Stolen Child (4 page)

‘I want our privacy to be respected, especially when our baby comes along,’ he had warned her. ‘This is the last time anyone from the media sets foot in our house.’

Looking at the glossy photographs, Carla wondered if he had been right to object. Seen through the lens of the camera, their house looked larger, more luxurious and dramatic than it really was. There was something invasive about the photographs, particularly those taken in the nursery.

Initially, when Colin Moore, the photographer, had entered the nursery, she had moved forward to stop him, then changed her mind. This was a room waiting in anticipation. Somehow, it seemed appropriate to photograph it.

She had painted the nursery herself, a pale yellow shade that gleamed like gold when the sun struck the walls. Before returning to bed, she entered the room and trailed her fingers over the cradle. It had been an extravagant purchase, a replica of a Victorian cradle with a canopy of white gauze. She had bought it at a craft fair, along with the mobile of stained glass seahorses that now hung above it. She sat in a wicker rocking chair and swayed slowly back and forth. Her baby moved, a hard defiant kick that advised her to savour her tranquil moments. They would be gone soon enough. She cradled her stomach as she watched the city drift asleep and tried to imagine herself and Robert as parents.

They had so little in common, or so their friends had claimed when they first met. Bets had been laid on how long their relationship would last. Carla smiled, remembering that first meeting when Raine, in the aftermath of another fashion show, shouted their names across the table in Sheens on the Green to introduce them. Robert had lifted his eyebrows and smiled ruefully at the noise dividing them. Under normal circumstances, he told her later, he would have refused point blank to attend a fashion show. He had never shown any interest in the glitter and glamour associated with his sister’s career but this was a charity event to raise funds for breast cancer research. Gillian, his mother, had insisted he support it – not just financially, but physically, by accompanying her.

Gillian, frail but defiant in a red bandana, had the translucent pallor of someone who had stepped close to death. Carla noticed how attentively her son listened when she spoke, as if he appreciated the second chance he had been given to cherish her. She studied their faces, seeking similarities, and found them in their intense blue eyes and the generous width of their mouths. They shared the same bone structure. Cragginess would come to him with age but his features
would never sag. The restaurant lights glinted off his black hair. Gillian’s lips would have been voluptuous before illness drained their fullness and her son had inherited that same lush curve. A mouth made to be kissed, Carla thought, and Robert, as if attuned to her thoughts, reached out and held her in his gaze. In that single glance, something indefinable passed between them. Carla would later acknowledge it as love and he would agree, his expression still bemused by the suddenness of their attraction. Love at first sight – as romantic as it was ridiculous. If any of her friends had described the sensation, Carla would have laughed and called it a chemical hit. But it had carried them into marriage and would soon carry them into parenthood.

The night-time traffic had slowed. Only an occasional car passed, casting brief, surging shadows across the walls. The mobile tinkled above the cradle and the circle of seahorses, translucent mauves and luminous greens, flashed and danced lightly, as if they sensed her intrusion.

‘Why seahorses,’ I asked Miriam when I travelled to Maoltrán for the first time to be interviewed for the position of marketing manager.

‘Why
not
seahorses?’ She had sounded amused. ‘The female of the species is intelligent enough to enjoy the delights of courtship and the male gallant enough to carry the consequences.’

She picked a seahorse from a plinth and held it up for me to admire. The shade was a delicate coral that gleamed like mother-of-pearl and deepened to a glistening salmon when the spotlights caught the glass and played with it. She smiled and stroked her index finger over the protruding belly. ‘Would that
our
men were so obliging,’ she added, and we laughed together, the kind of conspiratorial laughter women share when we discuss our men.

She handed the seahorse to me. I tapped it with my nail. The tinkling sound was as pitched as a tuning fork. I imagined a shoal of pregnant males, their slender exclamation-mark spines camouflaged against wavering sea grasses, their taut, tight bellies pulsing with life.

Her seahorses have names and personalities. Some are
exquisitely etched and encrusted with gems. Others have a more practical design and can be used as bookends, framed on walls or attached to bathroom mirrors. The mobile is one of the most popular items in her collection.

Carla Kelly has one hanging in her nursery. I saw it in
Pizzazz.
That magazine may be devoid of intelligent content but old habits are hard to break and I buy it every month. I used to check it regularly to see which of my clients had been included when I worked for Carter & Kay. Sometimes they didn’t make it. Not prestigious or interesting enough. The editor was ruthless when it came to deciding who should feature on her pages. Carla Kelly now obviously fits this profile.

