Amanda wasn’t too posh to push and Marcus came easily, slip-sliding into his father’s waiting arms. She had never been a fan of newborn babies, always finding something vaguely repulsive about their piscine features and slitted eyes. Their thin cries reminded her of kittens scrabbling at the sack before her father drowned them in the canal. Marcus cried the same way. His mouth opened like a goldfish kissing water. His head was scrunched and there was a purple crease, thick as a matchstick, in the centre of his forehead. She thought Rebecca had lost her senses when Josh was born, all that drooling and nonsensical cooing. She hadn’t realised love could be so savage, so dazzling.
Her arms ached to hold Marcus. She stared at him for hours. Mesmerised. Her milk was bountiful and she gave it willingly. Lar said she was a natural mother. That thought would once have been alien to her but motherhood had filled a hole within her. She had never realised it was there or that it needed filling until Marcus curled himself effortlessly into that waiting space.
At night, she sat by the window and watched the stars. He tugged at her breasts, his hard, firm gums demanding sustenance, and she found it almost impossible to believe she would have considered aborting this tiny life if Lar had rejected her. Motherhood had turned her on her head and she wallowed in the joy of it.
Lar moved into the bedroom he had once shared with Rosalind. Unlike many younger husbands, he didn’t feel threatened by Amanda’s all-consuming emotion. Rebecca was not so fortunate and claimed that her husband had complained bitterly about being left out in the cold after Josh was born. Amanda suspected that Lar was quite relieved he didn’t have to spend his energies on a passionate wife. He needed a peaceful night’s sleep to tackle the workload that awaited him every morning. He suggested hiring an au pair to look after Marcus when Amanda returned to LR1. She disagreed, vehemently. Marcus would attend a crèche. He needed other children, not some sultry Spanish au pair who would steal his affection with her kisses.
Two months after Marcus was born, she returned to work. Older fathers was the theme of Mandy Meets that afternoon. Three guests appeared on her panel: a retired solicitor, a jaded actor, who would never be able to retire now, and her husband. All entering fatherhood for the first time, and all in their sixties. Lots of jokes about sleep deprivation and pouches under their eyes. Marcus was the only baby who didn’t cry in front of the camera. Another natural, like his mother, Lar said afterwards.
Amanda thanked her fans for their cards and gifts. She had received a myriad of blue bootees and storks and teddy bears; all reminding her that she had a treasure. But there were always those who resented other people’s happiness. She was used to it by now. Not everyone liked what she did on Mandy Meets, or what she had written when she was with Capital Eye.
One of the cards was black. The white cross painted in the centre reminded her of a gravestone, as it was supposed to do. Lar shuddered when he saw it and handed it directly to the police. They would investigate but find nothing. Billy Shroff, of course, just reminding Amanda he was still on her case. She had always been fearless. Many had called her reckless but she had trusted her instincts as she walked that thin line between caution and audaciousness. Now that line had collapsed under the weight of a new responsibility. She rocked Marcus in her arms and knew that she would take on the world to protect her son.
Chapter Thirty-Five
On Grafton Street Amanda Bowe carried her baby in a sling, casually, as Nicole had done when Sasha was that age. Like their children were moulded from their hipbones. She was accompanied by Lar Richardson, his arm possessively across her shoulders, his eyes fixed proudly on his sleeping child. Karl hid in a doorway, ashamed to be seen. A homeless man of no fixed abode.
The slide had seemed sudden, yet really it had been a slow descent that began after his return from New York. As he had anticipated, his house was soon repossessed by the bank. He handed back the keys and rented a bedsit within walking distance to the city centre. He looked for work. The woman at the recruitment agency slid her hand over his résumé and said, ‘False imprisonment, how unjust.’ Her smile was thin, her gaze wary. ‘What kind of job do you have you in mind?’
‘Anything.’ He was no longer interested in writing about music. Let others deconstruct, analyse, review, criticise. All he wanted to do was listen to it on his earphones and deaden the voices in his head.
‘Anything?’ She disapproved of such vagueness. She would be in touch with him if anything suitable arose.
Fionn introduced him to a solicitor who specialised in employment law. Sheila Hande agreed that Karl had a case against Richardson Publications but warned him it would take time to bring a case for unfair dismissal to the labour court. Lar Richardson would do everything in his power to delay it. A wily fox who knew how to outfox the system.
As the weeks passed, Karl realised that Lar had been right about one thing. His name was tainted, his face instantly recognisable. No smoke without fire. He knew the maxim, but had never understood its destructive nature until then. Was there anyone in the country who had not followed those seven agonising days of searching and speculation? Constance’s face on the posters, on the television, in the newspapers. People drew back a little, shifting their gaze, when they recognised him. Their tone changed, became more emphatic when they told him the job was taken. Guilt by association, a notorious crime remembered in fragments and coloured by the prism of their personal recollections.
His landlady was sympathetic when she told him he had to leave the bedsit. Property prices were rising again and she had a buyer interested in the building. He tried to find another flat. A room with a door that he could close at night. But rents were increasing and the owners, after a quick glance at him, insisted the accommodation had already been let.
Even when he was sleeping in the same room with five other men, who snored, farted, snuffled and moaned their way through the night, he was still unable to accept the reality of homelessness. The hostel was a temporary arrangement. He would pull himself together and find proper accommodation.