lips.
‘Hello, dear,’ said Devlin.
Melanie pointed to him. ‘What the hell is that?’
He turned towards the light and held out a small bundle. ‘It’s, well, kind of…’ He was searching for the words but none came.
‘It’s a baby, Devlin.’
‘Yeah, that’s right.’
Melanie walked towards her husband. He shook the small child up and down to try and calm it. ‘Come on now, that’s enough.’
It was clear to Melanie he had not a clue how to look after a baby. Something leapt in her; she took the child in her arms.
Chapter 23
The baby calmed in Melanie’s arms, gurgled. She looked at the small round cheeks and the pink nose and thought how cute they were. The child was like a toy, a squirming noisy toy. She lifted the baby onto her shoulder and started to walk around the living room, shushing and cooing. McArdle watched for a moment or two then threw himself down on the sofa. He seemed unaware of, or unconcerned about, the red wine stains.
Melanie watched her husband as he took out his mobile phone and checked his calls. He scratched the back of his neck and sighed, returned the phone. ‘You all right with that nipper for a bit, doll?’ he said.
Melanie turned round, looked him in the eye. ‘What do you mean?’
McArdle sat forward, rested his elbows on his thighs. He looked, if not troubled, at least not his usual self. Melanie had expected shouting, screaming about the wine stains but he wasn’t bothered in the slightest. He seemed to be preoccupied; there was something troubling him. ‘It’s like this… I’m minding it, for a pal.’
Melanie felt her brows crease, her jaw sag. He made the poor child sound like a car or something that was stolen from a building site — a generator or power tools. It was a child. ‘What the hell do you mean, minding it for a pal?’ she launched into him.
McArdle rubbed his neck again, brought his hand up the back of his head, smoothed his palm over the stubble on his crown. His eyes darted from left to right; he was about to lie to her, she could tell. ‘See, there’s this couple and they have a bit of a problem and can’t mind the kid for a bit, so-’
Melanie arked up, ‘So you said you would!’ It didn’t sound like Devlin McArdle to her. It sounded like a decent thing to do and she knew he wasn’t capable of a decent action. If he had taken this child he had done it for some other reason. ‘Oh, come on, do you expect me to believe that?’
McArdle flared his nostrils, opened and closed his mouth, then, ‘Mel, you can believe what you want.’
Was he testing her? She knew he was playing at some kind of game but she couldn’t work out the rules. He liked his psychological sparring as much as the physical, but this was all new to Melanie. She understood that someone had to look after the baby — and that someone was going to have to be her — so McArdle needed to keep her onside. If he lost patience with her, he’d have to look after the child himself, and that obviously wasn’t part of his plan; neither was letting someone else look after the child. If he had intended to leave the child elsewhere he would have already. There was a reason why he had brought a baby back to their home and Melanie wanted to know what it was.
‘I want the truth,’ she said. Her voice betrayed the seriousness of the situation, sounded harsh. The tone had surprised Melanie. Was she standing up to McArdle? She knew she would never do that herself, but she seemed to draw strength from the situation.
‘Okay, okay… Come here.’ McArdle motioned her towards the sofa. ‘Come and sit down, Mel.’
‘I mean it, I want the truth… This is a baby, not some knockoff gear you’ve brought home.’
McArdle breathed in. His chest rose as he spoke: ‘I was out at Muirhouse today…’
‘I fucking knew it. You’re not doing anyone a favour!’ Melanie stood again. She felt light-headed.
‘Sit down, love.’
‘No. No way.’ Her adrenaline spiked at the mention of the scheme. Nothing good came of McArdle’s doings there. She knew he dealt drugs, but he had a small army of people to do that for him. If he’d been visiting the badlands it meant trouble: someone hadn’t paid up, or an old score had been settled. She prayed he hadn’t taken some poor mother’s child to put a scare on a bad debtor.
As she walked away from her husband, Melanie McArdle suddenly wondered to herself, where was she going? She could flee to the kitchen, the upstairs bathroom maybe, but that was as far as she’d get. The thought stilled her. She turned, faced him. McArdle was fiddling with his watch strap. His teeth clenched as he readied himself to deal with Melanie’s rebellion. She felt her nerves shriek. The realisation of her situation was like a hard ball being bounced on her head. She scrunched her eyes and looked away. When she returned her gaze, McArdle had reclined in the sofa, crossed his legs; she could see the Adidas symbol at the top of his socks.
He patted the cushion beside him. ‘Come on, Mel…’
She sucked at her cheeks, pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth. She tried to keep her mouth closed, but the words wouldn’t stay in: ‘What’s going on?’ She wanted to know, she wanted to hear the truth, but at the same time she felt helpless to do anything about the situation. She couldn’t stand against him — he would kill her before he tolerated that.
McArdle tweaked the tip of his nose with his finger and thumb, spoke: ‘Well, if you’re ready to listen, I’ll tell you.’
She nodded; hugged the baby close.
‘As I said, I was in Muirhouse… Now, it’s not what you think. I had some legitimate business there and, well…’ he paused, cleared his throat, coughed into his fist, ‘well, how can I put this, love…’
Something was wrong, she knew that the second he started to call her love. He was lying. McArdle never stalled for words. He was lying to her because he needed her to help him out of a fix. She’d seen the look before, when police were involved. It put a shard of ice in her spine. She gripped the child again.
McArdle continued, ‘There’s this couple there and, well, they have their addictions… Nothing serious, mind, they take a bit of grass and a bit of skag and they’re payers, good payers, I’ve no worries with them on that score if that’s what you’re thinking.’ He rubbed his knuckles, fiddled with a heavy gold sovereign ring. ‘Melanie, it’s like this… The social services are coming down hard on them, threatening to take the kid away. Really shook them up, so it has…’
Melanie couldn’t look at him any longer. She turned her head away, spoke: ‘So you said you’d take the kid… Why?’ It didn’t make sense to her.
‘Because, love, they need a break and they don’t want to lose the kid… Look, they’ve no family to speak of, so the social would just put the nipper into care. I couldn’t let that happen, could I?’
She huffed; who was he kidding? Since when did Devlin McArdle give a shit about the people he supplied drugs to? He cared if they didn’t pay him. He cared if they short-changed him, lied about having money when they didn’t, or bought from someone else, but that was all. He wasn’t a social worker, and he thought about one person and one person alone: himself.
‘Mel, please… Hon, it’s not going to be for long. A week at the most. You can look after the kid for that long, can’t you?’
Melanie stared at her husband. The blood surged in her veins. He had reached a new low and she hated him for it, but she knew she was powerless to do anything about it.
He spoke again, his voice a pathetic low paean: ‘Mel, I know you can do it… I know you can, one week, that’s all I’m asking.’
She felt a spasm in her neck tug her gaze from him. She took in the full horror of the winestains. Before she knew what she was doing, Melanie had answered him: ‘Okay. One week.’
Chapter 24
