Kidnapped
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. I had been sick this morning and fainted twice in the past week so I thought it best to relax with my book and try to stop worrying. I had not got beyond the first page when the phone rang .
I hurried to the study,"There is a woman on the phone. She says her baby has been kidnapped."
Across the room, engrossed with his computor, Tom my husband , does not even look round.
"Tell her to ring the police. I've retired!'1
"She say's she is an old friend, Jane Xerrin and she can't go to the police."
He repeats the name, reaches for his crutches and heaves himself up with a greater alacrity than I have seen for some time.
I stay in the study where I can only hear snatches of the conversation. Tom won't have a phone in the study.He doesn't want to be disturbed. To be fair, I admit most of the calls are for me. I leave an answering machine on while I'm at work.
I am glad he has decided to write his memoirs although thirty-nine would be too young for most people to think of recording the details of their life but Tom has a bullet lodged in his spine and has had to give up the force. He could have had a desk job but he would have found it irksome.
From the hall, I hear him tell the caller to come round and bring everything with her.
While we are waiting, Tom makes several phone calls.
"I thought you'd finished with police work," I said.
"This is different. Jane is an old friend." He felt in his pocket. "Damn," he said.
I fetched his pipe from the study.
She is blonde, slim with the kind of figure that never runs to fat. I look from her blotched face to her hands twisting and wringing the man sized handkerchief. Her husband is with her. He is a dark square man. He seems calm but the corner of his mouth twitches.
Tom introduces me."Tell us what happened," he said. She had been shopping and was outside her own front door. Rebecca, her two year old child, sat on the step while she searched in her handbag for the key. A man had suddenly appeared, snatched up the child and bundled her into a car. It was a blue car: a Ford she thought. There was a woman at the wheel. She had been too shocked to take the car number but she recognised the woman - her voice faltered and she stopped.
"Rebecca's mother?" Tom said.
"No! Rebecca's my baby. She gave her to me the day she was born. My hand was the first her baby fingers clutched. No one else has fed her, nursed her. When she cries in the night it is for me she cries." She brushed her eyes with the back of her hand. Her husband put his arm round her.
"You have adoption papers?" Tom's voice was calm and impersonal. Twenty years in the police force had cured him of emotional involvement. Your first murder case, he had once said, you're a crusader, by your tenth it's just another for the record. She unzipped her large white handbag and handed him a brown envelope.
He drew out a bundle of papers, "Jane," he said his voice thick with reproach.
"There was no other way." she said. "Tom you owe me." She gave him a recent snapshot and a studio portrait of a bonny child with straight dark hair.
On the back of each he wrote weight -22lb height -93cms colour of eyes -brown.
He promised to do his best to have the child traced. He had friends in C.I.D. He knew he could call on them to help but as to the outcome? He bit on his pipe and shook his head.
I made coffee while Tom made more phone calls. Before it was ready they had gone.
"Why you?" I asked. "Why not the police?"
"She has no legal claim to the child. It was a surrogacy arrangement."
"Then that wasn't adoption papers she showed you?"
"No just a contract drawn up by a solicitor. Not worth the paper it was written on. You can't buy a baby in this country, yet! I had better hand in these photographs. The quicker they are circulated the better."
The door closed.
Why had she come to Tom? If they were friends, why had I never heard of her?
Was he lying? Could the missing baby be Tom's? Now I'm being ridiculous. Tom is as blonde as Jane without any help from the bottle. The baby's eyes were brown, Tom has blue eyes, a bright piercing blue that could send shivers up your spine when he was angry. Thank goodness his anger had only been directed at me once. That was when my boss had driven me back from a show.
His designs had been a huge success and we had a drink to celebrate. After Tom and I made up our quarrel Tom admitted to being jealous but his main concern had been for me. He has too often seen the results of celebration drinking.
It was after eleven when Tom returned.
"Well?" I said.
"They'll do their best but finding the child will not be easy. The kidnappers will have made straight for the airport and are probably out of the country already."
