The Stranger on the Train (20 page)

“Sorry. Sorry.” Rafe was backing out of the room. “The door wasn't locked. I'll leave you to it.”

Emma saw herself in the mirror again and cringed. How embarrassing. Caught here in all her wobbly glory by some bloke she still hardly knew. What was it she'd said to him the day he'd called to the flat and tried to cook her dinner? What had she accused him of trying to do? It just seemed funny now. If she'd known then the standard of girls he was used to attracting: French, teenaged, slender as willow trees. He must have thought: In your dreams, dearie—but been nice enough not to say it.

“It's all right,” she called. No point making things awkward between them. “Come back and brush your teeth. I'll wait next door.”

But he was gone. A china soap dish wobbled for a moment, teetering on the edge of the bath. Then it crashed to the floor, shattering to pieces on the tiles. He must have managed to knock it as he went.

• • •

Ritchie was sitting on Emma's knee. The warm weight of him pressed on her legs, and his eyelashes lay along the curve of his cheek. Her arms were around him and she was cutting up a muffin for him.

“He loves muffins,” she explained to Antonia, who was sitting opposite. “Chocolate especially.”

“I never knew that,” Antonia said.

Ritchie beamed and held out his hands. He grabbed the muffin and stuffed it into his mouth.

“See.” Emma kissed him. “I told you. I told you he was mine.”

Antonia's face darkened. She picked up a heavy mug. She began to bang it on the table.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

“Stop.” Horrified, Emma put her hands over Ritchie's ears. “What do you think you're doing? You'll frighten him.”

Thunk. Thunk.

“Emma.”

Thunk.

“Emma! Wake up!”

She was lying on something slippy and pink. The curtains were framed with light.

Someone was banging on the door.

“Emma!” It was Rafe. “We got a call. They want us at the consulate.”

Emma was out of bed in a second. Why hadn't they phoned her? She must have missed the ring of her mobile. She got dressed, struggling to haul up her jeans. She shoved her feet into her runners, not bothering about socks, and flew out of the room.

They didn't speak. She ran all the way, sprinting ahead of Rafe. The consulate was just around the corner.

They were greeted at a side entrance and shown through to an office. The office was modern and ordinary, with a swivel chair, a wooden desk and a computer; completely different from the ornate hall of the other night. Brian Hodgkiss was waiting for them in front of the desk.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning,” Emma said, breathless, darting her eyes around, taking everything in.

Standing beside Brian was another man who could have been his twin. Same beige trousers, same retreating hairline, same stripy tie under a round-necked jumper. This new man was holding a torn brown envelope and a folded sheet of paper. Emma's eyes went straight to the paper. She knew at once what it was.

“The DNA result is back,” Brian explained unnecessarily.

Emma stepped forward; she actually went to take the paper out of the man's hand. He moved back, lifted it away from her.

“I can see you're in a hurry,” he said. “I won't delay things any longer.”

He unfolded the page. Looked at it for a moment. Cleared his throat.

“The report is quite detailed,” he said. “So I'll just try to cover the main . . .” His eyes skimmed down the page. His voice trickled off. “. . . testing conducted in accordance with . . . hmm . . . child named . . . yes . . . the alleged mother . . . probability of . . . Ah. Here it is.”

He cleared his throat again.

“So. To summarize. The result of this test indicates, with a probability of parentage of 99.999 percent, that the mother of the child in question is . . .”

He looked up again. Thinned his lips in apology.

“Mrs. Philippa Hunt.”

Chapter Fourteen

Tuesday, September 26th

Day Ten

A cold hand pulled at Emma's insides, toppling her until she thought she might fall. The floor shifted. The room glittered and spun.

“I don't understand,” she said. Her lips felt like the stiff, plastic lips on a mask. She turned to Rafe. “You said the test was accurate.”

“I thought it was.” Rafe's face was pale.

“It is,” Brian's twin put in.

“He's not hers,” Emma pleaded. “The test is wrong. There must be something we can do.” Brian Hodgkiss was shaking his head, his mouth all pursed up.

“I'm a British citizen,” Emma cried. “You have to help me.”

“I'm sorry.” Brian Hodgkiss was colder and stiffer now. As if getting involved in all of this had got him into trouble in some way. “I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do. Go home. Forget about here. Maybe you'll have news of your child in England.”

“Couldn't I do the test with
my
DNA? Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe there's more than one match.”

“I don't think it works like that.”

“I'm not leaving this country without him.”

“I must warn you,” Brian Hodgkiss said. “If you harass this family again, you
will
get yourself arrested.”

“Arrest me, then!” Emma shouted. “I'm not leaving. I'll kidnap him if I have to.”

Brian exchanged a glance with his colleague. He said: “I wouldn't advise that, Ms. Turner. As it happens, the family have gone to stay with friends at the moment, for their safety. They plan to leave the area soon. Their house is up for sale.”

“They're moving house?” Emma was shocked. “To where?”

Brian didn't answer.

“To
where
?” Emma brought her fists down on the desk. Pens and paper clips hopped. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Brian's colleague swiftly leave the office. Most of the desk was taken up with a large computer with a bulky screen. Emma put her arms around the screen. She began to drag it towards the edge of the desk.

