I place my palm on the cold glass pane. I’m so numb. Some of the one-sided conversation slips through the cold fog I am in: Something about seizing Ben’s phone records. Somebody has been to his place. Looking for clues. The phones are already tapped. A police inspector has been discreetly and unofficially contacted. Feelers are already out in the street. The disjointed thought in my numb brain: how fast these men move. As if they were expecting such a scenario. An ambulance, its siren turned off, but its lights flashing, passes us on its way to another tragedy.
I think of Sorab’s little face and a shudder goes through me. Where is he? He is not familiar with Ben. He will be so frightened. He will have to go to sleep without his favorite toy. He has never been to bed without clutching Sleepy Teddy. I think of him blinking up at me from my lap. The image is oddly painful.
And then a clear thought, so comforting: They will not hurt him. They just want money. Blake will give them whatever they ask. I know Blake has ties with the underworld and the mafia. Obviously, we will get our son back. Some part of me knows, of course, that I am probably deceiving myself, but at that moment that baseless belief comforts me tremendously. I lie back and close my eyes and don’t allow myself to think further than that. I just listen to the blood pounding steadily in my ears and concentrate on the feel of Blake’s thigh pressed into mine.
When I get home the nightmare becomes real. The dining room looks like a war office with listening equipment and gadgets I cannot recognize, and Geraldine looks at me with huge, frightened eyes.
‘I’m so sorry, Lana. I was only in the toilet for a minute,’ she says in a trembling voice.
Fourteen
Blake Law Barrington
Brian walks into the room and lowers himself into a chair and sits forward. He is sporting bronze stubble and looks uneasy. My senses flash a warning and adrenalin starts frothing into my veins. His eyes, always deliberately expressionless anyway, are flat and dead. I’ve known him a long time.
‘You’re not going to like this,’ he says.
A man like him is not prone to exaggeration. In fact, he is like a black hole sucking in all kinds of information and observations and never giving anything back. At his words a strange coldness invades my body. It is already so tense that it feels as if every nerve is screaming, but I force myself not to react.
‘We picked up the pings that came off the unidentified mobile phones that Ben was in contact with. We ran through every number on them for the last six months. One of the numbers was registered to a woman called Angel Levene. She works in the mental asylum Victoria is committed in. But here’s the real kicker. The one time it was used to call Ben’s number, the tower that served it was located close to the mental asylum.’
A chill goes through my body. I gape. ‘Victoria?’
Brian doesn’t say anything. A corner of his eye twitches. I never noticed that nervous tic in his cheek. I drop my eyes to the papers on my table and see a blur of white. You’re not going to like this. It has scared the shit out of me. I’m fucking terrified.
Fruitcake Victoria’s got my son? The implications are beyond anything I could have imagined.
For a long time after Brian leaves I do nothing. Simply stare out of the window. Shocked by how blissfully unaware I had been of the impending storm. Once, I would never have been caught so unprepared. I have changed. I’ve become soft. Then I get up and go to look for her. She is in the south facing reception room. She spends most of her time there now. The rest of the house seems so full of cold-eyed men. I can hear strains of Puccini’s Nessun Dorma as I get closer. It makes my hair stand on end.
Nobody shall sleep! Nobody shall sleep! Even you. O Princess.
I stand at the door and watch her, how still she is. When I move into the room, she catches the movement and starts rising to meet me, but she is seemingly so dazed she has to test the sole of her shoe on the floor before she puts her weigh on that foot.
We stand a few feet away from each other. I’ll never be able to listen to Turandot again without having this feeling that I am a falling glass, about to hit the tiles. About to shatter into a thousand pieces.
Fifteen
Lana Barrington
He stands at the door of the living room. He knows something. And it’s not good. I stand and look at him expectantly.
‘Victoria’s got him.’
Time stops. I freeze. He freezes. Then I am flying across the room to him—he catches me and holds me so tightly against his chest my feet lift off the ground. I begin to sob into his neck.
‘Don’t, my darling. Don’t cry, don’t,’ he whispers again and again, but I cannot stop. I want to blame someone, but there is no one to blame.
He gathers a fistful of my hair and pulls my face away from his neck and kisses me. His kiss is odd. It is as if with that kiss he wants to suck away my pain. There is no erection against my stomach. Even in my sorrow, I hate that. It feels wrong. Everything is wrong. I let the strange passionless kiss go on and on and then I break away and stare at him breathlessly.
‘But you said she is locked away in an asylum?’
‘She is.’
I frown. ‘Then how can she…? I don’t understand.’
‘Victoria is more resourceful than I gave her credit for.’
So there is someone I can blame. I can blame him. He is at fault. It is his fault that my baby is gone. At that moment I feel his separateness from me. My face twists at my own crazy thoughts. I pull myself back from that cliff edge. But even that one second of doubt and blame that I indulge in breaks something precious. I break ‘us’.
I see his face change and a look of such hurt and pain come into his eyes that I am immediately filled with regret. He has given me so much and asked for so little in return. My hands rush up to his neck and wrap themselves tightly around it.
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, darling. I did not mean it. I love you. You’re the last person I want to hurt. I’m just so scared I don’t know what I’m saying.’
‘But you are right. It is my fault. You entrusted me with his safety. I have failed. I have let both of you down.’ His voice is scarily quiet. In all the time I have known him I have never heard it so. It feels as if he has walked away from me, for good. I pull back and stare at him. Could it be that what we had was nothing? That with one moment of mistrust he could walk away. That our great love cannot survive this tragedy.
He turns away from me, and my betrayal of him during his time of greatest need. I try to pull him back to me, but he is already striding away. I watch the door shut behind him with horror.
For some time I wait. His footsteps become fainter. I listen intently. Maybe he will realize and come back. Of course he will come. A whole minute passes. He’s not coming back. When I hear his car start outside, I sink to the floor and, holding onto my belly with both hands, sob—ugly wrenching wails that come from a place I did not know existed.
I did not feel this depth of loss even when I walked away from Blake, pregnant and lost, and left for Iran. It seems as if all this while I was playing at motherhood. I have known nothing, but the fun stuff. But this—this hurts so fucking bad.
‘Oh God. Oh God. Please don’t take my son away from me. Please. He’s just a baby. Take me.’
Suddenly, I stop blubbering. There it is. The truth that was staring me in the face the whole time. It is not Blake’s fault. It is mine. I came back to Blake. I dared her wrath. I was the one who was so naïve and stupid I did not think further than my passion. Both Billie and Jack warned me and I did not listen. It’s not Blake that is to blame. It is me. I stole another woman’s man.