After Anna (30 page)

So, a real ale lover. And, it seemed, amphibians:

Evening listening to frogs at local vernal pond. #Norfolkboy #BestcountyinEngland

So, a real ale lover from Norfolk. She carried on reading. Here was something from a year ago:

Love being an engineer. New job in pumps. Awesome.

And a tweet in reply, from @RobParker:

Congrats mate looking forward to seeing you in the office and celebrating with a few jars. Nice one

Almost certainly a man, then, and a man who worked as a pump engineer in Norfolk, with someone called Rob Parker.

From then on it was easy. On LinkedIn there was a Rob Parker working at a small sewage pump company in Norfolk. He only had seventeen connections, one of whom was a man called Clive Gaskell, who had joined around a year ago, and who was chairman of his local real ale society.

A search on Clive Gaskell revealed a Facebook profile of a man in his late forties, married, two kids. His profile picture was a pond in the evening.

Bingo.

A few more clicks and she had the name of the owner of the pump company: Jenny Jones. She had a Twitter profile too. Julia typed out a tweet in reply to @vernaldraft’s most offensive effort:

@vernaldraft Not sure about
#forcedsterilization
. Seems a bit eugenics to me. Sure you want him working for you @jjpumps?

Then, just for good measure, she replied to the others:

What about this one @vernaldraft @jjpumps?

Or this one @vernaldraft @jjpumps?

That should make Clive Gaskell think twice before abusing someone again.

She closed her laptop. Fun as it was, spiking the guns of her Twitter enemies was nothing more than a way of taking some kind of control of her situation, a way of breaking the habit of seeing herself as powerless in the face of her husband and the press and the courts and Edna.

Which was going to be important, as the real work was just about to get started.

‘You know,’ Mike said. ‘I think it might be better if I go to see Derek alone.’

Julia stiffened. She glanced out of the passenger-side window of Mike’s Audi. A woman pushing a pram looked back at her, her face drawn and harried. They were on their way to see Derek Jacobs, the retired magistrate who had witnessed Julia scratching Brian.

‘Why? I thought we were going to talk to him together.’

‘I don’t want him to feel pressured,’ Mike said. ‘He might clam up.’

‘I do want him to feel pressured!’ Julia said. ‘He has to know what’s at stake here! I want him to have to look me in the eye.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Mike said. ‘But he was a magistrate. If he thinks there’s going to be a custody case then he may simply refuse to talk. If it’s just me then he might be more relaxed. And I’ve known him for a long time. I can keep it off the record.’

‘You know him?’

‘I’ve been a lawyer in this town for three decades, Julia. He was a magistrate. Our paths crossed from time to time.’

‘I don’t know, Mike. I want to see him.’

The car slowed to a stop at a red light. Mike turned to face her. ‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘It’s better this way. Really. I know Derek. He’ll talk to me. If you’re there … I don’t know.’

‘Ok, we’ll do it your way.’

‘Thanks. Now, talk me through what happened at Edna’s house again.’

‘There’s not much to say,’ she said. ‘Brian and Edna pushed me and I lost my temper – wrong, I know, but I was tired and they had my daughter – and I scratched his face. And this guy was there to see it all.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s typical Edna. In the middle of all this and she had a lunch guest. She said it was a long-standing appointment. It’s exactly the kind of thing she would do: carry on with some social engagement so that she didn’t lose face.’

‘You have to admire her,’ Mike said. ‘She’s got balls, if you know what I mean.’

‘I’m not sure “admire” is the word I’d use.’

They pulled into the car park of a white-walled pub. Mike switched off the engine.

‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back in an hour.’

Julia watched Mike shuffle across the damp tarmac of the pub car park. His suede shoes were stained and his trousers were baggy and shapeless. She felt a tug of sympathy for him: he was going to grow old alone. The highlights of his life: boozy lunches with former colleagues and visits from his daughters; highlights that would only serve to show how desperate the rest of his life was. The problem for Mike wasn’t that he would be alone – plenty of people put up with, or even enjoyed, that – but that he didn’t want to be. She could picture him as a young dad, warm, goofy, fond of telling bad jokes and reading good books to his girls. And as a husband: loyal, considerate, generous, and prepared to play his role; work hard to provide for his family. It was a shame it wasn’t enough for his wife: a woman she had met since their divorce whom she couldn’t help but dislike because of what she had done to Mike.