“I'll smash this on the floor,” she warned. “I mean it. I'll break every window in here. I'm not leaving until you tell me.”

“Ms. Turner.” Brian rushed to push the computer back into place. “We'll get the police in here. I'm warning you. I'll have you arrested.”

Emma hauled at the screen again and he shouted: “
Ms. Turner!
”

Rafe's calm voice in the background: “Emma. Emma, listen.”

“Get off me.”

“There's no point here, Emma. Come with me. We'll talk about this, we'll work something out.”

“Leave me alone.” Emma began to sob. “I should have taken him at the house but you made me come away. If it wasn't for you, I'd have him.”

Rafe tried to take her hand. She let go of the screen and swung around, shoving him with all her strength.

“Get
away
from me!”
she screamed. “Get away, get away, get away!”

She pushed him off her and stumbled, collapsing against the desk, just managing in time to stop herself from falling to the floor.

Brian said: “Mr. Townsend, I'm going to have to—”

“Give us a minute,” Rafe snapped. “Please.”

And then, quite suddenly, all of Emma's energy drained away. Squeezed out of her, like the final drops of water wrung from a sponge. Over, she thought, surprised at the sense of release. It was as if the sponge was relaxing again, dry and light. Over now. Inside, a tightness unraveled, the tightness that said they thought she was lying or mad, or else they just didn't care, because in this world some people mattered and some did not. Some people had power and some didn't; that was how it was; and how you got that power she didn't know, it was a secret she'd never know now, it would never be for the likes of her. She was no one. She was no good for Ritchie. She knew that now. She sank to the desk, propping herself up with arms that felt like bags of sand.

“It's all right,” she whispered. “It's all right.”

Rafe said: “You'll come away from here?”

“Yes.”

The door of the office burst open. Three or four large men pounded in, all heading straight for Emma. Rafe put his hand up.

“She's just leaving,” he said coldly. “Back off, can't you?”

Brian must have made some signal. The men stood back.

“All right, Emma?” Rafe held his hand out to her. She had to lean on it to walk.

“I believe it's your fault she's here at all,” Brian Hodgkiss said to Rafe as they passed. “I've no doubt there'll be questions back in London about this.” He raised his voice after them. “There are reasons for the Official Secrets Act, you know. This sort of thing happens otherwise.”

Rafe muttered: “Yeah, yeah.”

Their car was parked outside the B&B. Rafe opened the passenger door and helped Emma in.

“Wait there,” he said, putting his hands in the air, palms facing her. Then he closed the door and ran into the B&B. Emma leaned forward until her forehead touched the dashboard. Gray, bumpy plastic blurred before her eyes. Minutes later Rafe was back with their bags. She felt him peering anxiously into the car, as if afraid she might have disappeared, but here she still was, hunched in her seat, as limp as a strand of seaweed.

They drove away from the town.

“What do you want to do?” Rafe pleaded. “If you want to stay, I'll stay with you. But I don't know what else we can do here.”

Sunflowers; fields of them. Nodding their yellow heads.

“Maybe we should go to the airport,” Rafe said. “Get a flight home. Take it up with the Foreign Office in England.”

Emma said: “I told Dr. Stanford I wished he was dead.”

“I know,” Rafe said. “You told me.”

“That wasn't all, though. It was worse than that. I didn't tell you all of it.”

“People say things—”

“I told her I was thinking of hurting Ritchie.”

“But you didn't mean it.”

“But I
did
.” Her voice shook. “I did mean it.”

“You went to your doctor to ask for help,” Rafe said loudly, banging his fist on the steering wheel. “That's what people do.”

“I wasn't
asking
for help,” Emma said.

She started to weep, twisted in her seat.

“I was planning to kill him.”

• • •

“Muh,” Ritchie said, the day he first walked.

He waddled across the sitting room, sticking his hands in the air to keep his balance. He staggered to Emma and put his arms around her neck.

“You clever boy!” Emma grabbed him and planted kisses all over his pudgy little face. “You're the cleverest boy in the whole wide world.” She kissed each temple, then his eyes, then his ears, and then finally the most precious part of him, the part where the curve of his cheek met his throat, just below his ear. Neither of them could stop smiling.

For emergencies, however, he went back to crawling; it was still faster. He went to the kitchen and put the yellow plastic mixing bowl over his head.

“Aloo?” he shouted. “Aloo?”

He loved tidying up. He put all his bricks back in their box, panting and grunting with the effort of opening and closing the lid between each brick.

“You can leave the lid open,” Emma told him. Sometimes he made her laugh.

But there were all the other times that he wore her out. He was hard work. He was always there, looking for her, bursting into tears if she left the room even for a second. If she went to the loo, he would stand outside and shout: “Muh. Muh,” until she came out. The constant whining got on her nerves. She began to snap at him more—shouted at him, even—until finally he stopped wailing and looked at her in bewilderment.

• • •

With Ritchie's teething came a row of ear infections, one after another. He often woke in the night, crying, and Emma had to get up and take him into the bed with her, where he spent the next hour or so fussing and snuffling and trying to lie right on top of her. She took him back to Dr. Stanford, who said it was just a virus and he didn't need any more antibiotics. Emma didn't agree. She was sure there must be something more serious going on. Why else would he be so cross and clingy? Dr. Stanford became impatient with her.

