‘What? No. The drugs. Please, Marielle. Let me go. I don’t know anything about any illegal adoption. I promise. I have a son –’
‘So did I!’ screams Marielle, making me shrink back in terror.
Marielle closes her eyes and breathes in through her nose. She tucks her hair behind her ears. In the half-light,and from my position on the bed, she looks terrifying: gone is the poised, well-groomed woman I’ve known over the last few weeks and in her place is this banshee, with wild hair and raging eyes.
‘Do you know what we did to get Simone to talk?’ Her eyes snap open. She’s calmer again now. ‘I pretended to be a nurse. At first she thought she was in hospital. Until she learnt the truth, of course. I drugged her food, made her too weak to try to escape and started probing her for answers. I left little clues around the room, hoping she’d realize why she was there. A rabbit I’d bought for the baby and taken to the hospital in a maternity bag. But she didn’t, of course, because she was as dense as you. I called my baby Peter. Did you know that? Peter.’
I remember her telling me she had a son called Peter.
‘Marielle,’ I sob, ‘I’m so sorry you lost a son. I’m so sorry, but I promise I don’t know anything about it.’
Henry comes up behind his wife and places a hand on her shoulder. ‘Mari …’
And then I notice it. Uncertainty in his eyes. He doesn’t want to do this. His resolve is weak. This has all been led by her. I’ve got it all so wrong. I thought he was bullying Marielle.
I remember his threats in the street. His insistence that I leave them alone. No wonder he was so angry when Drew confronted him about his sister. He must have met up with Drew in the park to try to placate him, and when Drew confronted him about his car Henry became angry and acted guilty because hewasguilty. Not of doing anything to Sarah-Jane, but to someone else’s sister.
She shrugs him off. ‘Don’t, Henry …’
And then they freeze.
Someone is banging loudly on their front door.
58
HENRY
February 1999 London
Henry had first met Hugh Warrington at medical school, and even though they were never great friends (Henry wasn’t one for friends) they ending up sharing student digs together. Hugh was a narcissist: that was obvious to Henry early on. He wanted to play God. And Henry was good at dealing with narcissists, thanks to his father. He recognized parts of himself in Hugh. The morally grey parts. Like attracts like. After medical school they lost touch until, a year or so after Henry and Marielle married, she persuaded him to join some pretentious males-only members’ club that her dad went to. Hugh was also a member and they reconnected.
Hugh liked a drink and he liked to brag, and it wasn’t long before he admitted to Henry what he was up to at St Calvert’s. Henry sometimes wondered if perhaps he gave off a kind of immoral aura, like a dark-hearted priest, because of the number of people who had confessed things to him over the years.
One night, while drinking at their club, Henry admitted to Hugh about Marielle wanting to try fertility treatment. Hugh had agreed to persuade her that it wouldn’t work for them and she had believed him. And then she had fallen pregnant naturally.
It had been a shock and Henry had hoped it was a phantom pregnancy. But, no, their doctor had told them this could happen when a couple stopped trying. As the weeks went on and Marielle’s belly continued to grow, Henry knew he was running out of options.
So, he went to Hugh with a plan and Hugh had agreed to help, for a large sum.
A few days before Marielle’s due date Henry would give Marielle a solution of misoprostol to drink to induce her. Hopefully it should work within twenty-four hours and Hugh would book the day off so he could deliver the baby, but unofficially, so there would be no record of it. ‘We can take her to the new natural birthing unit that is nearly finished,’ he told Henry. ‘The builders have always clocked off by three so we won’t be seen. It’s in a separate building to St Calvert’s because,’ he’d rolled his eyes, ‘it’s supposed to make the woman feel like she’s giving birth at home. Anyway, some of the suites are already finished so we can use one of those. I’ll have it ready. I’ve got a midwife who will be in on it with me. Someone I trust. She’ll keep Marielle sedated until it’s all done.’
Simone Harvey. He hadn’t forgotten her name. A pretty little thing who had judged him, he was sure of it, when she ushered them into the unit that night. Marielle was a little bemused that they were going to St Calvert’s insteadof the fancy private maternity hospital she’d been booked in to but she was in so much pain, screaming at him that she’d made a huge mistake in getting pregnant, and didn’t argue.
It had all worked so well. Hugh said he knew a couple who couldn’t conceive and were desperate for a baby. As he whisked their little boy away from under an exhausted Marielle’s nose, Henry left Hugh to organize the fake death certificate and pretend ashes he could give to Marielle.
Henry had continued to sedate Marielle at home, for weeks afterwards, in a bid to stop her asking too many questions. He pretended they’d had a small memorial for the baby, just the two of them, which she must have forgotten about, and they scattered the ‘ashes’ in Richmond Park, her favourite place. By this time her father had moved abroad with his new wife, and she was more or less estranged from her sister so there was nobody to involve.
The whole thing had cost him a lot of money. But it had been worth it. He was safe in the knowledge that his son was growing up somewhere with parents who would give him the emotional strength that he and Marielle never could.
He could never have predicted that twenty years later Hugh Warrington would rear his smarmy head again and derail his perfectly orchestrated life.
59
LENA
Someone knocks again, more insistent this time.
‘Get rid of them, Henry,’ Marielle barks, twisting around to face him.
