Who Loves You Best (33 page)

I nod curtly. Wissam Ghanour, the gold-toothed café owner, was surprisingly helpful once we persuaded him to our point of view. He took us to the “safe house” Marc had prearranged with him, a two-story building off the main road back to Beirut. The three of us waited in the car until
it got dark and we were able to see movement through the uncurtained windows. One blond baby looks much like another, especially one you’ve never seen in person; but I’d studied the photograph of Marc until it was burned on my retina. I recognized him the moment he walked into view. We had the right place.

Yesterday, Josef arranged a brief vacation for Ghanour in the Bekaa Valley with some of his relatives, while I flew back to Britain for Clare. I hated to involve her, but I had no choice. Besides, she’s his mother. How much more involved could she be?

“How do you know Marc won’t have vanished again since yesterday?” Jenna presses. “Why didn’t you just take Rowan when you had the chance?”

“Marc has his passport, in case you’d forgotten,” I say tersely. “Even if I had it, I’d never have gotten him back into Britain without Clare. An American man, traveling alone with a British child who has a different name? Alarm bells would’ve gone off in all directions.”

“So why didn’t you go to the Lebanese police? They do
have
police here, right?”

“Don’t be damn ridiculous—”

“Jenna, if Rowan gets caught up in the Lebanese legal system, I might never get him back,” Clare interrupts. She leans across me, her white shirt pulling tight across her breasts. “Nicholas warned us: Fathers nearly always get custody of children in Beirut, especially if they’re boys. It could take years for an appeal to be heard, and even then I probably wouldn’t win. It’s too risky.”

“But you—”

“Please, Jenna,” Clare says, and sighs. “Listen to Cooper.”

Jenna shrugs and picks up her magazine.

Clare sinks back into her seat, closing her eyes. I glare at Jenna. The girl’s a real pill; I wouldn’t have brought her, but we need to get close to Rowan, and a woman is far less likely to attract attention. Clare’s too blond and recognizable. She stands out like a sore thumb. With her dark hair, Jenna could pass for European Lebanese. She may be a pain in the ass, but the girl’s our best shot.

We land at Beirut Airport, a vast new marble concourse very different from the crowded, sweltering concrete shoe box of the civil war days. Jenna and Clare collect their visas, and we hurry outside. The humidity is smothering. Even this late at night, we’re all sweating by the time Josef pulls up to the curb to collect us.

He drops us at an anonymous small hotel in Hamra, the busy downtown shopping and commercial district of Beirut. It’s full of tourists: an easy place to blend in. Plus, the manager owes me. Anyone starts asking about us, I’ll be the first to know.

“I think I’ll call Davina,” Clare says anxiously. “I know it’s late, but she’s never looked after Poppy before. She’s really not very good with babies—”

Jenna snorts. “Mrs. Lampard’s the one who’ll be changing the shitty nappies. Stop worrying. Poppy will be fine.”

“I know, but … honestly, I won’t be long. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

“Don’t get gung-ho on me,” I warn Jenna, as we find a discreet corner in the bar. “This isn’t going to be easy. Clare’s entitled to have access to her child. Whereas you—”

“Name, rank, and serial number. I get it.”

“You need to understand what you’re letting yourself in for.”

“You said. Forget it, Cooper. I’m in.”

She has balls, I’ll give her that.

Clare returns downstairs. I notice other men in the bar watching her. Exhausted and sick with nerves, she still has an indefinable
something
that turns heads.

Her eyes flicker around the room, and then find mine. Her shoulders relax slightly. Or do I just imagine that?

“I’m going to bed.” Jenna yawns. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Clare takes the seat she’s just vacated. “I’ll be up in a minute, Jenna. Can you leave me the bed next to the phone?”

“How was Poppy?” I ask, as she picks fretfully at the arm of her chair.

“How was Davina, you mean,” Clare says tiredly. “Jenna must have powers of persuasion I don’t: Davina would never have agreed to mind Poppy if I’d asked. Anyway, they’re all fine. Davina spoke to Nicholas this evening. He’ll file a Residence Order as soon as we get home. That should make it much harder for Marc to leave the country if he tries to take Rowan again.”

Josef has already asked if I want Marc to be permanently taken out of the picture (an offer I reluctantly declined). He finds our Western reliance on the rule of law a strange way to do business.

