Don't Let Me Go (46 page)

With a sigh of understanding as well as longing, Charlotte said, ‘I so wish you were here. I really miss you.’

‘I miss you too, but how about this? If I had been able to come when all this blew up would things have taken off the way they have with Anthony?’

Charlotte didn’t have to consider it for long. ‘No, probably not,’ she conceded. ‘So now you not being here is a good thing? I’m not sure I can quite make myself see it like that, but I take your point. Is your lawyer still trying to get it cleared for you to come?’

‘Yes, he is, but he hasn’t received the cast-iron reassurance he’s looking for yet.’

‘I wonder if Anthony can help.’

‘I think you’ll find he and Don Thackeray are in touch, so if there is anything he can do he’s already on to it.’

Surprised, Charlotte said, ‘Really? He hasn’t mentioned it to me.’

‘Maybe because he doesn’t want to get your hopes up until he has something positive to tell you.’ Anna stifled a yawn. ‘Sorry, you know it’s three thirty in the morning here.’

‘Oh God, of course, sorry, I should let you go. Thanks for the chat and please tell Bob I’m sorry if I woke him up too.’

‘He’s dead to the world,’ Anna assured her.

A few moments ticked by with neither of them ringing off. In the end Charlotte said, ‘She’ll be all right, won’t she?’

‘I’m sure she will,’ Anna replied softly. ‘And so will you.’

Feeling slightly reassured by the words, Charlotte put the phone down and went to pick up one of the photos of Chloe that her mother had emailed and she’d had printed and framed. It was a big close-up of Chloe laughing, with sand stuck to her cheeks and the light of pure happiness in her eyes. Charlotte remembered taking it; they’d been playing on the beach swing and for the very first time Chloe had found the courage to leap off into the waves. She’d been so flustered when she’d come up for air, gasping and trying to find her feet, that it had taken a moment for total euphoria to kick in.

She’d done it!

Charlotte hadn’t been able to get her off the swing for the rest of the day. Everyone had to come and watch, Nanna, Danni, Craig, Auntie Shelley, even Grandpa had been invited, or at least Chloe hadn’t shaken her head when Charlotte had suggested it.

It had been a happy, proud day to be cherished along with so many others: the first time she’d ridden a horse with Danni; the day she’d found the confidence to speak to the other children at Aroha; the little part she’d played in the Christmas pageant; the first time one of her cakes had risen; the recognition of a kiwi call; the naming of wild flowers as they drove into town.

So many memories, floating in from the past like leaves to lie gently upon one another with Chloe’s face, her little world on every one of them. If only it were possible to pick them up and hold them, to somehow transform them back to reality.

‘I don’t know where you are now, my angel,’ she whispered to the photo as tears blurred her eyes, ‘but I hope you can hear me in your heart when I tell you that I love you and I miss you and I’m not giving up hope of getting you back. Not yet. I can’t, because seeing you again, hearing you and loving you means the whole world to me. And now,’ she added more softly than ever, ‘there’s someone else I want you to meet who I just know will love you too, given the chance.’

Chapter Twenty-Two

IT WAS HARD
to believe how quickly the next few weeks passed. It seemed no sooner had the papers been served than the Plea and Case Management hearing was upon them, and Charlotte was standing in front of a judge pleading not guilty to a crime the whole world knew she’d committed.

‘It happens all the time,’ Anthony had reassured her after, ‘and you’re not under oath so you don’t have to feel squeamish about upsetting God, or anyone else upstairs.’

‘I was actually more concerned about my conscience, and how I’m being given such a hard time in the press again.’

‘They’ll get over it, and the only people we have to worry about are the twelve who’ll be sitting on the jury and they won’t be coming to a decision until they’ve heard you tell what happened in your own words, a privilege no one else has been afforded.’

It was true, they hadn’t, but was it really going to make all the difference? She guessed she wouldn’t know until the day, but what she did know now was that rumours of their relationship had started up on Twitter.

‘Someone’s obviously been watching us,’ she told him, unnerved by the thought of it. ‘I’d guess at Heather Hancock, but it could have been anyone. God, I couldn’t bear it if another barrister had to step in now.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to let that happen. Maybe we haven’t been as careful as we should have, but there’s no proof we’re actually having a relationship, just that we’re spending a lot of time together, and as your lawyer why shouldn’t I be spending time with you?’