She wrote a ‘before and after’ feature about the house in Ranelagh where she and her husband live. The before shots look horrendous but the after photography is pure
Pizzazz
and allows her to do what she does best. Her face leaps from the pages and dominates them to such a degree that the furnishings and décor are insignificant props in the background.

That night at the fashion show, she shuddered when I mentioned Edward Carter’s name. She covered it up but I watched her composure slip for that instant and I knew she was back there again, with him, intent on destroying what they had so wantonly and carelessly created. I wonder if her husband knows. Probably not. There’s something hard and unforgiving about his eyes.

No sign of him in the
Pizzazz
shoot. It’s not his kind of magazine. Gloss and dross. Back in those days, apart from the advertisements, Carla Kelly never appeared in her own right. She was just another face, another model climbing on the backs of the older ones, juggling for space in the tabloids. Titbits and gossip, she loved the camera and it loved her. Then she got her lucky break with the lingerie campaign.
She’s changed now, of course. Pregnancy has given her credibility. Celebrity and credibility, an unbeatable combination.

She painted the walls yellow for her baby, a neutral colour to suit either gender. A white cradle sat in the centre of the room, muslin curtains trailed the floor. She sat by the window in a white wicker chair, her hands resting below her stomach, her face in profile. Outside the window, a tree was visible, bronze leaves beginning to turn. Her expression was serene, her head bent slightly so that the light streamed through the blonde tendrils. The eternal Eve. I almost expected a serpent to coil from the branches behind her. Signs and omens, they keep appearing.

The whispering voices awaken me at night and insist that I listen to the tinkling call of the seahorses that Miriam fuses in the raging heat of her furnace room; the molten globs are suspended, swelling, mutating. It has to be more than a coincidence.

Shortly after their marriage, Carla was crossing O’Connell Bridge on her way to a luncheon fashion show when she saw her husband at work. The wind, blowing harshly off the Liffey, tossed her hair across her face, and he had almost passed her by before she became aware of him. A junkie, she thought, summing him up in a glance, his baggy tracksuit bottoms, the grubby trainers minus laces, and the way he hunched into his nondescript anorak, his pale face protected by the hood. More like a dealer, she decided, as his eyes, darting and shifty, sized up everything around him. For an instant, she was swamped in his gaze as his eyes flashed with recognition. Then he was gone, swiftly absorbed in the crowd.

Shocked, she leaned over the balustrade and gazed into the Liffey. The tide was low, the walls of the river dank and brown. She pretended she had not recognised him, knowing he would be furious with himself for dropping his guard, even for an instant. Strange that she, who knew his body intimately, had not noticed his height, nor could she remember anything about his features, other than his eyes, momentarily betraying him. But in that chance encounter,
Carla realised they did share something in common; a chameleon quality that allowed them, when necessary, to dominate or to blend successfully into any landscape of their choosing.

Almost a year had passed since then but she remembered that incident when she watched the evening news. A consignment of drugs had been discovered in the secret compartment of a truck entering Dublin Port. Not discovered, Carla thought, as the news report unfolded. The customs officers knew exactly what they would find when they stopped the truck. The television camera lingered over the plastic bags laid out on a table for maximum exposure. A grave-faced policeman estimated the street value of the seizure. Five hundred thousand punts, a sizeable sum. Uniformed Gardaí moved in the background. Robert was not among them. His role was covert, undercover. He worked the docks area, eliciting information, making contacts, his identity so deeply embedded that twice he had been arrested by uniformed guards unaware of his undercover work. These things he whispered to Carla in the aftermath of lovemaking, coiling her hair around his fingers, his laughter warm in her ear. He skimmed over the dangers, aware that he straddled two worlds but confident of his footing.

‘Did you see it?’ He rang her shortly after the evening news. The background was loud with voices, laughter, music.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Well done, my favourite mole.’

‘We’ve gone back to Sharon’s house,’ he told her. ‘I’m just going to have a few drinks then take a taxi home.’

‘A likely story.’ She knew he would arrive home in the small hours, smelling of whiskey and, probably, a late-night curry. ‘The spare room is ready and waiting,’ she warned him. ‘In my delicate condition, a drunken detective in my bed is the last thing I need.’

He promised to be quiet, shoes off at the front door. ‘You’re sure you’re okay?’ he asked.

‘I’m fine.’ She wished she felt as serene as she sounded. ‘Another fortnight to go. I assume you’ll have sobered up by then.’

