The Start of Everything (35 page)

“It’s awkward timing, but … I’d like a baby with you, Coco.”

I nod.

“You going to tell me how
you
feel?” he presses.

I shake my head. But I say, “All right.”

“You feel all right?” His hands are on my cheeks.

“No. ‘All right,’ I’ll tell you.” He waits. I pull his hands off me. I squeeze his fingers. “I don’t like sharing my body like this. I don’t like what it’s doing to me. I like to sleep. I like to work. I’m bad at this already. If I feel this way now, it’s only going to get worse.”

I’m still outside the door; he’s still in. The lamplight behind him puts him into silhouette. I can’t read his face.

He says, “You don’t want to have this baby?” He’s trying to sound neutral. He’s not succeeding.

Tears again. I hate this. I push him into the house and stomp past. Who’s the child again? I’m throwing a fair tantrum.

“I do want this baby. I do,” I say, sucking snot back up my nostrils. “But the me that wants it isn’t the me I’m used to. There’s another me in here, a me who leans into other people’s prams, cooing, and looks up baby names on the Internet. That’s what I mean by sharing my body. There’s two of me in here, the me I know and always have been, and this baby-crazy mum. I don’t know her, I don’t know if I’ll like her, and when the baby comes out I don’t know how much of the old me will be left. I like me, the old me. I don’t want her to die. I don’t want to die.” I fold in the middle, leaning forward, bouncing with sobs. “When I told Keene, I—”

“You told Keene?” Everything up till then he’s absorbed, generously, but this he throws back at me, incredulous.

“I didn’t tell him like a friend, I told him to fuck off. I told him he wasn’t the only one with a, a … physical problem.”

Dan cringes at the last word. “Our baby is a problem?”

“No, I …” But then I rally. “Yes, a baby is a problem. It’s not only a problem. It’s a gift, too. A beautiful, wonderful, lucky gift. And, dare I say it, a problem. Anyone who doesn’t admit that is full of shit. Or the one who isn’t pregnant.”

I catch my reflection in the dark window. My arms are folded over my breasts. My shape is obvious. Under my elbows is a curve that wasn’t there before. I won’t be able to hide it much longer.

I lower my arms. My breasts are larger, too; hasn’t he noticed? My areolas have darkened. I’m tempted to go on the offensive:
Don’t you even look at me?
But that wouldn’t be fair. That wouldn’t be kind.

“Let’s start over,” I say. “Dan, we’re having a baby.” I attempt a smile. “I’m scared I’m going to be a bad mother or a bad cop. Or both. I don’t like feeling this way.”

Dan hugs me like ribbons round a maypole, in parallel diagonal stripes: one arm up across my shoulder to my hair, the other stretched across my waist to my hip. We rock a little, until my breathing slows down.

When we pull apart he says, “Alice needs you. Richard sounded scared.”

“She would hate me if she knew what I’ve said about being pregnant.”

“This isn’t about miscarriage. It’s police business. She needs you.”

I nod. I wipe my face with a tissue. “I’ll come home …” I mean to say “quickly” or at least “before midnight.” But I know I might not. It’s not that kind of job. “I’ll come home,” I repeat.

That will have to be enough.

CHAPTER 30

GEORGE HART-FRASER

R
ichard had a lecture scheduled the next day. So did I; I cancelled mine. Juliet stayed home to let in the gas man to repair the boiler. I had the car to myself.

My hand quivered. I forced the key into its hole and started the engine. I’d brought a screwdriver. That should help open a door. If that didn’t work, it could shatter a window. I supposed. It’s not as if I’d done any of this before.

I parked in a pub lot and walked up the road. House numbers were hidden behind hedges or within calligraphic renderings on tile. I finally found it—a white Tudor wigged in thatch.

I didn’t have to break anything. The door to the conservatory at the back was merely latched. I pushed and jiggled until the hook jumped off the eye.

Boxes filled the lounge. Either it was a recent move or they hoarded. The boxes were labelled “dining room” and “books” in black marker. I didn’t think Tobias’s school memorabilia would be there.

The stairs were uneven and turned a sharp corner up to the first floor. One step squealed under my foot. An answering moan came from upstairs.

I held still. No further sound came. Lifting my foot quickly from the step would probably release the noise again. I pulled up from my knee very, very slowly.

I waited in silence, postured like a flamingo. The moan might have been an animal. Or a person, asleep.

I put my foot on the next step, and the next and the next, now keeping to the edges. At the top, three doors bordered a square central landing. I had to choose.

