The Stranger on the Train (14 page)

She spotted Rafe beside a large board with an
i
on the top, wearing his blue rain jacket and reading the announcements on the board. As she watched, he tipped his head back and took a long gulp of water from a bottle. His black rucksack, bulgier than before, hung by its strap from his hand. He finished his drink and started to wipe his mouth with his hand. Midway through, he caught Emma's eye. He raised the bottle towards her and smiled. Emma tightened her lips in return. She wasn't quite sure what to say. It was odd, them meeting like this, away from the flat.

“The train for the airport's leaving in five minutes,” Rafe said as she reached him.

“I have my ticket.”

“Then let's go.”

They ducked and zigzagged through the crowds, Emma following the blue flash of Rafe's jacket. Announcements dinged over the loudspeaker: “The. Next. Train. From. Platform. Three. Will be the . . .”

The whistle blew just as they stepped onto the train.

“Perfect timing.” Rafe grinned, dumping his rucksack on the floor between his feet.

“A good omen, maybe?” Emma tried to return the smile.

The train was full; they had to stand. A woman who looked to be in her thirties appeared at the door and lifted a small boy into the carriage. The woman held the child's hand and remained on the platform to continue a conversation with someone on the other side of the turnstile. The boy was about two years old, with thin curly hair and bright red cheeks. He seemed very excited to be on the train. His eyes almost popped out of his head as he swiveled from side to side, anchored by the woman's hand, trying to see everything at once. Then he froze, clearly spotting something of interest further down the crowded carriage; Emma couldn't see what it was. The woman on the platform was still chatting. The boy gritted his tiny teeth and hauled himself from her grip. A second later, he was free. He took off down the carriage, disappearing into a forest of legs. Emma looked quickly at the woman. She didn't seem to have noticed.

“
Definitely,
” she was saying in a loud voice to her friend. “Well, as soon as I hear from Barbara, we'll arrange—”

Beep-beep-beep.
The carriage doors sounded their warning. Emma's heart pounded. She stepped forward. At the last second, just before the doors whipped shut, the woman turned, hoisted her straw shopping bag higher onto her shoulder, and stepped onto the train.

“James,” she called. “James.”

The little boy reappeared, poking his chubby face around a metallic wheelie case.

“
There
you are, darling,” the woman said. “What did Mummy tell you about keeping close?”

Emma shrank back against the rail. The woman and child headed off together down the carriage.

The train started with a lurch, causing those passengers who were standing to stumble and step on each other's toes. The crowds were a good thing; they meant that Emma wouldn't have to talk to Rafe during the journey. She needed time to think. As the platform slid past, she realized she was holding her breath. What if Lindsay had got suspicious and decided to have her followed to see where she was going? What if the police had bugged her phone? What if the train stopped again, and Detective Hill came on board, telling her for some reason that she wasn't allowed to leave the country?

But the train didn't stop. It kept on moving, click-clacking its way through the North London suburbs. Some shift in the crowd just then pushed Rafe towards her. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the rail beside her head. The veins on the back of his hand stood out as he steadied himself, keeping the crowd from her.

• • •

All the way through the airport, Emma couldn't stop thinking:
Ritchie's been here
. She'd never been to this airport before, but he had. Her tiny son had been somewhere before her, had seen a place that she had never seen. She looked around at everything, trying to view it all through his eyes. Was this the door they'd walked through on the CCTV? Was this the desk they'd checked in at? Those three check-in girls in their dark blue uniforms—was it one of them who had seen Ritchie that day, and remembered him enough to speak to the police? Had he woken at all during the journey? What had he thought of the plane, the noise of the engines? Had he been cross? Excited? Afraid?

She was relieved when the plane finally took off without any sign of its being stormed by the police. She'd been allocated a seat beside the window. The woman next to her had busied herself during the safety demonstration arranging an inflatable rubber tube around her neck and wrapping a woolen pashmina around herself, right up to her chin. Now her eyes were closed and her head rested sideways on the tube, bouncing with the turbulence. She seemed to be already asleep. Rafe was sitting several rows behind.

