Her Sister's Child Read online

  The agent taps her long, shellacked nails on her cheek. ‘It’s not what we usually do,’ she prevaricates. ‘But I know the landlord is keen to get someone in the property as soon possible. Let me give him a call and explain the situation, and I’ll get back to you.’

  While they’re killing time, Jake wants to visit a car dealership. ‘There’s one just up the road,’ he wheedles. ‘Just to look.’

  But of course once he’s looked, the looking alone is not enough. And a salesman with pound signs in his eyes is only too happy to let Jake test drive an Audi TT.

  ‘We should get it,’ he tells Charlie, his eyes shining.

  ‘Surely something a bit cheaper,’ she suggests, trying to keep her tone light. ‘A bit more practical.’ Something compatible with a child seat.

  ‘It’s only £250 a month to lease it,’ Jake scoffs. ‘Two hundred and fifty poxy quid. What’s that – a couple of grand a year? That’s nothing when you’ve got thirty K.’

  ‘But we’ve already spent a third of it on the flat,’ Charlie protests. ‘We need the rest to live on. Surely you realise that.’

  Jake’s lip curls. ‘And surely you realise that I’m not going to let any chick dictate what I do. You said the money would be joint, yeah?’

  ‘No, I didn’t, I said I’d put some of it in a joint account. That money will be half yours, half mine.’

  ‘Not what you said earlier, babe.’

  ‘Maybe I wasn’t clear,’ Charlie says desperately, thinking of her grandmother’s university fund evaporating.

  Jake shrugs. ‘Whatever. No car, no moving in together. The whole thing’s off.’

  He strides out of the dealership, with the salesman and receptionist staring curiously after him. Charlie’s cheeks flush crimson with shame, and she can feel tears welling up.

  She smiles helplessly at the dealer, who takes pity on her and asks the receptionist to make her some coffee. She doesn’t want any, but accepts it anyway as it gives her a chance to sit down and text Jake.

  Fine, we’ll get a car

  There is no response, so five minutes later she swallows her pride.

  Please come back

  Twenty minutes later, he lopes back in, hands in his pockets, thrusting his jeans down so far that the Calvin Klein logo on his boxers is exposed.

  ‘You’re right,’ she says, trying to soothe his bruised ego. ‘It’s not a huge amount of money. And we could use a car.’

  Just after Jake has signed the lease paperwork and they’re walking out of the dealership with the promise of a comparable Audi being available within forty-eight hours, the lettings agent phones Charlie’s mobile. She relays the news that the landlord will be only too happy to have the £12,600 transferred into his bank account. As soon as the funds are received and the contract cleaners have been in, they can collect the keys. The next morning should work fine.

  ‘Sweet.’ Jake gives a genuine grin, and Charlie feels her stomach flip to see him happy. ‘I guess I’ll go back to Mum’s and pack my shit. Her and that wanker she married are going to be so happy. How about yours?’

  ‘Um, I don’t know. I guess they’ll be cool.’

  But Charlie knows full well that her parents won’t be cool. They’ll be horrified. And doubly so when they find out how she’s funded the whole endeavour.

  So when she gets home that evening she says nothing about it, sitting down to a Chinese takeaway with her parents, younger brother and her sister, recently returned home after the end of her university term.

  After supper she sits on her bed for hours, waiting for the rest of the household to go to bed. She texts Hannah.

  Can you keep a secret. You’ve got to promise not to tell ANYBODY

  Omigod girl WTF you have GOT to tell me!!! shiiitttt what’s happening

  I’m moving in with Jake

  SHIT DO YOUR PARENTS KNOW

  Not yet. Don’t tell yours okay? Promise?

  I won’t but why the hell would you want to do that boys are pigs

  And Hannah adds a stream of pig emojis to reinforce the point.

  Once she’s sure everyone is asleep, Charlie takes a suitcase from the cupboard on the landing and packs, indiscriminately, as much as she can cram into it before eventually falling asleep for a few hours.

