Lullaby (3 page)

The rattle of the train battled the hiss of my tight breath. I automatically reached for my inhaler again, but of course it was still missing. Just the sock, the bobbly little sock, and a fingernail of fluff.

In the carriage, which stank of pee, I tried to relax, but I couldn’t sit back even for one small second because I was squeezed into the corner by the world’s largest man. He sweated on me all fatly, pores oozing in the stifling heat, squashing his huge nylon leg fully along my thigh, but I didn’t care. I crossed my arms over my poor bosoms that were as hard as crash helmets now, and I willed the train on with every piece of me, because by now I was quite sure that Mickey was back home; would be there when I arrived; that Louis was safe; and I banished thoughts of his tearful little face firmly from my mind. I stamped them down and replaced them with his fuzzy-peach head, his chubby smile.

And all the way I played that stupid game, the one I played incessantly as a kid. I was gambling with myself, making promises I couldn’t keep. If that bald man got
off at the next station, Louis would be home; if that woman turned her page before the old lady beside her nodded off, Mickey would be so apologetic, would kiss and hug me and beg for my forgiveness, and I would be serene, oh yes, serene, bestowing a gracious kiss.

And when the train pulled into Blackheath, I was like the kids from my old school, the daredevil ones; like Robbie used to be. Like I used to be. I jumped before we even stopped, running beside the still-moving train, about to fall. I was falling but then I caught myself and righted myself, and before I hit the tarmac I was running safely again.

I had sat in the Tate until I could bear to sit no more. The nice man, whose name was Mr Norland, let me ring my house—but the answer-phone picked up. I left a brief, burbling message, told Mickey to stay put if he came home, and then Mr Norland suggested tea. When he heard I had no money, he pressed handfuls of warm change into my hot, damp hands and propelled me to the café.

And so I sat alone and waited, sat very still and watched the world go by. My drink went cold, left a scummy tidemark on the shiny china as happy tourists bustled round me. People joined my table and left again. One couple had a muttered row about what film to see that night, and the bloke got really quite irate and went all pink, so I looked the other way and tried hard not to listen.

A brisk German lady in a khaki cagoule sat beside me eating carrot cake, and then forgot her postcards.
I called after her but she’d already gone, so I wiped a blob of buttery icing from the bag, and thumbed through her selection. She’d bought the one of the woman looking out over the field, the one I liked so much, and it made me want to cry again. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t cry. I just kept searching for Louis in the crowds and kicking myself for letting them vanish from my sight.

An hour passed, the slowest of my life. Mr Norland came to say his shift was over, but his colleagues had my details. And then, very gently, he suggested that perhaps I should go home.

‘Can I borrow your phone again?’ I asked, and one final useless time I rang Mickey’s mobile and home. Still nothing whatsoever on Mickey’s line, and just my silly jolly voice at home, with Louis’s gurgle in the background recorded for all time.

‘They must be on their way back home, d’you think?’ I said, and Mr Norland nodded and shakily I thanked him, stuck my chin in the air, much braver than I felt. As the sun slid down the creamy summer sky, I headed out for home.

Exploding into the dawdling rush-hour crowd the train had just spewed out, I pushed up through the village like a bullet from a gun. Natalie from my antenatal class waved merrily from outside the pub, her posh pram tucked all safe behind her, but I wouldn’t stop to talk; I couldn’t talk. On and up the hill I forced myself until I hit the great humid heath. Normally I’d feel relief here, pause to savour the space surrounding
me, but there wasn’t time for any of that now. I desperately needed my inhaler to breathe in this stagnant dusk, but at least the house was in view, and the light was on in the front window, and I promised God that I’d do anything, anything whatsoever, I’d never swear or lie or row with Mickey ever, ever again if he could just be home with Louis and everything would be normal once more.

I rang the bell. I could hear voices—thank Christ, there were voices! But no one came. I rang again, stuck my finger on the gold-plated doorbell that Mickey hated, kept swearing he’d replace, and I left it there until eventually the talking stopped. A silence fell, and that unnerved me more. Then footsteps pattered down the parquet floor, and the front door swung open-and it wasn’t Mickey at all. It was just the cleaner, Jean. I pushed past her into the house I so rarely called my own, past her into the kitchen, but I could see, oh God I saw, that no one else was there.

For a moment I nearly lost control. I put my head back and I almost howled ‘Louis? Mickey?’ Resounding silence met me.

