A Special Relationship (33 page)

‘I need to stop at a cash machine, please,’ I said.

We pulled up in front of a Nat West machine on West Hill – possibly the ugliest section of road in South London. I fed in my card, hit the numbers, and was greeted with the following message on the screen:

This Account has been closed. Please contact your local branch should you have any further queries.

Instantly I re-fed the card into the machine and pressed the necessary numbers, and once again read:

This Account has been closed. Please contact your local branch should you have any further queries.

Account closed? He couldn’t have …

I rifled through my wallet until I found an AMEX card which I held jointly with Tony. I fed it into the machine. I punched in the Pin Number. I read:

Card No Longer Valid.

No, no,
no.
I saw the driver glance at me with concern. I checked my purse. My net liquid worth was £8.40 – and the round-trip fare was bound to be at least £20. I tried my own account, into which my
Boston Post
salary used to be paid. It had been largely depleted over the last few months since I was no longer employed by the
Post.
Whatever remaining funds were left over from the paper’s final payout to me had been transferred to our joint account – to help cover the mortgage and also pay for some of the final renovations to the house. But I was still hoping that there might be a little cash left in it – so I punched in the PIN number requesting £200. The screen message read:

Insufficient Funds.

I tried £100. The message read:

Insufficient Funds.

I tried £50. Bingo. Five ten pound notes came sliding out towards me. My new liquid worth was £58.40.

Actually, it was £36.40 by the time I paid off the driver.

Back at the house, I rang the bank. The customer services representative confirmed that the joint account I held with Tony had been closed down two days ago. Ditto our shared VISA card – though the good news was that the outstanding balance of £4882.31 had been paid off. How kind of him.

‘What about any outstanding funds in the joint account?’ I asked. ‘Where did they end up?’

‘There were no outstanding funds. On the contrary, there was an overdraft of £2420.18 ... but it’s also been cleared.’

‘Let me ask you something: don’t you need the written permission of both parties to close down a bank account?’

‘But the account was always in Mr Hobbs’s name. He just added you as an adjunct signatory ten months ago.’

An adjunct signatory.
It said it all.

I tried to reason all this through. Tony quits his job. Jack’s nursery is exactly replicated in the house of that Dexter woman. And our bank accounts are both closed, after debts of around £7300 are paid off.

What the hell was going on here?

‘Don’t you get it?’ Sandy said after I called her and horrified her with a detailed account of my London homecoming. ‘He’s met some rich bitch. And the way he’s set the whole thing up makes it pretty damn clear that he wanted you to find out about the whole set-up straight away. I mean, he could have used your own address in the court order. Why didn’t he?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe because he wanted you to know immediately about his new life. I mean, imagine if he had just disappeared with Jack, without letting you have his new address. You’d have the cops on his tail. This way … you know exactly what’s happened …’

‘But not
why
it’s happened.’

‘To hell with
why.
He’s taken Jack. You’ve got to get him back. But the first thing you’ve got to do is find a lawyer.’

‘I’m waiting for someone to call me back.’

‘How are you going to pay for it?’

‘Remember the bonds Mom and Dad left each of us?’

‘Mine were cashed in long ago.’

‘Well, I’m about to do the same. They should be worth around $10,000 now.’

‘That’s something, I guess.’

‘But if I don’t have any other income …’

‘One thing at a time. Get on to the lawyer. Now.’

‘Right,’ I said, suddenly feeling exhausted.

‘More importantly, do you have some friends in town who can look after you?’

‘Sure,’ I lied. ‘I’ve left a couple of messages.’

‘Bullshit,’ she said. And then her voice cracked. ‘Jesus, Sally – this is horrible.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is.’

‘And I wish I could jump a plane right now …’

‘You’ve got enough to cope with.’

‘You won’t do anything stupid …’

‘Not yet.’

‘Now you have me scared.’

‘Don’t be.’

But the truth was: I had me scared too.

I called back Virginia Ricks at three pm that afternoon. I was connected to her voice mail. I left a message. I called back at five pm. This time, I was connected to her secretary again.

‘Like I told you before,’ she said, ‘she’s out at court all day.’

‘But it is urgent. Genuinely
urgent.
And I desperately need …’

I broke off, covered the mouthpiece with my hand, and started to sob. When I was finally able to speak again, I discovered that the line was dead.

I called back. Now I found myself on voice mail again.

‘It is absolutely imperative that you get Ms Ricks to call me back as soon as possible.’

But I received no further calls for the rest of the day. Or night. Except for Sandy who rang at six pm London time and then again at ten pm to check up on me.

‘No news at all?’ she asked.

‘I’ve been waiting by the phone all night. For what, I don’t know.’

‘You did try Tony’s cell phone again?’

‘Only about five more times. It’s locked on to voice mail. Which means it’s pointless continuing. He’s screening all his calls.’

‘But you’ll still keep trying?’

‘What other option do I have?’

‘You should go to sleep.’

‘It’s an idea, yeah.’

I took two sleeping tablets with my end-of-the-day dose of anti-depressants. Around three that morning, I jerked awake – and the silence of the house seemed cavernous. I walked into the empty nursery. I could hear the voice of Ellen Cartwright – the hospital therapist – telling me over and over again,
It’s not your fault … it’s not your fault.

