The Cold Cold Sea (26 page)

This one was mercifully short and contained nothing but vile abuse. Maggie took it to the kitchen sink to burn. This pain was hers alone. There was no point showing it to Colin; the news that it had come would be enough to ruin his evening. Resentment flared inside her as water speckled with black and grey swirled around the plughole.

Philip drove through Saturday afternoon rain, conscious of the relief he felt at the opportunity to spend a few blessed minutes by himself.

Life was intense now that the babies were home. Jennifer spent every available minute with the twins, feeding them, rocking them, changing their clothes if they got as much as a speck on their designer outfits. Everything else was up to him, which meant that not only was he doing all the housework, shopping, and looking after Hailey, he was also being denied the pleasure of bonding with his own two children. He was allowed to deal with Daniel now and then, true, but he wanted to do more than change the odd nappy. Yesterday, Jennifer had been so caught up in her own world that she had barely spoken to him all day, and he felt both left out and powerless to change things. And he was afraid to confront her in case he made things worse.

So the chance to go down to the harbour store and buy a couple of things he’d forgotten yesterday was a welcome one. This was what his life had come to, he was delighted to be going to the village to buy fish fingers and cream.

Inside the cramped little shop the first person he tangled baskets with was Hailey’s teacher.

‘Miss McLure! Sorry. I don’t even need a basket, I’m only here for a couple of things.’

She smiled at him. ‘No problem. How’s Hailey enjoying her first weekend with the babies? She was so excited about it yesterday.’

Phillip struggled to smile back, and sound like any other dad having new babies home.

‘Oh, it’s exciting alright. And tiring, I’d forgotten how it feels when you’re up half the night. But of course it’s wonderful too, they’re doing so well.’

‘That’s great. You must bring them to school for a visit soon. The kids would love it.’

‘Sure,’ said Phillip, turning towards the check out. ‘Sorry, I’ll have to go now. Jennifer’s, um, waiting for the cream. See you Monday.’

She stood to the side to let him pass. ‘Say hello to Hailey from me.’

He nodded, and marched as quickly as the other shoppers would let him towards the checkout. Standing in the queue, he fumbled for his mobile when it rang.

It was Jennifer, her voice petulant.

‘What on earth are you doing so long, darling? I need you here.’

Phillip felt his heart rate increase. So yesterday Jennifer had ignored him all day, and today he couldn’t even go down to the shop without her phoning and hurrying him back.

‘I’m next in line at the checkout. Is everything okay?’ he said hoarsely, but she had already rung off.

Back at the car, he tossed his shopping onto the passenger seat before flopping down behind the wheel and jamming the key into the ignition. No chance of a walk round the harbour now. He should have left his phone at home. But he had to know if Jennifer was coping with the babies by herself. And there was Hailey, too. Nothing must happen to Hailey, and Jennifer seemed only bothered about the twins.

Another car was hovering, waiting for the space. Phillip pushed the car into gear and drove slowly up the hill towards home. He’d told Miss McLure that life was wonderful. It should be wonderful, and in a way it was. His children. Two new lives just beginning, and a cute little five-year-old too.

In a strange way he had almost forgotten that Hailey wasn’t actually his child. It was wonderful how natural it felt, being Daddy to a five-year-old daughter. Just as he should have been, and the fact that her face in repose really was a mirror image of his own Hailey’s helped him ignore the truth. The new Hailey had slotted exactly into a hole in his life, filling a space that had badly needed filling. Phillip sometimes went for hours now almost forgetting, but then suddenly the guilt would resurface, and it twisted inside him, this guilt; he really couldn’t live with it.

Fortunately a kind of fog had appeared in his life. Although he was fully aware of his first daughter’s death, and he knew that the new Hailey shouldn’t be there, he kept the actual feelings associated with all this in the foggy part. The guilt was intolerable, and keeping it in the fog meant he wasn’t confronted by it all the time. Only very occasionally did he allow himself to think about Hailey’s real parents and what they must be going through. And that it was all his fault. He wasn’t having a breakdown, he knew that Hailey wasn’t his daughter, but he had chosen to ignore the fact that he was, in effect, hiding an abducted child within his family. It was his fault that the new Hailey’s real parents would be going through the very same hell that he and Jennifer had suffered. Each day was as haunted as the one before.

