Something to Hide, page 8
Peach preferred the Embankment because she knew the route and hence its length and the time required for her to accompany Deborah before returning to the comfort of her bed and the hope of something edible falling to the floor. But Deborah preferred the sight of people to the rush of traffic, so she urged the dog in a crisscross to Old Church Street and from there up to the King’s Road.
Peach took her time, naturally. Walking the dachshund was like attempting to walk a hoover: every inch of the route had to be sniffed and sorted. These things could not be rushed.
Deborah was grateful when she saw the tabloid. Peach’s progress being more the tortoise and less the hare, along with her complete unwillingness to be hurried in any way, meant that her companion on the walk either needed the patience of Moses waiting for the Pharaoh to wise up or, better yet, had brought reading material or earbuds connected to soothing music. Deborah, alas, had neither, so The Source would have to do.
Thus she saw the front-page headline and its accompanying pictures. The tabloid was continuing to feature the disappearance of Boluwatife Akin as its main story. The concentration on this day, however, gave the reader copious background information on the girl’s parents, revealing to the reader that Boluwatife had come into the world via IVF, and the girl’s mother, Aubrey Hamilton, had undergone four rounds of the procedure to have the child. Her relations were coming forward to share further details. The child was the centre of her parents’ lives, they said, she was a treasure, and her parents were devoted to her.
A sidebar accompanied this on page three, where the story continued. It revealed background on the girl’s father, Charles. Born in Nigeria, he possessed a first-class degree in geography from Oxford. The veracity of this was examined, as was his time at Lincoln’s Inn, where he’d completed his pupillage and where, at present, he was a barrister associated with an international chambers. He was high profile, according to the sidebar, within the field of civil law. Nothing he’d done in court was either controversial or glamorous. He was not flashy, and if he was said to have ambition, it was to take silk one day.
He’d spoken to a reporter about his daughter’s disappearance, saying that he wanted to believe that Bolu was only lost in town somewhere. If not that, he wanted to believe that she was being held for ransom and, although he was not a rich man, if it was money that was wanted to bring Bolu back to them, he and his wife would find it. He wanted, in short, to believe anything that was not the worst fear a parent faces when a child goes missing.
Accompanying the story, both on the front page and on page three, were half a dozen pictures that the parents had handed over for publication: Bolu as an infant in her mother’s arms, Bolu as a toddler gripping her father’s fingers, Bolu perhaps six years old on the lap of Father Christmas, Bolu on her father’s shoulders, Bolu on her mother’s hip.
Deborah closed the tabloid, but she didn’t toss it into the nearest rubbish bin. Instead, she took it with her.
Peach picked up the pace once she realised they were heading in the general direction of home. Home was where the treaties were. Home was where the bed was. Home was where that obnoxious feline dozed, just out of reach of fierce canine jaws.
It was the fact that Charles Akin was born in Nigeria that gave Deborah pause. She realised that she was tossing him into a basket in which he very well might not belong, but there were several considerations that the tabloid wasn’t touching upon, and this seemed out of character in a paper known for its proclivity to dig up dirt and smear it across the face of anyone who might have earlier garnered the public’s sympathy. England’s tabloids had always lived by a single creed: build ’em up and tear ’em down. In other words, if a tabloid loved an individual highlighted by a front-page story, there was a virtual guarantee that the same individual would be vilified by that same tabloid within seventy-two hours.
With Peach safely at home and ready to doze, Deborah collected her equipment and set it by the door. She dashed up the stairs, where she found her husband just finishing the buttoning of a blazingly white shirt. He had on trousers, and the matching jacket lay on the bed along with a tie. She said, “Giving testimony?” and to his wry response of “Now how the dickens did you guess?” she responded with, “There’s no other earthly activity worthy of a shirt like that. You could do with a haircut, Simon,” she added, and when his gaze met hers in the mirror above the chest of drawers, “Honestly, I’ve never known anyone as afraid of barbers as you. Never mind. I’m off as well. Peach has been walked and fed, so don’t let her beguile you with her dachshund eyes.”
“She holds no charm for me,” he said.
“Right. I mean it, Simon. She mustn’t get fat. It’s not good for her.”
“Nor for any of us.” He turned from the mirror and took up his tie. “I swear I shall pass her by with nothing falling loose from my hand,” he said. “Are you off to Whitechapel, then?”
“I am.”
“Not enough photos yet?”
“This is something else. I mean, more or less it’s something else.”
“Suitably vague, my love,” he pointed out. “You sound more like me than you.”
“I’ll take photos, as well. But there’s . . . Never mind. It’s not important.” She kissed him. She eased her fingers into his hair. It was soft as it curled against her palm. She gave it a tug and said, “Leave off going to the barber for now. It’s nice.”
“As you’ve been looking at it since you were seven years old, I’m gratified it maintains its appeal.” He kissed her back.
She headed out, pausing only to scoop up her equipment. A quick drive down Cheyne Row to Cheyne Walk and she was on the Embankment. Like nearly everyone else, she drove along the river in the direction of Westminster. She wondered how she would ask what she wished to ask. More, she wondered to whom she could address her question in a situation that could truly be called none of her privileged-white-lady business.
