Faith Read online

  ‘You need a period of convalescence before that,’ Greg said, kissing her and smoothing back her hair. ‘Your problems didn’t start with the poison, you were overwrought for a long while before that and your body is exhausted. You won’t be able to cope with an active toddler just yet. I’m going to book you into a lovely hotel in the sun, so you can recover completely before you start being a mum again.’

  It was of course what Greg had done so often in the past, turning her protests around and presenting his own scheme which appeared kindly and more logical. He argued that Barney was settled and happy with his mother, and if Laura had him back before she was really up to taking care of him, she might have a relapse and that would be bad for the little boy.

  She was to go off to Madeira for a month, and the very next day Greg drove her to the airport.

  Reid’s Hotel in Madeira was such a splendid place that it would have been impossible for anyone sent there by their husband to imagine that he hadn’t done it out of love. Set up on rocks above the harbour, it was the epitome of gracious, old-fashioned luxury and style. Laura had a beautiful room overlooking the sea, and the gardens around the hotel were stunning, for the mild all-year-round climate was perfect for the exotic plants.

  At first she just revelled in the luxury of it all, for there was wonderful food and first-class service. She could spend her days lying by the pool on a padded lounger with a book, or walking around the small, pretty town. She soon began to feel really well again, the shine came back into her hair, her skin became golden-brown and she put on the weight she had lost. But although there were other people to talk to, and she took the occasional trip out with them, loneliness began to creep in during the second week.

  Greg phoned her every other evening at half past six, but although he would tell her things Barney had done or said, it seemed to her that his calls were unnecessarily brief, and he brushed aside any question of her coming home early.

  She had been at Reid’s for sixteen days, by which time she knew every member of staff’s name, had watched dozens of different guests come and go, and worked her way through almost all the English books in the library, and she was growing bored. After drinking a whole bottle of wine, plus a couple of large brandies, she felt brave enough to phone her mother-in-law to chat about Barney.

  Her in-laws lived in a beautiful old country house near Brentwood in Essex, and the church where she and Greg got married was next door, but Laura had never got close to his parents. She had always felt they looked down their noses at her and Mrs Brannigan was very critical of her, sniffing and making remarks like ‘Well, of course I don’t understand you modern girls, in my day a wife followed her husband’s wishes.’

  Mrs Peebles, the housekeeper, answered the phone. She said the Brannigans were in Wales staying with friends. When Laura asked if Barney was with them, Mrs Peebles seemed puzzled by the question, and although Laura was a little drunk she realized from the woman’s responses that Barney wasn’t with his grandparents and never had been.

  Laura rang the house in Chelsea then, but there was no reply. She phoned a neighbour and they said they hadn’t seen Greg or Barney for at least two weeks. Next she rang John Merchall, Greg’s closest friend, and his hesitation suggested he knew exactly where Greg was, but needed time to think up a lie. ‘He said something about maybe going to a hotel for a bit of a break,’ he said eventually, but couldn’t or wouldn’t say where.

  Laura knew immediately that Greg must have a mistress, and that she had a hand in this. Few fathers, and certainly not an inept one like Greg, would choose to take a small toddler to a hotel in the middle of winter on their own. But they might very well take their child to the woman waiting in the wings to be their next wife.

  Laura cursed herself for not insisting she spoke to her mother-in-law about Barney the moment she came out of hospital, and for being stupid enough to let Greg convince her that a psychotic drug dealer had laced the black bombers with strychnine, not him. She had no doubt now that he’d told, or implied to, everyone he knew that her spell in hospital was to do with drug dependency. Unfortunately even the medical staff at the hospital, if called to give their opinion, would confirm she’d been taking amphetamines as they’d found traces of the drug while doing tests on her.

  To any court she would look like an unfit mother. And it he was awarded custody of Barney, Greg would get to keep his precious house and she’d be out in the cold.

