Chapter 25
25
A s Helen pulled the car into the driveway, Kay’s stomach turned over. Up ahead she could see the outline of Caro’s BMW, its sleek silver reflected in the moonlight. What she didn’t see until she had stepped out was the outline of the other car. Parked right in front of Caro’s, its blue and yellow markings were undeniable. Her heart picked up pace and her mouth went dry. The police were here. What had happened? She turned to Helen, but Helen had already disappeared through the rectangle of yellow light that was the front door of her house.
Frozen in the darkness, Kay listened to the commotion of voices coming from inside the house. Libby’s voice was loudest. So young and so strained. Now Helen, and Lawrence. Everyone talking over everyone else. She managed a step forward and then stopped. She had no idea where to position herself. If something dreadful had happened – and something had happened because the police were here – should she go in? Into the heart of a family, in such distress? Because right now, Lawrence and Helen, Libby and Jack were still very much a family. Before she could make a decision or take a step, a voice called from the doorway.
‘Kay.’ It was Lawrence.
Without knowing she was going to do it, Kay looked at the police car.
‘She’s not answering her phone,’ Lawrence said. ‘We had no choice.’
Confusion scrabbled her brain, like a saboteur with clippers, cutting off chain after chain of coherent thought, leaving her with the building blocks of Caro and Ben and the police. And she couldn’t get any further. Her mouth opened. She looked at Lawrence, ready to try again, to try and shape some sense into the scene, but Lawrence had gone, disappearing like Helen through that brightly lit doorway. She tipped her head to the black night and the silver stars. Where are you? she muttered. Where the fuck are you, Caro?
All the way back they’d tried calling her, of course they had. Chills ran down Kay’s arms, the finest cold silk pulled across the finest hair of her forearms. She turned away from the house and went back to her car, took out her bag and pulled out her phone. And in the gloom of the shadowed rose bushes, Kay listened, as she had so many times today, to the sound of Caro’s phone ringing out, on and on it went. She ended the call and then immediately tried again and as she did something at the furthest edge of her peripheral vision caught her eye. A beacon, like a lighthouse through fog. Phone at her ear she walked over to Caro’s parked car and there it was. Tucked away in the compartment behind the gearstick lay Caro’s phone. Kay, Kay, Kay flashing across the screen in blue. Like a cry for help in a silent movie.
The scene that greeted her was a tableau. And yes, Kay knew that word, although drama had never been her thing. Equations, probabilities, fractions… It was, and always had been, within these boundaries that she’d been able to steer life. The sheer subjectiveness of fiction appalled her. There might be no end to the introspection. But this time there was no escaping it: what faced her was a tableau. A silent, frozen frame of a story no one yet knew the ending of.
Libby was centre, flanked by Helen. Behind, tall and erect as sentinels, stood Lawrence and Jack. Across at the far end of the kitchen, taking a detached and neutral stance, stood a policeman and a policewoman. The small distance between them and the family huge in terms of viewpoint. They were there only as impartial observers to the chaos that was unfolding.
In front of Libby, on the table, lay a carrier bag, on top of which was a pair of blue baby dungarees, the label still attached. Next to them a huge vase of flowers. Even from where she stood, Kay could read the name at the bottom of the card, propped up against the vase: Caro.
So that left only her. Where, she thought, as she looked around the room, should she put herself? As it was, her body decided for her. It simply refused to move. So she stayed in the doorway and did the only thing she could. She lifted her phone up and said, ‘Caro’s phone is in her car.’
Slow and careful, Helen turned to her.
Kay’s arm fell loose. ‘I just tried ringing it and…’ She looked across at the policeman and woman. ‘It was behind the gearstick,’ she added and with her free hand rubbed at her forehead.
The policeman nodded. ‘We’ve been ringing it.’
Kay blinked at him, unsure of how to answer. Caro’s phone hadn’t quite been hidden, but any rise of frustration she might have felt towards the lack of perceived effort on the part of the police had already collapsed. Swept away by the look Helen had just given her. Because for Kay, for a brief moment, looking back at Helen had been like looking at the sun. She felt blinded. Far too dazed to challenge what was being said. And wherever Caro was, whatever had happened, anger, she understood, had not been the response she’d expected walking into this kitchen. Worry, yes. A terrible, consuming panic, yes. But not the white-hot rage Helen emitted. Something had shifted. In the time between them arriving and now, Helen’s mood had shifted.
