‘Mary?’ mumbled the President. ‘That was the… housekeeper?’
‘Yes, that’s right. And my name is Hanne Wilhelmsen. You’ve probably forgotten. You can call me Hanne.’
‘Hannah,’ the President repeated.
‘Near enough.’
Helen Bentley took a few tentative steps. Her knees were shaking, but her legs held up. She looked askance at the other woman.
‘Where am I going?’
‘Follow me,’ was Hanne Wilhelmsen’s friendly reply as she rolled towards the door.
‘Have you…’
The President stopped and followed. The dawn light outside told her that it must still be very early. But she had already been there quite some time. Several hours at least. The woman in the wheelchair had obviously kept her promise. She hadn’t let anyone know. Helen Bentley could still do what she had to before raising the alarm. It was still possible to work the whole thing out, but to do that, no one must know she was still alive.
‘What’s the time?’ she asked as Hanne Wilhelmsen opened the bathroom door. ‘How long have I…’
She had to lean against the door frame for support.
‘Quarter past four,’ Hanne replied. ‘You’ve been asleep for about six hours. I’m sure that’s not enough.’
‘It’s a lot more than I usually get,’ the President said and managed a smile.
The bathroom was impressive. A double-width sunken bath dominated the room. It was almost a small pool. The President could make out something that looked like a radio and something that was definitely a small TV screen in the unusually spacious shower cabinet beside the bath. The floor was covered in oriental-patterned mosaics, and an enormous mirror with an elaborate gilded wooden frame hung above the two marble sinks.
Helen Bentley thought she remembered the woman saying that she was a retired policewoman. There certainly wasn’t much in this flat that had been bought on a policeman’s salary. Unless this was the only country in the world that paid its police what they were actually worth.
‘Make yourself at home,’ Hanne Wilhelmsen said. ‘There are towels in the cupboard over there. I’ll put some clothes outside the door, so you can get them when you’re ready. Just take the time you need.’
She rolled her chair out of the bathroom again and shut the door.
It took Madam President a while to get undressed. Her muscles were still tender and sore. For a moment she was unsure what to do with the soiled clothes, before she noticed that Hanne had put a folded bin liner by one of the sinks.
What a strange woman, thought the President. ‘But weren’t there two of them? Three, with the housekeeper.’
She was naked now. She stuffed the clothes into the bin liner and tied it carefully. What she really wanted was a bath, but a shower was probably more sensible, given how dirty she was.
The warm water poured from a showerhead that was about the size of a dinner plate. Helen Bentley groaned, partly from pleasure and partly from the pain that coursed through her body as she leant her head back so the water would wash over her face.
There was another woman there last night. Helen Bentley remembered it clearly now. Someone who wanted to tell the police. The two women had spoken together in Norwegian, and she hadn’t been able to make out anything, other than a word that sounded like police. The woman in the wheelchair must have won the argument.
The shower was helping.
It was like purification in every sense. She turned the tap on full. The pressure increased noticeably. The jets of water felt like arrows massaging her skin. She gasped. Filled her mouth with water so she could hardly breathe, then spat it out, let everything run over her. She scrubbed herself thoroughly with a hemp glove that felt coarse and comforting on her hand. Her skin went red. Bright red from the hot water and flaming red from the hemp glove. Her cuts stung intensely when the water hit them.
She had stood exactly like this that late autumn evening in 1984, the evening she had never shared with anyone and that therefore no one must know about.
She had showered for nearly forty minutes when she got home. It was midnight. She remembered that clearly. She had scrubbed herself with a loofah until she bled, as if it were possible to scrape a visual impression off your skin. Make it vanish for ever. The hot water had run out, but she’d stayed in the freezing cascades until Christopher had come in and asked with some concern if she was going to get Billie ready for bed.
It had been raining outside. The rain had poured from the skies in deafening sheets that hammered on the tarmac, on the car, on the roofs and trees and the playground over the road from the house, where a swing swung backwards and forwards on the gusts of wind, and a woman had been standing waiting.
She wanted Billie back.
Helen’s daughter had been born to another woman. But all the papers were in order.
She remembered screaming, All the papers are in order, and she remembered pulling her purse from her bag and waving it in front of the other woman’s pale, determined face: How much do you want? How much do I need to pay you not to do this to me?
It wasn’t about the money, Billie’s biological mother said.
She knew that the papers were valid, she said, but they said nothing about Billie’s father. And he had come back now.
She said that with a slight smile, a vaguely triumphant expression, as if she had won a competition and couldn’t help boasting about it.
Father! Father! You never said anything about the father! You said you weren’t sure, and that in any case, the guy was gone, over the hills, an irresponsible slob, and you wouldn’t want Billie to be exposed to him. You said you wanted what was best for Billie, and that was for her to come and live with us, with Christopher and me, and that all the papers were in order. You even signed them! You signed, and Billie has her own room now, a room with pink wallpaper and a white crib with a mobile that she can reach out and touch, which makes her smile.
The father wanted to look after both of them, the woman said. She had to shout in the howling storm. He wanted to look after Billie and Billie’s real mother. Biological fathers had rights too. She was stupid not to have given his name when Billie was born, because then all this could have been avoided. She apologised. But that was the situation now. Her boyfriend was out of prison and had come back to her. Things had changed. Surely being a lawyer, Helen Bentley would understand that.
She unfortunately had to have Billie back now.
Madam President laid her palms against the tiles.
She couldn’t bear to remember. For over twenty years she had tried to suppress the memory of her panic as she turned away from the woman and ran towards the car on the other side of the road. She wanted to get the diamond necklace that her father had given her earlier that evening. They had been celebrating Billie, and her father’s face had been flushed and sweaty, and he had laughed and laughed about his little granddaughter, while everyone exclaimed how beautiful she was, how cute, little Billie Lardahl Bentley.
The necklace was still in the glove compartment, and maybe Helen could use the diamonds and a credit card to buy her child again.
Two credit cards. Three. Take them all!
But while she was fumbling with the car key and trying to hold back the tears and panic that were threatening to overwhelm her, she heard the loud thump. A frightening, solid sound that made her turn in time to see a body in a red raincoat sail through the air. Then she heard another thud through the rain as the woman hit the tarmac.
A small sports car spun off round the corner. Helen Bentley didn’t even register the colour. All was quiet.
Helen no longer heard the rain. She didn’t hear anything. Slowly and mechanically she walked across the road. When she was a few metres from the red-coated woman she stopped.