Surrogate – a psychological thriller (24 page)

I held my finger down on the entryphone. The gynaecologist’s surgery where Mole had her tests done should have been open by now. Come on, come on. I looked at my watch, which read half past nine in the morning. Cyclists swarmed round cars at traffic lights while I waited for somebody to answer. I had spent an uncomfortable night in the armchair waiting for an attacker who never came. Eventually I told myself to stop being so ridiculous and crawled gratefully into bed, luxuriating in clean sheets. Still, sleep would not come. On top of everything else, there was another thing that kept rankling me: why had Doctor Forget not said anything about my wife being on the pill? Surely he must have known. I mean, it would have come up on her tests. Yet he made her undergo that gruesome procedure, sticking a catheter inside her. I remembered Mole searching for my hand while she winced with pain, and then how he pointed out her womb on the X-rays, how matter of fact he had been tracing his finger over the ghostly cross-section. Rather than go to straight to Wales, I needed to confront him first.

A woman's voice asked how she could help. "Doctor Forget, please," I said loudly. "My wife's a patient of his."

"I'm sorry, but Doctor Forget is not here," she said.

"Please. I need to speak to somebody," I said. I could hear conversation in the background.

To my surprise, the woman Mole had met in the department store answered the door. What was her name, Fiona, Fionnula, something like that? She stood with the door ajar, looking just as surprised to see me.

"You," I said. "I had no idea you worked here. When we met, you didn’t say–"

"I'm sorry? I'm Doctor Forget's new assistant. I thought you knew."

"I mean, my wife never said she knew you from Doctor Forget’s office. When we met, I mean," I said stepping inside the entrance. Phones rang as the clinic geared up for the day.

Forget's assistant led me into the hall. "I only knew her briefly. She showed me the ropes just before she left. Please tell her how grateful I was."

"What do you mean, 'before she left'?"

I gripped the woman's wrist and held her tightly. Her eyes widened and she looked for help. What was this crazy man doing in the clinic?

"Are you saying she used to work here?" I realised how aggressive I sounded, and I relaxed my grip. "I'm sorry," I said. "I've been under a lot of stress. My wife– I didn't sleep last night. You see, my wife disappeared four days ago with our baby. I haven't heard from them since. I need to speak to Doctor Forget. There's something I have to ask him. Please could you tell him Hugo Cox is in reception and needs to speak to him? Urgently."

The woman didn’t move. "We don't know where he is. He hasn't been in the surgery for days. His wife just called as well asking if we had any news."

"So you're saying that Doctor Forget has gone too?"

"Yes, we haven't heard a word."

"I just need to be clear about this. You're saying that my wife used to work here?"

Felicity (yes, that was her name!) looked at me mystified. "Your wife was Doctor Forget's secretary before I was. Didn’t you know that?"

Colour drained out of the room as it all finally came together. I grasped for something to hold on to. The reality was that Forget and my wife were in this together. They had to be. It was the only explanation. Right from the start, they had set out to ruin me. All that hand-wringing anxiety about sperm counts and ovulation dates ... really, it was risible. They had been laughing at me, plotting and scheming, and I could picture the two of them luxuriating in their corruption. All those appointments when she said she was seeing him: instead I pictured them pawing at each other in a hotel room, Mole writhing in pleasure on the bed. But why? What had I ever done to either of them to make them want to destroy me like this?

"Are you all right? I think you had better sit down," Felicity said. Receptionists wearing headsets looked up at this unexpected visitor.

"Is there somewhere we can talk in private? I need to speak to you alone."

"All right," she said hesitantly.

We stood in the corridor, and I waited until a brisk blonde carrying a sheaf of reports walked past before I began. "When my wife and I came to see Doctor Forget, he told us she could never have children. Something about her immune system being too healthy. Then I found these ..." I presented her with the crushed contraceptive box.

Felicity scrutinised the prescription label.

"They're from this clinic," she admitted reluctantly before handing them back.

"Don't you see? Doctor Forget must have known there was nothing wrong with my wife. He lied to me. They both did. Emily never told me she worked here, never mentioned it once. Now she's gone off with my child, and Forget’s disappeared too. Funny that, isn't it?"

"Look, I'm really sorry, but I just work here. If you need to speak to Doctor Forget, I suggest you wait until–"

"Let me see my wife's medical records. Please. That'll show whether she was infertile or not.

