Stolen Child (12 page)

You are one year old today. ‘Where does time go?’ said Miriam. ‘My little cabbage is growing up.’

I worked so hard to make your first birthday a success. I’d bought you the prettiest pink dress and a matching hair band with a little butterfly attached. You immediately pulled it off, and did so each time I replaced it. Such will power, your face red, your bottom lip the size of a plum. David insisted that the hair band was hurting you. He lifted you from your high chair and tossed you in the air. You shrieked when he caught you and he tossed you again. It’s your favourite game. I warned him you’d throw up, which of course you did, all over the lace and appliqué. He carried you upstairs under his arm and changed you into a pair of dungarees and a T-shirt. You ended up looking like a boy, bold and triumphant.

I didn’t know most of the people who came. David’s friends, most of them, with their children.

‘Now is your chance to meet new people,’ he’d said when we were drawing up the guest list. ‘Maoltrán may seem like a one-horse town to you but there’s lots of clubs to join. It will help you to cope with your postnatal depression.’

I hated the way he said that…postnatal depression…as if the very idea made him irritable.

Some of the others I know. Phyllis and Lily, her mother Kathleen O’Sullivan, Corrine’s mother, and, needless to say, Imelda Morris was invited and came back from Dublin for the occasion. Joey sent you a birthday card. Corrine has evidently softened her attitude from a distance. She sends us regular photographs and video tapes of their son. Joey now wears a baseball cap and swings an ice hockey stick. He signed your birthday card with his name and a line of kisses.

Everyone made a fuss of you. Lily Lyons hobbled across the floor and said, ‘Joy’s got the look of the Dowlings, right enough.’

‘Same eyes as Joey,’ said Kathleen O’Sullivan.

But you look nothing like Joey O’Sullivan. You look like me. Except, of course, for your eyes. They’re too dark for your pale complexion and flaxen hair.

Phyllis bought you an enormous doll’s house. Far too extravagant, I wanted to tell her, but I hid my annoyance. She boasted again about your birth. I could see that the women were tiring of her story. Fifteen minutes of fame, said Andy Warhol. Phyllis will feed off it for ever.

Miriam looked around the house and said, as she always does, that she hardly recognised it. I reminded her that nothing had changed since her last visit, nothing major, and tried not to sound defensive.

I carried in your birthday cake. We sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and everything was going well until someone turned on the television. The evening news came on. The first anniversary of Isobel Gardner’s disappearance. Everyone in the room turned to watch, even David.

Carla Kelly sat beside her husband. I couldn’t believe I was watching the same woman. Almost impossible to believe
she ever strolled down a catwalk. Gaunt and grim, nothing to her face except bone. And her husband looked just as haunted. A wall exists between them now, invisible to most but obvious to anyone like myself who understands body language. They never touched or exchanged a glance until she broke down at the end of her statement. Glassy tears rolled down her cheeks. He gripped her hand then, a whiteknuckle grasp against the green baize tablecloth.

Their solicitor held up an artist’s impression of what Isobel Gardner should look like at one year of age. The camera zoomed in for a close-up. ‘One year and two days,’ he stressed. ‘Two days was all they shared with their child before she was taken from them.’

No one looked in your direction as you dipped your finger into the icing on your cake, sucked it, grinned with pleasure at the taste. I held you close to my chest. You must have felt the palpitations, thumping like a bird’s wings against glass. And the pain in my chest, across my shoulders, the dizzy, swooning sensation, as if everything was slipping beyond my grasp.

I understand the symptoms now. It’s anxiety, not a heart attack. I’m glad I discussed it with Dr Williamson. My symptoms had become too serious to ignore. When I visited her surgery last week, she’d checked my heart and my blood pressure.

‘It’s nothing to do with your heart,’ she’d said. ‘What you’ve just described are the classic symptoms of a panic attack.’

She shook her head when I asked if I’d imagined my symptoms. ‘Panic attacks can occur out of the blue for no discernible reason,’ she said. ‘But they can also have a deep underlying cause.’ She asked if I was anxious, distressed. I assured her that everything was fine but she wrote a name and phone number on a prescription pad and tore off the page.

‘This woman is an excellent counsellor,’ she said, and handed the page to me. ‘Give her a call if you think there is an underlying cause for your anxiety.’

