Emma's Baby (3 page)

Antonia didn't reply. She drew her cup of coffee towards her, picked up the tiny stainless-steel milk jug from the table and began to pour. Immediately, Emma regretted her tone. What on earth was wrong with her? Antonia was only trying to be nice.

In a politer voice, she asked, 'Do you have children?'

The steel jug stopped pouring. Antonia held it in the air for a moment before she answered.

'Yes, we do,' she said. 'We have a little boy.'

She tipped the jug again and went on pouring.

Emma was surprised. For some reason, she'd have thought that if Antonia had children they'd be grown by now. Teenagers at least. Antonia looked much too groomed to be the mother of a young child. Maybe she had a nanny. Before she could ask her where the child was, Antonia put down the jug and nodded at
Ritchie's pushchair.

She said, 'I gather from what you mentioned about it just being the two of you that this little chap's father isn't around?'

'No,' Emma said. 'We split up before he was born.'

'But your family helps out?'

'I don't have any family. My parents are dead.'

'I see,' said Antonia. 'Alone in the world.'

Emma stirred her coffee.

'Money must be tight, I imagine,' Antonia said, eyeing
Emma's bobbly woollen sweater and faded jeans.
'How on earth do you cope?'

'We manage.'

'But it isn't an ideal environment for a child, is it?
No money, no family support. Hardly fair on him, I would have thought.'

Emma felt uncomfortable. She really didn't want to discuss this any more. She went to undo the straps of
Ritchie's pushchair. He stiffened at once and scrunched up his face. Emma knew she was forcing him out of sleep and he'd be cross, but she wanted to wake him, to have him back to herself.

'Shh,' she soothed him, tugging on the straps. He pushed against them, tightening the buckle.

'Still tired,' Antonia remarked. 'Perhaps you should leave him.'

'Rich, look.' Abruptly, Emma turned to the table.
'Do you want some bun?' She steadied her hands by breaking a piece off the muffin on her plate.

When she turned back, Antonia had Ritchie out of the pushchair and on her knee.

Emma didn't know what to say.

'You shouldn't let him eat sweets,' Antonia said.
Ritchie sat on her knee, rubbing his eyes. 'Should she, little man?'

Emma's heart was hammering. She was thinking: I won't take the lift. We'll just go.

'Oh look,' Antonia said. 'Your lip's started bleeding again.'

Emma put her hand up to her mouth. Wetness on her lower lip. She took away her fingers and saw that the tips were red.

'Oh dear.' Antonia's face creased with concern.
'And I'm afraid I don't have any tissues left.'

Emma jumped up to get a paper towel from the counter. But she couldn't see any. The man behind the counter had disappeared, presumably through a doorway beside the fridge hung with coloured plastic strips.

'Hello?' Emma called to the plastic strips. 'Hello?'

Antonia's voice: 'You might find something down there.'

Emma turned. Antonia was pointing at a gap between the counter and the wall. Through the gap, a narrow passage led to a brown door marked
'Toilets'.

Without speaking, Emma marched to the gap and down the passage. She was going to get some tissues, wipe off the blood, take Ritchie and go.
Just as she reached the brown door, she looked back.
She could see all the way to the front of the shop where Ritchie was sitting on Antonia's knee, still rubbing his eyes. Then he saw Emma and his face lit up. He gave a heartbreaking smile and held up his arms.

'Muh,' he said.

She almost turned back to take him. Her weight went to one foot, then the other. But her face and hands were all bloody, and if the toilets were anything like the rest of the café, she could imagine only too well what condition they'd be in. She didn't want to take Ritchie in there if she could help it. There was something funny about Antonia – something about her superior attitude that Emma didn't like – but she'd done a good job minding Ritchie on her own already, those few minutes when she'd taken him off the train. Ritchie would be OK with her. Just for a few seconds more.

Emma smiled at him.

'I won't be a minute,' she said.

Then she opened the door, and went in.

