Close My Eyes (35 page)

I look her in the eye. ‘I lied,’ I say. ‘That man in the picture is my husband.’

Franny’s eyes widen. ‘Your husband?’ she says. ‘Then who’s the woman who comes in with him? They look like a couple and they’re definitely the parents.
I’ve heard the—’

‘She’s
mine
.’ As I say the words the reality hits me and my voice cracks. ‘The little girl they are with is
my
daughter.’

Franny stares at me. ‘Your daughter?’

‘Yes.’ My heart thumps. ‘She’s . . . she’d be almost eight, like you said. I don’t . . .’ I stop, unable to admit that I have no idea exactly what my
own child looks like. I say what I think Franny will find easiest to get her head around. ‘My husband has taken her . . . my daughter . . .’

Franny shakes her head. ‘Then it’s not your husband or your child,’ she says.

Out of the corner of my eye I can see Bobs trying to get to the door and Lorcan forcing him back. I don’t have much time here and I’m struggling to cope with what Franny is
saying.

‘I don’t understand,’ I say, feeling sick to my stomach. I shove the phone with the photo of Art under her nose again. ‘This is the man you’ve seen here,
yes?’

‘Yes.’ Franny nods vigorously. ‘But the child he was with was a boy.’

A
boy
.

‘No.’ I grab Franny’s arm. She must be mistaken. ‘Maybe it was a little girl with a short haircut . . . young children can look—’

‘No way,’ Franny insists. ‘He was wearing a Woodholme sweatshirt. It’s a boys’ school.’

I blink rapidly, trying to make sense of what she is saying.

‘But you said you saw them the Saturday before last,’ I say, shaking her arm. ‘Why would he be wearing school uniform at the weekend?’

Franny frowns. ‘Woodholme’s a private prep school. I’ve got friends who went there. They do Saturday school.’

I let go of her arm, the sick feeling in my stomach raging up into my throat. My heart is racing so fast I feel like I might keel over. The van has disappeared into a black blur at the edge of
my vision. I’m going to be sick, I’m sure of it.

I don’t understand . . . it doesn’t make sense . . . my baby is a girl . . .

And then the black blur mists up in front of my eyes and I pass out.

‘Gen?’ It’s Lorcan’s voice. ‘Gen, are you okay?’

Fingers are smoothing damp hair from my wet face. The ground is cold under my body, raindrops falling in a mist.

I open my eyes to find Lorcan gazing anxiously down at me. ‘Gen?’ he says.

‘I made a mistake,’ I said. ‘It isn’t Beth at all, it’s some other child.’

‘What?’ Lorcan frowns. ‘What are you talking about?’

I struggle to sit up. The back of my head is sore where I must have banged it and I still feel sick. I lean over my knees, letting the nausea ebb away. I’ve only fainted once in my life
before – at a bar on my hen night. I’d barely eaten anything during the weeks leading up to the wedding and I couldn’t cope with all the booze. It was Hen who looked after me then
– insisting I went straight home with her in a taxi. My wedding was a few days later. Hen stood with me, my only bridesmaid. It feels like a lifetime ago.

I breathe out slowly, feeling the nausea pass. ‘Where’re Bobs and the girl from the shop?’ I mumble.

‘Inside.’ Lorcan strokes my back. ‘When I saw you faint, I rushed out here and Bobs called Franny in then bolted the door, put the
Closed
sign up and disappeared
through to the back.’

I look at him.

‘I know.’ He grimaces. ‘That guy is guilty as hell about something. God, you look pale,’ he says, wiping rain off his face. ‘Can you stand up? Are you hurt?
Let’s get you in the car.’

I let him help me to my feet and over to the car. I sit inside, shivering in my damp clothes. Lorcan reaches round and grabs a fleece from the back seat.

‘Cover yourself with this,’ he orders.

I drape it over my wet coat and lean back against the headrest.

‘What did you mean, it was a different child?’ Lorcan asks.

I explain what Franny told me. ‘So you see, it’s a boy. Not Beth. Not my Beth.’ I close my eyes, trying to let this revelation sink in. I honestly believed I was getting close
to an understanding of what had really happened to her, and now I’m as far away as ever.

‘A boy?’ Lorcan frowns. ‘How does that fit?’

