Chapter 8
I couldn’t sleep that night. It was cold and the windows rattled.
The flat had been converted from a building which had been an old grain warehouse and turned cheaply into apartments that ought to have sold for huge amounts, but a downturn in the market meant anyone who could afford it had gone for the luxury market by the river.
The place had been used for student accommodation for a while, and now it was used for us.
The ‘build it cheap, sell it pricey’ approach meant that the flat had thin walls and no double glazing.
From outside came the sound of people with disposable income enjoying spending it in the bars and clubs, and from inside came the sound of those with no disposable income enjoying what they had in whatever ways they could.
Music made the walls thump, the floors jittered to the sounds of arguments and fights.
From next door there was the occasional wail of a waking child and Tia’s voice, reduced to a blurred Cornish accent, comforting them.
I turned my phone over and looked at the screen. No new messages.
We’re safe. We’ve got a roof over our heads.
We can afford food. Tilly had managed to keep some toast down before going grumpily to bed and, for lack of anything else to do, I’d got in beside her, where I sat knees up and thinking.
I didn’t often compare lives. Not now, not when we were happy.
Just, every so often I’d remember the ultra-king-sized bed with linen sheets and those slippery throws that had never stayed on the bed all night but looked good in photo shoots.
David, in bed beside me, with me unable to believe my luck.
Me, Libby Douthwaite, moderate of looks and attainment, having done nothing more noteworthy with my life than go to work for a company that managed bookings for a London theatre, had bagged myself a rich, successful actor!
All right, not that rich – the money wasn’t his but his father’s, and he had indulged his son in his desire to be an actor – and not that successful – he’d been on TV and stage but not played any major parts or had the acclaim he felt he deserved. Even so. I’d had it all. Ha.
Reflexively I checked the phone again. Then, almost as though to torture myself, I opened my old messages.
David
I just want to see my daughter. I want to know that she’s all right.
Then further back.
David
Don’t worry, I’ll find you.
I closed the phone, turned over and adjusted the earplugs that stopped the worst of the background noise.
Tilly, sleeping beside me with her mouth open, didn’t ever seem to hear a thing.
She could sleep through police raids and arrests, although I didn’t know how; I was awake and alert at the first thump on the front door. Count your blessings, Libby.
I had Tilly, we were safe and there was the prospect of getting out of here, if Ross Ventriss came through with his promise of five thousand pounds.
I didn’t dare think about what I was going to have to do to get that money, and the occasional thought that he didn’t even seem to have that money fired through my brain, but it was something.
Something to hold on to, a prospect of freedom.
We’d come so far, Tilly and I, we just had to hold on a little longer – and possibly fight to the death with a room full of birds, eject a woman from a house she didn’t want to leave and extract the money from an impecunious-looking man – and we’d be home and dry.
I fell asleep to the sounds of vigorous drumming from the flat below, and woke to silence and Tilly brushing Brass’s little felt body with my hairbrush. Outside, my limited view told me, it was raining. The sky was a dim grey and water trickled in slimy trails down the window.
‘We’ll have to put our coats on today, Tils,’ I said, looking for clothing that would make me seem businesslike in front of Ross, and yet would still be suitable for a park visit. I’d got some decent jeans, those would do.
‘No boots,’ Tilly said. ‘Boots gone.’
‘Here, you can wear your old shoes,’ I said, trying to trap her into getting dressed. ‘They can get muddy, it won’t matter.’
Tilly was quieter than usual. Whatever bug had made her sick had reduced her energy levels to something a little easier to cope with and given her less inclination to argue about every single decision made for her.
She accepted me strapping on her slightly-too-small shoes without complaint, a pair of dungarees which were also getting a little on the small side I noticed, and only really put her foot down about the jumper I wanted her to wear.
In the interests of actually getting to the park on time, I gave in on that point, and she wore her sparkly top with the glittery sleeves, and thus looked like a CBeebies presenter on her way to change the oil in her car.
