Page 109 of The Stolen Child

‘How dare you!’ Sally replied, her eyes flashing fire. ‘I told you it wasn’t safe to leave in that moment. I had to do what was best for Zach! For my child.’

‘I know you believe that, Sally, but I had to protect him from Baldwin. He would have killed you both.’

‘I would never have allowed that to happen. I was always going to leave, but you never gave me the chance. You took matters into your own hands, leaving me behind to deal not only with the horror of my son’s abduction but my husband’s anger too.’ Sally’s voice trembled with the accusation.

Lily’s head spun as both women screamed at each other, about how they’d done what was best for Zach. How could they think, for one second, that any of this was okay? She looked at her mother in disbelief.

Who was she?

‘How could you do this to your best friend? Snatch a child from her like that? It’s barbaric,’ Lily said, her voice quivering with emotion.

‘You don’t understand,’ her mum replied, her eyes pleading with Lily to see it from her side. ‘I was sure if I took Zach it would force Sally’s hand to follow me. And then we could go on with our plan – the three of us – together. Reggie was supposed to tell Sally where to find me.’

Zach stepped forward, his face ashen and his upper lip beaded with sweat. ‘Why didn’t you follow her, Mom? What happened after Elsie left?’

The tension in the room was palpable as everyone waited for an answer.

Sally turned to her son, ‘I went back down to the salon a few minutes later, wondering why Elsie and you hadn’t joined us upstairs. I don’t think I can ever explain the horror when I saw your empty pram. At first, we thought Elsie had taken you for a walk. But it became clear as the minutes became half an hour, that wasn’t the case. Nicola explained what little she knew about Elsie and Reggie’s plan, and we eventually put two and two together. I was dumbfounded that Elsie had taken you. And I had no clue where she had disappeared to.’

‘Why didn’t you ask this Reggie fella?’ Lily asked.

‘Oh we tried, but he disappeared too. Nicola asked some of Reggie’s friends from the Grove, and they said Reggie had had to go into hiding. Word on the street was that he was about to be nicked for aggravated burglary,’ Sally said. ‘It was as if Elsie and Zach had disappeared into thin air.’

‘Call the Gardaí. Let them sort all this out,’ Gaga said suddenly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile phone. ‘I want it on record that my son had nothing to do with this.’

Zach reached for Kevin’s arm and laid a hand on it. ‘Please, sir. Not yet. I need to hear what happened next. Once we’ve heard it all, you can do what you want.’

Lily felt her head swim. All this time, they’d thought her mum was the victim when all along she was the perpetrator.

Sally looked at Lily’s grandfather. ‘For what this woman did to me, she deserves to be locked up for life, but Zach is right. It’s time for answers that I’ve waited over forty years to hear. How could you do that to me, Elsie? We were as good as sisters. And yet you never got in touch, not a postcard or a phone call to let me know Zach was okay.’

Lily’s mum could only hang her head, at a loss for words.

Zach held the bridge of his nose as if in pain. Lily understood. An ache pierced her temples as the revelations kept on coming.

‘What did my father . . . this Baldwin man . . . do when he found out I was taken by Elsie?’ Zach asked.

Sally’s face darkened, and she bit her lip as she steadied herself to respond. ‘I wanted to tell him and the police that Elsie had taken Zach, but Nicola talked me out of it. She insisted that Elsie had a plan and we should trust her. I had no choice but to go along with that, figuring that if I gave the police her name it might jeopardise my chance to follow Elsie and Zach. So I placed my trust in the person I was closest to.’ Sally laughed without merriment. ‘What a fool I was.’

The room was silent, save for the laboured breaths from Kimberly.

Lily looked over at her father, who was quiet – too quiet. Surely, he had something to say about this? He had to be angry, because Lily felt fury begin to dance its way through her.

‘Nicola and I told Ian and the police the truth, that we’d gone upstairs for a few moments, but when we returned Zach had gone. We left Elsie out of the story. The assumption was that someone had sneaked in and snatched the baby. Ian accused me of being an unfit mother, leaving Zach on his own in the salon. A nationwide search was put in place, but of course Zach was nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, I was vilified in the press. Every newspaper raked through my past, from the orphanage, to my prostitute mother and her murder. Nobody cared that I was grieving and heartbroken.’ Sally wiped tears away and continued, her voice trembling. ‘I didn’t have to worry about leaving Ian after all, because he disowned me. My sordid past, which he’d worked so hard to hide from everyone, was now public knowledge. He wanted nothing to do with me.’

Zach wiped tears from his eyes as he listened to his mother speak. Lily’s heart constricted, watching the pain he was obviously in.

Sally’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Ian left me with one last gift before he – literally – kicked me out of our home. I was lucky to leave alive.’ She lifted her long blonde hair to reveal a faded scar.

‘You said that was from a childhood accident – that you fell off your bike,’ Zach whispered.

Sally shook her head sadly and for the first time since she’d arrived she began to cry.

‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ Gaga angrily shouted at Lily’s mother, his face bright red. He pointed to Sally’s scar. ‘You might as well have struck her yourself. What you did to that woman . . . I’m ashamed of you.’

Zach pulled his mother into his arms and held her close. She lay her head on his shoulder as he gently stroked the back of her hair. The tenderness of the moment brought a lump to Lily’s throat. The love between them was undeniable and starkly contrasted to Lily’s relationship with her own mother.

Yesterday, when her mum had held her in her arms, it had taken her breath away. She’d not been embraced like that in years. And now she wasn’t sure she would ever want to be ever again.