Tom smashed his fist down on the coffee table, "Sod it," he said.
I handed him his pipe and waited.
As he filled it he looked suddenly old and weary."Tell me," I said.
"Jane was raw young recruit assigned to me. It was about seven years ago. You were at the Paris dress shows.nShe was attractive girl, I thought she could go far but all she wanted out of life was a family. She used to say she would breed her own football team." He lit his pipe.
I waited.
"I was driving her home when we ran into a smash and grab raid. The jewellers on Radford Road. I gave chase. They swung into a side road. A dog ran into the road. I braked."
He relit his pipe."We hit a lamp post. I braked for a dog and ruined her life."
"Tom, you were doing your job!" I protested.
"I should have let them go. I knew she was pregnant. She lost the baby."
He sucked his pipe for a while "Jane took the loss pretty well. For a while we kept in touch. She accepted the doctors bland reassurances. She was young, just a matter of time. But time past and you know the routine: tubes blown, charts kept, psychiatric sessions and monthly despair."
Oh yes I knew only too well.
She had turned on Tom. Accused him of being a ghoul bringing the curse with his visits. He stopped seeing her.
"Why didn't she adopt the baby?"
"That was the intention. But the mother reneged on the agreement."
"Is there no hope?" I asked.
There is always hope, Tom told me.
I went to bed and left Tom sitting by the phone. All night I tossed and turned. Was she just a colleague? Seven years ago! We would have been married just over three years. Tom is ten years older than me so we had agreed not to delay having a family but no baby came along. I wasn't in too much of a hurry because Tom insisted I would have to give up working once we had a family. I love my work and enjoy the trips abroad to the fashion shows. Then I remembered! It was after the Paris trip that Tom had suggested we stopped trying for a family. I thought it was just to stop me worrying but now...
It was ten-thirty in the morning when the phone rang. Tom was seated near bye. He held out his hand to me and I clasped it tightly. They had found the child in a hotel near to the airport. She had been taken to hospital and we could take Jane and her husband to see her. A ' ward of court order' had been applied for.
"Thank God!" Tom said, hugging me to him, "for flight delays.
The kidnappers had decided to spend the night in an hotel room lest the sedation wore off. Their luck ran out. In the morning Rebecca was covered in spots. A maid at the hotel became suspicious and called the police.
"Is she all right?" I asked.
Jane smiled through her tears, "She has chicken pox." She turned to Tom. "Will they let me take her home?" she asked.
"Even if they do you will have to apply to the courts for custody."
"But," I interrupted. "If Jane's husband is the biological father, surely..."
"The court may agree with you," Tom said but Jane has to be prepared for disappointment.
At that point the nurse appeared. Doctor is discharging Rebecca but he'd like you to call your own doctor to keep an eye on her.
"A social worker will be calling on you," Tom told Jane, "and you wil1 have to bring Rebecca before the court."
As we waved them goodbye I felt sure that Jane would be allowed to keep her baby.
"Tom, it will be all right won't it?"
"I hope so. I've pulled every string. It's not as if the mother wants baby Rebecca for herself. She was actually intending to sell her to an American couple."
We drove in silence for a while.
I've made a pretty mess of things haven It I? I have robbed two women of a child."
"Two women?"
"I killed Jane's baby then I stop you seeking treatment until it's too late."
The longing in his voice startled me." But Tom,you told me you didn't want children."
"That was seven years ago. I felt so guilty about what had happened. I'd made one woman miserable I wanted you to be happy."
"Were you in love with Jane?" I had to know even though the answer could destroy me.
He stopped the car and cupped my face in his hands."I've never loved anyone but you." He kissed me gently."When we get home," he said,"I'll make you believe it."
I began to laugh before I cried.
"Well," I said. "You had better get cracking on your memoirs. They tell me it's not easy for house fathers to find time to write. As soon as we get home I'll contact my boss and book maternity leave.
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