‘Mickey, is he here? I heard voices?’ I croaked, leaning over the table, head bowed, trying to catch my breath. Sweat trickled down my back uncomfortably; the air hung thick around us and I knew the answer before it came.

‘No, dear, I haven’t seen him, I’m sorry.’

I stared at her. ‘But—the voices?’

‘The radio was on. I’ve switched it off now.’
Apologetic, timid voice, breathy as a child’s. White hair blending into chalky cheeks, my ‘diamond’ Jean might have spent her whole life underground. I knew she was a diamond because my neighbours told me so when I moved in. Only I’d never really felt that she was mine, you know. Jean belonged to the old regime.

‘When did you get here?’

‘Oh, I’m not quite sure, dear.’ Jean’s timekeeping was always a little hazy; a true hourly-paid conspirator.

‘Please do try to remember.’

My frantic tone seemed to drive her backwards. ‘I was late from Mrs Hamilton’s today, on account of her delivery, you see.’ A whisper, very fast, as if I might scold her; her pale face working hard. ‘I got here about three, I think. Is everything—’ she gulped at me like a goldfish out of water ‘—is everything all right, dear?’

‘Have you answered the phone at all? Are there any messages?’

‘No, dear. Well, actually,’ nervously she paused for thought, ‘actually, I did hear your voice on the machine, dear, when I was coming in. No one else, though, I don’t think. Not since I got here anyway.’

My chest contracted painfully. I scrabbled in the drawer for my spare inhaler, fingers curling round it gratefully like a drowning man’s. I breathed the spray in, and then very carefully I replaced the lid. With a huge effort to keep my voice from trembling, I tried to explain.

‘I’m just a bit worried because I got separated from Mr Finnegan and the baby at the gallery, where we’ve just been, you see, and I’m not sure—well, it’s just—’
oh God, it hurt me to admit it ‘—I just don’t know where they are right now, that’s all.’

That’s all.

‘Oh dear. Oh well, I’m sure they’ll be back soon, won’t they?’ She looked at me with hope.

I ignored the doubting inner voice; I said quickly, ‘Yes. Yes, of course they’ll be home soon.’ She was still waiting. ‘I’m going to make a few calls now, see if I can track them down.’

‘I’ll get on then, shall I, dear?’

Her heels tapped busily away as I searched through the junk on the kitchen table for my address book. Then I sensed a shadow in the hall. My head snapped up.

‘You could try ringing his office, Mrs Finnegan. Do you think—perhaps he needed to pop in there for something?’

‘Yes, good idea, Jean. I’ll do that.’

She smiled proudly, and tapped off again.

So I sat rigid as a tent-peg at the table and dialled Pauline’s direct line. She’d know where he was, surely, if anyone would? Leaden with exhaustion, I laid my head down, closed my eyes for just a second as I listened to the ring.

‘Pauline Gosforth is out of the office. If you need to reach Mickey Finnegan, please call Jenny Brown on extension four six five seven.’

Fuck! I redialled. Three rings in, friendly Jenny answered, thank God. She offered to check Mickey’s diary.

‘You know, I’ve got a feeling he did have a meeting
this afternoon. I was a bit surprised actually when he said he wasn’t coming in.’ She was enthusiastic. Did she feel complicit in something now, helping the boss’s wife? ‘Hang on, can you?’

I waited, stared unseeing at the folder of negatives Mickey had chucked on the table late last night when we’d got home.
‘Idyllic Ideals, Romantic Retreats’
the italics boasted, all swirly typed and grand. I clicked a pen between my teeth, up, down, up, down, up…

An eager Jenny was back on the line. ‘Yes, I thought so. Four p.m. drinks at one the Aldwych with Martin Goldsmith from Genesis. It’s a massive new account. Mickey must have forgotten when he took his day off.’

For a moment, the relief rendered me speechless.

‘Hello—Mrs Finnegan? Are you still—’

‘Sorry. Yes.’ Slowly my brain kicked back in. ‘Thanks so much, Jenny. How stupid of me. I knew it’d be something like that. He’s just—he’s so useless at recharging his phone, it must have run out again.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I just panicked when I couldn’t reach him.’

‘No problem. He’s always a bit all over the shop when Pauline’s away, isn’t he?’ She giggled shyly, as if she’d slightly overstepped the mark.

Yes, I agreed, of course he was. Lost without the indomitable Pauline, head of Mickey’s stable of capable women.

I was about to ring 118 for the hotel’s number when a car pulled up outside. I went running to the front window, skidding across Jean’s sparkling hall. Mickey! It was Mickey—it must be him.

