The Lie of You: I Will Have What Is Mine (27 page)

When we came off the motorway my arms were aching and my hands prickled. I could feel very little sensation in my fingers. Should I pull over and wait in the car for a bit? I longed to rest my head against the seat and let my arms recover. The wind showed no sign of weakening. If we pulled over the car might be struck by a falling branch, or worse. Now the tumult was coming from the trees on either side of the road as they were bent back and forth in a violent dance with the wind. There had been no sound from Billy on the back seat. He was sleeping through the noise and buffet of the wind.

I reached the A258 that leads down to Deal. There were pieces of ripped-off branches on the road. To my left was a stretch of farmland and I saw where a great tree had fallen on to a barn and its roof had caved in. Barn and tree had joined forces and become this strange hybrid, part brick, part dying sap. Now I felt the spray of the sea slap against the windscreen and the glass became sticky with salt and stuck leaves. The wipers fought against this onslaught. My arms were heavy, heavy but I was so nearly there. I turned into Cremers Drift, which led to the cottage. The road was choked with brambles and branches. I revved the Volvo to full capacity and drove over the branches. They cracked beneath the tyres.

Through the mess of the windscreen I saw that a tree had fallen right across the road in front of me. The road to the cottage was completely blocked. I would have to leave the car here and carry Billy and my stuff to the cottage. I turned the engine off.

Somewhere close by a house alarm was going off and there were lights in the sky as if searchlights were being used out at sea. I rested for a few moments then tried to open the door on my side. The force of the wind was tremendous. I pushed with all my strength and opened the door and climbed out. Now the wind was tearing at my clothes and my hair and the trees above my head were thrashing back and forth. I fought my way to the boot of the car and found the baby bottles, milk powder and nappies.

I pushed these into the holdall with my things and put the bag over my body. Then I inched my way round to the back door of the car by flattening myself against the body. Did I have the strength left to hold the door open and pick Billy up? At most I could make one journey from car to cottage. I laid my head against the roof and rested for a minute as the storm thrashed around me.

‘Don’t let this defeat you,’ Arvo Talvela said to me at one of our last sessions. ‘You have such strength of mind and character.’

I pulled the car door open and using my body as a door stop reached down and undid the seat belt straps on the back seat. Billy was still asleep but he woke up as I lifted him. He stirred against my body. I held him tight against me and wound the blanket more securely around his head and body. My arms were so weak and I had no strength in my wrists. He was heavy. I thought that I might drop him. I inched outwards until both our bodies were free. The wind caught the car door and slammed it shut with fury. I turned and walked the last few yards up the road. My legs were shuddering. Every step was an effort. Billy had woken up and was looking out of the cowl of his blanket at the rush and blackness of the night. He was making whimpering noises.

The fallen tree was my next obstacle. I lifted my left leg up as high as I could and straddled the tree. I had to sit there for a minute and rest. The smaller branches of the tree whipped against my legs. I could feel weals forming on my skin, under my trousers. I pulled my right leg over and continued up the road. Both my legs were now shaking so badly that I had to stagger the last few yards.

Billy had started to cry. I reached the gate of the cottage and pushed it open. The garden was a ruin of broken stems and branches and leaves. A terracotta pot had been flung over and smashed into pieces. Shards of pottery and earth spilled out over the path and crunched beneath my shoes. I reached the front door, found the key and let us in. I was completely exhausted. I slid down the door and sat on the floor with Billy in my lap. He was crying loudly now.

In a minute or two I will go to the kitchen and make him a bottle of milk. I may give him some Calpol. The woman in Boots told me that it helps babies sleep.

OCTOBER

Philip and Aisha got me out of the room and into a taxi. The storm was raging and all I could think was, Where is Billy in this terrible wind and fury? How will my little boy support life in this great storm? Aisha came with me as far as the flat. She was squeezing my hand and I couldn’t say a thing because my fear had made me mute.

