Not surprisingly, she was worried. ‘But why can’t you tell the police?’ she asked, her voice laced with worry. ‘Surely they can do something about it?’
It was on the tip of my tongue to confess everything. But that wouldn’t have been fair. My parents had enough on their plate with the unexpected arrival of their daughter. ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ I said. ‘But actually there’s not a lot they can do.’
That was true. I’d once had a client whose ex-boyfriend had stalked her. The only way we’d managed to get the police to take it seriously was to get him followed by a private detective to show that he was doing the same to other women too. Even then, he only received a caution. The law makes some very odd decisions at times.
Frankly, I’m just relieved that Joe hasn’t tried to get hold of us here. The thought of poor Merlin still makes me feel sick. Still sends shudders through me. If Joe could organize that, what else is he capable of?
Meanwhile, I am banishing my fears with work. Work, work, work. It’s the only way I can get some peace, the only way to shut out the shrapnel of Ed’s engagement and the stress of Tom.
When I first came down, I was worried I wouldn’t have enough clients and that after a while, the partners would decide it wasn’t worth subsidizing a satellite office. But within a couple of weeks, some parents from Tom’s school approached me. They were convinced that their son’s epilepsy had been caused by dirty water from an old well which had got into the water system. It so happened that I knew a specialist who said this was not beyond the realms of possibility. It went to court and we won damages – not a lot but enough to prove that some children’s special conditions are not just ‘one of those things’, but could have been prevented.
Then a father from Tom’s school asked me to look into some hospital notes which had vanished soon after his son’s birth. There had been problems, he explained. The cord had been wound tightly round his son’s neck during delivery and the consultant hadn’t been available. We never found the notes (they would, no doubt, have been shredded long ago). But we did find that the same pattern had occurred a couple of times now, all when a certain consultant had been on duty. That resulted in a class action, with other parents being given compensation as well as my client.
‘You’re building up quite a name for yourself, Lily,’ emailed my first boss, who had now retired. (We still keep in touch by email.) ‘Well done.’
How is Carla doing? I want to ask. Will she continue to work for you when she has the baby? But I don’t have the courage to raise the subject.
Then, one morning, as I am jogging along the front before work, I hear someone running behind me.
This isn’t unusual. There are quite a lot of us 6 a.m. joggers and we all know each other. There’s even a baggy-eyed mother who runs along with her stroller.
But intuitively, I know these steps are different. They match my speed. They slow when I slow. They speed up when I do.
‘Lily,’ says the voice behind me. A voice I know all too well. ‘Please stop, Lily. I’m not going to hurt you.’
48
Carla
June 2015
Carla looked down at her body in the soapy water. Her fourth bath in four days. But there was nothing else to do in the evening. And besides, it meant she could close the door and be alone for a while.
Since finding out she was pregnant, Ed had not allowed her to lift a finger at home. It was bad enough, he said, that she still insisted on going out to work. She should rest instead. They would manage somehow, despite those demands from the bank. He loved her. He would look after her.
The old Carla would have loved the attention. But life with Ed was not what she’d imagined. It wasn’t just his depression over unsold paintings or bank demands. Or even the drinking. Or Tom’s behaviour on their custody weekends, which upset Ed and affected them too, especially when she suggested that if Tom was ‘punished’ more often, he would improve. Nor was it the latest threatening note, which she had hidden from Ed.
WATCH YOUR BACK.
No. It was the wedding ring on her finger that really got Carla down. If it was not for the baby, she would not have agreed. Ed’s ‘care’ had become too controlling. But now she was trapped by her own pregnancy. How could she allow her child to grow up without a father as she had? No child of hers was going to be ‘different’. Look where it had got her.
So a wedding it had been. A small one, at her insistence. Just them and two witnesses off the street. The ceremony, she’d stipulated, had to be here, in the UK, in a register office. If they’d done it in Italy, the sharp-eyed matrons would certainly have spotted the small bump that had already started to appear.
‘So old-fashioned,’ Ed had said, kissing the top of her head as though she was the child he had first known. Sometimes, Carla wondered if Ed wished she was that little girl still so he could control her completely.
‘I think it’s sweet,’ one of the girls at the antenatal class had said when Carla had confided that her new husband would not let her do anything in the house. What Carla stopped herself from saying was that he wouldn’t even allow her to her put out his empties. Ed now drank far more than he would admit. It had led to a spectacular argument at an art critic’s party, right in front of everyone. Later, of course, he’d apologized profusely.
‘I am doing it for two,’ he had joked, putting his hand over Carla’s own glass when she had reached for the bottle herself. ‘No, you mustn’t. I don’t care what the latest report is. These so-called medical experts change their minds all the time. Far better to play safe and avoid alcohol altogether during pregnancy.’
Then he had stroked her stomach. ‘You’re carrying my child,’ he said in a reverent tone. ‘I promise to look after you. Not long now, my darling.’
Six weeks. Yet each day seemed to pass so slowly. How uncomfortable she felt! How heavy. Carla could not even bear to look at herself in the mirror, even though Ed told her, with the smell of whisky on his breath, that she was beautiful. Nor could she bear the touch of his hand on her stomach so he could feel the baby move like some monster inside her.
Soaping her breasts (so huge and the nipples so dark that they were scarcely recognizable), Carla allowed her mind to wander back to when she’d bumped into Rupert soon after the wedding. ‘How are you?’ he had asked.
They were in court at the time. She was there to support the barrister. (It was, ironically, a case involving a man who had got drunk at an office party and been sacked for making inappropriate advances to his boss. Rupert was on the other side.)
She found it hard to concentrate on her argument, constantly looking over to where her old friend was sitting. He appeared to be looking at her too. During the break, they sought each other out. ‘I am …’ she began. And then stopped. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I am married to a near-bankrupt drinker. A man whose child I am expecting.’
Rupert’s eyes widened. ‘I heard you had married Ed,’ he said quietly. ‘But I didn’t know about the other developments. I think we need a coffee once the case is over.’
Carla hadn’t meant to be so open. But it all came spilling out. Ed’s controlling ways, which could be interpreted as simply caring. The constant worry about money. (At the bank’s insistence, the house was finally going on the market, but they hadn’t had many viewers.) The uncomfortable feeling about living in another woman’s home.
‘In the end, Lily left almost everything, even her clothes. It’s as though she was trying to tell me that I couldn’t replace her.’
And then the note which had arrived out of the blue, threatening her for hurting Lily.
Rupert was clearly shocked. ‘What did the police say?’
‘I haven’t told them.’
‘Why not?’
Her eyes welled up again. ‘Because then Ed would make a fuss and not allow me back to the office. He would keep me at home, shut up like a bird, in case someone hurt me.’