‘You can be pregnant and in the police.’
‘You may find it hard to keep your mind on policing,’ he says.
‘My tiny pregnant mind, you mean.’
She doesn’t know why she’s doing this. She won’t be able to concentrate on anything except getting Fly out, but to get Fly out she needs to be on the inside, not stuck at home, and then she remembers she can’t go home. Home will be swarming with paper suits, the bath panels off, toilet cisterns dismantled, covers off the drains.
‘I can’t go home,’ she blurts. ‘I mean, I need to be on the shop floor. Take my mind off it. Otherwise I’ll go crazy.’ She forces a smile for him.
‘I’m sure DCI Harper has explained the seriousness of you having any contact with the investigation, so I’ll just reiterate it here. There is an exclusivity notice on this case. I’m sure you know what that means. Officers are not permitted to divulge any information and you, in particular, are not permitted to talk to officers about your son’s case. Also, you are forbidden from searching computer files – these searches would show up on your computer, and your computer will be checked. Is that clear?’
She wants to say, ‘Yeah, yeah, whatevs,’ as Fly would, but she remains silent. Which is like him, too.
Way back last July, when Manon saw the second line on the pregnancy test, the first person she wanted to tell (after her dad) was Bryony – her oldest friend, still in Cambridgeshire, stranded on Disclosure; mother of two, straining at the work–life–exhaustion balance. (‘I can make it work,’ she told Manon, ‘I’m just not sure I can stay married.’)
Bri’s role is known as Officer in the Case, which makes Manon think of Doctor in the House. The case file in any investigation starts out as a slim dossier of the primary evidence against the suspect, growing by the time the case reaches court to Disclosure – as many as 3,000 documents (witness statements, CCTV footage, forensics, pathology reports, expert witness statements) which are shared with the defence. Disclosure is the evidence that serves the prosecution case. Secondary disclosure is all the rest – the evidence that’s either deemed irrelevant, or more controversially, doesn’t serve the prosecution case. Police and defence lawyers see secondary disclosure very differently.
Anyway, there was a lot of numbering of documents involved, Bri said. You had to develop a love of foolscap. After the pregnancy test result, Manon punched away at her phone:
I have big noos.
DON’T LEAVE ME HANGING.
I am With Child.
Hahahahaha?hahahahaha?hahahahahaha.
You are going to be so tired. Hahahahaha?hahahahaha.
Who’s the lucky fella?
No one you know. Due April.
Oh please come back to Huntingdon. My auntie skills are primed and ready kisses the guns
Working on it. Have baggage these days.
Also, I want to laugh more at how tired you’ll be, hahahahahaha etc, esp as mine sleeping through the night, does victory dance falls asleep
‘This is really good of you,’ Manon says, heaving over Bryony’s threshold a brown wheelie suitcase in which she and Ellie had thrown, without folding, everything in their sightline which had seemed grabbable and useful – toys, vests, nappies, shower gel – while a uniformed officer stood guard.
The house seemed barely theirs. Manon felt its disarrangement at cell level; all wrong, strangers everywhere. Possessions, which had been connected to them – toys, cosmetics, condiments – severed from them at the disdainful hands of SOCO. She tells herself to remember this feeling when she’s handling a search at a suspect’s home in future.
Fly’s arrest was conducted with the utmost quietness by Davy, with lots of muttering about ‘just a formality’ and apologies and ‘nothing to worry about, Fly’ and ‘I’m sure this’ll all be over soon’.
Manon kissed Fly, saying into his ear, ‘I’ll sort this.’
Ellie follows Manon over the threshold of Bryony’s house. Solly is tangled around their legs, trying not to enter.
‘It’s a pleasure to have you,’ Bryony says, brisk bosomy mother, her arm about Manon’s shoulders as she kisses her. ‘We have vast amounts of extremely dry turkey meat to get through, so don’t think this is going to be any sort of holiday. It’s fun for us, isn’t it, Bobby?’
Bobby stands on the bottom stair wearing a Batman cape. He is 5. ‘Is it time to watch TV yet?’ he says.
‘You see?’ says Bryony. ‘We are the perfect hosts.’
Sitting around the kitchen table, they can hear Dora the Explorer’s squeaky saccharine tones emanating from the lounge while various-sized children including Bri’s 3 year old daughter, little chubby legs splaying from the sofa unbent, watch open-mouthed.
‘Fucking love TV,’ says Bryony. ‘Like taking their batteries out.’
‘What’ll it be like when we’re allowed back in?’ Ellie asks.
‘Like you’ve been burgled,’ Bryony says.
Manon is shaking her head and putting a grape in her mouth. ‘Won’t be that bad. No fingerprinting, so it’s not like it’ll be covered in soot. They’ll pull it apart a bit – down the drains, under floorboards, tops of cupboards, that type of thing. It won’t look like the cleaner’s just been.’
‘They’re supposed to leave it as they found it,’ Bryony says.
By the time the children have had their tea, Solomon has taken to following Bobby around the house like a salivating groupie. Bobby has found him a superhero cape and he wears it, naked but for a nappy, with a stretch-fabric eye mask.
‘If only Fly could see you now,’ Manon says to him upstairs, waiting for the bath to run.
Solly stops at the mention of Fly, looks at her, then shouts, ‘Bobby!’
‘Judas,’ says Manon, even as she grabs him and gives him a squeeze. She is in need of it, feels watery on the inside and she holds on to Solly like someone drowning. His body is comforting, warm and ever so soft. He struggles free.
Downstairs she can hear Ellie and Bryony talking about potty training.
‘I don’t know when to begin,’ says Ellie.
‘Try when he’s about ten. I’m not gonna lie, it’s a long road. Boys just love that warm squishy feeling. Girls are like, Bring me some pants, I’ve got a busy day at the office!’
Manon lies in Bobby’s single bed, beneath his Minion duvet, his moon and stars projector light throwing moving shadows onto the wall. The bed smells sweet, like warm bread, with traces of Vosene. Bobby is sleeping in with Bri and Peter. Ellie and Solomon are down the hall in the spare room, Bobby and Solly’s requests to share a room having fallen on very deaf ears.