The Stranger on the Train (30 page)

Beep.
The battery warning sped up at once.

“Ms. Turner?”

“Yes.”

“Eric Perrine here.”

Beep.

“I am phoning to inform you that, fifteen minutes ago, Mrs. Philippa Hunt was found—”

Beep. Beep.

“—attempting to cross the border at—”

Emma couldn't wait for any more.

“Ritchie,” she said. A dark bag seemed to have come down. It shrouded her head, obscuring the light, cutting the oxygen off from her face. “What about Ritchie?”

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Lieutenant Perrine's voice did not change. It stayed soft. Soothing. Very kind. Emma didn't know what it was, his words or his tone, or how she first knew, but she was breathing into the airless bag, and the battery warning became a long, single note, and the bag burst about her head, opening her up to the sky, and the soft voice, though the phone was silent now, went on sounding in her ears: “He is safe, Madame. The infant is safe. He is with our gendarmes.”

Chapter Nineteen

Thursday, October 5th

Day Nineteen

So she waited in a room at the consulate, with armchairs around the walls with lace on the backs, and a glass cabinet with plates in it, and a grandfather clock in the corner.

Tamsin Wagstaff came in, tucking her sleek, shiny bob behind her ears.

“Another couple of hours at most,” she said. “They're at Clermont-Ferrand.”

“How is he?” Emma asked. She'd been asking it every fifteen minutes since the phone call. “Is he okay?” She saw Ritchie in the police car, speeding across France, his flushed little face bouncing up and down in the back.

“He's absolutely perfect,” Tamsin said. “He's been fed, he's well wrapped up. Stoical little chap, the police said. They're hoping to recruit him.”

Emma smiled.

Lieutenant Perrine's voice: “The infant is safe, Madame. The. Infant. Is. Safe.” She was on her knees again, under the trees in the vineyard, screaming and crying so incoherently that it was several minutes before a terrified Tamsin could manage to understand what she was saying. It was a dream, just like a dream. She wouldn't believe it was real until Ritchie was here, right beside her, where she could see and touch him.

“Philippa Hunt is in a bad way, as you can imagine,” Tamsin said. “She collapsed when they found her. She'd guessed the police would look for them in Switzerland so she tried to go further north instead, to Germany. Thirty miles, she walked, all along back roads and in fields. She carried Ritchie the whole way.”

Emma pictured them, stumbling along in the wind and cold. Ritchie had had no bottle. Nothing to eat. His nappy wouldn't have been changed for hours. Maybe even days.

“She walked most of the night,” Tamsin said. “So it'll probably be a while before she can be questioned.
I
still want to know how she fixed that DNA. Someone suggested that maybe if she'd substituted a sample of your DNA for hers while she was in the bathroom—but of course, that's ridiculous. How would she have got a sample from you?”

“She did have a sample,” Emma said. She'd had plenty of time to work it out.

“She did?”

“She had a tissue. With my blood on it.”

“Had she?”

That day in the tube station. Antonia—she still kept calling her that—being so helpful and considerate.
Would you like another tiss-yoo. Give that old one back to me.
Had she taken Emma's blood on purpose? Even then, thinking ahead, knowing what she was planning to do? Had there been any moment at all when her motive was simply kindness to a fellow mother, so clearly in distress?

“Good Lord,” Tamsin was saying. “I can't believe it. The police will check it, of course. She'll be questioned all right, don't you worry.”

“It's just a possibility.” Emma shrugged. “She might have done it some other way. It doesn't matter now.”

Tamsin was looking at her curiously.

“You must hate her,” she said.

Antonia in the café, looking away.

Yes, we do. We have a little boy.

All the things that Emma knew, Antonia knew them too. The terrible pain of childbirth. The loss of youth and freedom. The loss of yourself. You were the soil now, not the flower anymore. And it was blimmin' dark and lonely down there. You worried, and you would worry forever. You could never, ever go back. Only forward, pulled by the world; and your reward, the touch of the future, the glory of that face against yours.

