She inched the draught excluder into place with a toe, stop the cold air coming in and snaking meanly around the downstairs rooms.
Skye’s stitches had healed now and she could move like a normal human being again. She’d stopped wearing the sanitary towel ten days ago and now she really was back to her old self. Still, habit made her go up the stairs slowly, her body still feeling a little full, cumbersome. Her breasts ached all the time. Just the tiniest brush against something and they’d be leaking everywhere. Sometimes she thought she was more eager to get the feeding done than Charlie was.
She waddled down the long, cold corridor to the nursery, stood in the doorway and took a moment to look at him, fast asleep on his back, arms above his shoulders, head turned to the side, mouth making little sucking movements. Charlie – the biggest and most important thing she had to be thankful to Nigel for. She went to the cot and smiled down at him. If it had been left to her she’d let Charlie sleep in bed with her. It would be easier to soothe him when he woke. To wrap an arm around his head and push a nipple into his sleepy mouth. But the screaming brigade of health visitors, relatives and childcare books had trampled her down. Reminded her she was the product of hippies and that, really, if she didn’t set the boundaries now, Charlie would never know which was his bed and which was Mum and Dad’s. He’d be scarred for life and end up a hopeless tangle of separation anxieties.
‘But a few minutes now won’t hurt, will it, little boy? Promise you’ll go back afterwards?’
She lifted him from the cot, grateful not to feel the tug of stitches any more. Put him over her shoulder and wrapped the blanket round him. Then, one hand on his tiny warm skull, the other on his bottom, and moving carefully because sometimes it terrified her that she might trip, drop him maybe, she padded next door to her and Nigel’s bedroom at the front of the house. She kicked the door closed behind her and sat on the bed. The light was off, but the curtains were open, and the room was filled with the yellow light of the streetlamp at the top of the drive.
Careful not to wake Charlie, she lowered her face and gave his bottom a sniff. Nothing. She unsnapped the poppers on the legs of his sleepsuit and wormed a finger in to check his nappy. Damp.
‘Nappy change, little man.’
With an effort, not using her hands, she tipped herself back on to her feet. Carried him across to the baby-changing station by the window. It was quite a number, in green and orange, with a strap to hold him safe and lots of drawers for different things: nappies, bags for the dirty ones, wipes, cream. Skye’s colleagues had bought it for her. She thought the gift showed a tenderness towards babies uncharacteristic of the mostly male solicitors with whom she worked and she was sure they’d only done it out of pity. Probably they were thinking that Charlie signalled the end of her useful career as a divorce lawyer.
Maybe they were right, she thought, as she unsnapped the Babygro – because these days the thought of going back to work made her want to cry. It wasn’t just the long hours she dreaded. Or the backbiting. It was the thought of existing at the sharp end of people’s cruelty, as if Charlie’s birth had skinned her of a protective layer. She didn’t think she’d be able to face seeing naked human nature at its rawest any more. It was more than just the few occasions where she’d heard, in the course of the divorces, accusations of child abuse. It was the acrimony, the loading of blame, the feral struggle for self. In just a few short weeks her faith in her job had evaporated.
‘Hey, little guy.’ She smiled down at Charlie, who had half woken up and was moving his fists weakly up and down, opening his mouth ready to cry. ‘Just a nappy change. Then a cuddle. Then back to your nasty old cot.’ But he didn’t cry and she managed the change with him still half asleep. She dressed him and laid him on the blanket on her bed. Puffed the pillows up against the headboard. ‘Now listen, little Charlie, you mustn’t get used to Mummy’s bed. The Nazis will come after Mummy if you do.’
She kicked off her slippers, pulled off the dressing-gown, and crawled across the bed on all fours to him. She thought he might wake up, want to feed, but he didn’t. After a few seconds he stopped agitating his arms and moving his mouth, and his eyes closed. His face slackened. She lay on her side, her cheek resting on her hand, and watched him sleep. Little Charlie. Little Charlie, who was everything to her.
The bedroom was quiet. The streetlight came in from the window and reflected off points in the room: a glass of water on the bedside table, the mirror, the row of nail varnishes on a shelf high up. Each surface sent back dull, reflective glimmers. But there was an extra glint in the room that she wouldn’t have recognized even if she’d noticed it. High above her head, among the ornate folds and creases of the plaster ceiling rose, nestled a tiny glass disc. The tireless, unblinking lens of a surveillance camera.
66
Bang. The barge shuddered. The squeal of rusting metal echoed in the tunnel. Bang.
Prody wasn’t in the water any more. He had crawled up on to the deck of the barge and was rocking the windlass, trying to dislodge it from the hatch. Three feet beneath him Flea stared up at the hatch. Every time he moved, the stripes of moonlight that criss-crossed their way through the dark were blotted out. She closed her eyes. There was a hard knot in her stomach – a hard knot from thinking about Martha’s shoe. About her grave and about the angle grinder, the way the motor had seized. Because of what? Because it had already been used to chew through meat and bone? And what had been in that sandwich? There was nothing she would put past Prody. Nothing.
She opened her eyes, twisted her head back and looked at the bulkhead hatch, then up at the rope locker. There wasn’t time to just sit here. She had to—
Above her Prody stopped rocking the windlass.
Silence. She stared clear-eyed at the outline of the hatch, holding her breath. There was a long pause, then he fell heavily on the deck, blocking the moonlight outline. He was lying directly above her. Inches away on the other side of the hull. She could hear his breathing. She could hear the shush-shush of his nylon jacket. She was surprised she couldn’t hear his heart pounding.
‘Oh, look! I can see your head.’
She flinched. Pulled herself back as tight into the hull as she could.
‘I can see you. What’s the matter? You’re very quiet all of a sudden.’
She put her fingers to her forehead, felt the pulse there, screwed up her face and tried to put all this insanity into place. When she didn’t answer he shifted so his mouth was to the crack in the hatch. His breathing changed, became spasmodic. He was masturbating – or pretending to. The knot in her belly tightened – thinking about a little girl who probably didn’t even know what sex was, let alone why a grown man would want to do it to a small child. A little girl, or what was left of her, lying in a grave less than fifty yards away. Overhead Prody was sniffing, making a noise as if he was sucking the insides of his cheeks. Something – a drop of moisture – leaked through the gap and hung on the underside of the deck. A tear or saliva, she wasn’t sure which. It trembled in the moonlight, then broke off and fell with a tiny plink into the barge.
She lowered her hand and gazed coldly at the hatch. The drop had been liquid but it hadn’t been semen. Yet she’d been meant to think it was. He was tormenting her. But why bother? Why not just get it over and done with? Her eyes went to the place where moonlight sliced into the hull through the scar he’d made with the angle grinder. She thought she understood why. He was doing it because he knew he couldn’t get to her.