  She’s woken by her mother shouting up the stairs: ‘Lottie, can you mind Olly for a bit? Thanks.’

  Charlie’s stomach lurches, and it’s not just morning sickness. This wasn’t part of the plan. She shouts back, ‘Why? Why isn’t he at school?’

  ‘Because he broke up for the summer on Friday! Goodness, those hormones are making you scatty.’

  ‘But I’m going out,’ Charlie protests. To pick up the keys to the new home you don’t know anything about.

  ‘It’s only for an hour or so. Then Lucy will be back.’

  As soon as she hears the door slam, Charlie grabs her purse and hurries to her brother’s room, still in her pyjamas. She waves a twenty pound note in his face. ‘Oll, I’ll give you this if you can find a mate to go and hang out with till Lucy comes back.’

  His eyes widen. ‘Why, where are you going?’

  ‘Away for a bit.’

  ‘Do Mum and Dad know?’

  ‘They will.’

  As soon as Olly has cycled off to his friend Josh’s house, Charlie scribbles a note, which she leaves propped against the toast rack.

  I’m moving out to live with Jake. Please don’t try and stop me and DON’T call the police, because I’ve checked and I’m old enough to live independently of my parents if I’m with another adult (Jake). I’ll be in touch soon. C xx

  She drags her suitcase downstairs, switches off her phone, and pulls the case out onto the front step, slamming the door firmly behind her.

  10

  Paula

  Estelle Armitage still lives in the house she shared with her late husband.

  After he divorced Wendy, Colin Armitage and his then-girlfriend Estelle pooled their financial resources and bought a run-down semi-detached house in the affluent suburb of Totteridge, pouring time and money into it over the years until they had created an attractive, and now quite valuable, home. They had eventually got around to marrying when Paula was nineteen.

  Paula has always got on well with her stepmother, without ever feeling close to her. Estelle has a family of her own, and while she was always pleasant to Steve and Paula, she was never particularly invested in them either, instead engrossing herself in her two grown-up daughters and handful of grandchildren.

  ‘Come in, love,’ Estelle says, kissing Paula warmly. She’s a well-preserved sixty-something who highlights her hair blonde and would never dream of being seen without a full face of make-up. ‘Coffee? Or would you prefer a G and T?’

  ‘Coffee, please. I’m driving.’ Paula follows her into the ostentatiously tidy sitting room, with its faux marble fireplace, gilt-trimmed lamp tables and heavy brocade sofas.

  ‘How are the kids doing?’ Estelle enquires. ‘Goodness… how long is it since I’ve seen them? Ages.’

  Paula reaches for her phone to pull up the most recent pictures, but Estelle holds up a hand. ‘You can show me in a minute, when I’ve fetched the coffee.’

  She returns with two mugs of coffee, plates, paper napkins and a large cake tin on a tray. Estelle has always loved to bake, and makes even more cakes and biscuits now she lives alone. ‘It fills the time,’ she confessed to Paula in the months after Colin died of a stroke. ‘So much time, and I’ve no idea what to do with it.’

  ‘So…’ She hands Paula a large slice of lemon drizzle cake. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure? Any special reason?’

  Paula visits with the children for Sunday lunch every few months, but hasn’t been to Totteridge on her own since before she was married to Dave.

  ‘It’s… well, it’s about Lizzie.’

  Estelle’s expression is one of puzzlement. Thanks to Colin’s long estrangement from his oldest daughter, she never met Lizzie. ‘Oh?’


  ‘When she died, I know it was Dad who organised the funeral, and took care of any arrangements.’

  Estelle looks down at her hands, neatly folded on her lap. ‘Yes, that’s right. He didn’t like talking about it, but I know he was very cut up about it… about what happened.’

  ‘Did he ever mention the post-mortem?’

  Estelle blinks. ‘No, I don’t think so. In what sense, love?’

  ‘There would have been a copy of the pathologist’s report sent to Lizzie’s next of kin. I’ve asked Mum, and she says it was sent to Dad.’

