the grass. She must have skewed to a halt when she saw me walking along, wearing Chloe’s coat, pushing Chloe’s baby.

*

Back inside the house, I hang the coat, very gently, back on the hook. As David closes the door quietly behind him, I turn to him and say, ‘I feel awful.’

‘Don’t,’ he says shortly.

‘She must have thought I was Chloe…’

Inside the sitting room, I can hear the sound of the television, some loud and violent cartoon.

David shakes his head. ‘She isn’t just deranged with grief, you know, she’s always been deranged. Chloe ran to her every time we had an argument, particularly when it was about you, and she always made it worse. She’s a bloody nightmare. A lot of Chloe’s problems stemmed from her, believe me, a lot of them. Don’t feel sorry for her. She’s capable of anything. I hated it when she had Harry on her own. I’m serious. I didn’t like that woman near my son. If Chloe hadn’t been so weirdly dependent on her, I wouldn’t even have let her in the house. She was round here the night Chloe disappeared. That’s why I couldn’t let you come round. I didn’t want her to meet you, even know what you looked like.’

But there was something familiar about her, I thought. ‘Did you and Chloe argue about me much?’

‘Of course we did.’ He turns towards the sitting room, speaking over his shoulder as he goes. ‘That’s what we argued about mostly, of course. The ghost at our table, she called you.’

She’s been gone less than a month and already he is using the past tense.

*

It is only later, an hour later, when we are feeding the children, that it comes to me. I have met Chloe’s mother before. She was the small, fierce woman at Willow’s wake, the one who scraped her stiletto heel against my shin. I think of my purple coat, the one inexplicably ruined by bleach, which is still hanging in my wardrobe. I think of Chloe’s expensive waterproof hanging in the hallway, shimmering and warm.

*

While Rees watches television, David and I make something to eat. My shoulder aches. Shaken by her mother’s attack, it is hard to be in Chloe’s kitchen. Once I have put a saucepan of water on to boil, I sit down at the table and watch David while he chops broccoli and carrots into tiny pieces, ready to add to the white rice we will cook for Rees. When he has finished, he puts a few tiny trees of broccoli and cubes of carrot in a bowl and silently places the bowl in front of me. To please him, I lift a few into my mouth, and chew… While I do this, he goes over to the kitchen window and stands looking out of it for some time at the neat square of their garden. His hands are resting on the edge of the kitchen counter top and his head is bowed.