Fallen Angel

The woman shook her head. ‘They’ll be in touch as soon as there’s any news.’

Sally stared at her. It didn’t matter who the woman was. Who cared? She was younger than Sally, her face carefully made up, her brown eyes wary, the teeth projecting slightly, pushing out the lips and giving the impression that the mouth was the most important feature in this face. The Daily Telegraph was open on her lap, folded to one of the inside pages. She did not wear a wedding ring. Sally clung to these details as though they formed a rope strung across an abyss; and if she let go, she would fall.

‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ she heard a voice saying, her voice. ‘All true?’

‘Yes. I’m so sorry.’

Sally let her head fall back on the pillow. She closed her eyes. Her mind filled with a procession of images that made her want to scream and scream until everything was all right again: Lucy crying for her mother and no one answering; Lucy naked and bleeding in a narrow bedroom smelling of male sweat; Lucy lying dead on a railway embankment with her clothes strewn around her. How could anyone be so cruel, so cruel, so cruel?

‘She might have just wandered off,’ Sally said, trying to reassure herself. ‘Got tired out – fallen asleep in a shed or something. She’ll wake up soon and knock on someone’s door.’

‘It’s possible.’

Possible, Sally thought, but highly improbable.

The woman stirred. ‘They say no news is good news.’

Sally opened her eyes again. ‘Has there been no news? Truly?’

‘If there had been news, any news at all, they’d have told you and your husband straightaway. I promise. I’m D C Yvonne Saunders, by the way. I took over from Judith.’ The woman hesitated. ‘You remember Judith? Last night?’

Sally’s head twitched on the pillow. More memories flooded back. A plain-clothes policewoman, Judith, holding her arm while a doctor with ginger curls pushed a hypodermic into the skin. Herself saying – shouting – that she wasn’t going to stay with friends or go to hospital: she was going to stay here, at home in Hercules Road because that was where Lucy would expect to find her; she and Michael had made Lucy memorize both the address and the phone number.

‘They’ll find her, Sally. We’re pulling out all the stops.’ Again a hesitation, a hint of calculation. ‘Doctor left some medicine. Something to help you not to worry. Shall I give you some?’

‘No.’ The refusal was instinctive, but the reasons rushed after it: if they tranquillized her she would be no use to Lucy when – if – they found her; if they turned her into a zombie, she wouldn’t be able to find out what was happening, they wouldn’t tell her anything; she needed to be as clear-headed as possible, for Lucy’s sake. Sally leant back against her pillows. ‘Where’s Michael? My husband?’

The eyes wavered. ‘He’s out. He’ll be back soon, I should think. I expect you’d like to freshen up, wouldn’t you? Shall I make some tea?’

Sally nodded, largely in order to get the woman out of her bedroom. Michael – she needed to think about him but she couldn’t concentrate.

Yvonne stood up, her face creasing into an unconvincing smile. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’ She added slowly, as if talking to a person of low intelligence, ‘I shall be in the kitchen, if you need me. All right, love?’

No, Sally wanted to say, it’s not all right; it may never be all right again; and I’m not your love, either. Instead, she returned the smile and said thank you.

When she was alone, she pushed the duvet away from her and got out of bed. The sweat cooled rapidly on her skin and she began to shiver. They had given her clean pyjamas, she realized, clinging to the security of domestic details. She was ashamed to see that the pyjamas were an old pair: the material was faded, a button was missing from the jacket, and there were undesirable stains on the trousers. The shivering worsened and once more the impact of what had happened hit her. Her knees gave way. She sat down suddenly on the bed. My baby. Where are you? The tears streamed down her cheeks.

She dared not make a noise in case Yvonne came back. This is all my fault. I should have kept her with me. She fell sideways and curled up on the bed. Her body shook with silent sobs.

Water rustled through the pipes. Sally, familiar with the vocabulary of the plumbing, knew that Yvonne was filling the kettle. The thought galvanized her into changing her position. At any moment the policewoman might return. With her hand over her mouth, trying to prevent the terror from spurting out like vomit, Sally scrambled off the bed and pulled open the wardrobe. She avoided looking at the accusing faces in the photographs on the chest of drawers. She selected clothes at random and, with a bundle in her arms, sneaked into the bathroom and bolted the door.

