Stolen (27 page)

That was the day Lotte took the kitchen knife. Fern wandered off a little drunkenly as they were washing up, and Lotte seized the moment to grab the newly sharpened knife, wrap it in a tea towel and slide it down the side of her jogging pants. She made the excuse that she needed a lie-down to go down to the basement, then quickly wove the knife into the bottom of the wicker laundry basket.

They missed the knife on Boxing Day when Howard went to cut up some vegetables, and immediately made a search of the basement. When they failed to find it Lotte felt she’d won her first battle.

From mid-January until almost the end of February, Lotte only rarely got out of the basement. Howard went away on business for days at a time, and perhaps because Fern was worried by the missing knife, Lotte had to remain locked up. Fern brought meals on a tray, opened the door, dumped the tray on the top step, then quickly locked the door again. Lotte was so big and slow she couldn’t have run up the stairs to overpower Fern even if she’d wanted to, but it did make her worry about what would happen if she went into labour and Howard was still away.

She woke on 20 February to a nagging ache in her back. As Howard had come home the night before, Fern let her come up to the kitchen for breakfast.

‘It could be labour starting,’ Fern said, exchanging glances with Howard. ‘I know you’re not due for a couple more weeks but it often does start with backache.’

Lotte had some toast and a couple of cups of tea, then went into the lounge to watch television. She was certain she was in labour but she was less certain that Fern knew as much about birthing as she’d claimed. What would happen if there were complications?

The backache turned to clearly defined and regular contractions around midday. They were five minutes apart and quite mild until two o’clock, when all at once they became far stronger. It was at that point that Fern insisted Lotte went back down to the basement and put on the cotton gown she’d bought for the birth.

Lotte remembered looking up at the tiny window as she walked around the room trying to ease the contractions, and seeing snowflakes falling. Somehow that seemed like a kind of omen that she was never going to get out of this room, and she became even more scared.

Fern gave her something to drink a bit later, saying it would help the pain. In fact all it did was make Lotte feel woozy in between contractions; it didn’t dull the pain at all.

She lost all track of time. It seemed to her that it was now one continuous pain which came in waves of severity from excruciating to so unbearable she thought she would die, and for much of it she was alone. She clung to the bed rail, arching her back up from the mattress to try to alleviate the agony, and felt sweat pouring from her.

‘Get me help, you bitch!’ Lotte demanded at one point when Fern did come down the stairs and laid a cool and ineffectual hand on her forehead.

‘Now, now,’ Fern said, as if she had nothing worse than a cold. ‘You’ll be fine, just breathe away the pain.’

A spurt of water coming from Lotte soaked the sheet beneath her.

‘Nothing to worry about, that’s just your waters breaking. Things will move on faster now,’ Fern said, stripping off the wet sheet and sliding a clean one beneath her. ‘Soon you’ll get the urge to bear down.’

Lotte had moments of utter clarity between the terrible pains; she saw Fern’s indifference to her pain and her irritation that it was taking so long. She had tied her normally carefully arranged hair back into a pony-tail, and she wore a white linen apron over her tee-shirt and jogging pants. She spoke in a practised tone as she trotted out her insincere little platitudes, but then she would disappear up the stairs for what was probably only minutes, yet seemed like hours because Lotte was so afraid.

She swore to herself then that she would make Fern suffer once this was over. The hidden knife might not be as useful now as effective pain control, but it would be if she survived this.

‘You should eat something, honey,’ Howard called down the stairs to his wife. ‘It’s after seven and you haven’t had a thing since breakfast.’

‘Make me a ham sandwich,’ Fern called back. ‘I’ll be up soon.’

‘You go up there again and leave me and I’ll strangle you the first chance I get,’ Lotte snarled at the woman.

It was at that moment that the need to bear down began, and Fern finally stayed at her post. She had fastened a towel around the bed rail and put the end in Lotte’s hands to pull on as she bore down.

‘Push with the contraction,’ she ordered Lotte. ‘Use every bit of the pain and we’ll get the baby out quickly.’

Lotte was only too anxious for the ordeal to be over, and she pushed with all her might. She was vaguely aware that Howard had come down to the basement and was preparing the Moses basket ready to receive the baby, but he didn’t speak to her.