He was still laughing when she hung up. Their marriage was as separate as a snapped thread from his small, close-knit team. Was she jealous, she wondered as she replaced the receiver. She thought of Sharon Boyle, with her black boyish hair and long, muscular legs, the tough-talking sister in the tight band of brothers. Carla had met her for the first time when she came to their house-warming party with other members of the squad. The group had remained apart from the general gathering. They sat on the stairs, forming a closed-off huddle that showed no inclination to stir outside their pall of cigarette smoke, shop talk and camaraderie. Robert had mingled effortlessly with the other guests but he had joined his colleagues on the stairs by the end of the night.

No, not jealous, exactly, Carla decided. Just envious of the slash of danger that drew people together in a way her safe, glittering world of fashion could never do.

She watched television for a while, searching the channels for light relief, a romantic comedy or an enthralling love triangle she could enjoy without Robert’s heavy breathing signalling his boredom. Nothing interested her. Her back ached and the baby appeared to have manoeuvred a vaulting pole under her ribs.

The phone rang when she was climbing the stairs to bed. She reached the bedroom and lay across the bed.

‘You sound like you’ve just run the marathon,’ said Raine.

‘A marathon would be easier,’ she replied and pulled the duvet over her.

‘I suppose the bro is on a razz.’ Raine had also seen the evening news.

‘Celebrations are well underway,’ Carla replied. ‘I’ve plumped the pillows in the spare room.’

‘Wise move.’ Raine laughed. ‘Although his powers of recovery are amazing.’

‘So I’ve discovered. How’s business?’

‘Brilliant, thanks to you. How are you?’

‘Solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. That’s if I discount kicks, jabs, twinges, aches, and the occasional rugby tackle.’

‘Do you want me to come over and keep you company?’

‘Not tonight, thanks. I’m already in bed.’

‘Sleep tight, kiddo. Enjoy it while you can.’

Carla arched her back to ease a deep cramping pain. Filled with restless energy, she arose and pulled clothes from the wardrobe, folded them into a black plastic sack. Tomorrow she would bring her Anticipation collection to Oxfam and wish good luck to those who wished to wear it.

Midnight came and went without any sign of Robert. She drifted asleep. Her dreams were jagged with pain. Awakening suddenly, she was unable to remember the details, only the discomfort. A moist warm trickle eased between her legs. She hurled the duvet aside, gasped as a spasm rippled across her stomach. Her waters were not supposed to break until later in labour. Her baby was not ready. Another spasm gripped her and she understood that it was she, not her baby, who was unprepared.

Gingerly, she left the bed. Her nightdress clung to her skin. She shivered as she pulled it from her and reached in the wardrobe for a skirt and top. Her bag was packed. All she needed was her husband, drunk or sober, by her side. She was angry with him, then amused, then panicked, her emotions all over the place.

Robert had given her a number to ring in emergencies. Sharon answered, her clipped authoritative voice slurred, too loud. Music blasted in the background. Heavy rock. Sharon shouted at someone to lower the stereo then returned her attention to Carla.

‘He’s not exactly in the best of health.’ She laughed apologetically. ‘Actually he’s just passed out on the sofa.’

‘Then throw a bucket of cold water over him,’ Carla shouted. ‘And tell him to get his arse over to the Valley View because his child is not waiting around for his health to recover.’

‘Message understood.’ Sharon snapped to attention. ‘I’ll call the ambulance. Do you need a Garda escort?’

Carla forced herself to breathe slowly until the cramp subsided. ‘That’s not a bad idea,’ she gasped. ‘But you’d better do it fast.’

She debated ringing her parents then decided against it. Her father would cope but she did not want to watch her mother’s lips trembling, her hands flailing, her mind ticking off everything that could possibly go wrong.

The ambulance crew arrived. They joked about delivering roadside babies. Carla panted and wondered if they would be laughing on the other side of their faces before the journey was over. The blue lights of a Garda car scattered the darkness as the ambulance driver followed, breaking through traffic lights and heading straight for the Valley View Maternity Clinic.

The pain gained momentum, the spasms coming faster. Robert arrived in a taxi at the same time as the ambulance reached the clinic. He rushed towards her, looking, as she had expected, utterly disreputable, unshaven, his voice excruciatingly precise as he attempted to convince her he was sober. She laughed and allowed him to help her into a wheelchair. Their baby was coming. She sensed its determination, the driving force of its head seeking the light.

‘I love you…love you…love you,’ Robert babbled as she was wheeled into the clinic.

She tightened her grip on his hand and breathed into the rhythm of another spasm.

The midwife said, ‘This one’s not going to hang around. Come with me, Mother. We’re heading straight to the labour ward.’