It all felt completely incongruous now. Downright wrong, in fact, but Anna was in an altered state, and she was operating like a robot. Anything she did or said felt as if someone else was remote-controlling her. She answered questions, she washed, she dressed, she packed up ready to leave, all as instructed by the kind folks around her, all as if her head wasn’t a bucket full of screams.
Anna had agreed to take part in the sizeable press announcement DI Thripshaw had arranged. She knew it gave her the best chance of getting Florence back. But as she was packing up her bag, she had no idea what she was going to say. She found herself unpacking the bag and packing it again three times. She realized that she was doing this in order to double-check that she hadn’t somehow forgotten she’d put Florence in there, somewhere at the bottom of the bag. She even looked in the zip-up inner side pockets. She found herself genuinely searching and half expecting to find the baby curled up there so that she could turn to them and pronounce, ‘Oh, there you are! Sorry, everyone, I totally forgot I’d already packed her away nice and safe. She’s snuggled in here, look at her, little hamster, all scrunched up …!’ and they would all laugh and do those big thank-God-for-that relieved eyes, and everyone would want to hold her so much, and she’d get tired and cry with her shakey bottom lip out and no one would mind in the least …
‘Anna, darling, we need to make a move. Follow me, and listen, I’ll do the talking, OK?’ Clearly, Julius regarded himself as hugely considerate as he passively bullied her into keeping quiet. Clearly, he had convinced himself that he was by far the better person for the job of confronting the press. And clearly, to an extent, that was true: he was indeed experienced, owing to his job. But Anna was actually the perfect person to speak to them. Because SHE WAS THE MOTHER.
In a haze of half-awareness, she took his hand and followed him along the corridor and into the lift and along another corridor and into the anteroom. Through the door they could see a long table with microphones set up in front of a row of cameras, with various grumpy journalists waiting. This was after all 1 January; most of them were nursing very sore heads, and they really REALLY didn’t want to be here. Not even for the kidnapping of Julius Albert Lindon-Clarke’s brand-new baby. On any other day, they would’ve cravenly devoured this opportunity, but today, they didn’t like their jobs. At all.
In the anteroom, DI Thripshaw briefed Anna and Julius on how he planned the conference to go.
‘Mr and Mrs Lindon-Clarke, we are all set up now. I’m not going to lie to you, this will be no walk in the cake, but if you follow my leader, I will kick off the preceedings, and then I will hand over to you—’
‘To me,’ Julius interjected quickly. He truly didn’t want Thripshaw to say much, since he appeared to put his foot in his mouth virtually every time he opened it.
‘Certainly, yes,’ Thripshaw agreed. ‘It’s best to keep it short, to the point, and heartfelt. Be yourselves and don’t be afraid to let them know how you really feel. It’s best to be fully honest. Now obviously there are a few of the tabloids out there, proper wolves in cheap clothing, but I will handle any off-pissed remarks. Either I will jump in or, if you give me the nod, Mr Lindon-Clarke, I will give them a shot across the bowels, don’t worry. Now then, are we ready?’
With all confidence vastly reduced to virtually zero, the doleful group trooped in and sat in a sombre row with DI Thripshaw at one end, then Anna and Julius, then two other police officers who had been specifically targeting the Romanian community as part of a five-year investigation called Operation Roma.
Thripshaw took the lead. ‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen – mainly gentlemen I see – and welcome to two thousand with a thud. As you may be aware, we are here to investigate the snatching of a newborn baby girl early this morning from this very hospital. Mr Lindon-Clarke, the father, will speak first, and I would ask you to be sensitive, please, folks: Mrs Lindon-Clarke here has been through a hedge backwards this morning, as I’m sure you will appreciate – all of us know the extent of the bondage between a mother and child is huge. Mr Lindon-Clarke …?’
Julius resisted rolling his eyes and pulled the microphone towards him on the table. For the first time since Florence had gone missing, he reached out to Anna and put his big hand on hers. She was already in a strange numb place where nothing made sense, and this unusual action compounded the surreality of it all.
He started to speak; there was a tremble in his voice. Was it real? ‘My wife and I are understandably devastated at the loss of our precious first-born daughter, Florence – of course we are – and we are relying on this city’s magnificent police force to find her. We have every faith that, with the help of the morally upright citizens we know are out there, we will get that vital lead we need, and we will bring little Florence home …’
Anna watched him speak. She knew he was certainly doing that because his mouth was moving, but she had very little idea what he