As soon as she smelled the air, she was glad she'd left
Ritchie outside. The toilet was just one room, with a tiny sink covered with grey cracks and no window. A ventilation fan in the wall above the sink was clogged on the inside with lumps of blackish material. This really was a horrible place. Emma would be just as glad to get Ritchie out of here as soon as possible, even if it meant him having to wait till much later to get anything to eat. She looked at herself in the mirror over the sink. The glass was rippled and bendy; her face looked wider than normal, but it was enough for her to see the swollen area on her lip, oozing from the cut in the middle. Blood streaked her cheek and chin.
She looked a right mess.

On the cistern at the back of the toilet was an industrial-sized roll of loo paper. Emma reached for it, avoiding looking into the actual toilet. She unrolled some of the sheets and tore them off. They were probably filthy but she didn't care. She wet the tissue under the tiny trickle from the tap and scrubbed at her face. There. That was the worst of it sorted. She threw the tissue into a bin under the sink and tore off a second piece. This she held to her lip, pressing it on the cut for a few seconds to stop the bleeding.
But when she took the tissue away, it stuck to the cut and pulled the scab off, making the bleeding start all over again. Emma sighed with impatience. It took two more pieces of tissue before the cut finally stayed sealed. A final quick scrub at her chin, and a rinse of her fingers, and she was done. She didn't bother looking for anything to dry her hands.

When she came out of the toilet, she was too busy at first breathing in the fresher air to fully take in what she was seeing. She was looking down the passage towards the front of the restaurant; she had a good view of most of the tables from here. She could see the window with its flaking red lettering: 'Mr Bap's' spelt back to front. But just inside that, where she would have expected to see Ritchie, with his flushed, sleepy face, and Antonia with her flicky blonde hair, there was a gap. Ritchie's pushchair was gone. The table by the window was empty.

Emma didn't start to worry straight away. They were here somewhere. She just wasn't seeing them.
She came out into the main part of the café and looked around. The table tops were sticky and yellow in the fluorescent light. The bearded old man sat with his eyes closed. The man behind the counter was still nowhere to be seen.

Uncertain, Emma stood in the middle of the room.
What was happening here? What was going on that she didn't understand? Then she got it. They'd gone outside! Antonia's husband had arrived. They'd got
Ritchie ready and put him back in his buggy. They were all out there, waiting for her in the street.

She went to the door and yanked it open. She looked up the street and then down. Cars and buses on the main road. Some shops still open, their lights glistening on the pavement. Music thumping from one of them, an unfamiliar Eastern beat. Groups of bearded men, some wearing round, coloured hats.
No sign of a woman in a furry jacket, pushing a buggy.

A few feet along, the street turned on to another side road. Emma went to it and looked down. Railings along the pavement, three buses in a row. Blocks of flats, a pub.

No woman with a buggy.

Trying hard not to panic, Emma hurried back to the café. This was ridiculous. They
must
be here!
Antonia must have taken Ritchie to some other table, some section of the restaurant Emma hadn't noticed before. She should have told her first, though. This was definitely the last straw. When she found Ritchie now, she really was just going to take him and go.

But even as she quickly examined every wall of the restaurant, and all around the counter, she knew what she'd known when she'd first walked into the place: that it was just one square room, with the window and door to the street at the front. There was no stairs and no corners, no tables she hadn't seen. No other section to the café at all.

Emma hurtled down the passage to the toilet. She flung open the door, just in case there was a second toilet in there and she'd missed it. But there was just the one stinking room.

Hands shaking, she ran to the front of the counter.

'Excuse me,' she called, her voice high-pitched.
'Excuse me.'

The coloured plastic strips moved. The man with the stubbly beard poked his head through.

'Did you see them?' Emma asked.

'Who?'

'My son.' Emma looked past him, through the coloured strips. 'Are they in there? Did they go into your kitchen?'

The man began to lift his hands in incomprehension.
Emma opened the flap on the counter. She ran to the doorway and shoved her way through the strips.
Behind them was a steel kitchen, cluttered with pots and piles of plates and smelling of bins. No Ritchie.
No Antonia.

'What are you doing?' The man was behind her.

Emma turned on him.

'There was a woman.' She struggled to stay calm.
'By the window, with my son. Did she take him?
Where did they go?'