Boats, ducks and teddies had colonized the side of the bath. One of Lucy’s socks was lying under the basin. Automatically Sally picked it up, intending to drop it in the basket for dirty clothes. Instead she sat on the lavatory. She held the sock to her face, breathing its essence, hoping to smell Lucy, to recreate her by sheer force of will. Did Lucy at least have Jimmy, her little cloth doll? Or was she entirely without comfort?

Tears spilled down Sally’s cheeks. When the fit of crying passed, she sat motionless, her fingers clenched round the sock, and sank into depths she had not known existed.

There was a tap on the door. ‘How are you doing, love? Tea’s ready.’

‘I’m fine. I’ll be out in a moment. I might have a shower.’

Sally brushed her teeth, trying to scour the taste of that long, drugged sleep from her mouth. She dropped the pyjamas on the floor, stepped into the bath and stood under the shower. Making no move to wash herself, she let the water stream down her body for several minutes. Last night, she remembered dimly, she had given way. She remembered shouting and crying in Carla’s house and later at the flat. She remembered Michael’s face, white and accusing, and police officers whom she did not know, their expressions concerned but somehow detached from what was happening to her and to Lucy. The ginger-haired doctor had been tiny, so small that he came to below her shoulder. She must not let them give her drugs again.

She turned off the shower and began to dry herself. There was another tap on the door.

‘How about a nice slice of toast, love?’

Seeing if I’m still alive. ‘Yes, please. There’s a loaf in the fridge.’

The thought of food disgusted her but she would be no use to anyone if she starved herself. She dressed quickly in jeans, T-shirt and jersey. In her haste, she had provided herself with two odd socks, one with a hole in the heel. She ran a comb through her hair. As an afterthought she pushed Lucy’s sock into the pocket of the jeans. The routine of showering and dressing had had a calming effect. But as she unbolted the door the fact of Lucy’s disappearance hit her like a flail, making her gasp for air.

She could not face Yvonne. She staggered back to the bedroom. Directly opposite the doorway was the crucifix on the wall above the mantelpiece. She looked at the little brass figure on the cross and realized as if for the first time how terribly pain had contorted the miniature face and twisted the muscles of the legs, the arms and the stomach. How could you forgive God for inflicting such suffering? But God hadn’t forgiven God. He had crucified him. And if he had done that to his own child, what would he do to Lucy?

The unmade bed distracted her. She pulled up the duvet and plumped the pillows. After making the bed, she reminded herself, she normally tidied the room. But it looked tidy already. Usually there would have been Michael’s dirty clothes flung over the chair, a magazine or a book on the floor by his side of the bed, a glass of water and his personal stereo on the table: he was a man who left a trail of domestic chaos behind him.

A pile of books on the chest of drawers caught her eye. They were small, shabby and unfamiliar. She picked up the first of them, a prayer book, and as she did so she remembered where they had come from. She turned to the flyleaf. ‘To Audrey, on the occasion of her First Communion, 20th March 1937, with love from Mother.’

Audrey Oliphant’s suicide seemed no more real than a story read long ago and half-forgotten. Sally could hardly believe that she had seen the woman dead on a hospital bed less than twenty-four hours earlier. She remembered the cheerless bedsitter, a shrine to lost beliefs. Most of all she remembered the woman standing up in St George’s as Sally began to preach her first sermon.

She-devil. Blasphemer against Christ. Apostate. Impious bitch. Whore of Babylon. Daughter of Satan. May God damn you and yours.

She dropped the Prayer Book as if it were contaminated. May God damn you and yours. She almost ran from the room, shutting the door behind her. Yvonne was no longer someone to be avoided but a potential refuge.

This feeling vanished as soon as Sally reached the living room. Yvonne had laid the table in the window; usually Sally and Michael ate breakfast in the kitchen, often on the move. She had managed to find the wrong plates, the wrong mugs and the wrong teapot. There were paper napkins, a choice of both jam and marmalade, and a tablecloth which the Appleyards had last used on Christmas Day. Sally thought of little girls playing house and tried to suppress her exasperation. She also wished that she had remembered to wash the cloth.

‘Perhaps you prefer honey?’ Yvonne was poised to dash into the kitchen. ‘And is there any butter? I can only find margarine. That’s what I have, but perhaps –’

‘That’s fine,’ Sally lied. ‘Margarine’s fine. Everything’s fine.’