Her fingers gripped her phone as she pressed it against her chest and looked across at the police. ‘Shouldn’t we… the hospitals? Has anyone?—’
‘We’ve checked the local A and E,’ the policewoman finished the sentence for her.
At the table, Libby stifled a sob.
‘They’re working from the assumption that it’s abduction,’ Lawrence said.
‘ Abduction? ’
‘They think,’ Helen said, without turning, ‘that Caro has taken Ben.’ Her voice was preternaturally calm,
Kay’s blood ran cold. She stared at the back of Helen’s head. Caro would not have taken Libby’s baby. That wasn’t possible. Helen couldn’t possibly think… But the policeman had now moved across to talk to Lawrence, so close and in such a low voice that she couldn’t hear. ‘I’ll ring Alex,’ she blurted. ‘Maybe he can… maybe he can go out and start looking?’
’We have a patrol car out,’ the policeman said. ‘It’s not a good idea to involve members of the public at this stage.’
His tone was so impassive and his jargon so practised it scared Kay. ‘Alex is my son!’ she cried. ‘He’s known Caro since he was born.’
‘Even so.’
Kay swallowed and her throat was on fire. ‘I’m sure,’ she whispered, ‘that there’s been a misunderstanding…’
Now Helen turned and looked at her blankly.
‘As my colleague said.’ The policewoman’s smile was devoid of empathy, designed to placate. ‘We’ve made a thorough check of A and Es.’
‘Like you checked Caro’s car? To find the phone?’ She couldn’t help it. The last thing Kay wanted to do, intended to do, was let slip the smallest quantity of oil onto these troubled waters. But this was Caro. And Caro would not do, would not have done, what everyone in this room seemed to be thinking…
At the sound of her words, Helen stood, chair legs screeching across tiles. ‘It’s pitch black, Kay,’ she said in a low voice. ‘And Ben is four weeks old! Of course there’s a patrol car out!’
Again, Libby sobbed.
‘Helen—’
But Helen’s hand flew up as if she might strike. ‘ Don’t , Kay,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t even try to explain it!’ From under a brow that was fevered with fury she looked straight at Kay. ‘Right now, unless Caro’s lying dead in a ditch I don’t want to know. And even then…’ Helen’s eyes burned. ‘Even then I’m not sure I could forgive her. Look,’ she hissed. ‘Just look at my daughter.’
Slowly, Kay backed away. Heart pounding, she looked from Libby back to Helen. ‘I’m not… I was… I’m going to get some air.’
Out in the drive, under the stars, her heart was the loudest thing in the universe. She felt sick. Split to the bone. As surely as if she’d been cleaved in two. It was disorientating to the point of destabilising. Round and around she went, spinning like a top, trying and failing to find a way to explain why Caro might take Libby’s baby away like this. Unless of course they were both dead, the thought of which produced a feeling of nausea so strong she had to go and sit in the passenger seat of her car and wait for it to pass. If her phone hadn’t rung, she might have sat there until the end of time, so benumbed was she.
It was Shook. Calling to say that they were back, that they had been for a while actually, and that the bike was in the garage. Alex was taking a shower. He could wait, if she thought she’d be back soon, otherwise he’d see her, probably tomorrow. The bike needed a tune…
‘My friend,’ she interrupted. ‘Caro. The one you remember. She’s missing.’
There was a small sucking sound, the sound of an intake of breath. ‘Missing?’
‘With my other friend’s baby. Helen. Not her baby, her daughter’s baby.’
Shook was silent.
‘Oh God!’ Kay put her hand over her mouth. ‘Caro’s just lost her own baby. I can’t believe she’d do anything so stupid as this, but now the police are here and?—’
‘Kay.’ Never was Shook’s name more unsuitable. ‘Start again,’ he said, ‘from the beginning.’ And his voice was like a hand on her shoulder, keeping her upright.
So she did. Fact by fact, timescale correct. No assumptions, little emotion, because this was what she was good at. No drama, no histrionics. And as she explained, though it didn’t occur to Kay herself, it was clear that emotion was an extravagance she’d rarely had the luxury of indulging. No wonder she was so practised.
‘Will it help,’ Shook said as she finished, ‘if I go and look for them?’
‘Can you?’ she answered. Of course it would help. Whatever the police had said, it could only help, because all this was a mistake. An awful aberration, a one-off jolt of the slow-moving plates of their long friendship. The rupture had to be mended as soon as possible. Repaired. Rewound.