The Safest Place in London (39 page)

Gerald laughed. Then he stopped, mid-laugh.

‘And the child? Have you seen the child? Have you met it? Do you truly believe that child is ours? That she isn't a poor, lost, very frightened little girl who has been forcibly taken from her mother by a complete stranger?'

But even this did not shake the man's complacency, his utter belief in this version of the truth. ‘I have met the child, yes,' he said. ‘And what you're describing, well, it's not what I saw. Not a bit of it.'

‘I don't believe you!'

‘See for yourself.' Brighouse stood up.

Uncertain if he was calling the man's bluff, or if he or the inspector or both of them were part of some elaborate hoax,
Gerald stood up and together they left the interview room, went along the corridor to the front reception desk, where the desk sergeant watched him expressionlessly, then down another corridor, at the end of which a door stood half open. Gerald could hear the murmur of voices, a woman's voice. He felt the muscles of his stomach tighten. This is intolerable, he thought.

Brighouse went first, pushing the door open and standing aside. He did not look at the occupants of the room, he looked at Gerald. Gerald stood in the doorway.

It was an office, Brighouse's own office according to the name plate on the door, with a desk and a low table with chairs ranged around it. Diana was seated on one of the low chairs in her winter coat, her handbag at her feet, her hat and gloves on her lap as though she was having tea with the vicar. She was smiling and offering encouragement to the child, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor absorbed with crayons and paper. The little girl's hair was brushed and swept back off her head by a pale blue hairband that suited her fair hair. She was bundled up in a winter coat that was a miniature of her mother's but with the addition of a hood. Knitted red mittens hung from a cord at each cuff and her feet were encased in sturdy brown lace-up shoes and little white socks.

‘How lovely!' Diana said. ‘What a lovely picture, Abigail.'

It was quite clear to Gerald that his wife knew they were standing there, the inspector and himself, that this little charade was entirely for their benefit, and it made a pulse begin to throb in his head, it made the little scene shimmer nauseatingly before his eyes.

But the child! How had she done that?

Diana feigned noticing them, looking up, and surprise and concern showed in her face. ‘Gerald,' she said gently, and, yes, she reached out a tremulous hand to touch his arm.

All men had a snapping point. You didn't fight in a war for three years and not know that, not see it, over and over again. A man, calm and rational and laughing one minute, a crazed madman the next, screaming to be let out of a moving tank, running across a minefield, picking up a machine gun and firing indiscriminately, walking into an enemy emplacement and shooting at men who had surrendered. Gerald had seen all of those things. He had wondered what went on in a man's head the split second before and during the long seconds afterwards.

Now he knew: nothing.

One minute he was standing in the inspector's office observing his wife, seeing her fingers reach out to touch his arm, seeing the child playing and absorbed like any other child with its mother. The next moment he found himself pushing open the swing door of the police station—though he had no recollection of leaving the inspector's office—running down the steps.

And the child was in his arms.

It was hard to run with a three-year-old in your arms but his pace did not slow. He was outside now and he saw that it had snowed during the time that he had been sequestered inside the police station, was still snowing. He was running on snow, his footsteps crunching, the snowflakes swirling in flurries in his face, settling on his nose. He felt the wonder of it, even in his madness, after three years in the desert.

The darkness had come, too, and with it the blackout. He was making for the railway station, he was going to take the child
back to her home, but already he was uncertain of his way. He slipped, pulled himself up and stumbled on, uncertain if he was on the lane at all or if he had lost his way completely. A bicycle reared out of the darkness, silent and with no lights, seeing him and swerving violently at the last moment so that Gerald felt it brush against his shoulder and a man cried out angrily, his cry lost in the flurry of snow.

He was going to take the child back to her home. He closed his mind to all else. It was easy to lose your way in war, to lose a sense of right and wrong, of morality. He had lost his way, he realised, as all the men had in the desert, or they would have gone mad, but now his belief in what was right was unquestioned and losing one's sanity seemed a small price to pay.

Behind him, distant and distorted, someone cried out, a man's voice, then a woman's. They were on to him and he had only the smallest of head starts. And probably they knew the ground and had men and torches and perhaps dogs. It hardly mattered—he pressed on. The ground banked steeply downwards and he found himself at the water's edge and he remembered he had crossed a river to reach the police station. He paused, fighting for breath, hearing the rush of the water. Otherwise it was perfectly still and silent. The darkness and the covering of snow deadened all sound. Even the shouts of his pursuers had ceased.

In his arms the child squirmed and fought but he pressed her face hard into his coat, steeling himself against his own brutality. He was doing this for her. It was the right thing to do. He would not let the child thwart her own rescue!

But how was he to cross the river? He turned to the left and made his way, slipping and sliding in mud, along the river's
edge. If there was a riverside path he could not locate it. If he was not careful he would have them both in the water. But there was the bridge, a dark shape dead ahead, the sound of the water muffled as it rushed beneath the arches. He scrambled up the bank, finding the road he had somehow missed before, and was up and on the bridge. But almost at once he lost his footing and fell to his knees and, weighed down by the squirming, terrified child, found it impossible to get up. She let out a scream, pounding furious fists against any part of him she could find.

It was almost a relief when they caught up to him. A constable and the sergeant came out of the darkness and onto him, one grasping the child, tearing it from his arms, the other pulling his arms back almost out of their sockets. He did not fight them. He had nothing left.

‘
Let go of him!
LET HIM GO!'

It was Diana.