It turned out to be Narissa Cameron, who was mulling over a large map of London spread over the table in the reception area of Orchid House. This once had been the vestibule of the chapel, and it was the only part of the building that was separated from the chapel by a wall.
Narissa turned as she entered. She looked beleaguered by worries. She said, “Oh. You,” in a way that was less than welcoming. But Deborah was not to be put off, since less than welcome had so far been all but the youngest girls’ stock in trade.
“You look a bit wrung out,” Deborah said. “D’you want a coffee?”
“I’ve had four. One more and you’ll have to scrape me off the ceiling. Christ, this is such a bitch.”
“Difficulties?”
“That just about says it.”
“Anything you care to . . . I mean, not to intrude or . . .”
“Stop treading on eggshells, Deborah. I’m not going to punch you if you say the wrong thing.”
“Well, that’s a relief. What are you trying to come up with, then?” Deborah nodded at the map.
“I’m trying to settle where the narrative moments are going to be filmed. Although it would be bloody nice to have a narrator in the first place. Who would’ve thought that part of the project would be the most difficult?”
“If I may ask . . .”
“Stop it! I swear . . .” She sighed. “Forget it. Please. You can talk to me person-to-person. You don’t need my permission just because you’re white.”
“Sorry. It’s just . . . Never mind. What sort of narrator are you looking for?”
“A woman. Black. With a commanding appearance and a compelling voice. A celebrity would be best—actor, pop singer, athlete—although I’d settle for a politician if I could manage that. Thing is, I should’ve listened to my dad. He told me to get on that first. These people have packed schedules, he said. But of course I went my own bloody way. Which is what I always do. Or at least always did and am trying not to do any longer.”
“Zawadi,” Deborah said. “Commanding presence and compelling voice?”
“I’ve thought about her, more than once. She’s not a celebrity but the rest is definitely there.”
“And?”
“I’m giving her . . . let’s call it ‘space’ for the moment. She’s not happy with me, and flexibility is not her middle name.” Narissa bent over the map. She was holding a red felt-tip pen, and she used it to mark smallish dots on various sites. She said, “Peckham Common will work. The Somali Community Centre, Myatt’s Fields Park in Camberwell, St. Thomas’ Hospital, Middle Temple. No. Not Middle Temple. Stupid idea. Not Myatt’s Fields. What am I thinking? Brixton Market is better.”
“What’ll they provide?”
“A backdrop for the narrator so she’s not sitting behind a boring desk or in front of an equally boring bookcase. Also footage to be used when the narrator’s off-camera and doing a voice-over.”
“In front of a schoolyard with children—all girls—at play. A children’s play area?”
“There was one on Camberwell Green. There’s another at the far end of Peckham Common.”
“Children playing, children’s voices. The voices fade out as the narrator speaks?”
Narissa glanced in her direction and gave her a smile that appeared only halfway reluctant. “You could be good at this,” she said.
“Thanks. Nice to know there’s a second career waiting out there for me. Can I ask you something?”
Narissa capped her red pen. “Ask away.”
“Can we . . . ?” Deborah indicated the out-of-doors. Narissa followed her outside and onto the green. It was lined with pollarded acacia trees, oddly umbrella-like in appearance. Deborah led her to one of them. She said, “I’ve been thinking a bit about this girl who’s disappeared, the one with the long name but they call her Bolu. Do you know about her?”
Narissa was silent for a moment before she said, “I saw it on the telly. What about her?”
“I was struck . . . Well, this morning I saw a copy of The Source.”
“You were lining your dustbin, I hope.”
Deborah smiled. “Walking the dog. I found The Source along the way. There was a story—on the front page and inside—about her parents.”
“What about them?”
“It’s just that when Bolu first disappeared, she was with two teenagers and they were on the Central Line, coming from Gants Hill.”
“And?” Narissa was distracted momentarily by the arrival of her two technicians. She called to them, “I’m set up already. I’ll be along directly.” And then to Deborah, “What’s your point?”
“Just that the Central Line goes through Mile End, and if they changed trains there for the District Line? And then got off at Stepney Green?”
“The girl’s at risk,” Narissa said.
“So Zawadi—”
“All you need to know is that she’s at risk, Deborah. The girl said something. Someone overheard. The pieces were put together. That’s all it takes. So if you want to prove yourself more than a white Lady Bountiful snapping away with her expensive camera, you’ll keep everything you know and everything you think you know to yourself.”
That said, Narissa turned and made her way to the chapel. When she got to the steps, she turned and said, “Do you understand what I’m talking about?”
Deborah nodded. She walked back to the chapel, back to her pictures.
