Little Face (12 page)

`And as soon as I brought Florence into the room, she realised her
mistake,' says Cheryl. Thank God. She is still on my side. Simon
knows this too, and he is inclined to take me more seriously because
I have the tacit support of my midwife. Thank God for Cheryl.

`Cheryl, do you remember Mandy?' I ask.

`Three days she was in agony,' David tells Simon. `It wasn't even
proper labour, that's what they said. They tried to induce her twice and
failed. Even when they put her on a drip, it didn't work. Nothing did.
In the end they did an emergency Caesarian but the anaesthetic didn't
work properly. Did it?' His eyes challenge me to deny it.

I shake my head.

`The pain was so bad she passed out. She missed the best bit, when
they lifted Florence out. By the time she came round, it was all over.
And the breast-feeding was a total failure too, Alice was devastated
about that. She'd really wanted to feed Florence herself. Don't you
think all that'd be enough to traumatise anyone, Inspector? To bring
on a sort of ... I don't know, post-natal madness?'

I am too shocked by David's account of Florence's birth to say anything in my defence. He seems to know all the facts but none of the
truth. Did he perceive it so negatively at the time? If so, he showed no
sign of it.

For the first time, I visualise his mind as a dangerous country, one
I am afraid to enter. All these years I have waited for him to let me in,
assuming that I knew or could imagine how the land lay. I pictured the
anguish and insecurity that were the legacy of having grown up without a father, been separated from his son, suffered the trauma of Laura's death. I attributed to him the thoughts and feelings that I
would have had if I were him.

`This isn't getting us anywhere,' Simon sighs. `Let's weigh the baby.'

In my head, I start to write an alternative statement, one that is far
truer than the thing I signed for Simon:

My name is Alice and I love my daughter Florence more than life,
more than all the best things in the world put together. Her full name
is Florence Imogen Fancourt. She has a perfectly round head, hardly
any hair, dark blue eyes and a tiny, perfect mouth like a little pink
flower. Her fingers, toes and eyelashes are all surprisingly long. She
smells clean and fresh, powdery and new. She has my dad's ears.
When I lean her over my hand to burp her, her round shoulders slump
forward and she makes a funny throaty noise, as if she is trying to gargle. She has a way of tucking her hands and feet neatly together, daintily, like a ballet dancer, and she doesn't cry in the random, anarchic
way that some babies do. She cries like an angry grown-up with a serious grievance.

`Nine pounds exactly.'

`So? So? That proves nothing. She's put on weight, that's all.
Babies do.'

On Friday 12th September 2003, she was delivered by emergency
Caesarian section at Culver Valley General Hospital. She weighed 7
pounds and 11 ounces. It was not a nightmare, as my husband says,
but the happiest day of my life. As the doctors and midwives were
wheeling me through from the delivery room to the operating theatre,
I heard one of them shout to David, `Bring some clothes for the
baby'. That was when it hit me that all this was real. I craned my neck
and just managed to catch a glimpse of David ransacking my hospital
bag. He pulled out a white bodysuit and a white babygro with little
Pooh Bears and Tiggers all over it. `Pooh likes his honey, but Tigger
thinks it's funny'. Vivienne bought it. `A baby's first outfit should be
white,' she said. I remember thinking to myself, my daughter is going
to wear those clothes. Soon.

`Have you contacted the hospital?' says Cheryl. `There's an outside
chance they'll still have the placenta and the umbilical cord. You
could test whether they come from this baby. We're supposed to dispose of them after two days, but, between you and me, it doesn't
always happen. You'd better get on to them quick, mind.'

`Oh, for Pete's sake. This is a farce! Are you really going to ...

As they pushed me into the operating theatre, a song by Cher was
playing loudly, the one where her voice goes all wobbly. I instantly
loved it, and knew that from now on it would remind me of my
baby's birth. It would be my song, mine and my child's. The anaesthetist squirted blue gel on to my stomach. `This shouldn't feel cold,'
he said.

`That wouldn't be too costly, I suppose, in terms of manpower and
resources. Could take a while for the result to come through, though.'

`See! He doesn't want to get in trouble with his boss, for wasting
public money on what's obviously sheer lunacy.'

`And the other women on the ward, this Mandy girl Alice mentioned.'

`None of those women so much as gave Florence a second glance!'

`Mr Fancourt, you're not helping. Excuse me a minute, everybody.'

It felt cold.

ENTRIES FROM DC SIMON WATERHOUSE'S POCKET BOOK

(Written October 3, 2003, 7 PM)

10/27/03, 11 AM

Area: Spilling Police Station. Received a phone call from Alice Fancourt
(see index). She said she needed to talk to me urgently because she had
some new information pertaining to the matter of her allegation that her
baby has been abducted and swapped for another baby (case no.
NS 1035-03-Q). I suggested that she should accompany her mother-in-law
Mrs Vivienne Fancourt (see index) to the police station later today (Vivienne Fancourt has arranged to come in and give us her statement) and I
said I would talk to her then. Mrs Fancourt started to cry and said she
needed to talk to me alone, in private, away from both her mother-in-law
and her husband David Fancourt (see index). I consulted with my sergeant,
DS 326 Charlotte Zailer, who authorised me to meet and talk to Mrs Fancourt. Mrs Fancourt suggested we meet at Chompers Cafe Bar in her
health club, 'Waterfront' (Saltney Road, Spilling), at 1400 hours on Sunday
28 September. I told her that was impossible and suggested Monday
29th. Mrs Fancourt became agitated and said she didn't think she could
wait that long, but I told her I couldn't see her sooner. I said the police station might be a more suitable venue than Chompers, but Mrs Fancourt
insisted that she wanted to meet somewhere 'less official and intimidating'