‘It doesn’t.’ I gulp as the shocking enormity of Art’s deception rises inside me again. ‘Art must have had someone from the beginning . . . from before he even met
me. A whole other life . . . family . . .’

My thoughts dart back to Hen. Of all my friends, she has known Art the longest. She has talked to him behind my back and kept things from me and she has a son the same age as Beth would have
been. She might be married to Rob now, but is it possible she has some kind of double life with Nat and Art down here? I can’t for the life of me see how it could be so, but . . .

‘Maybe it’s someone I know,’ I say. ‘Someone I’ve known for a long time.’

‘No.’ Lorcan shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry, Gen, but that’s crazy. Think about it. When you met him Art was completely obsessed with his business, wasn’t he?
Even if he has a second family now, there’s no way he had time for one back then.’

‘Then it’s
her
child and Art comes to see them
both
. Either way, Art has another family. Maybe it’s Charlotte West. She lives near here, after all. And I know
she called Art all those times. Jesus, she came to our house and he was pissed off with her. Maybe they were together then it finished and now she’s stalking him.’ I realize my fists
are clenched, and release them.

Lorcan makes a face. ‘I don’t know, it sounds very convoluted. I mean, if Art really does have someone else, why stay in his marriage?’ He spreads his hands on the steering
wheel of the car.

‘I don’t know.’ I close my eyes. ‘All I know is that the child Art comes here to see isn’t Beth.’

‘Wait a second,’ Lorcan says. ‘Suppose it
is
“Beth”? Suppose they made it up?’

‘Made what up?’ I open my eyes. What is he talking about? ‘You can’t pretend that a girl is really a boy, not all the way to eight years old. The school would know for a
start and—’

‘I don’t mean that Art and the other woman made up Beth was a boy,’ Lorcan explains. He runs his hands through his damp hair. ‘Suppose they made up Beth was a girl?
Suppose, in fact, your baby was a boy all along?’

I think through the list of people who were at the birth. Apart from Art, there’s Rodriguez and Mary Duncan and the anaesthetist. I think back to the conversation I had with Mary’s
sister, Lucy O’Donnell. She definitely referred to “Beth”, but then she also said that she’d “found out” my baby’s name when she looked me and Art up
online. Maybe Mary never specified whether I’d had a boy or girl. She was dying when she confessed, after all. What was it she’d said exactly? I wrack my memory.

‘Her baby was born alive . . . I feel . . . so bad for that poor lady because they took her baby away and told her the little thing was dead.’

‘Why lie about the sex of a baby you were telling everyone was dead anyway?’ I rub my head. It still feels sore.

‘To cover their tracks.’ Lorcan says. ‘It’s an extra layer of protection . . . an extra barrier to stop people ever finding the baby. And the child Art has been seen with
is the same age as Beth would be now . . .’

I stare at him, a mix of confusion and hope mingling in my head. I can hardly bear to face the idea that the daughter I lost, the Beth I’ve been dreaming of, is a fiction. It’s too
much. For the past eight years I’ve imagined her: my little girl. I’ve pictured her, I’ve mourned her, I’ve even
dreamed
her. She was so real to me. And now
I’m being told the very fact of her is an illusion.

‘We have to go Woodholme School,’ I say. ‘I need to see this boy . . . I need to see for myself.’

Half an hour later we’re parked outside a high brick wall, softened on either side by banks of oak trees and bearing a brass plaque with the words:
Woodholme School
for Boys: Lower and Upper Preparatory.

From where we’re sitting we have a great side-view of a sweeping driveway that leads up to a massive sandstone building. The sound of small children shrieking echoes in the distance. There
are two playgrounds separated by a wire fence. One contains a climbing frame, a scattering of animal statues in painted metal and a horse-chestnut tree in the corner. The other playground is bigger
and clearly for older kids – just a tarmac square, though the branches of the horse-chestnut tree hang over it.

‘We can’t wait around here for very long, Gen, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ Lorcan frowns as he looks at me. ‘It’s too risky. Some nosey do-gooder
will call the police and say we’re lurking out here.’

‘I don’t think we’ll have to wait too much longer.’

‘And what makes you so sure of that?’

‘Bobs back at the shop definitely knows Art, yes?’ I say.

‘I’d bet my life on it.’