For some reason, Emma found herself remembering a holiday she'd gone on to Greece, five years ago. Four of them had gone together: her, Karen, Joanne and Claire Burns. They'd stayed in a gorgeous apartment, with pink flowers in hanging baskets outside their window. Emma had had a holiday romance with a rather intense engineering student from Vancouver called Vernon. They'd all gone snorkeling one afternoon, and two Greek fishermen had given them a lift home on their boat. They'd had a good laugh. Emma pressed her forehead to the window, watching the sun gleam on the clouds.

We're so small. So small, and no one cares.

What was she going to do when she found Ritchie? She couldn't think beyond just seeing him again, confirming it really was him. Would he still be at this St.-Bourdain place? What if the kidnappers had moved on? They must have got a fright when the police came around asking questions. What if they'd sold Ritchie, or . . .

No! No. She wasn't going to think like that. Rafe had said that Antonia wanted Ritchie for herself. She'd taken a liking to him, and wanted to raise him as her own.

And Ritchie had liked her back.

Liked her very much, in fact.

He hadn't wanted Emma to take him.

You shouldn't give him sweets
.

Emma squeezed her eyes shut. How dare she! How
dare
that woman tell Emma what to do with her child! But didn't that sound as if Antonia did mean to look after him? Not to hurt him? But, Christ, it was weird if so. How did she think she was going to get away with something like that? Just taking someone else's baby and pretending he was hers?

• • •

Bergerac was sunnier than England. The airport, a pale, prefab-like building, looked like nothing so much as a large garden shed. Emma came down the steps of the plane, smelling warm, unfamiliar air. The trees and sky and ground had a different color to England. It was as if she was seeing everything through yellow-green lenses. Inside the shed, the passengers gathered in a crush along the luggage belt. Everyone seemed to be wearing the same thing: sandals and shorts or combat trousers, with fleeces tied around their waists. Voices, mostly English, rose around them.

“Jeremy, did you pack George's tennis shoes?”

“Mummy, tell Emily to stop putting things in my bag!”

Emma and Rafe hadn't checked in any luggage, so they were able to bypass the crowd. They proceeded to passport control, where a man in a round hat waved them languidly through.

“Do you think there's a bus to St.-Bourdain?” Emma asked, looking around the tiny hall.

“I doubt it,” Rafe said. “We'd be better off hiring a car.”

“Driving license, Madame?” said the man at the car-hire desk. He had a moustache like Detective Hill's.

Emma was flustered. “I never thought—”

“It's all right.” Rafe held up a laminated booklet. “I brought mine.”

Emma fumbled in her wallet for euros. Were they the same as pounds, or less? She hoped she'd brought enough for a car. She'd never thought about how she was actually going to get to the place where Ritchie was.

“I'll get the car,” Rafe said. “You paid for the flights, remember?”

“I can't let you—”

“Keep your money. Please. You don't know how much you might need.”

When the paperwork was done, the man told them: “The hire parking is at your left as you go out of the exit.”

The car park was dusty and quiet. The sky was white, the sun gleaming off rows of chrome. Space B5 was occupied by a silver Peugeot hatchback. In the car, the smell of hot polish and rubber hit Emma's nostrils like a wall. Rafe opened the map of the region that the man at the car-hire desk had given them. It was very basic. Bergerac was the smallest town marked on it. They had no way of knowing which direction a tiny village like St.-Bourdain was in.

“I should have brought a proper map.” Emma cursed herself. Hadn't she thought of anything?

“We'll buy one, don't worry,” Rafe said. He peered through the window. “Town center, look, that way. Five kilometers.”

At the car-park exit, the Peugeot squealed and leaped forward, throwing Emma against her seat belt.

“Sorry.” Rafe scowled, yanking the gearstick. “Bloody thing keeps sticking.”