She then told me that Vivienne Fancourt was also a member of Waterfront, but that she never went to Chompers Cafe Bar because she thought
it was 'a hell-hole' Just in case Vivienne Fancourt went to the health club
on the same afternoon, Alice Fancourt said that I should not go in via the front door and the main lobby area, but rather I should enter the cafe bar
through the door on Alder Street. That way, Mrs Fancourt was certain that,
even if her mother-in-law was on the premises, she wouldn't see me. I said
that this sounded too complicated and again asked her to come to the
police station. She refused, became hysterical, and said that if I didn't meet
her where she said, she wouldn't give me the new information she had. She
said that Chompers was the one place Vivienne Fancourt could be guaranteed not to go to because she 'boycotts the place on principle'

/ told Mrs Fancourt that / would seek my sergeant's approval and that
she should call me back in ten minutes. / then consulted DS Zailer and told
her that / was worried about the unusual nature of Mrs Fancourt's
demands, but she said we should agree to her terms in order to obtain
whatever new information she had. Mrs Fancourt phoned back four minutes later and we agreed to meet at Chompers Cafe Bar in the Waterfront
Health Club complex at 1400 hours on Monday 29th September. Mrs Fancourt then said that if she wasn't there by 1430 hours, / shouldn't wait any
longer. She said that she feared she might not be able to leave the house.
She sounded frightened when she told me this, and said goodbye and
hung up immediately afterwards.

9/29/03, 2 PM

Area: Chompers Cafe Bar at Waterfront Health Club, 27 Saltney Road,
Spilling. 1400 hours: when I arrived, Alice Fancourt (see index) was
already there, sitting at a table in the non-smoking part of the room. The
conditions in Chompers were as follows: full, noisy, smoky, very warm.
There was a lot of background noise of talking and laughing and loud pop
music coming from speakers all round the room. On one side of the
room, there was a children's zone, full of toys, a paddling pool containing
plastic balls, a small plastic climbing frame and a Wendy house. There were
ten or so children, between the ages of approximately two and seven, playing in this section of the room.

As / sat down, Mrs Fancourt said to me, 'Look at the parents. They don't even glance over to check they're okay. Clearly none of them has ever seriously feared for the safety of their children. 'l pointed out that there was
nothing to fear, and Mrs Fancourt replied, 'I know. I just wish / could tell
them how lucky they are' She seemed calm at first, but as she started to
talk, she became more distressed. She said she had a favour to ask me. She
wanted me to help her to track down her husband's father (name
unknown), about whom she has been told almost nothing except that he
left the family home when David Fancourt was six and has not been in
touch with his son since. / explained that / couldn't do anything without
the authorisation of my sergeant, and that Sergeant Zailer would definitely
not allow me to track down David Fancourt's father because there was no
good reason to do so in relation to any of our active investigations.

/asked her why she wanted to find her father-in-law and she said, 'I want
to ask him why he left, why he just abandoned his son. What sort of a father
would do that? Why does nobody ever mention him? What if... ?'She did
not complete her question, even after I prompted her. She said, 'I think, if I
could speak to David's father, it might help me to understand David better.'
She told me that her husband used to 'idealise' her and that now he has
'demonised' her. 'Did you know that people who've had brutalised, abusive
childhoods often do that? It's a typical response,' she said.

Mrs Fancourt then told me that there was a woman on the labour ward
at the same time as her whom she wished to contact. She said that the
woman's name was Mandy, but that she didn't know any of her other
details. She asked me if / could help her to find this woman. At first she
appeared reluctant to tell me why she was interested in Mandy, but then
she seemed to change her mind quite suddenly. She said that she had told
Mandy where she lived, and that she had 'seen in Mandy's eyes' that
Mandy had recognised her description of The Elms (see index). She
claimed that it would put her mind at rest if she could pay Mandy a visit
and reassure herself that the baby in Mandy's care was Mandy's daughter
and not her own.

'Mandy had a horrible, aggressive boyfriend,' Mrs Fancourt told me.
'What if she was worried he'd harm their daughter, so she swapped her with Florence in order to protect her? I've been racking my brains and I
can't think of any other reason why someone might swap one baby for
another.' Mrs Fancourt became extremely panicky and tearful as she said
this. 'It would be my fault, she said. 'I told Mandy where we lived'

I tried to calm Mrs Fancourt down, but she talked over me, telling me
that, although she did not know the name of Mandy's boyfriend, she
could describe him. She began to do so, but I interrupted her and told her
that I very much doubted Sergeant Zailer would allow me to follow any of
this up. Mrs Fancourt ignored this remark and continued with her description. She said that Mandy's boyfriend had brown hair but, she said,
'There's definitely a redhead somewhere in his family. Do you know what
I mean? One of his parents is a redhead, I'm sure. He's got that sort of ivory
skin, with a yellow undertone.'

Throughout the interview, Mrs Fancourt talked in this manic, determined
and peculiar way. She seemed to have difficulty focusing on one issue at
a time, and kept veering from the subject of her husband's father to the
subject of Mandy's boyfriend. I had the impression that she was irrationally preoccupied with both these men. At one point she realised she
didn't have her mobile phone with her and got very upset, insisting that her
husband had 'confiscated' it. I felt concerned about her emotional state
and advised her to see a doctor.