"I can't do that. Patient records are confidential. I could lose my job."

"All I'm asking is for you to show me a bit of paper," I said as quietly as I could. "I feel as if I'm going out of my mind."

"I'm sorry, but there are procedures. We can't just go round letting anybody see patients' records."

This time I gripped her wrist hard. She yelped and looked round the corridor. "Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I'm a desperate man, and I am capable of desperate things." I relaxed my grip. "For Christ's sake, I paid the bill. I have a right to know."

Felicity checked to see if anybody was coming. "All right. Two minutes. What was your wife's married name?"

"I told you. Cox. Emily Cox."

The filing room was directly opposite where we were standing. We slipped in to a store room groaning with hanging files. Felicity went to a filing cabinet and pulled open the bottom drawer. These were just the A to Cs, she explained, as nothing was computerised yet. The surgery still used an old-fashioned filing system. She riffled through packed manila folders and brought out a paper-clipped file. "Here. Quickly. You must never let anybody know." I looked through her patient notes, most of which were written in Forget's almost indecipherable fountain-pen scrawl. Just as I suspected, there was no mention of infertility, just repeated prescriptions for contraceptives. Neither was there any mention of IVF treatments, nor of recommending us to a surrogacy clinic either. It was as if I had invented going down the surrogacy route myself. There were also a couple of X-rays at the back of the file, black-and-white images of Mole's pelvis.

"Here," I said, handing them to her. "Can you see anything wrong here?"

"I'm not a doctor. You need to discuss this with Doctor Forget."

"But you see enough patient X-rays to know when something is wrong, right?"

Felicity studied the first plastic sheet, then the other. "They're both clean," she said, squinting. "There's nothing unusual here. Your wife doesn't have anything wrong with her ovaries. As I said, you really need to speak to Doctor Forget about this."

Felicity was about to say something else when the filing room door opened. I pulled her towards me. Now we were both standing behind the door, too scared to move. She could lose her job if we were caught. The crisp blond receptionist I'd noticed earlier bent over a filing cabinet, and neither of us dared breathe. Surely she must be able to see us: we were almost right in front of her. The blond slammed the cabinet shut and walked out again.

Felicity's shoulders slumped with relief. "Please. You must go. There's nothing more I can tell you."

"One more thing. Forget's home address. Perhaps I could speak to his wife."

Felicity paused for a moment and nodded reluctantly. I followed her back into the brisk jumble of the secretaries' front office. She scribbled an address on a Post-It note and handed it to me.

Forget lived in west London, in one of those big Victorian villas in an anonymous street in Fulham. I paid the taxi driver and noticed a line of parked BMWs and Mercedes outside the houses. Being a fashionable gynaecologist certainly paid well; Forget was living cheek-by-jowl with the bankers and lawyers whose wives I guessed were his clients. I was looking for number forty-three. I walked past the plane trees, appreciating the solidly built bankers' houses with their imposing gates and CCTV cameras. Walking up the garden path, I noticed the empty driveway before I rapped on the front door with its heavy knocker. I watched somebody approach through the coloured glass. A toddler in a grubby tee-shirt and a nappy looked up at me as the door opened. His mother stood over him, probably wondering who this stranger was.

"Hello?" she said. "How can I help you?"

"You don't know me, Mrs Forget, but my wife is a patient of your husband's."

"My husband is not here. You'll need to telephone his clinic." She started to close the door.

"I've just come from there. Mrs Forget, may I come in? You don't know where your husband is, do you?"

"I'm sorry. You really must contact his place of work."

"Mrs Forget. I believe that your husband is having an affair with my wife."

That brought her up short.

"Listen, I'm really sorry," I blustered. "You see, my wife has taken my daughter with them."

Mrs Forget did not look shocked, and I suspected this was not the first time somebody had told her that her husband had been unfaithful.

"Perhaps you had better come in."

The hall was full of the happy chaos of childhood: a spinning top, overturned bricks and a plastic train. I followed Mrs Forget into the kitchen, beyond which was a garden with a climbing frame. "Nice house," I said.

"Do you want some coffee?" she said. "I was just making some." I noticed how thin and unhappy-looking she looked compared to the strong, confident woman in the photograph on Forget’s bookshelf. Suddenly a wail went up from the sitting room, and she dropped what she was doing. "George, are you all right?" she called.