She made one long hard push after another, her legs bent, feet pressing hard into the mattress as she gripped the towel with her hands.

‘I can see his head,’ Fern announced. ‘He won’t be long now.’

It was only in those final moments that Lotte saw Fern did have some real experience of midwifery, for she told Lotte when to stop pushing, just to pant as the baby’s head was born. With the next contraction, which was suddenly much milder, Lotte felt the baby’s body slither out of her into Fern’s hands.

‘It’s a little girl,’ Fern said. ‘And honey, she’s a real beauty, just as I knew she’d be.’

For a short while Lotte forgot all the wrongs this couple had done her, and those that they intended to do in the future. She felt euphoric at delivering her baby safely, that the pain was over, and at the baby’s first lusty cry, tears rolled down her cheeks too.

She was beautiful, with well-rounded limbs, plump cheeks and the blonde fuzz on her head. Fern wrapped her tightly in a cotton blanket and passed her to Howard who tucked her into her basket with evident pride.

‘Can I hold her?’ Lotte asked.

‘Later, when I’ve got you all cleaned up and you’ve had a drink and something to eat,’ Fern agreed. ‘But Howard’s going to take her upstairs now. She needs to be kept really warm – it’s a bitter cold night tonight.’

Lotte was in a kind of warm bubble for the few hours left of the day. Fern washed her, changed the bed, brought her tea, sandwiches and cake, and praised her for her courage. Lotte was exhausted and soon dropped off to sleep.

The next morning she woke to the sound of the baby crying and instinct made her get out of bed. It was only when she found the door locked that the full implications hit her. She’d given birth and they’d taken the baby away, just as they intended, but somehow being told what would happen hadn’t prepared her in any way for the reality.

She was bleeding heavily, her insides felt as if they might fall out, and she could hear her baby crying. That wail of distress was touching a nerve in her brain and jangling it but she couldn’t get to her. But she had to, even if she had to break down the door.

Lotte hammered on the door with all the force she could muster, then went down the stairs to pick up a shoe to make even more noise.

‘For God’s sake stop that racket!’ she heard Howard shout. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’

‘Open the door,’ she yelled out. ‘My baby’s crying.’

‘It’s our baby,’ he corrected her. ‘And Fern has just picked her up to feed her. Go back to bed, it’s only six in the morning. I’ll bring you a cup of tea in a minute.’

Lotte felt deflated. The crying had stopped, evidence she supposed that her baby was being fed, but somehow that didn’t quite stop the jangling of her nerves.

Howard did bring her tea.

‘I want to see my baby,’ Lotte demanded.

Howard put the tea down and went straight back to the stairs. ‘I told you, she’s our baby,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘This was what we agreed, and as soon as you’ve recovered from the birth we’ll be making plans to take her Stateside. Don’t make trouble, Lotte. You’ll only regret it.’

During the following two days Lotte heard the baby crying a great deal and each time she felt agitated and worried that Fern wasn’t taking proper care of her. Howard brought food and drinks down to her but his replies when she asked for information were noncommittal and vague.

‘Babies do cry!’ he said in answer to her question about what was wrong. ‘Fern knows what she’s doing.’

‘Just let me come up and see her,’ Lotte begged him. ‘I’ll be satisfied if I can see her being looked after properly.’

Howard refused. His excuse was that Fern had to bond with the baby and she didn’t need any distracting influences.

Howard didn’t come back that evening with a hot drink as he normally did. Lotte had a feeling it was to remind her that they could stop feeding her altogether if she made a nuisance of herself.

That night seemed endless. She was sore from the birth, bleeding profusely, and she wondered if she’d been torn in the delivery. She must have slept eventually because she woke from a dream where her body was swelling up like a balloon and she couldn’t turn over.

She switched on the bedside light because she was scared and sweaty. It took a few moments to realize she really was swelling up; her breasts were twice their normal size, as hard as rocks, and she was feverish.

When she heard the baby crying and Howard’s footsteps up in the kitchen, she called to him and said she wasn’t well.

He told her to go back to bed and he’d come and see her later.

