point she plucked it from the cot, held it to her. She could feel something happening inside herself and she didn’t know what it was. An unfamiliar feeling, like it was tearing a hole in her. She didn’t like the feeling but she wouldn’t have wanted to be without it somehow. Not now.
So she held the baby. Waited for morning.
28
Caroline Eades couldn’t sleep. Her husband, lying on his back, mouth open and snoring like an angry lion growling, had no such problem.
She just couldn’t get comfortable. Every time she did, moving her body around to a position that could accommodate her stomach and the rest of her, somewhere the baby wasn’t lying on anything that would cause her discomfort, it would kick, or stretch, or shift about, and she was back to square one again.
But she didn’t think it was the baby’s fault. Not entirely. Graeme had come in after nine o’clock, put his briefcase down and announced he was going for a shower. He didn’t want any dinner, which was a good thing, since the M &S lamb shank was ruined by then; said he had eaten on the way home. Then, following his shower, he had downed a can of lager and gone to bed. He didn’t ask how she was, how her day had been, nothing. He barely acknowledged the children, who were putting themselves to bed. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought he was having an affair.
He had been her childhood sweetheart. Proper Romeo and Juliet stuff. At least she’d thought so until she read the play and saw what happened to them. She vowed that would never happen to Graeme and her. She would make it work, whatever. Give them a happy ending.
And she had. In the early days, when he was building up his business, she had put her career plans aside, been there to help him. In fact, the majority of the work involved in drawing up the business plans was down to her. But falling pregnant had stopped all that. Then she’d become a stay-at-home mum, let Graeme go out to work. His business had prospered, selling his recruitment agency to a national company while still being allowed to run the local arm. This had led to the new house, the two big cars, the private schools.
And now the new baby.
Unplanned but welcomed, at least by Caroline. Because if she was honest – and lying in the dark awake when the rest of the world was asleep was the time for honesty – she had nothing else. No friends since the move, apart from the other young mothers. Her two kids treated her as their personal servant. Her husband ignored her. So yes, this baby was welcome.
She looked at Graeme again. The man she had given all her dreams and wishes to. Her heart and soul. Her one-time Romeo, now snoring and drooling from the side of his mouth.
He had better not be having an affair. That would mean the baby was all she had to look forward to. Please, let him not be…
The baby kicked again. She shifted, tried to get comfortable.
Sighed. It was going to be one of those nights.
29
Phil sat on the sofa in his living room, took a mouthful of beer. Held it in his mouth, rolled it round, swallowed. Head back, eyes closed. The remains of an Indian takeaway on the coffee table in front of him, Elbow playing on the stereo, ‘The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver’. He sighed, listening to the song, Guy Garvey singing about there being a long way to fall.
He had come in from work thinking about the case, particularly Fenwick’s behaviour. But a quick weights session on his home gym had worked that out of his mind. Now, when he should have been formulating approaches, strategies for tomorrow, he found himself thinking of Marina. Only Marina.
When she had walked out of his life she had broken his heart and he had been bereft. And the way she had done it, cutting him out completely, after all they had meant to each other. No phone call, text, email, nothing. Like he was dead to her.
His bursting emotions had gone through several recognisable stages. Firstly incomprehension at her actions. A creeping guilt that she blamed him for Martin Fletcher. Then anger when she wouldn’t allow him to explain why he was innocent of her imagined charge. That anger upped to rage as he tried to hate her out of his system, telling himself she was no good for him and failing massively. Finally a numb emptiness as he realised he would be facing the rest of his life without her. All the while playing and replaying conversations with her, inventing and imagining new ones that they might possibly share, different scenarios and possible outcomes.
His reverie was cut short by the phone ringing.
He jumped to answer it, thinking at first that it might be Marina, but then in a more professional frame of mind realising it might be someone from the station with an update about the case. Or even another murder.
It was neither.
‘Hello, son.’
Phil relaxed. It was Eileen Brennan. The nearest thing he had to a mother.
‘Hi, Eileen.’ He flicked the remote, muted the sound. ‘All right?’
‘Very well, Phil. And Don sends his love too.’
Phil had forgotten. He always made a Wednesday-night call to Eileen. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was going to call you.’
‘It’s all right. Doesn’t matter.’ She sighed. ‘We saw the news. Those girls… terrible. I said to Don, that’ll be our Phil working on that.’
Phil heard the pride in her voice. Smiled. ‘Yeah, that’s me.’
‘And that’s why you had to stand poor Lynn Lawrence’s daughter up.’
‘Oh, please…’
‘Couldn’t you even have met her later? Gone for something to eat?’
‘I don’t think I’d have been much company.’
‘I know, Phil.’ She sighed. ‘Terrible. We live in a terrible world.’
‘Not all of it,’ said Phil.
‘Don wants to know all about it. I said you couldn’t tell him. He knows that but it doesn’t stop him asking. So how’s…’
And she was off. Phil relaxed, took another couple of mouthfuls of beer while he talked to her. Hearing Eileen’s tales of friends he barely knew and Don’s troubles with how to work their new DVD recorder was just what he needed to hear after the day he had had. It told him that, contrary to what Eileen might have said, the world wasn’t the terrible place he saw all too frequently, but a place where people went about their normal, everyday lives. He heard some of his colleagues talk about parents and responsibilities as if it was something boring that they hated doing. Not Phil. He loved these phone calls with Eileen.
She was coming to the end now, building up to her familiar sign-off. ‘I wish you could meet a nice girl, Phil. Settle down.You deserve someone nice. Someone to give you a bit of happiness.’
He responded in kind. ‘I know, Eileen. But I never get the chance, do I? Never meet any women through work.’
‘Well, I did try. But you’re a grown man, you can look after yourself. Anyway, Don wants to know if you’re still coming over on Sunday. I think he just wants someone to go to the pub with and watch the football. Don’t know why he wants to do that, either. We’ve got Sky here.’
Phil could imagine her sitting in the armchair of their big detached 1950s house in Mile End, just beside the mainline station. Mock Tudor, beamed inside and out. Tastefully decorated, torn apart by generations of foster children and lovingly repaired again. He loved that house. A noisy and energetic environment but also a warm, comforting one. It seemed empty now since they had both retired from foster care and there was just the two of