Mrs Forget returned carrying her overweight toddler on her hip, the child gulping as he fought to get his tears under control. With her free hand she gingerly carried over my coffee.

"Here, let me help you," I said, taking the cup from her.

"Sorry, do you take sugar?"

I shook my head. "This doesn't seem to be exactly news to you."

"You're not the first person to suggest that my husband is having an affair, no."

"And you don't find it upsetting?"

She slid her toddler down to the ground and encouraged him to run off and play. Mrs Forget waited until he was out of the room. "It's funny, Mr–?"

"Hugo Cox."

"It's funny, Mr Cox, but when you first meet somebody, you think they're dangerous and dark and exciting, yet almost immediately you want to change them. I knew what I was getting into when I met Jean-Marc. After a while you get used to it. My husband has what's called Prince Rupert's disease. He always thinks there's another conquest round the corner." She smiled ruefully.

"There's always a door," I said. "I mean, you always have a choice." In a way I felt sorry for her. She was a prisoner of this house, of her lifestyle. I wondered whether he knocked her about, and even if he did, I suspected she would put up with it for the sake of her toddler. It was a cruel thing to think, but that was how I felt.

"What option do I have? Look around you. As long as he doesn't bring it home, I don't care. You said your wife is a patient of his ..."

"Not exactly. She used to be his secretary. Perhaps you know her ... Emily Givings?"

Mrs Forget's mouth tightened. "That woman. Oh yes, I know her quite well."

"Go on, I'm listening."

"She was the only one who came near to touching our marriage. She was the only one he was cruel to me about. He told me once that when they made love she purred like a cat." She gave a little laugh that was more like a grunt.

"When did you last see your husband?"

"The day before yesterday. I've left messages, but he hasn't returned my calls."

"Has he ever done anything like this before?"

"He's gone away with one of his girlfriends, yes."

"So you haven't reported him missing?"

"Not yet, no."

There was one more question that I had to ask. "What kind of car does your husband drive?"

Mrs Forget looked at me as if she hadn’t quite understood the question. "A black Range Rover, why?"

I parked my car opposite the row of cheaply built cottages in the Welsh seaside town. The satnav told me I had arrived at my destination: the address where my mother-in-law was now living. The rain had turned to a light drifting mist, and dampness penetrated my bones. Was there anything more depressing than a British seaside resort out of season? Well, what did you expect in north Wales in April?

The locking system chirruped as I pocketed my keys and, pulling my raincoat tighter, I crossed the road. My flesh shivered beneath the thin wool of my suit. I faced a long wait if Mrs Givings had gone away. At best, I could stay overnight. Otherwise my trip would have been wasted. I would have to return to London without getting the answers I was looking for.

A small birdlike woman answered the door, and I searched for any family resemblance. She was wearing a pinny and had rubber gloves on. Clearly I had caught Mrs Givings in the middle of doing some housework. "Can I help you?" she asked. If she knew who I was, she gave no sign of it.

"Are you Mrs Givings? I'm an investigator from the insurance company. I've got some questions to ask you," I said.

"Insurance company? You never said you were coming. I'm afraid now isn't convenient." She was about to say goodbye when I said, "Mrs Givings, please, it won't take a minute. I tried calling you, but I must have taken the number down wrong. I've come a long way, and I don't want to go back empty-handed."

"Do you have any identification?"

"Of course," I said, tugging in my breast pocket for my wallet. I gave her my Berkshire RE business card, which she studied. Her face tightened, and she handed the card back.

"You've got a bloody nerve coming here," she said, about to close the door again.

"Please, Mrs Givings." I jammed my wet shoe in the door frame and held on to the door from the other side. This was all beginning to feel like something out of a bad detective novel. Mrs Givings gave a little O of surprise, but I had not come all this way to have the door slammed in my face. "I'm here to help you," I said. "We've decided to settle. I'm here to discuss money."

Now I saw the resemblance. It was in the eyes. Her eyes were the same as her daughter's, and Mrs Givings was looking at me with dislike. "How much money?" she asked.

"That's what I'm here to talk about."

"All right, come in," she said reluctantly. "This is the first time anybody has been to see me since my husband died. All I've ever had is letters from you people. The way you've treated us, it's despicable."