She drank a glass of fruit juice and then sipped a mug of sweetened tea. The first mouthful of toast almost made her gag. She allowed Yvonne to pour her a second mug of tea and used it to moisten her throat between mouthfuls. Yvonne made her feel a guest in her own home, confronted by an overanxious hostess.

Parish reflexes came to Sally’s rescue: automatically she asked questions. Yvonne told her that she worked at Paddington, that her boyfriend, also a policeman, was a sergeant in traffic control, and that they had a small flat in Wembley, but were hoping to move to somewhere larger soon. The illusion of intimacy lasted until Yvonne used the phrase ‘living in sin’ to describe what she and her boyfriend did.

‘Sorry.’ A blush crept up underneath her make-up. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t be talking like this. What with you being a vicar and all.’

‘Before I decided to become ordained, I lived with two men.’ Sally inserted a practised pause and then slipped in her usual punchline: ‘Not at the same time, of course.’

Yvonne tittered, and the mask slipped, revealing the youth and vulnerability behind. Usually, Sally thought, she would not have talked so readily to a stranger. But Michael was a police officer, which made Sally an honorary insider, at least on a temporary basis. And Yvonne was nervous – perhaps she had not done this job before. The flail of memory slapped her again: baby-sitting, they might call it, or child minding. For the next few seconds Sally fought the urge to bring up her breakfast over Great Aunt Mary’s linen tablecloth.

The telephone rang.

‘I’ll get it.’ Yvonne was already on her feet. She picked up the phone. She listened, then said, ‘I’m a police officer, sir … Yes, Mrs Appleyard is awake … I’ll ask her.’ She covered the mouthpiece of the handset. ‘Someone called Derek Cutter. Says he’s your boss. Do you want to talk to him? Or he says he’d be pleased to come over.’

Sally opened her mouth to say that she didn’t want to see Derek, or talk to him; and if she never did either again, she for one would not waste any tears. Instantly she restrained herself. This wasn’t Derek’s fault. She had a duty both to him and to the parish. And, more selfishly, it was important to create the illusion that she was in control; otherwise they might starve her of information.

‘Ask him to come over if he can spare the time.’ Sally decided to kill two birds with one stone: Derek could take Miss Oliphant’s belongings.

Yvonne relayed the message and put down the phone. ‘He won’t be long. He’s over at the community centre in Brondesbury Park.’

‘What’s that phone doing? It’s not ours.’

‘No. We’re taping and tracing all calls.’ Yvonne stiffened. ‘It’s standard procedure. Nothing to get worried –’

Sally pushed back her chair and stood up. She was shaking so much that she had to support herself on the table. ‘You’re sure Lucy’s been kidnapped. Aren’t you? Aren’t you?’

Derek took both Sally’s hands in his and said how very, very sorry he was. He had ridden over from Kensal Vale on the Yamaha. Sally thought he fancied himself in motorcycle leathers. As she introduced him to Yvonne, he loosened the white silk scarf around his neck, revealing the dog collar beneath.

With unnecessary tact, Yvonne retreated to the kitchen, leaving Sally unwillingly alone to savour the experience of Derek in full pastoral mode.

‘We are all praying for you, my dear.’

‘Thank you.’ Sally didn’t want prayers, she wanted Lucy.

Still holding her hands, Derek went on to say that there must be no question of her coming into work until Lucy was safe and sound. She need not worry, they could manage perfectly well.

‘Would you and Michael like to come to stay with us? Margaret and I would love to have you. The bed’s made up in the spare room.’

Sally’s mind filled with an unwanted picture of Derek in his pyjamas. Would the hair of his chest be as white-blond as the hair on his head? Had he any hair on his chest at all, or just pink skin stretched over his bony ribcage, with the two nipples as the only points of interest to break the monotony? She wanted to giggle and she felt sick. She heard herself thanking Derek for his (and Margaret’s) kind offer, and promising to discuss it with Michael. Certainly, she said, they would bear it in mind.

‘Lots of people send their love. Stella in particular.’

‘Stella.’ It was little more than twenty-four hours since Sally had driven her to the hospital. ‘Has her daughter had her baby?’

There was a pause. ‘Yes. Last night. It’s a girl. Mother and baby are doing fine, I gather.’

Sally concentrated very hard on Stella’s joy. ‘Lovely. Tell Stella how pleased I am.’ She made an intense effort to blot out the rising hysteria and the knowledge that Lucy needed her. ‘Audrey Oliphant?’