He had never typed ‘missing girl’ into a search engine, he had stopped reading newspapers and watching the news, and all because he was too much of a coward to face the reality of who this child really was. If only he had managed to get her home right at the start. But he hadn’t, and that was something he would have to live with now. This was why he needed the fog; there was enough to worry him without feeling guilty about people he didn’t even know.

And Hailey wasn’t even his biggest problem at the moment - that was Jennifer. He was so afraid now, in fact he was terrified that Jennifer’s strangeness would lose him his family. She was just so obsessed. Possessed. Frighteningly different. It was as if she was living on another planet, in a place where he simply couldn’t reach her. He had no idea what to do.

Home again, Phillip deposited his shopping in the fridge before looking into the sitting room. Daniel was asleep in his carrycot, and as usual, Lara was in Jennifer’s arms.

‘Hi, love,’ he said, forcing himself to sound pleasant. ‘Where’s Hailey?’

Jennifer’s eyes glittered in anger as she looked up at him.

‘Oh, Phillip, I wish you’d do something about that girl, she is
so
inconsiderate,’ she muttered savagely, then clutched Lara to her breast. The baby whimpered, and Jennifer rocked her. ‘There, my angel, Mummy’s right here.’ The eyes turned back to Phillip. ‘She was making a dreadful noise playing with that doll. I sent her upstairs with a flea in her ear. It won’t do, I can’t have it.’

‘I’ll - see to her now,’ said Phillip, and he escaped upstairs. Surely Jennifer wouldn’t have hurt Hailey. He had a feeling that something had happened before his return from California. The way Hailey sometimes flinched away from Jennifer, and the look on the girl’s face whenever Jennifer came into the room. And yet, Jennifer had adored her daughter, idolised her, even. But that had been before.

He pushed the little girl’s door open. Hailey was sitting on her bed, the doll called Maggie cradled against her shoulder. Her face was tearstained and to Phillip’s horror there was an ugly red welt on her cheek. He could see the outline of Jennifer’s fingers. In two steps he was beside Hailey.

‘Daddy,’ she said, and Phillip took her in his arms.

He sat on the bed with her in his arms and rocked back and forth. This child might look like his own girl, but her character was different, and now Jennifer was turning against her. She wasn’t the same doting mother as she was to the twins.

Phillip took a shaky breath, trying desperately to hold back his tears. The fog had disappeared for the moment and the guilt came crushing in. Hailey being here was as much his fault now as Jennifer’s. Quite deliberately he had done an unforgivable wrong to Hailey. Hailey who wasn’t Hailey, and he didn’t even know her name.

And the horrible, ironic thing was that Jennifer, who had taken the child in the first place, didn’t want her any more. And it wasn’t just Hailey who was unwanted, no, both he and Daniel were surplus to requirements as well. Jennifer had her baby daughter. Nothing else mattered.

And it was much too late to put it right.

A buzz of chatter filled the air, and Katie looked round contentedly. November was such a cosy month in a classroom. The wind might blow and the rain might pour, but here inside they were like those well-known bugs in a rug. The room was bright and cheerful in spite of the greyness outside, and everyone was busy.

That afternoon the children were making birthday cakes with coloured dough.

‘Make the best birthday cake you’ve ever had, if you can remember,’ said Katie. ‘If you can’t remember, make the best cake you can imagine. Tomorrow we’ll have a secret ballot – that’s when everyone votes for their favourite – and the winner gets a prize!’

She held up a red and white striped pencil. The children set to work at the craft table, and Katie sat watching them. She was continuing her Families theme, ready to run it into a Christmas theme in a week or two. After birthdays they would talk about other family celebrations, and that would lead naturally into Christmas.

They’ve made so much progress since the summer, she thought, looking round the group of chattering children. Derek didn’t stutter half as much now, and he got through most days without bashing anyone or being ganged up on, and Hailey - Hailey was much better too.