The town of Bergerac had a functional appearance. Rows of pale, square, shuttered buildings, some in need of a coat of paint. It was hard to say whether the few shops they saw were open or closed, because there didn't seem to be any customers in them. On one side of a square, a canopy jutted from the front of a café, shading a collection of red plastic chairs and tables on the pavement. The tables were all empty. Paris this certainly wasn't.

They parked the car close to the square and found a bookshop across the road. A bell tinkled as they pushed open the door. The elderly man at the counter looked up from his newspaper.

“
Avez-vous un . . .
” Emma scanned the shelves of books and magazines.

“Map?” she tried, but the man behind the counter looked blank. She craned again, peering up at the top shelves. Cartoon books, mostly, for children. Asterix. The Smurfs. A whole row of books with pictures of a bald boy and a small white dog. Then a memory rose in Emma's mind. French lessons, Year Nine, in the blue prefab in her school in Brislington. The wooden desks, the smell of cheese and onion. Kevin Brimley, the boy beside her, standing up to read aloud his essay about his
vacances
in Le Havre.

“
Plan,
” Emma said with triumph. “
Avez-vous un plan?
”

“
Oui. Plan,
” Rafe said. “
De France,
” he added proudly.

“
La-bas, Monsieur.
” The man pointed to a rack below the counter.

Back in the car, between sips from plastic bottles of water, they studied the folded-out map.

“There it is.” Rafe pointed at a tiny circle, marked in green. “St.-Bourdain. We keep going south and we basically hit it.”

They found the route easily enough, a medium-sized road with little traffic. The few cars they saw were plain and useful looking. A gleaming London Mercedes or Jaguar would look vulgar and out of place here.

“You're on the wrong side of the road,” Emma warned, clutching the dashboard as they came off a roundabout. Then, spotting another car in front of them, she realized her mistake. “No, I'm sorry. You're right. I don't know how you remember.”

“Keep the bitch in the ditch.” Rafe grinned sideways at her. “Works every time.”

They drove on in silence in the early-evening sun. Gradually, the scenery changed. Billboards and garages with rows of parked cars gave way to fields dotted with yellow and white flowers. Across the fields, thick, cloudy masses of trees darkened to blue in the distance.

“You know”—Rafe squinted at the rearview mirror—“we're going to need to come up with some sort of plan.”

Emma pretended not to hear. She was hunched towards the window, closely watching everything they passed. Signs, painted with pictures of grapes, pointed down narrow side roads with grass in the middle. “Château Mireille,” the signs read. “Château de Montagne.”

“Have you thought about what you're going to do?” Rafe asked. “Are you going to just sit outside the house all night?”

“I don't know.”

More fields. Rows of plants tied with wooden posts and wire.

“All right, then.” Rafe relented. He pushed on the gearstick. “We'll think of something when we get there.”

Drive, Emma thought. Just drive.

With each village, her pulse was rising. The deeper into the countryside they drove, the closer they came to St.-Bourdain and the more beautiful the villages became. The houses were built with yellow-colored stone, like in the Cotswolds. Behind them spread rows of dark, leafy crops, higher than a man; you could run into them and not be seen. She saw farmhouses with hens in the gardens, creeper-covered walls, rows of vegetables. Was Ritchie in a house like this? In a garden like that?

I'm coming, Rich
. She sent the promise to him, over the fields.
I'm almost there
.

And in return she felt his presence, as strongly as if he was in the car beside her. She knew she was right. Somewhere amongst these yellow houses, these cloudy trees, her little boy was waiting for her to find him and bring him home.

Ritchie was here. She knew that for certain.

He was here.

Chapter Eleven

Bringing Ritchie home from the hospital had been an anticlimax.

He'd looked so adorable in the taxi, dressed in his tiny new blue-and-white-striped Babygro and a woolly beanie hat that made his head look like an egg. He kept staring at the window in astonishment, as if he'd spotted something amazing out there, but unfortunately his head kept wobbling to one side. Emma jiggled him, gently helping him to bump it back up again so he could see.

