Chapter 27
27
‘G ot it. OK, yes,’ Kay whispered. Shook had found Caro and Ben. Both fine. Ben fast asleep. No drama. No drama, she whispered. Still sitting in her car, where she’d been for the last forty minutes, she ended the call and looked out to the open doorway.
In the time that she’d been sat there, Helen had been out twice, pacing the drive, unable, or unwilling, to talk to her, and refusing to close the front door.
Lawrence had been out too. Surprisingly kind. Quietly he’d leaned into the car to ask if she would come back in and had agreed that he too couldn’t really believe Caro would have deliberately taken Libby’s baby. Which, they both said, without saying, made the alternative so much worse.
And then Shook had rung. Forty-three minutes it had taken him to find Caro while she supposed the patrol car was still looking. Was it luck? It didn’t matter, it didn’t matter. Caro was safe. Ben was safe.
She eased herself out of the passenger seat and clutching her phone went into the house.
The kitchen seemed even darker. The only light came from under the wall units, making floating buoys of all the faces that turned to her…
Lawrence.
Jack.
Libby.
Helen
The policeman.
The policewoman.
‘He’s found her,’ she said. ‘Shook’s found them. They’re OK. They’re both OK.’
The policeman took a step forward, something passing across his face. A twitch of annoyance?
‘He’s a friend of mine,’ Kay said, by way of response. ‘He was out looking, and he’s found them.’ If he was annoyed that she hadn’t listened to his members of the public advice… well, she didn’t give a shit.
Standing at the sink, a few feet away, Lawrence folded in half, his long frame collapsing like a deckchair as he bent forward and put his hands over his head.
‘I know what you said.’ She was looking at the policeman. Now she turned to Helen. ‘But he’s found them. And he’s bringing them back now.’
The policeman took the corner of his vest and pulled it towards his chin. Twisting his head, he spoke in a low voice into his radio. The response, a garble of electronic voices, crackled through the kitchen like an electric whip.
Kay looked down at her phone.
‘Where?’ Helen said quietly. She hadn’t moved from where she sat at the table. Her face was grey.
‘Memorial Sportsground,’ Kay answered. ‘There’s a gravel track that leads down to it. Shook only went in to turn the car around and that’s when he saw them.’
Behind Helen, Libby dissolved on the table in a heap of hair and heaving shoulders.
‘Memorial…’ Helen stared at Kay. ‘What the hell was she doing out there?’ And her voice was like a stone thrown into a still pond. Deliberate, precise, catastrophic.
Helplessly Kay raised her shoulders, her hand coming up to her chest to try and catch a much needed breath. She was, she realised, desperate for an anchor, a play of stay because suddenly it seemed that although everyone and everything in the room had been washed over in relief, loosened, liberated, she alone had been left out in the tumult. The police officers had turned away to consult in low voices, Lawrence had straightened up, even Jack had shifted, settling, like sand, into a chair next to his sister. Which left only Helen, and her anger.
There was a terrible thumping in her chest, a rising panic both cold and hot. Helen’s question was valid. Why was Caro out at a sportsground, over five miles away, in the pitch black? She had no idea. She was sure of only two equally weighted certainties. Firstly, that whatever had carried Caro to this point required empathy and eventually forgiveness. And secondly, that Helen might not be capable of either. It was the end. It could be the end.
She wouldn’t have called the police. But she wasn’t Libby’s mother and Ben wasn’t her grandchild. And reasons that carried the weight of water in her hands were feathers in Helen’s. Who would not be able to forgive. Because it was unforgivable. Never in all the years of knowing and loving these two women had Kay felt more alone. Thrashed on all sides, unable to find a neutral, safe shore upon which to rest. She was already exhausted, and it hadn’t even begun.
Her phone rang and all the floating buoys turned once again to look at her, none of them, not one, offering up a haven.
‘They’re here,’ she said weakly. ‘They’re just pulling…’ And she didn’t need to say any more because the crunch of wheels on gravel had everyone moving. Scraping chairs and standing and rushing past in a blur of movement so swift that no one was left to hear her finish her sentence. ‘Into the drive.’