  ‘Let me see now…’ Estelle half closes her eyes. ‘I do vaguely remember something about that. I tell you what; any family papers on Colin’s side are all filed together. I can fetch them, and then we can take a look.’

  She disappears into the small back reception room which acted as a study when Colin Armitage was alive, and brings back a large lever arch box file. ‘Here…’ She starts flicking through the contents.

  Paula recognises some sepia photos of her grandparents, a couple of death certificates, her father’s old passport. Near the bottom is a large manila envelope, printed with ‘Coroner’s Office, Borough of Haringey’.

  Estelle hands it to Paula. ‘I think this must be it.’

  Paula wipes the cake crumbs from her fingers then takes the envelope and turns it over, puzzled. The envelope is still sealed. ‘It hasn’t been opened?’

  Estelle shakes her head. ‘Your dad couldn’t face reading it. It just upset him too much.’

  ‘Is it okay if I take it away with me?’ Paula asks.

  ‘Of course, darling. Though I can’t think what you’d want with it now. It’s been, what, fifteen years or more?’

  ‘Let’s just say that something’s come up.’

  Paula texts Johnny when she gets home.

  Kids with their dad. Want to come over? X

  He shows up at seven with a bottle of Prosecco, a bottle of Merlot and a six-pack of Mexican beer. ‘Wasn’t sure what you’d be cooking, so I thought I’d better cover all bases.’

  Paula reddens slightly. ‘Actually, I wasn’t planning on making anything.’

  Despite – or perhaps because of – her mother always drafting her into preparing the evening meal when she was a teenager, she’s not much of a cook. And during her marriage, the kitchen was always Dave’s domain.

  ‘If you’re hungry, I’ve got snacks,’ she says, hurriedly, reaching in the cupboard for bags of crisps and taking cheese, tomatoes, cold meats and a melon from the fridge. ‘When you’ve got teenagers, you always have to have plenty of food in.’

  Johnny shrugs. ‘Or we could order a pizza?’

  She hands him a takeaway menu. ‘Maybe later. Let’s just have a drink first.’

  They take the beers and some crisps onto the rear patio. It’s a warm evening, and the air is filled with the drone of a neighbour’s lawnmower and the sound of someone kicking a ball against a fence.

  ‘The reason I asked you round is because I’ve found something out,’ Paula tells Johnny, as he flips the tops of their beer bottles. ‘I’ve read the coroner’s report on Lizzie.’

  He looks up. ‘Really?’

  ‘It was sent to my dad. He never opened it, apparently, but my stepmum still had it at the house.’

  ‘And?’ Johnny hands her a beer.

  ‘You were right.’

  He grins. ‘I’ll let you into a secret: I always am.’

  She raises her eyebrows in exasperation, and his sober expression returns. ‘There was a paragraph in the description of the findings that said there was evidence that Lizzie had been pregnant and given birth recently, probably within the last few days before she died. They used a lot of medical terminology, but that was the gist of it.’

  Johnny gives a long exhalation. ‘I know.’

  She looks at him sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I asked my mate at the cop shop to look into it a couple of days ago and he just texted me back today. The police were just at the start of keeping digital records back in 2003, so he managed to find the case on the system. At the inquest, the coroner passed his findings on to the police, and requested they urgently try and find what happened to the baby. This would have been some weeks after you went to the Wood Green nick and asked about it yourself. Hence the house-to-house enquiries I remembered.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Apparently they turned up the boyfriend: he was in Wormwood Scrubs serving time for armed robbery. They spoke to some neighbours, and to your mum. Everyone denied knowledge of a baby.’

  Paula feels a strange sinking in her stomach. ‘Mum never said a word about it to me.’

  She tries to picture the officers calling at the flat and breaking the news to her mother that she had a grandchild that had mysteriously gone missing. Was that what her mother had meant when she said ‘the police got involved’? Was it a guilty conscience that prevented her ever sharing this news with Paula?