‘But someone’s added the fact that you were supposed to be on a sabbatical when you took the case on.’

Looking genuinely annoyed by that, he said, ‘Well, that was very obliging of them, but we don’t have to explain ourselves to anyone, and nor are we going to try. We’ll just simply deny it if anyone asks us outright, otherwise we’ll ignore it. Now, my darling, my love,’ (this was what he called her these days and she had to admit she quite liked both, together she loved it) ‘prepare yourself for some good news.’

Her heart skipped a beat as a hundred thoughts tripped over each other in the rush to guess what it could be. The case was being thrown out after all. The prosecution had decided to drop it. He’d heard something about Chloe.

‘We’ve finally received an assurance from the police that they are not looking to make any more arrests in this case,’ he declared, ‘which means your mother is able to be here for the trial.’

Charlotte gasped as tears suddenly filled her eyes. ‘Oh Anthony,’ she cried, running to throw her arms around him. ‘This is fantastic, I mean if there
has
to be a trial, and I suppose there has.’

‘I’m afraid so, but having your mother and stepfather here won’t only be a great support for you, it could make a big impact on the jury to see the family Chloe was a part of during the time she was with you. Not that we can make this about Chloe, you understand, it’s a criminal trial, not a custody hearing. But it’s a vital part of the defence to make sure the jury understands and is impressed by the fact that she had a far better life with you than she ever did with her parents.’

‘That shouldn’t be hard when it’s true,’ Charlotte murmured. Thinking of Chloe with her abusive father and demented mother always dimmed the light inside her, but the fact that her mother was coming was a joy that, for the moment at least, couldn’t be put down.

‘We’ll have to get a bed for the other room,’ she declared, ‘and more linen and crockery and . . .’

‘Wait, wait,’ he laughed. ‘We can do that, for sure, but when I spoke to Bob earlier . . .’

‘You’ve already spoken to Bob?’

‘About an hour ago.’

‘But it was the middle of the night there.’

‘I’d had strict instructions to call, whatever the time, if I heard the way was clear for them to come.’

‘So you told them before you told me?’

‘Because I wanted to tell you in person.’

She smiled, and gazed at him adoringly. ‘I’m glad you did,’ she whispered.

‘Keep looking at me like that and the rest of my news will have to wait,’ he warned.

Quickly pulling a straight face, while keeping her hips pressed to his, she waited for him to continue.

‘Bob and your mother will be arriving this weekend . . .’

‘
This weekend!
’

‘. . . and they feel that four of us in this apartment will make it a little overcrowded. Obviously, I offered to move back to Maggie’s . . .’

Her eyes widened in protest.

‘. . . but they’re insisting we book them into a hotel nearby, so can I suggest, once we’ve dealt with the situation that seems to be arising between us at the moment, that we take a stroll along to the Grand to check out their rooms?’

‘You may suggest it, and I accept, but definitely only after we’ve taken care of the situation you mention.’

‘God, I’ve missed you,’ he laughed, and pressing his mouth to hers he began walking her backwards towards the bedroom.

It was incredible, almost bizarre, how happy she was at a time when she’d never been so afraid. Having Anthony in her life had changed so much: he’d become the centre of her world, as she seemed to be of his, and she couldn’t,
wouldn’t,
allow herself to think of being taken from him. Occasionally she’d watch him from the window as he crossed the street to his car, or while he lay asleep in bed beside her, and her heart would overflow with so much feeling she hardly knew how to keep it in. The only time they spent apart now was when he was in London or Bristol having meetings with the other lawyers on her case, and even then barely an hour would pass without the exchange of a text or email.

They’d done so much together over the last two months that she’d started to keep a diary of it, something to treasure later, she told herself, though where and when she refused to contemplate. It was Anthony’s plan, she knew, to try and take her mind off the trial and Chloe, and what the future might have in store. And often it worked, as they walked on the beach in all winds and weathers, talking about everything from the holidays they’d had as children to his love of sailing and good wines and fishing, and hers of amateur theatre, children and interior design. Not that she’d had much experience in the latter, but it was an interest she’d decided to pursue once this was all over, though whether that was going to be seven weeks or seven years from now only time would tell.