“In again, Emma?” she took to saying whenever Emma appeared in the chair across from her desk. “What is it this time?”

These days, for some reason, Emma found she was much more tired than she'd been at the beginning. She stopped taking Ritchie for long walks; she just didn't have the energy. She often slept during the day, lying on the couch, while Ritchie crawled around the sitting room on his own, laughing to himself with his dirty little chuckle: “Huh huh huh.” This new tiredness worried her. Sometimes while doing something, eating her dinner or pushing Ritchie's buggy, she would just . . . stop. Unable to move. Literally as if some weight was pressing on her shoulders. She wondered if it might be a problem with her muscles. Ritchie's birth had taken its toll on her in a way she hadn't expected. He'd been a big baby, and she was small. Over the past few months, she'd developed all kinds of problems she'd never had before: bladder infections, anemia, backache. She'd never been the type to worry about her health, because she'd never needed to. But, Jesus, if she became ill now! What in God's name would she do about Ritchie?

Emma became obsessed with eating properly. She and Ritchie got free milk, and she stocked up on tins of beans, which she'd heard were good for you. Potatoes as well; you could just put them in the microwave. You could buy a sliced loaf for forty-six pence and it lasted all week. She got free vitamins from the health care center and made sure to take one every morning. Despite that, she managed to pick up a throat infection that got gradually worse over a few days until she could barely get out of bed. It finally went away, but not before she'd become very stressed. If she had to go into hospital, what on earth would happen to Ritchie?

The thinking didn't stop there.

What if—she went cold!—what if she fell one day, in the bathroom, say, and broke her leg and couldn't get up? Who would miss her and come looking for them? Ritchie could starve to death in the flat, and no one would know.

• • •

August 28th. Ritchie's first birthday. The sun poured in through the balcony doors. Emma dressed Ritchie in his shorts and blue Surfer Dude T-shirt. He waddled around the flat for a while, bimbling about with his various toys, before Emma sat him into his pushchair for his lunchtime nap while she cleaned up in the kitchen.

After a while, she glanced around the doorway to check on him. He was asleep by the balcony, the sun lighting the lower half of his face. Emma stood there, holding the J Cloth and watching him. One year old today! Who would have thought? His head was flung back. Little snores and whiffles came from his nose. Even like that, he was so beautiful. She went to the pushchair and stroked his cheek, using just the tip of her finger, so he wouldn't wake up.

“Happy birthday,” she said softly. “My gorgeous little darling.”

Today of all days, she would make an effort for him.

“We're going to get your present today,” she told him. “Something really nice.”

After lunch, they got the bus to the King's Road, a place Emma normally never went to shop, as it was way too expensive. But Ritchie was always dressed in cheap clothes from stalls or low-price department stores. Today, for once, she was going to buy him something really good.

They got off the bus at Sloane Square and headed west back along the King's Road. It was a long time since Emma had been here. She kept on looking around her in amazement. How gorgeous and colorful and clean everything looked. The people were so sleek and glamorous. Teenage girls, dressed in chiffon tops and waist-length strings of beads, tossed their long, shiny hair as they passed. Elderly women, some of them looking rather mad, wandered around with giant sunglasses and collagen lips, carrying tiny dogs in their handbags. An elderly man in a uniform lined with medals trundled along the path in a motorized wheelchair. People sat near the fountains in the Duke of York Square, drinking coffee, reading, chatting. And the shops! God, she'd forgotten about the shops. Everywhere you looked: gorgeous vintage and high street clothes; shoes; jewelry; handbags. Once she would have drooled at the handbags. She and Joanne used to read in awe about people fighting to get on waiting lists for bags that cost thousands of pounds. It just seemed weird now. To spend that much money on a bag. Obscene, even, if you thought about it.

The children's clothes shops, though. Look at the stuff they had! Beautiful. In one window, a row of tiny white cashmere Babygros hung on padded hangers. Emma was astonished at the size of them. Had Ritchie really ever been able to fit into one of those? His big toe wouldn't go near them now. She looked at the prices and was shocked all over again. Who on earth would spend that much on a Babygro? On something the baby would wear only for a month? And then in one window, folded on top of a giant wooden alphabet block, she spotted an utterly adorable blue zipped fleece top. Emma stopped. How sweet would Ritchie look in that fleece? Beside the zip was a felt, stitched-on elephant with big, shy eyes. The elephant was standing beside a pond, smiling and pouring water over himself with his trunk. Ritchie would love him! But a fleece would be too hot for this weather. Then Emma thought about it. At these kinds of prices, a fleece would be a much better buy than summer clothes. Look how often Ritchie had worn his red snowsuit last year. He'd practically lived in it. If she got the fleece a little bit too big—for aged eighteen months, say, instead of twelve—it would last him all this winter. He'd get wear out of it most days. It would be worth the extra expense.

In the shop, she took Ritchie out of his buggy to try on the fleece. He grinned up at her from inside the hood, which fell over one of his eyes.