Nick was disgusted by this admission. ‘You and Sally were better suited than you think. You both only care about yourselves.’
‘If you want him to stay with you, I’ll sign whatever papers you need me to sign to make it official.’ And, with that, Deepak rose to his feet and walked towards the front door. ‘Nick,’ he said, without turning around. ‘I really am sorry for everything, and I hope you believe me.’
Nick didn’t reply. When the door closed, he held his son tightly and planted a long, gentle kiss on his forehead.
Chapter 100
MANDY
‘We don’t think it’s the first time Pat’s taken a child that wasn’t hers,’ Lorraine said. ‘Neither Richard’s nor Chloe’s DNA results match each other’s or hers. They’re all unrelated.’
‘Could she have adopted them?’
‘We’ve checked European and American databases, and so far we can’t confirm that. Now we’re looking into cold cases of children reported missing around the time Richard and Chloe were born.’
‘Jesus.’ Mandy shook her head in disbelief and her heart sank at the thought of what could have happened had she not identified the Lake District holiday cottage in Richard’s photographs. She clutched her son a little closer to her chest, wondering how Richard and Chloe’s biological parents must have felt not knowing what had happened to their babies.
‘What’s going to happen to Chloe?’ she asked Lorraine, who sat opposite her. It was the first time they’d met face to face since Mandy’s baby had been rescued a week earlier.
‘She’s been charged with kidnapping a child, but as she has no previous convictions she’s been released on bail pending further inquiries. We predict her defencewill plead insanity. But don’t worry, she has restrictions preventing her from going anywhere near you or your home. Pat is being held in a psychiatric unit following her overdose, but it’s going to take some time before we find out the full story.’
Mandy found it difficult to erase the image of the moment she saw her child for the first time. He was wrapped in a towel, held loosely by Pat, who was unconscious and surrounded by empty blister packs of tablets. Everything else slipped into slow motion as Lorraine held Mandy back, her flailing arms reaching to grab her child. He was scooped up instead by a paramedic, whisked to the safety of the landing and placed upon the floor, his towel removed and his body checked for any signs of injury. It was only when it was confirmed there were none that Mandy was permitted to hold him for the very first time.
She’d fallen to her knees when he was placed into her arms. She smelled his head and ran her fingers across his soft chest, and held him close to her body so that he could feel her heartbeat against his skin.
She didn’t notice the paramedics rush to Pat’s aid or watch as they turned her on to her side and shoved piping down her throat, forcing her to vomit. Every voice that spoke to Mandy was muffled because all she could hear was the delicate sound of her baby breathing.
‘There’s something else I should tell you that I’m not supposed to,’ continued Lorraine, ‘something that was discovered in Pat’s medical records. Apparently she has a history of psychotic episodes that doctors who treated her believe stemmed from multiple miscarriages and at least two stillbirths. At some point these episodes appear to have ceased, which match up to the time Richard and Chloe came into her life.’
Mandy couldn’t help but feel sympathy towards Pat for the torment she must have suffered all those yearsago. She knew how awful miscarriages could be and how they can ruin your life. It didn’t exonerate her subsequent behaviour, but it went a little way to explaining it.
Mandy embraced Lorraine before she left the private room in the care home, and she thanked her for all she had done. Then, she picked up her son and made her way to see Richard. She took a moment to compose herself, and then slowly opened the door to where Richard was lying in bed, where he’d been when she’d first greeted him six weeks earlier.
‘Hi Richard,’ she began gently, and took a chair by his side. ‘I’ve brought somebody to see you. This is your son, Thomas. I named him after my dad who died a few years ago, I hope you don’t mind. I know you’ve met him before when your mum brought him but I thought it’d be nice if it was just the three of us together.’
Mandy gazed at father and son in turn, and admitted to herself that Pat was right: there was a palpable resemblance between the two. They shared the same colouring and even the positioning of dimples in their cheeks.
She thought back to the news headlines regarding the Match Your DNA falsified results scandal, which she’d heard earlier as she drove to the nursing home. If hers and Richard’s had been faked, she’d decided it didn’t really matter. The result was still this beautiful child buckled into the baby seat next to her. Once, she’d worried that she couldn’t love a child that wasn’t born out of a Match as much as one that was. But now she knew that not to be the case.
The strong smell of disinfectant in the room made Mandy’s nose tingle and she sneezed twice, which made Thomas giggle. She rose, placing him on the bed inside the safety railing next to Richard’s forearm, which lay poker straight by his side, and fumbled around in her pocket for a tissue.
But when she turned back to pick up her son, something was different. Richard’s arm was no longer by his side. Instead, his palm was face up and his baby son’s hand was pressed firmly inside it.
Mandy took a sharp intake of breath, not believing what she was witnessing. She watched as Richard’s fingers slowly and purposefully entwined with his son’s.
Chapter 101
AMY
Amy couldn’t bring herself to look at the blank, motionless face of the man she’d loved and whose life she’d ended.
Slumped in the chair she had tied him to, Christopher’s head tilted backwards and tears were still visible in the corners of his bloodshot eyes. She desperately wanted to bring the man she had adored back to life, but even if she could raise the dead, he’d bring with him the compulsions that she loathed.
For the sake of every other woman and herself, it had to be this way and it had to be Amy who’d set his tortured soul free. ‘Hold it together,’ she told herself and clenched her fists into tight balls so as not to give in to sorrow. Her body still shivering, she clambered back to her feet and sifted through Christopher’s backpack, using his equipment to clean up any trace of her presence in the home of the terrified woman she’d left tied up in the bedroom, oblivious to what had just happened under her roof.
Amy harked back to just a few days earlier when, after discovering the love of her life was a serial killer, she’d put on a brave face in front of him while silently beginning the grieving process for what she was about to lose.And just as Christopher had planned to kill his final victim, after much soul-searching and internal deliberation, Amy had decided to kill him.
She’d followed his car one night as he drove to a quiet residential street in Islington, and she’d watched from a safe distance as he patrolled the road on foot, making mental notes of the position of street lights, access to the rear of a ground-floor flat and a probable escape route. She placed her hands over her mouth to stop her sobs from being overheard outside her vehicle.