When we got to the flat Aisha hugged me tightly and left. I took the lift up and Markus opened the door. The police were already there, two uniformed men, with Fran in the kitchen. Fran leapt to her feet the moment she saw me. Her face was swollen and her eyes puffy and streaked.

‘Kathy, I was in the living room. He was fast asleep.’

She started to cry and shake.

‘What happened? How
can
he be gone, Fran?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘Did someone come to the flat?’

‘No one...’

Markus said, ‘They’re sending a detective round. He’s on his way.’

One of the uniformed men, the older one, was writing things down on a pad. I went into Billy’s room. His cot was empty and his blanket was gone.

‘She took his blanket,’ I said.

She had left his blue teddy behind and it was on the floor. I picked it up and smelled it. Markus was standing by the door.

‘
She
took my baby, I know she did.’

He flinched and said, ‘We’re going to get him back.’

He started to walk over to me as if to touch me. I moved away from him and went back into the kitchen. Billy had just had his first birthday and there were greeting cards all over the kitchen, mocking me with their cutesy images of babies and bunnies and bears.

The men were still questioning Fran. She was slumped at the kitchen table and one of the policemen kept asking her what she had heard and she kept saying through her frightened tears that she hadn’t heard a thing; she’d been watching television and Billy was asleep. The front door was shut. She didn’t know how anyone could have got into the flat.

Markus said, ‘That’s right. I left after Fran got here and I closed the door behind me.’

‘And you didn’t open the door to anyone?’ the policeman asked her again.

‘Of course not. I already told you!’ Fran wailed.

I said to the man who was questioning her, ‘I know who took my baby.’

He said, ‘Let’s go in the other room for a minute.’

We went into the sitting room.

‘A woman called Heja Vanheinen has taken Billy. She hates me and she’s taken Billy.’

I could hear the storm outside as I was walking up and down the room. There was the sound of roof tiles falling as they gave in to the force of the wind, a whistle then a muted crash.

The policeman said, ‘Can you spell that name?’

‘He’ll be so scared in this terrible storm. H-e-j-a V-a-n-h-e-i-n-e-n.’

I spelled it out for him.

He wrote it down and said, ‘Why do you suspect her?’

‘I don’t suspect, I
know
she took him!’ I said fiercely.

‘OK, OK. Tell the detective when he arrives. For now we need to take your nanny down to the station for further questioning. She was here when it happened, whatever happened.’

I looked at him and realized he thought that Fran was somehow involved. ‘It’s not Fran. It’s Heja!’

The doorbell was ringing and then Markus came into the room with another man in plain clothes who nodded at the policeman and said to me, ‘Hello, I’m from Marylebone police station, Detective Inspector Nick Austin.’

He showed us his card.

I said to him, ‘I know who did it. I know who took my baby.’

I couldn’t look at Markus but I felt his presence, standing behind me as Nick Austin said, ‘Let’s sit down.’

‘Her name is Heja Vanheinen. She’s been stalking me for months...’

I looked behind me at Markus, challenging him to contradict me. He said nothing.

The uniformed man said, ‘There was no forced entry. Someone must have had a key or been let in.’

Nick said, ‘It’s Kathy, isn’t it? What do you mean by stalking?’

‘She hates me. She came to my work and got a job there.’

‘Why does she hate you?’

‘She used to be with my husband. She hates it that we’ve got a baby.’

He looked over to where I sensed Markus was now standing, behind the sofa by the window. He’d said nothing all this time and I knew from his silence that he wanted to protect her.

‘OK, let’s go through this step by step. I need to know all the details. What makes you think she would take your baby?’

‘She wants to destroy me!’

I knew I was sounding shrill and incoherent and might be losing the confidence of the detective. I tried to steady myself.

‘She came to see me a few weeks ago and said she was resigning and going back to Finland, to Helsinki.’

‘She’s Finnish?’

‘Yes.’

‘What makes you think she’s here?’

‘Her boyfriend came to see me. It was odd, her going like that so suddenly... You can check it out, can’t you?’

‘Yes, we can. Where does she live?’