‘You won’t get the maximum sentence,’ he’d told her firmly and repeatedly. ‘There are no aggravating circumstances and absolutely no harm came to Chloe while she was with you. Quite the reverse, in fact. Nor was anyone deprived of their child, given that her father was already in jail, and no one’s ever going to want to see her returned to him. So please put the seven years out of your mind.’

‘And replace it with what?’

‘Trust. Now, let’s change the subject and discuss what we’re going to have for dinner.’ Or breakfast, or lunch, depending on the time of day the conversation took place.

He was resolute in his refusal to enter into a guessing game, or a series of what-ifs, or even a review of similar cases and how they’d worked out. As far as he was concerned the legal team had everything in hand, and as they were regularly feeding him information his command of the case, at this stage, was absolute.

So their time was spent in ways that were making her fall more deeply in love with him than ever, mainly because of how sensitive and intuitive he seemed to be to her needs and how to distract her. It would never have occurred to her that a visit to her family’s grave at St Mark’s churchyard in Temple Fields could mean so much at this time, but it had. Probably, she realised later, because Anthony had been with her, and had listened quietly as she’d told him what little she knew of her grandmother, grandfather, aunt and half-brother, Hugo. Her father’s burial place was too far distant for them to visit while she was tagged, but they’d talked about him anyway. The only memory she had of him felt more like a dream: a tall, fair-haired man catching her up in his arms and swinging her round and round until she was too dizzy to see.

A week after the visit to the cemetery Anthony had managed to get her a pass for the day, and had driven her to York to visit Millie in her care home. She’d shed an ocean of tears while there, and on the way back, for dear old Millie hadn’t known who she was; she hadn’t even seemed to register anyone was there. Her eyes were no more than vacant blue discs sinking to the sides of their sockets, her hands bunched like claws in front of her pallid face. It was the longest, cruellest wait for death, and Charlotte could only wish it would hurry up and come, because the Millie she’d known, spiky, loving and fiercely independent, would never have wanted to wither away like this. Still, at least she’d been able to kiss her goodbye, and take heart from the fact that visiting Millie had made a nonsense of the feeling she’d had the day the old lady had been taken to York, that she would never see her again.

Please, please let the feeling she’d never see Chloe again be equally wrong.

‘I thought you was never coming back for her,’ Mel Beacher grumbled as she let Tracy in out of the rain. ‘Three days you told me when you was last here.’

‘I know, I’m sorry, it all got complicated, the person she was supposed to go to had a problem crop up, then I got the flu and no one else was available to come . . . Anyway, how is she?’

‘Silent as ever, and in disgrace if you must know.’

Tracy frowned. Chloe wasn’t naughty, at least not the Chloe she knew.

‘She’s been sneaking out at night with that bloody Carla,’ Mel rasped, starting to cough.

Not sure she’d heard that right, Tracy said, ‘Sneaking out at night? With Carla? Who’s Carla?’

‘The girl what was here before. Well, she’s still here and trying my patience till I’m ready to swing for her, that’s for sure.’

Tracy’s eyes widened.

‘Don’t worry, I don’t never lay a hand on ’em that way, though half of ’em would be better off for a good clip round the ear, I don’t mind telling you.’

‘What do you mean, Chloe’s been going out at night?’ Tracy demanded, bringing them back to the point.

‘What I said. I puts her to bed, good as gold with that tatty old bear of hers, and next thing I know she’s gone. God knows what those girls want with a kid that age out there on the streets with ’em, cos that’s where they’m hanging out, got nowhere else to go, have they? Went bloody mental I did first time the police brought ’em back.’

Tracy was stunned. ‘Why on earth was I never told about this?’ she cried. She’d have had Chloe out of here faster than she could say her own name if she’d known what was happening, even if it had meant putting her into residential care.

‘I don’t know,’ Mel grunted. ‘Social services was told, because obviously they’m both under age, so the police had to contact them. I suppose, cos they’m both already in care, there wasn’t much else they could do. I’m telling you though, someone’s got to get that Carla in hand, because she’s a right bloody nightmare, she is. I’ve told ’em, she’s too much for me with my chest, they have to find someone else, but they’re taking their bloody time over it. Can you have a word with someone?’