Of course, people could say that she was no better. She wasn’t happy with Brian – a fundamentally decent man – so she was walking away. If Mike’s wife should have stayed with him, why was it different for her? She wasn’t sure it was.

Anyway, now was not the time to think like this. She took out her phone and scrolled through her emails. She had a request from LinkedIn. It was an old friend – well, an acquaintance, really – from university. She was working in Leeds as Managing Director of a haulage firm, which was not where Julia would have imagined her ending up. They’d met when Julia had acted in her one and only student play. Charlotte was blonde and petite and girly.

She accepted the request, then flicked through her contacts. A guy she had dated during high school was now VP of Marketing for some big corporate. She should have stuck with him, except for the fact that he could only get aroused if she pretended to be a cat. The first time it was almost enjoyable, but after that it became downright weird. She’d been recommended for strategic thinking by a former colleague. Nice to know. And Brian was celebrating a work anniversary. Five years in his current job. She clicked on his name. He didn’t have many contacts. One of them, she was surprised to see, was Edna.

Edna had a mere nine contacts. Of course she did: very few people, Julia included, would merit inclusion in her inner circle. Julia glanced over them.

And then she sat up in the car seat, her stomach tight.

Edna was connected to the News Editor at the
Daily World.

Julia read it again, then typed the man’s name into Google. He had a bio on Wikipedia: Oxford alumnus, at the same time as Edna.

Why hadn’t Edna mentioned it? She could have leaned on the guy and stopped them from publishing all the rubbish about Julia. It was amazing she had a contact like that and hadn’t used it.

Unless, of course, she had.

‘No,’ Julia said, out loud in the empty car. ‘No, she wouldn’t.’

Was it possible that Edna had leaked the information to the
Daily World
? Surely she wouldn’t have done something like that. But it made sense: it was either the police or someone else who knew what was going on, and there were very few of them. After confronting Brian, Julia had assumed it was someone close to the police, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was Edna?

Her head was spinning. It was a struggle to concentrate. But one thing was clear: if Edna had done it, it would blow the custody case wide apart.

Forty minutes later, Mike was back.

He opened the door and sat in the car, the smell of beer settling in with him. The glassy look in his eye suggested he’d had at least a couple of pints in the hour he’d been in there.

Julia didn’t care. She was flush with her discovery.

‘Mike,’ she said. ‘I think I found something out. Something important.’

‘That’s a coincidence,’ he said, ‘because so did I.’

vii.

‘You go first,’ Mike said.

Julia handed him her phone. He read it and looked up at her.

‘So?’ he said. ‘It’s Edna’s LinkedIn profile.’

‘Look who she’s linked to.’

Mike glanced back at the screen. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I see.’

‘Yeah,’ Julia said. ‘So here’s what I think, Mike: I think she leaked the details of my so-called suicide attempt and negligent parenting and rumours of an affair to the press.’

‘An hour ago,’ Mike said. ‘I would have said you were crazy. But not now. Not after what Derek told me.’

‘Which was?’

‘I asked what happened at Edna’s house. His story was pretty much the same as yours. He expressed some regret that you were going to lose out, but he couldn’t help. It was your own fault for losing your temper.’

‘Sympathetic guy.’

‘He has a point, Julia. Anyway, I didn’t think I was going to get much, but then I mentioned that it must have been strange to be there at such a difficult time, but Edna was the kind of person who held to her engagements, especially those of long standing.’ He paused. ‘And then it happened. He looked at me funnily – sort of confused – and said that it wasn’t a long-standing engagement. Edna had invited him that morning. She said she wanted to keep things as normal as possible and could do with the moral support.’

‘What did you say?’ Julia said.

‘Not much. I just glossed over it. Pretended that it was nothing.’ He started the car and put his hand on the gear stick. ‘But it’s not nothing, Julia. It means she was planning something. It means she set you up. And if she was leaking stuff to the papers as well … ’ he looked at Julia and grinned, ‘then we have a case.’