‘In Blackfriars. She must have stayed here all this time and she waited and she took Billy tonight when she knew we’d be out and he’s in the storm and she’s going to kill him...’

‘
No!
Don’t even say that!’

Markus had found his voice at last. I could hardly breathe then, I was filled with such fury against him; he was trying to protect her.

‘If you even think it, let alone say it, we’ll both go mad.’ He was hoarse as though he could barely get the words out.

‘She’s a monster,’ I gasped.

Nick leaned forward, closer to me on the sofa.

‘Kathy, we can put out all kinds of information to help us get Billy back. So I need you to stay calm and to tell me all the details you can so we can follow this up immediately. OK?’

He had an open face and a scar on his chin and I felt he wanted to help me.

‘OK; but she’s
not
normal.’

Nick looked over at the uniformed man and said, ‘You’ve taken the nanny’s details?’

‘Yes, we’re thinking she should come down to the station.’

‘Agreed; we need to get details about the sequence of events,’ Nick said. Fran looked at me piteously as they led her away. I had no room for compassion for her at that moment. I could believe anything of Heja. Was it possible she had prevailed on Fran to let her into the flat?

OCTOBER

The storm had blown itself out. I was lying in the strange soft bed in the front bedroom. There was an old-fashioned eiderdown over the sheets and blankets, and I had spent a warm night there. I propped myself up against four large pillows. Billy slept on, next to me. Through the cottage window I could see a small square of washed-out blue sky, like a watercolour painting when too much water has been put on the brush and the colour is hardly there at all. I could hear birds singing. After last night’s terror and tumult they were making the world anew. The house alarm was no longer ringing. There were footsteps on the road outside and other sounds of human activity.

Markus was very much in my thoughts. We fought that summer at Åland because I sensed that he was attracted to Agneta, the Swedish woman on the boat. We had made it through the night and had moored safely at Sottunga on a morning of intense freshness. Agneta suggested we do a longer trip together. She said we’d made the grade as sailors. If we could survive that storm without getting sick we could survive anything. She suggested we do a week-long trip around the smaller islands.

I felt sick at the very idea. Markus was excited and agreed at once, looking over at me with eager eyes. I said nothing. I got up and walked away from them all, along the jetty. He came after me. He grabbed my hand and shouted at me for being so rude as to walk away like that. What had got into me?

I screamed at him, ‘I won’t spend another minute with that bitch Agneta fawning all over you!’

‘Your crazy jealousy again,’ he shouted at me. ‘You can’t keep getting madly jealous every time a woman speaks to me!’

We fought, briefly and viciously. I kicked him on his bare leg with all my force and he gasped with pain. He lunged at me and ripped my white T-shirt, scratching my neck as he did so and drawing blood. I ran away from him back to our lodgings in the town.

He shouted after me, ‘Your jealousy is driving me away, Heja!’

I packed my things in a fury and was wheeling my case up to the ferry station when he caught up with me. We made up. We went back to our room and went to bed and made love all afternoon. In the early evening a beam of sunlight came through a crack in the curtains and made a track of light across his naked body. I laid my head on his stomach and stroked the golden hairs above his penis. I rolled my face into these hairs and smelled him deeply. How foolish I was to be so jealous. Markus loved me, only me.

Billy had woken up and started to make a grizzling cry so I picked him up and took him down to the kitchen. My legs and wrists were very weak this morning. I noticed again how heavy he was and I rested him on my hip. I had to hold on to the banister tightly as the cottage stairs were steep and narrow. Then I laid him down on a towel on the kitchen floor while I made up a bottle of milk for him. He rolled over onto his stomach and started to crawl around the kitchen and out into the hall with surprising speed. I picked him up and brought him back into the kitchen and shut the door. This was going to be a difficult day. My body ached and I needed to rest but first I had to get the stuff out of the car. The car was down the road, blocked by that tree.

After he had his bottle I changed Billy and dressed him. It took a long time. He wriggled on the bed as I tried to pull on his trousers and there were all these buttons to do up while he kicked his legs. Then I got dressed.