‘Amy -’ Alex began, eyes widening in alarm. ‘Don’t. Please stop. I don’t want to hear any more.’
‘I thought about it,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘She was sleeping, and I thought about gently putting her in the water and letting her sink to the bottom. Only for a fraction of a second, but I was horrified at myself nevertheless. After that, I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t be trusted around her. And this beautiful little thing deserved a chance. But she couldn’t stay with me. I couldn’t even take her home to my mum and ask for help, not with every millimetre of that space screaming out the absence of my father.
‘So I did the only thing I thought of at the time.’
Trembling, the scissors on her penknife moving towards her soft, vulnerable head, taking a small lock of downy hair, a tiny keepsake.
Alex braced himself, tensed, waiting.
‘I wrapped her in a shawl, then put her in a cardboard box. And I left her on the doorstep of a nearby Buddhist monastery.’
The spot behind the wall where she had stood for what felt like hours – though it was probably only minutes – watching that box until the door opened. Stray dogs sniffing at it, chickens running next to it, her heart thundering.
‘So many times I nearly ran back. In fact, I was about to, when the door opened and a monk stood there…’
He had been blinking in the early light, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Wrapped in orange robes with his alms bowl under his arm. Middle-aged, bald, bespectacled. Kind-looking.
‘He just peered into that box, picked it up and carried it inside and closed the door, like he was collecting the post, no emotion showing on his face at all.
‘And then she was gone. And I left.’ Amy released all the breath in her lungs with a huge sigh, then covered her eyes with her palms and mumbled towards the ground.
‘And that was that.’
81
Alex had no idea what to say. Amy looked at his face and could see that he was stunned.
‘Amy,’ he breathed eventually, still incredulous about what he had heard.
She had been so calm as she told him all this, but now her voice cracked. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s awful. There have been so many times I’ve wanted to go back and ask about her, but I don’t dare. I abandoned my baby girl – the only way I can get through it is that in my daydreams she’s living a happy and secure life with people who love her. Otherwise…’
‘What did you do after that?’ he asked quickly to distract her.
‘I left Thailand. I went to Europe. I pretended it had never happened. It wasn’t too hard, in a way – my whole life became surreal very quickly. The baby began to feel like a strange dream. My nomadic existence became normal. And the years slipped by. I did lots of different things, went to lots of different places – hell, once or twice I was surprised to find I was beginning to enjoy something. Many times I thought about ending it, often just after an unexpected high, when the low that inevitably came next was all the more crushing. But I had made a promise to Mum and it stuck – something in me felt I owed it to her, I guess.’
‘Or maybe you just didn’t really want to die,’ he added.
Amy looked taken aback. ‘I wanted to die,’ she said.
‘Maybe you just wanted the pain to go away,’ he continued. ‘And it was the only way out of it you could think of. But it’s not the same thing.’
He could see she had never thought of it like that before. ‘Well,’ she said, after a pause, ‘now you know just how evil I am.’
Alex moved closer to her, and put his arm around her shoulders. ‘Nothing you’ve told me has been evil,’ he told her. ‘Tragic, yes. But that’s all.’
‘I abandoned my baby, Alex,’ she said.
‘I know.’ He kissed her hair. ‘God, Amy, what you’ve gone through – it’s unimaginable. And I let you down, right from the start. I should have kept you close, helped you to -’
‘I don’t feel like that,’ Amy interrupted. ‘I’ve been angry at you, sure – when you walked out of the hospital, I felt I hated you for a while. But I’ve had a lot of thinking time since, and I understand. It wasn’t your fault either, we were both caught up by circumstance. If it hadn’t been for the baby, I’m sure I would have come back a lot sooner.’
Alex’s heart surged with affection for her as he took in her softly spoken words. ‘Well, everything is changing now,’ he told her. ‘It’s going to be okay. I already have a plan for what we should do.’
Amy rested her head on his shoulder as he talked, and together they watched the boats bobbing on the river.
82
Mark hesitated as he checked the screen on his mobile. He hadn’t seen his father since Henry had stormed out of the apartment. Yes, it was pricking at his conscience, but he easily put it to the back of his mind because, first of all, he was getting heaps of work done, and secondly, he’d been spending a lot of time with Chloe.
Finally, they were getting on top of the Abbott research. On Friday, Mark had been intrigued to see Chloe, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, walking hastily into her office and had followed her inside, closing the door behind him.
‘What’s going on?’ he’d asked, gesturing to her unorthodox officewear.
‘Don’t ask,’ Chloe had said, shaking her head, but then, as he sat in the chair usually reserved for her clients, she proceeded to tell him what her mother had done the day before.
When she finished, by saying ‘Can you believe her?’, Mark had shaken his head.
‘What’s wrong with our parents?’ he’d asked.
‘God knows,’ Chloe said, her own head shaking again in echo of his. ‘I’m worried Mum is losing it, and I can’t expect June and George to be responsible for her. But I also can’t race up there every time her heart skips a beat and she panics and phones an ambulance.’
‘It could be worse,’ Mark said. ‘She could be coming into your office wearing your clothes and trying to take over your cases.’
They’d looked at each other for a long moment, and Mark had laughed first. Chloe quickly followed, and for a moment they revelled in the release of it.
‘God,’ Chloe said, reaching for a tissue and blowing her nose. ‘I keep trying to think back over what I’ve done to have attracted such incredibly bad karma.’
‘Don’t waste your time,’ Mark said, sobering. ‘None of this is your fault. Sometimes life is just shite, I reckon.’
Chloe looked at him and sighed. ‘Yes, I know you’re right. To be honest, I’m fed up with going over and over every thing. I just want to forget about it all for a while and get on with this.’ She gestured to her paper-strewn desk.
‘Fancy a working weekend?’ Mark suggested. ‘I’m thinking we surprise Neil by actually displaying a certain degree of competency about the Abbott case by Monday morning.’
Chloe had smiled, then nodded. ‘Definitely.’
So they had worked on Friday night, over a Thai takeaway; then all yesterday, stopping only for a deli lunch break, and a fish and chip supper. Mark had slept on Chloe’s couch, and they’d resumed again in the morning. They hadn’t talked about anything awkward – certainly not the pregnancy, which Mark was doing his best to pretend didn’t exist – it was either the case, or irrelevancies like politics, TV or which films they’d seen recently. By lunchtime there had been an efficient pile of notes, and nothing much left for them to do, so Mark had decided to head back to his apartment, but not before telling Chloe he was taking her out for a meal later.
They were growing closer, he could feel it, and he was revelling in it. He’d never expected to have time alone with her like this again, but in the past week they had established a cajoling, easy banter that he didn’t even remember them having the first time around. His chest swelled with happiness whenever he made her smile. He was also boosted by the knowledge that each smile was a small victory over her undeserving husband, proving that Chloe might still be happy without him.