‘Take the child to safety, please!' She was still some way off but she spoke in such a way that the policemen released him; their hands were full anyway with the screaming, kicking child. They had pulled him up to his feet in order to tear the child from him but now he sank to his knees once more in the snow.

And Diana appeared and kneeled before him. How oddly ghostlike she looked. He was uncertain if it was the darkness and swirling snow that gave her this ghostly look or if she was, in fact, a ghost.

‘I'm so sorry,' she whispered. She lifted him by his shoulders, searching his face. ‘I'm so very, very sorry.' She brushed the snowflakes from his lashes and nose.

He put his hands on her shoulders, gripping her, returning her gaze. ‘Diana, it's not real.'

And she sat back on her heels.

‘I know, Gerald, I know it's not real. I know she is not our child. I lied to the police but I won't lie to you. I've already told you what happened. But perhaps I didn't explain it well enough.' He shook his head uncomprehendingly. ‘What does that mean?'

But she looked away, at the panicked child, the two cursing policemen, the inspector a long way behind still making his awkward way towards them. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again she spoke calmly and steadily: ‘I need a child. I'm thirty-nine. I won't have another baby. Gerald, nothing can replace Abigail, our child. But I
need
this. I need her. And I believe she needs us. Can you not see that?'

Someone had put a blanket around him and sat him on a chair. So far as Gerald could tell no one had been left to guard him. The constable had placed a mug of hot cocoa in his hands. They had left him in a room—not the inspector's office, not the interview room—and he could hear distant voices on the other side of the door and he presumed they were discussing him. It was curious how little it seemed to matter to him what they said. The cocoa steamed quietly, a few lumps of the cocoa powder and flakes of dried milk floated on its surface. Gerald blew on it, instinctively, because that was what one did with a hot drink. When they had first placed the mug in his hands he had not been able to feel its heat; now the warmth was slowing penetrating his fingers.

Diana had said,
I need her. And I believe she needs us. Can you not see that?

And now, oddly, he could see that. He could see that his wife needed this child. That she was not mad or delusional or deceitful. She was desperate. And perhaps the child needed them. He wondered why he had not seen it this clearly before. Perhaps he had just needed her to say the words,
Nothing can replace Abigail, our child
.

It all seemed surprisingly simple and straightforward. He sipped the cocoa and waited for them to remember him and come and get him.

After a time, the door opened and Diana came in. He looked up at her gratefully. He could see the inspector behind her, frowning, still making up his mind, unhappy at the sudden and unpleasant turn that events had taken earlier in the evening. Diana kneeled before him and took both his hands.

‘Darling, the inspector is concerned that you might be a threat to—to Abigail or to myself. Or to yourself. He needs to know that you're quite alright now. Then he'll let us go . . . won't you, Inspector?' She glanced over her shoulder.

Brighouse muttered noncommittally under his breath.

‘Darling?'

Gerald nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, quite alright now.' He summoned a smile for his wife, another for the inspector. ‘So sorry to have been such a nuisance. Don't quite know what came over me. I think what I need is rest.'

He stopped, and Diana looked pleased with this. She turned again to the inspector.

‘Aye well,' said Brighouse with another of his frowns. ‘I'll give
you the benefit of the doubt, Mrs Meadows; you know yer husband better than I do. But you mek sure you tek my advice and contact that doctor I told you about first thing. I've seen a lot of this kind o' thing up here. I'm no stranger to it. You tek my advice.'

‘Oh, I most certainly will, Inspector. Thank you. You have been so very kind.'

A car was found and the constable dropped them back at the cottage. It was approaching midnight, or long after midnight, and the child clung to Diana and eventually she lay on the back seat and slept, the teddy bear with the missing ear clutched in her arms. The constable lifted her up and carried her inside and Diana led Gerald to the armchair by the hearth. There had been a fire in the grate earlier and he gazed at the half-burnt logs in anticipation of a new fire. He could hear Diana dealing with the constable, thanking him when he promised to look in on them in the morning, he was too kind, they had all been too kind. He heard the door shut.

Diana got the fire restarted, found a blanket and laid it over him, placed another one over the child. She poured him a tiny whisky and one for herself, and arranged herself at his feet. The child lay curled up in the other armchair.

For a while neither spoke.

‘How did you do it?' said Gerald eventually, nodding at the sleeping child who two days before had been kicking and screaming and uncontrollable in the corner of the room.

‘I bribed her with a bar of chocolate,' said Diana, as though it were the simplest thing in the world. ‘She's rather fond of chocolate. Tomorrow we'll need to see if we can get hold of some more. I've used up my current supplies.'

Gerald gazed at the burning logs and thought about his wife bribing the child with a bar of chocolate.

At his feet Diana shifted, moving her legs to a more comfortable position.

‘You found them, didn't you? Her people—you found out who they were?' she said, her voice very low, almost disembodied in the darkness.

‘Yes I did. Almost certainly.'

‘And there was no one, no other family?'

‘None that I could locate, no.'

She gave a small sigh. ‘Poor little thing.' And then, ‘Don't tell me their names, Gerald. Do you mind? I think I'd rather not know.'

‘Of course not.' A log collapsed with a soft crack, sending out a tiny shower of embers. ‘Would you mind if I asked you a question?' he said. ‘Just one, and then the subject will be closed.'

‘Of course.'

‘The child's mother. What was she like?'

Diana thought for a moment before answering. ‘Fearless. She was fearless.'

Gerald nodded, pleased with this. Pleased with his wife.