But it wasn’t—it was just a delivery for next door.
Wine. Boxes and boxes of wine piling up beneath their sagging buddleia as they laughed and joked with the driver; as I prayed for my son’s return.

The phone rang and my stomach swooped. Finally! I dashed back across the hall again. It would be him now, out of his meeting, slightly pissed, buoyant about sealing the deal on a huge new account. I could practically hear Louis chuckling down the line—

But it was Jenny. She sounded apprehensive.

‘Um, Mrs Finnegan, I just checked Mickey’s voice-mail. There was a message from Mr Goldsmith wondering where Mickey had got to. I’ve just spoken to him and he—well, he did wait apparently, for over an hour. Mickey never turned up.’

The most important thing was not to panic.

‘Oh. Oh, right. Thanks, Jenny. Will you—’ I forced myself to say it ‘—can you let me know if you hear anything else please?’

The most important thing was to remember to keep breathing.

‘Of course, but I won’t be here much longer. Shall I just quickly ring the hotel for you and double-check?’

‘Please,’ I accepted gratefully. ‘I’d appreciate it. Thanks, Jenny.’

I hung up, paced the floor, chewing my lip. I checked the answer-phone. Nothing but me, and then the plumber, whose call I’d been awaiting for weeks.

Jenny didn’t ring back.

I stood in the middle of the house, which had never felt so alien and cold, despite the day’s raw heat, and
wondered what the hell to do next. I must keep moving or terror would take over. I kept trying to think what I’d forgotten, replaying the scene over and over as Mickey had wandered off. What had he said that I hadn’t caught? Louis’s face cartwheeled through my head; how he must be crying for me now, his sooty lashes separating into damp little spikes, his bottom lip curling out to sob his little seagull cry. He wouldn’t understand why I wasn’t there, why I’d abandoned him, and would Mickey pick him up and comfort him like he should? Of course he would. Wouldn’t he? Was Mickey even there—and then I stopped, clawing my palms with my own nails at the horror of my thoughts. Oh God, it was all my fault; I should never have let Louis leave my grasp.

So I did it. I did what I’d been holding back from ever since the start. I dialled 999, and when I got through I said, rather frantically, that I had missing people to report. Missing persons. My missing baby.

But of course the police thought I was ridiculous, though they were too polite to actually say it. An officer with a smoker’s wheeze talked calmly to me; he seemed quite patient but I couldn’t concentrate on what he said; I was imagining his stained teeth, I was jumping on ahead. When he said it was too early to call them missing, I asked quite tersely, ‘How long do they have to be gone to call them missing then?’ and he said something about twenty-four hours but as it was a baby they might make it earlier, but not this early, eh? And he tried to laugh with me, but why would I laugh? And so he coughed instead, and cleared his throat and
said, ‘Friends, family? Have you checked with them?’

A match flared down the line. I thought of my father-in-law, going slowly senile in a care home west of Belfast. Of Mickey’s only sister Maeve, pregnant with her fifth child on the Californian coast. Tentatively, Stained Teeth went on.

‘I should ask, madam, did you argue with your husband today?’

I wondered dimly whether he’d count almost-rows about chocolate cake and being fat, and so I replied, ‘Yes, well sort of, well—actually no, not really. Well, not about anything serious, you know. Just a silly sort of row.’

And there was rather a fraught pause, in which I felt quite daft, and then the policeman said he’d take my details anyway, though he was sure it would all be fine, but just in case…and when I said goodbye, I knew the policeman thought I was just being neurotic, only I wasn’t, you know, I really wasn’t. It’s just that deep in the pit of my stomach I felt that something was wrong, very wrong, and what I really wanted to do was scream, but I didn’t, because that’s not what we do. Not what I did then, of course.

Blindly I stumbled to the bathroom. I splashed my face with freezing water and then I leant back and shut my eyes. I needed to have a plan, that’s what I needed.

I went up to Louis’s room. Shaded by the old ash tree behind the house, it was cool in there, very cool and silent. I felt a sudden urge to lie on the floor, prostrate myself beneath the dangling star mobile, but I
pushed the impulse down. Instead I walked across the big white rug with all the blue giraffes on, and walked up to Louis’s cot. And though I could see he wasn’t there, though I knew he couldn’t be there, I stood for a minute looking down. I held on to the cot bars very tight, and then I moved his soft bear to the end where I always laid his head. To where his head had left a little dent. I walked out very fast.