  She left Reid’s the following morning after persuading the hotel manager to give instructions to his staff that if her husband rang, they were to say she wasn’t in her room, but not to let on she’d left the hotel. She used the excuse that she was going home because she missed him and wanted to surprise him, and the man seemed touched by the romantic gesture.

  Changing her flight home was no problem and as the plane took off, all she could think of was Barney. She didn’t care about possibly losing her home, it had never felt like hers anyway, and she knew she could make a new life for herself without Greg’s money. But she couldn’t bear to lose her baby. Nothing and no one had ever come close to making her feel the way she did about him. She loved Meggie and Ivy, she had claimed to have loved Greg and other men, but when she held Barney or even just looked at him she knew exactly what real love was. It was something so strong and pure it made her heart swell and beat faster. She was never going to let some other woman bring him up; he was hers, and if she had to, she would kill for him.

  By the time she got into Heathrow airport she had her plan worked out. As image was everything to Greg she had to put him in a position where he would have to do right by her, or lose face. So she got a taxi straight to his factory in Acton.

  To her relief his silver Mercedes was parked by the offices. She had always known that work was more important to Greg than love or family, and this confirmed it. She was glad too that she looked her best, suntanned, glowing and stunning in her red full-length coat, with a black mini dress beneath and long black boots.

  She paid off the cab driver, left her two suitcases out in the yard and breezed into the offices.

  ‘Mrs Brannigan, how lovely to see you!’ Miss Lofts the receptionist exclaimed. ‘Is Mr Brannigan expecting you?’

  Miss Lofts had worked for Greg’s father before him and she was dedicated to the company. She was over fifty, with grey, tightly permed hair, favouring tailored navy suits and pussy-cat bows on her blouses, and Greg said she was the last word in efficiency.

  ‘No, I want to surprise him,’ Laura said, giving the woman a flashing smile. This was one place where she knew people liked her, for they considered her as one of them: she’d been on the Tiger Toys promotion team before her marriage and made quite a few friends in the company. ‘I missed him so much I came home from Madeira early.’

  ‘It’s good to seeing you looking so well,’ Miss Lofts said, her smile a genuine one. ‘Go on in and give him a jolt. He’s only having a chat with the sales team and they’ll all be pleased to see you.’

  If Laura hadn’t been so anxious she might have laughed because she couldn’t have timed her arrival better if she’d known Greg’s itinerary for the day. The sales team were men she knew really well and had had many boozy nights out with before she began going out with the boss. She ran up the stairs feeling very much more confident.

  She opened his office door without knocking. ‘Tah dah,’ she said, making a theatrical gesture with her arms, and sidestepping the three men seated opposite Greg at his desk, she rushed across the room and hugged him. ‘Hello, darling,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t stay away from you any longer.’

  His shock was palpable, but he recovered quickly. ‘Laura! You look marvellous, but perhaps you’d better wait downstairs until we’ve finished here.’

  ‘You don’t mind me being here, boys, do you?’ she said, smiling flirtatiously at them as she perched on the desk. ‘I could make you all some coffee.’

  Harry Michaels, Frank Crew and Sid Emery all grinned delightedly at her.
They’d all chatted her up in the past, lechers all, despite being middle-aged. But they were decent, hardworking, family men at heart and they wouldn’t approve of what Greg had in mind for her.

  Greg gave in and let her make the coffee, and as she expected it was only minutes before Harry complimented her on how well she looked. ‘I’ll be better still once I’ve seen Barney,’ she said. ‘He’s down at Greg’s mother’s. Will you ring her, Greg, and tell her I’ll be right down to collect him?’

  ‘Later, Laura,’ he said. He looked rattled.

  ‘Then I’ll ring her,’ she said, reaching out for his phone. ‘I can’t wait to see him,’ she said to the men. ‘It feels like I’ve been away for a year, not just two weeks.’

  Greg put his hand out and stopped her lifting the receiver. ‘I’ll go and get him, Laura, you go on home and wait.’