Tamsin was still looking at her. Emma shook her head.

“I don't hate her,” she said. “I understand.”

• • •

“Personal call for you,” said a girl at the door, looking across at Tamsin, who rose, smoothing her pale gray skirt.

She said to Emma, “I'll be in the office if you need me.”

She left, and the only sound was the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner:
Lock. Lock. Lock.

Suddenly Emma's palms were sweaty. She hoped Tamsin wouldn't be too long. She'd been hoping she'd stay with her until Ritchie came. Be with her
when
he came, even. What must she look like, all scrawny and pale and wrapped in plaster? With her arm so heavy and strange? Ritchie might be frightened when he saw her.

Lock. Lock. Lock.

She couldn't go on sitting here. Tamsin had left the door open. Emma retied the sling on her arm and stood up. She wandered out into the hall. The last time she and Rafe had been here had been at night. Now the sun came down in a cone from the round, high window in the roof. Dust floated around the edges. Emma felt as if she was walking on her toes. She was suspended like one of the dust dots, floating in the lightness of her head. Her arms and body and mouth and face tingled, the nerves buzzing as if they'd made contact already, but not yet, not yet, hold on, you've been here before.

• • •

You weren't fit to look after him.

• • •

What if Ritchie had forgotten her? Or didn't want to be with her anymore? What if he wanted to stay with Antonia? Antonia had been good to him. He had liked her at the tube station; she had handled him as if she knew him. She had dressed him in beautiful clothes, and held him so lovingly in her garden, and carried him all night in the rain.

Whereas she . . .

• • •

You weren't fit.

• • •

When Emma opened the door to Dr. Stanford's surgery, the rain came in with her from the street. The floor was wet. The waiting room was crowded and smelled of pus and bad breath.

“It's an emergency,” Emma said.

The receptionist looked her up and down. Ritchie was in his buggy, squalling for his lunch.

“You don't have an appointment,” the receptionist said. “You can see the locum tomorrow.”

Emma shook her head.

“I have to talk to someone,” she said. “It has to be today.”

• • •

Don't think about this now. Why are you thinking about this?

• • •

Dr. Stanford gave a tight smile.

“Hello again, Emma. What brings you in today?” She was looking at a card on her desk. “I see we'd arranged an appointment for the week after next? A final check on Ritchie's ear?”

“Yes.”

“So what was it that couldn't wait until then?”

Emma thought she'd planned this. She thought she'd known what to say. She sat there, looking at Dr. Stanford, and not a single word came out of her mouth.

Dr. Stanford's smile grew tighter.

“You did say it was an emergency,” she said. “I'm going away tonight for a week. You can see how full the waiting room is.”

• • •

This should be such a precious day. Don't spoil it.
Emma stood in the sun cone, under the high, round window, and tried everything she could to push Dr. Stanford's surgery away, but it kept coming back. Nudging at her. A persistent child offering a toy.

• • •

“You see,” she said to Dr. Stanford, “I can't leave Ritchie behind.”

“Of course not.”

In the pushchair, Ritchie sobbed, his voice a hoarse, used croak.

“Things can be tricky, can't they?” Dr. Stanford said. “A small child. And the weather's been terrible these past few days. Awful when you can't get out.”

Ritchie cried on.

“Look.” Dr. Stanford glanced at the clock on the wall. “Now doesn't seem the best time for us to talk. Why don't I ask Alison, our health visitor, to call and see you over the next couple of days? You know Alison? She's been away for a while, but she's due back next week. She's very nice. Very approachable. You two can have a good, long chat. All right?”

She made a note. Then she looked back up at Emma.

“All right?” she said again, a little impatiently.

The noise Ritchie was making stabbed right through Emma's head. He was crying so hard his voice had almost disappeared and his chin sank in fatigue, but still he persevered. She'd never seen him like this. She couldn't make any move to soothe him because she was sinking too. She let him cry for her, because she had nothing left.

Dr. Stanford said: “Was there anything else?”