"I can only apologise for that." I coughed. "There's been a change in policy. New management. How we are treating claimants, I mean."

We were standing in her cramped hall with its cheap overhead lampshade and anaglypta wallpaper. Everything looked finger-marked and grubby. "The sitting room's on the left," she said. It seemed as if the contents of a much larger house had been crammed inside this one. Silver photographs were crowded together on a table and, sure enough, there was Emily as a little girl about to mount a pony, and another one of Mrs Givings standing over her while she blew out candles on a birthday cake. My heart welled at the thought of my wife, and then I felt pain at how she had betrayed me.

"I'd like to go over everything one more time," I said, bringing out the little notebook I carried for interminable work meetings. Mrs Givings had been in the middle of clearing out the fireplace.

"You've had my letters. My solicitor has written to you, too. What else do you need to know?"

"I just wanted to get the sequence of events clear in my head. Before I make my report."

"What is there to say? Your company killed my husband. You and your people are responsible for my husband's death," she said simply.

"I don't understand."

Mrs Givings snapped off her rubber gloves. "Of course, it was our fault for letting ourselves get talked into it. Your salesman said there was hardly any risk, all we had to do was sign up and we could expect a fat cheque each year. Once we could prove we had enough cash, we would be admitted into the golden circle. Everybody was doing it, he said. Then there was the lunch in the executive boardroom, the fine wine and the silver service. God, the snobbery." She gave an unhappy bark of laughter.

"We had our daughter in private school and the fees kept going up every year, so the thought of a little windfall dropping through the letterbox was appealing. It meant we could go on holiday or get the car serviced. We weren't being extravagant, we were just trying to give our daughter a middle-class upbringing. What's the expression? The squeezed middle. Yes, that was us. I remember Charlie asking, 'What does it mean, unlimited liability?' I think the salesman even bloody winked, as if to say, they have to put that in. There was no chance of that ever happening, he said, not once in the three-hundred-year history of Lloyd's. I felt as if I was being patted on the head. It never occurred to us that he meant the house."

She paused for a moment before continuing.

"Everything was fine for the first couple of years, and we spent the money on school fees and kitting Emily out for sixth form. Then the first demand arrived for ten thousand pounds, which we could meet out of capital, then twenty. Soon we had eaten through most of our savings and still you kept dunning us of money. 'Unexpected circumstances.' 'Difficult market conditions.' There was nothing left after two years. Having burned through all of our money, we thought you would leave us alone but no ... you came after the house."

So, this was what it was all about.

Emily's parents had been two of the small investors Dad had so disparaged, those little people who were collateral damage while he fleeced the company. These were the people who paid for his Hermes ties, Turnbull & Asser shirts and Lobb shoes. The truth was that the investor pool had grown too big. Our salesmen had become too greedy for commissions. I remembered a story Dad had told me about one of his heroes, Joseph Kennedy, father of the US President, who realised it was time to get out of the stock market when his shoe-shine boy started giving
him
share tips. The Wall Street crash happened shortly after.

"Tell me, once you'd gone through your capital and sold the house, how much did you repay Berkshire RE?"

"You must know the figures. About a million pounds. Everything we owned."

One million pounds.

The same amount as the ransom demand.

Mrs Givings picked up the poker and started raddling the grate, spilling ash onto the hearth. "Charlie started having a recurring dream. He was on the upper deck of a double-decker bus with a steering wheel coming up through the floor. The bus was out of control, and he couldn't steer it." She looked at me sharply. "That tells you something about his state of mind, doesn't it? When the solicitor's letter arrived telling us we had to sell the house, that was the final straw. He felt he had failed as a father and as a provider. He nailed a belt to a door in the basement and hanged himself. It was our daughter who discovered him."

There was a lump in my throat, and I found it difficult to swallow. I could see everything: the leather belt being nailed to the door frame, the buckled loop being slipped over Mole’s father neck, and then the pair of shoes twisting in a shaft of sunlight ... "I am so sorry," I said. "I really had no idea. You must accept my unreserved apology." We sat there in silence for a moment while I tried to think of what to say next. I still needed to find out whether she knew where Emily was, though. "Mrs Givings, I do need to know more about your daughter."

"I don't see what she's got to do with it."

"Please, it's important."

"I really don't see–"

"The payout will be more depending on the level of mental distress."