  ‘But that’s daft,’ she laughed. ‘You’ve got work to do. It’s much easier for me to go.’

  ‘Go on, let her get her baby, Greg!’ Harry said. ‘You’ve got that meeting with the art department later. And look at Laura, she’s like a cat on a hot tin roof! Mums can’t wait where their kids are concerned.’

  Greg looked worried now. ‘I told Mother I was coming later today, so I could go through some old accounts with Dad,’ he said, and Laura could almost see him racking his brain for some plausible excuse. ‘She said they were intending to take Barney out to a friend’s for lunch, so she won’t be back till after four. Let’s just stick to that, eh?’

  Laura hadn’t quite got what she wanted but she could see she had him cornered. He’d be afraid not to get Barney back in case she called his mother and found out he had never been there.

  ‘If you say so,’ she said glumly and went over to him and kissed his cheek. ‘Mind you hurry back then, I’ll cook us something special.’

  Back home later, Laura quickly unpacked her suitcases, then began a systematic search of Greg’s study. In his filing tray she found a receipt from a Bond Street jeweller for a necklace costing £750, dated only two days earlier, and an application form to add a child on to an adult passport. At the bottom of a cupboard where he kept files she found an envelope containing £1,000.

  Two weeks ago none of these things would have seemed suspicious. She would have thought the necklace was a surprise gift for her. When he first suggested her going to Madeira, she said she wanted him and Barney to go with her, but he’d pointed out that Barney couldn’t go because he wasn’t on her passport, so it was possible that he thought he’d rectify this in case she wanted to take Barney away another time. As for the money, he could well have a valid reason for keeping such a large amount of cash at home.

  But in the light of finding that Barney wasn’t at his mother’s it all looked very different. She was absolutely certain Greg had bought the necklace for this new woman, and he’d left the receipt lying around because he hadn’t expected his wife back so soon. And he was intending to put Barney on his passport to take him out of the country. As for the cash, she guessed Greg was in the process of stashing money away so that when they finally ended up in the divorce courts it would look as if he had very little.

  As a precaution she dug out Barney’s birth certificate and hid it away in an old toiletries bag. That at least would prevent him from making a passport application.

  In the early afternoon Laura got into her own car, the yellow Beetle, and drove it back to Acton. But this time, after checking Greg’s car was still there, she waited further down the street where she could watch him come out. At three-thirty the silver Mercedes nosed out of the car park, and she followed him from a distance out on to the Uxbridge Road. When he turned west towards Ealing her suspicions were confirmed, for that was the wrong direction to go to his parents.

  She knew that her Beetle was far too conspicuous to be tailing anyone, so she had to hold back and let several cars get in between them. She thought she’d lost him altogether when she turned a corner she’d seen him take, then found his car had disappeared. But after driving further along the road she discovered that most of the turn-offs were into cul-de-sacs where she would have been able to see his car if he’d parked in one of them. She turned around and drove back, taking the first road she’d passed which led to a quiet, tree-lined crescent of smart, semi-detached houses. Outside one of them was Greg’s car.

  It was almost dark now, and she sat in her car seething with impotence. She wanted to go storming over to the house, but she couldn’t, for there was a chance she might be mistaken, and if Barney was in there he’d be frightened if she went in shouting and bawling. So she just sat and waited, taking in everything about the house to try to get a fix on what the owner was like. But she could see little in the gloom, just coach lamps either side of the oak front door, a red Mini parked in front of the garage, and two leafless trees in the front garden.

  She had been waiting for three-quarters of an hour when Greg finally came out, carrying a large bag. A woman followed him with Barney in her arms. Laura’s blood began to boil at the sight of another woman holding her child as though he were her own. A street lamp outside the house illuminated the woman enough for Laura to see she was slim, and fair-haired, dressed in a maxi-skirt and some kind of cardigan or jacket. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, a few years younger than Greg.

  Greg put the bag into the boot of his car, then opened the back door and taking Barney from the woman’s arms, placed him on the back seat and shut the door. Then he turned to the woman and kissed her lingeringly.