“Clare, we
will
get Rowan back,” I reassure. “We know where he is. Someone’s been watching the house since we found them. Marc’s not going to get away again.”

She drops her gaze to her lap. “But what about afterwards?” she whispers. “What’s to stop him doing this again? I can’t play Ping-Pong with my children. Maybe next time Marc will take both of them. Maybe I … maybe I
should
let him keep Rowan. At least I’d still have Poppy.”

“Marc may be planning to come back for Poppy anyway,” I say gently. “It was only luck she wasn’t with Rowan. You can’t think like that, Clare. Your son needs
you.”

Her expression is anguished. “I know I’m not a good mother, Cooper, but I don’t deserve to lose my children, do I? First Poppy nearly died, and now Rowan’s been taken from me. What do I have to do to show I’m sorry?”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I say forcefully. I take her hands in my own, forcing her to look up. “Clare, listen to me. You
are
a good mother. But good doesn’t mean perfect. Good doesn’t mean you won’t get tired and angry and make mistakes. No one gets it right all the time; or even most of it. You do your best, you fuck up, you figure out where you went wrong, and you fuck up again. You aren’t perfect, and neither are your kids. But you’re their mother, and you love them. In the end, that’s all that counts.”

“Jenna’s so patient and
organized—
”

“You think they give a damn how neat their closets are?”

“It’s not just that—”

“You’ve got to get this idea that you’ve failed out of your head. This isn’t a test. There aren’t any perfect scores. What are you looking for, someone to tell you you’ve made class valedictorian?”

She blinks back tears. I fight not to pull her into my arms.

“Give yourself a break, Clare,” I say softly. “So, you’re not Soccer Mom of the Year. You have a job. Sometimes your kids cry and you don’t know what’s wrong. Do you think any of that really matters?”

“Oh, Cooper. This isn’t the kind of mother I ever intended to be—”

I thumb her tears away.

“None of us are the kind of parents we intended to be. If we even intended to be parents in the first place.” I think suddenly of Jackson, the closest I will ever get to a son. “Clare, you’re tearing yourself to pieces wondering if you’re good enough. Don’t you get it? The fact you even ask the question is your answer. Rowan and Poppy are lucky to have you.”

She catches my hand, and holds it against her cheek. “What must you think of me? This is the second time you’ve rescued my children—”

“Next time,” I promise, “it’ll be you.”

“If we are to do this,
habibi
, we must do it soon,” Josef mutters. “People are starting to ask questions about Wissam Ghanour.”

I glance back along the street. Josef and I have taken it in turns to keep watch on the house for the past two days, while Jenna and Clare stay out of sight at various cafés and diners nearby. At night, I’ve made them return to the hotel, though not without a great deal of protest from Jenna.

So far, the only person to enter or leave is an old woman dressed in black, who arrives each day with a plastic bag of groceries, and stays for a few hours. I figure she must be the new baby-sitter. I know Marc’s still there; I’ve seen him moving about the house. But until he leaves Rowan alone with the sitter, we can’t do anything. Josef is right; the longer we stay, the more risky this gets.

I leave him watching from a diner down the street, and drive back to the café where the girls are dragging out their fifth cups of coffee.

Clare looks up hopefully as I enter. Even though it’s not my fault, I feel a bastard for letting her down yet again.

“He can’t spend the rest of his life in there,” Jenna groans. “Sooner or later, he’s going to drop his guard.”

“How has he managed to arrange all this?” Clare frets. “He doesn’t know anyone in Lebanon. How can he have rented a house and found a baby-sitter and done all this so fast?”

“It’s not difficult. Money talks, and Marc had a lot of cash to throw around.” Jenna looks at her feet. “Sorry, kid.”

“I keep telling her it’s not her fault.” Clare sighs. “Even if I’d known Marc had so much cash, I’d never have thought he’d do something like this. I’d have assumed he was trying to steal my money, not my children.”

“Why don’t we just bribe them more than he has?” Jenna suggests, after a moment.

The thought has already occurred to me. Josef followed the old woman to a run-down tenement in the Armenian quarter the first day. I just don’t know how likely she is to stay bought: by Marc or by me. If she double-crosses us,
Marc could vanish again, and next time, it might not be so easy to find him.