Mrs Givings hesitated before continuing. "To be honest, I don't think she ever got over discovering her father like that. I didn't have much time for Emily with all our money troubles. I was too busy trying to keep Charlie on an even keel. He was depressed. I blame myself. I see now that my daughter needed me too."

"And your daughter, where is she now?"

"I don't see–"

"Dependents ... the settlement."

"Before we go any further, I want to hear more about this settlement. How much money are we talking about?"

"Everything you paid out. Believe me, Mrs Givings, I'm on your side. I believe the risks never properly explained, that you never understood what you were getting into–"

Mrs Givings considered what I had just said. "Very well, then. She works down in London. In a doctor's office, a gynaecologist. We–" she paused. "We haven't spoken for some time. We've become estranged. Something like this ... affects everybody. It's like a stone thrown into a pond. The ripples go on and on forever."

I pulled out my phone and found a photograph of our baby daughter. "Tell me," I said, handing the phone to her. "Do you know who this is?"

"What's this got to do with–"

"Please, Mrs Givings, it's important."

Mrs Givings studied the phone for a moment. Outside the rain had turned into the third act of King Lear, hammering down on the cars parked outside.

"I have no idea," she said with a shrug, handing the phone back.

"She's your granddaughter."

Mrs Givings burst out laughing, and again I recognised Emily from her laugh. They shared the same kind of laughter. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm not a grandmother."

"And I am your son-in-law."

When she realised I wasn’t joking, Mrs Givings sat down in one of the chintz-covered armchairs. I shifted on the sofa. "Mrs Givings, I am the chief executive of the Lloyd's syndicate you lost your savings to. I realise this has come as a complete shock. First, I am so sorry about what has happened. I can truthfully tell you I had no idea. Many others lost everything as well. As I said, I don't believe the risks were ever properly explained. But I think it goes deeper than that. I believe that you and others were the victims of fraud. I think there was enough money to cover any losses but that money was creamed off by others."

"What do you mean? What others?"

"I mean by the chairman of the syndicate, by my father."

We both sat there allowing my words to sink in. "Are you telling me that you and Emily are married?" Mrs Givings said finally. "Why would she marry you? You're probably the one person she despises most in the world. You and your father. She blamed both of you for what happened to us. I remember her saying that some people could only be made to understand, to feel somebody's pain, by punishing them for what they had done."

"She said that? She used those words?"

"You know what, I've had enough of this. I'm going to phone her right now."

I rose from the sofa, blocking her way. "She won't answer your call. She hasn't been taking mine. Please–" I raised both my hands. "Just listen to my story."

I went through the whole thing, from meeting her daughter, what, a year and a half ago (it felt like a different life), to the ransom demand and becoming the prime suspect in a murder investigation. Then Emily finding out about my adultery and disappearing with our daughter before I discovered her own affair.

"Emily and her employer planned this together right from the start, I'm sure of it. They must have roped Alice into it. Money, I guess. Something went wrong. Maybe Alice had second thoughts ... anyway, Emily panicked and fled with our baby – and a million pounds of my money."

If I had hoped to gain my mother-in-law's sympathy, I was wrong. "It all sounds so far-fetched. False identities. Kidnappings. Ransoms. Like something you'd watch on TV."

"What could I possibly have to gain by lying to you?"

"I don't know. I just don't believe you."

"Think about it, Mrs Givings. This was about revenge. Payback for what happened to your husband and her father and something for which, believe me, I am truly sorry." Perhaps this is what it had all been about, the furthest point of my journey, my coming to this sodden, dreary Welsh town, prostrating myself before my mother-in-law.

"Surely you're not asking me to believe that my daughter is capable of something like this."

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you."

She shook her head. "I really must ask you to leave."

"Mrs Givings, you are my only hope. Please, if you know where your daughter is, if you know anything, you must tell me."

"I told you. We haven't spoken for months. I don't know where she is. And even if I did, I wouldn't tell you. You're the last person in the world I would help."

If she was going to push me, I was going to shove her back. Hard. "Mrs Givings, if you don't tell me where your daughter is, you will never see your granddaughter. I will make sure of it."

"My granddaughter? I didn’t even know that Emily was married until you walked in. From everything you’ve told me, how do you know this baby is even yours? Now I want you to get out before I call the police. Get out. Get Out. GET OUT."