But I knew better. I was the architect of my own disaster. I had nobody to blame but myself. And now …

Now I was desperate for a friendly, reassuring voice. So, at eight that morning, I rang the private number that Ellen gave me, ‘in case of any emergency’, as she said at the time. Well, this definitely qualified as an emergency, which meant I hoped she’d be sympathetic about the earliness of the call.

But I didn’t speak to Ellen – instead I got her answer-phone, which informed me that she was on annual leave and would be back three weeks from now.

Three weeks.
I couldn’t last three weeks.

I made myself some tea. I ran a bath. But I was terrified of getting into the bath, out of fear that Tony would ring and I wouldn’t hear the call. And the phone was on the far side of the bedroom – well away from the bath, which meant that it might take me a good seven rings before I reached it, by which time I would have missed the call, and then …

All right, this was completely manic logic –
I could find an extension cord and move the phone closer to the bath, right?
– but I couldn’t latch on to any sort of logic just now. I was in the deepest trouble imaginable – and the same damn question kept replaying itself inside my head:
what can I do now?

Once again, the answer was:
Nothing … until the lawyer calls.

Which she finally did around nine-thirty that morning. From her mobile phone, stuck somewhere in traffic. Her voice was crisply cadenced, plummy.

‘Sally Goodchild? Ginny Ricks here. My secretary said you called yesterday. Something urgent, yes?’

‘Yes, my husband’s vanished with our son.’

‘Vanished? Really?’

‘Well, not exactly vanished. While I was out of the country, he got a court order giving him residence of my baby …’

‘You know,’ she said, cutting me off, ‘this is probably best discussed face-to-face. How are you fixed at the end of the week … say Friday around four pm?’

‘But that’s two days from now.’

‘Best I can do, I’m afraid. Lots of divorcing couples right now. So Friday it is then, yes?’

‘Sure.’

‘You know where to find us?’

And she gave me an address in Chancery Lane.

When Margaret called me that afternoon for a transatlantic update, I mentioned that I had managed to get an appointment with someone from Lawrence and Lambert.

‘Well, that’s a start.’

‘But she can’t see me for two days, and ... I don’t know … maybe I’m pre-judging her on the basis of one fast phone call, but her tone was so damn supercilious.’

‘They’re all a bit like that,’ she said.

‘Alexander doesn’t know of anybody else over here?’

‘I can ask him again, but by the time I get back to you it will be tomorrow, and by the time you call the firm and get an appointment …’

‘All right, point taken.’

‘Don’t you have some friends there who can point you towards some lawyer they know?’

Here was that question again:
don’t you have friends in London?
The long answer to which was: I arrived here pregnant. A few months later, I ended up being confined to quarters with high blood pressure. Since then … well, let’s not go through that happy scenario again. So, no – I’ve found no toe-hold here whatsoever. And it’s all my own fault.

‘No – I really don’t know many people around town.’

‘Hey, don’t beat yourself up over that,’ she said. ‘It took me more than a year to meet anyone in London. It’s that kind of a town.’

‘I’m desperate to see Jack,’ I said.

More than desperate. It was an actual physical ache.

‘I can’t even begin to imagine …’

‘Don’t say it …’

The next forty-eight hours were hell. I tried to stay busy. I cleaned the house. Twice. I called my old bank in Boston, asked them to cash in my bonds, and wire the entire amount over to me. I took my anti-depressants with metronomic regularity – and often wondered if this pharmacological compound was keeping me in check; if, without it, I would have already descended into complete mania. Somehow I was managing to push my way through the day. I even called back Tony’s secretary and apologized for the scene at Wapping the previous day.

‘There’s absolutely no need for an apology,’ Judith Crandell said. ‘I understand completely.’

‘But do you understand why Tony quit?’

A silence. Then, ‘Sally … it’s not that I am unduly loyal to Tony, it’s just... I don’t think it’s my business to involve myself in your business.’

‘But Tony told you about my … illness … didn’t he?’ ‘Yes, he did mention that you had been … unwell.’

‘So you did know a certain amount about my business. Which means you also must know something about the woman he’s vanished with.’

‘This is very awkward …’

‘I just have to make contact with him. What he’s doing is so unfair.’

‘I’m sorry, Sally. But I just can’t help you here.’

I phoned Tony’s deputy, Simon Pinnock. He was similarly evasive (and just a little mortified) to be cornered like this by the shunned wife of his ex-boss.

‘I really don’t have a clue why he did what he did,’ he said, the nervousness showing.

‘Come on, Simon,’ I said. ‘I think you do.’

‘If you’ll excuse me, I’m being called into conference…’

I even tried ringing Tony’s long-estranged sister – whom I’d never met (they’d had a falling out over something he wouldn’t discuss with me), and who now lived in East Sussex. It took some dogged on-line digging in the BT directory to find her number. She didn’t particularly want to talk with me either.

‘Haven’t spoken to Tony in years – so why should he call me now?’ she said.

‘It was just a long shot.’

‘How long have you two been married now?’

‘Around a year.’

‘And he’s already abandoned you? That’s fast work, right enough. Mind you, I’m not surprised. He’s the abandoning sort.’

‘You mean, he’s done this before?’

‘Maybe.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘Maybe
I feel I don’t need to give you an answer. Especially having adopted that tone with me …’