  Laura started up her car and drove off. She wasn’t going to tail him home – she wanted to be there first. She knew she was driving like a maniac, but she didn’t care. It didn’t matter to her so much that Greg had a mistress, but the way he’d taken her son to stay in her house and let her wash, change and feed him was far too much for her to take.

  She had been home some fifteen minutes before Greg arrived, and during the wait she’d tried to make herself calm down, but the moment she heard his car, she rushed outside and wrenched open the back door to reach Barney even before Greg had finished parking it.

  ‘Hold on, you’ve got all evening,’ she dimly heard Greg say. But she grabbed Barney anyway and holding him tightly ran back inside with him.

  ‘Mumma,’ he said wonderingly, getting a handful of her hair in his little fist. ‘Mumma.’

  He was dressed in dark blue wool dungarees and a red and navy striped jumper, both garments she didn’t recognize. His dark hair had been trimmed, making him look suddenly boyish rather than a baby. She could smell the woman’s perfume on him, something vaguely familiar. She felt murderous that this new woman had dared to put her taste and smell on her son.

  She hugged and kissed him but he wriggled to be free of her tight embrace. ‘Get down now,’ he said.

  When she put him down he toddled off into the sitting room, making straight for a box of toys that was kept in there. He looked taller and chunkier than before she went away, and when he turned and smiled at her, she began to cry.

  Greg’s voice behind her startled her. ‘He looks well, doesn’t he? He’s got a lot of new words too. He said chocolate on the way home, he used to only call it choc choc.’

  ‘Does he say I want my mummy, not daddy’s tart?’ Laura sobbed. ‘Did he ask why he was at Ealing instead of his granny’s?’

  Greg’s face blanched. ‘What are you talking about?’ he said. ‘Christ almighty, Laura, you haven’t been home two minutes and already you’re ranting.’

  Greg was a past master at turning things to look as though she was the one at fault, and he was doing it again.

  ‘I’m not ranting, you bastard,’ she said, wiping her wet eyes on her sleeve and trying to keep her voice down because she didn’t want Barney to be frightened. ‘Don’t even try to lie and say that woman was just a childminder, or give any other excuse. I know! Barney hasn’t been anywhere near your mother’s and I followed you today to see where he’d been while I’d been away. Explain that if you c
an.’

  His face closed up. She could almost see the cogs in his brain whirling round trying to come up with a plausible tale.

  ‘I’m not going to talk about anything while Barney is around,’ he said airily. ‘He needs his tea, a bath and bed. Until then, will you kindly keep your trap shut.’

  He wheeled round and left the house, leaving Laura shaking with rage. She knew he would go to a pub where over a drink he’d soon concoct some kind of story, and whatever she did or said he would turn it around to make himself look like a victim.

  It cut her to the quick when Barney said ‘I want Jan Jan,’ while in the bath and it took a monumental effort to stop herself crying.

  ‘Jan Jan’s gone now,’ she said, and tickled him to make him laugh, but that didn’t stop her feeling as if someone had clamped a steel band around her heart.

  Greg didn’t come home that night. She waited and waited, but by twelve-thirty she knew he wouldn’t come. She guessed he’d gone back to the woman and that the pair of them were discussing what to do next.

  All the next day Laura went through the motions of going to the shops for food, taking Barney to the swings, and all the usual daily routine of being a wife and mother. But she knew with utter certainty that Greg wanted her out of his life.

  He had never been a devoted father, she doubted he really wanted Barney in the new life he’d got planned with this other woman, but once again his actions would be decided by how they affected his image.

  Straightforward desertion of his wife and child would not be an option to him; he would have to make himself look like the victim. No doubt he’d already told his parents and friends that she was unstable, a user of drugs and an unfit mother. Maybe he’d even said she’d gone off abroad with another man. Everyone would admire him if he took Barney and had to struggle to bring up his son alone.