The landing itself was made of apparently original boards that had warped and probably were never well-fitted to begin with. I kept to the edge here as well, to avoid making them whine underneath my weight. I shuffled along the wall.

The first door was slightly ajar. I nudged it, revealing tiles and a white sink. Two doors remained.

I looked for evidence of use. A corner of paper peeped out from under one.

I squeezed the iron handle and eased the door in. It was a cramped study. A laptop lay closed on a desk, and a scanner. Next to them, a box. The photos within showed cricket and rugby and choir and a vast dining hall full of young boys, cups raised. Underneath those pictures: certificates, a small football trophy, a fat knitted scarf in school colours, and two old, faded books. I upended it all onto the desk. Photos slid, books thudded, and the trophy clanged. I rooted around but found no watch.

Through the wall, a springy creak. In one step I pushed the door closed, but not clicked. A door slapped its opposite wall. The landing floorboards did indeed complain, lightly.
A woman?
Water rushed into the sink.

I held still. The floorboards again. The middle stair.
Damn
.

The dining room and lounge downstairs were connected by a wide arch. If she were in either, there would be no getting past.

A gurgle ran through pipes in the wall. The kitchen! I made for the stairs, skimming over the noisy one.

At the bottom, angles were such that I saw her, through the convergence
of the wide dining-room arch and the thin kitchen doorway. She stood, back to me, leaning against the counter, next to a white grumbling kettle. She wore a pale nightdress. A shock of red patched the back of it. My disgust must have been audible. She turned.

She reached for the telephone on the wall. I rushed her, slamming her across the room against the fridge. But the spiral cord stretched. Three tones for 999 beeped right in my ear. She released the receiver and it sprang back towards the wall behind me. The low tones of an answering voice came from it. I threw myself at it to hang it up.

Hot shock hit me in the back of the neck. I convulsed backwards. Pain ripped a shriek out of me. She’d poured boiled water down my back.

I wrenched the kettle out of her hand to beat her with it, but she skittered behind a door I didn’t realise was there. A lock clicked. I banged the kettle on the door, then threw it down.

Fingerprints everywhere. Police on the way. I ran across the street, hunched over. My shadow looked like a badger’s. I huddled in the car, banging my head against the steering wheel in a dull rhythm. I turned the key. The car lunged onto the road.

I gave my back to the cold shower spray, each stream hitting me like a blade. I braced myself against both sides of the stall.

Juliet knocked. “Occupied!” I called. She could wait to relieve herself. Or she could piss elsewhere.

“A police-person came while you were out!” she called through the door. “She said they’d found your watch. I didn’t know you’d lost a watch.”

I needed my passport. I could not stay.

“I haven’t,” I shouted over the water noise. “I don’t know what they’re talking about.”

The water turned dully warm; I got out. The soft towel scraped my back. I knelt on the bathmat, dripping, quivering.

The door shook from her knocking again. I hadn’t locked it, I realised a moment too late.

“You done in there? I need it.”

She barged in. She saw the blisters on my back. “Holy shit, George. You have to see somebody.”

“No,” I said.

“I’ll take you to A and E; that looks serious.”

If I didn’t go, she’d call them to come for me.

“No,” I said, pushing myself up.

“What the hell happened to you?”

I grabbed her by the back of the neck and slammed her head against the toilet.

In Bristol, I’d never had to see Stephen’s body. Mother did that. To me, Stephen remained fleshy and vital, not stiff and charred. He was gone, not changed.

Juliet bled.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I shouted at her. Her head leaked, matting her hair. The blood came at me, drained towards me, chased me out of the room.

The door under the stairs hung ajar. That’s right; the gas man had come today. That’s why it was warm. The heating was working.

I pulled the door open farther.

It took a spanner to loosen the coupling between two pipes until I got a hiss, and a stink. A botched job, creating a gas leak, could explain why Juliet fell and hit her head.

I had my passport. I had cash. I locked the door behind me.

CHAPTER 31

MORRIS KEENE

T
he cottage is more than four hundred years old but with shiny new thatch on top. It nudges right up against the edge of the road, like so many buildings from the days before cars.

I’m noticing these things because I haven’t been here before. Richard and Alice have lived here for four months, since they got back from honeymoon.

I haven’t phoned. I should have, to ask if this is a good time, but I didn’t want to hear no.

I don’t want to hear no in person, either. I wait in the drive.

Gwen miscarried once, after Dora. I never told anyone that. Gwen did; she told her friends and her siblings. I didn’t tell anyone. Who would I tell?