‘Eh?’ Derek released her hands. ‘Who?’

‘The woman who tried to kill herself. You remember? You asked me to see her yesterday.’

‘I remember.’

‘She died before I reached the hospital.’

‘Was she one of ours?’

‘Yes. In a sense.’ Sally sat down. ‘She was the woman who made a disturbance when I preached my first sermon.’

‘Oh, yes. Poor woman. Where did she worship?’

‘I don’t know if she went anywhere. Her landlady thought not. But I think we should see she gets a proper burial.’

‘Better make sure it’s a man who conducts the service.’ Derek began to smile, then stopped, remembering why he was here.

‘Anglo-Catholic for choice. Her room was like an oratory. I’ve got a bag of her clothes.’ She looked wildly round the room, wondering where the bag was. ‘And also some books.’ Had she taken the books out last night? If so, why?

‘It doesn’t matter now. We’ll sort it out.’

Derek’s voice was so soothing that Sally realized she must be sounding overwrought. She made an effort to turn the conversation back to the parish and the arrangements which needed to be made.

Derek slipped from the pastoral mode to the managerial. Here he was in his element; his efficiency was a virtue. He had already arranged cover for her services. Margaret would see to the Mothers and Toddlers and the Single Mums for as long as needed. As he went through her responsibilities, Sally had a depressing vision of Derek rising unstoppably, committee by committee, preferment by preferment, up the promotional ladder of the Church. It wasn’t the meek that inherited the earth but people like Derek. She told herself that the Church needed the Dereks of this world, and that she had no reason to feel superior in any respect.

‘And if there’s anything that you or Michael need,’ he was saying when she pulled her mind back on course, ‘just phone us. Any time, Sally – you know that. Day or night.’

He stood up, tied the silk scarf round his thin neck and slipped the strap of his helmet over his arm. In its way, it had been a polished performance, and part of Sally was able to admire its professionalism. It made her squirm. Yvonne had almost certainly been eavesdropping through the open door of the kitchen.

‘Look after yourself, my dear.’ He seized her hands again and pressed them between his. ‘And once more, if there’s anything I can do.’ Another, firmer squeeze, even the suggestion of a stroke. ‘You have only to ask. You know that.’

Good God, Sally thought, as her skin crawled: I think he fancies me. With a wave of his hand, Derek called goodbye to Yvonne and left the flat. Too late, Sally remembered Miss Oliphant’s bag but could not bear to call him back.

Yvonne came into the living room. ‘Quite a charmer.’

‘He does his best.’ Sally forgot about Derek. ‘Who’s in charge of the case?’

‘Mr Maxham. Do you know him?’

Sally shook her head.

‘He’s very experienced. One of the old school.’

‘Shouldn’t he be asking me questions? Shouldn’t someone ask me something?’ She heard her voice growing louder, and was powerless to stop it. ‘Damn it, I’m Lucy’s mother.’

‘Don’t worry, love, they’ll send someone round soon. Maybe Mr Maxham will come himself. They’re doing everything that can be done. Why don’t you sit down for a bit? I’ll make us a nice hot drink, shall I?’

‘I don’t want a drink.’

Sally sat down and started to cry. Yvonne dispensed paper handkerchiefs and impersonal sympathy. In a while the tears stopped. Sally went to the bathroom to wash her face. The reflection in the mirror showed a stranger with moist, red-rimmed eyes, pinched cheeks and lank hair. She went back to the living room. Being with Yvonne, with anyone, was better than being alone. Solitude was full of dangers.

The minute hand crawled round the clock, each minute an hour, each hour a week. Everywhere Sally looked there were reminders of Lucy – photographs, paintings, toys, clothes and books.

The worst reminders were those which were coupled with regrets. Lucy had wanted her to play Matching Pairs on Thursday evening, and Sally had said no, she needed to cook supper. Lucy had demanded another chapter of the book they were reading at bedtime, an enormously dull chronicle of life among woodland folk, and had thrown a theatrical tantrum when Sally declined. Lucy had also wanted Michael to kiss her good night, but he had not been at home; she had not cried on that occasion, but her silence had been worse than her tears and screams. Lucy had wanted to bake gingerbread men the other day, Lucy had wanted the conjuring set from Woolworth’s, Lucy this and Lucy that. Sally sat placidly at her desk and pretended to read a magazine while, all around her, the flat hummed with lost opportunities and reminders of her failure to be the mother that Lucy needed and deserved.