“Bit of a bruiser, in'ee?” the taxi driver said admiringly.

Emma smiled with pride.

But when they'd arrived at the flat, and the taxi driver had helped her bring all her stuff to the lift, and they'd reached the fifth floor and closed the door of the flat behind them—when all that was done, it was just the two of them, sitting there looking at each other. After the buzz of the hospital ward, the flat seemed very bleak and silent. No other babies wailing, no mothers in their dressing gowns smiling and saying hello as they passed. No nurses popping by to coo at Ritchie and say what a good sleeper he was. There was no one to greet them, no one to hold Ritchie up to and say:
Look at him. Isn't he the most beautiful baby on earth?

At least they
had
a flat by then.

“How am I going to be able to afford somewhere on my own?” Emma had uneasily asked the social worker, two weeks before the lease on the Clapham flat ran out. She'd been doing some calculations and realized, with a shock, that once she stopped work she wouldn't be able to afford even the rent she'd been paying with Joanne.

“You'll be entitled to some benefits,” the social worker assured her. “Though if your mum has left you some savings, you'll have to contribute towards rent and council tax.”

Emma had expected that. Still, it worried her, having to dip so soon into her nest egg. She'd hoped to be able to keep it for a rainy day. Which, of course, this was.

“How long do you think it'll take to find somewhere?” she asked.

“We would hope to have you placed by the time the baby is born.” The social worker frowned at her clipboard. “I have to say, though, that accommodation is fairly tight at the moment. I can't guarantee anything.”

“But what will I do in the meantime?” Emma asked. You couldn't just move into a flat for a few weeks; you had to sign a lease. Pay a deposit. Why hadn't she looked into this long ago?

“If you're stuck, we can find you a B&B,” the social worker said. “It shouldn't be for too long. We've placed you on our emergency waiting list, as you're a vulnerable homeless person.”

A vulnerable homeless person. In the grimy B&B room beside a laundrette in Balham, Emma stood with her bags at her feet and felt the first pricklings of real fear. Vulnerable homeless people featured on
Panorama
. They lay under bridges and shouted at empty seats on the tube. A brown patch in the middle of the mattress disgusted her, filling her with nausea. She put her hands on her stomach. No way could she have a baby here.

To her utter relief, ten days before Ritchie was born, Emma was offered a flat in a housing association complex between Hammersmith and Fulham. It was miles away from Joanne and Barry, and from her GP, Dr. Rigby. She'd have to change doctors. But she was in no position to argue.

By that stage, she could just about still walk. It was more of a waddle really, the weight of her stomach pulling her this way and that. The social worker, a chatty woman with a gray bob, came with her to view the flat. It was in a tall, brown tower block, facing an identical block across a concrete car park. Swirly red and orange graffiti daubed the walls as high as an arm could reach. A sign above a row of wheelie bins read: “To all Tenants. Please place rubbish IN the bins, NOT beside.”

The social worker dug a card out of her bag and ran it through the strip beside the steel-and-reinforced-glass doors. Inside, the hall was tiled and dim, with a browning yucca plant in a plastic pot beside the lift.

One lift, Emma couldn't help noticing. For a block with eleven floors.

“Don't worry.” The social worker eyed her swollen belly. “The management here is quite good. If anything breaks down, they usually fix it within a couple of days.”

The tour of the flat didn't take long. The yellow-painted hall was so tiny that with Emma's belly the way it was, she and the social worker had to take turns standing in it. Three doors led off the hall. The first led into the bathroom, which had no window, just a fan; but it did have a bath.

“A bonus when you have a baby.” The social worker smiled.

The bedroom had a single bed with a clean, stripy mattress, a built-in wardrobe with white doors, and a desk with two drawers in it under the window. The desk would have to come out if they were to fit a cot in there for the baby. The sitting room was very dark, despite the fact that it was three in the afternoon and the curtains to the glass balcony doors were open. It was furnished with a maroon-colored corduroy couch, and a round, glass-topped table with two metallic chairs. A doorway with no door led through to a windowless kitchen. No room for a table in here; just an oven, fridge and stainless-steel sink, and three mustard-colored cupboards at eye level. The white and gray speckled lino was held down in places by sticky tape.