They stopped at another pub, a mile down the road. This time it was Julia who needed a drink. She ordered a glass of Sauvignon blanc; Mike had a diet Coke.

‘So what do we do with this?’ she said. ‘Should I confront her?’

Mike shook his head. ‘Do nothing for now, and say nothing. She and Brian think they have the upper hand. The last thing we need to do is warn them that we know more than they think. We need to wait until we have everything in place before we do that. So, for now, act as though nothing’s changed: pick up Anna when you’re supposed to, return her at the appointed time.’

‘And in the meantime?’

‘In the meantime, we need to prove she leaked the story.’

‘How?’ asked Julia. ‘The paper will hide behind journalistic privilege. Sanctity of the source, that kind of thing.’

‘I know,’ Mike said. ‘Miserable hypocrites that they are. I’ve been wondering how we could compel them to reveal their source. But it’ll be difficult.’

‘Unless we do the same thing ourselves,’ Julia said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Fight fire with fire. If Edna can leak lies, then we can leak the truth. We can tell a rival newspaper what’s going on. If they print it, the
Daily World
will have to confirm it or deny it.’

‘Or they can do neither,’ Mike said. ‘But the absence of a denial will be enough. And I doubt they will deny it publicly. The fallout would be too great.’ He raised his diet Coke. ‘So, it seems we have a plan,’ he said. ‘Play dumb with Brian and Edna for now, while we arrange our chess pieces.’

Julia lifted her glass and clinked the rim against Mike’s.

‘Sounds good to me,’ she said.

14

Doll’s House

i.

You can relax now. The child is where you want her. You are surprised it happened so quickly, but that’s ok. You are not so foolish as to look a gift horse in the mouth. Vigilance is required, of course. You never know what will happen, what people will do when they are desperate. After all, you have been desperate yourself, and look what you did.

You still cannot believe you managed it. To take the child, hide her, and return her unhurt, without hardly a moment when you felt that you might be caught; it was something special, even for you, even for someone with your past, with your
capabilities
.

You can admit that luck has been on your side. You have to. Everything went perfectly. You would have succeeded anyway, you’re sure of that – good planning and intelligence would have seen to it – but the luck helped. What was it Napoleon said? Give me a lucky general over a good one?

Well, how about one who is both, Monsieur Bonaparte?

You admire Bonaparte. He was a great man, a bold man. He would have admired you too.

So, you’ve won the opening skirmishes and prevailed in the first battle. But like all good generals that it not enough for you. Not
nearly
enough.

The battle may be over, but the war is only just beginning.

ii.

Julia was going to be in and out of there as quickly as possible. Once they had a routine she would simply pull up outside the front door and Anna would skip out to the car, climb in, and they’d be away. This first time, though, she knew she’d have to get out, ring the doorbell and face Brian and Edna.

She knocked on the door. It could be a while before Edna opened it. It was quite a way from the back of her house to the front, and the layout meant there was not a direct route. That was what happened when houses grew from a sixteenth-century seed.

It was over four-hundred-years-old, that house. It had seen so much. Births, deaths, marriages, funerals, celebrations, devastations, even, probably, murders. And it was still there, adding to its stories, quietly witnessing the antics of the latest occupants. Brian had once said that, when they first moved in, he had felt it was haunted, felt the presence of the ghosts who had played out their earthly existences at Toad Hall, as she had always called it. They’d moved from a 1930s suburban semi after the death of Edna’s father, who had left her a substantial inheritance, and the switch to an old house had spooked him. The feeling hadn’t lasted. He’d got used to it, he said.

Grew up, I guess
, he said.
Stopped believing in ghosts.

Julia wasn’t so sure that was the explanation. She suspected that, if there were ghosts, if there were spectral presences left by prior inhabitants, they had been silenced by the presence of Edna. It was not Brian growing up, but Edna’s ferocious remodelling of the house. It had been a bit ramshackle, in need of some repair, and Edna had seen to it that the repairs were done. Walls were shored up, roofs replaced, chimneys repointed. She’d had the place more or less gutted and rebuilt, rewired and re-plumbed. The ancient shell remained; what lay beneath it was brand new.