• • •

In the hall in the consulate was a huge marble statue that Emma didn't remember seeing the last time. And yet something about it struck her as familiar. A pale robed woman leaned over a child in her lap. The peaks of her robe glowed in the sunlight. The child reached up with dimpled arms and a half smile. The woman had her hand in the air, caressing the space above his head, guarding and protecting him; and the expression on her face as she gazed at him was one of awe and tenderness and wonder.

• • •

It had to be something quick. She'd thought about it, over and over. Some way he wouldn't suffer. Because she loved him, more than anything; more than she could have ever have thought possible. In her whole life, she'd never thought that one human being could love another this much. But she had to think of something soon, because she was shrinking, shrinking in her coat. A cold, shriveled worm in the dark.

All she knew was that she didn't want to hurt him.

She said to Dr. Stanford: “I'm going to throw Ritchie under a train.”

• • •

When he came, it was after five.

Emma and Tamsin were in the room with the grandfather clock. Someone had brought a tray with coffee and cups.

“Message for you, Tamsin,” said a girl at the door.

Tamsin stood up. “Another message,” she said to Emma. “I seem to be quite popular today. You go ahead; have your coffee before it gets cold.”

The pot was heavy, awkward to manage with just one hand. Concentrating on it, Emma thought she heard something: a high, sweet babble in the distance. Frowning, she steadied the pot and listened. Nothing. She lifted the pot again to pour. Then there were footsteps outside, and all of a sudden she was putting the pot down in a rush before she dropped it because everything was happening at once: the footsteps, the squeak of the door handle, the sharp, clear rectangle of light. Tamsin's voice: “Emma, Emma, he's here.”

She rose in confusion. Shapes in the hall, the light streaming past. For a second, the light was in her eyes and she couldn't see. Then the blindness went away, and she looked at the doorway, and there he was.

Something burst in her when she saw him. He was wearing a blue jumper, and trainers with real laces, and stripes on the sides. His eyes were big, and too bright; he was clutching a woman's hand and babbling about nothing, the way he always did when he was tired, just before he started to get upset. Then he saw Emma and the babbling died away.

He still held the woman's hand. He was staring at Emma in utter astonishment, as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Emma's chest squeezed; she was taking long, drawing breaths, as if she'd just come up from underwater.

“Muh,” Ritchie said. He pointed at Emma, looking uncertainly up at the lady beside him.

The woman said: “Yes, Ritchie. That is your mum.”

Ritchie turned to gape again. The woman prized his fist from her skirt and stepped back. Ritchie went on standing there, still gaping, his fist still in the air.

Oh, how tiny and funny he looked, standing there all by himself. How small and bewildered and overwhelmed. Emma's chest squeezed tighter. She was on her knees without noticing. “Hello,” she whispered. Ritchie's face was bright red. His lower lip was trembling. His eyes were like the eyes in a cartoon. She was afraid to touch him. She stretched out her hand and her fingers brushed his sleeve. Ah, how quiet it was in here, how strange. All those people, where had they gone? Just the two of them here: her and her baby. The light from the hall came in and pinned them there. She went on stroking his sleeve, and when he didn't pull away she moved her hand, very slowly, to his arm, then to his shoulder, and so at last . . .

. . . and so at last to . . .

Ritchie came closer.

“Muh,” he said. He was puzzled, she could see. He looked into her face and she read the questions in his wet, heavy eyes:
Mum. Why don't you talk to me? Why is that white thing on your arm? Why do you look so strange?

Why are you shaking?

Then he put his arms around her. He pressed into her, his warm, fierce, soft little body, his pudgy cheeks, his smell. The curve of his cheek below his ear. “Muh,” he said again, his breath on her face. She wanted to speak, but it was too big, what she had to say, it swelled inside her, surging outwards until their chests touched.
I'm here,
she said, and the message passed straight from her heart through to his.
We're both here.

Epilogue

August

Cornwall

Four o'clock. Emma stood in the doorway of the Pie and Lobster in Polbraith, and smelled warm beer and the sea.