The balcony, though, was nice. It was a plain cement rectangle, barely the length of a person lying down. But she could put plants out there, make it nice in the summer. The carpets in the flat were threadbare but clean. No brown stains anywhere. That was really what made Emma breathe a sigh of relief. Not the Ritz, then, for sure, but miles better than the B&B. She didn't know what she'd have done if the flat had been as bad as, or worse than, that awful place.

“I'll take it,” she told the social worker.

“Not much choice, have you, love?” the social worker said cheerfully.

Emma moved in the next day. Even with all her possessions, it only took one trip in a taxi. Clean though the flat seemed to be, Emma went to the Sainsbury's down the road and bought a cupboard full of supplies to scrub it all over again. Over the next couple of days, she used some of her mum's money to buy things for the new baby. A pram which converted to a pushchair, a cot, blankets, bottles, a sterilizer. Mugs, plates, cutlery, nappies. A green stuffed frog with friendly eyes from a stall in Hammersmith Broadway.

That weekend, she lay in bed and listened to the
thump-thump-thump
of music from somewhere above her head. Someone was having a party. Well, let them; it was Saturday night. Shouts came from below, followed by the sprinkly crunch of breaking glass. Emma's hands moved to her stomach. But she was safe in here. She was on the fifth floor; it wasn't like anyone was going to climb up. She'd been given an electronic coded card for the heavy doors at the bottom, and a separate, normal key for the lock on her own door.

They'd be okay here. She and the baby. They'd manage.

For a while, anyway.

• • •

And then, eight days later, Ritchie arrived, and for the next few weeks everything was a blur. All of Emma's time and energy was taken up just with concentrating on him. There was so much to do. She had to feed him—more or less continuously, it seemed. With pauses, where she had to sit him up and pat his back until he burped, the way the health visitor had shown her. She had to change his nappies. Sterilize his bottles. Wash his clothes. Every other minute there was something.

She was surprised, though, at how quickly she got the hang of it. She'd been worried she wouldn't know how to look after him, never having known anyone with a baby. But the sleepless nights weren't as bad as she'd expected. It was tiring, definitely, all that getting out of bed to give him his bottle, but after a few weeks he was sleeping right through and they'd got a routine going for the day. Up at six thirty. Bottle. Both of them back to sleep until nine. Two further naps during the afternoon. Bed for the night at eight to eight thirty. Ritchie was a placid baby; he only cried when he was hungry or wet and she was usually able to work out the reason. He wasn't the worst baby, Emma knew that from what she'd read. There were some infants who just screamed and screamed, night and day; you couldn't do anything to get them to stop. But Ritchie didn't do that. She was lucky. And she'd read that you were supposed to sleep whenever the baby did during the day, so that was what she did. She got enough sleep; the housework got done. There really was nothing very difficult about it.

Only that you had to keep on doing it.

Over and over and over again.

It wasn't until the worst of the nights were behind her that Emma realized properly for the first time how alone she was. How hard it was to get out of the flat with a small baby, and how few people she ever saw.

She was delighted when Joanne called over one evening on her way home from work. Ritchie was about six weeks old by then.

“Ems!” Joanne cried, flinging her arms around Emma as soon as the door was open. She looked amazing. She was wearing high, spindly heels and a pale blue trouser suit. Her hair was cut to her shoulders, with a new long fringe swept to the side. “Sorry it's been so long. We've been redecorating the new place; Barry and me've been living out of boxes. And I've been promoted at work. I'm regional sales manager now. It's been mad.”

She kept flicking her fringe back as she looked all around her, at the corduroy couch, the boxes of nappies and wipes in the corner, the towels and Babygros drying on the backs of Emma's two chairs.

“Your flat's
gorgeous
,” she said in a very bright voice.