Lotte must have cried hundreds of times since she’d been brought here as she realized Howard and Fern weren’t the kind, loving, very special people she’d believed them to be. But she had never cried the way she did then. She saw that she had no bargaining tools left; they’d got the baby, they had all the power. She was just a fool who had been so desperate to be loved that she’d fallen into their hands like a ripe apple.

She hadn’t told anyone on the cruise where she was going when she left because she didn’t want their disapproval. That was so pathetic. If she was honest, even she knew that she was doing the wrong thing, so why did she do it? Masochism or lunacy?

Fern came down just after ten, bringing a mug of tea for her. ‘Now, what is all this about not feeling well?’ she asked sharply. She was wearing a dressing gown, with no makeup and her hair just scragged back in a rough pony-tail. There were dark circles beneath her eyes and her complexion looked muddy. It was the first time Lotte had ever seen her looking frayed, old and tired.

Lotte told her about her throbbing, swollen breasts and that she was sore down below and losing blood heavily.

‘Well, what do you expect?’ Fern said irritably. ‘Childbirth is a messy business. As for your breasts, that’s just the milk coming in, I’ll give you something to dry it up. All women feel upset on the fourth day, it’s connected with the milk. But you’ve got nothing to be upset about, just be glad you can rest. At least you haven’t got to feed and change the baby constantly.’

‘Let me come up and I’ll help you,’ Lotte offered eagerly.

‘I don’t want you near her,’ Fern said. ‘She’s mine now.’

She left then, rushing up the stairs as if she couldn’t bear to breathe the same air a moment longer. Howard came down later with a box of Epsom salts and some painkillers. He said Lotte had to stir a couple of spoons of the salts into a glass of water and drink it down to get rid of the milk. The painkillers would take down her temperature.

By ten that night her breasts were softer and she no longer felt feverish but she couldn’t stop crying. Strangely, she kept thinking about her mother, and wondering what sort of a delivery she’d had. Maybe it was a difficult one, and that was the reason she’d preferred Fleur? Yet Lotte hadn’t been aware Fleur was the favourite, not until she died.

She thought then that if she did get out of this alive, she would try to make peace with her parents. But thinking about them only made her cry more, for they had never tried to contact her after she left home to go and work at the hotel and they hadn’t even written while she was working on the ship, so they wouldn’t care what she’d been through here.

March came in with sunshine, but Lotte only knew that because late in the afternoon it hit the tiny window for about half an hour or so. But a shaft of sunshine was very welcome when she hadn’t seen more than a little square of grey sky for weeks. She found herself reaching out to touch the particles of dust in the beam. As a child she’d thought they were fairies and if you caught one you could make a wish.

Her wish was just to know what was going on upstairs, for Howard always brought the meals now and they were growing sketchier by the day – sandwiches instead of a cooked meal, tinned soup in a mug, no fresh fruit or vegetables. She had to suppose this was because Fern was busy with the baby, but when she asked Howard how she was getting on he told her it was none of her business.

But it was her business. Each time she heard her baby crying she still felt a jangling within her. She wanted to know when this ordeal was going to end for her, and when they were going back to the States. She wondered too if Fern had become disenchanted with having a baby of her own, and whether she and Howard might change their original plan to be parents and sell the baby to a desperate couple. She couldn’t work out whether that would be a lesser evil or a greater one.

Lotte had recovered well from the birth. By the time the baby was four weeks old she’d stopped bleeding and was no longer sore. She spent an hour every day doing gentle exercises to make up for not being allowed out for walks or even upstairs.

Listening at the door was the thing she spent most of her time doing. Fern had always kept her voice down before the baby was born, sounding calm and measured almost the whole time. But Lotte thought that maybe this was just for her benefit, to create an image of someone who never lost control, for she didn’t sound like that now.

She screamed at Howard, about food, cleaning the baby’s bottles, that the house looked like a pig sty and there was washing needing to be done.

In one respect it pleased Lotte that everything was unravelling for them, for maybe if Fern was having second thoughts about having a baby of her own, she might just hand her back to her real mother, or at least let her out to help. But even as she hoped for that miracle, she knew it was in vain. Fern wasn’t the kind to back down about anything.