“Finished for the day?” Susan, the bar supervisor, asked.

“Yeah.”

“See you tomorrow, then, Emma.”

“See you.”

Emma walked on down the small main street. The Spar shop had its wire racks out, hung with buckets and spades and postcards of Cornwall: horses at sunset, and woolly-hatted fishermen mending nets in the harbor. Beside the Spar was Dr. Rudd's surgery with its brass plaque at the entrance. After that came a row of houses in a terrace, then a shop selling wetsuits and surfboards. At the end of the street was a whitewashed cottage with a wooden sign by the door: “The Dolphins Nursery: 0–5 Years.” Below the lettering, a painting of a cheerful blue dolphin leaping out of a wave.

Jess, the friendly girl who ran the nursery, opened the door.

“Hi, Emma,” she smiled. “Come on through. He's in the garden.”

They walked through the narrow hall. Jess cleared the way, pushing tiny chairs back against the wall. The walls were decorated with stencils of Winnie-the-Pooh, and a poster of a giant smile saying: “Be Kind to Your Teeth.”

“Was he good?” Emma asked.

“He's always good,” Jess assured her. “He spent the afternoon talking about ghosts. I had to put a towel on my head and say: ‘Woo-ooo.'”

“Oh, poor you.” Emma had to laugh. “He loves ghosts. He saw one on TV a couple of weeks ago and he's been going on about them ever since.”

They were in the kitchen. The door to the garden was open.

“Well,” Jess said, “there he is.”

She'd already seen him, crouched beside the sandpit, his head bright in the sun. His tongue stuck out of his mouth as he emptied some bricks out of a bucket. Beside him, another small boy was covering a plastic dinosaur with sand. Then Ritchie looked up and saw her. He dropped the bucket and came running. Emma knelt to meet him.

“Kiss?” she said.

Ritchie's wet mouth bumped heavily against her cheek. “Mmmm-AH!”

“What did you do at school today?”

“No.” Violently, he shook his head.

“Go on. You must have done something.”

“No. No.” He shook his head again, dying to be off. He ran to the door of the hall and hung off the handle.

“School must have got easier since my day,” Emma said to Jess.

They laughed, and said good-bye.

• • •

Juliet's just a friend. That's all it's been now for a long time. We did plan to meet up when she came to South America, but so far our paths haven't crossed. At this stage, I don't think they will.

• • •

Ritchie was thrilled to be back at their little cottage on the cliff. He rushed to his red truck, parked in the middle of the sitting room, and attempted to steer it into the kitchen, but Bob the Builder was lying under the front wheel.

Emma watched him trying to drive the truck over Bob.

“Do you remember Rafe?” she asked.

Ritchie had spotted Bob's limp form.

“Uh-oh,” he said.

He climbed off the truck to pull him out.

“Rafe's back from his year in South America,” Emma said. “He's coming to visit us tomorrow. For the weekend.”

Ritchie glanced up briefly, but Bob was well and truly stuck in the axle. Getting him out was going to be a big job. Breathing heavily, he returned to the task.

Later, when Ritchie was asleep, tucked up with Gribbit in his little boxroom beside the kitchen, Emma sat out on the doorstep of the cottage, listening to the tide. She stretched her right arm out, opening and closing her hand, the way the physiotherapist had taught her. She'd been busy today. She and Susan and some of the others had finished clearing out the back office of the pub. They'd removed every stick of furniture, along with what seemed like hundreds of old boxes, books and piles of papers. They'd scrubbed all the floors, windows, walls, even the ceiling. They'd had a bit of a laugh. There was a satisfaction in seeing the once dingy room transformed into a bright space, all ready for repainting.

It was Dr. Rudd, at the health center, who'd suggested Emma take the job at the Pie and Lobster.

“Some friends of mine have taken it over,” she explained. “They're going to expand and redecorate, and set up a new restaurant, all while trying to keep the bar up and running. If you need something to do over the next few weeks, they'll be glad to get some extra staff in to help.”