The dungarees weren’t a great move, given that she was only recently toilet trained, but they were the most mud-resistant of her clothes.
I didn’t fool myself that a visit to the park was going to be a decorous walk and a quick push on the swings; Tilly could get covered in mud sitting on a chair in an empty room.
Five thousand pounds, though. I couldn’t keep my mind from dwelling on the money, as I strapped Tilly – with a good deal of complaining – into her buggy for the walk through the rain to the park.
‘How the mighty are fallen,’ I muttered to myself as I shoved the cheap buggy through the drifts of soggy leaves.
‘Fallen down?’ Tilly turned her head to look at me. I hadn’t even realised I’d spoken aloud. The situation must be really getting to me.
‘Just thinking.’ I tried to sound dismissive.
‘Nothing to worry about.’ But my mind had filled with a worrying confusion, as often happened when I slipped back into thinking about my previous life.
I’d been happy with David, we’d had Tilly and he’d changed so suddenly into a man I didn’t recognise, as though he’d been body-snatched and replaced with an alien, turned into something that looked like the man I’d loved but whose behaviour had… had…
My mind ran into the swamps of disbelief again. I reflexively checked over my shoulder but nobody seemed to be following and I wondered when, or whether, this habit would leave me. We’re safe. You just have to believe it now.
Tilly sat quietly for once, which was nice, tucked up snugly under the rain cover, one thumb in her mouth and Brass making the cover bulge around her midriff, as though she’d gained two stone.
The streets were colourfully smeared with leaves of all colours and it was like walking through an impressionist painting, weaving through the umbrella-wielding people and the sticky snatches of drifting vegetation.
However, as soon as we reached the park her energy returned and she wriggled her way out of the straps, kicked herself free and was gone, hurtling across the muddy grass towards the pond where geese were pecking threateningly at the ground.
‘Tilly!’ I began to run towards her, the buggy – which was ancient and had been donated to me by Tia – scuffing sideways over the pockmarked ground.
A few mothers, or nannies more likely from their impeccable clothing and Boden-wearing charges, raised their eyebrows as I fled along, arriving at Tilly just in time to stop her from paddling in after the now fleeing wildfowl.
‘Tilly! You stay away from the water!’ And the geese, I wanted to add, but was still mindful of not putting my phobias onto her. ‘Look, there’s Ross sitting over there by the swings.’
The word swings did it and I managed to get her over to the small play park, where Ross was indeed sitting on a bench.
He looked like a down-and-out who’d found the back door to Next unlocked: slumped forward seemingly asleep in a good black coat, decent walking boots but with his hair at so many different angles that he could have been a lesson in geometry.
‘Good morning,’ I said as we passed him so that I could put Tilly onto a swing. The backwash of my recent memories must have remained in my voice because I sounded hesitant, as though I was slightly uncertain about the goodness of this particular morning.
The jolt he gave told me that he had been asleep. Things must be bad if he was sleeping on park benches. ‘Ah,’ he said, obviously trying not to look as though he’d been woken abruptly. ‘You’re here.’
‘Yes. And I’ve got about half an hour before Tilly starts screaming about food or being cold or wanting to watch Octonauts or any other personal inconvenience she may be suffering.
’ I tucked Tilly into the seat of a baby swing.
She protested lightly that she was a big girl, but she’d fallen face first out of swings too many times for me to give in to that.
I needed to concentrate on what Ross had to say without fielding a toppling toddler every ten seconds. ‘So start talking.’
Ross came over and leaned against the swing post while I pushed Tilly. ‘Have you ever seen The Great British Build?’ he asked, hands thrusting deep into his pockets as he spoke. ‘On TV?’
‘If it doesn’t contain cartoon figures and an opportunity to sell me plastic play sets every five minutes, almost certainly not.’ I pushed gently again. Tilly swung metronomically back and forth but seemed happy. ‘I don’t get to watch much adult TV.’
‘It’s a competition for architects,’ Ross said, sounding rather miserable.
‘Wow. Bet the audience figures are out of this world.’