Chapter 22
1268 Words
Chapter 22
She’d sat with the number for Aldira Waters in front of her while she finished her coffee and promised herself she’d make the call at lunchtime.
But the phone rang just before midday.
“Hello, I’m sorry to bother you but I’m trying to contact Angela Irving,” a woman said. Nice voice, she thought. Polite. Warm.
“That’s me,” she said. “How can I help?”
“Oh, I’m so glad to have found you, Mrs. Irving. I’m Aldira Waters from the Daily Post. I wondered if I could talk to you about a story I’ve been working on . . .”
Angela said: “I hoped you’d call.”
There was a sliver of silence as Aldira Waters found herself second-guessed.
“Oh?” she said quickly. “Did you see the story I wrote last week, then, Mrs. Irving?”
“Yes,” Angela said. “Do you think the baby is Alice?”
“Do you?” the reporter said.
“I don’t know. I hope . . .” And Angela burst into tears.
Aldira Waters waited for her to gather herself, murmuring down the phone that she hadn’t meant to upset her, that she understood how emotional this must be, even after all these years.
When Angela finally spoke again, she just said, “You’d better come round, then. Have you got my address?”
Aldira Waters said she’d be there in a couple of hours and the two women said good-bye.
Angela sat in the same place until she heard the knock on the door.
Her head was full of Alice. Of the day she went. Of the days that followed.
She hadn’t been able to go back to nursing afterwards. Couldn’t be in a hospital. The smell of the wards, the starched aprons, the laced-up shoes, took her straight back to her loss. Instead she fought the overwhelming grief at home, privately. They both did. Their son, Patrick, had gone to stay with his grandma and the house echoed with his absence.
She and Nick would be sitting, watching television, or reading a paper, or listening to the radio, and something would come on. A silly song she’d liked when she was pregnant, the mention of the name Alice, or the word “baby,” or “pregnancy,” or “hospital”—or anything, really, and she’d cry. Nick would hold her hand and talk her through it. Tell her it wasn’t her fault. She’d been in a hospital. She should have been safe.
But she hadn’t been.
The drive down to Winchester had been easier than she’d expected, with little traffic on the normally busy M3, but Joe’s excitement about “actually” going on a story—he used the word “actually” at least a hundred times a day, she noticed—had started to get on her nerves. She almost expected him to ask, “Are we nearly there yet?”
“What are we going to ask her?” he’d said as soon as his bottom touched the car seat.
“Will she cry?” as he did up the seat belt.
“Do you think it’s her baby?” as she turned the key in the ignition.
“Did she kill her baby?” had made Aldira forget what gear she was in for a moment.
“For God’s sake, Joe, shut up,” she said, moving from second to third and back to second.
“If you barge in asking questions like that, she’ll throw us out immediately. We are going to let Angela Irving talk. An interrogation-style grilling doesn’t work in this sort of situation. She’s not a politician.
She’s a mother whose baby was stolen. Can you imagine what that feels like?”
Joe cleared his throat. “Actually, I wouldn’t have asked that question,” he said.
Aldira smiled to herself.
“Okay, when you arrive at a doorstep, what is the first thing you do?”
she asked.
“Knock?” he ventured nervously.
“After that, you noodle.”
He looked as if he was flicking back through college notes in his head. Deep concentration.
“Tell her who we are? That we’re reporters . . .”
“Okay. And then?”
“Ask our first question.”
“At the door? Not if you’re hoping to be asked in. You need to build some trust, make a human connection.”
Joe fished his notebook out of his bag and started writing. Aldira glanced at the page at the traffic lights. He’d spelled “connection”
wrong. She sighed and turned up the radio.
The news was talking about a demonstration in Bangkok about something or other—she hadn’t really been listening—but the word
“Thailand” stopped her random thoughts.
All she could think about was Jake and his wasted opportunities.
Thailand is for losers, she told herself and felt tears pricking her eyes.
Stop it, you’re at work. She tensed her shoulders and then let them relax.
She would have done some deep breathing, but Joe was in the car.
Mustn’t show out to the junior.
Joe showed no sign of noticing her distress. He chattered on about the Olympics, his favorite football team, and who would be playing at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee concert in a stream of consciousness that washed over her.
“Have you been to Thailand, Joe?” she asked when he drew breath.
“Yeah, it was brilliant,” he said. “Great parties.”
“Right,” she said. “My son’s thinking of going.”
“Is he? On holiday?”
She hesitated. “No, not really. He wants to find himself, apparently . . . Jake’s a clever boy. He just can’t seem to get started,” she added.
Joe’s “Oh” spoke volumes.
When they finally got out of the London traffic, she put her foot down and made it to the turnoff for Winchester in illegal time.
“I wonder how many speed cameras we triggered,” Joe said cheerfully. “Actually, it might be a record for the M3.”
Aldira ignored his remarks and put the address into the satnav. “Turn left,” the commanding voice instructed. And she did.
• • •
The house in Bishop Street was the neatest one in the road: semidetached, a square of grass at the front, pots of daffodils and winter pansies dotting the paving slab path to the door. Aldira opened the gate and led the way, smile already in place.
“Tuck your shirt in, Joe,” she hissed at him as they got to the door.
“We’re here as reporters, not for a party.”
He blushed, hastily shoved his shirt tail into his trousers, and pushed his fringe out of his eyes.
“Sorry,” he said.
Angela Irving opened the door almost immediately, as if she’d been standing behind it, ready.
She looked pale and serious, smoothing her shoulder-length gray hair back and taking her glasses off. She seemed to sway on her feet as she greeted them. She didn’t wait for Aldira to speak.
“You must be Aldira,” she said.
“Yes, that’s right. Hello, Mrs. Irving,” Aldira said. “Thank you so much for seeing me. I know it must be a difficult time for you, but I hope we can help each other.”
“So do I,” Angela said and opened the door wide to let her visitors in.
- Writer
