Everything and Nothing (27 page)

Ruth knew she had slept in as soon as she woke up. The air seemed different and a hazy indifference swirled above her head. The clock told her that it was twenty past eight and she wondered how she had slept through the children waking and Christian getting up. She could hear Betty shouting downstairs, the whirr of the television, the smell of coffee. The sleep had done nothing for her, instead seeping into her body like a drug, teasing her with its presence, showing her what was possible.

But today was a day that needed action and decisions and pain and torment. The day was not going to let her rest. Ruth already knew it was going to frazzle her until she might sit on her sofa in ten hours’ time with a glass of wine and a dread of what Monday held in store. She pulled herself out of bed and her legs felt heavy, her head woozy. She stood under the shower in the hope it would wake her, but went downstairs feeling ravaged and distracted. Christian was busying himself with bin bags. He had already cleared most of the garden, she noticed.

‘Morning,’ he said. ‘D’you want some coffee?’

‘Please.’ She wondered how she was going to do this alone. How she was going to be the one person responsible for it all. She couldn’t decide if letting him stay would be weak, too much of an admittance of something she didn’t want to know. ‘Is Aggie up yet?’ she asked instead.

‘No.’ Christian tied up one bin bag and shook out another. He irritated her with his unusual effi ciency. ‘What are we going to do about that?’

‘I have no idea.’ Usually Ruth was full of solutions, even when they were bad, but for this particular problem she couldn’t think of anything. ‘Mum said she could help us out if we need to get rid of her.’

‘You definitely want her to leave?’

‘Are you joking? What if she’d been alone with Hal and Betty when that happened?’

‘I’ve never seen an epileptic fit like that.’

‘How many have you seen?’

‘Well, none. But I didn’t know they were like that.’

Christian passed her the coffee and Betty came in from the sitting room, still in her pyjamas, the sound of cartoons following her like they cared.

‘Can I get in Hal’s tent?’ she asked. ‘I’m sure you can, sweetie,’ said Ruth. ‘Why don’t you ask him if it’s okay?’

‘He’s still asleep.’

Ruth looked at Christian. ‘Hal’s still asleep?’

‘Yeah.’

She felt a constriction in her chest. ‘But he never sleeps past seven.’

Christian was on his way back into the garden. ‘He must be tired after yesterday.’

Ruth tried to draw something from his nonchalance. ‘I think I’ll go and check on him anyway.’

Ruth took the stairs two at a time, praying to an unknown God as she went, bargaining with everything for the life of her son. She opened the door to Hal’s room and it was dark, but she could tell from the door that he wasn’t there. She walked towards the cot pointlessly because it was empty. She had been worrying about illness, but she realised that she was about to deal with something much more sinister. There was still a chance that he had found his way to her parents or Aggie. She tried her parents first because somewhere she already knew what had happened.

She knocked on Aggie’s attic room and her mother opened it. ‘Hal’s not in here, is he?’ asked Ruth.

‘No, darling. Is everything okay?’

But Ruth had turned away already, she couldn’t answer. She didn’t even knock on the door of the box room. It was as empty as a barren womb. No trace of Aggie remained. The bed didn’t even look slept in.

Ruth raced down the stairs. Her mother was at her back trying to speak and Betty was still asking about the tent. Everything was in her way. The air was like soup so she couldn’t breathe or walk. Christian was too far away, at the other side of the garden picking plastic cups out of the flowers. She went over to him and found she couldn’t speak so she touched his arm to make him turn round.

‘Shit, what’s happened?’ he said, retreating from her touch as if she was diseased.

‘Hal’s gone. So’s Aggie. She’s taken him.’

Christian put his hands over her arms, the way she’d watched actors do on soap operas. It was like he wanted to squeeze a false truth out of her. ‘Don’t be silly, Ruth,’ he was saying somewhere over her head. ‘Of course she hasn’t taken him. Have you looked everywhere?’

Ruth was aware of her mother shouting behind them. It was going to take too much effort and time to explain to Christian what was happening. She knew with absolute certainty what had happened, she just didn’t know how much of a head start the girl had got. ‘Shut up, Christian,’ she said now, shaking his hands off her arms. ‘When did you get up?’ A clarity which had eluded her for years lit up her mind.

