There are reporters, photographers, and cameramen everywhere. Surely there must be bigger stories to report. What about the wars, terror attacks, homegrown jihadists, or drowning refugees? Public attention should have moved on by now. Something newer and fresher should have captured the headlines.
Reporters are mingling with the crowd, asking the same questions: “How do you feel? Are you shocked? Fearful?”
What do they expect people to say? Clichéd questions get clichéd answers. “Nothing like this has ever happened around here,” someone says. “What’s the world coming to?” says another. “It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” adds someone else.
Wonder what? I want to scream. Wonder why bad things happen to good people? Wonder if we’ll be home in time to watch Dancing with the Stars?
Why won’t people accept that Ben is gone? Rory is the one who matters. It would be cruel to send him back. The interests of the child must always come first—that’s what judges always consider in child custody cases. Rory has a mother. He has a family. Ben doesn’t exist anymore.
Meg was fine until Jack made that speech and now her mascara is smeared on her cheeks and she has panda eyes. Lucy and Lachlan look like they’re handling it well. People often forget about other siblings in situations like this. It’s like what happened to me when Elijah died. I was forgotten. Unloved. Less important. That’s what I want to say to Megs. “Love your other children. Focus on them.”
People linger outside the church, hugging and handing out tissues. Random strangers touch Rory’s head and smile, as though reassured that the world goes on. The priest draws a small sign of the cross on Rory’s forehead and says a blessing.
I turn and almost bump into Megs. She looks at Rory and I feel a rush of fear.
What if she can tell? Some animals can smell their own children or recognize their cries. I don’t know if Megs spent long enough with Rory to know these things, but she carried him for nine months inside her womb.
“He’s beautiful,” says Meg.
“I wasn’t sure I should bring him,” I stammer.
“Of course you should. Is he a good baby?”
“They’re all good babies,” I reply, before realizing how that sounds. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
She hugs me and looks at Hayden.
“It’s nice to finally meet you.”
“And you,” he says.
“Did you make it home for the birth?”
“Not quite.”
“Well, you’re here now.”
“I’m sure they’ll find your little boy,” says Hayden.
“Thank you.”
Megs is ushered away by a police constable, who is keeping reporters at bay.
“Let’s go,” says Hayden, who seems to share my unease.
A photographer steps between us. Without asking, she begins taking pictures of Rory and Hayden.
“Can we get a shot with you?” she asks. “We’re doing a story on the candlelight vigil. Do you know the Shaughnessys?”
“Yes.”
“Can you lift him out of the sling? That’s it. Hold him a little higher. Next to your cheek.”
The flash keeps firing. A recording device is thrust under my chin.
“Are you frightened for your own baby?” asks a reporter.
“No. Why?”
“It’s shocking, isn’t it? You don’t expect babies to be stolen.”
“No. I guess not.”
“Do you have a message for the person who took Baby Ben?”
“No, not really, I think everything has been said.”
MEGHAN
* * *
Morning, 6:15. Red digits glow on the radio clock. My hand slides across the cool sheets, but the bed is empty. Jack must have woken early and decided to get up. We made love last night after the vigil. He didn’t penetrate me (my stitches) but we found other ways to get close and it did more to heal us than a dozen counseling sessions.
Yet even as he moved against my hand and lips, I felt Jack slowly running down like the mainspring of a clock. I pulled his face close to mine and saw the tears. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to hide them as he moved faster and moaned my name.
I doze again. When I wake the second time, I turn on my mobile. There are dozens of messages—questions about a story in the newspaper. I open a link but the doorbell chimes downstairs. I hear Annie’s voice and DCS MacAteer’s. I jump out of bed and shrug on a dressing gown, pulling my hair into a band.
They’re in the kitchen—Annie, Jack, and MacAteer. Lucy and Lachlan are watching cartoons in the sitting room. Newspapers are spread across the bench. Jack is poring over them, looking shocked and pale.
I join them and glance at the pages, noticing a photograph of Jack and me. A second picture shows a glamorous-looking woman with tousled hair, white teeth, and a low-cut blouse. I recognize her: the estate agent who sold us the house.
The headline screams: I DIDN’T STEAL BABY BEN.
And the one below it: But I’m in love with his dad.
Jack tries to close the pages. I put down my hand and push him away, reading the opening paragraphs.
A London estate agent has denied any involvement in the abduction of Baby Ben Shaughnessy, but admitted to having an affair with his father, well-known sports presenter Jack Shaughnessy.
Rhea Bowden claims she and Jack “shook the house down” when they had sex in dozens of different properties she was selling in South London. Those houses include the one in Barnes that she sold to Jack and Meghan Shaughnessy last December, three months before she and Jack began their affair.
Jack is trying to force my fingers off the page. “Please, Megs,” he says, his voice thick with . . . what . . . ? Guilt? Shame? Remorse?
I keep reading.
“We bumped into each other at a trivia night at a local pub, the Sun Inn, and Jack offered to buy me a drink. He bought a bottle of champagne,” Rhea Bowden told the Daily Mirror.
“We flirted and laughed and were both pretty drunk by the second bottle. We finished up kissing in a doorway and making love in my office. I knew he was married, of course, but I didn’t realize his wife was pregnant.
“After that, Jack would call me when he had an afternoon off. We’d either meet at my place or go to one of the houses I was showing. I know it was wrong, but whatever people think or say about me, I didn’t take Baby Ben. I love Jack. I would never harm his family.”
The newspaper rips as Jack wrenches it away from beneath my balled fists. My eyes are swimming but I refuse to cry. I look at the other front pages. They all have the same story, writ large in bold headlines. I picture the entire country sniggering over their cornflakes or muesli, gossiping around the photocopier, or over garden fences, or at checkouts. We are no longer that poor family who lost a child. We are tabloid fodder. We are a soap opera. Jack hasn’t just cheated on me, he has humiliated me; he has made a mockery of our marriage and every statement we’ve made about being a loving family. We don’t deserve sympathy. We don’t deserve to get Ben back.
I go upstairs. Jack tries to follow. MacAteer stops him. He has questions to answer.
“Can’t it wait?” asks Jack, pleading with him.