‘I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr Tyler, but we haven’t done anything to hurt you. Please let Charlie go.’
‘Have her periods started?’
‘What difference does that make?’
‘I want to know if she’s ovulating. Maybe I’ll put a baby in her. You can be a grandmother, a glamorous granny.’
‘Take me instead.’
‘Why would I want a grandmother? I’ll be honest with you, Julianne, you’re a fine looking woman, but I prefer your daughter. It’s not that I’m into little girls. I’m not a pervert. You see, Julianne, when I fuck her, I’m going to be fucking you. When I hurt her, I’m going to be hurting you. I can touch you in ways that you can’t even imagine, without laying a finger on you.’
I look up and down the street and cross over. People walk around me, occasionally jostling my shoulder and apologising. My eyes scan the street ahead.
‘I’ll do anything you want,’ she sobs.
‘Anything?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t believe you. You’re going to have to prove it.’
‘How?’
‘You have to show me.’
‘OK, but only if you show me Charlie.’
‘I can do that. I’ll let you see her right now. I’m sending you something.’
I press a button and the photograph transmits. I wait, listening for her reaction. There it is! It’s a sharp intake of breath, the strangled cry. She is lost for words, staring at her daughter’s head, encased in masking tape, breathing through a tube.
‘Give my regards to your husband, Julianne. Tell him he’s running out of time.’
Police cars are heading south along St Augustine’s Parade. I step onto a bus heading north, watching the police pass in the opposite direction. I lean my head against the window and look down the Christmas Steps, falling away to my right.
Five minutes later, I step off the bus in Lower Maudlin Street before the roundabout. Stretching my arms above my head, I feel the vertebrae crack and pop along my spine.
The bus has turned the corner. Wedged between two seats, in a hamburger wrapper, the mobile phone is still transmitting. Out of sight and out of mind.
58
Sniffy nudges her bony head into my ankle, purring as she rubs her body along my calf and twirls to come back again. She’s hungry. I open the refrigerator and find a half-open can of cat food covered in foil. I spoon some into her bowl and pour her some milk.
The kitchen table is covered with the debris of the day. Emma had cheese sandwiches and juice for lunch. She didn’t eat the crusts. Charlie used to be the same. ‘My hair is curly enough,’ she told me at age five. ‘I think I’ve had enough crusts.’
I will never forget seeing Charlie born. She arrived two weeks late, on a bitter January night. I guess she wanted to stay somewhere warm. The obstetrician induced her with Prostaglandin and told us the drug would take eight hours to work so he was going home to bed. Julianne went into accelerated labour and was fully dilated within three hours. There wasn’t enough time for the obstetrician to get back to the hospital. A big black midwife delivered Charlie, ordering me around the delivery suite like a puppy that needed housetraining.
Julianne didn’t want me looking ‘at the business end’, she said. She wanted me to stay up next to her face, wiping her brow and holding her hand. I didn’t follow orders. Once I saw the dark-haired crown of the baby’s head appear between her thighs, I wasn’t going anywhere. I had a front row seat for the best show in town.
‘It’s a girl,’ I said to Julianne.
‘Are you sure?’
I looked again. ‘Oh, yeah.’
Then I seem to remember there was competition to see which of us would cry first- the baby or me. Charlie won because I cheated and hid my face. I had never been so satisfied taking total credit for something I had so little to do with.
The midwife handed me the scissors to cut the umbilical cord. She swaddled Charlie and handed her to me. It was Charlie’s birthday, yet I was the one getting all the presents. I carried her across to a mirror and stared at our reflections. She opened the bluest of eyes and looked at me. To this day, I have never been looked at like that.
Julianne had passed out, exhausted. Charlie did the same. I wanted to wake her up. I mean, what child sleeps through her birthday? I wanted her to look at me just like before, like I was the first person she had ever seen.
The humming refrigerator rattles into stillness and in the sudden quietness I feel a small ceaseless tremor vibrating inside me, expanding, filling my lungs. I am disconnected. Cold. My hands have stopped shaking. Suddenly, I seem to be paralysed by an odourless, colourless, invisible gas. Despair.
I don’t hear the door open. I don’t hear footsteps.
‘Hello.’
I open my eyes. Darcy is standing in the kitchen, wearing a beanie, a denim jacket and patched jeans.
‘How did you get here?’
‘A friend brought me.’
I turn to the door and see Ruiz, rumpled, careworn, still wearing his rugby tie at half-mast.
‘How are you doing, Joe?’
‘Not so good.’
He shuffles closer. If he hugs me I’ll start to cry. Darcy does it for him, putting her arms around my neck and squeezing me from behind.
‘I heard it on the radio,’ she says. ‘Is it the same man- the one I met on the train?’
‘Yes.’
She takes off her rainbow-coloured gloves. Her cheeks are flushed with the change in temperature.
‘How did you two find each other?’ I ask.
Darcy glances at Ruiz. ‘I’ve sort of been staying with him.’
I look at the two of them in amazement.
‘Since when?’
‘Since I ran away.’
Then I remember the clothes in the dryer in Ruiz’s laundry; a tartan skirt in the wicker basket. I should have recognised it. Darcy was wearing it when she first turned up at the cottage.
I look at Ruiz. ‘You said your daughter was home.’
‘She is,’ he replies, shrugging away my anger as easily as he does his overcoat.
‘Claire’s a dancer,’ adds Darcy. ‘Did you know she trained with the Royal Ballet? She says there’s a special hardship scholarship for people like me. She’s going to help me apply.’
I’m not really listening to the substance of what she’s saying. I’m still waiting for Ruiz to explain.
‘The kid needed a few days. I didn’t think there was any harm.’
‘I was worried about her.’
‘She’s not your concern.’
There’s an edge to the statement. I wonder how much he knows.
Darcy is still talking. ‘Vincent found my father. I met him. It was pretty weird, but OK. I thought he’d be better looking, you know, taller or maybe famous, but he’s just an ordinary old guy. Normal. He’s a food importer. He brings in caviar. That’s fish eggs. He let me try some. Talk about gross. He said it tasted like ocean spray, I thought it tasted like shit.’
‘Language,’ says Ruiz. Darcy looks at him sheepishly.
Ruiz has taken a seat opposite me, placing his hands flat on the table. ‘I checked the guy out. Lives in Cambridge. Married. Two kids. He’s all right.’
Then he changes the subject and asks about Julianne.
‘She’s gone with the police.’
‘You should be with her.’
‘She doesn’t want me there and the police think I’m a liability.’
‘A liability- that’s an interesting analysis. Then again, I’ve often thought your ideas were dangerously subversive.’
‘I’m hardly a radical.’
‘More like a candidate for Rotary.’
He’s teasing me. I can’t find the energy to smile.
Darcy asks after Emma. She’s gone. My parents have taken her to Wales, along with Imogen. My mother burst into tears when she saw Charlie’s room and didn’t stop sobbing until my father gave her an oversized box of tissues and told her to wait in the car. Then God’s-personal-physician-in-waiting gave me his stiff upper lip speech, which sounded like something Michael Caine delivered in Zulu.
Everyone means well. I’ve had calls from three of my sisters, who each told me I was being stoic and they were saying prayers. Unfortunately, I’m not interested in hearing cliches or comforting words. I want to be kicking open doors and shaking trees until I get my Charlie back.