Anxiety. It was so obvious. I tracked back to the moment the first attack occurred. I had been driving home from Dublin and you were strapped in the car seat. We’d spent the weekend with my father and Tessa, and I was anxious to get away from the city before the peak-hour evening traffic. I was driving along the quays when the pain had clamped my chest. I braked at the red lights. I’d wanted to run from the suffocating atmosphere in the car but your face was framed in the rearview mirror. I couldn’t run away. But that was what I wanted to do, abandon you in the traffic and run into a mist too dense to ever find me. The traffic lights changed and I’d moved forward. I struggled to control my terror. And I did. I managed to get you home safely. But the attacks continued and, when Dr Williamson gave her diagnosis, I understood.

The Liffey had been flowing on a high tide that day and cranes were visible beyond a high hoarding. Posters fluttered on the hoarding; rock bands and theatre advertisements. But one poster stood out from the others. A poster of a baby, one day old. A stolen child – an image almost bleached from existence.

Anxiety. I’ve got the pills. But they just deaden me. I still know what I have done.

Once again, the journalists were ranged before them. And the photographers…
click…click…click.

Initially, the questions were predictable.

‘How do you feel on the anniversary of your daughter’s disappearance?’

‘Do you think Isobel is still in Ireland?’

‘What do you want to say to the person or persons who took her?’

‘Are you going to model again?’

Josh Baker stood up and fixed Robert with his hard, speculative stare. ‘Is it true that the Gardaí suspect a criminal involvement in your daughter’s disappearance?’

‘What exactly are you implying?’ Robert asked. Carla sensed his tension, his withdrawal. His elbow remained rigid on the table.

‘Was your daughter’s disappearance linked to the drug seizure at Dublin Port that took place the day she was born?’ Josh asked. ‘Is it possible that through your undercover work with the Drugs Unit, her disappearance is an act of revenge?’

Criminals…drug traffickers…revenge…For an instant Carla was unable to catch her breath.

‘There is absolutely no evidence that there was any criminal involvement in my daughter’s disappearance.’ Robert sounded stern and certain. He refused to answer any further questions and Leo, shepherding them from the table, almost lifted Carla from her seat. In the anteroom Robert collapsed into a chair. She sat opposite him and gripped his hand. His skin was cold and clammy, his eyes bloodshot from the shock. To be considered responsible for Isobel’s disappearance. She understood the emotions whirling inside him. She experienced the same rush of guilt every time a journalist asked her about the Anticipation promotion.

Over the following week, the tabloids and broadsheets ran with variations of the story. Journalists listed the gangland figures who, allegedly, could have ordered the revenge kidnapping or worse. One tabloid ran a headline – ‘
Dad-to-be Drinks in Anticipation
’ – and published a photograph of Robert, his arm around Sharon Boyle, celebrating the drug seizure on the night of Isobel’s birth. They held their glasses towards the camera, smiling broadly, two half-smoked cigarettes resting on an overflowing ashtray in front of them.

The photograph had been cropped, Robert insisted. He pointed to his other arm, truncated from the crop, and insisted it was around Gavin’s shoulder or Victor’s or Jimmy’s; he was at a party with friends, and had only the vaguest memory of who was sitting beside him.

‘Who gives a fuck…’ He sounded too weary to care. ‘They’re my mates. We were celebrating.’

‘Some mates!’ The image of Robert and Sharon Boyle laughing and drinking together while she was suffering labour pains ran like a wire through Carla’s brain. She picked up the newspaper and tore it into shreds. ‘Find out which of your
mates
gave that photograph to the papers. But
I doubt if you’ll succeed. They can’t even find your own daughter.’

He watched her fling the pieces to the floor. ‘Don’t ever speak to me like that again.’ His anger, tightly suppressed, was visible only in his eyes. ‘I’ve enough on my mind without having to endure your petty jealousy.’

‘I’m not jealous. Not of her—’

‘Then what?’ he snapped. ‘Is it because I’m the centre of media attention for a change?’

Something inside her shrivelled. It could have been her heart or something less tangible, the knowledge that they were stepping into new, dangerous territory where forgiveness could soon become impossible.

‘What exactly do you mean?’ Her voice was shrill, accusing. ‘Do you believe I enjoy the notoriety…that I seek it out for my own satisfaction rather than from a desperate need to find Isobel? If that’s what you mean, then say it. Say it straight to my face, Robert.’

‘I’m sorry…sorry. I didn’t mean it.’ He rubbed his hands over his cheeks and swayed forward. ‘Forget what I said…
please
forget it. How can anyone enjoy what we’re going through? But you’re able to handle it…you’re used to it.’