THE MOTHERS SQUARE
LOWER CLAPTON
NORTH-EAST LONDON
Mark Phinney knew that he couldn’t go on in this way. He had responsibilities coming at him from every corner of his life, and, while he was meeting them at work, he wasn’t meeting them with a decent degree of professionalism. He also wasn’t meeting them with a surplus of compassion, empathy, love, or whatever else at home. At Empress State Building he was fast mastering the art of listening without listening, as well as taking in and reading reports on activities without actually digesting a thing. He attempted to hide his growing indifference to the job at hand as well as his grudging acceptance of his duties to his wife and his daughter. But whereas he was fairly competent at hiding his lack of interest at work, at home he could hide virtually nothing when it came to Pete.
He didn’t wish to be read by his wife. He wished to be free. He wanted desperately to be out in public, finished with clandestine meetings that left him feeling three times the traitor to everything he once believed in, and to everything else he’d once held dear. He could cope with the guilt, with the betrayal of his marriage vows, with the many ways he was failing his colleagues, with the entertaining of unspoken wishes about his only child. What he could not cope with—and had not even once anticipated—was falling in love and having to suffer the consequences of that love in a situation in which any move he made was going to crush someone.
Yet he wanted to make the move. He could, at least, admit that. He wanted to walk away from Pete and Lilybet and into the waiting arms of the woman he loved. She was his soulmate. They were in effect a single person cleaved in two by . . . who knew, really? Fate, a hopeless situation, his failure to act upon what he knew to be real and true? And while that failure didn’t need to define his future—or their future together—he couldn’t see a way to trigger events in his life so that they led ineluctably where he wished them to lead. Pete would never allow that to happen, and who could blame her?
She’d read him well enough to hire a helper, at least and at last. He was a retired male nurse called Robertson, who did not wish to spend his pension years becoming less and less useful to society. He was seventy-one, but in his case the seventies were the new forties. He spent his holidays walking various pilgrim trails in Europe—his favourite being the Rome-to-Santiago route, which he’d done an amazing three times—and his free time in England was dedicated to getting physically prepared for the next pilgrim walk. Mark felt like a sloth next to him.
Robertson was there days—to give Pietra a few hours of free time—so several of them passed before Mark actually met him. When he arrived on this particular evening, however, the bloke was still there, as there had been “a wee bit of a scare with baby girl’s breathing this afternoon,” as he put it. “I got to her directly the alarm sounded, but I haven’t liked to leave her without someone else here besides Mrs. Phinney.” Someone else meant Mark, and he was home later than usual. A new member had been assigned to his team—Detective Sergeant Jade Hopwood, she was called—and he’d been meeting with her each day’s end to bring her up to date on what had been either planned or achieved so far and to put her more fully into the picture of what they were trying to do next. She was a quick student—praise God—and she was equally good when it came to suggestions, but there remained many reports of actions to be gone through as well as much to discuss.
Mark asked Robertson at once about Lilybet’s breathing. What had happened? When? How?
Robertson’s reply was, “I’ll let the missus explain it.” Then with a glance at Lilybet’s room, he lowered his voice and went on. “Baby girl ought to see her specialist, though. This thing that happened? It came without warning. She was fine and then she wasn’t. She was breathing and then she wasn’t. Best have her checked.” And off he went, stopping at the front door to put on his hiking boots and to take up the walking poles he used to keep his arms in shape.
Mark went to Lilybet’s room. Pete was sitting on the bed with her, her arm round their little girl’s thin shoulders, Lilybet’s head on Pete’s breast. Both of them had their eyes closed. Only Pete opened hers when he entered.
“Robertson told you?” She paused to clear her throat. “For a moment I thought we’d lost her.”
“Did you ring 999?”
“I did, but you know how it is. They take so long. By the time they arrived, we’d resolved everything, Robertson and I. But Mark, she was turning . . . Her lips were going purple.” Her eyes brightened with tears as she spoke.
“Robertson says she should see the specialist.”
“What good would that do? She’ll say what she always says. ‘Her system’s compromised. In a situation this grave, she needs round-the-clock care.’ Anything can happen, she’ll say. Choking, suffocation, a stroke, an aneurism, cardiac arrest. But, he’ll add, the worst can still be avoided if she’s put into a care home with full-time medical staff.”
Mark looked at Lilybet, her head lolling against her mother. The television on the opposite wall was showing one of the Frozen films. The sound was muted. Only the bright colours remained. If her eyes were open, he wondered, would the vibrant hues be enough to stimulate her brain? Could her brain even be stimulated? Was Pete spending her life—these vital years—attempting to scale a mountain that could not be scaled?
“She might do,” he said to his wife. “But one way or another, we should take Lily to see her. Someone needs to assess her after she’s had an incident.”
“Assess her for what? Brain damage?” she asked derisively.
“You know what I mean, Pete.”
“I don’t want to hear the words another time.”
“What words?”
“The ‘put her away’ words. The ‘no one will blame you for making a decision like that about her care’ words. As if I’m worried about being blamed. As if I’m desperate to hand her over to someone who’ll put her in a bed in a ward and check on her three times a day so that I can be relieved of a burden, carefree, able to . . . I don’t know . . . go to a gym? Learn to play golf? Start swimming again? Have my hair styled monthly? Play tennis? Study French? This is my child, Mark. This is our little girl.”