Dr. Rudd had been very good to Emma and Ritchie since they'd moved to Polbraith. They were only here for the summer, but they'd had to register with a GP because of Ritchie, and because Emma was still getting physiotherapy on her arm.

They'd come after the court case, which had happened in May. Emma was required in court for only one day to give evidence, but she'd had to meet up a few times before that with Lindsay and Detective Inspector Hill, to give her statement saying how the kidnap had affected her and Ritchie. Detective Hill, still wearing his tan coat, had barely been able to meet her eye. In the statement, Emma described how awful she'd felt when Ritchie had disappeared, how unbearable had been her terror and pain. She talked about her injured arm, which was now slowly recovering, but only after three operations and many months of physiotherapy. But she was also honest enough to admit how bad things had been before Ritchie had disappeared. How she was getting treatment now for the way she'd felt then, and how, even though she still didn't know what the future held, thanks to what the Hunts had done she didn't think she would ever feel quite that way again.

In the end, David Hunt had received a three-year prison sentence. Philippa got four years, but she hadn't started serving them yet. She'd gone straight back to hospital from the Old Bailey, and, as far as Emma knew, she was there still.

She'd seen the Hunts, that day at the Old Bailey. They'd been sitting with some other people at the back: David in a gray suit, staring straight ahead; Philippa in black, her head down, not moving at all. A woman beside her had her arm around her. Emma had time for only a quick glance at them before the lawyer began his questions and she'd had to turn to him and concentrate. Later that day, however, on her way out of the building, she'd seen David Hunt again, standing with a group of men in the hall.

The shock of seeing him so close caused her to stop. Lindsay, beside her, suggested in a low voice that they return to the waiting area until David had gone. But then David had turned and seen them too. He seemed older, his hair thinner. He looked very tired. He had lost everything. His job. His beautiful house in France. His wife, to all intents and purposes, even if they did end up staying together. And of course, he had lost his son.

Emma looked at him, and he looked back, each of them acknowledging the other. There was no change of expression from either of them. No smiles, obviously. But no anger or hatred either. Not from him, not from her. If she could have spoken to him, she might have, though it might have taken a while to find the words. Then Lindsay put a hand on her arm, and they moved on together until they were out in the street.

At the entrance to St. Paul's tube station, Lindsay gave Emma a warm hug.

“Congratulations, Emma,” she said.

“Congratulations to you too.” Emma smiled. An oval-shaped diamond glittered on Lindsay's engagement finger.

“You're quite sure you won't take that lift?” Lindsay asked. “The car isn't very far away.”

Emma shook her head. “I'll be quicker on the tube,” she said. “My neighbor is minding Ritchie, and I don't want to keep her too long.”

“All right, then.”

They looked at each other for a moment. They both went to speak at the same time. Then they laughed. They hugged again, and wished each other well. Then Lindsay walked away. Her dark coat and neat, glossy bun vanished quickly into the crowds. Emma stood on the long escalator and watched herself being carried down to the platform. She felt several different emotions at once. The main one was a great sense of peace and relief. That was it. She would not see any of those people again.

Mrs. Cornes had a friend who owned a couple of summer rental cottages in Cornwall.

“You need a break after that court case,” Mrs. Cornes said. “Your mother used to holiday in Polbraith as a child. She often said how much she loved it. The cottage is only a tiny little two-bedroom in a terrace but my friend, Mrs. Castle, will let you have it for a very low price for as long as you need.”

Emma said: “We'd love to take it. But only if you'll promise to come and visit us while we're there.”