Katie frowned. Hailey was much better, but... There was a distinctly odd ‘but’ about Hailey, yet it was difficult to put a finger on what it was exactly. The little girl had been much happier in the weeks since her father’s return, and most days she was even quite talkative and certainly a lot livelier than before, but she still had moments of sitting staring into space and looking lost. She often talked about her father and the babies, but her mother might not have existed for all Hailey spoke of her. This was particularly noticeable at the moment, when they were discussing families every day. And while her reading and counting were fairly average, her writing, and most especially her drawing, were immature. If you could call a five-year-old immature. The child was a puzzle, even if she was getting on much better than Katie had expected at first.

Katie rose to her feet and wandered round the table. She found herself missing Mark more each day, and often thought about him up in chilly Aberdeen, looking after four children and running his sister’s house. But at least she’d had no major problems to deal with since his departure, and the way things were going, Katie wasn’t expecting any.

Most of the children had created cakes of the round-with-candles variety. Julia’s, however, was a heart shape, and Aiden was attempting something in green. Katie stopped at his side.

‘What is it, exactly?’ she asked, and Aiden heaved a sigh.

‘It’s a frog. But I’m not doing it very well.’

‘You had a frog birthday cake?’

‘I always have an animal. Mummy makes them. Next birthday I’m having a dinosaur.’

‘Gosh. What a clever mummy you have.’

Katie went on to Hailey, who was creating a more traditionally-shaped cake with a blue and green top. The little girl’s face was pink with concentration, and Katie smiled.

‘You’re looking well, Hailey - bet you’re enjoying having your dad home.’

Hailey nodded slowly. ‘I don’t need pills anymore,’ she said suddenly.

‘Well that’s good. And what a lovely cake.’

‘I had a sea cake with three candles,’ said Hailey, lifting a chunk of brown dough. ‘With marzipan waves and a marzipan boat on top. I love marzipan. This is going to be the boat.’

‘Super,’ said Katie. ‘Did Mummy make it?’

Hailey’s face clouded. She shrugged, and went on shaping her little brown boat. Katie didn’t press her. It was just another instance of Hailey being distant.

When most of the children were finished, Katie clapped her hands for silence.

‘Tomorrow,’ she said, ‘I want you to bring birthday photos. We’re going to make posters. We’ll enlarge the photos on the colour copier, stick them on poster paper and you can draw and write things in between. Bring a photo of your first birthday, your second birthday, your third birthday and so on. It doesn’t have to be a cake photo, just a birthday photo. Does everyone understand?’

Everyone did, and Katie started them clearing up for going home.

The next morning Katie was greeted by a small crowd of children waving envelopes of various sizes.

‘I remembered!’

‘We printed mine out already!’

‘And I brought one of me when I was just born!’

‘What a good idea,’ said Katie, laughing. ‘Right, kids, let’s get settled now, are we all here?’

‘Hailey and Graeme!’ called several children.

‘We’ll wait, then. Has everyone written their name on their photo envelope?’

Four or five heads bent to work, and Katie went to get the poster paper from the office cupboard. When she returned, Mr Marshall and Hailey were standing beside her desk. Hailey was holding an envelope, an oddly defiant expression on her face.

‘Morning, Mr Marshall. Hello, Hailey.’

Katie looked inquiringly at Hailey’s father. He looked tired, but then he’d probably forgotten what a full night’s sleep felt like, with baby twins at home. He cleared his throat, and she noticed a muscle jumping under one eye.

‘We had a problem with Hailey’s photos. I’m afraid a couple of albums seem to have been mislaid when my wife moved house, and my laptop where they are stored is out of order. Hailey only has photos of her first two birthdays.’

‘That’s quite all right, don’t worry. Hailey can draw pictures of her other birthdays, can’t you, Hailey?’

Mr Marshall seemed to be in a hurry, so Katie saw him to the door. Hailey remained standing by the desk, still looking unhappy.

‘It’s really alright, Hailey,’ said Katie, putting her hand on the little girl’s head. ‘Things do get mislaid when people move house. Your albums will probably turn up when no-one’s looking for them.’

‘They won’t,’ said Hailey, blinking hard. ‘My albums are all still at the old house. I didn’t bring them. I didn’t bring anything.’

‘I’m sure Mummy packed your albums somewhere,’ said Katie, patting the short hair, which was looking much better now that it was growing out. Strange how it looked darker though. ‘Don’t worry, Hailey. We’ll manage with what you’ve got here.’