‘So he’ll warn him and Art will send someone to pick up . . . this child.’ I want to say
my
child but I still can’t get my head around the fact that the baby
I’ve been dreaming of for nearly eight years might be a boy, not a girl. It all feels unreal. I force myself to be logical. ‘If Art knows we’re on to him, he’ll act.
He’ll know he won’t be able to get to the school before we do, but he’ll want to get the child out of here. That’s if the child goes to this school.’ I glance at the
sign on the wall. ‘If he’s eight he could be in the lower or upper prep.’

Lorcan nods slowly. ‘You think he might send the woman he’s with to take him out of school?’

Fury builds inside me. ‘If they’re in this together I imagine she’ll want to come as soon as she can.’

We sit in silence for what feels like a long time. Several women pass us on the pavement. Others pull up in cars. Then a bell rings – loud and sharp – from inside the school. Seconds
later scores of children swarm onto the playground. As their voices fill the air, all the women who haven’t already left their cars get out and walk through the school gates. More appear from
around the corner, strolling along in pairs and groups, many holding smartly dressed toddlers by the hand.

‘The invasion of the yummy mummies,’ Lorcan says drily.

‘It must be going-home time,’ I say, my throat dry.

It couldn’t be worse. I’d expected to see a single child being taken out of school early. Now I’m going to have to pick one out of a crowd.

More women pass us, chattering away. They’re mostly my age or a bit younger; lots are pushing buggies or prams.

We get out of the car and wander through the school gates. Mothers and nannies and their charges are trickling past. I scan the scene feeling desperate. If my child is here, how will I know? I
look for a woman in a hurry . . . someone scared and furtive . . . but everyone around us seems happy and relaxed.

It’s hopeless. A new terror fills me. If Art knows I’m here, and this boy is our baby, then Art will move him away from this place, from this school, and I will have to start
tracking him down all over again. I think about the mugger and his threat:
Stop looking
. I have gone against his order. I have kept on searching.

My life – and possibly Lorcan’s – is in danger. But I need to find this child. I need to know if he’s mine. I need something concrete that I can take to the police.

I gaze around. More children are emerging from the younger kids’ playground. Most are chattering away, several clutching paper hats with streamers that flutter in the breeze. The sun comes
out and some of the women shield their eyes from the glare. I stare from woman to woman. From boy to boy. Each one wears a pale blue Woodholme sweatshirt over long navy shorts. They’re a
homogenous bunch: almost entirely white, with fresh round faces and high-pitched squeals.

More groups flood out through the school gates now. I can’t keep track of them all. I fixate on the hair. Most of these children are blond . . . or blondish . . . but Art and I have always
had dark hair. Would our son be dark too? I start walking through them, turning as I stalk the gate area, trying to see every face . . . scanning all the women, all the dark-haired kids.

And then I see him. And everything I’ve ever known shifts and reframes.

He’s racing another little boy across the playground, a look of intense determination on his face. His dark hair is cut short round the back and sides, but hangs in a floppy silky fringe
low over his forehead. I stare at his face – at the dark, serious eyes and at the way his bottom lip is thinner than the top – and it’s like I’m looking at the photo of my
dad as a little boy come to life.

This is, without a doubt, my son.

I stare at him. Lorcan follows my gaze to the little boy. I remember showing him the picture of my dad as a child and wonder if he’s noticed the likeness too.

‘D’you see it?’ I ask, breathless.

‘He has Art’s colouring,’ Lorcan says ‘but there’s something else too. He looks like you around the mouth, I think.’

‘He looks just like my dad.’ As I speak the words, the enormity of the moment presses down on me. This is as basic as it gets – it’s genes, it’s blood, it’s
family.

A young woman goes over to the boy.
My
boy. She’s plumply pretty, with a short, spiky haircut that would suit someone skinny and petite but sits strangely above her round face and
rosy, milkmaid cheeks. She’s wearing a bright pink tracksuit that is stretched tight over her bum. Is
this
the woman Art took our baby for?

My mind does the maths in my head. Even if she’s a bit older than she looks, this girl couldn’t have been more than sixteen when the boy was born.
Surely
there’s no
way Art could have been having an affair with someone that young?

I start walking towards the boy. The plump girl is gesticulating wildly at him, clearly trying to draw him away from his game. As I get nearer I can hear her sharp, nasal whine.

‘Come
on
, Daddy said we have to hurry.’