Suffering had a monotonous quality; Sally had never known that before. Only the phone broke into the tedium. Each time it rang, Sally willed it to herald news of Lucy; or, failing that, that it should be Michael. Yvonne answered all the calls. Sally held her breath, digging her fingernails into the palms of her hands, until it became clear that the caller was just a time-waster – or rather, worse than that, someone who might be preventing news of Lucy from reaching Sally.

‘Mr and Mrs Appleyard aren’t available for comment …’

Sally’s fingernails left raw, red half-moons on her palms. Some of the calls were from friends but more were from journalists.

‘I’m afraid they’ll soon be camping on the doorstep.’ Yvonne went to the window and looked down at the road below. ‘Not a lot we can do about that except move you somewhere else.’

‘Why are they so interested?’ Sally made an enormous effort to be objective about what had happened. ‘Thousands of children must vanish every year. They aren’t news.’

‘They are if their dad’s in the CID and their mum’s a vicar. Let’s face it, love, that makes it a news story whether we like it or not.’

Michael did not ring. She wanted him very badly. What the hell was keeping him? Sally tried to prise information out of Yvonne but had no success: either the policewoman knew no more than Sally or had been forbidden to discuss the case.

By ten-thirty, there were three journalists outside the front of the block. Sally felt sorry for them: though they were well wrapped up against the weather, they looked pinched and cold. One of them tried to sneak into the service entrance at the rear and was indignantly shooed out of the communal garden by the owner of a ground-floor flat.

Sally tried to phone Carla, but there was no reply. Sally wondered how the child minder was feeling. Did she blame herself? Sally perversely wanted to monopolize the blame.

At eleven o’clock Sally made some coffee. By then she and Yvonne had stopped trying to talk to each other. Sally sat at her desk in front of the window, nursing the steaming mug between her hands, and waited for something to happen. In her mind, the pictures unfolded: she saw a pool of blood sinking into bare earth under trees; Lucy’s broken body half-concealed under a pile of dead leaves; a man running. She heard laughter. Fire crackled; a bell tolled; there was snow, straw and excrement on the cobbles. Briefly she glimpsed the dream that had filled her mind just before waking. Had there been a woman screaming? In the dream or in reality? Another or herself?

‘Do you do crosswords?’ Yvonne asked.

Sally hauled herself out of the confusion. ‘No – well, I used to, but I haven’t had much time recently.’

Yvonne was working on the crossword in the Daily Telegraph and had already completed a respectable number of clues. ‘It passes the time. Do you want a clue?’

Sally shook her head. She tried to read but it was impossible to concentrate. Her mind fluttered like a butterfly. She pushed her hand into her pocket and touched Lucy’s sock, her talisman, her Jimmy.

Please God, may Lucy have her Jimmy. Please God, bring my darling back to me.

It was important to act normally, otherwise they might sedate her heavily or even put her in hospital. But what was normal now? Reality had lurched into unreality. The substantial was insubstantial, and vice versa. Sally felt that if she poked her forefinger at the surface of the pine table in front of her, the finger might pass straight through the wood and into the vacancy beyond. It was unreal to be sitting at home doing nothing; unreal not to be helping at the Brownies’ jumble sale in St George’s church hall; and most of all unreal not to know where Lucy was. Like a small hungry animal, Lucy’s absence gnawed at Sally’s stomach.

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a tablet?’ Yvonne’s voice was elaborately casual.

‘No. No, thanks.’

There was shouting in the street outside. Sally looked down, and a second later Yvonne joined her at the window. A man was shouting at the journalists, waving his arms at them.

‘Who’s that?’ Yvonne asked. ‘Anyone you know?’

‘It’s Michael. My husband.’

Michael was very tired. When Sally hugged him, he leaned against her but otherwise he barely responded. His face was unshaven, his eyes bloodshot; he wore yesterday’s clothes and smelled of sweat.

‘The bastards won’t tell me anything,’ he muttered fiercely into her hair. ‘And they won’t let me do anything.’

Sally heard footsteps in the hallway. And the sound of voices, Yvonne’s and a man’s.

Michael raised his head. ‘Oliver brought me home. Maxham phoned him up; someone told him we were friends. I want to do something, and all they can think of is to give me a fucking nanny.’