“We need to go,” I say, standing up. “There’s another—”

My phone rings.

“He’s just left,” Josef says.

Clare’s hand finds mine. Adrenaline that has nothing to do with the task in hand pumps through my body.

“Come on, Cooper,” Jenna snaps from the doorway.

The spell is broken. I have to let go of Clare’s hand to drive, but every electron in my body zings with energy. I could move mountains.
Forty-nine years on the planet, and I never knew
. Christ, what in hell have I been doing with my life?

With a supreme effort, I force myself to concentrate.

“Are you sure about this, Jenna?” I ask for the final time as I park up a block away from the house. “You know what to do?”

“Enough, already. Just keep your fucking phone switched on, all right?”

I hand her the temporary Lebanese cell. “Hit nine on the speed-dial. I can be with you in two minutes.”

“You’d better be.”

We watch nervously as she walks towards the house. She’s a tourist, we’ve decided; she’s got lost, and wants to use the phone to call her friends. As soon as she sees Rowan, she’s to grab him and bolt for the door. We don’t have time for fancy cover stories, and anyway, none of us can think of one that’ll seem halfway plausible. By the time Marc finds out, we should be on our way to Syria. The plan is to fly out of Damascus, less than three hours’ drive from
here, rather than from Beirut: If Marc does give chase, he won’t be expecting that.

Clare reaches for my fingers again, and squeezes so hard I lose all feeling in my hand.

“I don’t know why you’re doing this for me, but thank you,” she says quietly. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”

“You will,” I say. “And you do know.”

The next ten minutes are the best and worst of my life. I feel as elated and confused as a teenager. I want to jump up and down on the hood of the car and scream her name; I want to flip down the seat and have her, here and now; I want to go down on one knee and ask her to marry me. More than anything, I want to make her smile again; to wipe that haunted, desperate expression from her eyes. Everything hangs in the balance. It all depends on Jenna.

The front door of the house opens again. Suddenly Jenna is running towards us, almost stumbling in her haste. She’s holding something in her arms.

“Oh, God,” Clare breathes, as I fling open the rear door.

Jenna throws herself into the car. “I locked her in the loo, and pulled the sofa across the door,” she pants. “It should give us another ten minutes.”

The bundle in her arms lets out a bewildered cry. Clare reaches between the seats for Rowan, tears streaming down her face as she pulls him into her arms. I can’t stop smiling.

“Fucking hell, Cooper!” Jenna yells. “Move it, would you!”

I throw the car into reverse, and pull a sharp one-eighty. Clare buries her face in her child’s hair, bracing herself
against the dash with one hand. I glance in my rearview as we pull out onto the main road, dirt spinning beneath our wheels. No one is following us. The street behind is empty.

I join the slip road onto the highway, my eyes flicking constantly to the mirror. Another hundred yards, and we’ll be free and clear.

Abruptly, we grind to a halt. I wind down the window, and crane my head out. A few cars in front of us, two moped riders argue in the middle of the street, their scooters crumpled on the ground between them. A painted van covered with bells and harnesses noses out into the flow of traffic coming the other way. Within seconds, the entire road is gridlocked. Bystanders gather around, adding their ten cents to the heated debate. I scan the side streets nearest to me, searching for a way around the chaos.

Clare moans softly and shrinks back in the front seat, clutching Rowan.

Threading his way through the traffic, a carton of cigarettes swinging from a clear plastic bag in his hand, is her husband.

Marc spots her seconds after she sees him. His astonished expression would be comical in any other circumstances.

For a moment, he seems frozen; then, with a howl of anger, he drops the cigarettes and launches himself towards us, ricocheting off the gridlocked traffic as he thrusts his way between cars. Vehicles are jammed ahead of and behind me, bumper to bumper: I have nowhere to go.

I reach across Clare, and open the passenger door. “Get out. Double back and find Josef. I’ll deal with Marc.”

“I can’t just leave you—”

“Come on, Clare!” Jenna yells, tumbling out of the backseat and grabbing Clare’s hand.

“Go on!” I urge. “Josef will get you to Damascus. I’ll meet you there. Please, Clare!”

She struggles out of the front seat. Rowan is screaming now, his face red and shiny with tears. Marc is just two cars away. Jenna reaches for Rowan, but Clare simply cradles him tighter against her chest.