'I didn't—'

'Did she leave him on his own?' Emma was shouting now. 'Did she take him, or did someone else? You must have seen something, are you blind?'

The man backed away, looking alarmed.

'I didn't see nobody,' he said. 'I don't know where they go.'

Emma pushed past him, back to the shop. The old man by the wall was peering up at her. His eyes had a bluish film on the front.

'Did
you
see them?' Emma begged.

The man just gripped his cup. He was more elderly than she'd thought, shaky and vague. She couldn't tell if he even understood what she was saying.

'Call the police,' she shouted to the man at the counter. 'Someone's taken my child.'

The two men stared at her.

'Call the police,' Emma screamed at them, and ran out into the street.

There was still no sign. She couldn't even run, she didn't know which way to go. The street blurred; she was dizzy and sick.

'Ritchie,' she called. 'Ritchie.'

Her throat was clicky with fright. She looked up and down again, standing on tiptoe. People everywhere, in coats and scarves and hats, but no one with a baby. Ritchie seemed to have completely vanished.

Emma wanted to vomit. She tried to cross the road to the island in the middle, to get a better view of the street on both sides of the café, but there were railings everywhere, blocking her way.

'Ritchie,' she yelled. And then: 'Oh God. Please.
Somebody help me. My baby's been kidnapped.'

A man in a baseball cap and jacket was striding towards her on the path.

'Please.' Emma tried to stop him. 'Please. I need help.'

The man veered past her and kept going.

'Someone. Please.' Emma was breathless with terror. She had to force herself to stay standing. Her legs were like water. She couldn't think straight. What should she do? Someone had to help her, she couldn't, she couldn't think about anything.

A large, middle-aged lady, laden with plastic shopping bags, slowed down to have a look.

'What's going on here?' the lady asked.

Emma almost threw herself at her.

'Please. Oh please. Someone's taken my baby.'

'Who's taken your baby?'

'The woman, she . . . Did you see them? A woman and a little boy? Did you pass them on your way up here?'

'I don't . . .' The woman hesitated. Around her, more people were stopping. People were talking, mostly in foreign languages, she couldn't understand what they were saying. One or two English phrases came through:

'Who's taken a baby?'

'That thin girl with the torn coat.'

'Is that blood on her face?'

'My child has been
kidnapped
.' Emma couldn't believe it. Why were they all just standing there? She grabbed the middle-aged woman by the front of her jumper.

'Call the police,' she yelled at her. 'What the hell is wrong with you?'

The woman recoiled, her mouth a rectangle:
What have I got myself into?
Someone else said in a sharp voice to Emma, 'Hey, hey, no need for that.'

Emma let go of the woman. She sprinted down the street in the opposite direction from which the woman had come, trusting her that if she'd seen Ritchie on her way up she'd have said. Her breath sounded thin and whistly. Only a tiny amount of air was coming in each time. Oh God, don't black out. Oh please, let her not black out now, there wasn't time, she had to find him before he got too far away. She was trying to look everywhere at once, at the lighted windows, the darker corners and side roads
,
straining to see Ritchie's tufty little head and blue fleece in all the colours and the gloom. Had Antonia's husband come; had the two of them bundled Ritchie off together? Did Antonia even
have
a husband? Or a child? Or was she just some nutter who . . . ? Oh Jesus.

Ice.

Maybe Ritchie wasn't with Antonia at all. Maybe
Antonia had got bored, and walked out of the café and left him, and someone else, some person Emma couldn't even begin to imagine, had seen him there on his own and come in and taken him.

The street disappeared. The road came and went in flashes, like the strobes at a nightclub. Then she was pushing past people, shoving them violently out of her way. She was flying down the street, spinning down side roads at random, then sprinting back up them again. She didn't know which way she was going, whether she was searching the same places over again or different ones, they all looked the same, the same people and roads and buildings. Had she missed him, gone right past him? Was she flying around in circles, not making any progress at all, while all the time he was getting further and further away?

The flashes were coming faster. She screamed his name all around her, again and again and again.

'Ritchie. Ritchie. Ritchie.'