People had been so kind. Rosina, glowing with happiness, had called to say she was going home to the Philippines for three whole months. She asked if Emma and Ritchie would like to go with her for a while, to stay with her family by the sea. Emma thought that the journey might be too long for Ritchie, but Rosina had told her not to worry because the invitation would still be there for when he was older. Even strangers like Dr. Rudd had gone out of their way to help; and Mary and Tom, the owners of the Pie and Lobster, who had given her the job. Emma and Ritchie had been in all the newspapers for weeks, their photos in every shop and newsstand, everywhere you looked. It seemed, at one point, as if everybody knew them and wanted to do something to show their support. But these days, fewer and fewer people were recognizing them. The photos in the papers were out-of-date now; she and Ritchie were not the same people they'd been then. Ritchie wasn't the tiny child on the red truck anymore. He was huge. People thought he was three, not two. He was learning how to swim. He was a little boy now, not a baby. And when the newspapers published the report on the court case, Emma was surprised to see the picture of herself that they used. It was one that had been taken a few months before the kidnap. A health visitor had taken a photo of her holding Ritchie when he was about five months old. She was thin, with black circles under her eyes. Angry and hostile looking. Her eyes were slitted, her head lowered, her hair scraped back off her face. Had she really ever looked like that?

Life was not perfect now. Emma still didn't know what she and Ritchie would do once the summer was over. Would they go back to their flat in Hammersmith? Maybe ask for a bigger one, now that Ritchie needed a room of his own?

She'd seen Joanne a couple of times in London. Joanne and Barry had split up soon after Christmas. Joanne had come home from work early one day and caught Barry in bed with one of his female colleagues.

“I'm well shot of him,” Joanne told Emma over coffee in Emma's flat. “He was so controlling. It was only
his
friends he wanted us to meet up with, never mine.” She put a tentative hand on Emma's arm. “I'm so sorry we lost touch, Ems. We should meet up more often now. Never let it happen again.”

But was that what Emma wanted? To go on living in social housing, even in a larger flat where Ritchie had his own room? To go on meeting Joanne for coffees and pretending that their friendship could ever go back to what it had been?

And money was still an issue. She was very much enjoying the camaraderie of the work at the Pie and Lobster, but the job was for the summer only. Once it was over she'd have to go back to dipping into her savings.

At night, sometimes, she worried about all of these things.

But the other day, walking home with Ritchie from the beach, where both of them had swum in the sea and she'd laughed at Ritchie's face when he'd seen a crab, the afternoon had been so lovely she'd caught herself humming a song she'd heard on the radio earlier.

The tide
whoosh
ed
again. Emma stretched her arm out, opening and closing her fist.

Tomorrow evening, Rafe would be here. How would things go between them? Would they get on well together? Run out of things to say? It was almost a year since she'd seen him. He'd been all around South America since then. He had e-mailed photos: the bar where he'd worked in Rio de Janeiro, a campsite by a glacier in Chile, a canoe he'd floated in, down through a gorge: “I felt like Indiana Jones.” Her and Ritchie's life would probably seem very dull to him. Well, she hoped he'd enjoy the weekend. She'd like to show him Rich swimming, and the cliffs, and the places where the surfers went. It would be good if they could be friends.

If you're serious about reapplying for the police,
she'd written,
you can put Ritchie and me on your CV.

Three months. And here she was, still in Polbraith. She'd never intended to stay this long. She could see why her mum had loved it so much. People here looked out for each other. It would be a lovely place to bring up a child.

• • •

A couple of evenings back, Ritchie had come flying into the kitchen to find her.

“Muh.” He hauled on her sleeve, pointing towards the sitting room. “Muh.”

“What is it? What's going on?”

“Oh. Oh.” He panted, desperately trying to tell her.

He pulled her into Mrs. Castle's chintzy sitting room, and scrambled up onto the window seat. Outside, it was getting dark. The flowers on the bush below the window glowed luminous pink. The line where the sea met the horizon was pink as well, the sky navy.

“Woo,” Ritchie kept saying. “Woo-ooo.”

“A ghost?” Emma peered. “Where?”

Ritchie pointed vigorously into the garden, but it was clear he wasn't too sure where. His eyes searched. Then he was on his knees, pointing again and gasping dramatically.

Emma said: “Oh,
now
I see.”

She did. A pair of white barn owls, swooping in the dusk over the bush. Ritchie's eyes, following them ecstatically, were filled with the pink light from the sea.

“They're beautiful ghosts,” Emma told him.