Her voice, when she was able to speak, was hoarse. ‘I hate them…the whole fucking circus feeding off us. But if it means keeping Isobel’s name out there, I’ll endure it. And you’re right. I am jealous. Jealous to my bones of the woman who stole our child. She’s out there somewhere and she’s getting further and further away from us with all this nonsense about gangsters. We need to step up the campaign—’

‘What campaign?’ He shook his hands in frustration. ‘It’s over, Carla. We have to move on with our lives. You talk about jealousy. Have you any idea how I feel about Edward
Carter? “
The Spur.
”’ She flinched back from his mocking tone. ‘What is it with you and him? I hear the remarks, the speculation—’

‘What speculation?’

‘That you’re having an affair with him.’

‘So? What do you think, Robert?’

‘I know it isn’t true. I just don’t understand why he took such an interest in our case.’

‘Because I asked him. I told you we used to know each other.’

‘How well did you know him?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Robert—’

‘I need to know.’

‘But that doesn’t give you the right to ask such questions. I’ve never questioned you about your past.’

‘This is different. Everything humanly possible was done by the police to find Isobel yet the two of you are constantly criticising my superiors. It’s implicit in everything you say, especially when you launched that campaign.’

‘So this cross-examination is about your superiors and what they think of you…and, by extension, me?’

‘No, Carla. I’m asking you as your husband. What is Edward Carter to you?’

‘A friend,’ she replied. ‘Someone who is willing to help us.’

She bent down to pick up the newspaper pieces. He hunkered beside her and helped. If he touched her now they would tumble to the floor and make love, swift love, hurting and intense. Perhaps, afterwards, they would be able to reach each other’s thoughts, share the pain, her secret. His face was turned from her. Perhaps he was waiting for her to reach out to him. Robert, as if suspecting her turmoil, allowed the scraps of paper to fall from his hands. He made a sound; animals must moan in the same bewildered way when they
were caught in traps, she thought. He straightened and walked away from her, away from the room, from their house, from the hope that if he had stayed an instant longer, they could have broken the back of their grief together.

The letters had continued to ebb and flow, depending on the publicity she received. Since the anniversary of her disappearance, it was becoming more difficult to keep Isobel’s name in the public eye. The day marked a watershed for the public who had been following each twist and turn of the search. They were moving on. This morning only one letter lay in the hall when Carla came downstairs. She left it unopened on the kitchen table. She was running late this morning and Gillian would be waiting for her.

Gillian’s strength was waning, although she still insisted on getting up each day, even for a short while. When the day was fine, they usually walked along Sandymount Strand, which was only a short distance from Gillian’s house. She had refused any further chemotherapy, settling instead for pain management and home assistance. Her determination to live until Isobel was found was a fragile hope but she never wavered in her belief that her grandchild was alive and would eventually be reunited with her parents.

She was downstairs in her kitchen when Carla arrived at her house.

‘I suppose you haven’t eaten,’ she said as she removed eggs and smoked salmon from the fridge.

‘I’m not hungry.’ Carla flung her coat over a chair and sat down. ‘You don’t have to make anything for me.’

‘Who says I’m cooking for you?’ Gillian busied herself at the cooker. ‘I happen to be hungry and I don’t like to eat alone.’

‘Then let me do it.’ Carla stood behind her and placed her hands on her hips, shocked by the thinness Gillian disguised under her chunky cardigan and loose trousers.

‘I need to do it,’ Gillian replied. ‘Please, let me cook for you, Carla.’

The scrambled eggs, flavoured with pink slivers of salmon, were fluffy and light. Carla forced herself to eat and knew that Gillian was making the same effort. Food, the great comforter. She had become Gillian’s chief carer. An end was in sight and, although Carla dreaded its inevitability, her days now had a structure and a purpose. When Gillian’s phone rang, she knew it was Raine calling from Hong Kong or Japan or wherever her job dictated. She knew it was Robert ringing from his desk, grabbing a few moments to enquire about his mother. A ring on the doorbell meant a nurse or a doctor. They arrived with relief-inducing morphine for Gillian and advice for Carla. Gillian’s friends also came with homemade soup or casseroles and offered to sit with her while Carla did the shopping or met Steve Robson, the private detective Edward had hired for the ‘Find Isobel’ campaign.