  Johnny reaches out and squeezes her hand. ‘Maybe she decided it was best not to discuss it when the police failed to get to the bottom of it and closed the case. Like I said before, there was so much gang and drug stuff going on in Tottenham at the time, they were over-stretched. They concluded that given her drink problem, the baby was probably born dead or died soon after birth, and she got rid of the body somehow.’

  Got rid of the body. Is that what had happened? That was certainly what Marian Glynn had wanted her to believe, when she had spoken to her at the time.

  ‘The thing is, Paul, you were right all along. There was a baby. You definitely didn’t imagine it, and now we have hard proof.’ Johnny reaches down and strokes Biscuit, who has followed them outside and is waiting patiently to hoover up any pieces of crisp that are dropped.

  Paula sits up and drains the beer in her bottle. ‘Thanks, Johnny. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help. You’ve been so fantastic.’

  He leans forward, and she realises that he’s going to kiss her. She closes her eyes and lets it happen. He smells of musk and fabric conditioner, and tastes like the beer she’s just drunk. The kiss goes on for a while. The lawnmower continues to drone somewhere behind them.

  ‘Listen, Paul, I’d love to help you some more, but I’m going to be working away for the next few months.’ Johnny squeezes her fingers, then straightens up again. He hasn’t talked much about his work, so all she knows is that his company acts as a contractor for the event management industry: setting up and taking down tents, providing sound and lighting and security services.

  ‘It’s the festival season from now till the end of September, and that’s the core of our business. I’m going to be up in Suffolk, then Derbyshire, then down in Wiltshire, then Cornwall.’

  ‘Shame,’ says Paula, lightly. ‘I’ve got used to having you around.’

  ‘We’ve still got tonight…’ He fixes those clear, blue eyes on her face, tipping his head in the direction of the house. ‘We could go upstairs.’

  Does she want to sleep with Johnny Shepherd? Paula asks herself. The question is redundant. Of course she does. But does she want to do it now, when he’s about to disappear for three months and hang out with a load of young, flower-crowned festival groupies? No, she does not.

  She stands up. ‘Let’s order that pizza,’ she says, firmly, gathering up the drinks and crisps. Johnny shrugs ruefully and follows her inside.

  ‘There was something else,’ he says, half an hour later, when they are sitting at the kitchen table, washing down their American Hot with glasses of the Merlot. ‘I almost forgot.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘When the police were investigating Lizzie’s baby, they interviewed the social worker. Marian Glynn.’

  Paula sets down her pizza on her plate and looks at him. ‘They did? Can you remember what she said?’

  He nods. ‘I read her statement. She said the last time she’d been to visit your sister was Thursday, the third of July. She showed the officia
l record of the visit she’d made in her paperwork, apparently.’

  ‘No,’ says Paula, firmly. ‘That doesn’t sound right. When I called round to her house, she made it sound like she’d just seen Lizzie. Like, very recently. And that she would definitely go round and see her a couple of days later.’

  Johnny pours more wine. ‘In her statement, she’s adamant that she never saw Lizzie or had any contact after the third.’

  ‘Well, there we are then!’ Paula says triumphantly. ‘What she says definitely can’t be trusted.’

  Johnny nods. ‘I reckon she knows something about what happened to that baby.’

  11

  Charlie

  She takes a deep breath and rings the doorbell.

  The wisteria finished flowering many weeks ago, and now that summer is almost over, its carpet of pale purple petals has turned to a brownish mush that sticks to the soles of her trainers. She tries to remember how long it has been since she was last there. A couple of months at least. She’s celebrated a birthday since. The thought prompts her to touch her abdomen. She’s well into the second trimester of her pregnancy now, almost in the third. Her family will find that strange, she decides. Awkward. The whole thing is going to be awkward. But it has to be done, to get them off her back.

  It’s not as if there has been no contact since she walked out and left that note. She has been in touch with her parents fairly regularly by text. Mostly with her mother. Reassuring them that she’s fine, but that – for now – she doesn’t intend to give them her address. But this time they have asked – no, demanded – to see her, and told her it’s nothing to do with Jake Palmer. Whatever it is, it’s bound to be awkward. Awkward AF.