‘She might have just taken him to the park or something.’

‘When did you get up?’ Ruth shouted.

Her mother came back into the garden. ‘They’re not in the house. I’ve looked everywhere.’

Christian started to cry. ‘Oh God, no.’

Ruth wanted to slap him. ‘When did you wake up? Come on, Christian.’

‘Six-thirty.’ He looked at her and she flinched from the terror in his eyes. ‘I woke with a start, I thought one of the kids was awake. I got up, had a shower. I must have been downstairs by seven. Then Betty got up. You were the next person down. I thought he was asleep.’

‘She wouldn’t have left in the night. Maybe her leaving woke you. It’s quarter to nine now. That means she’s had nearly three hours.’

Christian started towards the house. ‘I’m calling the police.’

Ruth followed him, the ground giving way beneath her, pulling her into an earth that was hot and hostile. The things you see in films or read about in newspapers were happening to her. Helplessness clawed at her being like a zombie was crawling through the ground to tear the skin from her bones. Betty was crying but she didn’t care.

‘They’re going to be here as soon as they can,’ said Christian. Then he left the room and Ruth heard him retching.

Her mother and father were near her. Someone put their arms around her. Ruth looked at her mother and wondered if her misery was like her own or if you never stopped being a mother. If somewhere deep inside she was saying that silent prayer of thanks that it wasn’t her child, that it wasn’t Ruth.

‘She won’t hurt him, darling,’ her mother said. ‘She’s mad, Mum. You saw her last night. She doesn’t have epilepsy. God knows what she’s got, but Hal is not safe with her.’

‘The police will find them. She can’t have got far.’

But of course she could already be on a ferry or in a plane. Ruth had no idea how organised she’d been. The thought made her go to the drawer where they kept the passports. Ruth didn’t feel sick when she saw Hal’s was missing, she felt like her insides had turned to slime and that they would seep out of her when they were ready.

The police arrived and Christian showed them into the sitting room. They looked so severe in their uniforms. A man and a woman.

‘She’s taken his passport,’ Ruth said as she followed them into the room.

One of the men held out his hand. ‘Mrs Donaldson, I’m DC Rogers and this is WPC Samuels.’

‘Please,’ said Ruth, ‘you’re wasting time. She’s had three hours already. They could be anywhere.’

WPC Samuels walked forward. ‘My name is Lisa. I know this is hard, Mrs Donaldson, but in order to find your son we need to ask you a few questions.’

That was when Ruth started to cry. They weren’t going to help her and somewhere out there Aggie had Hal.

DC Rogers was talking again, addressing Christian now, without sharing his name. ‘You said on the phone you think your nanny has left with your son without your permission. Are you sure she hasn’t just taken him to the park or somewhere?’

‘No, no,’ said Christian. ‘I’ve been awake since six-thirty. I thought they were asleep. She had some sort of breakdown last night. She said it was an epileptic fit, but we don’t think it was. We were going to ask her to leave.’ Ruth could hear the utter ridiculousness of his words.

But the policeman ignored his confusion. ‘Did she know this?’

‘Nothing was said, but she might have guessed.’

‘She’s odd,’ said Ruth. ‘I’ve known there’s something wrong with her for a while now, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.’

‘Odd, how?’ asked WPC Samuels. Ruth looked at Lisa and wondered if she had children and if she left them with odd people.

‘I don’t know. She was too perfect. Looking back, I’m wondering if anything she said was true.’

‘Can I look at her room?’ asked WPC Samuels. ‘It’s at the top of the house, the loft room, but she’s taken everything,’ said Christian, ‘I’ve checked. And most of Hal’s clothes have gone as well.’

‘And his passport,’ repeated Ruth.

As WPC Samuels left the room Ruth could hear her on her radio, her serious tones filling up the house.

‘Where did you employ her from?’ asked DC Rogers. ‘We need her full name, age, family history.’

‘We put an advert in
The Lady
,’ said Ruth. ‘I rang her referee and she couldn’t praise her enough. Her name is Agatha Hartard. She said she was estranged from her family.’

‘So you never met her parents? Did you ever see her passport? Are you sure that’s her name?’