She forgot about the letter until she returned to the house that evening. She glanced at the postmark. Co. Clare. When she was a child, she went there once with her parents for a holiday. A cottage overlooking the sea in Lahinch. She rode a donkey on the beach and Leo buried her in sand, only her head protruding, like a character from
Endgame.
She remembered the Burren, the strange rock formations, the exhilaration of jumping over them with her brother, then lying down, pretending to be dead, under the dolmen slabs.

Rockrose

Maoltrán

Co. Clare

22 November 1994

Dear Carla
,

I’d like to offer you and your husband my deepest sympathy. Your struggle has moved me deeply. I hope constantly that there will be a breakthrough in the search for your daughter and, like the rest of the country, I hoped that the search of the industrial estate would be the end of your suffering. Sadly, that was not to be. How anyone could be so cruel is beyond belief – so I have to assume that the person who made that phone call was deeply disturbed. I wanted to write to you then and tell you how much I admire your courage and endurance. But I did not want to intrude on your privacy.

However, after last week’s appalling press conference and the media’s behaviour since then, I simply had to make contact to express my disgust at the coverage you have received from certain newspapers.

Do not allow them to deflect you from your search or diminish your courage. If faith can move mountains, then you have the power to create an earthquake. What lies beneath the surface is fragile and constantly shifting. Sooner or later, and I hope with all my heart it will be sooner, the cracks will appear and you will be reunited with Isobel.

Please do not think I’m comparing my loss to yours – but I do understand the pain of being parted from a child. My son lives in Canada but I’m fortunate to be in contact with him and able to foster a close relationship. I hope that soon you can put this dreadful time behind you and look towards the future with your precious daughter by your side.

Yours sincerely
,

David Dowling.

Robert rang to say he would be late. Sharon Boyle was leaving the force, moving to Australia. Tonight was her send-off party. Carla wondered what it would be like to fly away to the other side of the world. Abandon everything and start over. Sometimes, when she was exhausted, when her strength was at its lowest ebb, she wondered what life would be like if Isobel had been stillborn. Dead and buried and mourned. If she had never felt the warm touch of her baby’s skin, the pull of her baby’s lips against her nipples, would her agony be more endurable? If she had never smelled the newborn baby smells, sweet and sour, heard those kitten whimpers or the arrogant wail that demanded space for Isobel Gardner in the bright, big world she had entered, could she and Robert have moved painfully forward into a different reality? If Isobel’s brief presence on earth was marked by a small white cross then they might have had a second chance at happiness instead of being caught in a static web of waiting.

She unpacked bags of groceries and tidied the kitchen. Midnight came and went without any sign of Robert. She answered David Dowling’s letter. Her hand shook and she misspelled Maoltrán. Too tired to write another envelope, she crossed out the word and rewrote it.

The front door slammed. Robert stood in the kitchen doorway.

‘How long have you been drinking?’ she demanded, knowing from his expression of concentration that he was very drunk.

‘Not long.’ He carefully enunciated his words.

‘Sleep in the spare room tonight.’

‘I told you I’d be late.’ He sighed heavily and swayed forward, gripped the frame of the door.

‘But not drunk.’

‘It was Sharon’s send-off party. Don’t make a drama, Carla.’

‘You’re drunk, Robert. I don’t want you in my bed.’

‘Drunk or sober…it doesn’t seem to make any difference.’

‘It might, if you occasionally came home to me.’ He is my husband, she thought. I love him…love him…love him…The words were meaningless.

She guided him up the stairs. When his hands fumbled she helped him undress. Help was all they had to give each other. They lay together. His body was flaccid, hers unyielding, but, gradually, they grew warm and moved closer. They took comfort from this heat. Nothing else was possible.

3 Longley Crescent
,

Ranelagh,

Dublin 6

25 November 1994

Dear David
,

Thank you for your letter. I appreciate the time and trouble you took to contact Robert and me. We are heartbroken over Isobel’s disappearance but the letters of support we receive help us to cope with each day. You called me courageous. I’ve never seen what I do as courageous. There is simply no other way to behave. If I don’t hold on
to the hope that Isobel will be found, it will be impossible to continue. She was in my life for such a short sweet time, yet now she dominates my every waking moment. She enters my dreams where I hold her close to me. You may think I would find it difficult to awaken and discover I was only dreaming, but when the dreams are kind, they nurture me through another day.

You wrote about your son and your separation from him. How very sad. But continents cannot separate you and you must use every opportunity to see him. I wish you every happiness in your life and thank you again for your kindness.

With my best wishes
,

Carla Kelly-Gardner.