“Sit down.” Emma was thrilled to see her. “I'll make us some coffee.”

Joanne gave the couch a quick check before she lowered herself onto the edge.

“Isn't he sweet,” she cooed at Ritchie, asleep in his pram.

But she drew the line at picking him up.

“Babies don't like me,” she giggled, tucking her knees in the opposite direction. “I'd be afraid I'd drop him.”

“Oh, go on,” Emma said. “He's lovely to hold, honestly. He's tougher than he looks. He won't break.”

She was lifting Ritchie out of the pram as she spoke, trailing blankets all over the floor. She placed him in Joanne's lap, dying for Joanne to get to know him. Ritchie stirred, screwing up his face. And then, just as Joanne lowered her hands to take him, he turned purple and launched into a high-pitched, waspy wail. Joanne put her hands back in the air at once.

“I told you babies don't like me,” she said, trying to poke Ritchie back towards Emma with her knee.

“Just give him a minute,” Emma urged. “He gets colic. It goes away once he's settled.”

She realized how much she wanted to see someone else apart from her holding Ritchie. Giving him a cuddle. Loving him. It was funny. In the past few weeks, this tiny pink scrap had managed to sneak his way under her skin in a way she'd never expected. If Joanne would only take him for a minute, then she'd see. But then Ritchie opened his mouth and spewed a long white fountain all over Joanne's pale blue trousers.

“I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.” Emma couldn't stop ­apologizing.

“It doesn't matter.” Hastily, Joanne lifted the ruined fabric to hold it away from her leg. “But maybe you'd better take him back now.”

Emma soothed Ritchie, rocking him on her knee while Joanne sponged the sick off her trousers with a J Cloth and told Emma all about her new job. She and Barry were putting in a new bathroom and knocking out the wall between the kitchen and living room. She didn't know if she was on her head or her heels these days. Ritchie kept up an uncharacteristic, monotonous wail throughout, which meant that Joanne kept having to raise her voice to be heard. Emma missed most of what she was saying because she had to keep putting Ritchie in different positions to try to settle his tummy.

Once, when he seemed to have gone quiet, she asked: “Have you . . . do you see Oliver at all?”

“Oliver?” Joanne frowned. “Now you mention it, Barry hasn't met up with him in a while. I don't think they're working together anymore. Oliver must have left the company.”

“Oh.”

Ritchie bawled again, and Emma was forced to turn her attention to him.

“He's not usually like this,” she said with relief when Ritchie had finally stopped howling and fallen asleep, facedown across her lap. His nose and mouth rested partly in her hand, filling her palm with warm, wet snuffles and hiccups. “I shouldn't have woken him. Next time you come over, he'll be all smiles, wait and see.”

“Why don't we meet for a drink some evening instead?” Joanne suggested. “Somewhere halfway between us both. We can have a proper chat, and it'll be good for you to get a break.”

Emma was startled. “But what would I do about Ritchie?”

“Oh. Um. Babysitter?”

“He's a bit small,” Emma said doubtfully. “I don't know if anyone would take him. And babysitters cost such a lot.”

Joanne shrugged. “Oh, well. When he's big enough, let me know. We can arrange something then.”

• • •

Emma was surprised that Joanne hadn't commented on the way her hands had trembled when she'd mentioned Oliver's name. Half an hour after Joanne had left, she still hadn't recovered. She managed to drop two spoons and the sugar bowl when she was clearing up the coffee things. From the casual way Joanne had answered Emma's question, she obviously thought that Emma was long over Oliver; but, distracted as she'd been these past few months, no day had passed that she hadn't thought about him.

Because Ritchie looked so like Oliver! Same heavy eyes, same wide mouth built for smiling: everything. Ritchie being born had stirred up all sorts of feelings, all over again. Did Oliver even know that Ritchie was here? The last time she'd spoken to him, she'd told him she wasn't going to go through with the pregnancy. Clearly Joanne, at least, had not informed him otherwise.