Ruth looked at Christian and everything was removed. ‘Oh God,’ she said, holding her hand over her mouth to stop herself from falling out. ‘Oh God.’

Agatha had a plan. Of course she did. First they walked twenty minutes to Kilburn station where she had checked out the loos and worked out they could dye their hair and change in peace. Sure enough there was no one around and Hal was content to have himself changed dramatically without putting up any sort of fuss. She bagged everything in the bin bags she had taken and re-packed it in the knapsack, then she put them both into their new clothes. Looking into the misty mirror she could see the person she was becoming and she was pleased.

It was only seven thirty by the time they were standing on the platform waiting for the tube to Euston. Hal looked tired and she knew he was going to ask for a bottle soon. She would buy him a pain au chocolat at the station as a special treat for the train. She was also going to buy herself a latte, because that was the sort of woman she was.

Agatha thought they were probably still safe. Ruth had been tired and she hoped she might not have woken up yet. If she was awake she almost certainly wouldn’t have checked on Hal yet as it would be too precious to her to have a few moments sitting on her own or arguing with Christian. And they wouldn’t expect her to be up yet; they’d think she was still sleeping off her fit. It was odd to think she was epileptic, strange that she hadn’t known that about herself before now. But it was fine. When things settled down she’d go to a doctor and get a proper diagnosis and drugs to control it and then everything would be fine again. Everything was going to be fine.

The tube took them to the station just as it promised it would. They bought the coffee and the pastry and they stood under the big boards which flashed the names of all the places they could go. Agatha had already decided they would go to the coast and get on a ferry headed somewhere in Europe, but as she stood on the grimy concourse she realised that if that had been her plan they would have taken a tube to Victoria station, not Euston. Everyone knew that Victoria took you to the coast and Euston took you back, back to the heart of England. A spinning started in Agatha’s head as she tried to re-capture the last thirty minutes of her life, to see herself choosing this as her destination when she’d stepped onto the tube, but nothing came. She scanned the orange words formed out of nothing more than tiny squares piled on top of each other like children’s building blocks and knew why they were here. The next train going to Birmingham was leaving at 8.25, in ten minutes. Agatha pushed Hal’s buggy to the ticket counter and bought a one-way ticket. They were coming back, but not yet. They were going at the moment, going back to where she had come from. Going back to where it had all started. An odd fizzing was building up behind Agatha’s eyes, like someone had opened a can of coke in her skull. She had to get back and then it would be fine. Everything would be fine.

‘It appears she did give you her correct name,’ said WPC Samuels. She hadn’t found anything in Agatha’s room and had just got off the phone to someone who was trying to find Hal. ‘That’s a good thing. If she’d been organised, if she had come into your family with the intention of stealing a child, she would have concealed her identity.’

‘She’s been with us for eight months,’ Ruth was saying somewhere outside Christian’s ability to listen.

‘Eight months is not long for a paedophile. They’re often prepared to put months into the planning it takes to abduct a child.’

‘A paedophile? You think that’s why she’s taken Hal?’ Christian tried to stop listening.

‘We have to look at every possibility, Mrs Donaldson. The fact that she gave you her correct name is very hopeful.’

Christian felt better when DC Rogers left. He imagined him screeching down alleys and knocking on doors, looking for his son. Also he felt freed of the policeman’s contempt; because what sort of people were they, him and Ruth, that they discarded their children this way? Can I go with you? Christian had asked. What he had really wanted to do was drive around the streets screaming his son’s name, but DC Rogers had told him it was vitally important they stayed where they were in case Aggie rang. She would be in an unstable state, he’d said, and she’d need everything to be normal. Other policemen and women came and went. Someone sat him and Ruth down and explained to them that they weren’t going to release any details to the media yet. They were worried about spooking her because she was unstable. The word ‘spooked’ made Christian think about ghosts.

They had distributed the photograph of Aggie and Hal standing over the vegetable patch to the police nationwide. It was the only one Ruth had been able to find, although he’d wished to God she hadn’t. They looked so complicit, so young, so innocent, so right with their spades and the earth and the sun and their wide smiles. Police were being dispatched to every train station, ferry port and airport, and she would be caught if she tried to leave the country. Soon her image would be on every police database, even the bobby on the beat would be scanning faces.